Thoughts regarding leadership

As I was putting together the paper for Issue 7 - and I choose to address the Third Millennium School - I came across an article about leadership for change/leadership for 21st century skills

"Beyond Testing: The 7 Disciplines for Strengthening Instruction"

which got me thinking about several things associated with the school district where I went through K-12 and where once I had a family of my own, we fled before the kids got into kindergarten.

The 7 principles referred to in the article title are a practice advocated by the Harvard Graduated School of Education's Change Leadership Group, and set forth and process and intermediate goals to improve student achievement. A couple of the principles got me thinking...

"The district creates an understanding and a sense of urgency among teachers and in
the community for the necessity of improving all students' learning, and it regularly
reports on progress. Data are disaggregated and are transparent to everyone.Qualitative data (for example, from focus groups and interviews), as well as quantitative data, are used to understand students' and recent graduates' experience of school."

The district I refer to is constantly on the front page of our local Sun Newspaper - and the reports are usually negative consisting of school closings, failed levies, strife in the halls, strife among the school board. However disparaging reports of the school system are, there remains a loyal and dedicated faction of the community that continually supports the system.

Another sticking point in the article made a reference to a student asking of the principal, "When is it my turn to get a good teacher like the honors kids get? One who will answer my questions and care about my learning?" This statement falls in line with the following principle:
• There is a widely shared vision of what good teaching is, which is focused on rigorous
expectations, the quality of student engagement, and effective strategies for
personalizing learning for all students.
I never made it into the honors classes in high school but a couple of my friends did and there were pretty apparent discrepancies in the educational experience that were noted by myself at the very young (and vulnerable) teenage years which in retrospect did not necessarily set me up for failure, but left me completely unequipped for my first couple of years of college.

Thoughts on Professional Development

Again, it has taken a week or so for my brain to kick in on the Professional Development assignment. But, as I have been gathering my thoughts and information over the past few days on the topic I have been considering what goes on at my college in the realm of professional development. We (Cuyahoga Community College) actually have a very nice program for professional development that hosts a wide variety of events and training opportunities for faculty including an annual faculty colloquium, a new faculty orientation to teaching and learning, a Technology Training Institute and various workshops, lectures and continuing education opportunities. Since I have been at the college I have seen the program grow and the current head of the department (whose title has recently changed to District Director, Teaching, Learning and Academic Professional Development) is a wonderful, warm, smart and enthusiastic person. I have recently been placed on a committee that she chairs on Teaching and Learning in Online Education and our charge is to create learning/teaching opportunities for faculty that want to teach in Distance Learning - and I look forward to working on the committee.

However, there is one aspect of faculty/professional development that has been a flop at our college and that is the Academic Excellence Centers (AEC). These centers came into being probably about 8 years ago and never achieved much at all. The center directors came and went and programming was sparse. Each campus (and there are three) relocated classrooms, offices and dedicated centers so the Academic Excellence Centers could be outfitted with computers, scanners, printers, etc. in order to teach faculty how to use technology. The centers, then under the direction of the Learning Resources Centers were very unactive and eventually faded into the background never to be used or staffed.

Recently the Teaching, Learning and Academic Professional Development department has taken over the charge of the AEC's. Instructional Designers have been hired or are being interviewed. An emerging technology position is available and steps are being taken to determine what faculty needs are in the AEC's (that's where I am going to do my "needs assessment"). But while I consider all the good intentions of those that are dedicated to teaching, learning and academic professional development it has dawned on me that the whole climate of the institution weighs very heavily on the attitudes, motivations and desires of the faculty. Why haven't the centers succeeded in the past - and what will enable them to succeed now? How can Directors of Teaching Learning and Academic Professional Development fill the centers with energerized faculty when the faculty themselves are struggling with a revolving administration and students with needs that go far beyond using technology effectively in the classroom?

A very good article that has helped to prompt my thoughts on this important topic can be found here "The Value of a Teaching Center."

Blogging in the Workplace

For some reason getting through the Issue 5 assignment was really difficult for me. I choose the CMC option and hemmed and hawed on what technology to implement to increase employee engagement with technology as well as increase communications, sharing of ideas and the collaboration on new uses of technology in the particular workplace. I finally decided that blogging would be the best option because the company could do it for free. I considered using Facebook, but in my own experience with Facebook, I find it to be such an entertaining distraction - I spend way too much time looking up people from high school, then getting depressed because I am still in Cleveland and some are all over the country doing really cool things...I digress...

So, despite the fact that I struggled with Issue 5, in doing the assignment I came across an article that referenced Andrew McAfee from Harvard Business School. Intrigued by his concept of Enterprise 2.0 - basically using Web 2.0 tools effectively in the workplace - I began to do some research on him and found his blog "The Impact of Information Technology (IT) on Businesses and their Leaders" dead on target to the content of Issue 5, totally interesting and well written, and very much drew me in to the subject matter.

Thanks to Prof. McAfee!

Putting down thoughts

For the past couple of weeks, as I have been working on the various Issues assignments, several thoughts have come to mind that I'd like to share regarding Constructivism and Laptops in Higher Education. My thoughts have been sitting on little sticky notes on my calendar, so now I will formally think out loud...

Constructivism
While working on the constructivism pieces of the course, I remember reading somewhere (maybe another student's posting on a forum, or in an article) that the applications that promote constructivism in the classroom really do not bode well in the elementary setting. Perhaps the information I refer to considered elementary students need more guidance and structure than is normally associated with constructivist methods of learning and engagement. However, I beg to differ, and do so using a wonderful example of a project that my 3rd grade child is currently taking part in. Destination Imagination is a national program run through various school districts that seeks to build creativity, problem solving and teamwork "in enjoyable and meaningful ways." The goals of the program are many and include: fostering creative and critical thinking; learn and apply creative problem solving methods and tools; develop teamwork, collaboration, and leadership skills; and encourage competence in, enthusiasm for, and commitment to real-life problem solving.

Here's what the kids do - they are placed into groups of 5 to 7 and assigned to a team coach. The team coach is a parent volunteer (and unfortunately there are not nearly enough parent volunteers to accommodate all the children that want to participate). Once the teams are formed, the kids are presented with a choice of 5 challenges of which they will pick one challenge to work on for a specified length of time - about 5 months. The teams present their solutions to the challenge at a tournament. In addition to the central challenge that the kids work together to solve, they also are presented with instant challenges throughout the course of the program to practice for the instant challenge they will be asked to solve at the tournament.

The role of the parent coach is essentially keep the kids on track, give them snacks, coordinate logistics (getting from school to meetings), and guiding them, but in no way can the coach help out with solving the problem.

Here some additional information about the program:
"Instant Challenges" - teach students to take what life is handing them moment to moment. These challenges spark and quickly capture the team members' wild imaginations by requiring them to solve a challenge on the spot.

"Team Challenges" - teams use art, technology, performance, and real world relevance as they tackle one of the five Team Challenges - every team challenge has two parts: one which is unique to the challenge and the other which has five smaller categories (artistic, technical, performance, relevance, and improvisational).
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Laptops in Higher Education
As I sat at the reference desk, which is situated right next to a small (3o computers) computer lab, reading various articles and assorted information on the use of and possible requirements of laptops in higher education, I formed several opinions regarding the topic:

• A laptop requirement is a good thing, simply if it allows equity in access to all students. As I watch the lab fill up and students enter and leave the library not able to get on a computer I think that if each of these students were required to have a laptop they would not be turned away from the lab - their access to the technology would (or at least could) be in their hands at all times.
  
• A laptop requirement is a good thing as it would free up valuable space. Rather than carving out large portions of the campus for the space needed for a computer lab, a laptop requirement could free up space for - in the case of the library - more quiet study space - or allow the college or university to use the space to create environments conducive to collaborative learning, comfort and meeting the needs of today's students - i.e. coffee stands, media outlets, collaboration rooms, etc.
  
• A laptop requirement is a good thing as students then are in control of their learning and use of the technology - meaning translated here - if a student is in a full computer lab and using a computer to watch YouTube videos or a Social Network to converse with friends and another student needs to use a computer for Word processing a paper but cannot because the lab is full AND there is no policy for computer usage does that seem fair?
  
• A laptop requirement is a good thing as it may empower the student who would otherwise not have access to technology on an as needed basis.

Those were just some thoughts I'd thought I would share!

First Post

Hi -

Like the picture of my family? We were on vacation in S. Carolina. I love vacations...I live for vacations..

Right now I would like to strangle my family members in the picture...my husband is not answering his cell phone, my youngest keeps pooping in his pants, my middle son can't get along with anyone...and my oldest is in a mumbling stage of life. But I do love them all very much...

I guess this has nothing to do with ITEC, Constructivism, or current issues in technology - but it feels kind of good to vent.

All for now.