Ten Helpful Reads When Planning for an Innovative 2010/2011 School Year

Here are ten posts to read when planning for the 2010/2011 school year.

1. Incorporating Innovation into Strategic Planning that Will Enrich Learning
2. COST EFFECTIVE WAYS TO PREPARE YOUR SCHOOL OR CLASSROOM FOR 21ST CENTURY LEARNING
3. Ideas for Leading Transformation in Schools from Alan November
4. An Innovation Roadmap: Criteria for Innovative Schools in the 21st Century
5. The 10 Zens of Technology Planning
6. Ten Innovative Ideas for Getting Started with 21st Century Teaching and Learning
7. School 2.0 Transformation Toolkit - A Recommended Resource for Innovative Educators to "Let the conversation begin!"
8. Instructional Technology Tips for New Teachers
9. Helpful Documents for Innovative Educators Interested in 21st Century Teaching, Learning, and Leading
10. Vision & Planning – School of the Future Case Study

Follow the Leader Who’s a Tweeter

They are few and far between in the Twitosphere, but among all the thousands of educators in my learning network who are tweeting, connecting, interacting, and making meaning, only a handful are principals and a huge BRAVO to them. Whether you’re a tweeting educator trying to convince your principal to tweet or a principal who wonders what it’s all about, the six principals below can help lead the way.

There’s Meat in the Tweet of These 6 Principals
If you are a principal or if you know a principal who wants to start tweeting here are the guys to check out complete with a link to their Twitter account and blog.

Chris Lehmann
Where he leads: Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA (Opened 9/06).
His blog: Practical Theory -A View from the Classroom

Eric Sheninger
Where he leads: Educational administrator responsible for preparing over 650 students in grades 9-12 with essential 21st Century skills that will enable them to be successful, productive members of society.
His blog: A Principal's Reflections

Patrick Larkin (Patrick Larkin)
Where he leads: Patrick Larkin is the Principal at Burlington High School (MA). He is a member of the Commission for Public Secondary Schools at the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). He is also a proud member of the Educator's PLN.
His blog: Burlington H.S. Principal's Blog

Dave Meister
Where he leads: High school director blogs about education, technology, student engagement and things that are happening at Paris Cooperative High School in Illinois.
His blog: PHS Director Blog

George Couros
Where he leads: Principal at a K-12 program in Stony Plain, Alberta.
His blog: The Principal of Change

Deron Durflinger
Where he leads: Where he leads: Secondary Principal, Van Meter Schools Iowa, United States. Passion is for schools to move away from the factory model developed over 100 years ago to a more relevant system for learners of the 21st century.
His blog: #Vanmeter Schools Transforming the Educational System

If you are or know a principal ready to hop on board, here’s how to get started.

5 Steps to Help Leaders Start Tweeting

1. Join twitter
2. Follow each of the following leaders
3. Lurk about and see what they have to say
4. Reply to some of there tweets and let them know you’re a principal too!
5. Make sure you look at your “@” replies and “DMs” (direct messages) to see who’s reaching out to you.

I hope you’ll join these 6 principals who I have no doubt will become inspirational members of your personal learning network. They are leading the way in supporting other pioneering school leaders who believe in moving from old-school leading to preparing our students for the real-world in which they live. If you’d like to join the conversation, they’re out there waiting for you to comment on their personal blogs, connected blog or send them a tweet.

Connected Principals - A Place for Leaders to Connect

Principal George Couros recognizes the tremendous amount of support he has received through places like Twitter, Facebook, other social networking sites, and his blog, which have inspired him to learn and share with many other great educators. George recently announced his next contribution to leading in the 21st century. Connected Principals, a blog comprised of a group of passionate school administrators who are sharing their views on education. The site serves as an organized resource with categories relevant to school leaders. The purpose is to share best practices by principals that they are currently doing in their respective schools.

While connecting with these other educators around the world isn’t a requirement to being a great leader, it definitely does help. While leaders can further their knowledge through a university course, or reading a book by a great business leader, George shares that he is finding that he is learning more from others that are in similar positions. What’s more, these are not great leaders of yesteryear, but these are educational leaders of today. Through them he sees unbelievable innovations everyday. The purpose of Connected Principals is to extend this learning to other school leaders. Couros believes that for lifelong learning leaders there needs to be time spent connecting with others. He shares that in doing so, he actually ends up saving time as he has an entire community helping his school to get better.

As George explains, this is not about technology. It is about connecting and sharing with others and technology can be a fantastic medium for this. It is still ultimately about the relationships you create. Connected Principals is a step in that direction. You can check out the site here. Please take a look and share if you are or have a great school leader who might be interested in reading, commenting, submitting a guest post or even becoming a contributor.

Principal who used to block, now offers guidance to skeptical admins in social media use

With barely a handful of other principals participating in social media environments principal Eric Sheninger feels rather lonely and is extending an offer to lead others into the digital age of interactivity. In his latest post Building Momentum, Mr. Sheninger puts out a call to action to educational leaders to join him in online environments or, as I like to say, become a part of his personal learning network.

Administrators who are skeptical about utilizing social media have a lot to learn from Eric or NMHS_Principal as he’s known in the Twitosphere. He was in the same boat just a little over a year ago, and his ship was sinking. He blocked sites and banned mobile devices to an extreme all in an effort to do what he thought was best for his students and staff. Today he says, “Boy was I wrong!” and realizes the error of his ways.

Sheninger now advocates to empower educators to effectively integrate technology combined with best instructional practices and takes any chance he gets to discuss his transformation with skeptical administrators. His motivation is simple. He says, “I now have the confidence to clearly articulate how social media has enabled me to become a more effective and efficient administrator in many areas.” He adds that, “I stress the fact that this phenomenon is not going away and is a major component in the lives of today’s society.”

Sheninger’s advice to educational leaders is that we should be modeling, supporting, and collaborating with our respective staffs to create a vibrant school culture that fosters risk-taking and innovation. Learning environments that are structured in such a way will not only help students think critically, problem solve, and master the content, but also teach them how to be digitally responsible.

He explains that his motivations are partly selfish too. He needs other administrators to join him saying that he finds it depressing as he looks around his own state of New Jersey as well as the country and globe in general and notices the lack of an administrative presence in the world of social media and other areas of educational technology leadership.

I understand Eric’s frustration. We each have personal learning networks numbering in the thousands, yet there are only a handful of principals participating. We pretty much know the same five guys who I also mentioned recently in my post Want to help a principal start a blog? These 5 principals can provide inspiration. He adds a name new to me Deron Durflinger to the list as well. So there are six guys. As a female, I can’t help but notice they’re all men and add, that not only do we need more school leader voices, but some females would be great too!

In his post Eric cries out to his five principal buds who are all working hard to do their parts to lead in the digital age, but he asks for their help to build momentum pleading, “Can ya help me out with this one?” We need leaders to step up and into these worlds for the sake of our students. As Eric points out, he’s learned a lot, but there is so much more to learn about educational leadership and facilitating sustainable change. He knows from his participation in online networks that the best way for learning to occur is when it happens with other experienced leaders in the trenches that can share their knowledge, strategies, successes, and failures. Like most, this is how he learns best and he confesses that he needs their help, support, ideas, and advice on all aspects of educational leadership, not educational technology. He knows that when educational leaders move together they can all collaborate to grow, lead more effectively, and move towards substantive reform.

To entice his peers, Sheninger offers five facets of social media that truly assist educational leaders to become more effective and efficient. They are 1) Communication, 2) Branding, 3. Professional Development/Growth, 4) Opportunity 5) Collaboration

You can find out how social media plays a part in each of these in his post Building Momentum.

Thank you to Eric Sheninger and the fabulous five George Couros, Patrick Larkin, Chris Lehmann begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting, Deron Durflinger, Dave Meister for being the pioneering voices of school leaders today.

Innovative Ideas for Getting Teachers Excited About Building Their Personal Learning Networks Real Time from Hunterdon Central Regional High School

Virtual Introductions for a More Powerful PLN

Guest post by Cathy Stutzman

This summer, my school is expanding its 1:1 computing program, and we "veterans" from last year’s pilot are helping to prepare the new group for a school year with student netbooks. The participants have been working really hard on redesigning unit plans and rethinking their practices to include things like project-based learning, formative assessment, guided inquiry, web 2.0 tools, and community outreach opportunities. They have been signing up for social networking sites like crazy and learning from educators in every subject area from all over the world. However, as many of us in the original cohort remember, it's tough to put yourself out there. It's easy to lurk around on Twitter and soak up information from the fascinating people out there in the Twittosphere, but you often wonder, "who cares what I have to say?"

With only a few, courageous exceptions, most of the group hadn’t started to participate in online conversations about their ideas. Because we really want the teachers to understand just how powerful a PLN can be and because we know they have awesome ideas to contribute to the online conversation, we came up with some ways to combine what Lisa calls 1.0 and 2.0 PLNs. The teachers shared with the large group their ideas for unit and course redesigns while fellow instructor, Keith Dennison, and I took notes in a Google Doc about their plans and the tools they were thinking of using to achieve those goals. The group as well as our special guest for the day, Will Richardson, provided incredible feedback. They asked questions, suggested other tools, voiced concerns, and encouraged each other.

Meanwhile, Heather Hersey (another original member of the pilot) and I were simultaneously discussing the incredible ideas via Twitter with the hashtag, #hctweet. After about 5 teachers had presented and received some insight from the group in the room, we asked the group’s permission to tweet the Google Doc URL so that we could invite members of our extended PLNs to check out the innovative ideas that these teachers were sharing. Additionally, we asked that everyone in the group login to the document so that they could contribute any additional ideas or questions they had as the conversation continued.

We displayed on an LCD screen the Twitter dialogue emerging around their ideas, and that’s when something really powerful started happening. Many of the group members began contributing to the online dialogue as well as participating in the discussion that was happening in the room. Teachers who had put their ideas online for the first time were receiving feedback from teachers all over the world. Will was getting tweets asking about the projects and the teachers who were presenting. Individual teachers were getting direct messages and “at” tweets with suggestions and compliments. By the end of those few hours, we had a packed Google Doc that is still being viewed as I write this, and a whole slew of teachers from every discipline who were now part of the conversation and actively seeking feedback and connections.

It was truly an energizing day! And it certainly demonstrates the power of a PLN, but I think this was also a lesson in how important it is to be able to lean on others around you to help you ease into the sometimes scary world of social networking. I still need my critical friends to hold my hand when I’m reaching out of my online comfort zone, and I think that having a group of trustworthy people is invaluable as you learn anything new. If you’re new to social media, don’t be afraid to ask your educator friends to try out some of these tools with you; you can potentially double your networks if you combine forces. If you’re a vet, don’t forget how scary this can be: offer to virtually introduce new friends, ask them questions to get them involved in online conversations, and provide encouragement as often as possible. Risk-taking is always easier when you have a support system out there with you.

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Cathy Stutzman, teaches English at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington, NJ and tweets at Stutz01.

Don’t Silence Students. A Resource to Support Students In Developing Their 2.0 Voice

I recently engaged in a mini debate over whether or not students should have the ability to authentically comment in social media. The company I was talking to said their site didn't allow this. Instead students pick approved (aka canned and boring) comments from a drop down menu. This was the decision made because they felt educators and administrators believed students might write comments that were inappropriate.

Well how on earth will that ever change if students aren't commenting in the presence of teachers who can guide and support them on appropriate interaction when engaging in social media. That’s the big deal when it comes to social media. Commenting allows students and readers/viewers to make meaning. Have a conversation. Use their voice. Furthermore, what about the outside world of experts and others who share an interest and passion in student’s work. But, nope, this site was safe which meant one and all is relegated to being Stepford commenters. A further concern was that teachers might not know how to support students in appropriate commenting or have time to teach them. Aaaarrrgh! This is an essential 21st century literacy. Engaging appropriately in social media is exactly the type of real teaching we need to be doing.

So, with this conversation fresh in my mind, fortunately a smile was brought to my face by this tweetweb20classroom The Educational Blogging Wiki: http://bit.ly/cTXLt5

Phew a breath of fresh air. The link takes you to the wiki of Mrs. Yollis a third grade teacher who, among other things, provides commenting lessons for those interested in having students engage in authentic social media platforms. The heart of the wiki is helping teachers who want to start a blog with their class. The site is a treasure trove of smart information that I've often verbally shared with other educators, but never captured in writing.

Here are some links to the nuggets she shares:

• Why Have a Class Blog?
• What Do Students Write About?
• How To Teach Commenting Skills
• How Do Your Third Graders Know How to Type?
• Curriculum Examples
• Things to Consider

In addition to her great commenting lesson and ideas I just love her advice about Things to Consider. There, she articulates nicely thoughts I agree with (and was just discussing with a group of teachers) about having a class blog rather than student blogs.

From the site...

A class blog? Individual student blogs? What is right for you? I decided that giving every child a blog was not something I wanted to tackle at this point. First of all, I wanted to teach directed lessons about posting, creating images, and composing quality comments. Having a class blog allowed me to direct all my lessons at one site. Controlling the lessons and the publishing allowed me to work at my own pace. If I wanted to publish once a week, I did. If I felt like I wanted to publish more, I felt free to do so. Having several individual blogs to proofread and moderate would have been overwhelming for me.

To me this seemed smart. Before a student should even consider blogging, they need to read and participate in blogging and Mrs. Yollis does a smart job of ensuring students are taking a hard look at this interactive writing format.

Next, she shares an idea I just love! She requires interested students to earn their own blog. How great. I always had an issue with teacher-assigned blogs. What happens after the class? I feel blogs should be student driven. It brings me back to Alan November’s question of “Who Owns the Learning? Here’s What Mrs. Yollis does.

Currently, I allow students to earn their own blog. They can earn their own blog by contributing ideas/writing to groups posts and by demonstrating consistently good commenting skills. Once a child is ready, I let his/her parents set up the Blogger account at home, and I will link the child's blog to our classroom site. The parents must be the administrator and comments must be moderated. If problems arise, I remove the link from our class blog. Allowing children to earn their way to a blog is powerful. They want to be linked to our class blog to increase their readership. In addition, it encourages parents to take an active online role with their child.

Wow. How smart! She just addressed so many issues here. Students own their learning. Parents as partners. Self/parental ownership for moderation. Fantastic!

Thank you to Mrs. Yollis and all the others like her who are helping prepare our children with voices to use them in important ways in school and in life.