Multi-faceted Refractions

It is 4:30 a.m. and I am wide awake, with many idea fragments and thoughts running through my brain. I cannot sleep and have to capture these kernals and observations so that I can retrieve them for the daunting task which I am currently facing, which is to act as an unbiased mirror, reflecting and confirming the observations of another school. I am both excited and giddy about the intense process which I am currently undertaking and will be doing so for the next 96 hours. It provides for me an opportunity for  professional development which is enriching and exciting. I cannot wait to go back and observe, reflect, and learn from a school observation while getting the opportunity to add new members to my personal learning network, whose ideas, views, and perspectives I will be able to tap into in the months and years ahead.

You see, I work at an independent school which belongs to the Independent Schools of the Central States (ISACS). To maintain membership as an ISACS school and more importantly, as a tool for growth, each school is asked to participate in an analytical review process every seven years. This self-reflection is one which is often loathed for the time and energy that it takes to go through. However, when done right, this process can help a school identify both what their strengths are so that they can continue to build on those. Each school also identifies its weaknesses with plans on how they are going to tackle that challenge.

It is now my job to simply go and observe and interact with the faculty, holding up the mirror to verify that the image that they created is accurate and not skewed. I have 48 hours to peel away the layers to make sure that they have reflected their core. During this process, I will also gain a new lens and perspective which to apply to the way that I view my school. I will be able to bring back ideas, but more importantly new ways to look at both the way that me and my department look at the challenges that we have and allow us to apply our strengths to help resolve our challenges.

The culminating artifact which will be produced is a written document which will then be provided to the school administration. Not only do we have only 48 hours to observe and confirm the picture, but we need to write our reflections for the school to process. It is an intense project and the final report was one that I used to dread. However, since I have begun to use this space to reflect on my ideas and the projects that I work on, I am finding the process to be much simpler. I am already in the habit of partially stepping outside myself to assess and reflect what I am doing.

What would  be interesting would be to produce a mini-documentary, or to provide images which we could use to show our views of what they are doing, we have to produce a document which can be easily accessed by the administration, who unfortunately is more are text based learners. Maybe in the upcoming years, as more schools provide opportunities for students to engage in these ways of creating a story, when they begin to be part of the process as adult teachers, they will push us for the opportunity to use different modalities to tell the story as well.

Now that I have emptied my head and documented my thoughts, I better catch some more sleep so that I will be able to be alert and ready for the morning. It will be here before I want it to be.

As an independent school educator, we occasionally get invited to participate to help other schools evaluate themselves. For a school, this process occurs every seven years. Six weeks ago, I accepted an assignment from the Whitfield School in St. Louis to be a part of their visiting team.

Each team has a leader, who organizes the efforts of the group of educators who evaluate the school. When I got my first email from the leader our team, I saw the name of the leader and knew there was something that about this person which seemed familiar, but I could not put my figure it out.

The head of school in charge is Peter Fayorian, the head of school at the Greenhills School in Ann Arbor. Not a common name. I liked the tone of his email and knew that I would love the style in which he would lead the team. But I still couldn’t figure out what was bugging me about him.

Last night, it hit me, maybe this was the same person who I had gone to Middle School and High School with, even did a few science projects in his basement in the 9th Grade. We were in the same classes, but ran in different groups. In a large public high school, with a graduating class of 750+, it might have been. I thought the name was the same. But since I moved the day after graduation, I have lost track of most of my high school classmates.

I got my old yearbook out, and yes, the name was spelled the same. Upon Googling him, I couldn’t quite connect the dots. When I did a Google image search, found a picture which led to an article that confirmed that in fact he is the same person I went to school with for six years.

We will have some catching up to do. I wonder if he is aware of the connection?

I have been thinking about how we deliver technology professional development at our school. There are currently two goals that we are trying to accomplish:

1. Making sure teachers are aware of new tools so that they can become competent users of technology for themselves.
2. Making sure teachers can use these tools to enrich and transform their classroom for the community of learners during that physical time and space.

To date, we have employed following methods:

1. Using email/blog to make teachers aware of different tools and sites. We sometimes use this in a broad sweep, sometimes in a targeted fashion. This is a passive activity which requires a large amount of time and energy to follow up with those who are not self-motivated or feel overwhelmed.
2. Use of Large Group Meeting time. These times are often used to either show the whole group a set of tools or to provide a vision or direction. This then requires individual follow-up to make sure that the tools are implemented. Good for exposure,but does not lead to inclusion or change without a self-motivated individual taking control of their own learning. It is difficult to schedule as much time with the competing factions and needs for a whole group meeting.
3. Meet with Small Groups. These are often effective and more narrowly focused meetings which allow for greater rates of teachers being willing to experiment, play, and then embed the use of the tools for both personal and for inclusion in teaching. These are effective since different groups can be built, a group from a department, a grade level, a group with a common interest. The difficulty is carving out times for these groups to get together. It is very difficult during the school day and either before and after school. Our Brown Bag Lunches were a good example of this, but the differing lunch times and different divisional timetables makes this difficult time to schedule.
4. One-to-one – This is often the most effective, but most time intensive from a tech staffing standpoint. It requires that we know the goals of the teachers so we can align it with the right tools. I am spending more time this year developing these relationships. Once trained, I am asking the individuals to help serve as mentors for the tools. I want to do this because I believe that teachers need to hear authentic stories from their colleagues in addition to hearing my voice. They will be more likely to try when they hear the passion from more people.
5. Encouraging people to take advantage of wonderful opportunities online. This has been more miss than hit, as once again, it takes a highly motivated individual to make happen.

What I need is your guidance. Specifically:

1. Are there other methods that I should use that you think will be affective?
2. How can we rethink time so that we can facilitate more regular small group meetings?
3. Do you think that putting this in a virtual space (Moodle, etc.) would be helpful in providing access that is not time dependent?
4. Is there anything else I am completely missing in this conversation?

I look forward to hearing the thoughts and ideas from members of my network.

Over the past six months, we have been investigating several converging ideas:

• Campus Wide Long Range Space Planning
• Questioning of Schedule and Time in all three of our divisions
• Discussion of the role of technology - tablets, laptops, projectors, network, and services to support learning

These conditions are converging, suggesting that we are nearing a near perfect storm that potentially could transform our learning environments and provide us with the framework which will enable us to enter into our second century of existence in 11 years. I am really excited about the possibilities.

Our Head of School has been interested in the Harkness Table concept. He has been dropping this idea into conversations for nearly a year now. As we are getting closer to our next milestone in determing whether or not we will be heading to a school environment in which technology will be “like oxygen, ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible” (Chris Lehmann in School 2.0 - Creating Schools We Need). Last night, I had an epiphany moment connecting this initiative and the Harkness Philosophy. The Harkness Philosophy can be updated for the new learning environment.

Embedded is a presentation which is I am developing the connection between the technology, learning environments, and the updates needed to provide for the Harkness Table 2.0. The changes are not in the physical realm, but instead extend to the collaborative network. I would appreciate any feedback or pushback from my network so that I can continue the development of these ideas. This is a work in progress, so I will be updating it over the next week.

One of the tools that I have and enjoyed is Inspiration. I have used this product since 1989, when a forward thinking local school system purchased it for its teachers and I had to train them on how to use it. I have always been a visual thinker, which is one of the reasons that I loved my Macintosh computers and why I think that tablet technology is an increasingly interesting tool for users.  The ability  to create diagrams and then simply create outlines, the ability to export a series a diagram into a web site were some of the great innovations.

With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies led me to begin to look for an equivilent solution so that multiple people could work on the same project. Many offered some of the tools and functionality of Inspiration, none of them had the full sets of features available.

At NECC, I heard the rumors that Inspiration was coming out with a web 2.0 edition of their product. I was excited about the possibilities and anxiously awaited its arrival. This morning, while scanning my reader, I saw a post by Kevin Jarrett (Inspiration comes to the web: meet MyWebspiration.com!) and I became excited.

Over the course of the day, I have begun to play with myWebspiration.com. Truly a beta product, it does not have full Web 2.0 functionality. It does have the ability for a group to collaborate, but unlike the Google products that I have been using, only one person can be editing the document at a time. There is not the ability to embed the document. The only way to access the document is to save a copy to your local hard drive and further manipulate it in Inspiration 8.

It does allow for all of the features I have come to love, such as rapid entry and the ability to switch between visual mode and outline mode. From Leigh Zeitz, I hear that this product will stay in beta and available for free for an undetermined amount of time while they are testing the waters.

It is a solid start and I look forward to seeing enhancements in the upcoming months. It is a something to watch develop and grow.