LeaderTalk

Embracing Citizen-Journalism in K-12 Leadership

Source: Patrick Lencioni's 3 Signs of a Miserable Job Model

Job misery, shares Patrick Lencioni, author of various educational leadership books, comes as a result of 3 reasons. Those reasons include the following:

1. Anonymity - If others in authority are unaware of what you are doing, then you are unhappy. We cannot long work in obscurity.



2. Irrelevance - If our work is irrelevant, means nothing to the organization, has no impact on the bottom line—teaching and learning—then why do it? Why get up and fight the good fight?



3. Immeasurement - Failure to measure our success—or lack of it—means that we are unable to assess our progress. And, without that tangible measure of forward movement, of change, it is too easy to be lost in the midst of the change we are trying to facilitate.

As an administrator, I see it as my role to clarify for staff how their work is relevant to the organization, to provide feedback on their rate of success, and to celebrate their hard work so that all know they are responsible. If we assume the mantle of citizen journalists, then we can tap into our own creativity and eradicate the 3 reasons misery finds its way into the hearts of our leadership teams.

Power in Creativity

When I do something—teach a class, create a product—I get a charge of energy. At the end of a day of meetings, I walk out drained, tired, and wishing I could take a nap before driving 45 minutes through bumper-to-bumper traffic. When I “do something,” I walk out feeling awesome and I’m ready to go out for the evening, craft administrative procedure, or facilitate a workshop.

The reason creativity is so powerful for me is that I am at heart, a teacher, a person who likes to share what he is learning with others. Citizen journalism is about reporting on what is going on around me, and enabling others to have access to experiences and ideas that are daily occurrences but that only a few see.

Fight Job Misery with Read/Write Web Tools

Patrick Finn, author of Literacy with an Attitude, shares that powerful literacy involves creativity and reason—the ability to evaluate, analyze and synthesize what is read…it is also the ability to write one’s ideas so that another person can understand them. As leaders in public schools, we can take on the 3 factors of job misery that Lencioni identifies and minimize them in school settings. It is simply a matter of using technology to transform the negative, to be creative and create online value that others can come to better understand what our students and staff are doing.

1- Recognize - “There is something that is much more scarce,” shared Elbert Hubbard, “something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.” With easy access to publish at will tools, you can easily recognize educators, students and parents in your school community.

Foster recognition by featuring the work you or your team does in blogs and video clips that show how they are working on behalf of their target audience or colleagues. To get things going, check out how success is celebrated in this online collection of video interviews and sharing of student work. Some specific tools you can use to achieve this include:

• Blogs - Setup a blog you can easily contribute to. Blogs make it easy for people to subscribe to them, and you can add photos and videos to them. While initial setup can be challenging, there are now many educators who can provide assistance.



• Wikis - Moving to the next level, challenge teachers and others you trust to contribute content to a wiki, an editable web site. The ease of adding content should enable people to contribute content.

Both of these mediums are essentially blank journals, or bulletin boards, that can hold sound (e.g. podcasts), video (e.g. vidcasts) and text media (e.g. narratives). If you are not comfortable with embedding media like video or audio, put it on a web site that simplifies the process (e.g. Edublogs.tv is a great site to host video or audio at no cost and without advertising).

Once you have content online, you can also choose to create a narrated tour. Some tools you can use include the following:

• Diigo Web Slides - These allow you to create narrated slideshows of web sites. The web sites remain interactive and clickable even as you add your audio narration to them.



• Flowgram.com - This new tool enables you to combine audio narration with web sites, pictures, and a variety of content in one easy to use tool. You record directly from your computer (you’ll need a microphone) and just need to know the web address of the content you want to add. This makes it easy for you to highlight online work that your staff and students are creating and sharing via the Web.



• Jog the Web - Create a guided tour of web sites, adding your comments to each site. Lacks the audio component available in Diigo Web Slides and FlowGram.com.

Other possibilities include using tools like MyPlick.com, VoiceThread.com to upload a slideshow document—such as one created in Powerpoint—and then adding audio to it. VoiceThread even enables your viewers to add audio, video and text of their own. What a fantastic way to recognize the work that is being done, and invite recognition of that work done by your staff by others!

2- Engage - Engage your colleagues in conversations and work that makes a difference in the lives of others. As educators, we have opportunities to engage others every day. One Read/Write Web tool that we can use to engage others is to facilitate professional meetings and learning that is available using Moodle. Often, our meetings and workshops leave us disconnected, shuffling from one disjointed event to another.

Creating a Moodle and empowering your staff to participate in it can provide opportunities for engagement, for enabling individuals to be heard and to exercise their voice. However, do not expect success immediately. It may very well take a year of hard work, including consolidating resources in one place, to see results. You can find Moodle.org online, and there are ample examples of Moodles being used to enhance work and professional learning settings.

3 - Set Clear Parameters for Success - If the team needs to be able to measure it’s own success, it’s own progress separate from me as the boss, then I need to set clear definition of what constitutes success. This is often difficult with changing expectations from above, “scope creep,” as projects do take on a life of their own. I always come back in those projects to whether the end user has learned how to use the technology proposed, and whether they are using it at a maximal level that optimizes their work.

While some administrators have access to project management tools (e.g. MS Projects), there are now ample tools that enable collaboration. Wikis and Moodles are two powerful tools you can use that do not involve adding yet another tool. However, data collection can sometimes be a challenge.

Why not use a tools like GoogleDocs Spreadsheets and Forms (login as guest) to collect information on the progress of an initiative? Or, install the Questionnaire module in Moodle (view example)? While these simple tools cannot replace more sophisticated project management tools, they do provide ways for educators to collaboratively design the parameters for success and to report progress on those.

Conclusion

As education administrators who have access to a variety of Read/Write Web techologies, it is possible for our teams to experience anonymity, irrelevance and immeasurement. Yet, it is a possibility well within our control as leaders.

Take a moment and learn how to use simple Read/Write Web tools to become a citizen journalist rather than continue as merely an administrator who waits for a Communications Department to decide what is newsworthy and what isn’t.

Author
Miguel Guhlin is Director of Instructional Technology Services for a large urban school district in San Antonio, Texas, USA. You can engage him in further conversation online at Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net or read his writings online.

Check Yourself in the Mirror

by Miguel Guhlin

"Check yourself in the mirror," my Dad would call out each morning before we left for the drive to school. That last minute look in the mirror would often reveal a hair out of place, or that my shirt buttons and belt buckle weren't lined up right. Worse, it might show a bit of stubble--when in high school--that I hadn't shaved, or crud in the corner of my eye.

Now, every morning, I offer my nine-year old the same advice. It's not about vanity but knowing how you will appear to others. And, if you're sending the message you want to send, then that's fine. But if you're not, that last check in the mirror can provide a crucial moment of insight. While some prefer to never look in the mirror when it comes to their organization, it's absolutely necessary. Our role today in schools is about building Global Communications Center for our campus or district. It is NOT the job of the Communications Department...it's YOUR job as an educational leader.

WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING ABOUT YOU?
Dave Fleet shares some suggestions for online monitoring of your organization's image, or the buzz around it. He says it's important that before you do anything--such as set up a blog, whatever--that you find out how to track what's going on out there. I see his suggestions as part and parcel of establishing your own Global Communications Center for your school or District. Fleet writes:

Before your organization launches a blog, before you start playing with Facebook, before you even think about Twitter, you should be listening to what people are saying about you.

"Google is managing your identity unless you are," as quoted by Dean Shareski in his Going Global, Going Public. "What digital footprints are existing for you right now? It's not an ego search but to find what others are saying about you." This goes for each of us, but also, for organizations like schools. But it's important we go, as Dean and others share, beyond just tracking our digital footprints, but that of others' footprints when they interact with our organizations.

As an edublogger, this is something I learned while setting up my blog and finding ways to connect with others. However, the tools that are available now are much more comprehensive than what were available when I began. A quick look at Dave's suggestions, and I'm astonished that I'm using most of these approaches already. What I doubt is happening, though, is that school districts and schools are doing this...most of our organizations may very well have a less than active interaction with news and other people out there. Simply publishing your own television show isn't enough when most people thrive online, and most content endures online more than in a broadcast.

I love this quote (Christian Grantham as cited in NewAssignment.net) about ending the "passive relationship with local news" in this blog entry. What catches my attention is that the same tribulations and troubles students, teachers and leaders are going through, well, that's what a lot of folks in the news industry are going through. You could tweak this paragraph easily to reflect the angst among educators:

I love working with people who see the importance of the role the net will play in transforming the way the world gets and interacts with information. I also love working with veterans of news, and I will always remember the challenges they face with the changes that are happening. For some, that change is very difficult. But the fact is, we are no more in the television and newspaper business than Wal-Mart is in the trucking business. Our business is no longer the industry that surrounds distribution – the trucks, the printing press, the reams of paper, the broadcast towers, the satellite dishes, the lights, the huge cameras, the buildings, the “live trucks”…

It’s the final product: information. The market in an on-demand world for news and information where people have to wait to receive a highly produced product is steadily shrinking. At the same time, the online audience for news and information is growing significantly. It’s an exciting time to be working in a new medium that is transforming the way we get information.

How has our "business" in education changed? It's no longer about textbooks, that's for sure and canned ideas. It's about creativity, communication, collaboration. Even as the market shrinks in the news world, in the education world, I find this statement to be as true as it's ever been in education (BTW, the link below includes a Clay Shirky moment in video):

If our information was made freely available and became the building blocks through which other work could be done - we would be the foundation upon which the news and information world is built upon.
Source: DigiDave - Journalism is a Process, Not a Product: Changing the Legal Structure for Digital Journalism

That education is still the foundation--albeit being switfly eroding--is because it is firmly entrenched in a "no market" environment.

Dave points to 4 steps and I've included links to some with sample searches for "mguhlin" in each:

1. Define your keywords
2. Create your searches...some of the tools Dave shares include:
   -GoogleNews
   -GoogleBlogSearch
   -Technorati
   -TwitterSearch (Dave mentions Summize, recently acquired by Twitter.com, and TweetScan)
   -Blogpulse.com
3. Plug the results into your RSS reader OR
4. Collapse all the results RSS feeds into a service like AideRSS.com (I've included a list of Tools4RSS here)

One additional type of tool that I'd add to Dave's list includes Social Bookmarking sites.

The idea comes to me from a presentation Alan November did in China (Learning2.0 Conference) where an audience member suggested using Del.icio.us as another search tool in lieu or addition to regular search engines. 3 skills November says aren't taught in schools include:

1. Teaching students to deal with massive quantities of information (pattern-making, organizing patterns for information)
2. Global Communication skills/global communication, as well as checking sources with people on the ground
3. Self-directed, lifelong learning

What's neat about becoming your own "global communications center" is that you can teach students these skills as you're setting up your classroom web site. Imagine what would have happened if model classroom teachers using blogs with students--such as Bob Sprankle and Darren Kuropatwa--had set these tools up (if they'd been available) BEFORE they started blogging with their students. Wouldn't it have been awesome to capture the feedback flowing in from all over the world, including traditional and participatory reporting?

WHAT ABOUT SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITES?
It would definitely be fun to know how many folks are bookmarking what you're doing, and you can also subscribe to the RSS feed of results. To accomplish that, you'll probably need to use Page2Rss.com--a tool someone told me about but a week or two ago (speak up if you're out there!). Neither Diigo or Delicious, as far as I can see, support RSS for search results. So, with that caveat in mind, to the list, I'm adding these two:

• Diigo.com - RSS wasn't available via Page2Rss.com since Diigo timed out.
• Del.icio.us - RSS

OTHER TOOLS
A few other tools worth checking out include these:

• IceRocket.com - RSS
• Teoma.com
• Spy ...lacks an RSS feed but you can get one with Page2RSS (not sure yet how well it works). Lets you know what's going on in Twitter, FriendFeed, Blogs, and Google Reader.

Though I had some of these items setup (Technorati, TwitterSearch) I didn't have all of them setup. As a result, I discovered some new blog entries out there--and new blogs I wasn't reading--writing about what I'd written. Nice to be in touch!

GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS CENTER
You know, I hadn't ever thought of myself--or the work the Communications Dept in a school district--does as Global Communications. But, that is exactly what we're doing with Read/Write Web tools. And, that is the challenge facing districts as well as journalists. We are caught up in a "citizen" journalism, teacher communicator.

"Should learning professionals be leading the charge around new work literacies such as social media and informal learning?" Good question. My answer: yes. Because everyone should be. Tucker writes, "my responsibility is to work on my own sphere of influence, starting with our online course development team leading by example for our facilitators." Christy Tucker, Experiencing E-Learning
Source: As commented on and cited by Stephen Downes

How are YOU setting up your Global Communications Center? How are YOU leading the charge? The answer to this question is a lot easier than taking this position:

Al Gore said: "We have to abandon the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve this crisis. Our policies have to shift." He was talking about global climate change but he might as well have been talking about our attempts to transition schools into the 21st century…
Source: Our Policies have to Shift, Dr. Scott McLeod, Dangerously Irrelevant

Compare that approach--abandoning the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve the crisis in education, or journalism--to this one from Pete Reilly (EdTech Journeys) with his tale of Gandhi's decision to not offer advice unless he was living by it himself.

When you get up tomorrow morning, take a moment to check your school or district's virtual image in the mirror of public opinion. Begin now to build the resources you need to keep track of those, and make a difference.

Administrator-Journalist: Embracing the Citizen Journalist in You

by Miguel Guhlin



"Either write something worth reading," shared Ben Franklin, "or do
something worth writing about." This entry outlines a few strategies
for enhancing your communication strategies as a
"administrator-journalist." As educational leaders, powerful tools are
available to us. Assume the role of a citizen-journalist, or
"administrator-journalist!"





The idea behind this is administrators that can--although we lack
professional journalism training--use modern tools to create, enhance
and/or share information. At a time when we're all struggling to share
what we're about, why we need more funding, it's essential that each of
us recognize that maybe, it's no longer just about teaching, learning,
and leading...it's also about sharing about that in ways that are easy
for others to understand. The techniques shared in this blog entry will
help you.

TECHNIQUE

As a writer who began long ago sharing ideas, I found
the advice that Charles Main offered up in an article entitled The List
Article in The Handbook for Magazine Writing to be easy to follow.He
shared that the list article is designed to solve problems, present
information and otherwise help the reader. This makes it perfect
for"administrator-journalists" to use to share their stories of success.

To get started, make a list of how you
have solved a problem, or better yet, how someone at your
campus/district has solved it. See if you can get them to guide you
through their problem-solving process. Capture that process with audio
or video, and then share it online. The results are powerful because
you 1) Celebrate problem-solving by your staff; 2) Invite feedback and stimulate idea sharing with a broader community; 3) Build a deeper relationship with the individual and the broader community; and 4) You establish a record of how work gets done
at your site. This last piece is one that has inestimable value since
it serves as a "living" record, an oral/video history of your efforts.
It reflects well, not only on you as the educational leader, but also
your team and organization. Who, after all, can argue with the success
that has been shared with such a wide audience?

SOME IDEAS FOR GETTING STARTED

Although you certainly don't have to
implement all of these ideas immediately, I encourage you to review the
list and practice this in your daily work as a campus or district
administrator. I'm amazed at the opportunities that arise for sharing
engaging, positive stories with others provided I am prepared to
capture them.

1. 
   You pick the stories that show your campus in the best light and then
   follow-up on those.
   
2. 
   Follow the story, especially when it reflects the truth of the
   situation. If you don't like the story, share the obstacles and what
   is being done to overcome those.
   
3. 
   Include video, audio, photos that tell the story compellingly from
   multiple perspectives (e.g. parents, students, district admin,
   teachers)
   
4. 
   Include links to available online content. If the content doesn't
   exist (e.g. documents), then make those documents available when not
   confidential.
   
5. 
   Publish the story via a blog.
   
6. 
   Encourage online conversations--whether in the comments or an online
   discussion board.
   

Though it is not my intent to go into each of these in detail at this
time--I will in future blog entries--I do want to encourage you to
embrace writing in the first person. We have all been taught that
formal writing is critical and appropriate. The truth is, though, all
writing has voice, and if your voice is stilted and boring, no one will
want to read you again. Worse, they will be less inclined to think well
of you. A friendly, personable demeanor as conveyed through your
writing is important. You can achieve that by eliminating jargon, and
writing simply. As Samuel Johnson liked to say, When you find a phrase or sentence that you think is particularly good, strike it out. Our goal is simple, straightforward writing from the heart.



Also, pick stories that you wish you could tell in more detail but are
unable to. I often find myself wishing I had a staff member present at
a meeting so they could share what happened with all the original
enthusiasm bubbling up inside them and out to the audience. There's no
capturing that enthusiasm for others unless you use audio and/or video
recorder to capture the event. Often, a photograph snapped with your
camera-phone or digital camera is enough to capture the moment. The
audio is easy to share, as is the photo.



Some quick technology suggestions:

• Have the right equipment - Use an inexpensive Olympus
  WS-110 digital audio recorder ($50-$60) to take your podcasting on the
  road. I keep my recorder in my pocket and have impromptu conversations
  with staff. This is powerful, just-in-time kind of story gathering you
  want to engage in. If you want to do video, get a FLIP video camera
  ($150) and use that. The software to work with audio includes
  SwitchFree (to convert it from WMA to MP3) and Audacity (to edit the
  audio itself). If working with video, use Moviemaker on a Windows
  computer or iMovie on a Mac.
• To put your audio or video on the web, use EduBlogs.tv. It's easy video/audio hosting, free, and education-focused. You can copy the link of the file once it's hosted and then put it on your blog.
• If your district isn't able to set you up with your own blog in a timely manner, get a free blog via Dr. Scott McLeod (Dangerously Irrelevant) or Edublogs.org.

In the next blog entry, I'll share a simple approach to being an administrator-journalist using technology. Join me?

About Miguel Guhlin
Transforming teaching, learning and leadership through the strategic
application of technology has been Miguel Guhlin’s motto. As a veteran
educator comfortable with modelling the use of technology at the
classroom, campus, and district level, he has a simple goal. That goal
is to use powerful technologies to transform practice and enable
learners to communicate and collaborate with each other.
As Director of Instructional Technology for a large urban district in
Texas, Past President of the state-wide Technology Education
Coordinators group in one of the largest United States technology
educator organizations, he continues to model the use of emerging
technologies in schools. You can read his published writing, engage him
in conversation via his blogs at Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net and LeaderTalk.

The Game Leaders Play

Jonathan Becker asks us all in his LeaderTalk blog entry entitled, The Future of Educational Leadership, the following questions:

1) Are schools going to become increasingly virtual and distributed (as the authors suggest of businesses)? 

2) Should school leaders be spreading around the leadership wealth so as to encourage experimentation?

He cites a report that points out that if we want to see what business leadership will be in five years, we need to check out online games. I was grateful to Jonathan pointing this out, as well as highlighting the report. It reminds me of the Demos "Their Space" report I read a few months ago.
In the article, the skills a World of Warcraft guildmaster needs are as follows:

• attracting, evaluating and recruiting new members;
• creating apprenticeship programs;
• orchestrating group strategy; and
• managing disputes.

Isn't it ironic that these are the tools that in 5 years--and if you wait that long to acquire the skills, you're out of business according to Don Tapscott and Anthony William's Wikinomics--business may find useful, necessary for communication in a flat world?

Changes needed in schools include the following: a) Recognize/value learning that occurs outside the classroom; b) Support this outside learning, providing a space for reflection, enabling students to recognize and transfer those skills to new situations and contexts.

This sentence makes me wonder at what potential goes untapped in schools today. The answer is staggering--our children. It is our children that are untapped. This led me to the next question: What needs to be unleashed in schools? Children's power for creativity and innovation. Slow to respond to change in schools, schools' failure to recognize and value the skills that young people are developing is a blind spot.

Educational leaders, in neglecting to use mass collaboration tools like wikis, fail to model how students can interact with a changing world that expects global collaboration.

A few months ago, I found myself walking my seventh grader through the halls of a local high school. She was there--ahead of her time--to take the SAT, that high stakes test that determines whether you will be successful.

As I read more and more of the Demos' THEIR SPACE report, I started to wonder at the relevance of the SAT my daughter was taking. Wouldn't it have been better if they'd put her in a team of learners who had to solve a problem? And, solving that problem involved coordinating the work of others around the world (or in the next classroom) using technology tools, voice over IP? Wouldn't such approach to assessment do what the SAT was meant to do in the first place? SAT 2.0 would do the following:

• Challenge young adults to demonstrate how they can collaborate at a distance to develop creative solutions that involve mashing-up different technologies.
• Successful completion of the SAT 2.0 would mean using Web 2.0 tools to connect, collaborate, create and share ideas/solutions with each other.
• Successful completion would involve the team catalogue each team member's strengths and weaknesses, then assign jobs/tasks that build on strengths.
• Based on a team's weaknesses, staff people from outside their team--across the world but accessible via VOIP technologies (like Skype)--to buttress their weaknesses.

What other ways could such a project be used to measure what students need to know in a Read/Write Web world? What skills and strategies that need to value the soft skills our children are developing for recreation, that are worth emulating, but aren't unleashed in schools today?

THE ROLE OF EDUCATION LEADERS

The more important question for educational leaders isn't whether schools are going to be more distributed or virtual. Rather it is whether educators--including administrators, teachers, students in leadership roles, regardless of position or title--will be able to continue functioning in five years WITHOUT these skills.

I fear that if the answer is YES, then we will have schools that serve as centers of static learning...and our "students" will have already found somewhere else to learn what they need to. The SAT will have become meaningless except as an out-dated rite of passage.

Are you modelling online collaboration and enabling others in your district? If you're not, then you need to consider how you can accomplish that within the work you are expected to do every day.

Wikifying the Superintendent's Work

Last week, I wrote about organizing yourself with wikis. Not surprisingly, someone emailed, asking a couple of questions of how this might be relevant to superintendents and the work they are about. The two questions highlighted a deeper issue--Is YOUR Superintendent taking advantage of the latest tools available to stay in contact, foster collaboration among staff?

When I read Technology Tools for Educators, I was immediately hopeful that such tools might find their way into the hands of superintendents. My own experience with people in those high level positions is that they are "big picture" oriented, moving from project to project facilitating deep thinking about project management and implementation. Keeping that data in a wiki might be useful, but might be too time-consuming and considered "high-tech." Superintendents are less hands-on than a principal or director level position, and, they may fear that the involvement may jeopardize stakeholder opinions. After all, a superintendent is THE BOSS.

Yet, every reason I can think of for a Superintendent NOT using these tools is also a reason FOR using them. Wikis and their use can equalize powerful ideas, regardless of their source, and yet, not detract form the Superintendent's ability to make the final decision. A project management wiki--like the one I shared in my previous entry--can be useful. It allows the Superintendent to focus on ONE aspect of a project at a time at his/her leisure. Yet, it allows his Cabinet to work together on multiple aspects.

Wikifying the Superintendency might result in the following benefits:

1) Increasing transparency of work among all parties, keeping everything fair and above board for all. However, transparency can be challenging. The challenge in itself is worthwhile, but some superintendents may not be ready for the consequences. For example, consider what this superintendent wrote on his blog--another Read/Write Web tool that facilitates conversation--about the wiki he had started:

In either case I can't serve as moderator on two forums and do my "day job." Ulitmately when the public is comfortable with how open web 2.0 environments work, they will police themselves. In other words the first mature reader that noticed the "Duh - look I changed the page" comment - they could have restored the original comment immediately. (Same philosphy on vadalism - remove the perpetrator's work immediately)
Source: Why the Wiki is Down

In this case, the Superintendent was responding to the charge that he was being less than transparent when he removed the wiki. The Superintendent rightly pointed out that a wiki is a community effort. I would advise a superintendent seeking to use a wiki to select the community he first starts working with (e.g. his/her Superintendent's Cabinet).

2) Allow you to, as John Maxwell shares, "staff your weaknesses." A superintendent can flesh out an idea, general directions, outline non-negotiables, and then allow her team to fill in the missing components, as well as enhance the basic framework. For example, one approach to this is exemplified by a wiki created by Laura Nelson. Ms. Nelson is facilitating a class, but her approach to modelling wikis for use by her students could easily be applied to a superintendent's use of a wiki.

3) The wiki can be used as a place to track ideas. Emily Dickinson wrote that "A word is dead, some say, when it is said...." However, put those words and ideas into a wiki, and they live on until they are needed. A wiki page for new ideas can be accessed by the Superintendent's team, and serve as the basis for new initiatives, projects, or ways to complement existing ones.

While there are other considerations, the questions that arose as a result of my previous entry are as follows:

The two questions that I was asked included the following. I have shown my responses underneath each:

1. Do you think your superintendent would relate to this subject? Does he/she use one?

My current superintendent would relate to this subject; he even keeps a blog online at http://www.saisd.net/superintendent . I hope that previous work on recording podcasts as a means of communicating with campuses and constituents will bear fruit. Most superintendents I have met focus on oral communications, creating environments that their staff can flourish in. Putting things in writing isn't something superintendents like to do...and a wiki requires just that.

That caveat in mind, I do see superintendents encouraging their staff to take advantage of wikis simply for the transparency aspect. A superintendent can get a quick report via a wiki, but they can also check the wiki themselves or know that their team (the cabinet) is working on a project. There's no reason why wikis closed to the public couldn't be used to facilitate online conversations that continue AFTER the meeting is over.

2. Do you know other superintendents who do?

I do not know of any superintendents who use wikis. The tool is "new" for use in education, but especially so at the superintendent level. Of course, it is that newness and usefulness that makes it worth sharing. I welcome any superintendents who are using wikis to share how they are using them in the comments.

Other superintendents might see the wiki as a place for their constituents to share ideas...for example, how can we improve what we're doing? Are there any services that could be streamlined to provide greater benefit?

As a technology director, I often ask myself how I can use new and emerging technologies to change--for the better--what I do. If new technologies like the Read/Write Web can foster increased communication and collaboration, and knowing what emphasis top level administrators on such activities, it seems wikis and superintendents could be a nice fit.

What are your thoughts?

Organize Yourself with a Wiki

Over the last few months, I've been experimenting with wikis. As a district administrator, I have fun keeping track of hundreds of documents that find their way into my inbox, that get "locked up" on my hard drive. Often, these documents are not confidential, should be looked at by lots of people. Yet, since email is the "killer app" that we've all grown old with, we find ourselves with more in our inbox than we can delete.

If you find those characterizations to be true of your inbox, then you may find this next one to be even more apt. Documents that are attached to your emails eventually take over your email backups. You start to wonder, where can I put that valuable document? You realize that your email program become the primary way you interact with information. After all, it's easier to keep documents in your email than save them to folders on your hard drive. You put a document on your hard drive, and then you may spend some time looking for it. Even though there are hard drive utilities to find stuff, only the techies know how to install them.

A few months ago, I decided to change that. I began to put non-confidential documents into a wiki. The power of the wiki is that I can continue to move content around, reorganize it easily, and better yet, leverage my secretary's organizational skills. Once my secretary--an excellent organizer--learned how to use the wiki, I began to point those emails with documents to her. "Would you please post this on the wiki in the appropriate place?" I'd ask. After a light chuckle--she allows herself these laughs at my expense--she would put the documents online.

Now, I'm beginning to find that the wiki is THE heart of my document management. And, I've started keeping my meeting notes there, as well as works in progress. I'm meeting with the technical crew on campus vs district server options. My job in the group is to craft the executive summary (oh boy, you should see those...need one for every project prior to approval) that we'll submit to the higher-ups. What do you know, planning it all out there makes the work transparent.

Transparency. Yes, that's what I'm really striving for. I never know what might happen to me on my home from work. Now, I know that should something happen, my team, those I work with, my supervisors can find out exactly what I'm working on, the documents relevant to that, and more.

You can check out my budding wiki here at http://itls.saisd.net/projects

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Duck, Dodge and Hide Leadership

"Duck, dodge, and hide" leadership is contradictory. It implies that a leader can be someone who ducks problems, dodges inquiry about those, and hides from the truth. If I hide from criticism, I set myself up for failure. If I listen only to criticism, or, alternatively, compliments, I still set myself up for failure. Balance has to be struck between the two, an understanding of the ying and yang.

In response to Stephanie Sandifer's recent entry explaining leadership strategies, including "DUCK" which stands for "Dependent Upon Criticizing and Killing Success," Lorne (Education and its Discontents) writes:

...I couldn't help but feel there is something quite condescending and essentially manipulative in the suggestions you list. As a retired teacher, I can tell you that those measures would only work if they came from the heart, not as a strategy to win over the staff. Teachers have a tremendousw capacity for detecting b.s., and you can be certain that if administrative gestures are forced or insincere, they will be seen through by the majority of staff. Teacher goodwill can only be achieved by genuine respect.
Source:

The last comment rings true, especially as we consider that genuine respect is often lacking in the political commentaries. On the one hand, some focus on the negative rather than the positive. On the other, some ignore the negative, afraid that it will derail their efforts at improvement. Whether you're ducking positive or negative comments, you're still practicing "Duck,dodge, and hide."

Pete Reilly (EdTech Solutions) shares an observation that I have found true no matter what job I have worked:

As educational leaders we often encounter people who are not aligned with our vision. They can surprise us by the tenacity of their negative energy. They have already "been there and done that" and know, that whatever we're trying to do; it will never work. They see every place in the organization where things are not working and, for them, this confirms their negative outlook on their jobs, and in many cases, their lives.

When I began working as an administrator 7 years ago, I felt a powerful drive to get the job done, to make it happen. I would have perceived the people Pete describes above as roadblocks, people that fit into Will Rogers famous quote (poorly paraphrased by me here), "You may be on the right road but if you're not moving, get out of the way." Like my superintendent in an East Texas small town district (13,000 population for the town) said once about a teacher on the techology committee, "We need to pave right over him and smooth out the bumps" likening the teacher to a bump in the road that had to be pushed down.

I had a visceral, negative reaction to that statement and, corrected him. "I want to hear the other point of view" and I kept that teacher on the Committee. True to form, he always offered insights into what we hadn't thought of. I'm grateful to him for teaching me the value of oppositional thinking. What's the point in having people who only agree with you?

Of course, as I liked to say it--which now reminds me of Collins' Good to Great or is it Built to Last--"The bus is moving, whether you're on it or not." As I recall Collins says that even more important about knowing where to go with the bus is getting the right people on the bus--and the implication for me is kicking the wrong people off!, which I disagree with--and then getting them to decide where the right direction is. As an educator, I find this reprehensible, especially for public school educators. The bus--as is with people of differing perspectives--is a jigsaw puzzle, a blood and muscle game of Tetris, but where the pieces fit themselves to the puzzle to ensure maximum gain.

I like to think I've gotten more mellow these days. Although I still see the value of make it happen, I like to imagine that "let it happen" works better. Let it happen means letting things take shape, evolve...as the situation develops. Although I know I want the bus to move, I'm more inclined to trust folks...where I disagree with Collins is that you have to get the right people on the bus. I have found in my "small" organizations that the right people are on the bus, they just haven't been allowed to build on their strengths and share their wisdom. My role is to tap into that wisdom, and encourage them to use their strengths for the benefit of the organization.

My first insights into dealing with those caught up in "victimhood" was simply to help us (that person and I) surrender to several important ideas:

1) Even though the world is difficult, that does not mean we are released from our obligations.

2) Since education environments are dependent on so many variables (e.g. politics, people, funding, legislation, etc.), just because something DID NOT work when you tried it, doesn't mean it won't work when we try it again. And, when I say "work" I don't mean that the initiative was unsuccessful ("didn't work") because the person doing it was incompetent or didn't think things through, but rather, that it was not approved or that it failed to catch on. That the time wasn't right then, but you never know the time is wrong until afterwards.

3) Surrender to whatever may happen. We are all called to serve passionately...while we may never surrender our passion, we must certainly surrender to the fact that our passion may not move things in the direction we want. It's this last idea that reminds me of an adaptation of something Dick Westley wrote in Redemptive Intimacy...

Having faith doesn't mean bad things won't happen and God will protect you from them, but rather, that bad things may happen but they won't matter as much because God has faith in you

.

So, with that last point in mind, I'm not the kind that believes in smiling to keep a happy face. I believe people can be joyful even as tears run down their face. I believe that negative energy is an essential part of the Ying-Yang, a spur that encourages one to be grateful...accepting...of the realities we face even as we challenge that reality and seek to transform it. I'd like to think negative/positive energy forms the nascent synergy that can transform who we are, what we do, and how we serve.

As Lorne writes in her blog, one of our obligations as administrators is to "Recognize that one of...[our]...most important functions is to provide a positive climate for both staff and students. Lead the school with moral conviction, not craven career ambition."

The craven are those who fail to acknowledge their fears, to share them openly. They instead act to protect themselves rather than do what is right. You want moral conviction as an administrator, as a leader? Then acknowledge your fear, share it...and welcome oppositional thinking for what it is. . .the power to transform the positive/negative energy into fuel for forward movement.

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Beyond Fear

A superintendent in a small school district gave a talk at the Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA) Midwinter's Conference a few years ago. She moved her hands quickly in the air, her hands almost blurring, parallel to each other. "This is the kind of change we need in schools," she exclaimed. "But this," and she moved her hands ever so slowly, " is the change we're getting. We need this change [moving her hands quickly] because our children can't wait."

I was impressed with her talk...and I wasn't alone. "You know," I said to the tech director in that district, "I wouldn't mind working with her to achieve that vision she articulated." At last, an administrator who gets it. A superintendent who will bring about change.

Less than a year later, she had been ousted from her perch and the community had mobilized against her. Whether she was bought off, resigned, it didn't matter. Everyone wanted her gone. Riding the coat-tails of her defeat, the very people she cited as the problems rose to power. The balance swung in the opposite direction. What she had hoped to accomplish was laudable, but how she went about it scarred the District, not to mention her career.

When I stub my toe on the "rocks" that block the way to successful change in school districts, I remember the story of the Superintendent mentioned in the story above. Change is necessary. Who we serve, not change itself, requires us to move quickly. As I get older, I notice that I get increasingly impatient with the slow pace of change in K-12 education. Yet, change has occurred. My son, on the way home from school, answered the mobile phone. "We're on highway 604," he told her. I was shocked...he had never shown an awareness of where he was by street name or the name of the highway. "He's growing up," I said to myself. Then, I heard him say, "No one told me it was 604." He was acknowledging that he had grown up enough to know where he was. That's how change occurs.

But, it can also be an auto wreck, like the one that left a Putlitzer Prize writer suddenly, unexpectedly, dead. Which is better? I've seen both in education, and been grateful for both. In one district, upper administration was cleaned out as if by a plague. Prayers, some say, were answered and change happened. Other times, change is a dawning realization. Nature allows for both sudden and gradual changes...shouldn't we?

I've worked side by side with teachers, campus, and district level administrators. At every level, I have found much to be enthused about, but also, come to see that there is always someone who opposes change for no rational reason. That reason is fear-based. Rather than face their fears, they act from fear to block change, to prevent that which would require them to overcome that fear.

My dad, who died a few short months ago, always encouraged me but cautioned me never to cheat. "Better to try honestly and fail," he'd say, "than cheat, even if you're not caught." Those words taught me the meaning of honor and integrity. Better that we brand our educational leadership efforts failures. Yes, better that than fail to acknowledge we hold our children back when we fear disruptive technologies and the change they bring.

1 Reason to Change

"Why don't you type up your writing assignment like you do your stories?" I asked my 13 year old daughter a few weeks ago. Her response shocked me. "I have to write it up at school by hand, so why use the computer?" she replied. My daughter publishes her stories and poems online via a wiki, but has given up trying to turn her assignments in via a blog or wiki...her teacher won't accept them. One reason to change, that's all we need.

A recent Pew Research study showed that twelve to seventeen year olds share what they think and do online, while one in five teens remix content from a variety of sources, synthesizing and making new creations. Yet, when these children get to school, they are forced to engage in irrelevant activities with no real audience, without the technology they have learned to use and without appropriate role models. One reason to change, that's all we need.

The study also found that 56 per cent of young people in America were using computers for "creative activities, writing and posting of the internet, mixing and constructing multimedia and developing their own content." Research and technology are driving profound changes in expectations for the use of technology in schools. These are embodied in the International Society for Technology in Education's (ISTE) National Education Technology Standards (NETS) for students AND teachers. One reason to change, that's all we need.

Schools are expected to overcome obstacles and help children develop skills required in a digital world to "produce and innovate" using technology. The revised standards are organized into six categories: creativity and innovation; communication and collaboration; research and information retrieval; critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making; digital citizenship; and technology operations and concepts.

Under communication and collaboration, you will find:

Students...
(A) collaborate, publish, and interact with peers, experts, and others employing a variety of digital media and formats
Example: Expert Voices - http://expertvoices.wikispaces.com/

(B) communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences utilizing a variety of media and formats
Example: Flat Classroom Project - http://flatclassroomproject.wikispaces.com/

(C) develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures.
Example: International Teen Life -  http://internationalteenlife.pbwiki.com/

and

(D) contribute to project teams to produce original works.
Example: 1001 Flat World Tales Project - https://burell9english.wikispaces.com/

This is work that is done, not in isolation, but in collaboration with others outside of school. Click on the links above to see examples of each.

"These teens," shares Lee Raine, "were born into a digital world where they expect to be able to create, consume, remix, and share material with each other and lots of strangers." One reason to change, that's all we need.

What should schools be doing? Should they ban the technologies children use at home in school, or model appropriate use in school? And, as education leaders, what are the implications for us?

If not for the children you serve, but for your son, your daughter, your precious grandchild, change. One reason to change, that's all we need.