Reflecting About Tech PD at My School

I recently read this article from eSchool News about 4 common mistakes made when delivering tech PD, which made me reflect on how these 4 mistakes happen in my school.  Have a read through this article and see if anything in it strikes home with you - http://www.eschoolnews.com/2016/11/30/tech-based-pd/?all.

In summary, the 4 mistakes (as I interpret them for my reality here at my school, particularly in the secondary school where I work) should be addressed or considered in the following ways:

1. There is not enough support of Ed Tech to do our jobs most effectively, when teacher's priorities are focussed on their classes/students/curriculum.  In my school, Ed Tech is relatively new and has not had a very positive history/track record over the past two years so it seems to be way down on the list of priorities.  We need help from senior admin and through the strategic plan of the school to make tech integration a long-term priority.  Time and resources need to be dedicated to Ed Tech in order to make change, which involves changing the culture of the school as a whole.  And we all know that changing a school culture can be a long and difficult process.  Without the full support and backing of school leadership, this becomes an almost impossible job.  We are all in this together!
2. Offering tech PD outside of the school day just doesn’t work.  I have experienced this in my previous 3 schools and it still applies here.  When I completed my Action Research project for my masters program in my last school, much of the research supported teacher efficacy is directly linked to training/PD being conducted within the regular school day.  PD that is relegated to after school, on weekends, or optionally during lunch/break times might have some initial success but eventually will fail due lack of teacher engagement.  The common argument of “not enough time to do this” will always be there, and we can’t take away planning time or “free” time (like lunch) to do this.  Training and PD has to be regularly planned/scheduled, and preferably differentiated too.  That is why I have found Speed-Geeking activities to be more effective, well received, and showed greater overall growth across the faculty than traditional "coffee mornings" or "tech lunches".  
3. Do not rely on online or video-based self-guided training – it will fail over time as it falls into disuse and becomes out-of-date.  There is a time and place for its use, but it should not be the only means of delivery of training/pd across the school.  I created a bank of "how to" MacOSX videos when we went through the platform change process with the entire faculty and student body.  Initially, I used these videos to differentiate learning and transitioning to the Mac for faculty depending on their experience with OSX.  This appealed to some of the teachers with some experience and who wanted to learn on their own, and to most of the more advanced users who really only needed to fill in some details of the set up of our school machines.  When the rollout moved to the entire student body the following August, I again used the same bank of videos to differentiate student-led training workshops for about 100 of 300 students.  Since then, the videos have been used repeatedly with new students coming into the school laptop program as part of their tech orientation.  Now that some years have passed, I would be surprised if these same videos are still being used as they would be very out-of-date.  Video training definitely has its uses, so my takeaway here is not to rely on it as the sole means of delivering PD.
4. Forcing the integration of technology into the curriculum also does not work – many teachers (especially in the HS who teach content heavy curriculum/courses) need to see the “value added” or the benefits of doing something with technology first, before they will engage with it. The same argument of “I don't have the time” will always come up and can be properly translated into “it's not a high priority”.  So how do you change this mindset?  How can you change the priority level for teachers?  Part of the answer relates back to #1 above where Ed Tech integration needs to be a school-wide priority which is ongoing.  But be careful here - do not connect integration to teacher evaluation or offering contracts as this will undermine why teachers are doing anything with integration at all (it will be seen as just jumping through hoops or checking off boxes as part of the job).  Instead, integration should be directly connected to professional learning, growth, sharing and collaboration through connecting training/PD to professional goal setting, professional learning communities, and support/coaching/training in and outside of the school.

How do you think these 4 common mistakes apply to your school and your personal/professional reality and perspective?  Did the article make you think about PD in a different way?

Redefining Search!

Note - this post was originally written back in May/June but never published for a variety of complex and personal reasons mainly having to do with my health . . . but all is good now!


May 2016 - I meant to write this posting about a month ago, but things have gotten a little bit away from me with moving back to Asia for next school year. Too much to do with so little time left in Poland before we move on from here. On a fast train heading south to Kraków gives me a bit of time to reflect, write and just think . . .


After attending Learning2 Africa in Johannesburg in the fall, I have been thinking how I needed to alter my approach in the HS towards teaching research skills to students.  For the last number of years we have taught and reviewed research skills with all G9 students as they entered the HS (through a series of projects, lessons and workshops culminating in a large, personal research project in their English class) and in G11 as students began the Extended Essay process. Changes this year in faculty, curriculum, and the approach to launching the EE have resulted in most of this work with research skills falling away. After attending Jeff Utech's extended session at L2Jo'burg on research skills, I knew I had to do something different right away.

Rather than continuing with the model of periodically working with whole grades of students, I shifted my focus to the faculty. My reining was simple - up-skill the entire faculty to give them the same toolbox of resources, techniques and strategies and they will in turn use, model and train all students in the same way, in every grade and every class. What I developed was a differentiated workshop targeted at individual departments/disciplines which worked through how research skills have changed with Internet-enabled mobile devices in the hands of every student. As teachers, if we are still asking questions which can easily be Googled, then we are asking the wrong kinds of questions of our students. Are your students trained in how to conduct a really deep and targeted search, or to cope with conducting effective research when they do not have any search terms?

To answer these questions, I put teachers into research scenarios which changed their thinking about research.  When you have no search terms to begin with, research ceases being a solitary act. It naturally evolves into a collaborative and creative process involving critical thinking and communication - the 4 C's of 21st Century Learning. For example, in the workshop I had teachers work in small groups and try to answer the following questions about this image: what is shown in the photo and where was it taken?

Do you know what this is?  And where was this photo taken?  [can you figure it out without using Image Search?]

Individually, most teachers had no idea where to start with such a task. In their small groups some started discussing what they thought it might be and what search terms they could use to describe the image. All sorts of search terms were tried ranging from "golden dog poo" to "swirls" and to "golden ratio spirals". Other groups tried to work around the task to find the actual photo on the web, or to use Google Image Search to find similar images, but I did not provide them a copy of the image to work with. The most successful groups spent a lot of time talking and collaborating about what they thought the image might be, before jumping into any searches. These groups hit upon really important search terms like "Buddha" and "statue" through their collective knowledge, which they used to quickly used to figure out that these are the top knots on the back of Buddha's head at Wat Pho (the reclining Buddha) in Bangkok. Every time I did this workshop with another department team, they all agreed that this exercise was not only fun and exciting, but very thought provoking. As we are now an MYP candidate school, this exercise placed teachers in an open inquiry process which was unfamiliar for some.

Some of the groups who started with an easier task wanted to try the more challenging images rather than finishing the rest of the workshop. Simple testimony of how much they enjoyed working on this. The remainder of the workshop focused on sets of resources and alternative sites for research, compiled by discipline.  If you are interested, you can use the following shared doc as a resource with your faculty or students.

Harder - Who are these women (what "people" are they)?  And what does "what they are doing" mean?

Following the ripples and impact of these workshops was really interesting. It was great to hear about how teachers took my materials back to use with their classes for ongoing research projects, and how students could immediately employ these techniques and resources for their projects. Other teachers still required more support  and booked me to work with their classes - even small steps forward are still making forward progress.  One tech-hesitant teacher took the initiative to present these skills and resources to their class who were engaged with an large-scale IB Diploma Internal Assessment involving deep research into a topic of the student's choice. This teacher still felt that they could not completely help all of the students in their class with their research so I was brought in to work with a few particular students. I ended up working with two students in particular who were truly "stuck" in their reach process and it was really gratifying to help them get unstuck, and then immediately pass on some more advanced techniques to their friends . . . Students teaching students . . . it doesn't get better than that!

Another teacher had an epiphany in the workshop, and took my exercise with open, collaborative inquiry revolving around an image, and adapted it directly into their lesson . . . the next day! This teacher had been struggling with a unit centered on the Renaissance and the rise of religious art and its symbolism. The lesson changed from a lecture and discussion about a few important pieces of art, to open inquiry process where small groups of students truly looked at and analyzed a piece art to discover its importance, symbolism, and hidden meaning. This teacher told me with great enthusiasm about how the class were looking and thinking deeply about art for the first time . . . in years . . . and how much they enjoyed the process of discovery.  Huge win, and a big step forward.

Epilogue (October 2016) - a number of months have passed by since I wrote this, plus I have changed schools and continents. At my new school in Singapore, not a whole lot is different and I have discovered that I need to take the same approach with faculty. So Redefining Search is being rebooted and recycled, and relaunched with both faculties that I work with (my new school has two separate systems/curricula under one roof).  It's interesting to think about how the "students are digital natives" thinking has really taken hold all over the world, and how teachers don't often consider how student's search skills (and their own) need upgrading.  Taking this approach of up-skilling the entire faculty in order to reach the most students (hopefully all of them ;-) has been a successful and necessary approach at my last two schools . . . so, how are your search skills and the skills of your faculty? 

Changing Mindsets . . . but not in a good way!

What do you do when someone's ambition and vision, collides with their skill set and technical abilities?  As a coach, what do you do when a person's mindset changes right before your eyes?  [this is the change that isn't very good to see]

So here's the story, the situation, the conundrum that I find myself thinking about for the last few days.  I will try to keep this as anonymous as possible, as I think this through as a write it all down.   But don't expect any answers here . . . I haven't got that far with my thinking.  Maybe you might have some input on all of this for me . . .

There is a colleague that I work with who embarked on a big project to revamp the online presence for part of the school.  They inherited a spaghetti map of different systems and platforms which wove together a piecemeal online existence, from their predecessor.  That previous colleague essentially built bits and pieces of the overall resource over a number of years, using whatever tool was on-hand, convenient, or in their field of view at the time.  In short, it is/was a mess and needed to be completely overhauled and replaced.

Enter my new colleague who fought and fought with maintaining this old plate of spaghetti, and came to hate it.  Once they had reached their tipping point where they wanted to fix it, change it, update it and make it their own, we started working on it together through regular coaching sessions.  My new colleague (how about I just call them Bob from now on) . . . Bob . . . started conducting a ton of research into what other schools were doing, their look and feel, their functionality and content, and their audience.  Bob also had a pretty good idea about what they wanted, as he had done a similar project at their previous school with much success.  The big difference between these two projects, is that the previous school did not have a system/platform already in place and they hired a developer to build everything for the school.  In the here and now, there is no big budget to pay someone, and the culture is more of a DIY project.

So Bob took it upon himself to rebuild everything from scratch, and made this their goal last year.  By the end of last year, we had built parts of the new system, but had not "released" it for use yet.  In other words, the old plate of spaghetti was still on the table and was still being served to the school.  At the start of this year, Bob really wanted to focus on building the last remaining pieces of the system and to get everything up and running as soon as possible.  As the beginning of the school year got busier and busier (as they do), this project got put on the back burner to simmer and stew.  We revisited it and worked on it periodically during our coaching sessions, but more often than not, something else would take precedence and would be more immediate.  When we did work on the project, development was often slow or at a standstill.  In Bob's own words, he often "could not remember how to do something" or "could not make a decision on what he wanted."  It was one step forward and three steps back, but we kept com in back to it, as it was/is important.

Then Bob dropped the bomb on me . . . he told me that he is so stressed out by the project and his inability to make any progress on it, that it is affecting his health.  Boom!  In order to preserve his health, he was going to drop the while thing, and perhaps we can salvage some of the pieces that we have already built.  "Thank you for your time and effort and patience in coaching me, but I can't work on this any longer."  Boom!!

What do you do when someone's ambition and vision, collides with their skill set and technical abilities?  The project involved rebuilding resources which are really important to the school, which support teaching and learning across school divisions.  Bob has a vision for what this could be, and would use it in his teaching everyday.  However, Bob really does not understand why he could not grasp how to use these tools to build his vision, and why it is so hard for him.  This is the clash or the difference between what they want to do, and having the skills/expertise to accomplish that goal.  As a tech coach, I see this as part of my job - to bridge the gap, which is what we have been working on for almost a year now.

What do you do when a person's mindset changes right before your eyes?  In the beginning, Bob clearly had an growth mindset towards this project - he saw it as a challenge and a point of deep learning on his part to work through it.  But all of that changed gradually as the frustration grew and the health issues started building.  Are these two things connected?  Bob seems to think so.  I, on the other hand, think that it has more to do with the steep learning curve that the project represents, combined with growing health issues related to his age . . . both difficult subjects to brooch in a conversation or coaching session.  With Bob's growing frustration and lack of progress, this turned into a downwards spiral which resulted in his mindset flipping over into the fixed position.  He is now thinking that he cannot learn these skills and tools, and that this project is just too big for him the tackle.  He even said that he will just leave it for someone else to fix and build once they are gone.  Totally defeated.  Bob no longer sees it has job to do this kind of work, and knows the school is not going to pay a developer to build it for him.  Totally stuck.

So what do I do with this project?  On one hand I could jump in and build it for Bob, but that is not my role or my job, and does not really involve coaching in any way.  Furthermore, Bob would not be in a position to maintain and further develop their system from whatever point I brought it up to . . . I would be signing up to be the gatekeeper and custodian for his system.  On the other hand, I could just accept that Bob is giving up and try to salvage some of the work we have already done, but that would effectively making part of the plate of spaghetti taste a little better, while at the same time making the plate bigger.  Not a very good outcome.  So what should I do, to move forward with this project and with Bob as a colleague whom I coach?  Any ideas?

Some thoughts on working with the "reluctant tech teacher"

I was just reading an open question on a forum which asked about how to reach/teach the teacher who is reluctant to use/integrate/try technology in their classroom.  It had quite a lively (and long) discussion going which drew me in to reading through all of the postings.  And then I found myself thinking and writing a response myself . . . but I ran out of room in the comment posting!  So here is my entire response as I wrote it . . . before having to cut out some bits to make it fit onto the forum:


Educational technology acts a lens focused on a classroom, a lesson, an activity . . . and the teaching and learning that is going on there.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the lens magnifies everything . . . . the good, the bad, the ugly, and the awesome.  This discussion began with questions about the reluctant or techno-phobic teachers and how to encourage them to use more technology.  Someone earlier on mentioned that teachers need to "let go of the reigns", which I think is a huge component that sometimes gets missed in this discussion.  Teachers know that technology is a lens on their pedagogy and teaching practice, and many are reluctant to let go of control in their classroom as it could/might/will reflect poorly on them if/when things go wrong.  Some of these teachers frequently experience problems with technology just in their day-to-day work which they cannot solve - why would they want to put themselves on display in front of a class of students if there is a chance of public failure?

Time frequently comes up as a major reason/excuse why a teacher is not using technology in their classroom.  They don't have time in their course to do something different, or the time in their day to look at something new.  They don't have time to learn a new tool.  If they used a new tech tool with their class and it failed, they don't have the time to fix it, time to plan an alternative lesson, or any way of making up for the lost time.  Then there is always the argument where they want to see absolute proof that this tech tool will save them time and will positively affect teaching and learning in their classroom . . . otherwise they cannot see investing the time to learn and implement the new tool.

So I think these two threads are intertwined and connected to one another.  As a tech coach, I frequently hear the "time" argument in all of its different flavours from faculty.  But what I think is really happening is that the time argument is thrown at you as it is hard to argue against or refute - not only is it amorphous and ever-changing, but it is also very personal to each teacher.  The time argument is masking the real underlying reason, which is fear - the fear of letting go, of trying something which might fail, and of stepping aside from being the "sage on the stage" or the expert in the room. As a computer science teacher, I have long been accustomed to not being the absolute expert on everything . . . all of my students typically had a very singular and narrow field of CS that they were intensely interested in and they typically knew more about that one particular topic than anyone within 100 km.  So not being the expert is something that I have long been comfortable with.  However, many teachers are not, and prefer to stick with their tried and true methods to get through their curriculum rather than facing the fear of change.

Change is a powerful and frightening thing.  It can be hugely motivating, yet completely paralyzing as well.  So how do we address this fear?  I once read somewhere that a person will only undergo a process of change if it is easier for them to make the change, rather than to keep with the status quo.  The need to change has to come from within, has to be self-realized and internalized, or else there will be resistance and push-back.  So how do you do that?  Well, there's lots of pieces to the puzzle that when combined, seem to have worked for me which include:
   * Just in Time Learning - providing training individually or in small groups which is directly focused on a tool which will be employed immediately
   * Exposure - showing off a variety of tools to show faculty what's out there and to give them ideas of how they might be used in the classroom (think Speed-Geeking here)
   * Connecting with Others - seeing and connecting with other teachers who are using a particular tool in the same discipline/class/course/grade level as they work in, provides teachers with the evidence they need to move forward
   * Tech Coaches and Peer Coaches - having access to people in-house who are available and accessible is huge; not all schools can afford to have tech coaches, but you can leverage the abilities and talents of those who are already in the building
   * Admin Support - having a built-in underlying support (which could mean connecting tech integration with evaluation) can really help to get things moving . . . some people need this kind of nudge before moving forward.

A Short Jaunt to Learning 2.013 Singapore

Getting to Singapore for the Learning 2.013 conference involved a very long flight, but well worth the effort. After working in Asia for 8 years and attending the Learning2 conference in its infancy, I know that it continues to evolve and simply gets better and better every year. There's certainly nothing like it in Europe, where I am now. And organizing a conference around cohorts who share similar roles, issues, concerns and successes just makes too much sense - how come other conferences do not do this? These are the reasons that I still tell people when they ask me why I have come so far for a conference. Plus the learning - my learning.

I used to say that being an AP Computer Science examiner and going to the exam reading every year was the best professional development that I ever did. I still look back fondly at those week-long trips to South Carolina to sit in a heavily air conditioned room for hours on end, learning a rubric, teaching it to others, and grading a single question hundreds of times over, day after day. Add in the regular feeding times every two hours, and you have a landlocked cruise ship experience where the only activity is grading exams. So why was it so good? Why did I do it year after year until the College Board retired me as an international examiner? Because of the people who were there and the learning that took place. The best of the best CS teachers were all there - trading ideas, talking shop and best practice specific to CS education, and looking behind at the trends and ahead to where we are all collectively going. It was really hard, exhausting and mentally challenging work, but the growth and learning that you came away with in a week was phenomenal. But I don't grade AP exams any more - I no longer teach the course and they cut-back on bringing in international teachers due to costs.

But this is how I see the Learning2 conference now - hard work and a long ways to go, but filled with learning and growth. Last year's conference was special as I was able to take the entire coaching team to my old school in China (Western Academy of Beijing) and show them around the city. This year was the first time Learning2 has moved out of China and I was also able to have reunions with both BISS and WAB folks that I used to work with. Funny that, as I am writing this while on vacation in Istanbul where we are having a week-long reunion with old friends and colleagues at Robert College.

My main takeaways from this year's conference revolved around: finding balance and practising mindfulness with students when it comes to technology use; creating a basic photography mini-course at my school which will help students become better creators and producers; gathering some new ideas and tweaking some old ones for updating how we deliver technology PD; employing cognitive coaching techniques when working with faculty in my role as a tech coach; and giving back to the wider community through two workshops that I presented which were well attended and received. Perhaps the most exciting development from the conference is that Learning 2.014 Africa is now in the works for next year, which I hope to get involved in at the organizing committee level - again, a lot of hard work but with big rewards in the end.  

See you in Addis Ababa and Bangkok next year!

Tech PD Calendar Idea - maybe you can get this to work in your school . . .

This time last year I was finishing my Masters degree, and was in deeply embroiled in getting my action research paper completed and handed in.  As my program was directly tied to an educational technology certification as well, and because I am a tech coach myself, I wanted to make my project to be linked to technology professional development.  I had a number of ideas at first for what my research project could focus on, but in the end I decided to once again try to implement an idea that I had about 8 years ago for a technology PD calendar.  Basically, I had formulated this idea when I was back at the Western Academy of Beijing and initially tried to implement the calendar there - it failed miserably as it never even got off of the ground.  The school was not using a viable calendaring system which could support multiple authors effectively, so I could not build the calendaring system without going down the road of building a relational database myself.  When I came to ASW, I again tried to implement this idea but again it failed miserably for a variety of reasons which I will not get into right here.  When the action research project came along, I decided to give this another try as the calendaring idea itself fit in well with the project requirements.  And it failed again - no third time lucky for me.

The idea that I have fits with a lot of research into technology professional development and teacher efficacy, which is why I keep coming back to it over the years . . . it should work!  Basically, my idea is to open teacher's doors, invite others into their classrooms to see how/what/when/why technology is being used/integrated/immersed in their classroom, get teachers who would not normally "present" to their peers to show off what they are doing in their classroom with little additional work or preparation, and to have faculty observe classes from other disciplines, grade levels or school divisions, and take away and apply whatever they have learned in their own area/context/class.  All of this through a simple calendar mechanism with very little overhead . . . but it has not worked.  Which leaves me with wondering why?

Perhaps it is school culture?  Maybe my school is simply not ready for this kind of open and self-guided peer mentorship program?  Perhaps teachers do not have the time or energy to devote to such a program, or simply are not interested?  Maybe teachers are so insecure with their teaching practices or using technology that they do not want to "put themselves out there" in front of their friends/peers/colleagues?  Or perhaps teachers are too wary of any kind of observation being somehow linked to teacher effectiveness and evaluation to get involved in the program.  For whatever reasons, my tech PD calendar idea failed again.  If any of this sounds interesting to you, then you can get all of the details about the calendaring idea, how I implemented the system (in Google Calendars), what the process was for adding events to the calendar (opening your door), or registering yourself to observe someone's class or lesson, from my action research project paper which is attached below.  Please feel free to download a copy if you want to read through the entire thing.

Has anyone else tried implementing something like this?  What happened - did it succeed or fail?  Whether it worked or not, what were the problems, challenges and things that helped?