What is your A to B? 5 takeaways from @gcouros!

On April 10 we hosted our first ever Technology Integration Conference.  The conference was for all teachers in our district.  Mr. George Couros, The Principal of Change, visited our district as the keynote speaker.  Mr. Couros, who hails from Canada, was able to provide us with a tremendous amount of knowledge that day but more importantly he was a motivational and inspirational force.  Being three terms into our 1:1 program we really needed another push to challenge our thinking and help us recommit to our plan. George helped us do that!  In the morning he spent time with teacher leadership teams and our administrative team.  In the afternoon he delivered a keynote that is the topic of many of our conversations a week later and will be moving forward.  After his address we held breakout sessions for the 300 teachers in attendance.  Thank you to all of our presenters.  No matter how large or small your session we are confident people walked away feeling like they were engaged in a very meaningful day!

Here are five essential leanings I had after George's time with us.

1) If you are not on Twitter, you are becoming illiterate.

As an educator it is our responsibility to keep up on what is current.  This is a communication tool that needs to be in your toolbox if it is not already.  It is the best free professional development that is available and opens you up to a network of resources.  If you are not engaged in this you are truly getting further behind.

2) 1% of the online community produces 99% of what is consumed.

What are you producing?  What are your students producing?  There are so many opportunities that if we are not engaging ourselves and others in this we are missing out tremendously.  Do you post on Twitter, do you blog, are you creating videos?  If not, you should be.  We all have something to contribute!

3) "If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less." General Shinseki
     
We all have to adapt and be flexible.  Our teaching and learning model has to be transformed dramatically with how quickly we can access content.  It is easier to do this than ever before and we as educators have to think about we are not facilitators of learning and not just there for disseminaters of information.

4)  Take risks!

Not everything is going to work the way you would like it to the first time you try.  If you are a leader we have to acknowledge this and allow teachers to take chances.  Teachers need to have confidence to step out of their comfort zone.  What we are asking from them is not the way they taught or learned so it will not come naturally to everyone, but everyone needs to know they are supported to take a chance.

5)  How do we move people from their point A to their point B?

This is what I would like to issue as a challenge for everyone.  How do you grow?  Everyone has room for growth, but my growth looks different than yours.  How do we help each other to keep moving  forward?Technology is just a piece of this, but the message is that we have to continue to learn and grow.  If you are a leader how are you modeling your growth?

Be Great!

Matt

Some Madness of Our Own!

How do you raise your game?  Many basketball teams in the NCAA tournament produce a better performance than they exhibited for most of the season or play even better than they thought possible.  Why is this?  I believe that it is because human beings generally rise to the occasion when presented with a challenge.  When we have higher expectations for ourselves and get challenged to do better, we DO better!

         

This past month we issued a challenge to our staff.  Let's get after it and increase the number of missions we are completing. The result ended up being 700 completed missions on our PD site, Mission Possible.  We handed out free keyboards, an Apple TV, Otterbox cases, gift cards, and more.  The staff really committed to diving in and learning with and from each other.  Our next challenge, now let's present to others.  We have several staff members taking what they know on the road nationally and state wide this Spring.  Our teachers have found that they learn best from each other and that it is infectious.

I have been proud to be a part of the staff here at Bettendorf High School.  I have slacked posting lately in part because of several personal issues, most of which are all positive. For those of you that do not know, next year I will be taking over as Principal at South East Junior High in Iowa City. Our family is excited to begin another new journey and thank everyone here in Bettendorf for their generosity during our time here.

Have you been camping lately?

This may seem like an odd question at this time of year.  I like to camp and always have.  My parents used to take us on camping vacations every summer to Leech Lake in Minnesota.  We did not have a ton of money so we used to camp.  This was always great fun for us.  I came to enjoy setting up camp, sitting by the fire, cooking our meals, fishing, and I even enjoyed the long rides in the back end of a pick-up truck to our destination with my brother.   I was also an Eagle Scout and learned many life skills by having to stay away from home on trips while camping with the Boy Scouts.  I feel that I can contribute many of my leadership skills to experiences learned in this arena.  However, to me one of the most enjoyable aspects of camping is the quiet calm surrounding you when you are immersed in the wilderness.  This always gives me the opportunity to reflect on the past and set goals for the future.  So what did I do this weekend?  I went camping, EdCamping! I was able to take part in the same type of deep thought this weekend just in a different setting.

This week Bettendorf High School was a co-host for the first ever Ed Camp Iowa.  This event brought together educators from all over the mid-west.  We were joined by a simultaneous Ed Camp for the western half of the state at Buena Vista University.  Scott McLeod, Jimmy Casas, and I all helped to organize the event and were very pleased with the participation and sharing that went on.  EdCamps are not your typical conference, they are actually an un-conference.  The participants determine the schedule and facilitate the sessions.  We started the day by building an agenda (after doughnuts of course) on a Google doc.  From there the participants were engaged in five sessions of their choice.  This was my second EdCamp experience and similarly to the first my head hurt by lunch time.  Many people commented on the way out the door that this was the most valuable education conference they had been to.  Awesome! It is even more exciting when we think about the fact that it didn't involve a big name presenter, time out of class, and a day of "sit and get".  The only thing we needed were 150 educators committed enough to give up their Saturday to come and talk about the topics they were most passionate about.

So the reflective part of me started thinking, if this experience is so much better then how can we take this new experience and actually do something with it?  How do we not get the same results of other conferences?  What will be our next step?  How do we transform our words into actions for our students?  There is no easy answer to this or a quick fix solution.  Rather, I believe it has to be about mobilizing these voices and building this culture of learners in our own building.  What if we ran our next professional development this way?  We design it for the teachers by having the teachers design it right there! How great could these conversations be?  The most empowering part of the whole experience for me is realizing the answers are within us! We are the solution! We just need to make it happen! Have a great week and as always it is a great day to be a Bulldog!

Matt

What is your journey?

Last week Kate and I had the opportunity to attend the inauguration of President Obama.  What an event! Having once taught American Government I was like a little kid in a candy store.  Between all of the museums, memorials, and monuments I literally got the chills. (I know I geeked out. :)) We had the chance to meet the United States Representatives and Senators for Iowa, and don't worry I told Rep. Lobesack I would send him a Bulldog pennant when we got back to Bettendorf.  We got to see Barack Obama being swore in and his family in the parade. Oddly enough though, the most significant takeaway for me was just being in the masses of people during the ceremony.  This in itself helped me realize that this was more than an "inauguration." This was the inauguration of a black man as our president for the second time!  Not only was this individual selected to lead the most powerful country in the world once, he was re-elected, and therefore inaugurated a second time. The significance of this is of course is that a majority of Americans believe he was the right person for the job regardless of his race.  This has mobilized a whole race of people in our country. I do not think I fully realized this until I was there in the masses of people and walked with them at the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial and watched on with them during the ceremony.  It would be easy for them to think all is accomplished, we have done it!  However, in President Obama's speech he referenced MLK Jr. and reminded all of us that our journey is not complete.  He stated that we should not settle for gains and achievements that have been made, and forget about others that have not. I couldn't help but wonder about the journey of all the others around me and how similar and different some of our struggles may or may not be.




Think of this in terms of your own role in education.  What has your journey been this school year or for that matter for your career? Are there parts of changes you have not fully embraced?  Parts that you hoped would go away?  What do you see as the next big shift in our field?  How will this effect your journey?  Whatever the answer may be I think we can all agree that the journey will continue to be different than those before us.  We can decide to embrace, foster, and welcome change or we can dig our heels in and resist.  I personally believe that we cannot keep constant with the status quo and offer a product like we have for the last fifty plus years in education.  We have to evolve and create a new system that challenges and inspires are students to do more and be more. Some of this will undoubtedly be uncomfortable.

A step to doing this was to give our students a modern day tool, the iPad.  Take time to think about how the iPads can help to ignite this change within your classroom.  How can they reshape your journey as an educator? They are just a tool, but they can also be seen as a catalyst for so much more.  Like President Obama we cannot believe that all has been accomplished because we accomplished one objective and now have a modern day tool.  We need modern day educational thought to go with it! I am proud of what we are seeing and hearing as products of this implementation and of your hard work in committing to not doing things the way we always have.  I would like to challenge all of you to keep pushing though, keeping thinking, keep redesigning, think big.  We will support you.  I am not speaking of minor changes.  Remember we are looking for transformation!  As an educator we all have an opportunity to leave a legacy.  How will people describe your journey?

Stop it, no really STOP IT!

This year Kate and I are taking on a new year's resolution that involves stopping something.  Often time’s resolutions involve starting a new activity or recommitting to an old one.  We have taken a different approach, we are embarking on a no spend Saturday once a month.  Kate read this somewhere and we decided to give it a try.  I will say that after three hours on Saturday morning I was shocked at how many times I had to catch myself from spending money.  Whether it was the morning doughnut run, washing the car, or getting a cup of coffee while dropping one of the kids off at an activity, I found myself questioning the purchase and refusing to spend.  It worked, at least for the one Saturday this month.  

The reason I bring this up is because I immediately thought about our classrooms and schools.  What else can we stop doing this year?  Maybe it is to stop assigning homework that is not as meaningful as you would like.  Better yet, what if you would stop assigning homework all together?  How would that look?  What if we stopped giving detentions or F’s?  Maybe it is refusing to assess the same way you always have.  Or what if you refuse teach a unit the way you have every other year?   What if I limit the time I spend on email or social media?  I think there is great power in thinking this way.  We question our practice instead of just doing the same thing we have always done.  So, when you think of this in terms of technology integration, you can also consider my question this way.  What will you not use these devices for?  If we go back to the premise that the intent is transformation not integration, remember that they are not here to simply make things easier or paperless.  What practice can they help you stop in your classroom? Therefore, what meaningful task will replace the stopped practice?    

To this end, there will be opportunities to push and challenge your thinking through staff development.  Below I have listed our professional development dates and tentative plans.  We are excited to help you get inspired and moving for the remainder of the school year!  

January 23^rd – Wednesday AM meeting to begin Mission Possible 2.0

February 6^th – Digital Learning Day: Mission Possible

February 7^th – 9^th and 10^th grade teachers working with Jonathan Wylie, GWAEA

February 15^th – Staff Development: Teach for Learner Differences and MP

February 16^th – Ed Camp Iowa @ BHS – Sign up now if you have not! 

March 6^th – Mission Possible

It's a Great Day to be a Bulldog!

Matt

7 weeks in!

It has been about a month since I last posted and after another tough afternoon against the Vikings my Bears season has hit a new low.  I am happy to report our path in Bettendorf is trending in the exact opposite direction.  We have two weeks left in the second term, which means we have completed 7 weeks of Freshman and Sophomore students carrying their own iPad to and from school. We have some great successes, thought through new challenges, and stretched our thinking! The piece that I keep having to remind myself of is that it is really only 7 weeks.  With that being said we have some teachers seeing powerful student learning in their classrooms using Educreations, Edmodo, Evernote, Pinnacle video, Google (everything), and much much more.  As a staff we are asking the right questions.  What do we want the students to do differently and how can this device help make that meaningful learning task easier?

We have worked with the staff and families to help with the transition to a 1:1 platform as well. It has changed the dynamic in the classroom and at home and we need to help support both of these.  We have held parent meetings and worked with teachers that are having to now account for a powerful learning tool but also a gaming device in every student's hands.  The cool piece of all of this is that just like anything in education we are helping to shape student behavior.  The BYTE Squad has been a great group to support our need for increased technology questions as we have many current students in the trenches helping others students throughout the day.

A couple exciting opportunities for professional development are quickly approaching.  On December 12, we will be having cross curricular conversations about the transition and classroom practice.  We are pleased to announce that on February 16th we will be hosting EdCamp Iowa at Bettendorf High School.  We are the host site in the East while there is also an EdCamp Iowa West.  You can register at the following link:
http://www.EdCampIowa.org.  Additionally, we will be holding a Bettendorf only tech conference on April 10th featuring, The Principal of Change, George Couros.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone for their support in this effort and wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season.   

Now what? Integration, no transformation!

As I was preparing to write this post at the kitchen table and nervously awaiting the start of the Bears and Texans game I get hit with a black bean from Alice.  This broke my train of thought where I had found myself thinking, now what?  Now that we have attended conferences, gone on site visits, presented to the board, got the devices, handed them out to the staff, handed them out to the students, had professional development, presented to others, hosted a couple visits, now what?  The answers that kept circulating were all about helping support integration. How do we give time to help support integration?  How do I help the staff and support their efforts? How do we get people talking to each other?  How do we give time for people to see each other teach?  How do we get answers to their tough questions?    

These are all important and necessary, and things we need to account for and accomplish.  The problem is that this does not go far enough and that is why I think I have trouble with the word and where I get frustrated.  It is a starting point, but if we simply integrate we do not reach the ultimate goal of transformation.  This week in our Organizational and Educational Leadership class we talked a lot about transformation versus reform.  Reform involves just adjusting current practice.  This may be where we begin with our instructional design process but it cannot be the end. The technology is a driver to help us transform our instruction.  "Technology has not added something to your plate as a teacher, it has transformed your plate." Benjamin Friesen via Twitter.  This goes for anything and everything, from classroom management to how we assess our students.  We want people to feel comfortable taking risks, but I also want the staff to know this is a process.  I think this is where sometimes teachers get frustrated too, because they want to transform but aren't sure how or what this looks like. True transformation is a huge process and does not happen overnight.  

The plate is different, which means how we work on it has to be different.  We need to continue to create times for conversation, support for new learning, and resources for help.  A quick reminder on some of the resources available in our building include; LeAnne Wagner and Eric McCoy in the library, these two have functioned as true all-stars throughout the roll-out. They have a ton of knowledge and ideas.  Colin Wikan, our Math teacher that has a open period committed to helping support teachers wanting to begin steps towards integration.  He has been hosting a conversation time after school on Thursdays as well.  The staff tech team, they have representation on every team in the building.  All of these folks have received advanced training on specific tech tools.  Finally, don't forget about each other.  Just because you haven't had a lot of experience in this area doesn't mean you can't be a resource.  What you are really trying to do is think about your classroom differently.  What do you want to try?  What do you want to change?  How can technology help support that?  I would encourage you to find an area of comfort or an area that you struggle with and start with a simple change there.  The more you use it the more the ideas will come.  The point is we want to reach transformation but there is nothing wrong with starting at reform our integration.  

Thank you for all you do for our children! It's a great day to be a Bulldog!