Leadership 3.O- Good things in California

So here is what is happening in California. I just spent the last three days in San Fransisco at the Leadership 3.0 Conference.  I was a little perplexed at first by the title, especially since I am not sure that I  have moved beyond Beta in my leadership. It turns out however that 3.0 refers to the work of the 3 organizations which came together to put on this conference: ASCA, CUE and TICAL. This was the first annual conference and I have to say from concept to execution it was very impressive! All three organizations and the steering committee deserve kudos!

The one refrain which I hear over and over again from teachers and tech coordinators at conferences and on the web is “if only my administrator was web savvy or interested in/ supported technology and web 2.0. “ .Imagine now if you will a dream come true . Gathered in San Fransisco for this very first conference were 200 administrators and superintendents who wanted to know more. They wanted to know how to help their teachers integrate technology. They wanted to know what tools they should learn about. They wanted to develop a vision for 21^stcentury learning. They wanted time to play with web 2.0 tools. This was an amazing group of visionaries and life long learners. Something is right here in California!

This was a conference just for administrators and it was amazing! In talking with Mike Lawrence, he shared that part of the concept behind this conference was that while some administrators attend CUE they do not engage in the same way as the teachers. Therefore they wanted to create a safe environment that would engage administrators , allow them to network, to discuss 21^st century  learning and to explore web 2.0 from the perspective of their needs and their work. That is exactly what happened! It was incredible to be part of this process.

The keynote was given by Sir Ken Robinson, author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative . Following is a loose quote from his talk which highlights the heart of his message:

“Human talent is deep, diverse, and extraordinarily rich....Education should expose and develop that .... We assume that talent is identified and nurtured by education...However, countless people go through the whole of their education without discovering/ connecting with their true elemental talents and ability. That is because education was designed to do something else...”

Culturally there is an underlying view of intelligence that is also wrong.

People say don't take art you aren't going to be an artist but they would never say that about Math- .....”

The challenge- Refit our schools....

As for my part, I had the privilege of giving two presentations and as I said there were many visionary leaders present but I was also struck by their openness, hunger and interest in everything I could share from tools like Google reader and Skype to the foundational information that builds vision like NETS, The World is Flat, Daniel Pink, PEW and connections to a host of great You tube videos and blogs.

The next Leadership 3.0 conferences is already planned, for April 2009. It will be in San Diego California....so spread the word...a visionary conference for administrators which supports and celebrates our journey into the future as we seek to educate students for their future.

Comments

[Patrick]

Barbara,

This sounds like a great event, and it does sound like something is right in California.

I had the opportunity to present at a technology conference for administrators here in New Jersey, and based on your description, it was nothing like what you wrote about. Rather depressing actually.

However, as more and more administrators become familiar with the uses and the transformative power of technology, I hope we don't lose sight of the power of good teaching. It takes a considerable amount of understanding and vision to see how technology can effectively be written into the curriculum, and then utilized well by the teacher and student. A lot of work has to be done to teach administrators what good teaching with technology looks like.

Thanks for the recap. It sounds like a conference worth looking into.

[Barbara]

Patrick, you are right. That is an important part of the picture. I will put that down as one of my suggestions for a topic for next year. There is an interesting push/pull in all of this...but if I were to identify a theme from the conference it would be transformation. Certainly Sir Ken spoke of that and of good pedagogy. We may not have done quite so well in the breakouts with that concept. There is more work to do to define and offer models of good teaching that has been transformed by web 2.0.

[Charlie A. Roy]

Sound like a great conference. I've seen one of Ken Robinson's talks on TED and he is fabulous.

[James Scoolis]

I was at Leadership 3.0 as well -- Ken Robinson was fantastic-- he had a roomful of a couple of hundred adminstrators standing and applauding. a couple ofother things he said:

"You can not improve learning by raising or even having standards -- you can only improve learning by improving teaching...."

"Paul McCartney was told he was not good enough to join his high school choir.…. and he is pretty good isn't he?..… Can you imagine how good that choir was..."

[Marie Sontag]

I felt privileged to attend the Leadership 3.0 Symposium. I was able to attend due to my involvement with CTAP- thanks CTAP! I am an instructional technology teacher on special assignment. This is my first year working out of the district office instead of a classroom, and it enlarged my educational perspective to be able to attend a conference with and by many administrators. Usually I attend educational tech conferences, such as CUE, where most attendees and presenters are fellow-teachers. I especially liked the presentation by leaders from Visalia as they shared their journey from grade-based to standards-based assessments throughout their district. I also enjoyed the spirited discussion between Thornburg and Davidson regarding the digital immigrants/natives debate. If I were keeping score, I'd say Davidson won big time!

[Hall Davidson]

Thanks, Marie! I am archiving your comments :) It was fun debating a person with David's knowledge base in front of such a sharp crowd. I was slightly under the weather and it was really the bateria talking, but I'm glad to know they did well.