Monthly Archives: June 2010

ISTE Oddities

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This June marked my first ISTE Conference. It was great to meet and re-connect with folks I know from the Interwebs, as well as have the opportunity to lead a breakout session at Leadership Bootcamp on Saturday and sit on a panel on Wednesday.

There was a lot of great learning going on, and I hope a lot of it leads to improvements in the way we teach our kids. But first, being an ISTE first-timer, I wanted to share a couple of peculiar observations I made over the last few days.

  1. ISTE Royalty? I’m not talking about the über-edubloggers and their enamored Twitter followers, I’m thinking about the good people I saw walking around the convention center with scores of ribbons dangling from their ISTE nametags. At first, it was 3 or 4. “Presenter,” “EduBlogger,” “Twitter…” But by Wednesday, what started as a mildly amusing trend became a downright puzzling obsession. People were literally walking around with ribbons dangling down to their knees. Between the excessive number of ribbons and the swag bags overloaded with free pens, stress balls, and other sundry vendor freebies, they looked like some overtired, sunburned elves helping Santa stage a June comeback tour.
  2. The PLN Workshop. Fresh from Saturday’s EduBloggerCon session in which we debated the very existence of PLNs, there were probably a hundred people or more lined up outside the “How to Start a PLN” session on Wednesday. The incredible irony was that most were staring at their iPhones or Droids Tweeting about where they were. I wanted to suggest to them that, quite possibly, the best way to start a personal network would be to put the phone away, turn to the person next to them in line, and introduce themselves.
  3. The Cupcakes. The only line in the convention center that was even close in length to the PLN line was the line for cupcakes.
  4. Backchannel Blunders. Twitter and the like are a double-edged sword. They’re great for making connections with colleagues whom you’re not likely to meet any other way. On the flip-side, though, they enable otherwise kind, regular people to put things out into the universe that (a) they would never say to someone in person, and (b) they’d never tolerate from their own students. During a couple of keynote speeches this week, we saw the best and worst that Twitter has to offer. Before any of us pop off with some scathing criticism of the person with the microphone, we should ask ourselves what we would be talking about if we were keynoting. We should ask ourselves how many sessions we presented in which our audience was busily ripping on us while we spoke. Consider – just for a second – that every thought does not have to be Tweeted.

All in all, it was a great event for me. Most of that is due to the people with whom I interacted in person over the last few days. I’m looking forward to putting into action some of the things I’ve learned and I hope you’ll share your Big Ideas from ISTE 2010 as well.

Trying on the Big Chair

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As I mentioned last week, career paths can take unexpected and unusual turns, usually when you least expect it.

I am happy to be blogging today and sharing the news that I have been appointed as the interim principal at Conrad Ball Middle School here in the Thompson School District. The current principal has been asked to serve as the interim Director of Secondary Education and I have been asked to assume her role for the 2010-2011 school year.

Of course, there are no guarantees beyond next year, but as a trusted mentor told me last week as I was weighing this decision, sometimes you have to just jump off the cliff without looking down and without checking your parachute. I’m extremely excited to get to know the faculty and staff at CBMS as well as to roll up my sleeves and get to work implementing some of the new and innovative initiatives that they have worked hard to bring to fruition this coming year.

I know I’ll be blogging more about my experience moving into this role, but I wanted to share this news with my virtual colleagues as soon as it was official!

My Latest Project

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This two-days-in-a-row posting pattern is not indicative, by the way, of any nascent desire to participate in Melinda’s latest Twitter challenge. It is, however, an indication of how excited I am to have been asked to facilitate an extension of today’s Tech Bootcamp for leaders.

Inspired by the work of Bud and Michelle in the district to my south, I will be facilitating what amounts to a year-long, embedded PD experience for leaders who are motivated to stop simply talking about making change and actually start doing it.

I have to confess, the iLead name is not original. But I like it. (Or, iLike it…) It’s catchy. And “I lead” really speaks to what I hope participants will get out of this. We will work to build leadership capacity around robust, 21st century learning by supporting the cohort members as they build their own professional and personal learning networks. Reflection and data collection will be key components of this project, and with a little luck we’ll have this year’s cohort mentoring next year’s participants.

I hope to get a lot of interest from district leaders who want to play in our sandbox.

Spreading the Word

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I am both excited and nervous about tomorrow.

Over a year ago, I pitched an idea to one of our district-level tech folks to do a hands-on, immersive day (or series of days) where school and district leaders could just… play. We spend a lot of time debating the theory of this or the data supporting that, but too many leaders lack the fundamental knowledge and skills to move forward with using technology to facilitate communication and collaboration in their schools and departments. And unfortunately a few are afraid of looking “dumb” and therefore not comfortable in their ability to support their staff in jumping into this stuff.

They really want to know. They’re hungry to know. But some just don’t know where to start.

It’s taken me a while to bring this to reality (huge thanks to our Director of C&I for actually thinking I was onto something with this idea…), but tomorrow I will be hosting our district’s first ever Leadership Technology Bootcamp. The format for the day was inspired by the bootcamps that Scott McLeod and his posse at CASTLE present to leaders in Iowa. The agenda is very aggressive for the time we’ll have (I doubt we’ll get past podcasting), but I’d rather keep it that way and leave folks wanting more.

My biggest concern going in is the diversity of proficiency in the group. I plan to do a little show & tell, followed by some hands-on time. I’ve also dragged a couple of my fellow TSD Twitterati along to help facilitate small groups.

My greatest hope for the day is that my colleagues see a lot of different tools and, through some experimentation, find one or two that they can see themselves using in the 2010-2011 school year. I also hope that by exposure to some of these tools, they will be in a position to better support their teachers — not necessarily because they know everything about Google Reader or WordPress or Etherpad, but because they know enough to steer a teacher in the right direction when they think something might be a good fit.

And it would also be nice for all of us to continue working together to improve our skills. A true community of practice. A Twitter colleague said it better than I ever could.

As it stands, I have close to 50 school and district leaders signed up to spend the day learning and collaborating. Quite a nice start, I think.

Wish me luck!