LeaderTalk

Virtual Schools as a Support for Face 2 Face Rather than a Replacement

When I listen to face to face teachers and administrators talk about virtual schools, there is typically a level of nervousness that if face to face schools embrace virtual schools and enroll their students in them, that the virtual schools will somehow eventually replace the need for face to face learning. While there are certainly a small number of students for whom a full time enrollment in a virtual school would be beneficial, most students enjoy the social environment of a face to face school and will use virtual schools to fill specific needs in their education.  If face to face schools and virtual schools try to compete for students, I believe both will lose. But what if the two truly partner in an effort to provide the best educational experience for the STUDENT? Below are some very real ways that virtual schools can provide support for face to face schools and if done well by both the virtual and F2F, can be very powerful:

1. Virtual Schools can act as en extension of the F2F course catalog. At the NC Virtual Public School (NCVPS) we offer an extensive list of AP, Honors, and World Language courses in addition to the general and elective courses.  For much of NC, there are many courses that we offer that many high schools do not have enough individual students to offer F2F. Therefore, students do not have to settle for what is available at their F2F school, they can team up with other students from across the state to take courses that are of interest to them.
2. Credit Recovery when students need it. Many schools struggle to provide credit recovery programs during the summer in a face to face setting. Some have purchased very expensive online programs to help students recover the credit during the school year. Virtual Schools can (or should) often provide these credit recovery opportunities to students free of charge. The Credit Recovery courses at NCVPS take a mastery approach to learning which means that students pre test for a module and only spend time on the items they have not yet mastered and can therefore proceed through a course as fast or as slow as they need.  I am a strong believer in the concept that we should not wait for students to fail an entire course before they are provided an opportunity to recover units of credit.  I would love to work towards a model of recovery in which students who struggle with a particular unit of study can drop into the credit recovery course, take only that unit and then get back on track in their face to face class. As a former math teacher, I wish I'd had this kind of intervention for my students.
3. Providing high quality teachers at a time of need. How many times do F2F schools start the school year and then have a high quality teacher leave at some point during the school year? And then have to find another high quality teacher to replace them - and end up settling for the warm body that happened to be available? As a virtual school, we have access to high quality teachers from across the state and have been able to support schools by creating a new section of a course in the middle of the school year (or quarter) and contracting with a high quality online teacher in the subject area to teach the school's students for the rest of the semester or year as needed. The F2F school commits to keeping those students online for the remainder of the course and they can do a new search for a high quality teacher when the natural hiring cycle resumes.
4. Provides 21st century skills to students AND teachers.  The NC State Board of Education has revised its goals to focus on future ready students where students and teachers develop strong 21st century skills. Districts have had to revise their strategic plans to address this new area of focus and in some cases struggle to implement this vision. Here is another way virtual schools can provide a support. Schools who encourage their F2F teachers to also contract with virtual schools to teach online end up with teachers who greatly improve their skill set at using virtual tools for instruction which inevitably improves their F2F teaching. Additionally, students who participate in online courses learn to learn, create, and collaborate with others regardless of geography and time. This is an extremely valuable skill for our 21st century students who will likely have to do exactly this type of activity in their careers after school.

These are but four examples, but the point is that none of them takes away from the F2F school, but rather supports it by making it a stronger institution because it is able to provide quality educational offerings to a variety of students.  Thinking of this relationship as supportive rather than competitive is key and is critical if we are to truly prepare our students for a future none of us can yet define.

Passing the Virtual Baton

This week is an exciting one for me as I have started a new position with the NC Virtual Public School as the Chief Academic Officer. I am looking forward to helping every child in NC become an e-learner, but in this post I want to reflect on my previous position as the Director of Instructional Technology and Media for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS).

I have spent a great deal of time over the past few years working with teachers, school leaders, and district leaders trying to increase their understanding of 21st century tools for 21st century learning. In the past year, I really ramped up this effort with the central office administrators by offering bi-weekly Lunch and Learn sessions on web 2.0 tools and modeling the use of wikis, blogs, podcasts, Google docs, social bookmarking, skype, twitter, and online video in my daily work. I especially made a point to use these tools as part of the already collaborative work I was doing with them. And it paid off...

As the new school year began in August, I saw these tools in action by the central office administrators and here is the best part - they used these tools of their own accord - NOT because I suggested their use!!  for example:

• At the leadership team retreat, several of the presenters used Google Presentation rather than Powerpoint so that they could easily collaborate on the creation of their presentations and then share them with others without having to email
• Google Docs are now being used to track School Improvement Plans and Administrative Workplans
• Wikis are used to document instructional materials in a specific subject area across the district
• A blog for middle school teachers and administrators has been created to discuss ideas relevant to that group
• The district has adopted a new strategic plan which focuses on 21st century learning and the professional development focus for 2008-09 is on 21st century skills
• All school board meetings are made available the following day via podcast

On one hand, it is very sad for me to leave this district at a time when 21st century learning is really at the forefront.  On the other hand, it is clear to me that these leaders GET IT and it was really OK for me to pass them the virtual baton.  I will miss them terribly, but will be following their progress closely.

The good news is that I am now working with another group of fantastic people and my current work holds many opportunities for me to continue to collaborate with my former colleagues. I really feel like it is the best of both worlds :)

Using 21st Century Tools via 20th Century Methods

I not a sports nut, but one thing I do know is that an essential skill for learning defense in most any sport is blocking. When the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was enacted in 2001, many schools and districts around the country went into defense mode in a big way. They began acquiring filters to block sites that might be harmful to students.  We all know that no filter is perfect. Inappropriate sites get through the filter and sites that should be visible get blocked. Any decent filter will allow the filter administrator to block and unblock individual sites as needed to take care of this issue. The problem is, in many locations, the decision on what exactly to block is determined by technology staff set up and administer the filter - not by an educator. 

I hear regularly from vendors who want to come into our district to to training that when they go into many other districts to do a demo or do training that they are often unable to do what they need to do because their site or ancillary sites they use are blocked by the district's filter. It takes an act of congress to get the site unblocked so that the instruction can proceed.

More recently, as I attend various conferences, I hear presenters advocating that the teachers in attendance advocate for various web 2.0 tools to be unblocked in their district so that they can use them for instruction. But where I was most amazed, was in my recent advisory board meeting with the NC Virtual Public School (NCVPS). NCVPS uses Blackboard to deliver instruction online to students across the state of NC. The committee I sat on was looking at the web 2.0 tools they are acquiring for their instructors to use in these online courses. I had not heard of the blog, wiki, and podcasting tools they had selected and asked why those were chosen. Turns out, these particular apps were selected because they work inside Blackboard and this is necessary because many of the districts in this state are blocking blogs, wikis, and podcasts with their Internet filters. This is the work around - their way to sneak 21st century skills and tools into the online course.

But let me ask you this - if you are blogging inside of Blackboard - and the only people who can see your blog are those in your class, how is that any different that typing up your thoughts in Word and posting it in the Blackboard discussion area? What is 21st century about blogging/wiki-ing/podcasting in a closed environment? They are using 21st century tools with a 20th century audience. Don't misunderstand me, this is not the first choice of the NCVPS staff. Their hands are tied because principals and district administrators are adamant that blog, etc, will not be allowed in their schools!!!!

I left the meeting frustrated and sad. I want to talk to each and every administrator who thinks they are protecting their students by blocking these valuable tools. I wrote a poem about it. But sadly, the very people who need to read it can't, because their filter is blocking this article and my poem.

Leading by Reading

Most ed leaders I know read a lot. The read about leadership, ed leadership, ed initiatives, things specific to their field and so on. We learn about new books by seeing what other leaders around us are reading. Occassionally we share a title or two because that is convenient. But what if you could create a list of the books you have read that you think others should read too?

I have been exploring a web 2.0 app, Shelfari, this week. I have blogged about how it can be used in K-12 education and how it can be used to help you expand your own personal learning network. I would love to see ed leaders create and share their bookshelves of must reads with their schools and peers. I want to be able to access those and find out what else I should read to make me a better ed leader. Let me know if you already have a Shelfari account and want to collaborate.

Watching Leaders Evolve

(Cross posted at PargoNet)

I have targeted my efforts in increasing the capacity of web 2.0 in our district towards administrators. It is my firm belief that until these tools become part of the regular work that our district undertakes on a regular basis, we will never see saturation in the classrooms.  So I thought I would take some time here to highlight the ways our district has begun to infuse new technologies into the work we do.

1. Our district web site is now syndicated with RSS
2. The Assistant Superintendent of Support Services began the Bow Tie Blog to keep the community up to date on the construction of new facilities.
3. All of the Board meetings are made available via podcast.
4. One of our high school principals makes a weekly phone call to the homes of all the students. He then converts the files each week to MP3s and posts them on the school web site as a podcast so that families who missed the call on Sunday night can still access the information.

This is an exciting start towards becoming district 2.0. There is still quite a lot of work to do and some of it is in the works. Our Superintendent challenged the textbook adoption committee to look beyond the textbook for materials and to make a greater use of technology. The elementary level embraced this idea and is going textbookless next year for Social Studies and instead will be relying heavily on technology for information needs.  However, our high schools are still buying a book for every student. The middle schools are, well, in the middle. They are purchasing a class set of books for each teacher and using the remaining money on technology.

I would like to see more blogging and reflective practice coming out of our Instructional Services department. I understand the time challenges, but how can we expect our teachers to use these tools with their children if we don't model good use of the tools for them?

Witness to History

Last Friday, one of our high schools participated in the Pearl Harbor Witness to History Video conference Program. In a nutshell, one of the social studies teachers, Bill Melega, applied for, and was awarded, a grant to fly out to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and conduct a mini lesson about Pearl Harbor via video conference for his students. Additionally two Pearl Harbor survivors were there to give tell the stories in their own words. You can imagine the power of this experience. I could go on talking about the fantastic use of technology and the high level of student engagement, but since this blog is about leadership, I want to take this opportunity to highlight the amazing levels of leadership it took to make this video conference such a success.

We consider our district to be a leader when it comes to technology. However, video conferencing is not something we have had a great need for up until now and therefore the equipment and expertise in this area was not abundant. It took lots of smart minds working together to make this work.

1. Teacher as Leader - I cannot emphasize enough that without this teacher's desire to do something innovative and meaningful for his students, none of this would have taken place. You see, rather than starting from a district or school administrative level of having the technology first and then trying to find teachers who want to fit the new technology (not that video conferencing is all that new) into their classroom - here we have a teacher with an instructional plan that needs the technology to support it. This is the way all instructional technology should work. Start with what the teachers are doing instructionally and find the technology to support and enhance the instruction. Thanks to Mr. Melega for your vision!
2. Technology Specialist as Leader - Once Mr. Melega was on board to do the video conference, he gave the list of technical specifications to the school's Instructional Technology Specialist, Wilson Diaz. Immediately, Wilson was able to determine what was already available in the school and what outside help was going to be needed. Wilson was the glue who kept this project visible to all the parties and was the liaison and advocate for the school in this process. He also took the time to video the session and post it on youtube for us all to see.
3. District Administrators as Leaders - Once Wilson shared with us what he needed, we knew right away that we were going to need outside expertise. When I say we, I really mean our Chief Technology Officer, Ray Reitz who really pulled all the pieces of this together and made this event happen. My role in this is limited to having shared the name of a UNC Professor, Tom Cox, I had met the week before along to Ray. Tom had expressed to me that anytime we wanted to try out video conferencing, he would be available to help. And he was. Turned out to be the magic link. He helped us determine what equipment we needed and what kind of connection we needed. Once we knew these pieces, we were in good shape.

As you can see, it took all three of these leaders to make this event happen. I like to call this collaborative leadership. And that is so 21st Century :)

Transforming My Own Work to Transform the Work of Others

Cross posted at PargoNet

For the past 2 years, I have created professional development opportunites during the summer for our teachers and any other faculty member who wished to join on web 2.0 tools and strategies to use them in the classroom. While the workshops have been well attended, I have only seen “pockets of excellence” as my superintendent calls it. In other words, the workshops have not transformed the way all teachers teach in the district. Rather, a small number of teachers have begun doing amazing things in their classrooms, but the number of teachers doing so is small.

So I have changed my strategy. While I will continue to offer summer professional growth opportunities in this area, I have begun attacking this problem with another approach - and it really is nothing radical. I have begun modeling the use of these tools for every meeting and interaction I have with teachers, administrators, and my technology specialists and media specialists. Below are some examples of the way I have modeled the use and the effects it is already having:

1. Graduation Project - The Director of Secondary Education, Sherri Martin, asked me to work with her to facilitate a series of committee meetings to develop a 21st Century Graduation Project that will be required of all graduating seniors beginning with this year’s sophomore class - this is a state requirement.  It seemed to me that if the students were going to be asked to incorporate 21st Century Skills into their project, the educators working with them better learn pretty quickly what those skills and tools look and feel like. So I did two things: rather than create a traditional web site with all of the committee info, Sherri and I created a wiki and shared the password with the committee. Additionally, the committee is divided into five work groups, each of which has a specific aspect of the graduation project to work on and a document to produce. So I set up a Google doc for each group and have them working in these docs collaboratively even outside of the committee meetings. I shared Common Craft’s video on Google Docs in Plain English with them so that they would understand why we were using this approach rather than the traditional Word Doc over email method. They were all very excited about this concept and one teacher asked, “you mean my students could use this to collaborate on their projects?” With a smile, I said “Yes they Can!” One of the administrators left this meeting to immediately set up a Google doc to work on with one of his groups, and more importantly, created a Google calendar to share with her co-workers - and another one with his wife to replace the paper calendar on their fridge so that they can keep track of what plans they have when scheduling new ones. He is totally psyched about this use!
2. Workshop sign ups - I have grown weary of trying to explain how wikis can be used to various groups, so rather than explain, I have increasingly begun using them. I have started a series of Lunch n Learn sessions for central office administrators (and any other central office staff) on web 2.0 tools. Rather than send out in an email the lust of dates and ask them to respond if they plan to attend, I created a wiki and asked them to edit the wiki to add their name beside any date they planned to attend. Do you know I have not gotten a single complaint about using this method or about how to go in and add their name? Instead, I have had a few administrators who were so impressed with this concept they have asked me to help them set up wikis of their own to do a similar sign up with their own groups. And we have not even done the session on how to create wikis yet! I have seen more progress made in a week after modeling the use of wikis than I have in the past 2 years of trying to explain them to the same people.
3. Organizing Work - with my technology specialists and media specialists (we have one of each in every school) I have been using so many wikis and Google docs, that I needed a place to organize them all so that they were easy to find rather than digging through emails. So I created a Google Group for each of these groups to organize the work we do. Now, rather than have them email various products to me, I have them post them in the group space. This has transformed my work significantly. I was getting bogged down in trying to track who had sent me the products I was asking for and compiling all of them - it was taking a tremendous amount of time. Now they are compiling their work for me and it is in one place for me to find - I love this.
4. Sharing Best Practices - Each month I have the technology specialists submit a best practice use of technology in their schools. Again, they would email me the link and then I had to create a web page and post the info. very time consuming. Now I have created a wiki that they post the best practice to by the end of each month. I then send out the wiki link each month to the teachers so that they can see all the projects going on around the district.

I know this has been one of my longer postings, but in a short amount of time, I have seen major progress made by using the tools rather than by evangelizing about them. It reaffirms my belief that teachers and administrators will not use new tech tools in their work with others until they have had to use them in their work for others. We have to become users before we can be leaders.

I am thankful for…

In the spirit of the recent holiday weekend, I wanted to share a few of the things I am thankful for these days:   (cross posted at PargoNet)

• The friends and family I have reconnected with via MySpace, Facebook, Geni, and good old fashioned email
• Wikis that allow me to minimize the email messages I have to sort through when preparing for a meeting
• Google groups to organize my work with others
• Edubloggers who keep me current with new technologies and bless me with their thoughts and ideas on how to use them
• Blogs that let me share my thoughts with the rest of the worlds
• Digital photo sites so that I share as many photos of my child without feeling guilty about filling up their mailbox quotas
• Unlimited mail box quotas
• A school district that lets me be excited about new ways to use technology in the classroom and lets me lead others in how to use technology to transform teaching

Leading the Leaders

Last week, I attended the NSBA T+L Conference in Nashville, TN. My boss and I were fortunate enough to be able to take two of our Principals and a School Board Member along. What an opportunity! Three days of undivided attention on my favorite topic - technology in education!!  While the conference was a good one and I certainly came away with some big ideas, the most important aspects of the trip were the conversations and learning opportunities with the Principals and School Board Member.

We are in a major push right now to increase funding for technology in our district, and while none of these three leaders were opposed to the idea, they now know enough to be advocates for our needs. The principals have a better footing to go back to their schools and ask questions. As budget planning gets going, we now have another school board member who can support us. One of the principals really captured her growth experience by saying, "I am used to going to conferences that are in my comfort zone. This one really made me stretch and I have learned more because of it."   How many times do you go to trainings or conferences that are far enough outside of your comfort zone that you have to stretch? It is always easy to get excited about the things that we are already excited about - maybe we need to spend a little more time get excited about other things.

Now my challenge is how to spread this enthusiasm to the other leaders in out district without having to find a conference to take them all to. Stay tuned.

Information vs Textbooks

What would instruction look like without a textbook?

This is the question our superintendent asked the district textbook advisory committee two weeks ago as they met for the first time to prepare for the review of materials for K-12 Social Studies for adoption in 2008-09. In NC, we adopt new "textbooks" every 5 years and each of the subject areas is on a rotation for adoption. This year we focus on social studies. In the past, the procedure has been to send a group of teachers to the state textbook warehouse in Raleigh to peruse the NC approved textbooks. They might narrow down the vendors to a handful and then invite them to come visit the district. The vendors then sell them on the main textbook and them schmooze them with all the "extras" such as powerpoints, lesson plans, and test generators that accompany the textbook. Some even have their textbook online.

Now the question is, in the 21st century, especially in social studies, do we need a textbook that is out of date before it is even distributed? What information is in the textbook that cannot be found online, often in an even more dynamic presentation? Do I need a textbook to read Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech when I can listen to Dr. King himself deliver it in a audio file? I can access thousands of historical documents online by looking at the primary document itself. The information is out there.

However, I am already sensing a great deal of hesitation and resistance when some teachers imagine teaching without a textbook. The issue is not whether the information is available online, but how to access it and what to do with it. You see, a textbook organizes the information for teachers. In my opinion, this is the single greatest challenge we face when trying to move into a 21st century mode of teaching and learning. Simply using online materials and resources would require a great deal of time and effort from teachers to organize it all and to devise a new instructional model for teaching and learning. But imagine, if you will, what the impact would be if we gave teachers the time to work together to critically think about the instructional model they currently use, the one in which a textbook fits so nicely, and what they would do differently if they were to rely on online resources for their primary instructional materials. How would instruction change? How would learning change?

Let's assume for just a moment that we got the teachers over the instructional change hurdle. The next challenge for us would be the hardware to support all of this learning. We would have to address budgeting differently - we would need to better align our budget to the instructional needs so that students and teachers have access to current hardware to support their online instructional materials. They also need to have access to adequate storage space and bandwidth.

Sounds like we are asking for a lot?  A century ago, the thought of printing textbooks for everyone seemed outrageous. We relied on the knowledge in a teacher's head and gave everyone a slate. Now the thought of giving every student a laptop seems unattainable. But if you stop and think, in the 21st century, the actual content of the information has become less important than what we DO with the information. We need dynamic tools to facilitate this type of learning.  Below is a passage I first saw on Rae Niles' site last year. I think it makes my point quite nicely.

Let’s have a little competition at school and get ready for the future. I will use a laptop and you will use paper and pencil. Are you ready…?

I will access up-to-date information - you have a textbook that is 5 years old.
I will immediately know when I misspell a word – you have to wait until it’s graded.
I will learn how to care for technology by using it – you will read about it.
I will see math problems in 3D – you will do the odd problems.
I will create artwork and poetry and share it with the world – you will share yours with the class.
I will have 24/7 access – you have the entire class period.
I will access the most dynamic information – yours will be printed and photocopied.
I will communicate with leaders and experts using email – you will wait for Friday’s speaker.
I will select my learning style – you will use the teacher’s favorite learning style.
I will collaborate with my peers from around the world – you will collaborate with peers in your classroom.
I will take my learning as far as I want – you must wait for the rest of the class.
The cost of a laptop per year? - $250
The cost of teacher and student training? – Expensive
The cost of well educated US citizens and workforce? - Priceless