High School's New Face 2008

High School's New Face was again an incredible experience for participants. National presenters such as Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Giselle Martin-Kneip, Dennis Sparks, Tony Wagner and Ken Kay just to mention those most known to educators and our teachers. The conference once again inspired us to continue to bring our high school, our instruction and our students into the 21st Century.

We know that engaging students in meaningful learning is the key to improving student achievement. We also know that students will do better in school if they feel that they have a connection with their teachers. Students need to feel that the adults around them genuinely care about them. We want to find what students are interested in and make a connection to the content/subject being taught. Our Thoughtful Classroom initiative is helping us to personalize learning much more than in the past. Lessons are being designed that meet the needs of individual learning styles of students and teachers are thoughtful about designing lessons and activities that have something for each type of learner in the class. We want to find more ways to make that personal connection with students. Conversations we will be engaged in during the coming school year.

Our students are constantly engaged with media, technology, text messaging and socializing. Images flash in front of them on computer screens and information is a click away. "Sit and Get" type lectures will no longer capture the heart and minds of students. Lessons need to be creative, hands-on and engaging. More and more students are reporting that our teachers are doing 'something' different. Students are engaged. At the same time, students are being asked to change, and take more responsibility for their own learning. They are being asked to collaborate with each other, create projects instead of writing essays and make presentations as part of their learning to become proficient at public speaking and communicating their ideas and knowledge. I highlight these changes with some sense of pride that at Iroquois, we are on the right track.

A focus of High School's New Face was the need to teach 21st Century Skills. I have written about these skills before in a post about a report Tough Choices, Tough Times. They include skills in collaboration and teamwork, creativity and innovation, and communications skills including reading, writing and speaking. These are a few of the skills our business community tells us that workers in the 21st Century must be proficient in. Added to the list include critical thinking and problem-solving. These are skills employers need their workforce to possess. The skills related to the "product" a business is involved in is something the businesses/companies can teach. As we move forward, we need to emphasize these 21st Century Skills with our students. I believe that many of these skills are being taught as a result of our Thoughtful Education focus. We may not however, identify these skills for students. We need to talk about them and incorporate them into outcomes for students.

Proficiency in Information and Computer Technology is another area we have been integrating with instruction. We are quickly approaching the point where access to technology will no longer be the issue. Many students come to school well versed in the Internet and how to access information. But, are they able to determine if the information they find is from a credible source? Are they able to gather information and share it in a concise and efficient manner? Can they take the information they find and put it into their own words? We also know that the Internet can be a place where predators lurk, information posted can never be retrieved and just as written work is protected by copyright, so is information posted on the web. Students need to be educated to make the best use of the power of the world wide web. We are discussing how we can provide this learning to students. A group of teachers will be meeting in the next few weeks to discuss technology standards and benchmarks, Internet safety and how best we can teach this essential information to our students.

This is an exciting time in education. While accountability is at an all-time high, the environment (and our economy) is demanding that we do things differently than what has been done in previous decades. In a future post, I will discuss the need for 21st Century Skills and the imperative coming from our business community.

We took a great team to this year's conference. I would like to thank Ross Esslinger, Anne Obersheimer, Sean Lauber and Catherine Stojanovich for taking time out during summer to join in the learning and inspiration tha High School's New Face provides to our region.

On-Line Professional Learning Communities

This week I had the pleasure of attending a training facilitated by the incredibly talented Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson: Western New York Powerful Learning Practices. In the context of Web 2.0 technology, at Iroquois Central School, we are advocating for the use of technology as an instructional tool that has the power to prepare students for the 21st Century. One way we are doing this is the development of an on-line platform to develop a professional learning community across our district. The purpose of this learning community is to share best practices in our schools and how we educate 21st Century Learners. This platform has no boundaries i.e., grade level, subject matter. The vehicle is a Wiki. There are resources related to our district’s initiatives for the year, lessons that teachers can develop, expand upon and share.

As we know in any business (education not to be excluded as a ‘business’) relationships are the key to success. Through these on-line learning communities, relationships are developed. People begin to identify credible individuals that provide trusted information. These on-line platforms have the ability to ask a person questions and make comments about their work or contributions. As practitioners, we will model exactly the skills we want students to be learning: Collaboration, Literacy, and becoming Global Learners with no boundaries. Your location is no longer a barrier. Whether across town, in another state or another part of the world, there are talented individuals that have a lot to offer educators.

We share bookmarks on line with tools such as del.icio.us. The link will take you to my account. The bookmarks you find are articles and resources on a variety of topics that interest me and that I have used in my learning related transforming how we prepare students for the 21st Century. In my account, I have followers and people that I follow. We each have access to each other’s bookmarks. My learning and resources is then expanded exponentially. In the busy life of a superintendent, time is precious. I would love to spend hours researching a topic. But why should I? I can connect with these people and see if they have bookmarked resources that have topics similar to what I am looking for. If this isn’t collaboration, I don’t know what is. Dare I share for the “digital novice” that MySpace is nothing more than a social bookmarking tool?

I blog. I began blogging the minute I learned who to. Blogs are communication tools. I can instantaneously post current information. Then people read my blog. Some leave comments, others just read it. I never imagined the power blogging until I added clustrmaps, a program that tracks where in the world people are reading my blog. It also tracks how many people are reading my blog. The incredible power of this is not only the shocking reality that there are people all over the world interested in reading what I have to say but that everyone of these people are potential people for me to learn from. And I have. When it comes to literacy, I have read more in the past 18 months than I have read in the previous 3 years. I read a lot. My job demands it. I read research, professional journals and magazines, newspapers. I know add blogs to my reading. Can you imagine how much reading our children can do on the web? What if your child could “publish” on the web, send the link to their parents, cousins or grandparents who can see their work on the internet? How excited and motivated would they be to write? What about their classmates that blog? Would children be interested in reading blogs of their friends? They read their profiles on MySpace of FaceBook don’t they? If this type of reading and writing were expanded, would they increase the amount of material they read? Would they not become critical readers? If a peer published something with erroneous information or misspelling, would they not comment? Would they then question where that peer’s blog is a credible source of information? What if this form of reading and writing was shared with students from another country? Not only are students becoming more literate, they are becoming global learners.

This blog as well as a blog I have cross-blogged this post with Leaderstalk.org. Leadertalk is a blog of educators that share their experiences and resources to help leaders across the country learn from each other. In some ways, this blog is functioning as an on-line Professional Learning Community. I have so much to learn, but not enough hours in the day. After critically determining which blogs provide the information I need and want, I bookmark these blogs and view them several times per week. If this isn’t powerful, I don’t know what is.

I will continue to blog as a means of “spreading the word”. It has been cited by many authors that we are preparing our students for jobs not yet invented. The questions we all need to be asking ourselves include:
• Do we want our children to function in a global society?
• Should “learning” include a global perspective?
• Do we want our children to collaborate with other students around the world?
• As professionals, aren’t we to be models for our administrators, teachers and students?
• Can we not all learn something from someone else?

If you answer yes to all these questions, spend some time on the read/write web. Follow some of the links on this blog and see what is out there. As an instructional leader I will continue to support the use of the read/write web, on-line collaboration for administrators, teachers and students. I will continue to support changes in how students are taught and learn so that they can develop the skills needed in the 21st Century.

First Evening at High School's New Face Conference

Talk about changes in the 21st century.......

This evening was an opportunity for planners and presenters for this year's High Schools New Face Conference to get together for dinner and socializing before the conference begins tomorrow. After dinner there was a campfire for folks to get together and chat. As we are fortunate to have someone as talented as Monte Shelby here, Monte brings his guitar to play and sing a little around the campfire. A little girl asks her dad about a far away country. How does Dad answer her question? Retrieve every bit of information he can remember? Tell her they'll go to the library next week and get a book out about the country?

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words...



How many of us had our Dad bring us out to a picnic bench with his laptop and showed us anything in front of a campfire?
This is just one example of how kids learn in the 21st Century and why we need to change how students are educated. This will be an exciting three days!

Michigan's Merit Curriculum

Last week Michigan's Governor passed into law Michigan's Merit Curriculum. It is the state's attempt to make their high school requirements more rigorous. While New York State has high standards and now the Regents With Distinction Diploma, something stands out about Michigan's new curriculum. What caught my attention is a requirement that all students take 1 credit in online/computer technology. While we are integrating technology into our coursework and students can take courses as an elective, we have yet to make the next leap to make it a graduation requirement. Needless to say, this is something I would strongly advocate for. Not only would this make our curriculum requirements that much closer to what is relevant in schools today, it would be the impetus for all schools to address the need for students to be technologically literate in the 21st century.
Most schools do have keyboarding and have students exposed or required to use word processing or powerpoint. Obviously, I'm taking more sophisticated than that- social bookmarking, online collaboration, video-conferencing, blogging, wikis, etc... Almost all of which is FREE. We all would like computers for every student and more computer labs. Hopefully that will happen. All schools have 'some technology' available to students which could and should exposed them to Web 2.0 technologies. Michigan is taking that leap.
In New York, the Regents have identified technology as an area to address in their P-16 initiative. I do hope that results in requiring students some basic requirement for 21st century technological literacy.
If you want to read more about Michigan's first leap, the link below will take you there.

http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-140--152784--,00.html

Connectivism: What's it all about?

If we are to look at what is being written and discussed about reforming schools in general, connectivism is something you are likely to come across. And so, after reading several blogs about a conference in New Zealand, I found that the entire conference was dedicated to this concept of connectivism. Naturally, I needed to read more in order to understand it.

Connectivism is a learning theory for the digital age. Learning has changed over the last several decades. The theories of behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism provide an effect view of learning in many environments. They fall short, however, when learning moves into informal, networked, technology-enabled arena. Some principles of connectivism:

• The integration of cognition and emotions in meaning-making is important. Thinking and emotions influence each other. A theory of learning that only considers one dimension excludes a large part of how learning happens.
• Learning has an end goal - namely the increased ability to "do something". This increased competence might be in a practical sense (i.e. developing the ability to use a new software tool or learning how to skate) or in the ability to function more effectively in a knowledge era (self-awareness, personal information management, etc.). The "whole of learning" is not only gaining skill and understanding - actuation is a needed element. Principles of motivation and rapid decision making often determine whether or not a learner will actuate known principles.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources. A learner can exponentially improve their own learning by plugging into an existing network.
• Learning may reside in non-human appliances. Learning (in the sense that something is known, but not necessarily actuated) can rest in a community, a network, or a database.
• The capacity to know more is more critical that what is currently known. Knowing where to find information is more important than knowing information.
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate learning. Connection making provides far greater returns on effort than simply seeking to understand a single concept.
• Learning and knowledge rest in diversity of opinions.
• Learning happens in many different ways. Courses, email, communities, conversations, web search, email lists, reading blogs, etc. Courses are not the primary conduit for learning.
• Different approaches and personal skills are needed to learn effectively in today's society. For example, the ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
• Organizational and personal learning are integrated tasks. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network and continue to provide learning for the individual. Connectivism attempts to provide an understanding of how both learners and organizations learn.
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning.
• Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate impacting the decision.
• Learning is a knowledge creation process...not only knowledge consumption. Learning tools and design methodologies should seek to capitalize on this trait of learning.

The concept makes so much sense as we begin to introduce the tools of Web 2.0 in schools. The notion of not necessarily having unlimited and sometimes irrelevant information may not be as important as know where and how to access knowledge about a particular topic seems much more appropriate in a world that is ever changing and that with the internet, access to information is limitless. This idea of a flat world and needing to educate students how to collaborate in such an environment is exactly what we are doing when we teach students about blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and on-line collaboration tools such as SKYPE and VYWE.

Now that I know what "connectivism" is, my interest in learning as much as possible about the theory has been peaked.

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