…I want to engage with other educators – not just teachers, but administrators, psychologists, LDTCs, and others in the education field – as to uses for much of the technology that is available to us.

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I’ve titled my blog “Apace of Change” because it so precisely sums up my life situation: trying to keep abreast of ever-changing technology while also dealing with significant changes in my personal and professional lives.

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I’m really doing this for the collaborative aspect – I need to talk about these issues with people, and where else other than Edublogs am I likely to find such folks?

So what’s changed?  I’m clearly no longer hosting with Edublogs, and I’ve since expanded the scope of my writing.  At first, I wrote a wanna-be ed-tech blog.  Now, I write a wanna-be blog about the broader landscape of education.  This shift has mirrored the changes in my professional life, from classroom teacher to school psychologist and professional development facilitator to aspiring administrator.  As my professional perspective and concerns have changed, so has the focus of my writing.

I’m also more comfortable in my own digital skin.  I think at the beginning I was modeling my writing very much on the other blogs I was reading, education and otherwise.  It took me a little while to find my own voice, but having done so – along with purchasing my own domain and hosting space – gives me an even greater sense of ownership over this digital space of mine.

Speaking of which, there’s also this statement from my portfolio website:

Since 2007, I have blogged at Apace of Change about the challenges, successes, and failures I experienced in attempting to infuse technology into my instruction and assessment as a high school English teacher.  From 2009 on, I shift focus to broader issues in education, with some focus on special education and school psychology related issues, including the use of read/write Web tools as assistive technology.

Blogging has great potential as a tool of reflection, and I have found that frequent and thorough reflection has helped me to become a better educator, psychologist, husband, and father.  Whereas some may prefer to write in a journal or simply reflect in thought, blogging allows for interaction with an audience.  In some cases, this interaction provides me with affirmation; in others, my thoughts are challenged.  Either way, as long as the discourse remains constructive, growth occurs.

There’s no two ways about it – I love getting comments on my blog, and do my best to respond to each one as best I can.  I’ve found, however, that as the years have passed, I’ve been more focused on the personal reflective aspect than the conversational aspect.  I don’t comment on other blogs as much as I used to, and I’ve noticed that comments on my blog have fallen off proportionately.  I’m OK with that, though, since a) as I write I’m reflecting and refining my thoughts as well as my words, and b) I get most of my discourse via Facebook and Twitter these days – another big change from the summer of 2007.

I know, I know – it’s 2012, and blogging is dead (or is it?), but as long as I still have ideas, problems, questions, or concerns about education, this blog is staying alive.

Listening with understanding and empathy: Understand others! Devoting mental energy to another person’s thoughts and ideas; holding in abeyance one’s own thoughts in order to perceive another’s point of view and emotions.

I’m taking this post a bit off-topic and writing not about how I am empathic at work, but rather, how a personal experience forced me into the proverbial mile in another’s shoes.

On December 20th, I had surgery to correct femoral acetabular impingement.  My prognosis is good – the surgeon predicted an eventual return to full athletic activity for me, but in the meantime I had a few physical limitations:

• No driving for two full weeks after surgery
• Walk assisted, to some degree, by crutches for at least the first four weeks after surgery
• Very limited mobility in my right leg for the first few weeks after surgery
• No bending at the hip past 90 degrees for six weeks after surgery

The weeks since the 20th have given me a refresher course in awareness of issues of mobility and physical access. Here are some of my experiences from the last month:

Week 1: While I was able to get around on two crutches, I felt weak, nauseous, and tired much of the time from the surgery and pain meds.  The first few days I spent mostly horizontal on the couch, alternately reading, watching TV, and napping.  I avoided getting up as much as possible not so much because of the walking on crutches, but because the physical act of getting up off the couch without bending my hip was so taxing.  I had to mentally prepare myself just to get off the couch – I was not used to that.  Learning to use the crutches properly took a little getting used to as well – put your weight on the handles, not the armpit pads.  I’ll spare you the details of how I managed in the bathroom, but suffice to say that I had to reinvent how I did all the many things one does in the bathroom in order to stay upright and not stress the hip joint.  If you want a small taste of what it was like, try taking a shower (and getting in and out) standing on one foot. Good luck with that.

Week 2: Significantly better than Week 1, but still on two crutches.  Getting in and out of the car (as a passenger) was laborious, as I not only had to lean backwards into the seat, but then lift my right leg into the car with two hands while not breaking the 90 degree bend at my hip.  That, plus the increased amount of time it took me to get from Point A to Point B on the crutches made being ambulatory feel kind of like more trouble than it was worth (and what a horrible thing to feel!).

Weeks 3-4: Back to work!  I returned from Winter Break on the two-week post-op date – I was allowed to drive, but the hour+ drive to work made for an uncomfortable ten hours each week.  I often felt in danger of breaking the 90 degree rule, so I rolled up a fleece blanket and sat on that while leaning the seat back as far as it would go – still not terribly comfortable, but thankfully I have long arms and have been able to live with this arrangement.  I also spent the first few days spectacularly underestimating how long it would take me to get to different locations around my building.

Now: As I write this, I am just shy of four weeks from my surgery, and things are going about as well as could be expected.  I’m walking mostly unassisted, but I’m not allowed to bend beyond 90 degrees at the hip until the end of January, and I still have to take it slow going up stairs.  I feel fortunate that my recovery has gone as well as it has.

It still amazes me how much of the last month I have spent thinking about my body – not in terms of vanity or exercise, but in a purely logical, mechanical sense:

• How can I group the tasks I need to get done so I can minimize the amount of time I spend on my feet?
• Should I bring a backpack to work so I can carry more than one thing at a time?
• What’s the quickest way to get to X or Y classroom in case I’m needed?
• When are the halls filled with students, so I can time my trips to classrooms/offices/bathroom accordingly?
• Now that I’m in the kitchen/bedroom/office, do I have everything I came in here for so I don’t have to make another trip in 10 minutes?
• Should I just stand at the counter and eat my food now or should I make multiple slow trips to get it all into the living room?
• Should I sit uncomfortably in my office chair and think constantly about breaking the 90 degree mark or should I just stand at my desk to work?*
• When do I need to get dressed in order to have someone around to put my right sock on for me?
• What clothes/shoes do I have to wear in order to make getting dressed less challenging?**
• Is my hip flexion breaking 90 degrees?  What about now?  How about now?  Now?

But here’s the thing – I won’t be living with these issues forever.  I have, for a very short period of time, experienced a hint of what lots of folks live with on a full-time basis: limited mobility, persistent discomfort, and fatigue.  The experience has been a valuable one, not only for the long-term physical health benefits, but also for the concrete reminder that we all live, work, and move within different physical realities, and to be mindful of that at all times in our professional practice.

As Ira Socol says – and I frequently parrot – disability is often transactional.  In the case of physical disability, being mindful of the myriad potential physical conditions people can bring with them to your office, your shop, or your classroom and accommodating for them can lessen or remove their impact (read Ira’s blog post linked above for good examples of how).  Even those of us who consider ourselves sensitive to these issues may not fully recognize barriers until we experience them for ourselves.  Demonstrating empathy in this regard is elemental to establishing a culture of respect and trust, especially when one works with children and their families.

*Shout-out to my colleague Ryan, who provided me a tall stool from his office – a low-cost assistive technology accommodation that has made working at my desk significantly more tolerable for this 6’2″ guy with restricted hip movement.

**My 3-year-old daughter can zip up my black Chelsea boots for me, so they’ve gotten a lot of wear this month.

References

Costa, A.L. & Kallick, B. (2010). It takes some getting used to: rethinking curriculum for the 21st century. In H. H. Jacobs (Ed.), Curriculum 21: essential education for a changing world (pp. 210-226). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Persisting: Stick to it!  Persevering in a task through to completion; remaining focused.

This really isn’t much of a challenge for me when the tasks come one at a time, but it gets a bit more difficult when they start flying at me from all directions.  My default mode is to start a task, notice that another one is undone and start working on that, notice a third that just needs one quick thing done to it, after which I see something else that needs… and so on, which ties in neatly with:

Impulsivity: Take your time!  Thinking before acting; remaining calm, thoughtful, and deliberative.

Impulsivity is really only ever an issue for me when it comes to task completion, in that my focus tends to flit to whatever issue comes up next, regardless of how complete (or incomplete) the previous one is.  As work has become predictably more hectic in the period between Thanksgiving and the New Year, I’ve been more conscientious about completing one task (or at least getting to a natural break) before starting the next.  Without taking this deliberate approach to my work, it would be very easy for jobs and responsibilities to get buried and lost under the taskalanche.  Happily, taking this deliberate approach has helped me to stay up to date on all my responsibilities, which was even more important to me than usual this year since my break started three days early due to my surgery.

I hope to get at least one more post up before 2012, but if I don’t, I wish you all a happy holiday season!

Reference

Costa, A.L. & Kallick, B.  (2010).   It takes some getting used to: rethinking curriculum for the 21st century.  In H. H. Jacobs (Ed.), Curriculum 21: essential education for a changing world (pp. 210-226).  Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

If memory serves, credit for this idea has to go to my cooperating teacher during my student teaching experience in the fall of 1998.  I started my folder toward the end of that semester, and have been contributing to it here and there for 13 years now.  In fact, given the broad scale shift to digital communication in that time, I even started a separate feelgood folder notebook in my Evernote.

It’s not something that has to be public like a blog or website (although there’s nothing wrong with a little shameless self-promotion from time to time), just someplace you can go to remind yourself of all the good you do for so many people every day.  People in professions such as education give so much of themselves to help and support others that they too often neglect themselves.  If you don’t have such a folder, consider starting one; if you’ve already got one, take some time to flip through it and enjoy some well-deserved recognition.  If nothing else, it’s good for the soul.

The first course in my doctoral program, Experiential Learning, focused primarily on helping students to codify their beliefs about leadership and establish learning goals for the coming year.  In one of my papers, I established the following goal:

Goal #2: Reflect on my learning in a transparent manner.   I have long felt that honest reflection is one of the most vital components of learning, and I required my students to do it frequently, both verbally and in writing.  As a blogger of over four years, I have found great value in writing about my professional practice and considering feedback from my audience [...] I hope to gain similar benefits from writing online about my experiences in the doctoral program as I have from writing online about teaching and school psychology.

So what are my reflections upon finishing my first course?  They’re much less to do with leadership and more to do with biting off more than I can chew.  I figured it would be difficult, but doable, but I seriously underestimated how much all this newness in my life would take out of me.  I don’t feel that either my studies or my work suffered as a result of my decision, but my sleep patterns, stress levels, and general well-being certainly did.  I had the opportunity to defer starting my studies for a year, and in retrospect that wouldn’t have been the worst idea, but what’s done is done.  Moving forward, I need to be much more sensible about balancing my responsibilities.  Perhaps that’s not such a bad lesson for a future leader to learn now rather than later.

Today I learned about two teaching techniques that were new to me.  You may have been using these for years, and if so, I’d like to hear about your experiences with them.  If not, feel free to take and use these as you see fit.

WhisperPhone

In one class, I initially thought I misheard when students were instructed to take out their “whisperphones” and start reading independently after they finished a task.  I Googled “whisperphone” on my non-whispering phone right there and found that it is indeed an actual product line.  The version I saw was a little plastic “handset” into which students read quietly; my understanding is that the handset (or headset) acts as a voice-feedback device that allows speakers to hear phonemes more clearly.  I can’t say for sure, never having seen this before this morning, but take a look at the company’s research page and come to your own conclusions.

Foursquare Plus 3

In my English teacher days, I used to have students use graphic organizers or plan sheets to organize their thoughts.   Today I learned about a slightly different take on graphic organizers: Foursquare Plus 3.

I’ve written and deleted several attempts at an explanation, but wasn’t satisfied with any of them.  Check this slideshow for an explanation instead (it’s the only result for “foursquare” on Google that doesn’t return something related to the location check-in site).

Do you have any experience with Foursquare Plus 3 or the WhisperPhone, good, bad, or otherwise?  See anything new here you might be giving a try?  Leave a comment!

Also, welcome to any new folks who are just discovering some new blogs for the new school year.  I hope you stick around and share your thoughts in the comments!

Schools: Your Friendly Neighborhood ISP? (Aug 2007)

If we are going to commit to instructing not only students, but administrators and parents, too (as folks have suggested elsewhere in the edublogosphere recently), should schools commit to providing community Internet access and education, especially in communities where folks may not even own computers?

Individual Accountability in Group Work (Jan 2008)

It’s not perfect, but it’s by far the most objective, data-driven approach to grading participation I’ve ever taken. I can’t take full credit for this, as I distinctly remember getting the basis for this from someone in the Twitterverse (sorry, can’t remember who), but I did flesh it out to suit my needs.

Open Letter to a New Teacher (Jun 2009)

It turns out that an aspiring teacher came across my resume via Google and decided to call me to ask for some advice on resources she could look to in order to prepare for her first year of teaching.

Leadership Day 2009 (Jul 2009)

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:

Does Gender Matter? (Aug 2009)

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.

Text Messaging and Executive Functioning (Mar 2010)

While I’ve been utilizing SMS & email reminder systems in my personal & professional lives for years now, I’m certainly not the only one. In fact, multiple studies have shown SMS reminders to have mostly high (but admittedly varying) degrees of efficacy in increasing desired behaviors, including:

• adherence to medical treatment schedules (Jacobson & Szilagyi, 2005; Kollmann, Riedl, Kastner, Schreier, & Ludvik, 2007; Liu, Abba, Alejandria, Balanag, Berba, & Lansang, 2008; Strandbygaard, Thomsen, & Backer, 2009;  Hanauer, Wentzell, Laffell, & Laffel, 2009)
• attendance at doctor & specialist appointments (Downer, Meara, Da Costa, & Sethuraman, 2006; Koshy, Car, & Majeed, 2008; Chen, Fang, Chen, Dai, 2008; Foley & O’Neill, 2009; Kruse, Hansen, & Olesen, 2009)
• participation in exercise regiments (Prestwich, Perugini, & Hurling, 2009; Prestwich, Perugini, & Hurling, 2010)

If none of these do it for you, please feel free to peruse the category of blog posts I have labeled Damian’s Favorites.  I’ve found this is a good way to keep an easily-accessed portfolio of what I feel is my best stuff, and if you blog, I encourage you to do the same as well!

One essay by Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick, “It Takes Some Getting Used To: Rethinking Curriculum for the 21st Century”, references 16 “Habits of Mind” that the authors believe are “dispositions or attitudes that reflect the necessary skillful behaviors that students will need to practice as they become more thoughtful in their learning and in their lives… [they] are necessary for success in school, work, and life” (Costa & Kallick, 2000, 2009, as cited in Costa & Kallick, 2010, p. 212).

I’m all for success in school, work, and life – particularly my own – so I thought it might be fun to blog about my own learning, both at my new job and in my new doctoral program, within this framework (see, this is what passes for fun when you get old).  I plan to do this periodically between Sept-Oct 2011 and June 2012, so stay tuned.

Here is the list of Costa & Kallick’s 16 Habits of Mind:

1. Persisting: Stick to it!  Persevering in a task through to completion; remaining focused.
2. Managing impulsivity: Take your time!  Thinking before acting; remaining calm, thoughtful, and deliberative.
3. Listening with understanding and empathy:  Understand others!  Devoting mental energy to another person’s thoughts and ideas; holding in abeyance one’s own thoughts in order to perceive another’s point of view and emotions.
4. Thinking flexibly: Look at it another way!  Being able to change perspectives, generate alternatives, consider options.
5. Thinking about your thinking (metacognition): Know your knowing!  Being aware of one’s own thoughts, strategies, feelings, and actions and their effects on others.
6. Striving for accuracy and precision: Check it again!  A desire for exactness, fidelity, craftsmanship, and truthfulness.
7. Questioning and problem posing: How do you know?  Having a questioning attitude; knowing what data are needed and developing questioning strategies to generate information.
8. Applying past knowledge to novel situations: Use what you learn!  Accessing prior knowledge; transferring knowledge beyond the situation in which it was learned.
9. Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision: Be clear!  Striving for accurate communication in both written and oral form; avoiding overgeneralizations, distortions, and deletions.
10. Gathering data through all senses: Use your natural pathways!  Gathering data through all the sensory pathways – gustatory, olfactory, tactile, kinesthetic, auditory, and visual.
11. Creating, imagining, and innovating: Try a different way!  Generating new and novel ideas, fluency, originality.
12. Responding with wonderment and awe: Have fun figuring it out!  Finding the world awesome and mysterious, and being intrigued with phenomena and beauty.
13. Taking responsible risks: Venture out!  Being adventuresome; living on the edge of one’s competence.
14. Finding humor: Laugh a little!  Finding the whimsical, incongruous, and unexpected.  Being able to laugh at oneself.
15. Thinking interdependently: Work together!  Being able to work with and learn from others in reciprocal situations.
16. Remaining open to continuous learning: Learn from experiences!  Having humility and pride when admitting we don’t know; resisting complacency.

What do you think of this list?  Are there any glaring omissions?  Anything you would add?  Any ideas you feel need emphasis over others?

Reference

Costa, A.L. & Kallick, B.  (2010).   It takes some getting used to: rethinking curriculum for the 21st century.  In H. H. Jacobs (Ed.), Curriculum 21: essential education for a changing world (pp. 210-226).  Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Beyond the immediate benefits, however, I thought it would be a good “dry run” of online learning for me, as my upcoming doctoral program is a hybrid online/F2F format.  Having been through graduate school once before, I’m familiar with the F2F part, but I’m curious as to what the online part will look like.  With my first online learning experience now behind me, I thought I’d write down some of my initial reflections on the process.  Please note that what follows is not a critique or endorsement of the content of this program, but rather the online format.

Benefits

My biggest takeaway from this experience was how much I liked setting my own pace and focus.  This course covered a broad array of topics under the “ethics” umbrella, and as I expected, I was more knowledgeable in some areas than others.  The fact that this course was available online meant that I didn’t have to sit in a lecture hall or hotel conference room and be spoken to (or worse, read a PowerPoint).  I was able to wear what was comfortable and sit where I wanted (I completed most of this course horizontal on my living room sofa).  I was able to skim over some parts, and spend more time focusing on others, both in reading more closely and in utilizing external resources to learn more.  While the course provides the same content for anyone who takes it, the asynchronous nature of the delivery allows for greater differentiation than the standard lecture hall setting.

Limitations

That said, I acknowledge that reading text is far and away my preferred method of receiving information.  I’d sooner sit and read than watch a video or listen to a recording, at least for academic purposes.  As such, this particular course was right up my alley (about 200 pages or so of reading), but I can see how folks with preferences for audio or video might find this format limiting or off-putting.  Also, while the course did allow for self-reflection with some case study-style exercises, the drawback to self-study is that you’ve only got yourself to work with.  Here is where having someone else in the room to bounce ideas off of or discuss options with would come in handy.

Final Thoughts

As part of the course evaluation, I left this comment for the folks at MSPA:

I would be very likely to take another online-only course for NASP-approved hours.  I am not always able to attend NASP-approved events in my area due to my own professional and personal scheduling constraints, and I applaud the MSPA and NASP for promoting online learning opportunities for their members.  I wish more state associations would follow suit.

My own state school psychologists association usually has two conferences a year, but I have only been able to attend one or two in the last six due to demands at work.  The national association convention is in a different city every year, and long-distance travel hasn’t been in my budget for some time (although I do hope to attend the 2012 NASP Convention right here in Philadelphia!).  That leaves me very few options for obtaining those necessary NASP-approved hours, but this course really fit the bill.

Although doctoral study will obviously be much more in-depth than a single PD course, I thought the experience would be a nice teaser of what’s to come.  I’m happy to say that I enjoyed my first major formal online learning experience, and I’m looking forward even more to starting the hybrid online/F2F format in a few weeks.

In January, I challenged you to get out of your classroom and observe your colleagues at least once a month from January to May.  I even said I would try to do it twice a month.

I did not meet my goal.

In fact, I fell way short.  This is not to say I didn’t conduct general observations as part of my job; rather, I didn’t get to conduct many additional ones as outlined in that blog post from January.

Ordinarily, this is the part where I would analyze my own actions or inaction, and determine what I could do differently to improve this for next time.  I started off well enough, sitting in on a basic skills Algebra class, but if I’m honest, it came down to there not being enough hours in the day.  I pride myself on always being able to find or make time for these things, but in a rare occurence, I just wasn’t going to be able to do it without neglecting other, more time-sensitive or higher-priority items.

So maybe this is a Seinfeldesque blog post about nothing, but I thought it important to at least come correct and own up to my inability to meet the challenge I set for myself and others.  If nothing else, it’s what I would expect of my students.