While undoubtedly many of today’s posts will focus on why and how administrators and supervisors should embrace technology (and don’t get me wrong; I believe they should), I think we first need to differentiate between “administrator” and “leader”.  I hope this doesn’t contribute too much to the “us v. them” mentality to which Gerald alludes in this comment (a valid point, and a problematic issue in any field, to be sure), but I believe it’s important to note that not all administrators (supervisors, headmasters, etc.) are leaders.  Surely, the specific attributes that best describe a leader will vary from person to person, but at the very least, I see that word as describing behavior, not a job title.

Conversely, not all leaders are administrators.  At the risk of sounding nostalgic, there was a very strong grass-roots movement among some of the teachers at my old school to evaluate technology and incorporate it into classroom activities.  A few years prior, in the late 1990s, the then-superintendent sort of put us on the map with regard to technology, but the curricular implementation seemed rather confined to this one project (although it was still pretty cool).  Still, perhaps even more importantly, the series of tubes infrastructure was in place, and steadily improving, from ISDN lines to Wi-Fi blanketing the 72-acre campus.  A few years after that project came to an end, this guy some of you might have heard of took advantage of all those empty Internets tubes and became one of the first to incorporate this easily-accessible technology that would come to be widely known as “Web 2.0″ into his classes.  A few years after that, I started investigating the utility of wikis with my English students.  Right around that time, several of my colleagues began using Skype with their World Language students and podcasting in their Social Studies classes.

The beauty of this is that it was not a formal, sanctioned movement, or a directive from on high; rather, some of us just started exploring options and becoming self-taught “experts” in our own rights in certain areas – Will was our blogging guru, I was the wiki guy, Jon and Ray were the people to talk to about Skype, and so on.  When we finally did come together, some of our supervisors and administrators had the foresight and humility to say, “You guys have really gotten this figured out, or are at least on your way, and we absolutely see the value in it – can you help bring this stuff to your colleagues?”  From there, that small core of five or six teachers started running after-school and summer workshops for our colleagues.  Eventually, the core group grew, as did our interests, tools of focus, and – perhaps most importantly – the number of teachers we were able to reach and help identify technological companions for their specific needs.  It was a beautiful, very organic development, thanks mainly to a) teachers who were not afraid to assume leadership roles in relation to their colleagues, and b) administrators who demonstrated true leadership by acknowledging the strengths of their faculty in areas that were largely foreign to them (the administrators) and trusting them to lead.

It should be noted that this approach of “bottom-up” leadership (as opposed to “top-down”) was implemented in many other areas with regard to technology as well.  A core group of teachers volunteered to be the first to be assigned tablet PCs at our school.  Once feedback was collected from this pilot group and the decision was made to roll them out schoolwide, the original cohort ran most of the subsequent training sessions (after all, they were far better suited to speak to the tablet’s impact and utility in the classroom than any administrator).  It’s also interesting to note that in this rollout, faculty & staff were not required to take one if they did not want one (I’ll just leave this there for you to opine upon in the comments…).  The same approach was taken some years later when the school decided to pilot a 1:1 student netbook program.  Teachers, who occupy one of the lower places in the traditional linear hierarchy of school authority, demonstrated multiple times their ability to be leaders in their school community.  This was not only supported, but celebrated and encouraged, by school administrators.

One lesson I’ve learned in the three years or so I’ve been active in online education communities is that there’s a tremendous amount of ego destruction that has to take place in order to really learn and improve one’s professional practice (at least, there was in my case).  Just as the teacher can never presume to be the smartest person in the classroom, the administrator cannot presume to be the best-informed on every single topic.  Mary Beth addressed this quite well in her post “6 Reasons I Surround Myself with People Smarter Than I Am”, and comments by Chris and Deven on that post pretty solidly address the implications for those of us in administrative positions.

I imagine there is a tremendous amount of pressure on school administrators to always have “the right answer” and know exactly what to do in all situations.  That goes with the territory, I suppose, but please remember that you also have an entire faculty of intelligent, dedicated professionals who work with you (you did hire intelligent & dedicated professionals, right?), and whose strengths and knowledge you can draw upon and foster, especially in the realm of educational technology.  Chances are there is a group of teachers in your school who have been tinkering and experimenting just as my colleagues and I did years ago.  Putting your ego aside and drawing upon these resources right under your nose can only benefit the students you serve, and provides a golden opportunity for you to be a leader in deed as well as by title.

In the meantime, please allow me to direct your attention to some projects to which I’ve had the pleasure and honor of contributing:

• Terry Freedman’s The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book is a free e-book describing over 80 Web 2.0 projects developed and implemented by teachers in classrooms around the world.  Head over to his download page for more details (and check out my write-up on the wiki created by my Honors British Literature class on page 70!).
• As I’ve mentioned before, I was a presenter at last November’s Technology Integration Showcase at the NJEA Convention in Atlantic City, NJ.  During my eight-hour shift on the floor of High Tech Hall, I was interviewed about social Web tools for educators for an episode of Classroom Closeup NJ.  You can watch the segment on the Tech Integration Showcase here (my bit runs from about 2:15 to 3:20).
• The Cooperating Teacher Leadership Network is an initiative based out of my grad school alma mater, Rider University.  The declared purpose of the group is to celebrate and support the folks who work closest with student teachers, but I think over time the positive impact of a group like this will ripple further into the entire teacher training program at Rider, with other universities hopefully to follow.  We’re in the process of planning a two-day conference for June 29-30 of this year, so if you’ll be in the Lawrenceville, NJ area this June and think you might be interested, check out our brochure (direct link to PDF).  Our Facebook fan page is still new and low on content, but feel free to become a fan if you’d like to see what we get up to in the coming weeks and months.

Add to this a few presentations I have coming up and a collaborative research project that I am very excited about, and my dance card is pretty darn full through the end of the school year.  I just hope I can stay focused as the seasons change and the weather draws me out of my winter hibernation!

All of the career decisions I have made in my ten years in public education have been guided by my desire to affect positive change in the lives of young people.  In my roles as both a teacher and a school psychologist, I have been able to create or influence these changes primarily on a classroom level (e.g., teaching techniques, uses of assistive technology, incorporating principles of Universal Design for Learning).  It is my hope that in matriculating to _____ University’s Ed.D. in Educational Leadership program, I will be able to build upon my existing leadership skills and knowledge of educational practice to affect change at a much larger systemic level, either through the training of undergraduate pre-service teachers, researching and contributing to education policy reform, or acting in an administrative capacity.

Fingers crossed, chin up, etc.  Here begins a new chapter of my career in education.

3. Get Rewarded: Rather than signing up for a credit card at your college’s student center based on the free t-shirt or frisbee you’ll get, let’s teach our students to shop around for credit cards with some kind of reward program.  I’m not sure if these are available to new credit card users or only people with established credit, but if you can find a card like Capital One’s No Hassles Reward Card or a store-branded Visa or Mastercard (e.g., the Amazon.com Visa), you pay no annual fee, and each purchase you make gives you points toward some reward.  In the case of Amazon, every 2500 points is worth a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com.  Capital One has a tiered rewards system, but since I’m not interested in any of the rewards they offer, I just trade my points in for cash toward my bill once I’ve accumulated enough.  It’s important to note that use of these cards should be guided by responsible spending, not just trying to rack up rewards points, but my thought is that if I’m going to have to pay for something anyway (e.g., cell phone bill), why not put it on the credit card and at least get something back for it eventually?

As always the technological component has to be balanced with a human behavioral component – don’t spend more than you can afford, create a monthly budget, beware of compounding interest, pay your balances off each month, etc.  These lessons are most important; I simply offer some supplementary advice here.

What are your top financial tips for young people just learning about managing money?  If, like me, your kids are significantly younger than high school age, how did/do you get them off to an early start with good ideas and attitudes about money from a young age?

Setting aside the semantic debate over the use of the word “literacy”, I have to say I’m behind this requirement.  While I took 4 years of math classes in high school, not once did we cover credit cards, compounding interest, APR/APY, monthly payments, budgeting, or any “real world” math that I might actually have to use one day (but hey, if you need a hypotenuse calculated, holla at ya boy).  In fact, in my experience, both as a teacher and a student, the “business” or “consumer” math classes have been traditionally reserved for the lower tracks of math, or even exclusively for special education.

In addition to the traditional curriculum these teachers will start covering next school year (you know, like “don’t buy things you can’t afford”) , I’d like to offer three personal finance tips that I hope our more Internet-savvy Business Ed and/or Social Studies teachers will consider including – one now, and two in a following post.

1. Get Paid: In 2009, there is no shortage of high-interest checking and savings accounts that will pay accountholders 3, 4, and 5% interest on their account balances.  This started in the realm of “Internet-only” banks like ING Direct, but even traditional “brick & mortar” banks have started offering high-interest checking and savings accounts.  We opened our first high-yield savings account with Capital One back in 2005 or 2006, when we were pulling in somewhere between 4-5% interest on our balance.  That rate has dropped significantly over the last few years, and it’s now down to somewhere around 1.5% or so – a disappointment for us, but compared to the 0.25% interest rate (or whatever it was; it was a long time ago and it only earned me a few cents every month on a fairly sizeable balance) I had on my old Wachovia savings account, that’s still not too shabby.

We made do with that 1.5% until I read about a local bank that was offering a high-interest checking account at 3% APY.  We made the switch from our traditional (read: 0% interest) checking account to the high-interest account with our new bank.  Of course, in order to receive the high interest rate each month, there’s usually a “catch” of some sort.  In our case, we have to do the following each month:

a) make 10 debit card purchases

b) have at least one ACH withdrawal or direct deposit

c) log into online banking at least once.

We do all these things anyway, so for us, switching from no-interest checking to high-interest was a no-brainer.  Some accounts may require minimum balances or other caveats in order to get the best interest rate, so make sure you read the fine print (another good life lesson for the kiddos).  Shop around for the (FDIC-insured!) deal that’s right for you, and let your money do a little work for you each month.

I’ve got two more up my sleeve, but what economics/personal finance/”entrepreneurial literacy” tips do you teach or think should be taught?

From the above link:

PSLPs are one facet of Governor Corzine’s and DOE’s effort to transform secondary education to better prepare students for the workforce and college. The plans utilize adult mentors, including parents, teachers and counselors, to help students recognize and achieve their education goals.

“It is imperative that we increase the rigor of our high schools to better prepare children for work and college, but it is equally important to help students get a better grasp on where they are headed,” said Commissioner Davy. “The interest we received from schools wanting to take part in this pilot shows that this initiative has the potential to have a tremendous effect on the quality of each and every child’s education and future.”

During the two-year pilot, PSLPs will be studied to determine how to best use the plans to help students focus on their individual personal, academic and career development needs and goals.

Also this:

“PSLPs offer students a framework for setting goals and mapping out their future,” said Commissioner Davy. “They are like global positioning systems for students’ futures. Like GPS, the plans will be able to offer a clear path to their goals but also will be able to change course if students want to go in a different direction at some point in their academic careers.”

The learning plan formats developed by the pilot districts will include at least the following three areas of development: personal, academic and career. In addition to goal setting, examples of activities that students may engage in while creating and carrying out the plans include:

• Personal Development: survey learning styles; inventory personality and interests.

• Academic Development: select courses for graduation as they relate to interests and skills; discern individual student learning opportunities (internships, and service or independent learning); utilize support services and referrals as needed.

• Career Development: Survey career interests and skills; Engage in career awareness and exploration to heighten understanding of opportunities available and generate interest (6th grade); Carry out career planning and preparation activities while developing academic knowledge and skill readiness (9th grade).

Evidently, 20 states plus the District of Columbia already have similar plans in place.  Does anyone have any experience with PSLPs?  How have they been received by students, parents, and faculty/staff?  Any advice for the NJ teachers piloting the program this year?  I would also love to hear about the experiences of the folks who are actually implementing these programs this year in NJ.

A final, hopefully not-too-cynical question: is it significant that there are only three teachers on the 33-member PSLP Advisory Committee (link to PDF)?  Should teachers have greater representation, or does a little under 10% of the committee sound about right?

Related: News story from today’s NJ Star-Ledger.

Fortunately, amidst all the running around, I was able to engage in two professional development activities that gave me great cause for optimism about the state of social media and technology in education.  The first was speaking with a group of educators at my former place of employment, Hunterdon Central Regional High School.  Will Richardson wrote fairly extensively about it here, but the Cliff’s Notes version is that a group of 20-25 teachers from across disciplines will be piloting a 1:1 netbook program with about 300 students this year.  Doubtless, HCRHS is an affluent district, but unlike many others with more money than sense, they really front-loaded their teacher’s training this summer with discussion and reflection on constructivist teaching and the role that personal computers can play in that.  In other words, it wasn’t “tech tech tech”, it was “teach well with tech”.

I was particularly happy to see two new educational bloggers emerge from this cohort, library media specialist Heather Hersey and English teacher Cathy Stutzman.  I’m really looking forward to reading their public reflections and learning from them, and I’d be lying if I said that watching all this from the outside didn’t make me just the teensiest bit envious that I won’t be a part of some potentially great things at Central.

Another event I was honored to be a part of was Patrick Woessner‘s panel discussion entitled Digital Citizenship & Social Media in the Classroom and Life (click for link to mp3 archive of our chat).  I joined Chris Betcher, Matt Montagne, and Kevin Jarrett via TinyChat for a group videoconference with teachers at Patrick’s school on topics such as Internet filters, use of social media tools with elementary students, and all manner of other neat stuff.  To be talking about a topic about which I’m passionate to a captive audience was thrilling enough, but to do so while bouncing ideas off these guys (and building off their own thoughts) was really a privilege, and I hope it signifies good things to come at this school in St. Louis.

I guess what ties what’s happening at these two schools in New Jersey and Missouri all together for me is this feeling that something is changing in education that is coming from the ground up.   These changes are not coming as a result of administrative directives; in fact, just the opposite is usually true – the movement is coming from teachers who are realizing where the next big shift in education could come from, and how we can harness that for the benefit of our students.  They are becoming school leaders through action and example, not simply by virtue of a degree, certificate, or job title.  It also underscores for me my belief that while the technology enables us to do some really cool stuff, the oft-cited “21st Century Skills” are as much, if not more, about the human connections we help to create, both inside and outside our classrooms and schools as they are about the technological tools we use to foster communication.  Students, much like potential customers or clients, are tired of being spoken to/at – that doesn’t fly anymore.  They want to be part of a conversation, and the teachers at HCRHS and MICDS are, directly and indirectly, fostering conversations about learning as well as about content, which is neither new nor revolutionary – it’s just not done enough.

I am about to start the 10th year of my career in education (not counting long- & short-term subbing positions). In that time, I have only worked in two high schools – one in which females comprise the majority of administrators (including the principal & superintendent), and one in which male administrators are the majority (again, including the principal & superintendent).

Off the top of my head, I initially thought that each of these gender majorities was overwhelming (I was thinking 90/10), but I decided to fact-check myself.  Sure enough, each school’s majority gender is only a majority by a small margin (60/40 or so, maybe less).

I have noticed differences in the leadership styles between the two schools, but I had chalked it up to different communities, different school cultures, different personalities, etc.  My wife was the first to point out the gender differences in the administrative teams, and I’m wondering if she’s on to something.  This piece from Inside Higher Ed (May 2007) posits that the differences between male and female leadership styles in education are becoming less pronounced (based on a study of community college administrators), but I wonder if that can be generalized to the K-12 sector.

A related issue that is probably worth thinking about here is the overall underrepresentation of women, particularly women of color, in leadership positions in American secondary education (Wrushen & Sherman, 2008).  I wonder how many of you in secondary or higher ed have worked with primarily female administrative teams – am I in a distinct minority group of educators in that regard?

Do you feel that the gender makeup of your administrative team influences leadership styles?  Do faculty & staff members tend to respond differently to administrators of different genders?  Or are we in a post-racialgender America, where leadership style is independent of gender?

Citation: Wrushen, B.R., & Sherman, W.H. (2008). Women secondary school principals: multicultural voices from the field. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 21, 457-469.  Retrieved August 15, 2009, from the Academic Search Premier database.

Mr. X was the third supervisor I’d worked under as an English teacher at my former school, but the first under whom I started working with wikis, podcasts, etc. with my students.  Whenever I have spoken about these experiences, formally or informally, I make it a point to credit Mr. X as integral to whatever degree of success my students experienced via these projects, not because he had any hand in implementing them with me, but because he did four things that I think any supervisor would do well to emulate:

1. He asked questions. I don’t discount how fortunate I was to have a supervisor who, not knowing terribly much about a wiki, was willing to say, “I’m interested; tell me more about it and why this could be beneficial to learning.”  He very easily could have shut me down without a discussion, but instead, he took time out of his exceedingly busy schedule to spend many sessions with me, not only learning about whatever project I initially proposed, but also to follow up with me, observe my classes, and speak to my students.  He was also available to me as a sounding board; quite a few times, I visited him to say, “I have this great idea for a project; here’s where I think I want to go with it and how I’d like to do it, but I just can’t figure out x or y.”  Again, it would have been easy for him to take that as a sign of ‘weakness’ or unpreparedness on my part and shut down the project, but instead he saw it for what it was: one colleague who doesn’t have all the answers reaching out to another to help him create the best possible learning situation for his students.  He was willing to engage in discussion about teaching and learning (and give suggestions!) in a medium that was new to him, for which I give him much credit.

2. He supported me outside of his office, by which I mean that when word of my tech-based projects floated up the administrative ladder, he was willing to stand behind me and support my students online projects all the way up to the district superintendent (who, it must be said, also ended up being very supportive and appreciative of my efforts).  Again, it would have been easy to tell me “You’re on your own”, but he had the professional integrity to stand with me as I tried what some might have considered unorthodox or unusual – certainly new for that school at that time.

3. He looked at the big picture. When I approached him about replacing one of my research papers in my curriculum with a wiki-based collaborative project, one of the first questions he asked (see #1) was about the skills each assignment aimed to teach or hone.  When he was sufficiently satisfied that there was extensive overlap in skills between the research paper and wiki project, as well as considered the additional benefits I thought the wiki project brought he greenlit the change.  As much as I hate the cliche, he was willing to think outside the box and consider an unusual request that others might have dismissed out of hand.

4. He trusted me as a professional. This is no small feat.  In an era where Internet filters and draconian usage policies imply that teachers cannot be trusted to go outside their school network’s walled garden, Mr. X not only supported my decision to do so, but also to take my students with me.  I don’t believe he would have supported me so fervently if he didn’t trust that I knew what I was doing (or at least had a pretty good idea, with one or two contingency plans, just in case!).  This has less to do with technology, in my opinion, and more to do with good leadership in general.  I have always felt that good leaders don’t try to be experts in every area; rather, they identify the people around them who are strong in certain areas and look to them for advice to supplement their own strengths.  Mr. X is an incredibly knowledgable teacher with many years of experience, but in this one small arena, I was more knowledgable, and he trusted me enough to let me lead the way into heretofore uncharted territory.

Overall, the administrative attitude towards technology in my old school was very positive and progressive.  I’ve said many times that we had the most liberal filtering software of any district I’ve heard of, and there was (and, I believe, still is) a strong “teachers teaching teachers” professional development model.  That said, there still existed among the faculty the fear, ignorance, and apathy that comprises much of the opposition to educational technology and Internet-based projects.  I don’t know how differently things would have turned out if this hadn’t been the atmosphere in which Mr. X and I worked, but I think this goes to show that support for educational technology must be systemic and built-in in order for it to benefit teachers’ professional practice and, ultimately, their students.

The last thought with which I’d like to leave you, especially if you are in a position of educational leadership, is to be willing to break from convention when considering implementation of educational technology.  The paranoid and alarmist responses I’ve most often heard coming from parents and administrators seem to be the result of considering the worst-case scenario.  I would ask all of you who are in a position to support educational technology to ask yourself not, “what’s the worst that can happen”, but rather, “what’s the best that can happen?”  Chances are that reality will lie somewhere in between the extremes.