Building Understanding

I’ve recently returned to my RSS reader (anyone else incredibly frustrated with Netvibes right now?) and as expected, rememberd why I loved subscribing to all these writers in the first place.

One in particular that I want to get out there quickly since it could be a powerful start to your year, is a video that NCS-Tech shared with the tag line:

Every. Educator. Must. Watch. This. Now.

So I did.

Fifth grader, Dalton Sherman of Dallas, TX delivers the keynote address -  just 2 days ago – to 20,000 educators.  Not to be missed.

A great inspirational speech to start your year.

He’s in fifth grade!

It’s making the rounds now and since it’s so new there isn’t much about this kid out there.  Here’s an article I found.

Also a little shout out to Tracy for reminding me to get back on the blog and start writing again…this hardly counts, but the first step is just getting on.

Also posted as a guest blogger on Dangerously Irrelevant

When Scott put out his initial request for guest bloggers on school leadership, Justin Medved and I considered whether we fit the bill. We are not school heads or principals, but rather a different kind of leadership that is emerging in this current era of technological change and efforts in education to use this change positively.

We are Technology and Learning Coordinators at International School Bangkok. Our primary role is to lead teachers toward embedded technology use, enhancing learning opportunities in the classroom and beyond.

More and more however, we find that school leadership looks to us to guide and inform on all sorts of decision-making, ranging from curriculum to hiring practice to processes involved in running the school. This defines a new kind of leadership in schools – one that breaks down typical hierarchical set-ups into one of collaboration and deferred expertise. One that is less top down and one that is more shared – at least in some areas. Ultimately, the buck continues to stop at the top, but input and influence seems to be growing from the “middle”.

Currently, many school administrators and curricular leaders are not “up-to-date” or savvy on current ed tech thinking or even on current technology tools. They lead from an understanding of traditional schools attached to isolated IT classes with computer labs for student use. They don’t grasp the possibilities of a participatory web or realize the true potential of the “network” (social and hardware).

For the most part, this is not because they don’t want to change, but because they don’t know what’s possible. This speaks less to their skills as an administrator and more to their backgrounds as educators. It is a credit to those administrators who recognize a changing landscape and ask for guidance from those in the know.

So they come to us.

We work in this dual role, convincing administration of directions we need to move, while at the same time working for teacher buy in. Administration defers to our expertise in these matters.

Both may be considered the jobs of the administrators, yet both jobs fall on the guys with the ideas and the people skills to get it done.

Do you have a similar situation in your schools? If you are reading this as a technology-type, what is your role in this alternative leadership? How much responsibility/say do you have?

Justin and I often tackle the question,

what does it take to bring administration on board to make significant change in schools, curricular or otherwise?“

This week we’d like to share with you the process that we went through from both a leadership side as well as a curricular side. We are in the process now, because we are trusted to do so, in moving ISB forward into a model of embedded technology founded on the Essential Questions of the 21st Century Learner. This curricular model has come directly from us rather than the curriculum office because we see a need for a different way to approach learning with technology.

In the coming posts, Justin and I will take you through our thinking on this curricular model with two purposes:

1. To get feedback from you and to push our thinking forward.
2. To hopefully inspire thinking at your own schools about how to best “embed” technology into classrooms so that is accessible to teachers and agrees with the way children live with technology.

This is a terrific opportunity to speak to a different audience than the readers we have already have at our own blogs (and those who have seen us present), so thanks, Scott. We are looking forward to the week.

with Justin Medved

Tomorrow’s Post: “Birth of a question and a concept” – How does an information and technology curriculum stay relevant and meaningful in the 21st Century?

Cross Posted at: Medagogy and Dangerously Irrelevant

Will Richardson followed up his request for contributions to his wiki page mentioned in my last post with a thank you and an expression of appreciation for the power of people getting together to offer their ideas and share with others. To that, I left the following as a comment and since it is so closely related to my previous post, I thought I’d share it here.

(apologies to those who read it on Weblogg-ed already.)

The power of the collective intelligence that we can tap into with the web continues to amaze me. But even more so now, I am impressed and encouraged by the willingness of people to do so.

People continue to want to better EVERYONE’S knowledge and understanding through sharing, collaborating, and conversation.

I remember someone telling me (though I can’t remember who) that true collaboration is when educators recognize that they are no longer responsible for the education of their students, but rather they are responsible for the education of ALL students.

While easy for me to say in my tech coordinator role – it’s a tough thing to let go of and acknowledge for a lot of educators.

At the school level, that means a teacher letting go of caring only about the experience that their own students get and sharing ideas and resources with colleagues so that all children at the grade level or school benefit.

At an administrative level, that means letting go of representing only your own building or division and working cooperatively with other administrators to ensure that all students in the district or school can best learn.

What I see daily on the web is that very concept applied to its greatest level. We share ideas and resources not only so that our kids at our schools benefit, but so that ALL kids at ALL schools benefit.

We want EDUCATION to improve, and together, we are collaborating and conversing to make that happen.

Together we are all smart AND sharing.

That’s a pretty powerful combination.

Technorati Tags: web2.0, collaboration, education

Will Richardson, Karl Fisch, and Anne Smith presented outside of Philadelphia on the Read/Write web in a session called, “21st Century Education: 20/20 Vision for Schools”. In preparing for that, they put out a plea to edu-bloggers to chime in with tips, sites, or encouragement for the educators in seeing the direction that we believe education needs to go.

They have a wiki for this which is quickly developing into a fine example of the power of our Web to tap into the collective intelligence/knowledge of people – in this case the edu-bloggers.

As Will suggests in his blog, our contributions prove the very point we try to make about the power of the current and future web.

In essence, we want them to walk away understanding the power of connections that can reach far beyond the classroom.

Today, Justin, Kim, and I were de-briefing after a UStream presentation with the FLNW guys and Justin mentioned how important that online community is for the unconverted in helping them to see that lots of people out there are “getting it” and on board. That online community’s participation – whether through a blog comment, a wiki contribution, or a live chat presence – give credibility to the very tools that we extoll in our presentations. That presence does more for getting teacher buy-in than anything we could say. It’s like seeing the impact of learning happening right before their eyes.

So get on that wiki and add! Prove that the collaborative power of this technology can tap into the intelligence of the many.

I am already adding that single page to my Delicious – it’s going to grow into a fine resource.

Thanks to all of you us.

photo by jurvetson, found on Flickr Creative Commons

Technorati Tags: collectiveintelligence web2.0