January 7th, 2010

L4L / Reflections — No Comments
7
Jan 10

L4L Round 2

When its quiet, I really enjoy my reading, especially my Google RSS reader. Every time I get an hour to read I find at least a handful of thought provoking statements. Today its Clay Shirky, he’s a regular contributor.

A revolution doesn’t happen when a society adopts new tools. It happens when society adopts new behaviors. (Clay Shirky)
Its got me thinking about our schools Laptops for Learning programme. We have the devices, now we need to get the schools society to adopt new behaviours. Can middle leaders significantly impact on adopting new teaching behaviour from a middle standpoint, when every discussion I have been a part of starts emphasises…. ‘you must have senior leadership buy-in?’ IMHO yes, now I need to define the types of behaviours we are looking for. Action planning worksheets showcased in this afternoon NCSL E-Learning course only identified the typical columns, what, who is responsible, by when and the expected outcomes. A poultry reflective column asking, were these outcomes met?! Maybe action planning should have describe the new behaviours we should expect to see as a result of change when innovating / leading.

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CPD and INSET / LfM — No Comments
7
Jan 10

LftM Online Learning

Values and vision for change was the first E-Resource I attenpted today.

The purpose of a vision for the school … is to inspire everyone connected to the school to focus action and to have all stakeholders pulling in the same direction.

Next I am learning the value of vision. Is this something that can really be taught? First the tutorial outlined the terminology and assessed our ability to accurately define the reality. A passable task, but a little boring. Next we were lead through’ action planning’ – somewhat disappointing. An hours learning, I am not sure it was credible. Next, ‘Leadership Capabilities and Styles.’

Summarised duties of a middle leader, Leadership, Management and Administration. To which point we were offered the important/urgent matrix and some online resources (not visible on the screen but the icons were hyperlinked) to help us manage our time and decisions.

After a long intro (which put into perspective how important our vision actually was) before we get to the focal point, what is good leadership. Within this introduction, there was little inspirational content, but as with most things, there were a few interesting take aways. Fullan talks about the importance of relationship building with leadership and notes;

Effective leaders constantly foster purposeful interaction and problem solving. They also strive to involve others in the goal setting and goal getting process; so they have ‘internal commitment.’

Again more prospective links, but the links are not visible and I am not prepared to play pot luck with my time. Come on NCSL. Inspriational, sadly no.

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CPD and INSET / LfM — No Comments
7
Jan 10

LftM – Leading Style

I am at my second sitting on the NCSL ViewPoints learning activity, designed to help me discover my own personal style. No surprise that I came out as a divergent thinker, but I was pleased that my prediction was accurate. However, there is a danger that, with a dominant style, I appreciate differences in others and do not discount alternative practice and procedure of my colleagues with different style patterns.

According to Dr Kathy Butler, divergent thrive on healthy conflict, think outside of the box and find sustained reflection (ie this blog) difficult….

With my interest tweak, I thought I would look a little deeper at Dr Kathy Butlers  work from the resources, but the link 404, so I directed back to her limited commericial offering.

Now I am supposed to observe myself for a few weeks, consider alternative delivery modes to support colleague with difference viewpoints to be able to contribute. Even better, to solicit the thoughts of linear viewpoints and to incorporate these into my delivery. I try to remember all that.

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ICT — No Comments
7
Jan 10

OCR Smilies

Having marked over 70 assignments over the Christmas break, with one set of classmarking  covering two assessment outcomes, I was able to make good use of my smilies stamp , rewarding students working at or beyond their target grades. This reminded me of my NCSL online facilitators  course experience, where adult learner pass grades were also awarded with smilies, only these were electronic online smilies, displayed in open access gradebook. As more learners completed the coursework, they requested demanded their smilies stamp of approval. These simple electronic smilies held value to professional adult learners, I was surprised. :)

I was reviewing the grading and feedback process I had undetaken and wondered if these smilies should be transfered from the assignemnt frontsheet inside their folder to the front of their manilla folder label where they could be envied? We would need to redesign our rather dry folder labels to include a space for these smilies but would it make a difference. Are stars, smilies and credit points under used or over-rated? What do you use to encourage academic performance?

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Middle Management — No Comments
7
Jan 10

Perils of Innovation

As I move into the new year, I am aware that my role in our school has changed evolved over the past 18 months in particular, moving from middle leadership to whole school IT and ICT. Within this role, our Headteacher has noted my enthusiasm for innovation but also my caution. We aim to be at the cutting edge, its too risky to be at the bleeding edge. Regardless, innovation, whether it is from a middle or senior leader viewpoint, leaves us in a perilous position. Let me outline why as Hans de Zwart , newly promoted to the position of ’Innovation Manager,’ quotes Machiavelli The Prince (via Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations),

There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things…. Whenever his enemies have the ability to attack the innovator, they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly, so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable.

With merely 24 months experience in post, here are my top four recommendations for leading innovation yet keeping you out of the stocks;

  1. Whatever you are about to do, has probably be investigated, tested and reviewed. Grow your PLN and be a positive contributor to sharing good practice within that PLN. You never know when someone may offer your their support, pay it forward.
  2. Create a test beds for your ICT and IT innovations within school. Develop your innovations in micro, with pilot groups and with a range of users. This could be staff, technicians, students or any combination of these, before sharing the innovation. Our Digital Leaders (students in years 7-11) offer our team the most insight. We invest and plan ernestly as it is far easy to get an idea off the ground than it is to land it successful and get whole school traction, especially if staff lose confidence in the pilot during takeoff. 
  3. Support the innovators but dont ignore the bruised. The most important point is to to reduce within school variance. That simply means your bottom line must be developing faster than your innovators.
  4. Grow yourself. One of the most effective ways to accelerate and share innovation, is to accelerate your own learning. Again, developing a proactive and sharing PLN is very valuable to you.

This January we have final hit a point where our aspirations and work flow are in balance. The backlog is nearly clear and we have staff available to help land our main projects. The VLE now has dedicated management with in-classroom and teacher support. Year 2 of the netbooks ‘Laptops for Learning’ should in theory be more established and easy to implement. The new domain is structure and ready for migration at Easter and planned for Sept 2010. For once, we are cruising at 3000 feet but checking the dials daily.

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