Credit must be given where it’s due: I think the organizers of this year’s High Tech Hall really got it right in terms of how to provide participants in such a huge setting (we’re talking attendance estimates in the tens of thousands) access to tools and meaningful uses thereof (as meaningful as you can get in a giant convention center, anyway).  Presenters in High Tech Hall were given round tables (approx. 6′ diameter), 32″ LCD screens, and 8-9 chairs.  We hooked up our own netbooks, laptops, speakers, and whatever other peripherals we needed, and conducted “drop-in” sessions where we could talk with small groups of people (see photos) about our respective topics (I did 4 hours on wikis and 4 hours on developing learning networks).

Having given both large group lectures and small group drop-in sessions, my favorite type is by far the small group setting.  I really enjoyed being able to talk with the folks who dropped in, find out what they knew and what they needed to know, and learn about their specific professional circumstances.  I was then able to tailor my presentation to their individual needs and help guide them where they felt they needed to go, not necessarily where I wanted to take them.

Toward the end of the day, I was talking with a resource room reading (I think?  sorry!) teacher who was thinking that wikis might somehow be encouraging to her students.  After explaining the basics of the tool, as well as listening to her background, we agreed that a wiki probably wasn’t going to be of much use to her students.  Due to the small setting, however (she was the only one at my table; this was about 10 minutes before shutting down for the day), I was able to sit and brainstorm with her for a bit, and I showed her Audacity, a free program for digital audio recording.  We talked a bit about teaching reading, oral fluency, listening skills, and self-monitoring & self-evaluation, and after some further discussion and an impromptu demonstration, that teacher left with at least another idea for helping her students.

It didn’t matter to me that a wiki was not in her immediate future because that would not have helped her students.  I liked being able to go “off book” and use what knowledge of tools I have to help her brainstorm some ideas for activities (aided, not driven, by technology) that would suit her students’ needs.  We do all our students a far greater service by letting their needs drive the choice of technological tools (or the choice to not use technology), rather than the other way around.  As I have said in the past, when you add a wiki (or a podcast, or a blog, or a Voicethread) to a poorly designed lesson, it doesn’t magically become a good lesson – it’s just a bad lesson with a wiki.  Folks who attended the High Tech Hall sessions were exposed to dozens, if not hundreds, of technological tools, along with ideas for classroom implementations.  Speaking as one who knows all too well how easy it is to get swept up in shiny new things, it is my hope that they balance their enthusiasm for their new tools with a very clear picture of the pedagogical benefits they offer (or don’t).

If you’ll be at the convention, stop by High Tech Hall to see Kevin, Lisa, me, and a slew of other folks speak about (and, more importantly, show examples of) using various technological tools to enhance teaching and learning experiences.

On Thursday, I’ll be discussing “Exploring Online Personal Learning Networks” from 9am – 1pm (supporting wiki), then from 1pm – 5pm, it’s “Wikis, Wikis, Everywhere” (supporting wiki).  These presentations are both condensed versions of multi-day PD courses I conducted when I worked at Hunterdon Central Regional High School.

On Friday morning from 10:15 to 11:15, I’ll be running a shorter, 1-hour version of “Wikis, Wikis” in Classroom 2, where participants will have access to computers and have the opportunity to create and explore along with me (computer access is limited and first come, first served, so get there early!).

Hope to see you in Atlantic City!

3. Get Rewarded: Rather than signing up for a credit card at your college’s student center based on the free t-shirt or frisbee you’ll get, let’s teach our students to shop around for credit cards with some kind of reward program.  I’m not sure if these are available to new credit card users or only people with established credit, but if you can find a card like Capital One’s No Hassles Reward Card or a store-branded Visa or Mastercard (e.g., the Amazon.com Visa), you pay no annual fee, and each purchase you make gives you points toward some reward.  In the case of Amazon, every 2500 points is worth a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com.  Capital One has a tiered rewards system, but since I’m not interested in any of the rewards they offer, I just trade my points in for cash toward my bill once I’ve accumulated enough.  It’s important to note that use of these cards should be guided by responsible spending, not just trying to rack up rewards points, but my thought is that if I’m going to have to pay for something anyway (e.g., cell phone bill), why not put it on the credit card and at least get something back for it eventually?

As always the technological component has to be balanced with a human behavioral component – don’t spend more than you can afford, create a monthly budget, beware of compounding interest, pay your balances off each month, etc.  These lessons are most important; I simply offer some supplementary advice here.

What are your top financial tips for young people just learning about managing money?  If, like me, your kids are significantly younger than high school age, how did/do you get them off to an early start with good ideas and attitudes about money from a young age?

Setting aside the semantic debate over the use of the word “literacy”, I have to say I’m behind this requirement.  While I took 4 years of math classes in high school, not once did we cover credit cards, compounding interest, APR/APY, monthly payments, budgeting, or any “real world” math that I might actually have to use one day (but hey, if you need a hypotenuse calculated, holla at ya boy).  In fact, in my experience, both as a teacher and a student, the “business” or “consumer” math classes have been traditionally reserved for the lower tracks of math, or even exclusively for special education.

In addition to the traditional curriculum these teachers will start covering next school year (you know, like “don’t buy things you can’t afford”) , I’d like to offer three personal finance tips that I hope our more Internet-savvy Business Ed and/or Social Studies teachers will consider including – one now, and two in a following post.

1. Get Paid: In 2009, there is no shortage of high-interest checking and savings accounts that will pay accountholders 3, 4, and 5% interest on their account balances.  This started in the realm of “Internet-only” banks like ING Direct, but even traditional “brick & mortar” banks have started offering high-interest checking and savings accounts.  We opened our first high-yield savings account with Capital One back in 2005 or 2006, when we were pulling in somewhere between 4-5% interest on our balance.  That rate has dropped significantly over the last few years, and it’s now down to somewhere around 1.5% or so – a disappointment for us, but compared to the 0.25% interest rate (or whatever it was; it was a long time ago and it only earned me a few cents every month on a fairly sizeable balance) I had on my old Wachovia savings account, that’s still not too shabby.

We made do with that 1.5% until I read about a local bank that was offering a high-interest checking account at 3% APY.  We made the switch from our traditional (read: 0% interest) checking account to the high-interest account with our new bank.  Of course, in order to receive the high interest rate each month, there’s usually a “catch” of some sort.  In our case, we have to do the following each month:

a) make 10 debit card purchases

b) have at least one ACH withdrawal or direct deposit

c) log into online banking at least once.

We do all these things anyway, so for us, switching from no-interest checking to high-interest was a no-brainer.  Some accounts may require minimum balances or other caveats in order to get the best interest rate, so make sure you read the fine print (another good life lesson for the kiddos).  Shop around for the (FDIC-insured!) deal that’s right for you, and let your money do a little work for you each month.

I’ve got two more up my sleeve, but what economics/personal finance/”entrepreneurial literacy” tips do you teach or think should be taught?

From the above link:

PSLPs are one facet of Governor Corzine’s and DOE’s effort to transform secondary education to better prepare students for the workforce and college. The plans utilize adult mentors, including parents, teachers and counselors, to help students recognize and achieve their education goals.

“It is imperative that we increase the rigor of our high schools to better prepare children for work and college, but it is equally important to help students get a better grasp on where they are headed,” said Commissioner Davy. “The interest we received from schools wanting to take part in this pilot shows that this initiative has the potential to have a tremendous effect on the quality of each and every child’s education and future.”

During the two-year pilot, PSLPs will be studied to determine how to best use the plans to help students focus on their individual personal, academic and career development needs and goals.

Also this:

“PSLPs offer students a framework for setting goals and mapping out their future,” said Commissioner Davy. “They are like global positioning systems for students’ futures. Like GPS, the plans will be able to offer a clear path to their goals but also will be able to change course if students want to go in a different direction at some point in their academic careers.”

The learning plan formats developed by the pilot districts will include at least the following three areas of development: personal, academic and career. In addition to goal setting, examples of activities that students may engage in while creating and carrying out the plans include:

• Personal Development: survey learning styles; inventory personality and interests.

• Academic Development: select courses for graduation as they relate to interests and skills; discern individual student learning opportunities (internships, and service or independent learning); utilize support services and referrals as needed.

• Career Development: Survey career interests and skills; Engage in career awareness and exploration to heighten understanding of opportunities available and generate interest (6th grade); Carry out career planning and preparation activities while developing academic knowledge and skill readiness (9th grade).

Evidently, 20 states plus the District of Columbia already have similar plans in place.  Does anyone have any experience with PSLPs?  How have they been received by students, parents, and faculty/staff?  Any advice for the NJ teachers piloting the program this year?  I would also love to hear about the experiences of the folks who are actually implementing these programs this year in NJ.

A final, hopefully not-too-cynical question: is it significant that there are only three teachers on the 33-member PSLP Advisory Committee (link to PDF)?  Should teachers have greater representation, or does a little under 10% of the committee sound about right?

Related: News story from today’s NJ Star-Ledger.

Fortunately, amidst all the running around, I was able to engage in two professional development activities that gave me great cause for optimism about the state of social media and technology in education.  The first was speaking with a group of educators at my former place of employment, Hunterdon Central Regional High School.  Will Richardson wrote fairly extensively about it here, but the Cliff’s Notes version is that a group of 20-25 teachers from across disciplines will be piloting a 1:1 netbook program with about 300 students this year.  Doubtless, HCRHS is an affluent district, but unlike many others with more money than sense, they really front-loaded their teacher’s training this summer with discussion and reflection on constructivist teaching and the role that personal computers can play in that.  In other words, it wasn’t “tech tech tech”, it was “teach well with tech”.

I was particularly happy to see two new educational bloggers emerge from this cohort, library media specialist Heather Hersey and English teacher Cathy Stutzman.  I’m really looking forward to reading their public reflections and learning from them, and I’d be lying if I said that watching all this from the outside didn’t make me just the teensiest bit envious that I won’t be a part of some potentially great things at Central.

Another event I was honored to be a part of was Patrick Woessner’s panel discussion entitled Digital Citizenship & Social Media in the Classroom and Life (click for link to mp3 archive of our chat).  I joined Chris Betcher, Matt Montagne, and Kevin Jarrett via TinyChat for a group videoconference with teachers at Patrick’s school on topics such as Internet filters, use of social media tools with elementary students, and all manner of other neat stuff.  To be talking about a topic about which I’m passionate to a captive audience was thrilling enough, but to do so while bouncing ideas off these guys (and building off their own thoughts) was really a privilege, and I hope it signifies good things to come at this school in St. Louis.

I guess what ties what’s happening at these two schools in New Jersey and Missouri all together for me is this feeling that something is changing in education that is coming from the ground up.   These changes are not coming as a result of administrative directives; in fact, just the opposite is usually true – the movement is coming from teachers who are realizing where the next big shift in education could come from, and how we can harness that for the benefit of our students.  They are becoming school leaders through action and example, not simply by virtue of a degree, certificate, or job title.  It also underscores for me my belief that while the technology enables us to do some really cool stuff, the oft-cited “21st Century Skills” are as much, if not more, about the human connections we help to create, both inside and outside our classrooms and schools as they are about the technological tools we use to foster communication.  Students, much like potential customers or clients, are tired of being spoken to/at – that doesn’t fly anymore.  They want to be part of a conversation, and the teachers at HCRHS and MICDS are, directly and indirectly, fostering conversations about learning as well as about content, which is neither new nor revolutionary – it’s just not done enough.

I am about to start the 10th year of my career in education (not counting long- & short-term subbing positions). In that time, I have only worked in two high schools – one in which females comprise the majority of administrators (including the principal & superintendent), and one in which male administrators are the majority (again, including the principal & superintendent).

Off the top of my head, I initially thought that each of these gender majorities was overwhelming (I was thinking 90/10), but I decided to fact-check myself.  Sure enough, each school’s majority gender is only a majority by a small margin (60/40 or so, maybe less).

I have noticed differences in the leadership styles between the two schools, but I had chalked it up to different communities, different school cultures, different personalities, etc.  My wife was the first to point out the gender differences in the administrative teams, and I’m wondering if she’s on to something.  This piece from Inside Higher Ed (May 2007) posits that the differences between male and female leadership styles in education are becoming less pronounced (based on a study of community college administrators), but I wonder if that can be generalized to the K-12 sector.

A related issue that is probably worth thinking about here is the overall underrepresentation of women, particularly women of color, in leadership positions in American secondary education (Wrushen & Sherman, 2008).  I wonder how many of you in secondary or higher ed have worked with primarily female administrative teams – am I in a distinct minority group of educators in that regard?

Do you feel that the gender makeup of your administrative team influences leadership styles?  Do faculty & staff members tend to respond differently to administrators of different genders?  Or are we in a post-racialgender America, where leadership style is independent of gender?

Citation: Wrushen, B.R., & Sherman, W.H. (2008). Women secondary school principals: multicultural voices from the field. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 21, 457-469.  Retrieved August 15, 2009, from the Academic Search Premier database.

• Odiogo is an excellent text-to-speech service that has voice-enabled my blogposts.  If listening is more your style than reading, click on the “Listen Now” icon just below each post title.  You can stream the blogpost online, add it to your iTunes, download the .mp3, or click on the “More” option to subscribe to the podcast or send it to Facebook, Digg, Delicious, and all the other usual suspects.  I invite you to subscribe to my Odiogo feed to receive the audio version of my blog in your reader/player of choice.
• The good folks at MoFuse provide a free (and optionally ad-free!) mobile interface for your blog.  If you have your own domain name, you can also map it to your new mobile site.  The mobile version of this blog can be accessed at http://m.apaceofchange.com.

Multiplicity of access is something that’s been on my mind lately; I don’t think that adding a voice to my blog is anything but a drop in an otherwise huge bucket, but as these tools come across my path, I try to be mindful of how students can utilize them – at least the concept, if not the specific tool (e.g., mobile phone access, text-to-speech).  Of course, the fact that I’m no longer in the classroom is turning out to be a double-edged sword in this regard – theoretically, I can reach more students in my current position than I could as a classroom teacher, BUT my removal from “the trenches” means that I now have an extra degree of separation to overcome in order to identify those in need and implement those changes.  I plan on being more proactive in that regard this coming school year, however, and I’ll be sure to report on my progress (or lack thereof) here.

I hope your summer has been as enjoyable as mine has been thus far; a little hard to believe there’s only four or five weeks left for some of us.

Mr. X was the third supervisor I’d worked under as an English teacher at my former school, but the first under whom I started working with wikis, podcasts, etc. with my students.  Whenever I have spoken about these experiences, formally or informally, I make it a point to credit Mr. X as integral to whatever degree of success my students experienced via these projects, not because he had any hand in implementing them with me, but because he did four things that I think any supervisor would do well to emulate:

1. He asked questions. I don’t discount how fortunate I was to have a supervisor who, not knowing terribly much about a wiki, was willing to say, “I’m interested; tell me more about it and why this could be beneficial to learning.”  He very easily could have shut me down without a discussion, but instead, he took time out of his exceedingly busy schedule to spend many sessions with me, not only learning about whatever project I initially proposed, but also to follow up with me, observe my classes, and speak to my students.  He was also available to me as a sounding board; quite a few times, I visited him to say, “I have this great idea for a project; here’s where I think I want to go with it and how I’d like to do it, but I just can’t figure out x or y.”  Again, it would have been easy for him to take that as a sign of ‘weakness’ or unpreparedness on my part and shut down the project, but instead he saw it for what it was: one colleague who doesn’t have all the answers reaching out to another to help him create the best possible learning situation for his students.  He was willing to engage in discussion about teaching and learning (and give suggestions!) in a medium that was new to him, for which I give him much credit.

2. He supported me outside of his office, by which I mean that when word of my tech-based projects floated up the administrative ladder, he was willing to stand behind me and support my students online projects all the way up to the district superintendent (who, it must be said, also ended up being very supportive and appreciative of my efforts).  Again, it would have been easy to tell me “You’re on your own”, but he had the professional integrity to stand with me as I tried what some might have considered unorthodox or unusual – certainly new for that school at that time.

3. He looked at the big picture. When I approached him about replacing one of my research papers in my curriculum with a wiki-based collaborative project, one of the first questions he asked (see #1) was about the skills each assignment aimed to teach or hone.  When he was sufficiently satisfied that there was extensive overlap in skills between the research paper and wiki project, as well as considered the additional benefits I thought the wiki project brought he greenlit the change.  As much as I hate the cliche, he was willing to think outside the box and consider an unusual request that others might have dismissed out of hand.

4. He trusted me as a professional. This is no small feat.  In an era where Internet filters and draconian usage policies imply that teachers cannot be trusted to go outside their school network’s walled garden, Mr. X not only supported my decision to do so, but also to take my students with me.  I don’t believe he would have supported me so fervently if he didn’t trust that I knew what I was doing (or at least had a pretty good idea, with one or two contingency plans, just in case!).  This has less to do with technology, in my opinion, and more to do with good leadership in general.  I have always felt that good leaders don’t try to be experts in every area; rather, they identify the people around them who are strong in certain areas and look to them for advice to supplement their own strengths.  Mr. X is an incredibly knowledgable teacher with many years of experience, but in this one small arena, I was more knowledgable, and he trusted me enough to let me lead the way into heretofore uncharted territory.

Overall, the administrative attitude towards technology in my old school was very positive and progressive.  I’ve said many times that we had the most liberal filtering software of any district I’ve heard of, and there was (and, I believe, still is) a strong “teachers teaching teachers” professional development model.  That said, there still existed among the faculty the fear, ignorance, and apathy that comprises much of the opposition to educational technology and Internet-based projects.  I don’t know how differently things would have turned out if this hadn’t been the atmosphere in which Mr. X and I worked, but I think this goes to show that support for educational technology must be systemic and built-in in order for it to benefit teachers’ professional practice and, ultimately, their students.

The last thought with which I’d like to leave you, especially if you are in a position of educational leadership, is to be willing to break from convention when considering implementation of educational technology.  The paranoid and alarmist responses I’ve most often heard coming from parents and administrators seem to be the result of considering the worst-case scenario.  I would ask all of you who are in a position to support educational technology to ask yourself not, “what’s the worst that can happen”, but rather, “what’s the best that can happen?”  Chances are that reality will lie somewhere in between the extremes.

I fired up my MindMeister account and started a mind map entitled “Yearly Goals”.  From this central main topic, I had five branches – one for each of the next five academic years (e.g., “2009-2010″, “2010-2011″, etc.):

As I recorded some of the ideas I had thought of earlier on the mindmap, I placed them under the year I thought I’d begin or complete them.  I don’t want to go into too many specific details here regarding content, but I will say that by the time I was finished, I had a very clear idea of what I was going to work on this summer and coming school year and what could safely wait until at least next summer and beyond.  This has helped me to focus my energy and attention on what is most immediately needed.

In the matter of about 20-30 minutes, I went from feeling overwhelmed with abstract concepts and ideas to having a very clearly defined, well organized plan of attack.  Mindmapping is not something I ever got into in depth with my students (although I did use graphic organizers to aid in writing), but maybe I should have.  My expertise is in the secondary English/language arts setting, but I imagine students in any project-based or multi-step environment could benefit from something like this.  In addition to helping me “pace myself” and sort out a plan of attack, an unexpected benefit of this exercise was seeing what smaller milestones I can achieve in between the major ones I’m shooting for.  Instead of focusing on the big things I’m planning for 2011-2012, for example, and wishing I could fast-forward to that date, I now have a list of smaller, more manageable (but still important) achievements to keep my focus on in the here & now (not one of my strong suits!).

Although I did this for personal reasons, how many of your students, in a special ed or general ed setting, could benefit from some short and long-term goal-setting like this, online or off, for curricular or other purposes?

For further information on mindmaps, check out Dr. Brian Friedlander’s blog – he has written more extensively on the topic than any other blogger I’ve read.