I’m back from ISTE (obviously) and been pretty busy. There have been lots of things going on that have gotten in the way with keeping up the site.

On a personal level, I’ve been dealing with parents that are getting older and in need of some additional attention. I think that we’ve got that worked out now.

I’m doing some consultant work which has taken a good bit of attention. It’s a lot of work, but very worthwhile. I’ll post more about that in the future.

On the professional front, this has also been a big summer. My district has passed a bond which will allow us to better serve the students, teachers, administrators and community. However, this also comes with a ton of effort by my team. We’re working on putting things in place so that the school year can start smoothly.

That being said, I should be catching back up on things shortly.

   I’ve landed at ISTE 2014. For anyone who has never attended, this is an overwhelming conference. There are thousands of people in attendance. The conference is always in a very large city with a massive conference center. This year, Atlanta, Georgia is the spot. The Conference Center has several buildings. The conference begins on Friday and runs until Tuesday.

The start of the conference is the overview of the schedule. This is done using the Conference App. The app itself is very overwhelming. The central issue for me is which sessions can I attend.

• When are these sessions?
• Are sessions offered more than once?
• What is the session about? There are lots of overlapping sessions. There are also lots of extra pay sessions. I have mixed feelings about extra pay sessions. On one hand, I certainly understand individuals being compensated or their expertise, time, and efforts. ISTE wisely has mostly segregated these sessions to the morning of Saturday. I like that. However, notice it is “mostly”. I do wish that the paid sessions were a little more, shall I say, affordable. Lots of the sessions are in the $100-200 range for a half day session. The real truth is, that I feel that many of these sessions are things that you could fairly easily learn on your own. There is some advantage to streamlining these topics, but $100 seems pricy to accomplish that. For example, there is a session that called “Streamline your daily tasks using Google tools and scripting”. The description is: “Discover how to make everyday processes more efficient using new tools and scripts.” This session is $109-$119. The description really isn’t enough for me to make a $100 commitment. However, I may be in the minority (this session sold out). This is not to disparage this session, by the way. This is just my view.

I spent several hours going through sessions so far. I still don’t have a discrete schedule (lots of choices, with many overlapping). This is one thing that I don’t like. Sessions may run from 8:00-10:00am. Other sessions run from 8:30-9:30. Others, 8:30-11:00. I prefer straight forward, simply organized blocks of time. You know 8:00-9:00, 9:00-10:00 OR 8:00-10:00. That way, if I attend a two hour session, I know that it replaces two one hour sessions.

I can imagine that traffic flow is an issue with a conference this large though. Again, this is a huge conference with tons of things going on.

I’ve been reading about “flipped” this and that lately. Now, I love buzz words as much as anyone. But why is everything flipped these days? I’ve just finished reading another article about flipped staff meetings. The idea behind these flipped staff meetings is that the mundane informational items are communicated via email or newsletter instead of being shared at the staff meeting. In other words, let people read what they can read and spend staff meeting time with teachers sharing best practices ideas and concepts. How is this a flipped anything? Granted it is a good idea, but flipped?

I was last a building principal over three years ago now. All of our meetings were run with teachers leading the way. We focused on school improvement ideas. We shared best practice strategies. We modeled lessons that were actually used in classrooms. We met in groups to discuss teaching strategies, students, curriculum, etc. We didn’t call it flipped. It was just good practice. I put out a weekly newsletter to share information (with a cute name, of course).

Flipped seems to be the most current fashionable jargon word available. I’ve heard just about everything referred to as flipped. So much so, that flipped has lost almost all meaning to me. There could be a good debate over whether or not the flipped classroom is actually effective or not. To do so, we’d first have to agree on the definition of flipped.

Now, I agree that not everyone is at the same juncture of their journey in educational practice. I’m sure that there are many concepts and ideas that I’m behind in understanding and applying. But can we at least stop glomming unto a name and applying it to everything?

The last couple of weeks have extremely busy. Like most educators. However, I was also lucky enough to spend a great deal of that time in schools. Specifically, I spent time in classrooms and media centers (libraries). I miss watching kids learn. I miss the ”light bulb” moments. It was great fun to see that again.

I also spent a little bit of time teaching classes. Not the full on, teacher lessons, teaching all day, but at least I was able to do some real instruction. The topics were things that I was pretty comfortable with and have taught before. Mostly, I was teaching about technology, how to navigate through a web page, etc. (On a side note, it is amazing how many educators don’t really know how to use a browser. Things like bookmarking, Back navigation, etc are a strange concept to some.)

One of my favorite moments was in an elementary school. A teacher was running late. I was in a classroom to help with a Promethean Board issue. The teacher I was helping started collecting the students from across the hall. The room quickly filled and there were more students yet to arrive. I told the teacher that I would take the other class back to their room and get them going. The incredulous look was priceless. “Are you sure?”

I assured the teacher that I would be fine. I had a great time with the first graders. The teacher arrived a bit after we started things out.

I was once again reminded how different things are when you work year round. You lose a bit of the ebb and flow of the year. Since there is no “break” to look forward to, no real new beginnings or endings, the ebb and flow become much closer to a monotonous drone.

These really are exciting times that we are living in. Never before has it been possible to reach so many students in so many ways. As humans, we are very visually oriented. We respond to what we see. We make sense of the world by looking around, making judgements, decisions, based on that information that we perceive.

This is one reason that many classrooms have been so teacher driven. Teachers can provide a focal point. A good teacher directs the attention of the students when and where it is needed. Teachers used the tools at hand to do just that. A blackboard allows for all students to see the same thing at the same time. This eventually morphed into the overhead projector. This allowed the teacher to focus the attention of the students while maintaining eye contact. The teacher was able to direct the learning and evaluate as the lesson was under way. What a powerful concept. However, that doesn’t scale well. It lead to teaching to the middle.

Carol Tomlinson and others made a push for differentiated instruction. Who could argue with that? Well, at least until it came time to actual differentiate instruction. Turns out that creating multiple pathways for students can take a time. A lot of time. A really, really lot of time. That wasn’t time invested, it was time spent. Teachers who do a really excellent job of differentiating instruction (and there are some out there), tend to put in a lot of time. Now, most teachers put in a lot of time. I’m talking about 6:00am-8:00pm at school kind of time. It just isn’t a model that seems to be able to be spread far and wide successfully. Yet, I’m excited about Blended Learning and the ability to differentiate instruction. Why?

Blended Learning allows teachers to leverage work. It still means a lot of work. However, it is work that is invested. Not just in the kids in front of the teachers right then, but invested into the future as well. Blended Learning allows teachers to reuse, remix, share, steal, borrow, leverage, etc, the work of creating resources. This work isn’t just for that one class (or one student), but becomes a resource for future classes and students as well.

Blended Learning classrooms now allow teachers to use video easily. This feeds the visual needs of students. The students who need to see the presentation again, can do so. It has never been as easy as it is right now to create video recording that are available for students. And it will only get easier. This allows teachers to create those resources and provide them to the students. This has been a generating force for “flipped classrooms”. But it really goes beyond that. Visually, we can now easily video conference (and this will get even easier). That means that we can take students to places that we never could before. They can see what a place looks like. They can talk to students from other places with the full visual queues that humans instinctively rely on. It also means that we can use video that others have created.

Blended Learning classrooms can do so much more than that. But that focus alone is super powerful. Creating visually intensive opportunities for kids. Grabbing the attention of a student. Focusing their attention in a biologically supported way. All these are powerful options.

Yes, we are on the precipice of fundamental change. These are exciting times. There will be some struggles as we move forward. But just think about what we can do.

The world is certainly a different place. Not better, not worse. Different. I visit lots of schools. I love looking at schools. At what they have posted on the walls. At the student work. At what is highlighted. I’m fascinated by the different ways that schools are laid out. The difference between newer schools and older schools can be profound.

School based on Independence Hall.

Security is an issue that is very obvious. In the building that I was fortunate enough to serve as a principal, the office was on the interior side of the building. Furthermore, there was no “security trap” (a second set of doors where you can contain people after they enter a first set of doors). Nope. Parents walked through the main doors, crossed through the hallway, and then entered the office. The building itself was beautiful. It was modeled after Independence Hall. The history of the building was fun. It was built in 1929. The most obvious feature was (and is) the central clock tower. (This was recently replaced. The original was all wood and filled with carvings and tools. The new version is fiberglass.) But when the building was constructed, there were no plans for security cameras, buzzers, etc. Furthermore, the building had additional construction at least three times. The additions jutted back from the ends of the building. This made the building into a basic U shape. After 9-11, there was an edict to lock all doors. The problem with this at my building was that we used the “exterior hallway” for traffic flow. That is, the kids would exit from one side of the building and enter the other. That meant leaving those two doors open all the time. Great for kids. Great for traffic flow in an overcrowded building. Not so great for security.

Many of the buildings feature portraits of previous principals. These portraits always interest me as well. In addition to the clothing, background and posture, I usually look at the plate that indicates the years that the person was principal. Many of these are measured in the decades. Lots of principals served as least 10 years with 20 not being unusual. These principals were an integral part of the community. Parents knew them. Parents may have attended that same school as a student with the same principal. Now, principals are moved around frequently. Principals may be in a particular school for three years and then move to another one. It is starting to become rare that a principal spends many years in one school.

All of this leads to the profound shift from place based to person based. Libraries used to be rooms (well, they still are, but that seems to be changing). Libraries are quickly becoming the web. More specifically, sites on the web. Community was built around a geo location – where you lived. Now community is based more around interest. For example, as my kids grew up, their friends tended not to live in the same neighborhood, but participated in the same activities.

The world is certainly a different place. Not better, not worse. Different. Are we preparing our students and children for this new landscape? Are we preparing ourselves? There is no point in living in the past. The present is here. It certainly is different.