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The problem of talking about the new web: you have to do it, too

I do hope Stephen Heppell responds to Bill Kerr's points on his Australian keynote speech, points that sum up something with which I, as a conference presenter, become increasingly uncomfortable:

1) An important international expert arrives from overseas to tell us that local knowledge is the most important thing;
2) We sit in lecture mode hearing that the lecture is no longer important;
3) The limitations of web2.0 apps are not mentioned. There was no context either historical (computer science) or historical, about all the knowledge discovered before computers were invented.

When I'm giving a talk I'm nearly always within the constraints of the organiser: "can you please come and give us a talk at this time slot", they ask. I then go on to lecture on how important it is to collaborate, but hope, at least, that collaboration will take place after the initial lecture.

The extended conference experience - not just a lecture
In my classroom I would start with 2-5 minutes 'lecture', setting the context, before the carousel of collaboration would begin for the rest of the 50 minute period. On the same scale, if I'm giving a one hour lecture you can expect the collaboration to go on for at least ten weeks thereafter (one hour a week responding to the concerns of locals who attended the talk). An essential part and package of my offer is the blog, and that people have the courage to at least email or leave comments on the 'lecture post'.

This both shows that local knowledge and skills are indeed the most important element but within the context of a global communications space, hence my professional relationships with teachers in New Zealand and the States being, arguably, more in-depth than my professional relationships with non-blogging teachers in Scotland.

The final point, about historical and cultural positioning of new technologies, is vital. That's why one of the talks I enjoy giving the most is Why Scotland's Been Blogging For 5 Million Years, applicable to most countries in showing that this is less a revolution, as a reformation. It's not so much new, as reminding people of what it means to be a human being, what makes us tick, and bringing that back into learning. These things include connecting to others, conversing, asking questions and giving answers. None of that, of course, is achievable in a traditional lecture format, but possible in my 'extended lecture' notion. If only more keynoters picked up discussions on their blog (if they had one of them, if... ;-)

If you haven't seen or heard Stephen speak you can catch him at the Scottish Learning Festival video website, in one of many videos captured for the Learning about Learning series or in the new Journey For Excellencedownload him onto your iPod for the trip home tonight.
site (search for 'Heppell'). You can even
Enjoy - it's good stuff - but you may have to do some of your own thinking to work out how it applies to you. And I can't think of anything good teachers would enjoy more than thinking about how to do their stuff better.

(Wo)man of Web 2.0 Skypecast

  Taking part in a brill Skype debate, WOW2.0 
  Originally uploaded by Edublogger

I had a ball this afternoon, October 10th, sitting as a Scottish educator in New Zealand debating with teachers working in 'yesterday', October 9th, about tomorrow's opportunities. If only the time difference really did allow us to gaze into the crystal ball...

The Women of Web 2.0 invited David Jakes and me to their Tuesday night shindig of a debate, with over 60 educators from all over the planet tuning in to the live Skypecast 'radio show' and chipping in on the chat zone. It was great to see Neil Winton back home chipping in with some great wee points about the superb work he's doing, helping to back up some of what David and I were saying, and I was indebted to Suzie in my new 'home' of NZ for relaying the chat over to me, as I sat in a local high school which wouldn't quite let me get into that (but which was great at allowing YouTube, Flickr etc etc).

We covered a lot of ground, but the main things that I was trying to get across were:

• We must make sure that we call a spade a spade when dealing with new technology. Pandering to 'baby speak' when it comes to new technologies will only delay the inevitable; better that educators accept the 'jargon' that their teens see as normal vocabulary.
• It's easy to assume that all teachers have an equal understanding of educational jargon; we don't. Blogs, wikis and podcasts might be unsavoury vocabulary for many educators, used as a way to escape having to learn new skills. What about assessment for learning, assessment as learning, inquiry skills, rich tasks, cooperative learning... For many educators these still remain meaningless jargon, but arguably are even more worthy of attention than blogs, wikis and podcasts. At least with the former, the latter begin to make sense.
• Small agile nations seem to be doing best in the education world. What can big nations do to become more like exciting energised startups than large corporations?

I think you'll be able to download the full hour long debate from the Women of Web 2.0 wiki soon. The full audio and text from the chat is available

On the leading edge: some ideas on managing huge technological change in education

Four factors for leading change at the leading edge

A few months ago I spoke at the National College for School Leadership, keynoting the ICT for Primary Leaders of the Future part of the course. The talk was based around the five "usual suspects", the factors I believe are vital to comprehend in order to engage our learners to their full potential.

At the end, however, I outlined four challenges for these future leaders of change in the schools system. I don't know how many leaders read my blog, but if you do or know someone who is, then feel free to send this as far and wide as you think it's worth. I think there are some messages a few more leaders could take on board.
If you want the audio and slides you can view the video right here: (I've put a super high quality version here: 28.4 MB, higher quality, m4a/Quicktime)

1. Anyone can know How, but you can only know Why by being In
There is a new literacy set, at the very least an adaptation of the one we most commonly use, which we need to be working on with our students. Teaching these is notoriously difficult, eliciting from students a haphazard affair with more or less success depending on the questioning and personal literacy skills of the teacher. I think if we are to think about creating a new literacy framework which includes media literacy there are three things leaders have to understand:

• Firstly is the greatest skill of them all: know when to teach, know when to stand back and listen. You're a leader, not an expert in everything. You're likely not an expert in social media to the same extent as some of your staff and certainly your students. If someone else can do it better, let them explain how it works. Paraphrasing some arguments you don't really understand will only make people feel the message is that little bit weaker, and those who feel they should be there leading things, too, will feel that their ideas have not been recruited (Corante). (Great managers teach (when they should; Lifehack).
• Second, you've got to participate if you are going to engage with others in the the ways social media and gaming can help improve the education of our young people. It's not good enough for leaders of change to pay lip service to these seismic changes - the students, for one, will smell you out for the lack of interest in the thing that interests them the most. Do you want to give an internet safety talk? Get yourself on Bebo for eight weeks and see where the real dangers lie (and they're not where you expect them). Going to tell us how much potential Facebook has for education? Not until you've been on there long enough to see where the potential really lies.
  
  Importantly, if you are going to encourage this in your school you've got to, for a while, be the most regular commenter on school blogs, Flickr streams and wikis. Participate, participate, participate. If you do it, the sharing culture you're looking for will largely take care of itself.

2. Death by risk aversion?
Does this describe your school or management environment? The phrase comes from Kathy Sierra's post of the same name. She uses the analogy of the Roomba process, whereby good things happen to those that don't plan it that way. We can only go one step at a time before seeing what the next step might be. Planning out all the steps in advance means risking a loss of creative spark that creates the next achievement, that unturns a stone you hadn't noticed before.

Hugh asks if you are "owned by Wall Street", if you are only as good as your last financial quarter and anything else means that silly social media project you're doing will be killed. The notion that a school's aims be dictated by a private bank of investors is abhorrent to most yet, every time a leader starts to avert risk, taking into account only the negatives, it's equivalent to being run by a bunch of faceless investors.

Who is telling the leader not to do something? Who is saying that it's too risky? The thing is, no-one probably is. It's rather the expectation that the faceless investors (parents who don't know about the idea yet, press, staff who only engage when they are complaining) will revolt. On the contrary, the more control exercised by a leader before an idea finds its wings the less trust they will garner in the longer term from their staff (link to Dave Weinberger).

There are some symptoms you can look out for before it's too late. The blog post that you write is only the stub of a conversation, remember, so open up the comments to let the conversation be in a place that you can see and in which you can participate. Not opening the comments up to the public is a common leadership decision and, on closer interrogation, it's because there is a genuine fear of fast feedback. Leaders like time to prepare their justifications, even when the walls are falling down around them. Blog comments are just a little too publicly fast.

If you don't open the comments then nobody will say bad stuff on your blog, but they will be saying it elsewhere. You just won't know about it.

3. Spread the word
Schools are normally great places for viruses to spread of both the medical and vocal variety, yet when good stuff happens it's hard to get the word to every kid, parent, aunt and uncle in the school community. The role of leaders in spreading the word about good news, through technology in particular, cannot be underestimated, yet some leaders have debatable communication skills at the best of times (think of the last PowerPoint you witnessed from one of your leaders).

There will always be glowing examples of open, online communicators in leadership, the first or early adopters, yet they may not take on the next stage in the process - employing the ideas of the other early adopters around them, finding cohesion. East Lothian's Head of Education provides one example where leadership in online communication from the top has helped reduce the permissions-based culture for those 'underneath', although there are still some pockets where permission is clearly felt necessary.

One of the ways to approach this is like a marketer. Take a read, for example, of Dan and Chip Heath's Made To Stick:

• Simple
  Have a single clear mission by finding the core of what you do and ridding the noise and chaos that no doubt currently surrounds it.
• Unexpected
  Putting a man on the moon before the end of the 60s seemed like science fiction, not science. Break down misconceptions of what is and is not possible.
• Concrete
  Don't abstract - put forward notions with which no-one can quibble: Man, Moon, Decade.
• Credible
  The man on the moon idea came from a President's mouth. Leaders have to lead by making informed unexpected decisions. They have to know the detail of what is being proposed, too, which means becoming more expert than they have been in new domans.
• Emotional
  Appeal to the aspirations and emotions of people, and take off that analytical hat. Does your education leader want your region to be the best education region in the world? If not, why not?
• Story
  The man on the moon story is all about overcoming obstacles, and has inspired many other stories. Make sure you have a story to tell if you want to lead others with you.

The curse of knowledge is often a reason for leaders obfuscating and missing the point. As Dan says, a  modern day manager's/leader's take on the man on the moon would read something like:

"Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry, using our capacity for technological innovation to build a bridge towards humanity's future."

Hmm.

"We're going to put a man on the moon within a decade".

I know which one I prefer. Has anyone done "100 innovative ideas in 100 days" at their school yet?

Learn how to communicate effectively, without the meeting request and memorandum (think about Google's 20% time and efficient creative meetings). Learn how to present this stuff to people. Lots of people know the stuff, but very few have worked out a way to explain it succinctly in a way that people can feel and use themselves.

4. Sustainable energy?
From Andy Hargreaves at last year's Building Learning Communities (available as vodcast):

Sustainability: "Sustainability does not simply mean that it can last (£). It addresses how particular initiatves can be developed without compromising the development of otheres in the surrounding environment, now and in the future."

K-12 Conference on Teaching and Technology: speakers announced

The K-12 Online Conference is a free online conference over two weeks in Autumn, about teaching, pedagogy and technology. It is just as relevant to complete novices to some of the latest technology as it is for those looking for something more juicy to get their teeth into. And, as the name suggests, anyone from Kindergarten to the end of formal schooling can take part.

I knew I wasn't going to have time to do justice to a talk at the K-12 Conference this year, despite the fun and interactions I had last year, so I'm looking forward to having some more time perhaps to hear what others are saying.

This year's lineup has just been announced over on the official blog and I can only strongly recommend downloading a few of the sessions or even taking part in some of the Elluminate interactive sessions if you can spare the time:

The 2007 conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26 of 2007, and will include a preconference keynote during the week of October 8. The conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries."

Sounds suitably ludic for my tastes!