Hi everyone,
It was nice to meet you all on Friday, I had great day working with you all. There was some excellent thinking happening and most of you got something down for your BIG question which is a good start. Try your best to keep up with the timeline set in the ARP document to avoid falling behind. The data gathering phase is almost impossible to do retrospectively so start working on gathering that now. Let me know if there is any final adjustments of questions you have around your big question ASAP so we can all move into the next phase.
This week...
E-confidence Assessment: Your Teachers, Your Students and
Your School
dk2 will email you instruction and a link to access and
complete the E-confidence survey of your Teachers, your Students and your
School. The next part of the project is
developing your school wide ICT change plan, the results of this surveys will
help you gauge where you need to focus your attention for the plan. Review the
results with your school course partner and discuss some potential directs that
come out of the data.
Note: This survey is
a pretty long one so allow 30-60min to complete it.
Your Action Research Project
Begin stage three, the data gathering component of the ARP
this week. Remember that data can take
many shapes and forms for this project.
You are gathering data or information on your leadership. It could be...
Reading and viewing relevant professional text and recording
you reflections
Surveying or interviewing colleagues or students or parents
and asking them how well they think you are leading
Insights and advice you receive from colleagues or leaders
in your school about your own leadership
Feedback from Nikki, me or anyone else in our mentor group
about your individual progress as a leader
E-confidence Survey data
Student or staff opinion survey data
Personal reflections on your learning and leadership
eJournal entries
Other analytical data such as 360 surveys
E-Journal Entry - What I have Learned?
In this weeks E-journal entry, reflect on:
Your current feelings about your own leadership and
reactions to what you are experiencing in this course
What you are learning and what have been the most powerful
learning experiences for you this week
A significant event for you this week and how you felt and
reacted
Issues or questions
And Finally - Our discussion this week
The following links will be tweeted out by Nikki via
@dk2_econfidence on Sunday. Read and view this material and contribute to the
group discussion in the comment section below.
Remember try and get back to the discussion 2-3 times during the week to
see how the conversation is progressing.
We haven't managed a week where all of our group has participated yet so
lets make that our weekly goal.
Professional Reading 6: 21st Century Leadership - Looking
Forward
Professional Reading 7: Digital Age Leadership
Professional Reading 8: The Connected Teacher
Professional Viewing 3: Dr Alec Couros - Using Twitter
Effectively in Education
To get us started for the week respond to one of the
following prompts
In the context of 2015 and beyond, how do you think the role of the education leader is evolving?
Is your leadership "visionary"? Is it realistic to expect this of leaders?
How do school leaders work collaboratively and begin to view their roles and responsibilities and potential influence as extending beyond "their own walls?"
Try to jump in here at least 2-3 times this week and prompt
others thinking with questions, we're aiming for a discussion with all members
of our group being involved.
Cheers,
Matt
Sorry to ask what might be a dumb question but is there a version of the ARP template that allows us to type into the template electronically?
ReplyDeleteAs a Word document...Meredith has sent this out and will re-send this week Cheryl. You can then upload it as a Google doc and invite Matt and I to check it out....
DeleteThank you...I don't know much about Google Docs - a challenge ahead.
ReplyDeleteDo you ever rest?
Oh yes...although my darling friend thought it was helpful to tell me I looked tired when i met them for coffee this morning...not sure that helped
DeleteCould you cut and paste it into a word doc? I know Brianna had popped hers into a google doc for easy collaborative editing. I think the instructions for that are below the ARP template doc.
ReplyDeleteAlec Couros is fantastic. Thank you for connecting us. On the back of our Mildura day, I felt his readings/viewings were most timely. I felt he clearly articulated how to use Twitter effectively in educational leadership. It has been a professional development requirement for my staff at Tempy to be using Twitter for professional readings - but now we will emphasis the professional networking.
ReplyDeleteI particularly enjoyed: The more parts you put out on the table – your hunches – you might enlist the support from others or you might inspire better practice in others, Use the # to receiving back specific information areas, Participation versus Contribution and using social networking to contribute to the learning of others.
We have been trying to use it to stay up-to-date - a deliberate response to how we manage staying abreast of state, national and global trends when we are so very isolated and don't have teams to work with.
I am very keen to work on the principal Alec suggested with regards to making learning visible. We have a CSIRO Scientist whom we have been collaborating with to try and come up with a project for our students. We will be applying the “The Learning Project" structure as part of our concept of how we will be working with our students:
1. Learn a skill, concept or idea you know very little or nothing about but that you're interested in learning.
2. Document the learning. Write about it, video tape, audio record, whatever.
3. Consider all the sources you use to learn. Collect those resources.
4. Take an early baseline snapshot of your understand at the beginning and another one at the end. Compare and analyze.
We plan to assign the big question (due to our resources) and allow the students to identify their area of focus. The big question will be "What's the Point of Plants"
I agree Cheryl, Alec Couros was great. When I sat down to listen to him, i kept clicking all the videos of him speaking. The more I listened/watched the more I was immersed in it all.
DeleteI liked that twitter was so much more than 140 characters - add a link or a lesson plan and its so much more.
The hashtags were useful; #scichat and #sschat etc, I keep searching and seeing great resources.
I also love that we can share knowledge and everything else through twitter, not hoard it to ourselves.
Cheryl I think its great that you have your staff on it, perhaps a #tempystaff to get a conversation going through a staff meeting! I cant wait to hear how it went when we catch up next.
Previous to beginning this course I had rarely used twitter, I had an account but never really checked it. Blogging was also something that I had dabbled in but not really got too serious about.
ReplyDeleteAfter the readings and the talk from Eric I am beginning to see the real educational purpose of social media and blogs. I think that the role of leaders in the future is becoming more around collaboration and sharing ideas rather than as Alec Couros said "sitting around thinking of new ideas". Technology allows us the opportunity to network more easily.
I'm with Marty, I had Twitter but never really used it. It was set up by a friend of mine while I was at uni. Since the course I had to use it, so I am finding I am subscribing to this more and more. I have heaps of educators on there now, but of course a few magazines and TV shows! I'm still not sold 100% as it's another thing to check, so if I'm feeling like that, I can see sooooo many blockers. I'll continue to build it and find awesome things about it, then I can be more supportive of my colleagues. I've never blogged. Ever. And I still find it weird. It's like a little journal. But an academic one.
ReplyDeleteI'm yet to find the readings?! So will pop back in when I have.
I had NEVER used Twitter or blogged, so it's a real eye-opener for me! I too am beginning to see the educational value of these social media tools and the positives of being able to share resources and collaborate. I'm a bit with you Brianna on the blogging. I don't mind this type of blogging but am finding the personal reflection one a bit foreign. I will persist and make an effort to get more in mine this week. Just found the readings on twitter so will get on to reading htose over the next couple of days.
ReplyDeleteThanks for pushing me outside of my comfort zone and opening me up to the world of social media!!
At first it's really difficult to know what to tweet. I was the same as most of you guys and only used it at Uni and to follow some interesting people. I got bored though, so I stopped looking at it. Last year I starting using it to connect to really innovative educators and to share resources. This year I began to really know what I wanted to focus on as an educator and using the interesting information that I found on twitter and other places, I began to feel more comfortable posting my own thoughts on topics. It's hard to really get into it in a meaningful way though!
ReplyDeleteThere's some great sharing going on here. How do people feel about the idea of leaders needing to be "visionary" is your leadership visionary?
ReplyDeleteIt's the idea of Leading V Managing. I feel at time I manage, possibly because my vision isn't clear enough. Reflecting and developing a clearer vision will help us lead in the schools we work in
DeleteThat's a pretty honest reflection Joe, what do the results look like in a school that has strong managers without vision?
DeleteIn my school leadership team I have encouraged everyone to have a separate Twitter account for professional development. If they enjoy Twittering, they are advised to have a separate one for personal chatter. We have replaced the weekly Staff Meeting with this form of professional online learning. We also have a great feedback system in place with regards to attending professional development where they post their links, thoughts and notes from the out-of-school events they attend and share that way. So we are sharing within our team and beyond. It is no extra work - just doing work differently. Our teams change a great deal at Tempy too. At the moment I have only one other full time teacher, a music teacher who visits occasionally, a visiting MARC Van teacher (two hours weekly) and an Italian teacher who delivers from another town via Polycom. I see it as my responsibility to develop them all the best I can, so Twitter and Edmodo are working for us. I think the reason I have not made time for blogging before is because I support a school newsletter and a FB page. My thoughts and opinions are circulated within a narrow community. The idea of a Blog widens the audience range and something worth exploring.
ReplyDeleteThats a great idea to move your professional learning onto twitter Cheryl!
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ReplyDeleteIt's massively important that leadership in visionary. You need people on staff to play devils advocate and to keep things in perspective, but if your leadership isn't visionary it makes it very hard for staff that have great ideas to feel that they have a forum to develop them. It's like what they say about how education kills kids creativity. Leaders who are not visionary numb and kill the creative and divergent thinkers on staff.
ReplyDeleteI see visionary leaders as those who enable a school to move forward. Without vision The steady state ensues... What do you think Peter?
DeleteYeah I agree Matt and may I add how frustrating it is. I had a chat with one of my leaders the other day about the need to look at using social media more to make some of our tasks more simple. They looked at me like I was insane! I went to my office, drew a new plan on my wall and their no into a yes.
DeleteI was able to convince them in part due to this point from the standards in our readings under systemic improvement: Collaborate to establish metrics, collect and analyze data, interpret results, and share findings to improve staff performance and student learning.
Do you know any good strategies to help leadership become more visionary?
DeleteI think to be visionary you need to be able to think BIG, metacognition, but to think big I think you need to know the whole picture. Thying to think BIG with a narrow understanding of things means that your "BIG" thoughts are not so big. Get it? :)
DeleteFurther to my last comment... What I'm trying to say is, to improve your visionary thinking, you need to learn more about your context and try and understand what the current state of things may lead to in the future. EI To be visionary we need to fully understand the context that we're involved in.
DeleteGet them involve din your BastowLSDA coursework Peter - change without vision is like a body without a head...directionless! Try and set up times when you can meet with your leadership as an LSDA team to discuss the learnings, contemporary educational thinking....vision is key in all of it.
DeleteAnd then there's the reality - some leaders are just operational managers. Rather than letting this top you, think of ways around it.
I had never used twitter or blogger before this course but i am also beginning to see the value of it. Listening to Eric last week highlighted how using ICT in this way can be so important. I agree with Brianna and Brooke and can see the value of blogging and using twitter but I still need to learn more about how to use twitter and find great people to follow.
ReplyDeleteI also find the personal blog a bit weird but am getting used to it.
Why "weird" Liz?
DeleteHello everyone,
ReplyDeleteFinally connecting after a busy week. I am probably in a similar position to Marty and Brianna, having had a twitter account since attending a PD with Will Richardson in 2011. While I haven't yet started tweeting myself, I am 'Lurking' with the intention of taking the plunge soon. Even though I'm Lurking, it is a good opportunity to find Professional Learning and following leaders in the field of digital technologies.
What could be a possible benefit to our professional practice in sharing small snippets of information on Twitter?
DeleteBy sharing small snippets of information it is possible to make your classroom or school more transparent to the wider community.
DeleteIt can allow you to make connections with people world wide.
Gain ideas from like minded people to help when you are stuck.
I find I am doing more and more professional reading through following educational leaders like Eric and George Couros. Their posts provide some terrific ideas.
It is amazing how putting different #tags in can help people connect with you. I posted a tweet over the weekend after listening to my kids put a couple of hashtags on and within an hour had about 4 favourites, 1 retweet and 1 or 2 new followers, majority from America. It wasn't my intention but made me sit back in amazement how quickly something we put out there can be connected with from anywhere.
It's quite a buzz when you see the connection and potential of twitter like this.
DeleteI originally thought that a 140 character tweet was not enough to get any educational value, on the other hand I am very unlikely to constantly read huge slabs of information. I am finding that a quick tweet can trigger some thinking and reflection.
ReplyDelete140 characters really makes your think carefully about what you want to say. I actual like it when tweets have links. Short tweets which are often quotes can real make you think/reflect/analyse.
DeleteI think this is one of my favourite things about twitter. The restriction on the character limit and how that makes me think about what I'm trying to say. I agree with Alec Curous when he says Twitter is a new form of literacy. It's such a skill to be able to convey a meaning in so little info.
Delete