When I began blogging again in January after taking a lengthy hiatus, my first series of posts was devoted to establishing a PLN (Personal Learning Network).  Although I must admit that I’ve been remiss in utilizing all of the resources I’ve highlighted on a daily basis, I do value the connections I’ve made with other educators and do the best I can in maintaining regular connections with my peers.  Of all the tools I employ, Twitter has become the most invaluable, but this afternoon it gave me quite a shock.  Upon logging in, I discovered that approximately 1/3 of my Twitter network was gone…and the the problem wasn’t mine alone.  For reasons unknown at this point, Twitter “bombed” and wiped out a large part of what all its users have worked hard to build and maintain; a vibrant PLN.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of a PLN or Twitter, this may seem a non-event; what difference does it make to lose contact with a few “virtual” friends and colleagues?  For those of us who rely on the wisdom, insight, advice, and collegiality of our professional counterparts from around the world, it means we now have 10s, 100s, or even 1000s of fewer minds with which to connect.  I “lost” more people on Twitter today than teach at my school; imagine losing each and every one of your “real” co-workers….

The lesson here is not to avoid social networking; I’m still using Twitter and I’ll rebuild my network (albeit slowly) as necessary.  I would ask, though, to consider how extensive your PLN has become since the advent of these tools.  It’s been said that we don’t know what we have until it’s gone; as an educator in the digital age, are you “connected” to the point where something like this could affect you?  As bad as this feels for the moment, I would think it worse to not be able to relate to the loss of contact with such a large number of inspiring individuals….

Hopefully Twitter will be restored soon.  In the meantime, who’s in your network?

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Over the last few months I’ve had the good fortune to participate in a number of professional development opportunities.  Not surprisingly, the vast majority of presenters I’ve encountered have made a point of reminding me that the world is changing and we need to provide our students with a “21st century education”.  To paraphrase a summer’s worth of indoctrination, “our students need an engaging, learner-centered classroom environment that teaches them to work collaboratively, communicate effectively, discern the quality of information, create as opposed to consume, and meet the challenges of ever-changing technology.”  While those are certainly valuable skills, they are hardly unique to the modern age.

Consider this article excerpt describing a specific decade of American education:

“…rejecting both traditional curricula and traditional methods of teaching … educators in this crucial decade developed important new ideas about educational practices—ideas founded on a new understanding of the nature of child development and grounded in new insights suggested by advances in psychology. Most centrally, these … educators advocated moving the child in school from the background to the foreground of classroom life. They assumed this fundamental shift in focus would be accomplished by creating new opportunities to engage the child’s cooperation and imagination.  Not surprisingly, old-fashioned rote learning was discouraged in the new, child-centered curriculum.”

Sound familiar?  Sound contemporary? It’s a synopsis of the first decade of the 20th century taken from “1900’s Education: Overview.” American Decades. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Richard Layman. Gale Cengage, 1996. eNotes.com. 2006.

Let’s not forget that this time period also saw the development of the automobile, airplane and radio, and schools shifting to a “corporate model” with efficiency being quantified and measured.  Are Dewey’s thoughts on education, the invention of life-changing technologies, and looking to the business world for guidance all that different from what we read and hear in today’s professional circles?  Constructivism is back in style, technology has never been more dominant, NCLB is on everyone’s mind, and we can’t seem to read enough “improvement” books from the corporate world like The World is Flat, A Whole New Mind, and, Wikinomics.

Granted, the world has changed quite a bit in the last 100 years.  The world is becoming flatter.  Creativity is as important as logic. Mass collaboration can produce wonderful results.  However, the notion that the challenges we face are unique to the 21st century does not acknowledge our profession’s history; we’ve been there and done that.  Perhaps it’s time to look past the “2.0″ panacea hype, recognize that we are eight years into the new millenium, and take a cue from Dewey in regard to preparing students for the future: “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”

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For the past three days I’ve been attending the Lausanne Laptop Institute in Memphis.  Now that the conference has ended, I finally have time to process all that I’ve seen, heard and learned. Looking back on the sessions I attended, several themes emerged regarding leadership that I think are applicable to all of us.

Strong Vertical Axis

In their session An Educational Vision Worth Sustaining, Bruce Dixon and Charlie Clark discussed how “a strong vertical axis” of leadership is essential for the success of any 1:1 computing program.   Although we typically think of “leadership” at an administrative level (i.e. administrators “lead” and the rest of us follow), Bruce and Charlie rightfully pointed out that everyone from the Board of Trustees to the classroom teachers must be truly knowledgeable about and vested in instructional technology.   In short, we all have the obligation and capacity to lead because we are all part of that vertical axis of support.

Image Courtesy of Kankie: Flickr Creative Commons

Support a Climate and Culture for Change

Paul Fochtman, Andrew Hoover, and Shabbi Luthra from the American School of Bombay presented a Tech Integration Landscape session that included their “essential conditions” for sustaining a laptop program.  Among their points on leadership was the call to support a climate and culture for change.  As I’ve said before, the world is rapidly changing, and teachers (in general) are averse to risk and change.  With a strong axis, however, we can foster an environment that embraces changes that enhance student learning.

Be Visionary

Blair Peterson, from the Mont’Kiara International School, directly addressed leadership in his session, Leadership for the 21st Century: Awakening to School 2.0.  Blair’s wiki, Principals of the Future, details his five main themes, the first of which is a call to be visionary.  As he states, leaders “must have a picture of what teaching, learning and administrating schools will look like in the future which requires knowledge of information trends, emerging technologies and the impact that information technology has on our global society.”

Leadership Matters

There is certainly more to effective leadership than the points I’ve highlighted here, but I think it’s imperative that schools consider the effectiveness and composition of their vertical axes, their culture and climate for change, and the depth of their vision.  A successful laptop program is not built on the strength of the technology but rather on the strength of the people, at every level, who understand its role in teaching and learning.

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I’m currently attending the Lausanne Laptop Institute in Memphis, TN, and this morning had the pleasure of attending Jim Heynderickx’s session, “When One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Strategic Differences Between Middle and High School Laptop Programs, and Their Long-Range Implications.”  Jim’s presentation is available from his website and it is well worth a look for anyone involved in a 1:1 computing environment.  Although we’ve charted a clear course for our Tablet PC deployment this fall, Jim’s points about MS and US characteristics, implications, and the long-term view will be useful in shaping our thinking moving forward.

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Music was a required course where I went to middle school.  Those who could sing joined the choir and the rest of us were drafted into the band.  Since I was tall for my age, it was decided that I would learn to play the most popular instrument in all of rural Minnesota: the tuba.  For eight long years I “oom-pahed” under the tutelage of our band director, Mr. Gordon Petersen.  “Gordy”, as we liked to call him behind his back, was no ordinary, small-town Henry Higgins; he sent our tiny marching band to college bowl games on a regular basis.  A impassioned task master, he demanded everyone’s best and his simple theory for achieving collective excellence was emphasized on a daily basis: “You are either part of the solution or part of the problem.”

While I haven’t touched a tuba in more than 20 years, I thought of Gordy yesterday while attending a workshop on campus given by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis.  As they shared their insight into flattening classrooms, they made a candid point regarding the importance of school administration.  Simply put, when it comes to progress, “administrators can either be the obstacle or remove the obstacle”.  It was an interesting assertion to say the least….

I am not an administrator, but I do encounter my fair share of obstacles in my position.  For better or worse, however, I typically focus on getting around obstacles, and in that I am not alone.  When websites are blocked, are students more likely to ask the school to consider opening them and state their rationale or simply use the Tor network to bypass the filter?  When an application doesn’t work properly and a lesson fails, are teachers more likely to pursue an after-the-fact solution with the IT department or simply forgo using that program again and opt for the low-tech “Plan B”?  When updated equipment is required to provide an optimal learning environment but the budget request is declined, does the technology staff demonstrate the undeniable need or prepare to make do with what is available?

Regardless of our roles and responsibilities, we have obstacles in our path, and how we choose to approach them is no small matter.  Some are truly impossible to remove, and to progress we must circumvent.  The majority of barriers, however, can be eliminated though the forces of intellect and conversation.  For my part, I don’t want to be an obstacle and I have no desire to continue going around what shouldn’t be there in the first place.  I may have lost all my musical inclinations, but thanks to Julie and Vicki, I was reminded that being part of the solution is the only viable option.

Let the band play on.

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