Life in Schools

Whaddya' Think of This Vision?


So, I've been writing recently about the importance of clearly articulated vision statements for learning teams, right?  Well, here's what I've put together for my group.

Check it out and give me some feedback.  Have I touched on key elements of accomplished vision statements?  Does my vision for student learning resonate with yours?  What do you like?  What did I leave out?

Here's what I've written:

If
our learning team is going to be successful at creating a collaborative
community, ensuring high student achievement and valuing the unique
needs of each learner, we must articulate what each of those terms
looks like in action.  Without a shared vision serving as a standard
for collective decision making, it will be impossible to meet the high
expectations defined by our mission statement.  The following vision
statement is designed to serve as a living guide for all stakeholders
interested in seeing our students succeed:

Curriculum

A
team committed to ensuring high student achievement and valuing the
unique needs of each learner provides all students with a strong,
fundamental education focused on the standards defined by the State of North Carolina's Standard Course of Study.
While clear emphasis is placed on core academic subjects, a strong
commitment to educating the whole child is also evident in the
development of top-quality art, music, drama, foreign language and
other elective experiences for students.  Finally, a team committed to
ensuring high student achievement recognizes and respects the changing nature of the learning and work environment in the 21st Century. 

On such a team, the curriculum:

  1. Focuses on a handful of essential outcomes identified after a careful examination of student performance measures. 
  2. Provides integrated learning experiences, enabling students to make connections between different subject areas.
  3. Encourages student-centered exploration of content rather than teacher-driven presentations.
  4. Allows students to engage in study of topics of deep personal interest.
  5. Remains consistent across classrooms.
  6. Incorporates right-brained lessons that emphasize design, play, story, symphony, empathy and meaning.
  7. Equally values non-tested learning that has been recognized as valuable by the community.   
  8. Introduces students to tools for managing and evaluating information.
  9. Structures
    frequent opportunities for students to create, communicate and
    collaborate with others, both in and beyond their communities.

Teachers

Research---including the results of the North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey---has shown time and again that the single greatest determinant in the
success or failure of students is the quality of classroom
teachers.  Pairing a deep understanding of their content and the
characteristics of the students that they serve, accomplished educators
tailor learning experiences and environments that both ensure student
success and value the unique needs of every learner. 

To maximize the human capacity in a schoolhouse, exemplary teachers:

  1. Believe that all students can learn and accept responsibility for results.
  2. Join as participating members of collaborative teams that share knowledge about high-quality instruction.
  3. Analyze data to identify and amplify effective practices.
  4. Demonstrate a commitment to constant professional growth by researching, reading and reflecting on learning.
  5. Use their school's mission, vision and values statements as guideposts for every decision. 
  6. Consider,
    confront and/or abandon practices that appear to be inconsistent with
    their school's mission, vision and values statements.

Attention to Individual Students

Decision-making
on a middle school learning team that is committed to ensuring high
student achievement and valuing the unique needs of every learner is
driven by the distinguishing characteristics of preteen learners.
Still developing physically, cognitively and emotionally, middle grades
students present more classroom diversity than their elementary and
high school counterparts.  Struggling with organization, task
completion, consistency and a developing identity, the students of most
middle school classrooms will face moments of great challenge at some
point during their sixth, seventh or eighth grade school years.   

These differences are recognized and respected on exemplary middle school learning teams where:

  1. Multiple opportunities to master academic content are offered.
  2. Structured feedback about content mastery AND productive work behaviors are provided to both parents and students.
  3. Ongoing support is offered for students struggling with social interactions and personal development.
  4. A range of extracurricular experiences are developed that provide every child with a place to belong.
  5. Celebrations of student success are frequent and take many forms.    

Students

While
still developing physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally,
students can---and should---play a valuable role in ensuring their own
success.  With the support of their teachers, students on exemplary
middle school learning teams:

  1. Begin to accept responsibility for their own learning. 
  2. Identify and pursue areas of deep personal interest. 
  3. Actively track their own academic progress, identifying areas of strength and weakness.
  4. Seek out connections between the content that they are studying in school. 
  5. Understand
    their role as a co-learner in a classroom and respect the different
    personalities, opinions and abilities of their peers. 
  6. Allow their own thinking to be challenged and actively challenge the thinking of their classmates.

Parents and Community Members

Perhaps
the saddest reality in schools today is that parents and community
members are often marginalized.  While schools expect constant support
from the communities that they serve, there are few formalized
opportunities for parents and volunteers to be actively engaged in
efforts to ensure high student achievement and to value the unique
needs of every learner. 

Exemplary middle school learning teams recognize the power of parents and community partners by:

  1. Regularly communicating with parents about the academic, social and emotional successes and struggles of students.
  2. Establishing meaningful volunteer opportunities that support the academic, social and emotional development of students.
  3. Engaging parents and community members in conversations about school programs.
  4. Developing
    community orientation programs that introduce interested citizens to
    the content and curriculum of the middle grades classroom.
  5. Eliciting support and guidance for school programs from local businesses. 

(Image credit:  DPW-20070805-203502-NIKON_D200-105 by Digiphotoworks, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

The Vision-less Learning Community. . .


Several years ago, I had the opportunity to join the faculty of a brand new school that was opening as a professional learning community.  Our administrator was nothing short of remarkable---one of those top ten-percenters who was able to single-handedly inspire passion and develop a shared sense of commitment and purpose. 

And our early work was nothing short of amazing! 

Perhaps most meaningful were our conversations around our school's mission statement.  Unlike the overly generic mission statements posted in almost every school that I'd worked in early in my career, our mission statement became a great source of pride for our building because we created it together!

The process was powerful, forcing us to wrestle with core ideas about teaching and learning.  Specifically, we struggled to decide whether or not our school's mission should be to "strive for high student achievement" or to "ensure high student achievement." 

While this may seem like a small semantic shift, "ensuring high student achievement" seemed pretty intimidating to us.  Like many educators, we immediately began throwing out all kinds of reasons why ensuring student achievement was impossible.  "What about the kids who don't do their homework?" some argued.  "Surely, we can't ensure high-student achievement for them!" 

"Right!" chimed in others.  "And what about the kids from families who just don't care?  I'm not about to promise to ensure anything that I can't control."

But simply promising to "strive for" high student achievement didn't sit well with our principal.  He wanted to see something more out of our building, and he said so:  "Guys, I actually believe in you.  If I didn't think that you could ensure high student achievement, you wouldn't be sitting in this room right now. 

"More importantly, ensuring high student achievement is the right thing to do, isn't it?  Shouldn't the parents of our students know that we are going to do more than just give it the good ol' college try?  The success of their children is too important to just hope that teachers are striving for excellence."

Because of our commitment to him---and because he had so obviously shown faith in us---the thinking in the room slowly shifted.  Instead of being intimidated by "ensuring high student achievement," we saw it as a moral obligation.  Our final mission statement reflected that sense of deep purpose, reading:

Our school is a collaborative community that ensures high student achievement and values the unique needs of each learner. 

Our principal had appealed to the core of who we were as professionals, inspiring us to take on a challenge that many schools shy away from.  There wasn't a person in that room who didn't believe in him because he had made constant efforts to show us that he cared about us as professionals and as people. 

This attention to relationships allowed him to move us from what Kenneth Williams calls---in his chapter of The Collaborative Administrator---compliance to commitment:

"Ensuring the learning of every student requires more than compliance,
however.  Learning for all students requires deep levels of commitment
from all stakeholders, and that is nurtured through principals
developing relationships with teachers that foster trust, integrity,
collaboration, and ownership.  The ambitious mission of learning for
all can only be accomplished through the deep commitment of teachers."  (page 73)

For the next three years, our mission statement drove every decision in our school.  There wasn't a moment when "ensuring high student achievement" was far from our mind.  In fact, every time that we ran a new idea by our principal, his first question was always, "Can you show me how this ensures high student achievement or values the unique needs of every learner?"

We got to the point where we'd carefully research everything, making natural connections between best practice, our proposals and our school's mission statement.  We knew that the more evidence that we could pile behind our plan, the more likely our principal was to support us in our actions. 

We also knew that if our decision couldn't be clearly connected to "ensuring high student achievement" or "valuing the unique needs of every learner," we'd be answering a collection of difficult questions from the bossman!  He'd either turn us away---or he'd force us to refine and revise until our ideas aligned with our school's mission. 

This all sounds great, doesn't it? 

Isn't the goal of any professional learning community to establish a powerful, shared mission that is used to drive the actions of stakeholders?  And shouldn't principals serve as the protectors of the mission, questioning decisions that seems out of alignment with the overall goals of the community?

Absolutely!  In fact, the "principal as guardian" role was recently described by learning community expert Rick DuFour in The Collaborative Administrator:

"Both their words and their actions convey what must be 'tight' in
their schools and districts--those imperatives that all staff members
are expected to observe and honor.  Furthermore, they do not hesitate
to insist that staff act in accordance with the purpose and priorities
of the organization.  They are vigilant in protecting against the
erosion of core values. 

They are empathetically
assertive when necessary.  They are not weak leaders, quite the
contrary.  They are strong leaders who demonstrate a different kind of
strength than the authoritarian control of traditional hierarchies.

They enlist colleagues in a fundamentally moral endeavor---making a
difference in the lives of students---and then work with those
colleagues collectively and collaboratively to succeed in that
endeavor."  (page 3)

But our building made one significant mistake:  We failed to take the time to develop a set of written vision and values statements to support our school's mission. 

Vision and values statements in a professional learning community seek to define what your mission statement looks like in action.  They give clarity to vague phrases like "ensure high-student achievement" and "value the unique needs of every learner."  As Rick DuFour and Robert Eaker first wrote in Professional Learning Communities at Work:

"An effective vision statement articulates a vivid picture of the
organization's future that is so compelling that a school's members
will be motivated to work together to make it a reality."  (page 63)

Vision statements force teachers to detail the specific steps that stakeholders---from parents and students to teachers and principals----must take in order to fulfill the stated goals of a building's mission.  The resulting transparency prevents false consensus from destroying the collective action of a building. 

Vision statements can be used by existing members of a school community to evaluate new decisions and set priorities, by parents and community leaders to hold schools accountable, and by teaching candidates interested in determining the fit between the beliefs of a building and their own core philosophies.  Finally, vision statements can be used to find short-term successes worth celebrating! 

Here is an example of a set of vision statements that I'm currently polishing with my new learning team.  Notice how we're explicitly making connections between our mission statement and the kinds of decisions that a school must make on a daily basis.  Also, notice how our vision statements are specific enough that we can take real actions to meet them.  They are based on behaviors, rather than beliefs. 

When they are complete, these vision statements will serve as practical guides for the day-to-day actions of everyone in my learning team. 

Looking back, I've realized that the teachers and parents in our building did have a shared vision guiding our day-to-day actions:  We believed in our principal and were willing to work with (and for) him.   

He was what we had in common.

And he was masterful at using strong relationships to guide our school towards decisions and actions that ensured we met our mission.  In fact, I'd bet that if you were to ask him to write out a collection of vision statements for our building, he could have done so in no time---and they would have reflected the general consensus of our school and our community. 

The problem is that like most accomplished administrators, he eventually moved on---and when he left, our shared sense of purpose collapsed.  Without his careful work to guard our efforts to "ensure high student achievement" and to "value the unique needs of every learner," our decisions began to drift into contrary directions. 

While faculty members still believed in our mission statement, "ensuring high student achievement" began to mean different things to different people.  Some believed that students needed to be taught responsibility and punished for missing assignments, while others believed that content mastery---rather than task completion---was the best way to help students to excel.

We struggled with decisions connected to technology's role in instruction.  We disagreed with the roles that professionals beyond the classroom should play in student learning.  We didn't see eye-to-eye on the best ways to provide remediation or enrichment to students. 

Had our previous principal remained with our faculty forever,these challenges would never have caused our building to struggle because he would have used his skills as a relationship-builder to guide us towards solutions that met his personal vision----and we would have happily followed because of our faith in him.  Our shared belief in our principal was the thread holding our faculty together.

The DuFours would argue, however, that a clearly articulated set of vision statements should serve as the thread holding a faculty's decisions together.  Taking the time to write detailed vision statements from day one eliminates fundamental disagreements, forcing educators to work through conversations about core issues, and detailing consensus for future reference. 

Does any of this make sense to you? 

Have you ever worked in a building where shared vision statements guided the actions of everyone?  What about in a building where an accomplished administrator served as the visionary---until he or she moved on to a new position?

How does your school go about making shared decisions about direction?

(Image credit:  MF 225 by Jeltovski, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

Leadership Day 2008: Finding Time for Learning

Scott McLeod---the mind behind Dangerously Irrelevant---has started an interesting July 4th tradition designed to support the digital development of school administrators called Leadership Day.  To participate, Scott asks interested edubloggers to:

Blog about whatever you like
related to effective school technology leadership: successes,
challenges, reflections, needs. Write a letter to the administrators in
your area. Post a top ten list. Make a podcast or a video. Highlight a
local success or challenge. Recommend some readings. Do an interview of
a successful technology leader. Respond to some of the questions below
or make up your own.

Having had my own learning permanently changed by digital tools over the past few years, I can't imagine a more important project to get involved in.  I passionately believe that digital tools make learning easy for everyone---and that by failing to integrate them into our practice, we are leaving our children unprepared to grow as self-directed thinkers and at a competitive disadvantage in a knowledge-based society.   

Heavy stuff, huh?

What's most frightening, though, is that I just plain doubt the digital capacity of most educators.  Many have yet to master efficient learning in the 21st Century---and some struggle to even seem interested in change! 

Now, it's difficult to argue that the mental stagnation surrounding schools is completely our fault.  Anyone who has worked in education for any length of time knows that
adult learning has generally been pushed aside as we sprint through
days in a state of panic about leaving no child behind. 

The few moments that we can steal for professional development
(typically beginning and ending in July OR starting at 3:45 after we've
wrestled with kids for eight hours) are spent in sessions with
"experts" pitching the latest silver bullet.  We rarely get to self-select learning opportunities, pursue professional passions, or engage in meaningful, ongoing conversations about instruction. 

We end up jaded, literally groaning
when given "opportunities to learn." 

How's that for ironic!

Heck, even Richard Elmore---Professor of Educational Leadership at Harvard and all-around educational policy rock star---has gone as far as to argue that school structures make learning for adults unlikely at best and nothing short of impossible at worse:

It would be difficult to invent a more dysfunctional organization
for a performance-based accountability system. In fact, the existing
structure and culture of schools seems better designed to resist
learning and improvement than to enable it.

As expectations for
increased student performance mount and the measurement and publication
of evidence about performance becomes part of the public discourse
about schools, there are few portals through which new knowledge about
teaching and learning can enter schools;

few structures or processes in
which teachers and administrators can assimilate, adapt and polish new
ideas and practices; and few sources of assistance for those who are
struggling to understand the connection between the academic
performance of their students and the practices in which they engage.

So
the brutal irony of our present circumstance is that schools are
hostile and inhospitable places for learning. They are hostile to the
learning of adults and, because of this, they are necessarily hostile
to the learning of students.

Amazing, huh? 

To argue that schools are hostile to learning is a bold statement---but if you're a school leader, chances are good that you were nodding your head in agreement as you read through Elmore's thoughts. 

Times have changed in two significant ways, however, since Elmore began describing the hostile learning environments that have held schools back.  First, a new emphasis has been placed on the importance of collaborative learning between members of close-knit teams in schools. 

Second, digital tools now provide new "portals through which new knowledge about
teaching and learning can enter schools."

Specifically, thousands of accomplished educators are now writing blogs about teaching and learning, bringing transparency to both the art and the science of their practice.  Coming from every content area, grade level, school size and geographical region, they are actively reflecting on instruction, challenging assumptions, questioning policies, offering advice, designing solutions, and learning together. 

And all of this collective knowledge and professional challenge is readily available to your faculty for free!

Not a bad deal, huh? 

With the investment of a bit of time and effort, you can expose your teachers to more interesting ideas in one day than you've been able to expose them to in the past ten years of high-dollar professional development!  Better yet, this learning has the potential to be authentic---driven by personal interests and connected to classroom realities. 

All that you need to do is introduce RSS feed readers to your faculty!

Feed readers are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet easy.  Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for anyone. 

Imagine never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources again.  Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the thoughts of writers that you trust and respect.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?

It's not!  Here's a Commoncraft tutorial explaining RSS Feeds in Plain English:

Have I hooked you yet?  If so, then it's time to take action!  To get your faculty learning again, take the following 10 steps:

  1. Start by using a feed reader as a learning tool for a few weeks yourself.  If you're really brave, find a collection of blogs that target school administrators and organize them on your own with an aggregator of your choice.  If you're not quite sure where to begin, try this collection of educational leadership blogs that my buddy Adam Garry and I organized with our favorite feed reader. 
  2. Dedicate a few minutes each day to browsing the content in your aggregator.  Notice how new posts are added automatically.  Make a commitment to reading two or three entries a week.  Find topics that you're motivated by and let your thinking be challenged.  Leave comments for the authors and see whether or not they respond.  Engage other readers in conversations or friendly debate. 
  3. Remember that all of this learning is completely free! 
  4. Smile profusely. 
  5. Tell others how much you enjoy having your thinking challenged by the blogs you are reading.  Share a few posts that you find with peers.  Ramble on about the beauty of RSS.  Use your enthusiasm to generate a buzz about the potential for professional learning to be fun again.
  6. If you're really brave, use a feed reader to create a collection of blogs for your teachers to explore.  Remember to find writers from different content areas and grade levels.  Focus on writers that offer specific, practical advice or model the kind of reflective thinking that you'd like to see more frequently in your building. 
  7. If you're not sure where to begin, use my personal feed reader.  I read the blogs in this collection all the time.  Some leave me challenged.  Some leave me angry.  Some leave me jazzed.  All leave me energized and ready to learn more.   
  8. Ask your teachers to share the most interesting articles that they find with you.  Read what they're sending and then extend conversations every chance that you get!  Make it a point to talk with a teacher about a shared blog post at least twice a week. 
  9. Remember that all of this learning is completely free.
  10. Smile profusely! 

Over time, you'll start to see a real change in the quality of the conversations in your faculty workroom.  No longer will teachers be sharing war stories or groaning about students.  Instead, they'll be debating the merits of the new instructional practices or the challenging ideas that they've stumbled across online. 

Better yet, you'll start to see RSS feeds finding their way into classroom instruction as well.  Teachers, driven to show others how to learn, will begin creating collections of student blogs for their kids to explore or designing automatically updating pages of resources on topics connected to their curriculum. 

To put it simply, you will have used a free digital tool to make individualized learning a part of the very fabric of your organization!

Shouldn't that be the ultimate goal of every school leader?

(Image credit:  Computer by Guillermo Esteves, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

The Kids I've Failed. . .

I had big plans for the Radical this weekend.  I figured I'd write a cogent piece on the importance of a school's mission, vision, values and goals statements.  I've been reading a bunch lately, refreshing my understanding of PLC fundamentals because I sometimes feel like my own decisions aren't totally centered. 

I'm also working up a post describing the skills necessary to prepare kids for the 21st Century.  I've been involved in about a dozen conversations this week with different folks trying to convince them that creation, communication, collaboration and information management have to become a more important part of our classrooms----and struggling with the impact that standardized tests have had on my own ability to push those kinds of learning experiences in my room. 

But my kids left on Friday for the final time (we operate on a year-round calendar) and I'm struggling with my emotions this morning. 

It's pretty intimidating to be a teacher, you know.  Every day, dozens of young minds roll through my classroom door trusting that I can point them in the right direction.  They believe in me---completing the tasks that I set before them, accepting my corrections, listening to my advice, learning along with me.

And in many ways, they're depending on me. 

To be successful, all I've got to do is identify the kinds of skills and content necessary to succeed.  I've got to design lessons that are both motivating and effective at moving kids forward academically.  I've got to sift through materials, find ways around barriers, work to inspire, understand the future, enrich, remediate and differentiate.   

No pressure, huh?! 

Sometimes I wonder whether or not I'm doing a good job.  Have I challenged every child?  Did stray words said in an instant lift children up or leave them behind?  Which kids have I changed forever?  Are they academically prepared to succeed in the future?  What about emotionally?  Socially?

Which kids did I fail?

That question leaves me destroyed each year because I know that there are students who I've failed---kids whose strengths I missed or forgot to celebrate....kids whose weaknesses I overlooked or ignored because I had to move on or fall behind...kids who didn't feel like I loved them...kids who have a sour taste about learning because they weren't successful or didn't feel valued in my room.

Now, don't get me wrong:  I don't walk into my classroom each fall with the intent of failing anyone.  I'm one of those guys who does everything with his full heart.  I'm willing to work long hours and to invest myself completely in my work. 

But my work can seem completely overwhelming and totally impossible at times.  The range of abilities in my classroom each year only seems to grow----and while I know that challenging each child as an individual is the definition of accomplishment, I drown under that effort.  Serving anywhere from 50 to 90 kids a day, I struggle to balance requirements with needs, interests, passions and personalities. 

I guess I could look at the bright side, right? 

I mean, there are definitely students whose lives have been changed for the better because they've crossed my path.  They've learned to question and to recognize their place in the world.  They've wrestled with issues like justice and injustice---and begun to understand the role that human decisions can play in bettering life for everyone. 

Often, they've learned to believe in themselves for the first time.  They've felt shared joy at personal successes and embraced their own expertise.  I've shown them where they've grown, what they've mastered, and how they can continue to improve.  My words have been meaningful---and will continue to be meaningful as they move through middle school.

And I guess I could listen to those who encourage me to see myself as a success:  "Bill," they'll say, "The kids who roll through your room will remember you forever.  You're one of the top 10 percenters---providing an learning experience that is almost unparalleled.  You can't reach everyone---but you come damn close."

But "coming close" just doesn't feel good enough this morning. 

The final products of my work are too important as individuals to celebrate coming close, don't you think?

Does this pressure resonate with anyone besides me?  How can we, as educators, come to grips with the idea of a job well done, when "a job well done" inevitably includes failures in the form of children who we just didn't wouldn't decided not to couldn't reach?

(Image credit:  Fail by Nimbu, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

 

A Short-Sighted Sprint to Measurable Glory

A few months back, I was tagged by Patrick Higgins to write an entry for the "This I Believe" meme series that has been making its way around the blogosphere.  In response, I churned out this fun piece on how educators can learn a ton about teaching and learning from attending middle school dances!

As often happens in the meme world, I've been tagged again----This time by one of my favorite Twits, Kevin Jarrett over at NCS Tech.  Kevin's a brilliant blogger who shares pretty remarkable resources all the time.  What's more, I just plain loved his This I Believe meme because it emphasized the importance of teachers taking responsibility for results---a strand that has been running through my mind lately.

Having enjoyed the opportunity to write a This I Believe meme the first time, I figured I'd give it another whirl.  Only this time around, I figured I'd write about standardized testing.  It's perfect timing for me, considering we just finished giving our exams this week:

Administering an end of grade standardized test could be one of the single most boring acts in the life of a classroom teacher.  Passing out dozens of Number 2 pencils, instructing students in the finer points of bubbling multiple choice answer sheets, reading scripted directions from an 88-page manual and doing my best not to nod off, I waded into the testing haze once again this week.

Having taught for fifteen years, this annual tradition is really no surprise to me.  In fact, testing is something that I've often defended despite my own misgivings because it is a tool for measurement that has been embraced by the general public----and the general public pays my salary!

But this year's testing was different.  I'm not sure why, but halfway through Wednesday's reading exam, I found myself quietly crying.

You see, I was looking out over a classroom of kids that I know as beautifully complex creatures.  They're inquisitive and curious, embracing challenging questions about the inherent justice and injustice in the world.  They've wrestled with the idea of standing up to power and tried to explain the origins of hate.  They've had their thinking challenged and challenged the thinking of others time and again over the past 180 days.

They've explored music and art, seeing beauty and understanding the importance of design.  They're humorous---and they tend to find joy even in the most challenging circumstances.  Almost all have personal passions, developing levels of mastery in areas ranging from dirt biking and skateboarding to writing and dance. They've shown compassion, demonstrated respect, and developed an attitude of exploration.

Each is learning about  himself, his friends and our world every day. 

But in the end, none of that "growth" will matter.  Instead, my students---and your children---will be defined by one mystical number generated from a collection of answers on one multiple choice exam given on one day in June.

As I tried to gather myself in the back of the room, I wondered what the consequences of our commitment to rigid promotion standards based on standardized exams will be.  Will schools push right-brained activities further into the background in a short-sighted sprint to "measurable glory?"  Have other teachers been forced to compromise what they know about the kids in their class in an attempt to simply make the grade?

How many students will see themselves as failures because their "results" don't "meet or exceed expectations?"  Are we sure that an unbending emphasis on the skills measured by multiple choice tests will bring our children success in a poorly defined future----and what are the consequences if we are wrong?

"This isn't an issue you can fix today," I whispered to myself before returning to the mechanical directions and procedures of exam day, "But someone has to rethink testing. 

This I believe."

  Now, for a bit of tagging.  I'd love to see "This, I Believe" pieces from:

John Holland at Circle Time:  Lead from the Start

Ariel Sacks at On the Shoulders of Giants

Any of the Brilliant Folks at In Practice

Here are the directions for this meme:

Barry Bachenheimer started this on a whim today, and tagged me with it to get it going. Most memes have very definitive rules for passing along or posting certain material, but Barry has given this one some really free “legs.” It’s description is simple:

National Public Radio does a piece called “This We Believe” where individuals share essays they have written that enumerates their philosophies. With this concept in mind in terms of curriculum ideas, (with apologies to the National Middle School Association and National Public Radio), “This I Believe."

(Image credit:  I Can't Choose by Rusty Buckets, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

Teacher Accountability from Dina's Eyes. . .

One of my favorite edubloggers is my girl Dina Strasser over at The Line.  Dina's brilliant, and she regular pushes my thinking about all things education---and she's done it again in a recent post about teacher accountability.  She starts by writing:

So where do we get off, really, thinking that we are beyond the accountability measures we impose on our own kids? Seriously. If they get a quarterly review, then that’s the least we can ask of ourselves.

I’m also tired of waiting for my employers to walk in here– be that a supervisor, a principal, a superintendent, or a parent– and ask me questions about my practice that I am unprepared to answer because my implementation is generally solid, but my documentation sucks.

She goes on to lay out a ten point plan for what she'd like to be held accountable for that includes student performance scores, family outreach, professional reading and writing, and collaboration with colleagues.  It's really an impressive collection of indicators that I believe would challenge any accomplished teacher to improve---as opposed to most current teacher evaluation programs which reward the bare minimum. 

I think Dina left out a key point in her accountability plan, though---and I told her so.  Here's what I wrote:

Missing, Di?

I don’t think you’re missing a thing. In fact, I’d venture to say that you’ll kill yourself just trying to keep up with the tasks that you’ve listed!

What’s funny to me is that the Vanilla Icing is all that your district probably evaluates you on, right? As long as the kids are quiet and you sign in on the morning sign in sheet, you’ll probably earn “Above Average” ratings on the ol’ evaluation and get your union-mandated pay raise.

But if you’re really looking to add to the list, why don’t you consider getting involved in some heavy duty policy advocacy stuff at the district level.

I’d love to see you at school board meetings every month, making your voice heard. Maybe consider embracing the backwards board member that believes teachers are best seen, not heard. Take him out for coffee every now and again. Fill his ears with brilliance.

I think policy advocacy is one of those things that classroom teachers tend to overlook because it seems intimidating to us. Besides, half the time, we don’t know where to begin.

But in reality, policy advocacy is nothing more than developing relationships with the right people. Becoming the “go to” guy or gal for those who hold formal organizational power is the lever that we can use to drive change from the classroom.

Whaddya’ think? Are you going to add it to your list?

If you did, would you remove something that already exists?

So what do you think? 

Should advocacy be something that all teachers are expected to engage in?  Does accomplishment carry the responsibility for elevating voices and shaping decisions beyond our classrooms?

Or can one be accomplished without ever trying to reach beyond their classrooms?

Would you want to be held accountable for being an advocate for education?  How would that change your work?  Better yet, how would it change our profession?

(Image credit:  Teacher Paperwork by Ladyheart, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

Elevating Teacher Voice with Digital Tools

One of my favorite teaching moments happened early during my second year.  I caught a child using a racial slur in an argument with another child.  Obviously upset, but recognizing that this nine-year old didn't understand the consequences of his words, I punished him by taking recess away for a week----a huge deal to an athletic third grader. 

Before the end of the day was out, I received an angry phone call from his father.  "What in the world are you doing?!"  he shouted, "You can't punish my child so severely for something so small.  Are you out of your mind---or do you just hate my son?"

Nothing seemed to help him understand that throwing racial slurs around was simply unacceptable.  He was convinced that I'd misunderstood the situation and administered a consequence that was too severe.  "Mr. Ahmad," I explained, "I'm a teacher...I know children..."

Before I could finish, he roared the ridiculous:  "Well, I'm a heart surgeon and I know children better!"

This was my first experience with what Dan Lortie calls "the transparency of teaching."  Because nearly everyone has spent the better part of 15 years sitting in classrooms---and because many have worked with children beyond the schoolhouse door---most people believe that they know exactly what teachers do each day.  That false awareness causes painful assumptions that teachers wrestle with from the beginning of their careers until the end.

False transparency has been nothing short of miserable for me.  You see, I'm a  guy that has been motivated by elevating his voice into powerful conversations for almost a decade.  I'm a deep thinker who wants to help translate what I know about the classroom into the decisions that guide the direction of education. 

The greatest challenge, however, has been elbowing my way into those same conversations!

Early on, I did a lot of talking, but no one seemed particularly interested in listening  Several educational leaders saw me as nothing more than a nuisance.  While they appreciated what I was doing with students, they weren't interested in anything that I had to add to conversations beyond my classroom.  Their typical response to one of my suggestions went something like this:

"That's nice, Bill, but it will never work.  You see, you just don't understand the bigger picture."

I couldn't have been more discouraged---and I thought about leaving teaching time and again. 

Then along came the internet!

Seems like a simple change, right?  After all, what exactly could the internet do to elevate the voice of a frustrated young educator looking for the opportunity to be heard?

The answer:  Almost everything. 

First, I stumbled across my digital friends here at the Teacher Leaders Network.  A pretty impressive group of provocative thinkers, TLN started as nothing more than an ongoing email conversation between teachers focused on what mattered in education.

The difference was that John Norton---TLN's formal moderator and digital community pioneer---was taking elements of our conversations and summarizing them to provide content for the Teacher Leaders Network website.  Understanding that the key to any website is a never-ending stream of new material, John began to beg members to write diary entries or book reviews that he could use on our growing site. 

And I jumped in feet first!

In the span of two years, I'd written almost 40 book reviews and 15 diary entries for TLN.  Writing became a passion.  It gave me the opportunity to have an audience for the first time.  I was crafting a place for myself at the digital table without an invitation.

That's the beauty of what Clay Shirky--in his new book Here Comes Everybody---describes as the "Publish, then Filter" world that we live in today.  No longer does anyone have to be tapped by a formal publisher---powerful because they own a printing press and have extensive connections with a broader audience and distribution network---to have ideas recognized.

Instead, everyone can publish using free digital tools.  Everyone can build an audience and have a voice, whether they're writing about rugrats, racing or religion.  Like no time in history, publishing is universal----and for me, that changed everything. 

Almost immediately, my writing was linked in other locations.  Authors were citing me in research reports.  eBlast newsletters from major organizations were referencing my columns.  Eventually, editors from formal publications started to find me.  They recognized that my writing had resonance and wanted to add teacher voice to their magazines. 

Five years later, that snowball continues to build. 

I've had ideas published by Threshold magazine, the National Staff Development Council, Education Leadership and Edutopia.  I've been contacted by the National Middle School Association, Solution Tree, Corwin Press and Teacher's College Press about potential book projects.  Other education blogs, including Teacher Magazine, Horn Book and the Learning First Alliance have offered me opportunities to write.

In just under two years, I've gone from a guy struggling to have any audience at all to a guy who is humbled every day by the fact that people read my work---regardless of forum or format---regularly.

How's that for influence? 

I've finally earned the credibility that I couldn't seem to find early in my career---and it had nothing to do with me.  I'm the same guy today as I was 10 years ago.  The only thing that's changed is that digital tools now allow me to be a publisher.

They can do the same thing for you!  All you need is a willingness to write and a sense for the kinds of tools that make this work easy.  Here's what I'd recommend:

For Advanced Writers:

If you're already confident in your ability as a writer, consider starting your own blog.  I know, I know--it sounds intimidating, doesn't it?  How can you possibly figure out how to post information on the internet?  You're not one of those die-hard techie-types that eats and breathes HTML, XML or HTTPs. 

The good news is that you don't have to be!  Most blog services are ridiculously easy to use.  After you create an account, you'll be working in windows that look like any word processing application that you've ever explored.  You'll see comfortable toolbars that allow you to change your fonts, add links, and center your content.  When you're done writing, click on a "publish" button and your work is automatically posted to the web.

How's that for easy?

Choosing a blog service is mainly about personal tastes.  I'm a Typepad user, even though it means I have to pay an annual fee.  I chose Typepad a long time ago---before most blog services were free---and I'm comfortable with it.  It's easy to use and offers tons of tech support if I need it.

Many of my peers have jumped on the Blogger train.  Blogger is a Google product, so it's not going away anytime soon.  Better yet, you can access Blogger blogs with the same username and password that you use for any Google service---so if you have a Gmail or Google Docs account, Blogger may be a logical choice for you.   

And I'd be remiss if I didn't remind you about Edublogs.  Edublogs is the premier blogging service for educators.  The advantage of creating your own digital home with Edublogs is that you'll be instantly connected to a community of like-minded writers who you might just be able to convert into readers!

For Intermediate Writers:

If you're just beginning to dip your toes into the digital waters, consider working with peers on a collaborative writing wiki.  Wikis are editable websites, and like blogs, they require very little technical skill to master.  Wiki toolbars also look just like common word processing programs---and when you're finished saving a contribution to a wiki page, your work is posted online automatically.

The difference between a wiki and a blog is that wikis are designed for collaboration between a group of users.  The content on a wiki can be edited at any time by anyone with the shared wiki password.  Wikis also provide discussion boards for every page, allowing users to engage in ongoing conversations with one another about the quality of their developing project.

For novice writers, these features can be invaluable.  Consider finding a few peers and writing bits about teaching and learning together.  Divide selections into sections and have each member of your collaborative writing group take responsibility for small contributions.  Allow users fluent with language to polish your final text.  Find members that are sticklers for spelling and grammar and turn them loose!

By doing so, the writing process becomes far less intimidating because you're not responsible for an entire selection all by yourself.  Instead, you'll be reflecting together---which in and of itself is a powerful form of professional growth. 

Almost every wiki service provides the same tools and features, so you'll just have to find a service that you feel good about.  I'm a fan of PB Wiki because I've been using it forever.  What I like the best about PB Wiki is that it allows users to create a "My PBWiki" account that provides immediate access to any wiki a user has created from one login screen. 

For a guy like me who is currently using 9 different wikis for work with teachers and students, this is a pretty important feature!

Wikispaces is another popular wiki service.  It was one of the first wiki services to be embraced by educators, so there are thousands of Wikispaces that you can check out as samples.  Wikispaces also has some unique features that will resonate with teachers who want to use wikis with their students---including automatic account creation for students without email addresses.

The service I'm most intrigued by right now would have to be Wet Paint.  Wet Paint is a slick little wiki service that caught my eye because its templates (the frame that goes around one's content) are super professional looking.  Wet Paint also puts more emphasis on facilitating and promoting the collaborative elements of wikis than any of the other services combined.  What really has me hooked, though, is that Jeff Utecht---and educational technology writer who I've followed for years---has started working with Wet Paint.

With his help, Wet Paint is bound to be the wiki service of choice before long!

Does any of this make sense to you?  Essentially, I've grown convinced that teachers---like anyone living in the 21st Century---can take advantage of free tools for content creation and collaboration to elevate their voice.  No longer do we have to sit unsatisfied, wishing that we had more of an influence over our profession. 

Instead, we can write about what we know.  We can help others to see exactly what it is that makes our work so challenging.  We can offer advice and guidance to one another.  We can speak the truth about testing, look for support with classroom management, make suggestions about educational policy, comment on trends that we see in our communities and testify on behalf of our students.

And most importantly, we don't have to wait to be asked what we think!

(Image credit:  Elbow by L. Marie, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

   
   

Need a Bit of Digital Help. . .

Alright, Radical readers---I need a bit of digital help! 

I've got a good friend who moved on to become one of the best principal professional developers that I know.  His current project is designed to try to help school leaders understand that the kinds of leadership traits and behaviors that support new teachers are not always the same as the kinds of leadership traits and behaviors that support experienced teachers.

Basically, he's hoping to get principals to differentiate a bit---and that's not a bad thing at all!

The only hitch is that he needs to begin collecting a bit of anecdotal data from real live practicing educators---which is why he contacted me!  Knowing that I'm still in the classroom, he figured I could convince a few of my practitioner buddies to fill out a short, five question survey detailing the kinds of working conditions that either keep them in---or drive them away from---the buildings where they work.

Now, you know me:  I'm a digital junkie, so I immediately saw this as a way to experiment with one of my favorite new tools----the form feature of Google Docs.  I took his survey and whipped it into a neat little form that you can fill out here:

School Leadership Survey

It'll take you anywhere from five minutes to five hours depending on how thoughtful you are---or how much you like/dislike your current teaching situation! 

The best part is that once you hit "Submit," your answers will automatically be added to a spreadsheet for me.  Just like that, I'll have a growing collection of answers that paint a picture for principals about the kind of working conditions that matter to teachers from all points on the teaching spectrum. 

What do you get out of all of this?

Well, if my undying love isn't enough, I'll promise to write a blog post in the near future explaining how you, too, can create forms using Google Docs.  It's a pretty nifty little feature that has about a thousand applications for classroom teachers.

And feel free to email this post along to every teacher that you know!  The more replies we get, the better our chances are of influencing the principals who are leading our schools.

(Image credit:  Help Point by Mark Hillary , licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

Surviving Digital Frustration. . .

I was recently involved in a conversation with a group of digital friends who were experiencing the kinds of frustrating experiences that can drive teachers away from digital tools. 

Their district firewalls were blocking every service that they wanted to use, their tech contacts were no where to be found, and their access to critical resources was insufficient to meet the demands of their digital efforts.

Sound familiar? 

It did to me because it's a frustration that I've shared as well!  As a digitally driven teacher who recognizes the importance of meeting kids where they are, I've worked to make digital tools a regular part of my instruction---largely because I recognize that digital tools can "grease the wheels" of learning. 

But the "transaction costs" for teachers interested in using digital tools in the classroom are sometimes incredibly high.  Firewalls and district access policies are real---and they pose real headaches to teachers who are working with digital tools for the first time.  I've invested countless hours into perfecting classroom applications for particular tools only to have those tools blocked as soon as I get a project off the ground. 

So how do I deal with digital frustration?

1.  I've worked to develop a positive working relationship with anyone and everyone who might have influence over what kind of technology is available to me in the classroom:

  This was a bit of advice from digital colleague and friend Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach that rubbed me the wrong way the first time that I heard it because I feel strongly that those kinds of decision makers should be serving me.  To turn that equation around bothers me because it puts teachers in a subservient role----a place that I'm uncomfortable being in. 

But I've also realized that positive working relationships with decision makers often give me more power than I ever had to begin with.  I'm starting to build a network of connections in the Central Office that I can call on when I see websites or services blocked.

These people trust my voice on digital tools and know that I'm a reasonable guy only because we've shared a dozen different interactions.  So when I go to bat for a tool, I've got a greater chance of seeing it unblocked than anyone else.

Does this influence work all the time? 

Nope.   

But each positive interaction that I have with people---and each connection that I develop in different departments at the district level----strengthens my position as a credible voice that should be heard.  Maybe it's Guerrilla Leadership----It can be tiring, but it's all I've got right now!

 

2.  I never get too attached to any one service:

This is another @snbeach suggestion that has worked for me.  Web 2.0 tools are pretty remarkable because there are literally thousands to choose from.  Rarely a day goes by when I don't learn about something new that might be worth checking out.  (Here's one from this morning:  http://www.utterz.com/).

 

While one advantage of the prolific nature of digital services is choice (It would be difficult NOT to find a tool that can enhance the work you're already doing with students), another advantage is that there are always other services to choose from when something is blocked by the big bad firewall----or when your favorite service goes out of business!

 

I know what you're thinking:  If you spend hundreds of hours learning to use a service that gets blocked, there ain't no way you're going to spend the same amount of time learning about a new service, right?

 

The good news is you won't have to.  Services that fall within the same category (tools for creation, tools for communication, tools for collaboration, tools for information management) typically all work in much the same way.  While there are likely to be a few stylistic differences, once you master a particular tool type, you'll be able to fluidly translate the skills that you've learned to a new service with little hassle. 

Working with Web 2.0 tools takes a certain amount of flexibility and a high tolerance for ambiguity.  You never know when you'll be forced to change directions.  Refusing to become too loyal to any one product can help make these transitions less professionally painful. 

3.  I constantly write about the successes that I'm having with digital tools:

The sad reality in many organizations is that few people have seen concrete examples of how digital tools are changing teaching and learning for the better.  Instead, they're bombarded by stories about kids being kidnapped by criminals and inappropriate content being posted on YouTube. 

When they do poke around content being created by kids, they stumble across junk!  They see blogs with thousands of spelling errors, wikis with inaccurate content, or videos that don't seem to meet any meaningful curricular objectives. 

These constant negative messages about digital tools taint decision makers and educators alike.  It's hard to believe that investing time and dollars into 21st Century learning is worthwhile when there are so few examples of high quality outcomes to explore. 

Pair that with the inexperience that most decision makers and educators have with using digital tools in their own lives.  How many people do you know--away from the electronic forums that you participate in--who are active bloggers?  How many create movies to express messages?  How many have feed readers?  How many text or instant message?  How many use social networking services to build a community of like minded learners?

If you're anything like me, the answer is probably only a handful!

Combining inexperience with a never-ending barrage of negative messages about digital content and tools is a recipe for the kinds of restrictive learning environments that give us nightmares---where students and teachers alike have to fight at every turn to gain access to tools that might just make learning more meaningful. 

The solution for me has been to constantly write about the work that I'm doing with kids, primarily because we're creating content that is nothing short of remarkable.  When people can look at a wiki that my kids create and see evidence of shared exploration of content and collaboration around their studies, they get it. 

When they can see an RSS feed reader being used to give students a collection of resources around a particular topic of study, they get it.  When they can see how social bookmarking sites or tools for asynchronous conversations can spark thinking long after the school day is done, they get it.

Publicizing these successes helps to counteract the negative messages that drag down digital efforts.
 

Does all of this work take time?

Sure---but not as much as you might think.  Building relationships happens best in chance interactions. It's not a structured part of my day.  Experimenting with new tools is a lot less time consuming the more that you do it.  I'm pretty confident that I could pick up any tool in less than ten minutes, and writing for me is really nothing more than a forum for the professional reflection that I've always done. 

What's even better is that the amount of time and energy decreases over time----and the value added to your classroom instruction and your own professional growth is certainly greater than you can possibly imagine. 

Any thoughts?  Additions to my "Surviving Digital Frustration" to-do list?

(Image credit:  MG_9839 by Nicholas Raymond, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

Efficient Sharing in a Learning Community

As most Radical readers know, I'm pretty fascinated by books that explore group dynamics and collective intelligence.  I guess when you're an active member of a sixth grade professional learning team that is working together to improve the instruction in their language arts and social studies classes, knowing as much as you can about the dynamics of human interactions is just plain valuable!

And if you haven't picked up on it yet, I'm also a bit of a digital junkie.  I've spent the better part of the past few years exploring how digital tools can be used to make good teaching easier, to engage students and to make my own work more meaningful and efficient.  I guess that all started when I joined TLN---which some members describe as a "digital teacher workroom on steroids!"

So you'll understand why Clay Shirky's new book Here Comes Everybody---which focuses on the complex changes that digital tools have had on the work of groups has left me completely jazzed!  Finally, someone is describing in approachable terms the changes that I'm experiencing first-hand as I introduce the teachers of my team to online applications that can change the way we work together.

Early in Everybody, Clay explains that group activities often scaffold upon one another, starting simply and becoming more complex over time.  In his thinking, the three levels of group interactions are sharing, cooperation and collective action.  Each of these levels, Shirky argues, can be supported by digital tools. 

For anyone that has ever worked with new learning teams, Shirky's levels feel right, don't they?  Rarely do teams jump into complicated tasks that require deep collaboration from day one.  Lacking shared experiences with one another---and the trust that those experiences generate---teams tend to focus on simple tasks that are focused on meeting the immediate demands of the classroom. 

Often, those early tasks involve the sharing of resources.  Teachers create digital copies of handouts or presentations that address elements of the required curriculum and pass them along to their peers.  They also identify websites that can be used in instruction or preparation.   Articles are gathered, assessments are written, and  videos are identified. 

While these early interactions are simplistic processes that by themselves aren't enough to drive meaningful change in teaching and learning, they are essential because they provide team members with low risk opportunities to interact with one another around the topics, materials and instructional practices that should form the foundation of classroom learning experiences. 

What's more, resource sharing will play a permanent role for most learning teams---even as they move beyond the novice conversations described above.  Highly accomplished teachers and teams are constantly wrestling with and reviewing their practices----which by default means that highly accomplished teams and teachers will always be identifying and generating new materials for use with students. 

The challenge, then, lies in managing the flood of potential resources, right?  With limited time, how can teams sift through materials, select those that are of value, and communicate new discoveries with their peers? 

For my learning team, this has always been a difficult challenge.  Each of us is nothing short of incredibly motivated to improve----and as a result, we've always got new materials to share with one another.  Until recently, sharing those resources most frequently happened by sending an email to our team mailing list.   We'd insert links to new websites or attach documents that we thought our colleagues would find valuable. 

And while email was serving its purpose, there was one huge hitch:  I hate email!

I don't know about you, but I drown in digital messages.  If I don't check my email every three hours, I spend another three hours trying to dig through complaints from parents, emergency messages from Nigerian princesses, updates on the fire drill schedule, pictures of the new faculty baby and urgent changes to the supply ordering procedures.

So the resources that my team sent out on an almost daily basis were getting lost in the electronic shuffle.  As much as I wanted to check out every new website that someone had discovered, I wanted to curse the email that it came in!

My solution was a simple one that's going to take a bit of explaining.  Are you comfortable with the challenge of reading a bit about digital ideas that may seem intimidating at first blush?  If so, keep reading:

I turned my team on to two of my favorite tech tools:  Delicious and Pageflakes.  Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to keep online records of the resources that they are exploring.  In its simplest form, that's all Delicious needs to be. 

But Delicious also allows users to add tags to the sites that they find.  Tags are short titles that are added by users that define the category that they believe best describes a particular weblink.  Once tagged, the resource that you've labeled is grouped with every other resource that has been tagged with the same label---and is available to any other Delicious user poking through the "Delicious Library" by tag!

So if you found this blog post interesting, you might tag it "PLCs" because it describes the work of a learning team, "Tech" because it describes how to use digital tools, or "Tempered_Radical" because it is a piece that you found here. Better yet, you might tag it with all three phrases----making it easier to find for Delicious users interested in any of those three topics! 

(Not that I'm trying to promote my piece or anything?!)

Knowing that sharing websites was something that was super important to the members of our team---and that our email only system of sharing was ridiculously inefficient---I convinced everyone on to sign up for a free Delicious account and download the Delicious browser buttons to their computers.  By doing so, they could instantly begin bookmarking and tagging websites that were related to the topics we were studying in class. 

In order to make following one another's tags easy, though, we had to decide on a common "tagging language."  A tagging language is nothing more than a set group of categories that we all agreed to use when we were bookmarking websites for school. 

We sat down in a meeting and decided on the kinds of resources that we typically find and share with each other.  For language arts, that included reading, writing, problem solution, evaluation and poetry resources.  For social studies, that included Greece, Rome, World Wars, Middle Ages, Europe, South America and current event resources. 

Together, we created a set of common tags that we would add to each website we bookmarked in Delicious.  Our tagging language looks like this:

salem6la_reading
salem6la_writing
salem6la_ps
salem6la_eval
salem6la_poetry

salem6ss_rome
salem6ss_greece
salem6ss_ce

(Is this starting to make sense to you?!)

Now I know what you're thinking:  This all seems a bit confusing, right? 

It really isn't!  Bookmarking a site in Delicious is no different than adding it to your favorites in any web browser.  The only difference for our team is that we add a specific tag to each site we bookmark.  By doing so, Delicious automatically sorts our sites for us and allows us to easily see any other resource that shares the same tag.

The other neat thing about Delicious is that it provides an RSS feed for every tag.  RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication---and its a bunch of digital gobbledygook for a really easy way to automatically see updates to websites or lists that are constantly changing.  (Check out this neat tutorial that explains RSS in Plain English.)  Tools like Pageflakes allows users to follow changes to websites with RSS feeds. 

To take advantage of the ability to follow changes to our Delicious groups automatically, I created a Pageflakes Pagecast that included lists of all of the new resources posted in Delicious by our teachers.  You can check out the Language Arts Pagecast here and you can check out the Social Studies Pagecast here.

What you'll see is exactly what the teachers of our team see:  A collection of boxes that contain weblinks to each of the topics that we study in our classes.  If you hover over one of the links, you'll also see a short description of the resource.  So now, whenever we want to see what resources the other members of our learning team has been exploring, we come to these two Pagecasts. 

The best part:  RSS feed readers like Pageflakes update themselves automatically!  As long as members of our team remember to use the right tag language when bookmarking something in Delicious, Pageflakes will find those new resources and add them to the right category in our Pagecasts. 

That's it.  Nothing more.  Visit one Pageflakes link and see everything that has
been found by every other member of our learning team.  No writing
emails.  No reading emails.  No jotting notes or sharing rambling
conversations on the way to the restroom!

Oh yeah----and Delicious and Pageflakes are completely free services.

It's hard to beat free, ain't it?

For our team, this system has been nothing short of remarkable.  In Shirky's terms, we've decreased the "cost" of each of our group's transactions.  No longer do we resist sharing because it's too time consuming or difficult to be valuable. 

Instead, with a little bit of thought and careful planning (Our meeting to decide on shared tags and install Delicious took 40 minutes, then I spent 60 minutes pointing Pageflakes to each of the groups of resources we were growing in Delicious), we've made sharing resources---a key process that all learning teams have to learn to manage---remarkably easy and instant.

If you're interested, here's a handout that I used to introduce the process of tagging to my team:

Download Salem_Sixth_Grade_Delicious_Tags.pdf

(Image credit:  MG_8663 by Nicolas Raymond, licensed Creative Commons: Attribution)

    

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