In other news, WordPress 2.8 is out, and is it ever good.  The dashboard layout is similar to 2.7, but what’s new and vastly improved is the way it handles sidebar widgets and how you go out and get themes from within the dashboard itself.  With each release, I find myself using an FTP client a lot less.   Updates and improvements are getting more automated all the time.  If this release doesn’t convince you to go out and get your own self-hosted blog powered by WordPress, man I don’t know what will.

If you’re not familiar with the PLC model, the concept is this:

• Identify the most crucial learning standards that need to be taught to mastery
• Form common assessments based on those learning standards to be given to students in a given grade or subject level.
• Teachers meet regularly (weekly, or more when necessary) to analyze student data and adjust teaching strategies accordingly, including providing intervention strategies for students who aren’t learning the standards.

The heart and soul of PLC’s is that teachers collaborate and use data to make important decisions.  Each one of our teaching staff throughout the district now has the book, “The Collaborative Teacher,” published by Solution Tree, and compiled by Richard and Rebecca Dufour, leaders of implementing PLC’s into today’s schools.  Each chapter was written by educational leaders–principals, superintendents, curriculum directors–with practical experience implementing PLC’s.  Refreshingly,  much of this experience is in districts where lower achievement scores were the norm for many years.

At a couple hundred pages, it’s not a terribly time-consuming read.  Even though I’ve been to two of the PLC Dufour conferences now, I’m finding some concepts that I either didn’t know before, or that needed to be reinforced to me.    I appreciate that, up front, the authors acknowledge that change in education is difficult, and even spell out an anticipated learning/acceptance path for individual schools.  They also provide some strategies in working through the rough spots on the PLC path.  Especially intriguing to me is the epilogue, “A New Era of Spectacular Teachers,” in which the author Mary Ann Ranells enumerates the ways in which successful teachers are embracing the PLC process. 

This is the first professional book that’s on my list this summer.  I have a few more that I will post as I get through them and prepare for my new duties in the fall.

ALMS houses students in grades 6-8.  There are two middle schools in our district.  The building itself is the oldest in the district, 60+years or so, and is slated to be demolished in two years.   Last November, our voters approved a 69 million dollar bond that includes the replacement of two elementary schools as well as this middle school.  We’re getting a new building!  For the time being, I’ll be directly behind Sunset, with just a soccer field and a playground separating the two schools.  I’ll be able to wave at my former colleagues from across the field periodically.

Technically, I will be a Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA).  The duties will essentially be that of Vice Principal:  Handling discipline issues, overseeing the behavior expectations in the building, and assisting the building principal where needed.  I anticipate working with our Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) to a large extent next year.  The district has adjusted the number of administrators it has for next year, but these duties are still essential to running a middle school building.  Some of the requirements in order to apply included an Oregon Administrator License, or be eligible for one by next year, and experience working with middle school kids. I believe my student services experience as a counselor also contributed to me getting this job.  In addition, I’ll be taking on the duties of Athletic Director.  Go Bullpups!

I’m looking forward to taking on the upcoming challenges head-on.  It will be a learning curve, to be sure, but this is the right step at this point in my career.  I’m grateful for this opportunity, and I plan to make the best of it. 

My immediate plan for this blog is to be able to chronicle current issues in school leadership, as well as create a record of my learning curve.  Periodic reflection is an important part of the education profession, and I will continue to keep this blog focused on those issues. 

Despite much social and political unrest in Sierra Leone, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative is gaining a foothold there. India recently put in an order for 250,000 of these laptops to be distributed among their schools. At $199 each, they run on completely on open-source software and are built to withstand the rigors of the 6-12 year old, regardless of where they are in the world.

Microsoft Sustainability from Kray Cédric on Vimeo.

If this is true, then we as educators have a lot of work to do. Especially those of us working with populations who typically don’t have access to a lot of technology.

Google Docs  is a nearly-full featured office application suite available in online form.  It can be used for simple word processing and spreadsheet jobs just like on your own desktop computer.  However, it’s the addition of the collaboration features as well as the newly-added forms (think online survey) that sets this app apart from the one that just resides on your desktop.  

Google recognizes the impact that Docs can play in school.  They’ve even set up a  Docs for Teachers  page to give you some ideas of how to use it in the classroom.  I notice that most, if not all, of these use the forms feature.  A few of their examples:

• Track missing assignments

• Introduce scientific method

• Book Reviews–kids get to actually see how other students have rated books in their library

• Grading rubric.  

• Formative assessments–and graded quickly!

Word to the wise:  Google Docs won’t make poorly designed student assessment any better.  I’m seeing one or two on the Docs for Teachers page that stick out as being not particularly helpful.  That said, it can take a well designed assessment and let you test and grade more efficiently.  And isn’t that part of what technology in education is supposed to be about?

Another word to the wise:  I’m seeing some student confidentiality issues in some of the examples above.  However you use this service, be sure and take measure to ensure privacy!

Personally, I’ve been using Google Docs for almost two years now.  Some ways I’ve used it:

• School admin class assignments

• Staff surveys

• Create and design professional development flyer

• Keep a database of counselors in our region

• Blog posting–I’m using it now, but this is my first time.  We’ll see how it works.  :-)  ( Edit:  It works terribly!  I’ll download this and open it up either in Live Writer or Scribefire for better results.  Hope I was able to retrieve the first post before it hit the syndication feed.)

I can think of some times in the past when we could have really put this service to good use.  A few years ago, when we were working on our district counseling & guidance curriculum, it would have been very helpful to have a single document that all twelve of us counselors could work on.  As it is, we kept sending the same edited document back and forth, over and over again.  By the time we were done, we kept trying to figure out who had the “correct” document.  

One of my upcoming projects is a  40 Developmental Assets survey that I will be giving our fifth grade students.  Also, we just got done with a staff survey concerning social functions at our school.  The survey itself took each staff member about 3 minutes of their time, and we were able to get some great data with it.  

For even more info, check out this  YouTube video:

How are you using Google Docs at your school?

I’m going to be refocusing this blog, so you’ll notice some changes in the coming days and weeks.   RickScheibner.net will once again be my professional blog.  I’ll use Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr for my other passions:  Family,  photography, and music.  If you’re on one of those excellent social networking sites, great! I’ll see you over there. On this blog, I’ll be focusing on these topics:

• Technology:  The tools we use to teach and learn every day.  What works, what’s unnecessary, and how to make ourselves better professionals.  I’m especially interested in making instructional/educational technology available to our population that doesn’t readily have access to them.  It would be nice to level the playing field in those instances. Make no mistake, though: The tech tools we’re using in education isn’t keeping up with the rest of the world, and that concerns me.

• Instruction:  How do we know that kids are learning?  What do we do when they are not?  I’d like to explore those questions and look at some ways we can improve our curriculum and how we deliver in the classroom and throughout our schools.  

• Leadership:  I’ve worked in and around schools for the better part of 20 years now.  I’ve seen some really good examples of school leadership, and I’ve seen some examples that I think weren’t effective.  What’s interesting is that almost none of the school leaders I’ve worked with has a monopoly on one or the other.   Me included. As I transition into an administrative/management role, I’d like to take the best I’ve seen around me and merge it with my own style to create a synthesis that works best with today’s schools.

If you’ve been following me for my ‘other’ pursuits, lately, I’m not offended if you need to unsubscribe. I’ll still be following you, though.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for coming along with me as this blog takes yet another step forward.

• I’ve already mentioned a need to search for text within .pdf documents, and I sincerely hope that that will be a feature in an upcoming release.  I get a lot of .pdf files in my line of work, and I can see myself using it quite a bit.  As it is, Evernote simply holds on to the file for you, and allows you to open it via Acrobat that you already have on your computer.  It’s also possible I’m missing something here, so if any of you can set me straight, by all means comment away.
• Information display and layout is lacking, in my opinion.  It’s even impossible (according to their own message boards, anyway) to simply float an image to the left or right within a given note.  The blogger in me really misses this feature.  When you copy and paste from a web page, though, the software is able to retain tables that way.  You just can’t create it from scratch.  To be fair, though, Evernote is in the data storage and retrieval business, and they excel at that.  I just wouldn’t recommend the software for presentation purposes.

Beyond that, I don’t see much that will prevent me from being a serious user.  Any features I see as useless I simply hide or ignore.  Currently, I’m not making much use of the tags or the saved searches feature, but others may find them handy.  As late as a month ago, I would have also mentioned the relative inefficiency of the web version of Evernote.  They’ve incorporated drag-and-drop recently, though, improving it’s interface and usability in the process.  Nice job, guys. 

I had planned on my next Evernote post as a conclusion to this series.  Instead, I think I will keep creating posts as they continue to make changes and improvements to the software.  In my next post, we’ll look at account options and compare the free and premium features to see which one is right for you.