TML Wk 29: Professional Online Social Networks

My post this week relates to Professional Online Social Networks. In response to this I will be reflecting on my own experiences as an early adopter of social media and the opportunities this has created for me professionally. I will discuss this considering Jay and Johnson's (2002) reflective model to unpack it. This takes the form of a three step reflection process that is descriptive, comparative and critical.

Descriptive

I consider myself to be a connected educator and early adopter of social media for professional use.  I have documented this journey, as evidenced in several blog posts and in particular this early one from 2009 on my top 3 tips for getting connected online.  In this post I suggest using "new" web 2.0 tools such as opening an RSS reader account, using social book marking (Delicious) and starting connections using Twitter! I also refer to my developing Professional Learning Network (a PLN) which back then was a very new term and predominately spread throughout New Zealand.  Now, some 10 years later, my PLN is global and these digital connections I can call upon because of the on-going nurturing of interactions via social media, making the vast physical distance of global connection virtual and compact in the palm of your hand (on your device).

Comparative

My experiences parallel the video produced from Office of Ed Tech (2013), shared for our week 29 course work which discusses how being connected is one of the number one tools for being a 21st Century Educator, the isolation of the classroom (or school environment) is no more through the magnification of the transformative power of professional learning via technology (social media).  At the time of writing this post their was limited responses in our cohort survey tool to compare.  What I can say from my own observation of being connected over the last decade is that the use of Facebook for professional social networking has increased with the use of "groups" and of interest over this time the development of #hashtags and frequency of #twitterchats to share professional knowledge.

Critical

As an advocate for using professional online social networks, I reflect back on this 2013 Ignite presentation that I shared in which I spoke about being connected, disconnected and reconnected.  

Ignite Talk | Justine Driver from Emerging Leaders on Vimeo.

It takes a lot to nurture your online social media profile and connections. The rewards of doing so open a world of professional growth that I would have never had opened if it weren't for social media/technology. I would recommend that anyone wanting to start being a more connected educator to follow the simple "Follow 5, Find 5, Take 5" method suggested by Whitaker et al., (2015) as a way nurturing a PLN.  As an employer, being a connected educator is an important factor in considering whether a candidate is suitable and I do review the online presence of applicants.  One of the key points of difference I have in my tool belt when going for leadership roles (I believe) is that my employer knows that it isn't just my skills, and knowledge that they are employing, but that of my wider collective and connective PLN too, which I can access readily!  

Opportunities afforded to be by being connected (& associated blog links/video):

• Presenting at the National Aspiring Principals Conference 2013 as alumni
• Presenting for TeachMeetNZ at the Festival of Education 2014
• Attending the Google Innovator Academy 2014 (becoming a Google Certified Innovator and Educator)
• Being on the leadership team for GEGNZ (Google Educator Group NZ)
• Organising the 2015 Twitter Dinner in Auckland
• 2015 Presenter for the Connected Learning Advisory session "Are you a connected leader?"
• #SparkshopAKL 2016 & 2017
• Being invited to be a coach at the 2017 Google Innovator Academy in Sydney
• Being invited to attend the GEG Asia Pacific leaders forum in Singapore for Google for Edu.
• Being a mentor for Google Innovators from the Colorado 16 cohort & Sydney 17 cohort

Word count: 649

References

Emerging Leaders, (2013) Ignite Talk by J. Driver. [video file].  Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/69428288

Driver, J (n.d). Blog posts retrieved from http://digitallearningnz.blogspot.com/

Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002). Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.
Office of Ed Tech. (2013, Sep 18). Connected Educators. [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=216&v=K4Vd4JP_DB8
Whitaker, T., Zoul, J., & Casas, J. (2015). What connected educators do differently. New York, NY: Routledge.

Are you a Connected Leader?

The Connected Learning Advisory (CLA) runs webinars each month, and I was asked to be part of a  Webinar on and for "Connected Leaders" on the 21 October.   The aim of the CLA is to provide interactive opportunities for sharing practice, discussion of key ideas and connection to experts and other educators.

What a great opportunity I thought to give back to the education sector and contribute some gems on helping the sector connect. The other connected leaders were Marnel van der Spuy, Stephen Lethbridge, Rachel Boyd and Annemarie Hyde and together we answered the following:

• What does a “connected leader” look like ?
• In your role as a connected leader, what do you do to support/model/advocate/facilitate e-learning ?
• What attributes do you think you need most, to make this role successful?
• How would you encourage a reluctant teacher/ leader to get connected?

Here is the link to the streaming video: https://coreedu.adobeconnect.com/p1oarmgeqsp/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal

#EdBlogNZ Challenge Week 2

#NotAtULearn15 - Get thinking Deeper!
So this week's challenge I've decided to do a bit of a combo and while I've done a few posts already on events that I've participated in during #ULearn15, for the majority of the week I've not been at ULearn15!  On the Friday morning there was a panel discussion that was streamed live facilitated by +Derek Wenmoth that I watched firstly on my phone then Chromecast to our 50" TV in the comfort of my lounge!  I love how Pam Hook challenged the status quo and didn't necessarily go along with the "group-think".  I'll add more detail of my points of highlight (when I find the notes I hand wrote at the time of watching)... watch this space



Here is the Twitter feed from the discussion that I kept an eye on while watching the video:

Leading Change with Digital Technologies

I have been instrumental with change leadership and implementing digital technologies across the curriculum at our school.  Earlier in the year I was asked by the Te Toi Tupu consortium who have the LwDT contract to record my journey implementing change in this field.  The video below was used for face to face regional meetings around the country and an online webinar for leaders on the LwDT contract.

Putting Faces on the Data: What Great Leaders Do!

As a member of NZEALS it was great to be able to go to a seminar day led by Dr. Lyn Sharrat on Putting Faces on the Data.  Dr. Lyn Sharrat is a high calibre educator from Ontario who works closely with Michael Fullan (who I really respect the work of).  Their book Putting the Faces on the Data and subsequent seminar today was affirming with the practices that we use at our school to ensure that all students are making progress.  Dr. Lyn Sharrat overheard me sharing our practices and asked for me to share with the whole audience - so this was very positive and reassuring.

Our group wondered whether there was an acronym for FACES and we came up with: Facing Achievement Changes Every Student or as Dr Lyn Sharrat said, although she hasn't ever thought of an acronym it is about Front And Centre Every Student - being at the heart of all learning organisations.

I was one of the few people tweeting the learning from today (below are some of the tweets, collated into a Storify) - I also look forward to reading the book.

Our GAFE Launch >>>3, >>2, >1 - GOOGLE !

Wow! What a term it has been - one term down into our Google Apps for Education and it's really transformed learning opportunities for our students in the senior team.
Part of our strategic roll out of learning with digital technologies saw us at the end of term 1 having a fantastic Chromebook and Google Apps for Education launching day in our senior school.  The Board of Trustees and PTA generously have supplied each of our five senior classes with ten Chromebooks.  All students have a GAFE account for their learning and teachers are using the Hapara teacher dashboard to manage and access student accounts.

The Chromebooks have been cleverly stored in lockable filing cabinets with dish racks as a cheap solution for security and storage.  Each Chromebook has been set up to only accept school domain log ins and we have created a sticker as a deterrent for would-be thieves to alert them to this fact.

Some of the kids reflections from Room 19 using VoiceThread of our launch:

I've had a few schools visit regarding how I went about deploying the Chromebooks and this has been some of the resources and steps I took:

GAFE parent letter: http://goo.gl/vnXjGB

Google Kids launch presentation: http://goo.gl/AYQqt3

Google Parent's meeting presentation: http://goo.gl/NmWQRK
VLN discussion on CMC set up: http://goo.gl/wSQvZb

Not used yet but link from +FionaGrant  to investigate Synergyse launches free interactive training for the Google Apps Admin Console - See more at: http://blog.synergyse.com/2014/07/synergyse-launches-admin-console.html#sthash.JuY9F1Ez.jsN5mQ64.dpuf

No point getting Chromebooks without paying the extra Chrome Management console $39 (approx I think).  You get whoever you are purchasing the Chromebooks through to get the licences for the CMC.  Then when you initially log into the Chromebook you set the wifi settings first and then Ctrl + e to enrol the chromebook on your domain (with your domain login is fine).

The process I took and timings for setting up 55 (initally) for the Chromebooks:

1. Got a parent helper to label all devices with the room and the date we got them.  As each class had 10 we labelled them 19/1 through to 19/10 and then date was just 201404.  She also labelled the corresponding box with the computer number (19/1-10) and these were on a Google Sheet. (This took about 2 hours)
2. Then we plugged in a bar scanner and with the Google Sheet opened with the class Chromebook numbers opened (in order) was able to bar -code scan the outside of the box to get the serial number of each Chromebook off quickly.  This took only 5-10 minutes - initially I had the parent helper tediously typing in the serial number but this ended up being the quickest and accurate.
3. Our TTS guy then opened them up and connected them to our school wifi logged into the internet - we have all our school owned devices set to this separate WLAN so that the kids didn't need to authenticate each time they and enrolled each device.  Not sure how long this took him but it was just on one of his scheduled fortnightly visits.
4. The Chromebooks were boxed up ready for the kids to unwrap!
5. I spent about 2 hours just going through the settings on the GAFE admin domain turning things on and off (as per list on VLN at your discretion). I also had a play around with a couple of the apps that I wanted the kids to be able to have deployed to the devices "typing club" was essential as we have such a long domain name to log in " @pakurangaheights.school.nz" so hoped that the kids might use this app in a self directed learning way.

Setting up the GAFE logins/hapara:

Kiwi Schools did this process for us, however I was inpatient and pushed them along!  I had spoken to Fiona Grant (Manaiakalani cluster) about what needed to be put onto the .csv file and got it prepared and sent off to Kiwi Schools who then uploaded it to Hapara - essentially you prepare 2 .csv files one with the teachers and room numbers and one with the kids information.  Once it's uploaded in the correct format Hapara then add access to the teachers, who can then print out the class info with the kids log in and intial password.

Team Collaboration for Teaching as Inquiry

I often get asked what does "teaching as inquiry" actually look like since this was the focus of my thesis work in 2011. While at my school we have adopted a teaching as inquiry approach since the launch of the revised NZC my current work has lead our staff to review the way that we work together in order to really focus on teacher practices that will have a positive impact to raise student outcomes. This year we changed the way that individual teachers evaluated their termly reading, writing and mathematics. I had a concern that teachers found the evaluation process a waste of time when I would hear comments like "no one reads them" so why do we do them? Some teachers did them for the sake of doing them but not viewed the process as one to reflect and transform their practice. I called a meeting of the team leaders and facilitated a conversation about what they thought of our evaluations, what they liked about them (or not) and if they were effective in actually having an impact on teacher practice to reflect on their actions that would change the way they viewed their professional activity. After the team leaders all had a turn sharing their ideas I could summarise that the system wasn't working and proposed a new way of working. Together we decided that a team approach would be the best option and came up with a possible template together that was agreed upon. 

We decided to use a Google Doc that staff members could collaborate on and analyse together as a team. After the first round of evaluations at the end of term 1, early in term 2 the team leaders reviewed the new system. All team leaders agreed that there were merits, better ownership of the team data and targets, putting the % of students to reach the target into actual numbers to get students "across the line" to meet the target was real, and that teachers didn't feel that they were alone in their endeavours to raise outcomes, the collegial approach seemed to be working Team leaders discussed that rather than doing evaluations at the end of terms they would do them as assessments were done and being updated (in reality it still ends up being at the end of a term). At the beginning of term 3 we reviewed the template again based on the ERO report on Accelerating the Progress of Priority Learners in School's report was published. As a team we identified that the evaluations in the current form were effective and to make the practice highly effective we would add in the changes since the last round of evaluations. We identified that staff were easily able to identify the gaps that students had, but weren't adding the specific strategies that they would try to see if it had an impact of student outcomes, what were the teachers going to try that was different? Here is a current example (with the names modified to reduce identification)

   

 In section A teachers choose a colour and record the students names and add the totals at the bottom of each well below, below, at and above section for their class. Students on the special needs register and receiving support are also identified by highlighting or * so that at a glance the curriculum leaders, team leaders and SENCO can see if support is required (if none already allocated). As a team they then add the totals and write a statement of how many students are achieving in relation to the National Standard targets and the shifts that need to occur. In section B (added after the ERO reading at the beginning of term 3) staff now have to describe the progress that has been made since the last round of evaluations and try to pinpoint what deliberate acts have caused this shift - what did they do differently. There is still a little bit of work across most teams to complete this new section, however we have made a great start. In section C the team work together to identify gaps in student knowledge and the strategies that staff will employ to accelerate progress - not just for the well below and below students but for the at and above students also. 

The team leaders ensure that the evaluations are completed before the school holidays so that the curriculum leaders for reading, writing and mathematics can review the data and see what professional learning they can provide for the team or individual teachers to improve outcomes. As DP for curriculum and assessment I then work with aggregating the shifts over each point the data has been collected and tally the information (example) I give print out a copy of all the evaluations for the curriculum leaders and also display the information in our staff professional learning room. The intention with the printed out tables being in a public space is so that staff may browse the data of other year levels to check how students that they have previous had, have progressed over time. If a teacher has identified a child they have had previously they might share some insights with the current teacher of strategies that they found had worked for the particular child. In this way the data and progress of all students is monitored and staff work collegially to take ownership of improving outcomes for all students.

Next steps: moving forward in 2014 we are going to continue this practice, however we are deciding on how this will look for us with the implementation of anniversary reporting.  At present we report in year group cohorts, so the move to After 1/2 &3 year at school anniversaries is leading us to think creatively how this might look next year.

Inspiring future leaders: a reflection on NAPP

Last year I was part of the National Aspiring Principals' Programme or NAPP.  This programme is for senior leaders who aspire to become principals in the near future. 

The focus of the NAPP is on developing adaptive, culturally responsive, digitally literate leaders through inquiry learning, and building their understanding of the research base around leadership. The delivery of the programme ranges from a variety of face to face small group work where akonga (learners) share their developing leadership inquiry over the year, a regional day, a national hui and  four online modules focus on school operating systems in the New Zealand context and show how to link those systems effectively to student achievement.  Using a mix of shared online interaction and individualised self-managed learning, the modules explore: school contexts, resourcing, personnel and employment, and strategies and planning.  I found the delivery of the programme to be very useful and complimented my daily work as a deputy principal.  I particularly enjoyed the face to face time in our smaller professional learning groups where each akonga shared their leadership inquiry and how this progressed over the year.  The opportunity to connect with akonga at the regional and national days meant that you could put a face to the online connections that you made through the Virtual Learning Network (VLN) and meet many inspiring facilitators.

This year I was priviledged to be asked to represent the 2012 akonga and return to address the 2013 NAPPsters at the National Hui, held in Auckland. I was asked to present a five minute talk to the close to 200 participants with a critical reflection on my experiences.  Leading with moral purpose and reflecting on ones practice is at the forefront of any leader if there is to be personal and organisational growth.  I discussed how being involved with NAPP led me to be more culturally responsive as a leader and reignite the need to be a digital resident and connected leader.

I was also asked to present two smaller round table events on my passion for implementing Teaching as Inquiry as a model of self and school improvement when staff view inquiry as a professional way of being.  Both these sessions were well attended and the link to this work can be found on my wikispace.

A Punch of Professional Development

Personalising professional learning to a whole staff is always tricky as 'one size never fits all' yet over the last year I've participated in several forms of professional learning that has catered to a wide group (all at once!). This has taken the form of "smackdowns" and unconference-style learning experiences. Smackdowns are small punches of information where tips, trick, ideas and wonderings are shared. In many cases a Google Presentation is set up and people are invited to create a slide prior to the event, when the event occurs participants must be prepared to get up in front of the audience and share their slide/knowledge. We have used the concept of a smackdown to continue weekly professional learning for our school wide blogging strategy. Each Monday at our morning briefing staff are encouraged to share 2-3 ideas about what they have found out about blogging. This way the learning is coming from the 'just in time' needs of the staff and staff see others taking a lead. The person with the designation of eLeader doesn't always have to be the source of new inspiration, staff can go to others who have shared or tried ideas. Using a smackdown has been a successful option for us - here is our weekly smackdown of growing ideas around blogging: An unconference format has also proven to be effective. This year I have attended the Emerging Leaders unconference called Ignition in the April school holidays, and at the beginning of this term Educamp Auckland using this format too. Usually when you attend a conference you are aware of who is presenting and what workshops are on offer for you to attend, with an unconference attendees turn up to the event and "post-up" workshops they are prepared to share. This way attendees create the professional learning that is to happen based on the needs, wants and ideas of the group of attendees that are in the room. It sources the collective knowledge and wisdom of the many to tailor learning. Lastly, I have found a hybrid approach to the smackdown/unconference and termed the phrase "sparkshop". I recently had the opportunity to organise a professional learning afternoon for our local eLearning network where we had 120 attendees. We started the session with a smackdown and then broke into sparkshops - 20 minutes of inspiration to spark ideas in attendees to go and try in their classrooms before the end of the term. Unlike an unconference where we would have been unsure who would be prepared to share, we approached 8 keen eLearners across the 15 network schools to present. These attendees made their contribution slide to a Google Presentation and then link their sparkshop so that everyone can view the presentations - attendees got to attend 2 sparkshops in our afternoon session. Here is our eLearning network sparkshop presentation: Finally, it's no point attending professional learning without a bias for action. Attendees were asked to fill in a pledge postcard and to record one thing that they will try between attending the eLearning network professional learning smackdown and sparkshops before the end of the term. These were collected and then school leaders will give back out in a few weeks time to see whether attendees have followed through on their pledge. Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini - success is not the work of one, but the work of many.