http://bit.ly/tnlWL(note this link will open your iTunes Application)

A colleague recently posted a discussion on the ISENET Ning urging others to push Apple to release the FirstClass iPhone app. While I share the frustration of the group, I find myself more puzzled by the strategy FC has employed. Rather than have to go through the process of getting a proprietary app approved, why not make FC more easily integrated with the iPhone as well as other mobile devices. This has been one of my biggest frustrations and criticisms of FC since the Palm conduits stopped syncing my calendar back in 2006! Since then I have have had limited success with Blackberry and moderate success with email on my iPhone. I have since been forced to use iCal, which I like better for my calendaring option.

Seems like the more strategic approach would have been for FC to have made the new release more mobile friendly. Just my 2¢. These were my thoughts earlier in the week when it appeared that the app would never see the light of day.

And then this morning I recieved a Tweet from a good colleague and friend @traviswarren informing me that the app was out. So naturally I downloaded and it installed it immediately.

A few initial reactions:

Installing/setup was easy. Mailbox is nice and the respond to email outside your own mail domain appears to be fixed. An issue that the IMAP mailbox never seemed to be able to get right.

Conferences work nicely, and the ability to read them is a plus. Search appears to still be ineffective.

HOWEVER, the biggest complaint I have and will continue to have is that the calendar is still NOT available. This has been the longest running issue for me personally for the past 5 years. It’s unfortunate to see the calendar missing from this first iteration but I am willing to cut some slack given that some of the other features appear to be working nicely.

So there you have it. A complete recap/ review written on my iPhone using the Wordpress mobile app and copy/paste while on an AT&T wifi connection, sipping iced coffee at Starbucks. Now that is cool mobile technology.

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Last week I attended the “Meaningful Faculty Evaluation” workshop given by ISM in Philadelphia. For those of you who are not familiar with MFE, it is a process of engaging faculty through conversations and personal growth that is intended to strip away the focus and obsession with weaknesses and focus on what teachers are good at. Now I know that many of my administrator colleagues are thinking “Wait a minute, what about those teachers that need to improve on X, Y or Z?” It’s all there, trust me. And if you haven’t had a chance to check it out, you should.

But the purpose of this post is not to focus on MFE as an evaluation tool but rather on one small, very simple exercise that lives within it that caught my attention. It was, in fact a very zen like exercise when I stepped back for a moment and reflected on its purpose and outcome.

At the very start of the MFE process, teachers are asked the following question “Other than making a living, why this, now with my life?”

Go ahead. Take a minute and re-read it.

Thought provoking to say the least and applicable to not only those of us in the field of education but just about everyone out there who has seemingly struggled with the question of why am I doing this work? It can be at times a challenging, thankless, exhausting exercise to wake up every morning and ask yourself that question. And you should. We all should. It is simply not enough to be working in education as a means to an income or 3 month summer vacation.

My last post focused on how I personally reflect on the year that has just ended, and it seems only fitting that I would follow that up with a post that looks upon the start of this new “year” by sharing my own personal mission statement with all of you.

“Antonio Viva exists to provide mindful leadership, raise a thoughtful, caring and successful son and reshape the world, one creative thinker at a time.”

Consider sharing/writing your own!

Photo Credit: ambergris

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This is the first Monday morning in months that I feel I have had the opportunity to sit down, check my voicemail, clear my desk of junk mail and find a little time to reflect on they year that has just passed. The life cycle of a school is similar to the ebbs and flows of the ocean, at times they seem calm and steady and at others, the feeling is fast, sporadic and unpredictable. And no matter how hard you try, you think you set out at the start of each school year with a sense of where and how that year will unfold. What projects you have in store, what work needs to be accomplished and how you hope to get it all done. The reality is, it never happens the way you think it will.

What amazes me about the life cycle for those of us in schools is that while everyone else seems to follow a traditional calendar year, with January 1st marking the beginning of new opportunities and fresh starts, July 1st is a date that those of us who work in schools will mark as the start of a new academic year. Budgets change over, thinking turns towards September and students and teachers returning to campus, and we find time to take on projects and summer work that has often been placed on hold during the course of the regular year. And so as I begin to turn my attention towards July 1st, I have taken some time to look back on 2008/2009 and realized that while it was in many ways a difficult year, it was at the same time, exciting and filled with new possibilities.

So here are three things I learned this year:

1. The best work comes from spontaneous, creative exploration. This work, if you are fortunate enough to work with students is amplified by the ability to tap into the creative potential of young people. I think many of us set out to find the next big thing, or take on projects that don’t pay the personal and professional dividends we had hoped they would. If it feels forced, it probably is. Instead of trying to make something creative happen in your work or practice, allow yourself the time to “play” like we did when we were children and you will be amazed at what can happen as a result. The biggest highlight for me this year was the work I did with my creative writing students on a little project/publication we called The WA Mash. It grew out of an organic and creative process.
2. Personal life changes no matter how big or how small represent opportunities for growth. There is no telling how life will find a way to challenge you, it is during those times that stepping back and reflecting on what is important to YOU that allows you to begin to see things more clearly. Each change is the start of a new chapter in the unfolding story that is your life. I was recently visiting with my sister and brother-in-law and we were discussing this very topic and I commented that I have come to believe that our life is not defined by what we do or what we have, but rather by how we chose to live it.
3. Simplify everything. Declutter your house or apartment. Clean out your car. Organize your desk. Organize your closet. Simplify everything. If you haven’t used it, worn it or needed it for ANY reason in the last 12 months. YOU DON’T NEED IT. Donate it to good will, bring it to a shelter or organization that needs “it” but don’t keep it. The key to simplifying everything in your life is not just clearing out the clutter but being able to avoid replacing the old clutter with new clutter. I recently delivered a set of professional development trainings to our faculty working on our 1 to 1 laptop program. The agenda was simple, it was clean, we included drinks in the late afternoon and we made time for people to sit and talk. We simplified the professional development. We took “stuff” out of the agenda to make time for what was really important. It was one of the best trainings we have done all year.

So there you have it, 2008/2009 in 712 words.

Photo Credit: Mr. Theklan

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So it’s been a while folks! I admit it. I have been swamped with the end of the trimester, presentations you name it! So accept my apologies for being away for a few weeks. It often seems like biggest hurdle is it getting to the point where the days start to get longer and it isn’t dark at 4:30 in the afternoon. In any event, I am sitting here in Montclair, NJ at the Montclair Kimberly Academy participating at the edSocialMedia BootCamp. Great group of educators from a variety of schools. I will be sure to update this post as a final reflection but for the time being, here is a copy of my keynote presentation that I delivered around 9:30 this morning.

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I was invited to speak with administrators from the Asheville School this week by my good friend and colleague, Peter Baron from Admissions Quest. The conversation lasted about 30 minutes and we discussed a variety of topics including; using social media in the classroom, understanding how to leverage the potential of social media technology in your communication strategy and changes in school culture.

I hope you enjoy it!

To find out more about Admissions Quest visit http://www.admissionsquest.com/

For information on the Asheville School, visit their website at http://www.ashevilleschool.org/

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Can we harness the power of social media to provide students with a vehicle for exploring and creating original content? WA Mash (Worcester Academy Mashup) is an online magazine where the power of social media is captured to provide creative writing students with a platform for exploring ideas and fostering and contributing to the larger global conversation. By exploring the possibilities offered by the use of social media tools, we explore how one teacher is defining the New Humanities at the secondary school level. Built off the work of Richard E. Miller at Rutgers University, students blog in a timely fashion about a wide variety of cultural, political and economic issues. Most importantly, it is about creating original content and redefining the role of student and teacher. They compliment their work with audio, video, photos and micro-blogging by integrating social media tools like YouTube and Vimeo, Twitter and Flickr. Think Slate or Salon for high school. The conversation will explore the nature and role of the New Humanities in education. How do we define it? What does it look it? What role does it play? And how do we move forward with implementation?

The resource wiki for this presentation can be found at educon21.wikispaces.com/211-3

Using Social Media to Define the New Humanities Classroom from Antonio Viva on Vimeo.

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This is my first time attending EduCon and I must admit that it has on the whole, delivered in every way. As I sit here in a Starbucks trying to catch my breath and enjoying a Vanilla Rooibus Tea latte I am thinking about the depth and breadth of conversations I have been able to have over the last two days. From our arrival on Friday afternoon, our tour of the Science Leadership Academy, the panel discussion at The Franklin Institute, the Saturday sessions, my presentation, the networking gathering and Sunday morning panel, the experience has been superb.

While I am still gathering my collective thoughts and trying to process much of what I have learned and heard over the past few days, I wanted to capture some of the enduring understandings that have left a mark on me.

• Part of the purpose of school should be to foster creativity, collaboration and courage.
• Schools should be a place where students generate ideas rather than just regurgitate them.
• We should strive to create environments where students have the ability to try out new ideas and test creative ideas.
• Working towards fostering new humanities rich environments where teachers can help “capture and harness student energy in order to shape it.”
• Schools should try to provide opportunities for students to convey concepts and original ideas through thoughtful, technology rich collaboration opportunities.
• “Schools should be about communication.”
• “A teacher has not really taught unless the student has learned.”
• If schools looked to the Mars Rover Mission for inspiration, they could see that any decision that they are about to make that does not meet the mission of the school is expendable.
• Schools should serve as the anchor and social hub for young people; they should be “the place to be” and have access to cool creative tools where students can create.
• As school administrators, we should strive to accept and embrace change with courage and confidence to challenge the status quo, and work toward fostering this mindset among all members of our school communities.
• Schools should work hard to become partners in the local economy where they can provide authentic, real-world experiences that allow students to take their original ideas to market.
• Small “schools” can exist within larger school structures. Meaningful relationships where no child falls through the cracks.
• “Transforming schools is not a mystery. What is needed is the moral courage to do what we know is right.”
• Gary Stager “As the richest country in the world we should provide every student with a computer and a cello.”
• Mandating systemic change has failed our schools, at what point will we truly honor diversity by seeing every school as unique?

I am sure that this partial brain dump is only a portion of what I have been able to digest and I hope that it provides you with a flavor what EduCon has done for my thinking around what education can be. I will be sure to process a more formal response once the conference is over.

In the meantime, have I left anything off the list?

Photo Credit: christopherl

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We recently held a professional development day where a portion of the morning program was devoted to the topic of differentiated instruction. Our very talented and capable Center for Learning Director worked with her equally talented and capable staff to design an hour long presentation intended to serve as a follow up to their presentation at our pre-sessional meetings in late August. Differentiated instruction is not a new concept to those of us in education, and its underlying premise is that rather than expecting students to fit their learning to the curriculum, curriculum and instruction are flexible so that they can better meet the individual needs of individual students. Teachers who are practitioners of DI believe that their teaching is shaped by the students they have in their classes.

In the midst of our conversation together on this cold January morning, one teacher asked a very powerful and thoughtful question. “Given that we are a college prep school, how does differentiated instruction fit into the reality that students will face once they reach the university level?” It was a very good, very pragmatic question. How does it fit? Then I came across an article that appeared in the New York Times which highlighted some of the changes happening in colleges and universities around the country. The article “At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard” focuses on how members of the Physics department at M.I.T are rethinking the way they teach the subject to undergraduates. In response to increasing absenteeism rates and failure rates in these traditional lecture based courses reaching 10 to 12% the faculty at M.I.T knew they needed to do something different. Furthermore, the article states that physicists across the country were continuing to push universities to do a better job in preparing young scientists entering the field.

The result is that large lecture halls where students sit in rows with wooden desks where the professor is at the front of the large lecture hall, filling blackboards with copious amounts of information have given way to smaller classes that “that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning.” The article goes on to state that

“M.I.T. is not alone. Other universities are changing their ways, among them Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, North Carolina State University, the University of Maryland, the University of Colorado at Boulder and Harvard. In these institutions, physicists have been pioneering teaching methods drawn from research showing that most students learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning.”

The image we hold in secondary schools as college preparatory institutions is being challenged by the very colleges and universities we claim in our mission statments we are preparing students to attend. M.I.T has given this new approach its own acronym, TEAL, for Technology Enhanced Active Learning. Read that again. Technology Enhanced Active Learning. Say it out loud. Imagine for a moment what that might look like at your own school. Consider the possibility that our view of what it means to prepare our students for “college and beyond” no longer holds true. Will we be putting our 21st century students at a disadvantage by continuing to conduct business as usual? Are we willing to challenge our view that classes should be held for 47 minutes and follow each other throughout the school day only to be capped by several hours of homework every night?

Regardless of what kind of school you teach in, the first step towards embracing the full potential of teaching in the 21st century requires us to abandon our view of what it means to prepare kids for college.

Photo Credit: Night Owl City

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Last spring I worked on a weekly series called “Monday Morning Meditation” where I would try to connect some thoughts, ideas and perspectives about leadership to the teachings of Zen. It is my hope that by devoting some time to the complex and very human interactions associated with leadership, we can find new ways to approach our work as leaders and help us on our journey towards reshaping our schools.

On Balance

Gaoan Said:

“What students should keep in mind are balance and truthfulness; even though thwarted in a hundred ways they will remain serene and untroubled. But if they have any inclination or bias, and spend the days and nights in petty striving with gain as their aim, I fear their enormous bodies will not fit between the heaven and earth.”

I am sure that many of us in leadership positions have found ourselves looking for that perfect balance. In our professional and personal lives, in our ability to deal with the stresses of work and home. It never seems to be fully possible to find that perfect balance because those of us who work in schools are keenly aware that the nature ebb and flow of the school year comes with moments of rest and reflection while at other times, the pace feels frenetic and out of control. What I find interesting in this passage is the notion that balance and truthfulness are linked together. Our inability to find balance often comes from our unwillingness to be truthful with ourselves. Why do we prioritize certain things over others? What drives us to make the decisions we make? What frames our way of thinking about our work and our relationships with our colleagues and direct reports? Remaining free of bias, keeping an open mind and perspective are often challenges for those of us in leadership positions. We can quickly become thwarted by a variety of factors that can get in the way, for example making decisions based on seeking personal gain.

Finding that perfect balance in life may seem a lofty aspiration but if we take the time to recognize that our approach to our work, our colleagues and our personal lives can serve as the vehicle towards finding more balance in our life, the challenge may not seem as difficult as it once did.

Namaste

Photo Credit: pshutterbug

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One of the first things I remember learning in my graduate work in education was that no matter what I did or how well I planned, there would simply never be enough time for me to get everything done. It just wasn’t possible, there were too many demands, too much work, not enough time. In the 14 years since, not much has changed. Regardless of the school you work for, or whether you are a teacher or administrator, the same mantra pervades most discussions that there is just not enough time to get everything done. The demands on students have not decreased, if anything, they and/or their parents inflict additional stress to be in every club, to compete at the highest athletic levels, to take 5 AP courses. It feels like not only has life gotten more complicated, but we try to pack 27 hours worth of “stuff” into a 24 hour day.

I am sure many schools have spent countless hours in faculty meetings discussing this schedule over that schedule and in some schools, the way we use time with students looks more or less the way it did 20, 30 even 50 years ago. Let’s face it. With the exception of a few schools around the country, the majority of schools function on the old agrarian based calendar where students were sent home for the summer months to work on the farm or in the fields and then sent back to school after the harvest in the fall. in fact, prior to the Great Depression, a few year-long schools popped up in mostly urban areas but they quickly lost favor in light of tough economic times. And since WWII our society has become less agrarian with each passing decade.

Yet, we continue to try and pack 10 lbs of potatoes in a 5 lb bag. We are pressed to find time to making meaningful changes in teacher practice; be it integration of technology, service learning opportunities, real-world experiences and multicultural education. Many schools regardless of their public or private designation are driven by standards based testing pressures, MCAS, SAT, AP exams etc. Students and parents are told by colleges and universities that they must have a breadth and depth of extra-curricular and co-curricular activities on their high school resumes as well as multiple AP courses and a commitment to community service. When will we pause for a moment and reflect that it is simply not possible for us to do it all.

Here in the New England we are only about 6 weeks into the winter season and many schools have lost significant time due to ice and snow, some as many as 8 to 10 school days. It has reached a point where the Massachusetts Secretary of Education is needing to weight adding school days to the year. The point is this; we need to rethink how we devote time to teaching and learning. Continuing to try and do it all in a 160 or 180 school days is only one component we must look at. Rethinking what we do with students during the school day is the second major task. Segmented, structed blocks be they rotating or non-rotating create learning environments that more accurately reflect the industrial age rather than the information age. Starting classes prior to 8:00 am for teenagers and after 9:00 am for elementary school aged children seems backwards to me. Rethinking the priorities and expectations parents and colleges place on young people also needs equal time in the conversation.

Regardless of your opinion of year-round schooling, breaking up the year into smaller and more reasonable chunks of time with breaks spread out over the entire year rather than during the winter, spring and throughout the bulk of the summer months would address issues of summer learning loss, provide extended time for meaningful real-world experiences and field trips and lastly, remove the pressure those of us in education feel to “cram” it in or “get it all done.” Embracing the notion that learning can occur outside the confines of the four walls of a traditional classroom and beyond the hours of 8am and 3pm will allow us to embrace the reality that is the 21st century we are now fully living in and can no longer simply continue preparing for.

Photo Credit: ToniVC

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