Yesterday morning I did a keynote presentation for our High School Pro-D day that I called:  ’It’s not about the Technology -(and it’s not a secret)‘. I’ll share this online after I get back from holidays.

The night before the presentation I sat and looked at what I had prepared and hated it. I wrote on Twitter: “I’m just over 10hrs away from presenting & want to totally revamp my presentation. Not a great feeling.” ~ It really wasn’t.

I appreciated the support and advice given to me, especially from Lisa Thumann, Jen Wagner and Shelly Terrell who all offered to take a look at what I’d done. The problem was that I didn’t like my presentation enough to send it to them… then I fell asleep. I woke up at 3am and realized that I was stuck with what I had, I just didn’t have enough time to change my presentation with just over 3hrs before I had to catch a cab to the train (Qing Gui) station.

I had to deal with the slides I already had. My presentation was broken into different sections that each had the item that is (not a secret) in brackets. I took all those titles, wrote them on post-it notes and juggled them around.

I broke up my presentation and, like Lego, reassembled the pieces into something different. I moved from a scattered bunch of ideas into a story. Suddenly I had a presentation I was happy with.

I slept on the train and when I woke up I ended up in a wonderful conversation with a man who spoke to me in Chinese and continually asked questions that I didn’t understand, and then talked about me to those around us. My broken and very limited Chinese did not serve me well.

Setting up for my 8am presentation we couldn’t get my laptop sound to go through the auditorium speakers without horrible feedback. Small speakers were brought in, (I almost brought my own, but I was at this auditorium just 2 weeks ago and knew that it was well equipped). With the small speakers and addition of my mic, all was good… or so I thought!

I tried to go to the primarypad.com/ pad (an etherpad clone) that I had set up with all my links, and as a backchannel for the session, but I couldn’t get wireless. It seems the new campus wireless doesn’t reach the auditorium other than a few rows in the back.

I started my presentation and within 30 seconds the power went out. I picked up my laptop and said to the 100+ audience members, “Ok, everybody gather around here.”

I started a conversation about ‘What tech tool can’t you live without, that didn’t exist 5 years ago… and by the time people had discussed this with their neighbours and we started sharing as a group the power turned on… “POP” … that would be the sound of the ceiling mounted LCD light bulb burning out.

That’s when I asked a new question: “How many of you have had the experience before of having a lesson planning epiphany… suddenly you are up late at night planning… you head into the school before class starts in the morning and when you get to the photocopier… it’s BROKEN!“ ~Most teachers raised their hands.

“So, keep your hands up if you said something like, ‘That’s it, I’m never using the photocopier again?’“ ~All hands went down.

Sometimes ‘technology’, be it a photocopier, a presentation, or even a pen doesn’t work.

Eventually we got going. I didn’t get to more than 1/2 of my slides, but found a great place to stop so that it felt like my presentation had an ending. Judging from the standing-room only in my break-out session afterwards, what I did was well received.

~~~

There were a lot of reasons to roll my eyes and complain. There were a lot reasons to let frustration prevail… and there was an opportunity for me to model for everyone that it really isn’t about the technology.

What the day was about was professionals getting together and learning, and when it comes to learning, the hardest thing to ‘fix’ is broken attitudes!

Kudus to the staff, they were patient with me, asked a lot of great questions, and eager to learn new things. Reflecting now, the only thing that feels broken is the title of this post.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

On Thursday our school held our Holiday Concert. Below I’ve highlighted 2 of the performance videos.

We called it our Holiday Concert, but in hindsight it was just a Christmas Concert. It wasn’t intentional, it was unintentional bias, but all of the songs performed were either Christmas songs, or songs that we tend to associate with Christmas. Next year I hope we can make it more of a world holiday affair, but for now enjoy my two favourite performances. Considering that all of the classes started practicing for this concert just 2 weeks earlier, it isn’t a surprise that the ones that I like are from teachers with music degrees. The first video is of two classes, Ms Shae & Yee’s class and my wife’s class, and includes my daughter Cassie. The second video is of Mr. Underhay’s class. Enjoy!

Christmas Comes from the Heart is wonderful! It sounds like a choir that practiced for months.

And this class combined their talents to perform a not-so-silent ska version of Silent Night.

Two other honourable mentions go to 4 year old Max’s Cello Solo and a fun version of Dancin’ on the Rooftop.

Enjoy the performances, and for those of you that celebrate Christmas, a very happy day to you. For those of you that celebrate other festivals and ceremonies this time of year, I’d love for you to link to some performances to help inspire our holiday concert next year.

I first wrote about Andy Hargreaves and the 4th Way back in October, (with an important update added to the bottom of the post in early November). The pyramid below is updated from that post, taking feedback from Hargreaves himself.

Administrators from our district met and discussed The 4th Way last Thursday and we were guided through some activities to encourage us to explore the text and to examine which of Hargreaves’ principles we are doing well, and which ones we need to focus on.

I like the recommendation of putting ‘Teaching and Learning’ at the top of the pyramid. I think that puts the role of both educators, (as a teacher and a learner), and students where they belong at the focal point of what is both important in education and meaningful in educational change.

We need to have a common, clear, inclusive and inspiring vision.

We need to collaborate at all levels of community… it really does take a village to raise a child.

We need to be active learners taking part in lively learning communities, networked with effective role models.

We need to be responsible and effective teaching professionals, lead learners fostering meaningful learning.

During our session, we got to see some exclusive video interviews that Hargreaves gave, and I realized that embedded, but not explicitly mentioned, in my pyramid is the idea of professionalism… This is where ‘Responsibility’ comes from. To me Hargreaves’ notion of “Responsibility before Accountability” is key to the 4th Way. The following was completed on a little reflection card we filled out and handed in, (I’m glad I took a photo of it first).

I wrote:

We need to be unified and collaborative.

Not unions, but professional organizations.

Not corporations, but community leaders.

Not top-down, but shared leadership.

Not teachers, but co-learners.

Not standardization, but a process of inquiry.

Looking at this list, it unintentionally follows the patter of: Not accountability, but responsibility.

The key here it to recognize that there is a coexistence between the two and that this isn’t a dichotomy, but rather a priority: “Responsibility before Accountability”.  This is where schools and school districts have the greatest opportunity to change.

In The 4th Way, Hargreaves says,

“Unions have missed an opportunity to raise professional standards among all their members and increase their credibility and transparency among the public. Government, meanwhile, has kept an iron grip on defining and controlling professional standards. This is professionalism without power—and teachers know it.”

Professionalism, and the ensuing responsibility that comes with it, empowers educators at all levels. In the end, we need to be accountable, but not to governments, or unions, or corporations. We need to be accountable to ourselves as professionals and educators, and we need to be accountable to the student in our schools.

Professionals acting responsibly and holding themselves, and others, accountable in the interest of teaching and learning.

Sometimes that means that we let corporations into our schools but we dictate the conditions and we expect them to be there as community leaders, not advertisers, (and we hold them accountable to this if they don’t do it responsibly). Sometimes we need to let parents and community members share their expertise and not worry that they are doing something that is defined as a union job. Sometimes, (dare I say often), we need to let students dictate what they want to learn, because they are passionate about an area of interest, and let go of the curriculum.

Maureen Dockendorf said at the end of the session about Hargreaves’ 4th Way, “It’s not a program, it is a set of principles”.

This is a great point, as The 4th Way is not prescriptive. Expanding on this idea in a discussion with Dave Sands later he said, “It’s not steps or even a set of principles, it is a philosophy or a way of being.”

Dave continued, “This is how an organization, a society, and a world moves to a greater state of consciousness. This is how we take responsibility and ultimately move to accountability.”

On a final note look at what I highlighted above:

Professionals acting responsibly and holding themselves, and others, accountable in the interest of teaching and learning.

Do you notice where the power lies is in that statement?

- – - – - – - – - – - -

After reading The Fourth Way article in Educational Leadership/October 2008, by Andrew Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, I’ve been trying to apply personal meaning to this new way. The 4th Way has five Pillars of Purpose, three Principals of Professionalism and four Catalysts of Coherence. But I think The 4th way rests firmly on just one pillar!

“An inspiring and inclusive vision that draws people together in pursuit of an uplifting common purpose.”

Beyond that the other pillars involve Collaboration in order to achieve the vision and common purpose being pursued. The Principals of Professionalism come from having Learning Conversations, or from Collaborators involved in an Active Learning network. And finally we need *accountability Responsibility to ensure the changes that we make are meaningful. I specifically avoided the term ‘assessment’, as that term suggests measuring things in ways that may not necessarily measure what we would consider progress. No ’standardization’ as Hargreaves suggests! Hargreaves’ Catalysts of Coherence are embedded throughout the pyramid.

We need a common vision of what we are in this for… Why schools are important? And how are they of value to our society and to our students? We need to be collaborating more effectively.

In doing so, we need to meaningfully connect Community, Educators, Students and Schools. We need to harness the strength of networks and learning communities and, equally as important, we have to create the time for these communities to meet as part of an educator’s (and student’s) day/week.

We need to be reflective learners, *accountable responsible to our communities that we share our learning with. Principles of Professionalism and Catalysts of Coherence will help us get ‘there’… but we need to collaborate and figure out where ‘there’ is first.

Maureen Dockendorf spoke of:

Not the Knowing, but the Process of Inquiry. Not covering the curriculum, but ‘uncovering’ the curriculum. A focus in innovation and creativity… how do we model this… every day?

We model this by creating meaningful learning communities based on professional inquiry and by giving those learning communities the time and resources to make things happen.

*See update below.

—–

Inspirational reading and viewing:

School Reform in 5 minutes by Chris Lehmann. Also see his What I want to talk about post.

What business are we in? by Clarence Fisher.

If “It’s not about the technology.” Then What is it About? by Heidi Gable.

Letting Go by Alec Couros

21st Century Pedagogy by Greg Whitby on YouTube

Raising Expectations by Kelly Christopherson

We are ready for The 4th Way!

———–

*UPDATE: November 2nd, 2008

I originally had “Accountability” in the top arrow, but a colleague suggested that I change it to “Responsibility” in keeping with Hargreaves’ idea of “Responsibility before Accountability”.

In a letter to my Superintendent, Tom Grant, Andy Hargreaves suggested that “Teaching and Learning” be at the top of the Pyramid. He said, “ We would put teaching and learning at the top, though and reflection all around it, probably.” I may change this yet again when I get an understanding of how to represent ‘all around it’ visually. Hargreaves also said to Tom, “It’s great that you are the first in to the fourth way, and in your own way which is entirely as it should be.” This truly is an exciting time for us!

*Update: April 28th, 2009 See my new post: [Part 2]

Is your computer being used to teach, to distract, or to promote learning?

If you are reading this while you have a class in session, get off your buttocks.

If you are e-mailing while you have a class in session, move your rump.

If you are planning your next lesson and you have a class in session, take a load off your tush.

If you are searching the web and you have a class in session, separate the chair from your rear end.

If you aren’t conferencing with a student or group of students at your computer then why are you looking at your computer at all?

I’m not preaching, I’m sharing a lesson learned.

At the end of my semester teaching Planning 10, where I used a Ning Network in the class, I surveyed the students for both their reflections and their feedback. A lot of the feedback was really positive! That said, it didn’t teach me as much as the constructive (some would say negative) feedback. Two critical points really struck a chord with me.

Something Mr. Truss can do to make the class or his performance in the class better:

I spent a lot of time in class reading things students had done in class and calling them up to discuss their contributions. I gave feedback, suggested ways to improve what they’d done, and I asked a lot of questions about where they planned to go next… but that’s not all I did. I did get distracted too. And why didn’t I spend that feedback time at my students computers rather than mine?

If one student was brave enough to admit that my circulating around the room was not meaningful, how many more thought it? Did I spend more time ‘policing’ or monitoring than interacting, engaging and helping? Why? How can I best use that time? What should I have been doing to help students learn?

The fact is that the computer is a tool that only holds the value you place on it: It can be a fantastic tool to help you teach; It can be a diversion or a major distraction; It can be a collaboration tool that engages learners in ways that you simply couldn’t do without it.

It’s great having a computer on your desk! But if it isn’t being used meaningfully while your class is in session, then get off your butt.

[This post is about questioning why we do what we do, so that we can do things in new, better ways. It specifically looks at design, differentiated instruction and assessment.]

I’m going to flush out an idea here and maybe even start a movement!

If you want to sit on a dry toilet seat, then please make the upright/raised position the default toilet seat position!

By design, toilet seats should be spring loaded to lift slowly after the weight of a seated visitor has been removed.

Many times I’ve heard about Men’s inability to aim for the center of the toilet bowl, but having cleaned Women’s bathrooms in a restaurant before, I must say that we at least have an aiming mechanism! If the seat is not going to be sat on anyway… then why not lift it to make the target bigger? That is a statement equally valuable to Men and Women! By making the raised position the default position, we remove the laziness or poor rearing factors from causing unnecessary seat puddles.

I grew up in a house with three sisters and now live with my wife and two daughters… I’m very well trained to raise the seat, use the toilet and put the seat back down: Operant conditioning at its’ best!

The fact that I’m willing to do it, and the fact that ‘it has always been done that way‘, in no way makes it the best or most effective thing to do.

I think that schools are wrought with traditional ways of doing things, not because these are most effective, and not because of smart design, but simply because that’s what was done before.

This year I really want to look at what we do in schools and ask a lot of questions: Why do we do it this way? How can we do it better? What is the purpose of this activity? Does our approach meet our students’ needs? How do we know our students are learning? What results are we expecting to see? Can we get better results by doing this another way? Are all these steps necessary? Why is this approach effective?

It is time for some positive deviance! If you disturb the contents of a toilet, then you know what you will be called, but if you disturb or disrupt an ineffective approach or idea then you have the potential to be a true leader! Here are some ‘positive deviance’ guidelines from Surfing the Edge of Chaos:

1. Design, don’t engineer.
2. Discover, don’t dictate.
3. Decipher, don’t presuppose.

I like this ’soft’ approach, but I also thing we need to stir the pot (rather than the bowl) a bit. We need teachers that do not go quietly into their classrooms and we need our edupunks to be educational leaders.

- – - – -

Here are three areas that I will be looking at with ‘new eyes’… the eyes of a questioner and a learner looking to do things more meaningfully and effectively.

• Design: Are we teaching this? Why not? When we say, “Do a Powerpoint”, or “Make a video”, are we expecting students to just know how to design these well? Where do students learn these skills? We don’t say “Do an essay”, and expect students to understand how to do this effectively without structural guidance… why is a powerpoint or movie project any different?

• Differentiated Instruction: How are students demonstrating their learning? Can they demonstrate it in different ways? Is this a Powerpoint assignment? Or a movie assignment? Or can a student choose to meet the learning outcomes in a different way? What’s more important, the assignment or the learning? Is the assignment designed with ‘the end in mind’? Does the assignment allow for different students, with different needs, to demonstrate their learning in ways that are meaningful to them?

• Assessment: Are we counting marks or marking what counts? How much does esthetics or design count for? Is this enough, or is it too much? Does the criteria measure the learning outcomes or what’s easy to mark? Does the criteria measure what we told students was important about the assignment? Does the assignment measure what is important about the leaning? Are we adding up the marks or assessing the learning we see demonstrated?

Those are a lot of questions, but I think they are worth asking! We know very well that ‘the right questions’ help our students learn, and so it would follow that the same would apply to our learning.

My challenge now is to figure out when and where it is best to ask these questions.

I’m not going to be leaving my toilet seat in the upright position at home… there is no need to as I find it dry all the time, and I’m the only one that needs it up… but don’t be surprised if you are next after me to use a public washroom and you walk in to find a dry seat waiting for you in the upright position.

Target Practice: Kandinsky meets Warhol in the Bathroom

Yesterday I had coffee with Heidi Hass Gable, our new District Parent Advisory Council (DPAC) President, and blogger at “I was thinking…“. I suggested to her that she watch Lost Generation while we were discussing some well thought out ideas she shared with me about nothing less than the purpose of education. Here is the video: 

This morning I thought about a post that I wrote, which keeps coming back to mind. 

School 2.0 Participant’s Manifesto

This post looks at the responsibility of the learner to be an active and engaged participant in the class and in the learning process. 

What excites me about web2.0 tools is not the tools themselves, but the ability of these tools to actively engage students in their learning. Students are often far more capable of leading their own learning than we give them credit for. Should students come up with their own manifesto? Or a class manifesto? 

Also, it is important to remember that the adults in the building are participants too! What are we going to do this year to model and share our learning journey with our students? 

The answers will vary from staff member to staff member… there is no cookie-cutter answer. However, regardless of the path we choose, we owe it to our students to have high expectations. 

With the start of the school year coming next Tuesday, I am excited about the possibilities before me. Many wonderful opportunities await myself, my staff, and our students. I believe that if we enter our schools as active, engaged learners, then we can have great expectations, and we can create an environment where we meet those expectations too!

A Blog from Nothing

I remember when I put a ClustrMap on my blog. I saw one on a novel study wiki and thought it would be great for student wikis & blogs, to help students see that they have a global audience. It took me over an hour to figure out how and where to embed the html on the Elgg open source blogging platform. Then a few dots started to show up on the map and I must admit to getting excited. And now, when I look at a map of visitors for my first year of blogging, I really feel like something has been built from nothing.

The Children’s Book by This Name

If you don’t know the story, as told by Phoebe Gilman, here is Something from Nothing in a nutshell:

A loving grandfather makes a beautiful blanket for his grandson. The boy takes it everywhere with him until it gets ‘tattered and torn’ , and so his grandfather salvages what is left of it by making a beautiful jacket… which in turn gets ‘tattered and torn’ so the boy’s grandfather makes him something from what is left again, and again, and again… and considering the title, I won’t be giving anything away by saying eventually something is made from nothing!

A Reflective Move

Elgg, my blog’s host, switched to Eduspaces. Eduspaces was about to change again when I’d had enough. I decided to move my 80+ posts on my blog to somewhere that I had more control, and so I bought DavidTruss.com. When I tried to transfer my blog I ended up with about 3/4 of the posts being truncated and every tag I used transfered as a blank link… all 1,700+ or them. As I painstakingly erased them, one-by-one, I thought about the opportunity this could be for me to reflect on my blog so far.

On April 26th, 2008 I reposted my very first post with a small box at the end, placed there for my Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting. It then took me over 2 months to repeat the process for all my posts! Despite it being a much slower process than I imagined, I must admit that it has been a richly powerful and wonderful experience. At times my reflections were whimsical; at times they were like whole posts, adding new insights; and at times they either reinforced or challenged what I’d written. My posts are a reflection of my growth as an empowered learner who engages in thoughtful reflection.

When I started the paragraph above, I’d intended to pepper it with linked examples of what I was talking about. I was going to dig through my reflections and demonstrate how I was inventive or contemplative or … However, the purpose of this reflection is not to showcase what I’ve done, but rather to examine the value of the experience. I’m not sure if I’d want to scrutinize and dissect what I’ve written like this again, but I’m very glad that I went through this process, (or should I say ordeal?)

Moving Forward

When I moved to the Grad Transitions Coordinator position I sometimes felt that I had to bite my digital tongue since the things I really wanted to talk about could have sabotaged the program I was running. Then I got to this Vice Principals’ position and again questioned how this would change what I write about… how it would force me to bite my digital tongue not just when blogging with students, but always, as a ‘Person with New Responsibilities’.

Now, thanks to this reflection process, I feel like I can go forward and continue to challenge my own and others’ assumptions. I can question what I, and the proverbial ‘we’, do in institutional learning without hesitation or thinking that I have to watch what I say. This is my blog. This is my learning space. This is my place to question and challenge my thinking. If that gets me in hot water, I’ll deal with that when the time comes.

Addendum

Last October, during an interesting e-mail correspondence with some friends about cell-phone use in schools, I linked to this blog post. I was asked by our Manager of Information Services, who was one of the people in this correspondence, why I didn’t use the district’s Mysite for my personal blog. This was my e-mail response [with updates]:

- – - – -

First of all, I have had this blog for a while now and it is my online ‘home’.

Second, I have a bit of a world audience… specifically a few readers in The US, Argentina, Scotland, Australia, and England, and so passwords protection is not appealing. (I’m not sure if this is an issue, can you directly link to the blog without a password? [You can, it has a district/locked face and a public face])

And also, I already RSS it into my mysite page.

I have considered posting my blog in the Mysite blog section as well (cross-posting in two locations [I've done this sparingly since writing this e-mail]), but there is one other reason…

I tend to be public about my dislike for the current state of education and that is MY opinion, not one endorsed by the district. I am not sure how well a blog post critical of education (such as this one http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/square-peg-round-hole/) would sit with some of the people who may be notified internally on their Mysite that I have a new blog post… and I don’t want the thought of that causing me to censor my personal views.

I’ve never actually stated the name of my school or my district in my blog, but they are easy enough to find out.

Perhaps I am just paranoid, but I question the idea of how personal this mysite is?

Do things I put there ‘belong’ to me?

Do I have an obligation or a responsibility to the district?

What if I was critical of the district in my blog? [I have been]

If I left the district how long would I have before ‘my property’ is taken away from me?

Basically my blog is MY BLOG, and I question my rights to do with it as I please within the Mysite space.

- – - – -

His response was honest,

…Your questions about how you can use your my43 blog are excellent – we haven’t thought through that at all yet. I will raise those questions with the design team.

All this makes me wonder: How meaningful are some of these learning spaces we create for our students? Are we giving them a site that is theirs? Who really owns their learning? Who should?

It’s the old allegory of the cave.

Last Friday I was leaving the school and I popped into my VP’s office. Among other things, Anthony and I often talk about technology in the classroom. One thing led to another and I showed him the YouTube video that was the subject of my last post: iPhone tutorial from a two-year-old. It was shortly after this, while I was saying something, that Anthony interrupted me:

“You can’t go back now, can you?”
“What?”
“You could never be able to go back to teaching without technology, could you?
“No.”

Driving home after our conversation it occurred to me what a transformation my teaching has gone through in the past couple years. Could I go back to a classroom and teach void of blogs, wikis, & online networks? Well, of course I could, but I just wouldn’t want to!

Not only do I never want to go back, but I have become an evangelist.
However I’ve noticed a bit of a backlash among teachers. Comments like “We can do that without technology” miss the point about what students have the potential to do. “Every time I get them in the computer room all they do is Facebook” recognizes that technology is a tool, not an answer, but comments such as these are used as excuses rather than challenges.

In the past few weeks I’ve heard more than one teacher say, “What is Facebook”, and “What is a wiki?”. This I can handle. But then I hear about how technology is evil; about what a distraction it is. Well here is a little news flash… IT ISN’T GOING ANYWHERE!

There are times I just want to put my head down, improve what I am doing as a teacher, and forget that there is ‘work to be done’. I can’t. Not only can’t I return to life in Plato’s cave, but I am also compelled to ’share the true light’. I now realize that at times I am destined to be seen as ‘blinded’, such will be the lot in life for many of us.

Can you go back now?