blogging, education, leadership, learning, Learning Conversations, pairadimes, reflection, restructuring, technology

Harnessing our advantage

Written by David Truss

Originally posted: March 30th, 2008

Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:

This is the last post that I have to move and so I thought I would put my reflection first.

I actually posted this after I went back to the beginning of my blog and started the reposting process. There is only one other time that I interjected a new post during this reflect and repost process, and I did that because the issue was time sensitive. That said, many reflections have been posts within posts with new ideas developed and shared.

So here now is my final post reflection in this format… I have now officially moved my blog completely over to this new feed.

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Audience does matter… and so does authority. Even in some of these reflections I have seen a shift in my tone on this blog. To be honest, it has been a healthy shift. I still rant, as the first link above demonstrates, but I think I have found a much more positive spin on things thanks to my change in position as well as the choice to put this blog at an address with my name on it.

Every e-mail I send out has the Zoroastrian quote, “Think Good Thoughts, Say Good Words, Do Good Deeds”, and in fact, so do most of my online profiles. Yet, my frustration with the slow process of tearing down archaic institutional walls that hinder the use of transformational technologies in schools has left me frustrated, if not outright bitter, at times. But who are my audience? What does a somewhat negative tone tell them about blogging or working with technology?

As I say below:

We need to be empowered learners if we want to lead other learners.

Anger and frustration may spur the desire to learn, but these ‘hot’ emotions do not encourage a positive learning environment, they do not enhance a learning experience, they do not empower us to be leaders.

You’ll still see me rant, and I’ll still show my frustration at times, but I hope to keep the tone positive and I hope to keep my very own personal learning environment, my learning hub, a place where my thoughts, words and deeds are inherently good.
Thanks to inspiration by Alec, I ended up staying up well past my bedtime (again) and writing a Forum Post in an online Dialogue for our Building Leadership Capacity group. This is a group of teachers interested in Leadership within the District, they meet for 3 session and the discussion forum is designed to keep the conversation going between sessions, (it is just getting started). It is interesting being one of the facilitators after being a teacher-participant for a few years. Regular readers will see that my comments are tempered with a slightly different tone as I figure out my voice as an Administrator. We tell students, “Audience Matters!” But now I am experiencing that first-hand. Here is my discussion forum post:
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Here is an interesting video.Schools as institutions are so slow to change. I think if we really want to be leaders we must prepare our students with the tools of today and tomorrow, not yesterday!

From Alec Couros’ Letting Go
“…we’ve reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools.”

Harsh words, but as our own district ramps up its’ online learning and districts like West Vancouver do the same, we must ask ourselves how best to meet the needs of our students in schools? On the topic of technology use, I created this slideshow to show to SFU Student Teachers at a pro-d session earlier this year: Brave New World-Wide-Web. Towards the end, it highlights some of the tools that students used to empower their own learning.
And that brings us back to the idea of leadership. We need to be empowered learners if we want to lead other learners. We need to create an environment that fosters doing new things in new ways, like many cutting edge organizations do. However, this isn’t a complaint about what we need and don’t have. I read a lot of blogs by teachers across the globe. Here in Canada, and in the US, there are countless districts where not every classroom has a computer, or where draconian online censorship by the district limits what a teacher can do. Compared to most school districts, we are actually leaders on the technology integration curve, especially with respect to our ideology of openness and what we have with the My43 portal.
So as leaders, how do we harness this advantage? If we want to build capacity and empower the leaders in our district, what is it that needs to happen to foster a culture that thrives on challenge
and change? What do we need to do to nurture our own learning? How can WE become educational leaders that prepare our students for an age of prolific technological advancement?