eSchool News Item

“The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has named 16 finalists in the first round of its Race to the Top competition, which will deliver $4.35 billion in school reform grants.

Selected March 4 from a pool of 41 applicants were Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The winners will be chosen in April.”

The full proposal that was submitted by Massachusetts is available at:
http://www.doe.mass.edu/arra/rttt/narrative.pdf

I am attending the Annual CoSN conference with a colleague. For our pre-conference session we attended “Bootcamp for School District Technology Leaders/CTOs.”

Description
O.K., you are the person in charge of technology at your school district. What are the essential skills that you need in order to succeed? Where do you turn to continuously expand your knowledge base? According to the consulting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the responsibilities of the CIO/CTO in all industry sectors have moved from being largely technical to being mainly strategic (leadership and management, fiscal management, organization and culture skills, and business skills). Yet, in the education sector, these are new trends and few people have the broad set of skills needed to provide strategic technology leadership within their school district. The task of identifying and developing essential skills for CTOs, a relatively new hybrid position in schools, is critical. While the responsibilities of the district technology leader/CTO vary by district, the Consortium for School Networking has developed a Framework of Essential Skills for CTOs. Take a self assessment and see your strengths and areas that need attention.

Presenter:
Ed Zaiontz, Executive Director, Information Services, Round Rock ISD, Round Rock, TX

The session lived up to its description. We met Technology Directors/CTOs from all over the country, from districts as small as 1800 students to 40,000 students. What I noticed is that we all deal with very similar challenges in our roles in schools. One of the best parts of attending this conference is the networking – making connections, meeting peers, and exchanging tips and strategies. I’m looking forward to the first keynote this morning.

John Kotter says that organizations have to transform themselves in order to survive. Organizations need to learn and grow in order to keep pace with the changing culture, economics, and global competition. He asserts that effective leadership is necessary to accomplish this and he articulates the following eight key steps that leaders must go through in the change process.

o n e
Leaders must establish a sense of urgency about the problem.
The leadership of the organization must create a sufficient sense of urgency around correcting the problem and interest people in the resolution.

t w o
Leaders must create a guiding coalition.
Kotter asserts that the leader must create a powerful guiding coalition, because one person alone cannot carry the vision for the entire organization. “Building such a team is always an essential part of the early stages of any effort to restructure, reengineer, or retool a set of strategies.”

t h r e e
Leaders must develop a vision and strategy.
There must be a clear vision for the organization and a strategy in place for reaching goals. When this is absent, employees may feel free to set their own direction. An effective vision should establish compelling reasons why the goals should be set and pursued.

f o u r
Leaders must communicate the change vision.
The vision and goals of the organization should get communicated to everyone in the organization, in both word and deeds, very often. “Clear, simple, memorable, often repeated, consistent communication from multiple sources, modeled by executive behavior, helps enormously.”

f i v e
Leaders must empower employees for broad-based action.
The organization must empower employees to act in the best interest of the organization. Employees must have sufficient autonomy to carry out their job. The leaders of the organization should remove obstacles so that employees can implement the vision.

s i x
Leadership team must generate short-term wins.
Kotter asserts that short-term “wins” are key to keeping motivation and morale high. Major change takes time and most people need to see convincing evidence, early in the process, that they are on the right track. Setting short-term achievable goals and then achieving them helps sustain interest and credibility.

s e v e n
Leaders must consolidate gains and produce more change.
Leadership teams have to recognize and celebrate the gains, while helping to keep people looking ahead to the long-term goal. Resistance is always waiting to reassert itself and complacency can return if people feel that the small wins are enough.

e i g h t
Leaders must anchor the new approaches in the culture.
It is easy to fall back on old ways of doing things, so Kotter says that the eighth component of successful organizational leadership is to make the changes really become embedded in the culture – they must become “how we do things around here.” Kotter says that this requires a lot of communication.

Kotter emphasizes that the guiding coalition must be comprised of powerful representatives of the major stakeholders so that they have credibility on all fronts.

Guiding Coalitions: I find in strategic planning efforts that key players from central office leadership must be active participants or there is a danger that many of the group’s recommendations will fall on deaf ears. Excluding teacher leaders might result in faculty mistrusting the findings of the group as being “top-down” and irrelevant to them.

John Kotter explains that people need “sufficient chance to think, feel, argue, and reflect” in order to air and deal with anxieties and conflicts. I agree – there is no substitute for putting in the face time with all stakeholders. People need to think things through and talk them out. Sometimes I refer to periods of thinking and mulling over as “ripening” – some ideas and projects need to sit on the shelf and ripen for a while.

In one of Kotter’s recurring themes throughout his change book, he explains that management tends to undercommunicate. He asserts that the message must be repeated often and by multiple sources. From my experience, this is very true.

He says that the message should be simple, that it should be repeated often in multiple forums, and that leaders should act in ways that are consistent with the vision and strategy. I try to heed this advice by including it as a strategy for solving problems. When every member of a guiding coalition becomes a spokesperson for a change effort they work with you to refer to the vision and strategy at every meeting and public forum. This helps to raise consciousness about the problem, helps to garner support, and keeps the message on the table. In my experience, quite often, even when there is a commitment to a project or idea, the focus tends to dissipate as people deal with their daily work load and ever-present responsibilities and job-tasks. Repeating the message of the change effort is a good way to bring people back to the importance of solving the problem.

Kotter says that short-term goals are necessary to demonstrate that the strategies are working and that the organization is one the right track. They help to build momentum toward the ultimate vision. Short-term goals, then, to be effective, have to be clearly defined, achievable, measurable, and clearly related to the change effort.

He often refers to the importance of the integrity of leaders and to the necessity of matching work to deed. That is, he says, that actions must be consistent with the vision that is promoted by the leaders of an organization.

Kotter says that organizations have to transform themselves in order to survive. Organizations need to learn and grow in order to keep pace with the changing culture, economics, and global competition. When he describes organizations in this book, his focus is on leadership, so it is an alternative leadership frame, perhaps.

About John Kotter:
This information is an excerpt from his web site, http://www.kotterinternational.com/AboutUs/Bios/JohnKotter.aspx

John P. Kotter is internationally known and widely regarded as the foremost speaker on the topics of Leadership and Change. His is the premier voice on how the best organizations actually achieve successful transformations.

Kotter has authored 17 books, twelve of them bestsellers. His works have been printed in over 120 languages and total sales exceed two million copies. His latest book, A Sense of Urgency, focuses on what a true sense of urgency in an organization really is, why it is becoming an important asset and how it can be created and sustained. Just released in September of 2008, Urgency reached #7 on the New York Times bestseller list in early October.

What do effective leaders do? Is there some elusive quality that good leaders possess? Something they are born with, that others can’t learn? I read about leadership a lot. I have some favorite authors, many of whom deal with leading change. As an educational technology leader, I recognize that much of what I do is leading (coaxing, nudging, stimulating, catalyzing) change. I find much to agree with and be inspired by in the works of John Kotter, Ron Heifetz, Michael Fullan, Douglas Reeves, Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal.

Using Bolman and Deal’s different frames for examining issues has been useful to me, and John Kotter’s eight steps to leading change are brilliant. In the next several blog posts I intend to share some of my favorite excerpts from these authors and try to explain why I find their ideas relevant to my work.

As I meander through these works, I will be thinking about what difference I make. Kelly Christopherson, in a recent post on his blog, Educational Discourse, really made me think. Are we making the difference we hope to be making? Am I making a difference in my district?

If I were to leave my job tomorrow, what would change? I hope that asking these questions will help to reveal a little bit about what it is leaders do, and on a personal level, help me to look realistically at my school district and the impact technology is having on teaching and learning (versus the impact I think it should have).

For this post, rather than write about and analyze the words of the aforementioned authors, I will describe, in my own clumsy and personal way, a few of the ways I would characterize good leadership. An effective leader is ethical and moral; takes on even difficult issues and problems; knows when to let problems or solutions “ripen”; shows the people they work with that they care; has a vision for a better tomorrow and some ideas about how to get there; works damn hard. If I had to explain, in just a few words, what an effective leader does, I’d say this: we shine the light and clear the path. We shine the light on problems and solutions – we get people to pay attention, we explain why it is important. And we clear the path – when we find people who are willing to follow, we clear the path for them – we move obstacles and look for funding and cheer them on. If that’s all we did, that would already be a lot, to shine the light and clear the path.

In the next several posts I’ll write about how the actual experts answer this question -  What do effective leaders do?

ISTE has announced the winner of their first crowdsourced keynote:

The ISTE 2010 Keynote Committee is delighted to announce the results of its first ever “Crowdsourced Keynote” project!

After nearly two weeks of voting and more than three months of input gathering, Hawaii-based educator Dr. Jeff Piontek has emerged as the people’s choice to headline one of ISTE 2010’s three keynote sessions.

The ISTE keynote team will work with Dr. Piontek to present a relevant and inspirational session focused on the overall conference theme, Exploring Excellence, with a specific focus on effective school leadership for the digital, global era.

Pionek is the author of “Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts…Oh My!” and many articles, including his latest, “Educating Jetson’s Children in Flintstone Schools.” Learn more about Dr. Piontek at http://jeff.piontek.googlepages.com/.

One fan commented, “Jeffrey Piontek is a dynamic, knowledgeable, and inspirational educator. His book has served as a guide for my staff and has helped to ensure that they successfully integrate technology into everyday instruction. Mr. Piontek presents his ideas in a very user-friendly manner, helping to facilitate the process of infusing technology into the classroom. His hands-on experiences provide teachers with practical suggestions that can be easily implemented. [He] translates the ‘theoretical’ into everyday classroom practice/s.”

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Piontek to our stage and thank all of our candidates and participants for their contributions!

~ ~ ~ ~     from ISTE email to members

I was (actually) fully expecting Chris Lehmann to be the people’s choice. Oh well . . .

Here is a blog post about the process and results, and here is a complete accounting of the results of the top nominees.

I have signed up for the ISTE webinar:

Make the Leader-Shift:  Strategies to Develop Transformational Leadership
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
1 pm Pacific / 2 pm Mountain / 3 pm Central / 4 pm Eastern

From the ISTE site:

Effective and sustainable leadership is essential to survive and thrive in our ever-changing world. Transformational leadership inspires organizations and their people towards the vision and goals while empowering and building the capacity of the people within. Yet in many cases, this type of leadership is still elusive. Join leadership expert and internationally certified coach, Valerie Woods, for this thought provoking discussion about transformational leadership and the strategies to move towards enhanced leadership effectiveness. This session is intended for all participants who want to learn more about shifting strategies to develop transformational leadership.

presenter: Valerie Woods, MA Leadership, CEC

The description certainly catches my attention and the facilitator has an interesting bio.

I would love to hear from any of you who have participated in any ISTE webinars. Was it high quality? Is it something you would recommend? Did you watch solo or did you get a group together and have discussions about it?

It seems that during every disaster in recent years the world has been quickly informed about it by the people on the ground and in the middle of it. I read tweets, blogs, and messages about the Indian Ocean Tsunami, the water landing of US Air Flight 1549 on the Hudson River by Captain Sullenberger, and Hurricane Katrina. But a colleague of mine, with extensive family and friends in Haiti, has had an unbelievably difficult time getting news of his family members. He has had trouble getting connected to people on the Internet, and has had almost no luck by phone (cell or land line). I have read that trunk lines are down and that very soon cell phone batteries will run out and people have no electricity to recharge them. I have heard this described as a near communication blackout. This is in sharp contrast to the flood of information and communication we have received from on-the-ground individuals (as opposed to news agencies) in other recent disasters.

Relief efforts are on the way. Planes should land today and ships are en route. This is good news and I am hoping that humanitarian efforts save lives and help communicate to loved ones outside of Haiti.

This may become a topic of discussion in classrooms – science, current events, political science, and social studies classes might all spend some time on this topic. In addition, I imagine that many volunteer groups and clubs will want to participate in the relief effort.

Here are a couple of resources you might want to use with students.

Thinkfinity Earthquake Resources

Thinkfinity.org is a resource-full web site that is funded by Verizon’s Foundation. The site provides media-rich content and links to other resources. Because the of recent eartquake in Haiti, they have just posted a feature page with many resources about earthquakes.

IRIS
“Seismic Monitor allows you to monitor global earthquakes in near real-time, visit seismic stations around the world, and search the web for earthquake or region-related information. You can also view seismograms and make dataset requests via its WILBER interface.”

US State Department
“For missing U.S. citizen family members, call 1-888-407-4747. To help with relief efforts, text “HAITI” to “90999″ and $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross, charged to your cell phone bill. Or visit InterAction to contribute. ”

WBUR

CNN
“The next question on many people’s minds after learning about the earthquake devastation in Haiti has been: How can I help?”

UNICEF
“The U.S. Fund for UNICEF is urgently appealing for emergency assistance to aid the victims of a devastating earthquake that rocked the Caribbean nation of Haiti early today.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Links added after initial post:

American Red Cross

National Geographic Forces of Nature

Discovery’s Make a Quake

image source: www.dailymail.co.uk

People often comment (positively) on my Facebook profile image and ask how I did it. I used Dumpr to create a special effect, taking a rather boring photo of myself and styling it like a Rubik’s cube.

To try this yourself, go to http://www.dumpr.net/ and choose the Rubik’s cube effect. Select an image from your computer and then click continue. Dumpr applies the special effect to your image and displays it. Options then include Save, Send as an Email, Upload to Flickr, or Save Full Size.

Here’s another example of a photo with the Rubik’s cube effect applied. This is me with two of my five sisters.

There are lots of other effects on dumpr – have fun with it!

CoSN, in conjunction with METAA, the Massachusetts state CoSN chapter, will host a CTO Clinic on April 26, 2010 at Holy Cross in Worcester. CTO Clinics provide professional development designed specifically for the school Chief Technology Officer (administrator for technology).
See the announcement at:
CoSN Events
and on METAA’s web site:
METAA Events

CoSN members from the New England region will be encouraged to attend. Remember – CoSN Institutional members receive one free registration to a Regional CTO Clinic. Join METAA & CoSN now and save the date for the clinic.

Is anyone else experiencing a direct conflict between budgeting and technology expectations? The Boston Globe has a front page story today, Schools bracing for deep cutbacks. It talks about cutting “into the marrow of the classroom,” cuts in recent years having been supplies, texts and infrastructure, and this round of reductions being more personnel-based. Against that economic picture, overlay the incredibly high expectations that school districts have of technology. With very few people (staff) we:

• Maintain computers, printers, and networks
• Upgrade computers, printers, and networks
• Conduct professional development
• Coach and support teachers
• Oversee a huge variety of data entry and data projects
• Teach people how to use the data warehouse (a Massachusetts data initiative)
• Create and manage budgets
• Model and assure adherence to purchasing regulations, software licensing, & copyright laws
• Write grants
• Lead technology planning
• Communicate with all stakeholders
• Ensure CIPA compliance
• Oversee (and sometimes design and update) the school web site
• Direct and coordinate use of electronic communications
• Make sure we are archiving those communications
• Constantly update our skills to provide leadership about using cutting edge technology
• Move our districts and teachers toward green computing and virtualization and blogs and wikis and …

…. the list can go on and on.

And yet, when the budget is being created, discussed, cut, presented, and finalized, is there a widely held recognition about the key role technology plays in your district? And if your budget does get cut, what goes?

I worry that the first things that get cut are professional development and instructional support. These are critical elements in school technology programs. Without them, technology integration suffers. The next thing is usually replacement hardware. Massachusetts has technology plan guidelines that suggest schools keep computers for five years only. I know many schools that have 8 and 9 year old computers, and budget cuts usually impact this replacement cycle in a negative way.

I think we all need to have a script – we need to figure out what makes technology critical to our core mission (in our district or in our school) and we need to be able to explain it – we need to be ready with that script to explain and defend the role of technology in education and the budget requests that need to support that role. Here are some ideas that I like to keep in mind when I am developing my budget talking points.

How are Computers Like Police Cars?
Barry Haskell, recently retired superintendent, Plymouth Public Schools, conducted a workshop of this title at a conference I attended. He had successfully campaigned for a sizeable capital allocation for Plymouth Public Schools. He shared some of the strategies he used. One was to explain to all who would listen that computers were as critical to schools as police cars were to the Public Safety Department. Schools can no longer function without computers; they are not optional; they are fundamental to our business; they are “like police cars.” This is so true. Our colleagues and students expect technology to work – everywhere, all the time. It is like plugging in a lamp – I don’t have to wonder whether the light bulb will turn on – it just does. It would help our cause if we can explain to stakeholders that the expectation is that computers and networks are as invisible and as dependable as a utility like electricity.

Technesia
At the 2009 CoSN Annual Conference I heard Bill Rust of Gartner explain technesia.
He said that technesia is when stakeholders fail to remember the value of technology in their environment. The same people who vote to reduce technology support staff will continue to expect the same level of support, just as the stakeholders who say this is the year to forego new technology (capital) spending will complain that the technology is slow. It’s much better to be able to articulate these needs at the budget table before cuts are made so that all stakeholders realize the future implications of present decisions.

Technology Aligned with Strategic Plan
There should be direct alignment and coherence between your strategic plan, student achievement goals, and technology. If there is not, technology will be relegated to peripheral, silo status, a stand-alone and separate entity within a larger system. With strong alignment, technology budget requests can be shown to be consistent with important, core plans and goals.

Technology in the Curriculum
Does your district have a clear vision of the 21st century skills that students should be mastering? Is there an understanding of what constitutes a 21st Century Classroom (or a Digital-Age Classroom)? Are there expectations and standards for teachers and students, and are they grounded in core learning experiences and goals? I know that in my current district this is an area for improvement. We have pockets of excellence and some real innovators who teach in technology-infused ways. Their students benefit from their skills, enthusiasm, knowledge, and from the fact that they embrace the tools at their disposal. We are not yet at the point where this is systemic or where we have a coherent vision school to school, level to level. To the extent that there is one, it can be used to explain and protect technology expenditures and budget items.

Other ideas?
Do you have tried and true ways that have been successful for you in positioning technology as a critical element in your school district? Something safeguarded as vital in your budget and an integral component in your strategic plan? I’d love to hear your ideas.