WebedtecH

(climbing on soap box)

The most important skill today’s students need to learn is the skill of collaboration. The ability to work effectively within a team and communicate ideas and information with others to work towards common goals. More than any other skill, the ability to collaborate with others using technological solutions or traditional ones provides a competitive advantage for the students in the workplace.

Agree or disagree?

(climbing down now)

Vicki Davis over at Cool Cat Teacher posted about “Loser Loops,” those administrative loops that suck the life and energy out of activities and teaching. Now rather than echo with, “I agree completely” I want to post some counterarguments and possible solutions.

I had an administrator that used to make me turn in every lesson plan for every class every week at the end of the prior week. He did not read them. They were for his file.

And IF I changed the lesson plan, I had to update it. I plan my lessons anyway… however, all of this paperwork really took the focus off of my STUDENT and made the PRINCIPAL my customer. The focus WAS on him NOT students. I often spent so much time making the lesson plans PRETTY that I wasn’t really ready to TEACH when it came time to implement the plan. That is ridiculous.

I honestly don’t know if I could have been able to do Flat Classroom or Horizon in such a scenario.

Now, I’m not advocating that we don’t plan our lessons. WE MUST PLAN AHEAD for our lessons. I plan out the year, the six weeks, the week, the day. However, often, these plans are a bit messy and working. I do them in pencil for the week and they end up with erasures and sometimes post it notes on them. They are working documents and they look like it! A BEAUTIFUL lesson plan is a report, not a lesson plan.

If you are mandated to provide this information on a weekly basis, why are you reproducing it multiple times? Wouldn’t it benefit you to share with your administrator the wonders of a wiki, Google Doc, or other tool that contained your lesson plans for the year, was always up to date with your changes and improvements, and by the way could be printed for permanent files when necessary?

I have friends who state that they spend 6-8 hours a WEEK on PAPERWORK. They say that real planning is an afterthought because the customer is all of the administrators and directors who are inspecting the paper.

Again, find a format that meets their needs as well as your own and you reduce your effort and time to delivery.

But teachers, don’t point your finger at administrators, because you have four pointing right back at you! Teachers are some of the worst at creating meaningless loops!

Why do we have the fill out worksheets? What if knowledge could be better imparted by experience?

Teachers often opt for the worksheet because it can be seen, touched, and “measured.” Experience cannot be filed in a box and handed to parents. Audio files and video are not as “tangible” as a piece of paper! We cannot touch a wiki or a blog!

We have to ask ourselves… what is the PURPOSE of what my students are creating? Can I expand the audience to be more than just the teacher? (IS it appropriate to expand the audience?) Can I better assess in another way?

This I will agree with. Teachers need to lead by example and help the administration learn by what can be accomplished within the classroom. Be able to demonstrate the value the technologies you have at your fingertips can bring to the administrative processes as well and you may just win a convert.

If you want to reduce the work you need to accomplish during the day, look for ways to deliver what is requested of you in a more efficient manner. Get over the thought, “if I can do more faster they’ll just ask me to do more.” That’s as self-defeating a position as you can take and you might as well just quit and go home. Get more efficient at your job and deliver things on their timeline, but on your schedule. You may not be able to eliminate the “loser loops” but that doesn’t mean you can’t find a way to shortcut them. Think “tesseract.”

I’m a big fan of Google Apps and they’ve just added a very cool feature to their spreadsheet package…gadgets!

If the existing features aren’t enough for you, there’s a new directory of gadgets that can be added to a spreadsheets and use existing data. You may remember the data visualization gadgets I found last month: they’re part of this directory, which includes many other interesting gadgets. You can add interactive time series charts, Gantt charts, funnel charts, timelines, tables with filters and grouping, pivot tables, maps, search results and you can also create your own gadget that adds other missing features.

I was playing around with the Gauge gadget for reporting the number of open technical support tickets in our system:

Pretty sweet, eh? This is a live feed from our ticket system. More tickets come in, the guage goes up. The gadgets can be published seperate from the spreadsheets. I can see how this has some HUGE potential to it. Now I need to go close some tickets.

UPDATE - There looks to be a problem with publically publishing the widgets. I’ve got a technical support ticket open now so we’ll see what Google has to say.

I had to chuckle a bit when I read this paragraph in The Chronicle of Higher Education written by an instructor:

“My experience with using Twitter and anything similar blogs, Facebook, etc. for academic purposes is that students just think it is weird, creepy, and geeky in the negative sense, one reader said. And they think that its inappropriate for me to be invading their space. Within two days of telling my students that I had a Facebook page, I was blocked from all of them.”

As ed-tech’s we’re always jumping up and down about the newest technologies and how they can be put to use in an educational setting. Is it possible that the students don’t want us treading in their spaces? Perhaps they’d like us to lag behind a bit so they can remain on the cutting edge. Think about it this way…when you were growing up how would you have felt if every time you went to someplace new and cool and bumped into one of your teachers?

Let’s think about concepts and approaches rather than the specific technologies. Rather than saying, “Can we use Twitter with students,” let’s say, “Can we use a group instant messaging system to help students?” Define how the type of technology can be used rather than the specific application and we gain two things:

1. A sound educational approach for the use of a process or system

1. An implementation that is not dependent on the technology-de-jour

As a bonus, we’re no longer the “creepy teachers.”

There comes a time for every presenter when they start to develop their own personal style of presentation. Some adopt the even-keel authority on the topic at hand, some the soft-spoken sensitive, and some (like me) the energetic, passion filled presentation. Now, before I start into this I’m not advocating one style over the others. There are dozens of styles and all have their place. I myself find switching between then based on the speech and topic is very useful in driving my message home. For this post I do want to focus on the high energy presentation.

Standing on chairs

Recently I gave a speech about “Be Passionate” in which at one point I pulled out a chair in the first row of the audience and stood on it, proclaiming my point loudly and forcefully. This topic lent it to this action naturally, but I could have used the same “shock tactic” with other topics had I felt the need to reinforce the point. The key with this is the old adage, “less is more.” You are creating a physical exclamation point in your presentation and it can be very powerful. But with each use, it’s strength weakens and diminshes. Wield this weapon in your arsenal carefully. It’s much more a bazooka than a sniper rifle.

Motion can reinforce or distract

Toastmasters, as with any good speaking organization, encourages it’s members to not lock themselves to the podium but rather to move about and use their motion as part of their presentation. Again, I must stress moderation in this. Highly animated motion can be a distraction from a powerful emotional message if it’s not timed carefully. When you rehearse your speech (and I highly recommend you do, numerous times) make a point of identifying when you will use “physical illustrations” to reinforce your words and thoughts.

Keep your shoes on

Avoid the inclination to get carried away with the physicality of your speech. A speech that is in constant motion with dramatic physical illustrations and jarring actions can be exhausting for you as the presenter as well as your audience. You want to end strongly and sprinting the entire time leaves nothing for the final push.

Conclusion

Never be afraid to pull out the stops and shock your audience a bit. Wake them up when you need to and draw them back into the presentation. Just don’t overdo it. Make sure it’s a good and steady chair too.