The One-to-One Tsunami

TechLearning Article: The One-to-One Tsunami

Read this posting from the TIE Tech blog by clicking on the title directly above...

A Rarity: Positive News About Student Use of MySpace

A Rarity: Positive News About Student Use of MySpace

Read this posting from the TIE Tech blog by clicking on the title directly above...

Are you preparing your students for their future?

Recently in my doctoral program, I came across this article posted by a colleague in one of my courses. As a K-12 educational leader, it made me ponder the questions: Are we doing all we can to prepare our students for the future? Are they learning the necessary skills from us that they need in order to perform and function in the world? Teaching and learning are changing, are we keeping up?

This article linked below describes one college who is now requiring all students to successfully complete at least one online course prior to graduation. Interesting.
http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/17/online

Governor Rounds Keynote

Governor Rounds opened his keynote with words of praise and recognition for all of the work to provide students in South Dakota with the best possible learning experiences, including the TIE conference as an opportunity for educators to interact with one another and with cutting edge innovations for effective technology integration.

In this year's Technology Counts report from Education Week, South Dakota received a grade of A for their support and use of technology. The objectives of the 2010 initiative are being met, with an emphasis on 21st C skills.

Technology can help teachers to make learning more engaging. Through the Classroom Connections program, laptops help to bridge the digital divide by providing all students with access. Students, teachers, parents, and community members are also coming together more often to interact with one another, and learn both from one another as well as with one another.

Today's educators in South Dakota are making a difference in the lives of students by preparing them for the global economy.

keynote

Will Richardson's keynote address on blogging and the use of blogs in education was a very enlighting address. When you take that in perspective of how students are ueing their computers and how we as educators try to block them from so many sites it helps one to realize that we need to change our approach. Students are using these tools and as educators it will be our challenge to mange this medium in an educational way rather than try to keep them from it.

It may take us a while to reach a comfort level with this but like all the other changes in education we will adapt and after such use becomes common practice we will wonder what took us so long to get there.

Supporting a G&V Curriculum with Curriculum Mapping

Tim Mitchell, Superintendent from Chamberlain School District, shared insights about how the Chamberlain school district is using mapping to obtain a guaranteed and viable curriculum. As they engage in this process, they are utilizing professional learning communities as a vehicle to reach their goals.

Mitchell started the work in his school with the three C's of community building:

• confront the brutal facts
• communication (effective)
• collaboration

One of the sources Mitchell has used to build his own knowledge around professional learning communities is On Common Ground by Richard DuFour.

Mitchell shared some of the basic tenents related to Marzano's work around the idea of a guaranteed and viable curriculum. A curriculum is guaranteed when you can be assured that every student, regardless of teacher or subject area is guaranteed to come in contact with the curriculum the schools has deemed important. A curriculum is viable when it is appropriately sequenced and when there is an appropriate amount of time scheduled to cover the content and skills. Mitchell believes curriculum mapping is an appropriate vehicle to obtaining a guaranteed and viable curriculum. It offers a 21st Century approach to managing curriculum. The technology supports the development of an authentic record of what gets taught.

Mitchell highlighted information about how the unpacked standards are integrated into the TechPaths curriculum mapping software. This feature allows teachers to design curriculum from the standards, rather than entering units and then finding the standards that match after the fact. TechPaths holds monthly conference calls so that school leaders can be updated about new developments with the software.

In the Chamberlain district, everybody maps. School administrators, including Mitchell, model the process by mapping professional development activities for the district. Chamberlain utilizes a curriculum mapping teacher-leadership team to help guide the initiative. This group takes responsiblity for organizing the mapping activities, solves problems and provides mentoring support for other teachers. Curriculum mapping requires a significant amount of work and a sustained committment in order to collect that data that allows educational communities to utilize the data to inform instructional decisions.

TIE Conference - Horsted Presentation

Welcome to TIE 2007. The keynote on Sunday, April 22 was Paul Horsted with photos of the Black Hills from the late 1800's and his own matching photos from today's view. I really enjoyed the presentation and found the process of aligning the shots fascinating. You can view his photos at: http://www.dakotaphoto.com/.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the conference. Go TIE!!

Make Mentoring Matter

The April issue of The Learning Principal focused on effective mentoring for school principals. While there is much research to demonstrate the value of mentoring programs for teachers, school leaders are often left in much the same "sink or swim" situation that is said to account for teacher attrition in the first three years. According to the authors, "Principal mentors can provide the rich set of job-embedded learning experiences that develop instructional leadership competencies." Too often mentoring for administrators has focused on tasks like observing a staff meeting which do little to help the aspiring leader understand "how to set the tone and culture for high performance and continuous school improvement." Mentors need to know how to be a good mentor, and the new principal needs a mentor who can help them get beyond the day to day management of a school to also focus on long term leadership.

Resiliency

The contrast between today's beautiful weather and the snowstorm that left many of the TIE/ESA staff members stranded in Mission just one month ago, got me thinking about the message I heard there about the importance of resiliency. As South Dakota travelers, we've learned to "bounce back" from a variety of weather-influenced situations. As teachers and educators, we support each other through changing political climates and financial outlooks. All of these have caused us to become pretty darn resilient, which was the focus of the keynote presentation. Here are some of the concepts from Dr. O. Raye Adkins that struck a chord for me.

• Developing relationships is critical. The first step to developing relationships is establishing trust. This reminds me of the old saying in the workplace, "under promise and over deliver." Trust is built when others know that you will deliver on what you have told them, that you will go the extra mile, and that you are being up front with them.
  
• Priorities are relative. It's easy to forget that what is most important to others may not be the same as it is for you. Garmston's norm of presuming positive intentions applies here--know that for whatever decision was made, someone involved was basing it on his or her priorities at that moment, with the intent of doing good. As Adkins story of the boy with the Nike shoes but no poster paper illustrated, sometimes keeping up appearances or demonstrating love with purchases takes precedence for a parent over school supplies.
  
• Help students understand "the rules." One of the easiest ways to help others is to simply share your experiences and the knowledge you have developed so that others can benefit from them. And one of the least democratic things to do is hoard all of your information so that others do not have access to it. What this says about classrooms that are isolationist in their practices is fodder for another posting.
• Vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary. You can't navigate a society very well if you don't know the language. An episode of The Amazing Race illustrates this quite well. I'm very happy that the next TIE membership DVD featuring Jo Hartmann will be focused on vocabulary development.
• H.I.S. High expectations, Insistance, and Support.
• Be a flame fanner. Good teachers recognize the potential and encourage students to build on it. We need to do the same with adults and school systems.