Moving to a Staff Blog

05. February 2011 · 31 comments · Categories: blogging, Education, Leadership

In August, I went cold-turkey and informed my teachers that I would not be sending mass emails this year. I briefly touched on how inefficient email is as a one-to-many communication tool and most nodded along as they’ve all fallen victim to the “TMI” of a colleague who uses “reply all” to share that they wouldn’t make the faculty meeting because they’d been having stomach cramps all day.

As with the introduction of anything completely new, I explained to them the trade-off I was willing to make. My school was functioning under an intense “culture of meetings” that, in my opinion, was a little excessive. I committed to them to cut down on meeting times, but the trade-off was that all “FYI” items — without exception — would be posted on a private staff blog and that they were responsible for checking it every day.

Knowing that there would still be some for whom this was uncomfortable, I enabled a “subscribe by email” button at the top of the page. This meant that it was up to each individual to subscribe if they wanted to continue to receive school news via email. For me, this meant that I still only had to post in one place.

As a last bit of insurance, I worked with our school technologist to ensure that our staff blog was the browser start-up page on teacher computers. This means that it’s staring them in the face every time they open their browsers.

The benefits of the staff blog as I have seen them unfold this year are:

  • Information is archived. How many emails do you get from staff who absent-mindedly deleted that email with the attachment they needed? I’ve been guilty of this myself! On the blog, everything is categorized and archived by month so the assembly schedule we used in October is still there when we need it again in January.

  • Information is searchable. Technically, email is searchable, too, but if you’ve ever used FirstClass as your email client you’ll know that this is less than ideal. Plus, with the small mailbox sizes we are allocated, and the wonky way FC duplicates emails when you reply or forward, people tend to delete stuff.

  • Comments are way more efficient than emailing. This one was a bit unexpected, but it’s probably the biggest benefit. Say you post about an upcoming event and you omit an important piece of information. If you had emailed it, you’d get 10 or 15 emails asking for clarification and you’d have to either reply to each one or send one of those, “Oops! I’m sorry I forgot to tell you that Friday’s dance has an 80s theme…” emails. On the blog, one person asks the question in the comments and I can answer it once,

Overall, I think this has been a successful experiment. I think one of the primary reasons is that I articulated the purpose clearly as a reduction in wasted meeting time. Also, the cold-turkey approach was the only way to go. I don’t think this would have worked as effectively had I continued to send emails and post on the blog.

It didn’t take long for the hold-outs to come around when there was something they didn’t know about. I overheard more than one conversation along the lines of, “How did you know about [whatever]?”

“It was posted on the blog yesterday. Don’t you check it?”

Also, as with the team blogs, support is critical. This was new for people so hand-holding was critical for some while some were off and running right away. Some people stress out very easily because they “just aren’t good with technology” so it’s critical to support them in the early stages.

At this point in the year, there are four of us who have rights to post on the staff blog. I want to expand this next year to make it even more collaborative and to reinforce it as the “one-stop shop” for all things school related.

Hello, 2011!

07. January 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: blogging

I always hesitate to make these kinds of statements, but my plan is to try to write in this space at least weekly. Something, however small, that says to the world that I’m still alive and kicking. If you’re interested in more of what I’m up to, please know that I frequently post to Twitter and pass along random thoughts on my Posterous site.

In addition, I’ve been invited to lead a couple sessions at ITSC 2011 in Portland, Oregon, next month and that I’m excited to be co-hosting (for the last time!) the 4th Annual Learning 2.0 conference/unconference/gathering here in Loveland, Colorado.

Blogging for District Leaders

16. July 2010 · 2 comments · Categories: blogging, Education, Leadership · Tags: , ,

I had my first meeting yesterday with my new boss, the Director of Secondary Education. She is the person whom I replaced as principal at my new school so we are both new to our respective positions.

She spent some time asking me about my vision for my school, but also asked for input on a few things. For instance, she wanted to know what I thought would be the best use of our monthly “levels meetings.” During these times, all the elementary principals, middle school principals, and high school principals get together with their colleagues. As a new principal, this time is going to be invaluable for me to learn from my colleagues at the other middle schools. My suggestion was that as much of the levels meeting time as possible be spent on sharing best practices, collaborating, and learning from each other. Administrivia, or the unidirectional flow of information items that could be handled via email or a memo should not eat into this valuable time that we will have out of our buildings once per month.

I was also very flattered that she asked me about blogging, and about how the Director of Secondary Education might make use of a blog. Like others I have worked with, she is an “article sender.” I’m certain most educational organizations have a person or persons who will send an email or two a week with some “suggested reading” attached or linked. I shared with her that with the high volume of email that I and other principals receive, it’s not unusual for something that isn’t an “emergency” to get overlooked for a day or two. Further, I don’t really care for email attachments as I think they’re an extremely inefficient way to pass along information.

One other assumption in the article-emailing model is that the information is getting to all of the people who need or are interested in it. This involves managing multiple email lists: one for high school principals, one for middle school principals, one for assistant principals… The list goes on. No matter how carefully you curate the lists, someone who wanted the information will be left out, and someone who doesn’t want it will have to either file it away forever because they think they might be asked about it someday, or (gasp!) delete it.

Even if the sole purpose for creating a Director of Secondary Education blog was to share articles and links, this would be a significant benefit to the folks at the buildings. My preferred way of receiving news is via Reeder on my iPad or Google Reader on my MacBook Pro. From there, I’ll often route longer readings to Instapaper so I can focus on them when I have the time.

Further, a blog would bring leaders and prospective leaders in as opposed to an email that is pushed out. I usually have one or two administrative interns who work with me and, despite my best intentions, I don’t always remember to pass along the articles and links that come my way. A blog would be a great forum to bring these up-and-coming leaders into the “fold” and increase their awareness of what is being discussed at the District and principal level.

Finally, with the ability to comment on blog posts, I could see a blog becoming a better place for discussion than the endless CC loops that email encourages and that, for better or worse, eventually get ignored or archived so I can come back later which I rarely remember to do.

It will definitely take some re-norming with principals, but I think given the success of June’s Leadership Bootcamp we are in a great position to start leveraging some more of these one-to-many means of communicating.

Overall, we had what I think was a very productive meeting and I’m excited to work with my new Director in the coming year. Plus, anyone who shows up in my office bearing breakfast burritos and Loveland Coffee knows how to set the tone for a great year!

Get your life back, Part 3

13. August 2008 · 3 comments · Categories: blogging, Productivity · Tags: , ,

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve captured what you need to do and set up a system to help you actually do it. But what about those odds and ends that you may need to revisit? Those little doodles, emails, handouts, or reference documents that you are just certain you’ll need agan?

As I indicated up front, I have untrained myself from the old habit of scribbling notes during meetings. Instead, I capture things that need to be done; actions that need to be taken. Yet I still find myself staring at piles of stuff that may need a home for some unforeseen time in the future when someone might ask me for it. Old meeting agendas, handouts, memos from the district, and the like.

For me, stuff like this breaks down into two basic categories:

Electronic Stuff

  • Emails with information that may not be immediately important but may be important later. Dates for trainings for teacher mentors, for instance. I don’t need it now, but may need it when an interested teacher approaches me about mentoring.
  • Other important documents you may need access to later. We have an emergency phone tree at my school, for example. Or maybe you got a PDF of a workshop registration attached to an email.
  • PDFs or other articles you keep meaning to read. I receive a lot of publications via email. Many of them are compilations of articles from around the web and there are always a few I’d like to read at some magical point in the future, “when I have the time.”

evernote1Evernote has become my digital dumping ground. Enough has been written about Evernote that I’m not going to spend a lot of time on what it does or how it works, rather I’m going to share with you how I make it work for me.

I keep a few notebooks for various purposes. I try to keep stuff that is work-related in its own notebook. In my “LHS Reference” notebook, you’ll find math content standards and frameworks, an emergency phone tree, and a list of important district phone numbers.  If I see an article I like, I ask Firefox to print it as a PDF and dump the PDF into my “Articles & Papers” notebook. Receipts for, well, anything get dumped into “Receipts” and anything without a clearly defined place goes into “Random Stuff.”

I recommend starting with one giant notebook and letting things happen organically. For instance, I think I’m going to have another notebook eventually called “Recipes” where I save recipes I come across online.

Non-Electronic Stuff

For stuff that doesn’t exist in electronic format (handouts, whiteboards from great brainstorming sessions, completed classroom observation instruments, etc), my first question is usually whether I can get it into electronic format (and whether I’d want to). One of these days I’ll get a Fujitsu ScanSnap, but until then I have a few other tricks up my sleeve.

Print“For handouts, I ask the hander-outer if they can email a copy to me or, “Put it on the wiki.” If it’s an Office document – or anything non-PDF – I’ll turn it into a PDF (this functionality is trivial on a Mac). For whiteboards I’ll shoot a picture or two with my iPhone. Both the PDFs and digital images can get dumped into Evernote where it will happily scan all the legible text and make even digital pictures of my whiteboard searchable.

But, alas, there are some things that just don’t make the jump to digital. For instance, I don’t have the time or the need to scan all the data-collection instruments I use for classroom observations. I have a folder for each teacher I evaluate and the instruments go in there. Once I complete a summative evaluation, I usually shred the instruments and move on.

As I mentioned in my very first post in this series, I don’t keep a lot of random stuff in hard copy format if I can avoid it. Having reference items in Evernote makes them easy to search and access if and when I need them.

Putting it together

We’ve come a long way from capture, to action, to filing away stuff you may need to get your hands on at some future time. Regardless of the system you put in place for yourself, make sure it’s something you can stick with and that it becomes a transparent part of your daily routine. The less you have to think about it the better.

By spending some time up front deciding how you plan to capture, act, and file you can free up your valuable time for other things. Plus you’ll feel less stressed because you’ll know you have at least some of your world under control.

Previously

My summer vacation

31. July 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: blogging · Tags: ,

Seventh-grade writing prompts aside, I had quite a busy summer both personally and professionally. As I get things ramped back up here at the Universe, I thought it would be fitting to bring some closure to what’s been going on since my last post some time ago. Feels good to get back into the blogging habit and I think I’ll start modestly, shooting for a couple posts a week.

Personally

  • Moved the blog to a new host and gave it some new, simple digs. I also decided to include my proudest blogging accomplishment to date: nomination for membership in Dan’s club. I decided to put that badge on my sidebar to remind me why I do this job. Of course, it’s “for the children.” But it’s also for the teachers who bust their butts day in and day out to raise the level of play in their classrooms. To innovate in ways that change the game for themselves and their colleagues.
  • Took an amazing family road trip (our first ever!) to Cody, Wyoming, and Yellowstone National Park. Lessons learned include: if/when you decide to take that step of buying a minivan get the DVD player!
  • Got involved (rather serendipitously) in a project with some of the guys I knew from the days when the forums at 43 Folders were the place to be for productive folks. We launched a new blog and forum called Work.Life.Creativity. Head over and sign up!
  • I’m a bike commuter.
  • I didn’t buy an iPhone 3G.
  • I really want a Kindle.

Professionally

  • I’ve Tweeted about this a couple times, but I’m actually teaching a class next year! While I act like this is a major hardship, what with my administratorial responsibilities and all, the truth is I’m really psyched. Since I’ll be teaching in the IB program (I’m sorry – I meant IB Programme), that meant mandatory summer training in St. Petersburg, Florida. Lesson learned: Even though I grew up in Florida, it’s dang humid down there! Bad for my hair.
  • I forgot how to do lesson plans.
  • I submitted proposals to present at both the K12 Online Conference in October and FETC in January.
  • A Kindle would really streamline my professional reading, don’t you think? And it would pay for itself after 10 or so books. If I could get my grad school textbooks on the thing, it would pay for itself after, like, two books.

Sundry

  • Dabbled in Plurk. Meh.
  • Decided that pretending Twitter has applications for the classroom is a bit of a stretch. I have, however, acknowledged that it has expanded my professional network and given me unprecedented access to the brains of a lot of people whom I like and respect.
  • Finally, Edupunk? Seriously? Edupunk on Wikipedia? Put down the Kool-Aid, people. There’s nothing “punk” about effective, engaging instruction.
  • On the other hand, if calling yourself “Edupunk” makes you feel hip, or more importantly teach better, go for it.

So I’m getting things warmed back up over here at the Universe. If you’ve dropped me from your readers or blogrolls, hook it back up! Starting a new year and teaching a class will make for some interesting blogging, after all.

In the coming week, I’m going to start the year off with a “How I Work” series, partly inspired by this great video of Mr. Meyer‘s and partly by my participation at WLC.

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