Last week, we had a very hectic schedule at our school. Somewhere along the way we almost double-booked our Tuesday night with drama and parent-student-teacher conferences. At this point, I decided that we should move away from the classic form of letting each other know what was going on, which is to tell the secretary all the dates that things are happening, she puts them on her calendar and then the rest check. I suggested that we use pbwiki and our own site to publish all events in the school. I ended up with a bunch of backlash, people complaining of having to do “one-more-thing” and other such complaints. Now, usually I can handle this type of rebuff but for some reason that day I couldn’t. I like to know what is going on because it is important to me. I think that being able to see all the different things happening at the school is important to all the teachers. So I pouted.

Yes folks, I, as administrator felt sorry for myself and pouted. Now, it didn’t last too long and I got over things. Some other people suggested we try it but there was not a unanimous decision and it was dropped. So, today, I brought it up again only this time, instead of wording it as an option, I suggested that, for the sake of everyone in the school, all events are to be added to the calendar. The routine is to put it on the calendar and tell our secretary not necessarily
in that order. There has been a link icon made for the teacher’s desktop so all they have to do is click and go. Because we are using the pbwiki site, the calendar is also compatible with my ical so I have all the information from school on my personal calendar so that I can see what is happening and can quite triple booking myself.

As the educational leader in my school, I use concensus decision-making and, as a group, we tend to work towards doing the will of the group. However, when it comes to technology, we’re just not doing much. Now, I see the tremendous possibilities to using technology and am using pbwiki for my own class. As I grow more comfortable with the tool, I can see that it will provide valuable assistance to me and students in developing their ideas and looking at areas that they are interested in while still maintaining a curricular focus. The calendar function is very easy to use and really provides an awesome idea of
what is going on. I’ve had the staff wiki going for about 3 weeks and there are some who are checking out the calendar but it is not reaching its potential.
Today, as I skimmed over the various blogs, one that caught my eye was Bill MacKenty’s post on how to make technology work in education.  Bill listed three things that will create more use of technology.

The effective use of technology in education depends on three things:

1) The relationship of the teacher to the technology
2) Effective and real in-class support for technology use
3) Relevant and real connections between content and the technology.

Now, I’m not going to discuss the merits of the above. You can check out the post for that. What got me thinking about all this was Dean Shareski’s post his work with teachers and technology. I think what they are doing is tremendous but what really
caught my attention was this

It’s noteworthy that Ev, who is a teacher of 30 years is, retiring this year. She is doing so somewhat reluctantly because she is feeling like she is just on the verge of exploring a new way of teaching and learning for her students. She is a true learner.

How is it we have teachers in their 30 years that are willing to go and try and learn and, and yet we get young teachers, as indicated in Will Richardson’s blog about a conversation with some beginning teachers, that aren’t.  The part I like is

The general sense from the group was “yeah, but” once again. Yeah, but we have these kids who are going to abuse these technologies if we open them up. Yeah, but we’re going to be out there on our own if we decide to use these technologies. Yeah, but I don’t have enough time to make this a part of my own practice. Yeah, but, etc. (And please, if any of those in attendance are reading this, feel free to chime in.) At one point I said something along the lines of “you know, there’s a lot of pressure on you in my circles because many people think nothing is going to change until the old guard retires out and you guys take over.” Well, that didn’t float very well.

The comments that follow are worth the read as are the one’s that Dean pulls out. So, where does this leave us? Pouting!

Well, that is where it left me for awhile when I saw the resistance that people were having to this technology thing. I then started to think that we need to do what is best for the students. We need to make decisions, not on what is comfortable for us but what will be best for our students and their learning and their future. So, as Kimberly over at G-Town Talks has said

I’m completely exasperated by the collective resistance to change in every arena. Why is it so incredibly hard? Why are so many people completely comfortable residing in the status quo? I agree with Dan, the current teacher candidates probably became teachers because they’re comfortable in the system as it is. I should start trying to hire teachers who weren’t successful in school. I’ll add interview questions that ask, “what did you hate when you were in school and why?” “What do you want to do differently?” “What do you think and what are you curious about?”

I know our teacher candidates aren’t any farther ahead than we are–it takes curiosity, guts, and determination–and that’s available at any age.

Well, Dean is seeing this with his work. I, too, see that teachers will embrace the technologies but they want it to be something that will add to what they do and not require extra-ordinary amounts of time.

Well, pouting didn’t help. It didn’t look good either, my lip hangs down way too much. So, I decided that sometimes, as an educational leader, I need to take teachers
where they don’t necessarily want to go. We now are officially using the calendar. I’m tracking the number of people who visit to see how it is being used. Last week, I had an incentive for all staff - a draw for one person to receive $50 worth of classroom supplies and you had to have your page into me in one day. It worked, everyone entered. But that isn’t the answe

Are we stalled? How do we develop that critical mass in the face of all the testing and data-driven decision making models making the rounds (what alliteration!!! ) As administrators, what options do we have as we watch our teachers face the onslaught of testing? What chance do the newbies have when they are critiqued by how well students do on their test results?

By no means am I thinking that this will go away but, facing the changes that are taking place in society and the resistance to change we are experiencing in education, what is needed to spur things along? Many thought that the retiring of the old guard would do that. Indications are - NOT! So, that leaves us looking at ways to get more teachers to feel like Eva - on the edge of something great. Man, I wish the pouting had done it because that would have been so simple. Hey, it works for my 4 year old sometimes. But he’s cuter when he does it. Maybe we need to get Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” to become standard reading for all people involved in education so we can at least begin the conversation.

As I look forward to Easter Break, I know that I’ll be pondering this as I look towards next year, wondering what we need to do to increase the use of these tools. I’ll also be finishing a few books and doing some other things. But I know the week will pass quickly and when we return, staffing and school course selection will be hot topics. I thought March Madness was over Dave!

As I’ve disclosed in my last post, I have a Communication Production Technology class that consists of students who really don’t want to be in school. They remind me of the Welcome Back Kotter class. Now, they’re not bad or anything like that it’s just that school isn’t their thing. Pete Reilly talks about a similar class that he had when he was teaching. These students find school to be more like a prison than a place that offers them opportunity.

Now, the class I teach really has a very open curricula which allows for some very interesting opportunities with technology. Specifically there is the opportunity to do different things with audio and video. This semester we are focusing on video with added audio. We began by doing some examination of audio programs, specifically we examined the various sound effects that were part of War of the Worlds and how tension, atmosphere and mood were created using voice and other sound effects. This went okay. I then had them do something similar with a reading or they could do a newsreport of their own. We brainstormed how this might work and we went over the process - plan, storyboard, script, material (sound effects) gathering, reading and editing. They were then given time. This is where the wheels come off the cart. It was much conjoling on my part to get anything done. The final products were done at the last moment with two of them being very late.

We’ve moved on to video in the meantime. We have watched a few really bad 80’s music videos and compared them to what is produced today. I had them find the videos we watched so we could compare them to the 80’s videos. We discussed the reasons for the improvement in quality - digital equipment, sound recording, computer effects and editing. They then did some reading on the effects of YouTube and had a written assignment. We are at the stage where we are doing some practice taping and then will be adding audio to the shots to practice the meshing of the two formats. They have ideas for their still-life that they are tape to practice various camera shots. Still like pulling teeth on a charging rhino.

We are working up to their doing a documentary on a topic that they have a passion about. I am going to show a brief documentary type video from YouTube, brainstorm ideas that they can do. We’ve been through the video pre-production and production process and will go over it again. I hoping that something will spark their interest and they’ll get away from listening to music and watching trailers.

These are the students that see no use in school. They feel no one is listening to them. I was hoping that this would be something that they would get into. Instead, they just want to watch trailers or videos and listen to music. They’ve fully embraced apathy. Now, maybe with another teacher, this might be different. As principal, I’ve seen all these students in my office for various reasons. Maybe that’s it. Maybe they see me as the disciplinarian and can’t get past that. I’m really not sure. Any ideas?

Well, I'm been doing a great deal of writing on my own reflecting and how it has affected my view on the various roles that I have within my school and my life. Now, as an ADHD person, I often have a hard time reflecting - my mind tends to wander quite alot so I have to really focus. However, once I begin to reflect, it can be a very intense experience as I become completely involved in what I am doing. Because I'm very interested in how this can be used in my professional and personal life, it is not hard for me to get into it. For anyone who has experienced this type of focus, I especially find it true when playing a video game, it is like you totally enter the experience.

Now, I began this reflection on my career after doing an administrator evaluation with my staff. From this, my supervisor and I sat down and identified some key areas that needed to be addressed. We also discussed various ways that I might work through this and both came up with the idea of a reflective journal.

Now, as an administrator, I've kept a journal of daily events for some years now. I record the days events, especially when I have to meet with a parent, student or teacher. Now, one of the things that I have worked on over time is to develop a neutral voice when making my recordings. A neutral voice means that I don't include judgements or comments. I work very hard to stick to facts, the events and the outcomes. Now, one cannot be totally impartial when recording events that one is taking part in but I have found that by removing such things like "She was very angry", "He was afraid" and "He said sarcastically" with more neutral observations or noting it that this was my own observation - "From my perspective, she appeared to become angry with this suggestion." I have been better able to record a situation fairly accurately. Of course, this was not something I learned in a class but learned "on the job." Now, this has served me well when I've had a situation that lasts for a period of time and I need to review what has taken place.

My reflective journal has been a bit different. In it I do almost the opposite of my school day journal. I record my perceptions of what takes place and my reactions to the situations. I started doing this three weeks before the Easter break. I don't write everyday. In fact, because it is reflective, a bit of time allows me to reflect on what has taken place and the outcomes. It gives me time to get perspective on what is transpiring and look at things from variuos perspectives.

Having done this for just a couple of weeks, I've notice a few things about how I react, interact and do things that have an affect which is not necessarily positive. With this information in mind, I have blogged about my experiences and received some great comments and suggestions. This, in turn, has expanded my options for how I might deal with a given situation. Thus, by combining my reflections with my blogging, I have increased the opportunities I have for an effective way to address the situation. Four months ago I could not have done this because my world was limited to the administrators in my division. But that's a whole other topic!


When I began my career as an administrator, I'd visit such sites as Education World to see what other administrators had to say about being an effective administrator. I remember reading how administrators would comment about "taking time to reflect", "spending time reflecting", "Going for a walk around campus to reflect" and wondering "Where do they find time to reflect?" As someone new, I didn't see how reflecting about what I did would really improve what was happening. I mean, there was so much to do and so many new things to learn and do that, by the time I was ready for reflection, I was asleep!

Now, however, I see that these veteran administrators were very wise. (Imagine that!) They realized that the "busy" would always be there but there was a need to create time to reflect on the day and its events. So, with this in mind, I began my journal. It began very slowly as I recorded much the same way as my "Today's Events" journal. However, it wasn't long before I realized that this need to record my emotions, reactions and interactions so that I could honestly reflect on the situation and improve.

In three weeks I've already noticed a difference. First, I am much more aware of each interaction and the affect it can have on people, especially students. I am cognizant that each student is arriving at school already having a number of issues on their plates, even my own kids! I have also realized that I must listen to the stories of the people who are talking to me. This became clear to me as I began to work through the chasm that has developed between a group of students in our school and the staff, especially me. I must be honest and grateful to this group since it was this distance that prompted a parent to write a note to my superintendent that prompted the administrative review that resulted in the reflective journal which made me realize that I need to do more listening to this group. I also realized that I need to be positive and open with all the staff. I have some staff who have been in the building for many years and they don't always see my suggestions as being positive or necessary. Instead of reacting, I know that I need to ask more questions and listen to what they have to say to me if I hope to get them using the technology more.

Now, I've been doing a great amount of reflecting, not only in my professional life, but also in my personal life. I've made a few decisions that have had a powerful positive impact on my life in just a short period of time. Such things as being willing to delegate to someone else and then have them inform me through updates and emails, handing a few chairperson situations to other members while still staying on the committee and dedicating time each day to spend time with the students away from my office all have allowed me to focus on areas that are my passions. It was a combination of the information from my administrative review and my reflections that made me realize that I needed to do a few things very well and then decide what they needed to be.

I realize, now, that it is important for someone in the unique position of administrator, to take the time to reflect. I haven't been an administrator for very long, this is my 5th year, but I have learned so much about doing things differentl. I've come to recognize that change, once something that people endured, is now what people must expect. As administrator I need to develop a way to screen and then incorporate those changes that will benefit our school and the teachers. For me, reflection, combined with blogging, has become a powerful combination that allows me to evaluate the workings of my day-to-day world and then get feedback from a group of working experts. To me, that's powerful evolution!

The last few days I’ve been intrigued by a number of posts referring to the use of games in education. I will start off by stating that I wasa gamer. I liked playing games butmy habit has been curtailed in the last few years by the growth of my family and the fact that it took up too much of my time.\. However, as my sons begin to get old enough for gaming, I’m looking at getting back into it - salivating at the thought of an gaming console or the Wii but knowing that it has an addictive nature to it that, until you play, you don’t see.

I am intrigued by the idea of gaming in schools because I find it ironic that finally someone is seeing that there is a place. As an ADHD person, I found games to be a great thing. I could concentrate for hours playing Space Invaders and the other arcade games or, once I had a nintendo, those games. I even developed a better handheld device for myself because I found the small ones that came with the game didn’t work too well. They hurt my thumb and I couldn’t move quickly enough. I did get good at Frogger and Donkey Kong.

As Dungeon and Dragons began to take hold and computer were making their way into the system, I began to play an online version where the players basically had various online “roles” and, depending on their choices, their fate in the world would unfold. It was fun and the whole idea that the world was not earth but more Tolkien in nature really made it fun. I did start in Everquest but, alas, a MEd and more children put a stop to that quickly. I still liked to play games such as SimCity and the action games based on movies. I then moved on to The Sim’s and more sophisticated computer games. Recently I’ve begun to get involved in Second Life and World of Warcraft. I also have a few Star Wars games that I enjoy just for frustration relief. I’ve also found some of the games that are present on Agames, NeoPets, and other children’s sites to be fun. Line Rider was introduced to me by some of the kids at school. It is a very interesting game with many different skills needed
to be successful. I really enjoy playing games with my kids, trying to outdo them. Thus far, I’ve been able to stay ahead except for the game Bubble-Struggle where my two daughters have unfairly been practicing when I didn’t know and can now soundly defeat me!!!

We enjoy playing games like The Sims together, designing homes and seeing what happens when you light things on fire! My pyro-son likes to see his sister’s house start on fire - it’s pretty funny! (Not sure what learning is going on there!)

I agree that games can be a benefit for the classroom. I’ve even used the game Risk to demonstrate that even the soundest military strategies can run into problems when taking the unknowns like weather and climate into account. I’ve had students design games to help them understand different aspects of Shakespearean plays or novels. As for playing games for educational purposes, I’ve used some of the BBC games to introduce students to various things dealing with world history.

Personally, I’ve learned that games can provide all kinds of learning opportunities but there are some things that, no matter what the game, I believe need to be put out in the open before games are used in the classroom.
#1 - Games are not real. You can simulate all you want and make it as real as possible - you are not affected. So, you can see what happens if you do A or B or C but, as an individual, you are not affected. So, when my son plays a new game, he will gladly sacrifice his lives knowing that he is learning things about the game that will increase his success in future plays, he can restart with new lives and it doesn’t hurt him at all to have the Penguin jump off the edge.
#2 - Emotions you experience are different than in real life - you will not know how you will react until the actual event takes place. I have seen this played out in many different fashions from the first time someone actually drives a car and not a simulator to how people react when there is actually an emergency. I’ve watched people trained to deal with emergencies freeze in actual events although they had done all the training and simulations.
#3 - Along the same line as 2 - your emotions when playing a game are not the same as when the event is actually happening to you. In the game, you are trying to win. In real life, there are many more things going on than trying to beat the game. In RL, you feel a multitude of things while in game life you usually feel very little. I can kill, maime, cheat or do whatever to win in a game and then walk away. It is a game. In real life, I have trouble killing a mouse!
#4 - In a game, reactions are one dimensional and end whent the game is over. In life, reactions always have multiple ripples that you sometimes don’t even see. Even when I am in SL, I know that in RL I’d never be able to stand for as long as I do and those bad landings when I fly, I’d still be recovering from the first attempt. Now, the conversations are real but not the same as in f2f.
#5 - Games have taught me different things than what was going on in school. Now, I can still remember various stages in a few games that I played and what was needed to defeat the stage. I remember what I need to do in different games that allow me to win. Granted, I haven’t really been able to delve into the multiplayer - multistation games or mpg but I will definitely be looking more closely at them. However, what I did in school did give me access to knowledge that I have used outside my teaching. Ex - I once owned a company and had to rely on numerous skills in order to do that and some of the basic skills I learned in school did have applications. The whole idea of learning to touch type is thanks to school. While I watch a number of people two-finger type, I realize that my taking typing in highschool was a blessing ( although I really didn’t like it at the time!) Who knew that such things would figure to be so much a part of what I have experienced.

Games can provide a number of ways for students to engage and learn different things. Using games in school has a place. However, thinking that because I can remember various stages from Frogger doesn’t mean using a game will help me with my math. I still have difficulty with my timestables and I’ve played various games with my children learning timetables. So, as with all technologies, we need to be sure of what we want when we begin to use games. What is the
purpose of the students playing the game? What do we want them to understand and how will they then demonstrate that they have, in fact, come to a specific understanding? I don’t mean test them but we must be able to assess in some way why students have used the game.

If I had more time, I’d play more games but as I’ve grown and found all these responsibilities, I’ve had to make some choices about time although, like I mentioned, I can see being able to get back into it in the near future (OH YEAH!!!) I’m looking forward to this on a personal level and because, as a kid, it was one place where being ADHD
helped me to excel. Now as an adult, I’ve other things to get my focus, like this blog!

As I’ve read about using gaming more in schools, I haven’t heard exactly what we want to accomplish with them. What are the objectives? As I ask my kids, So What? What will doing this affect learning and understanding? What is the benefit to the student? What about the addictive nature of gaming? How do we ensure that we don’t create even more problems
for some students? How will these games fit with learning and understanding? These, along with many other questions, need to be discussed as we explore the use of games in education. They do have a place, I’m just not sure how they fit at this time.

John Pederson tagged me with this “what are your secrets to a successful life” meme. Now, I’d like to dedicate this meme to my grandmother. I’m home visiting my family and my grandmother, who is 92, is just a wonderful person. The day that she found out we were coming home to visit, she went up town and made sure she had Easter gifts for all 7 of my children. She makes sure to buy each of them a treat for the drive home and just loves to have them visit. (Me, on the other hand she can take or leave!) She knits each of them a new pair of slippers each year. To pass her time, she makes tiny touque/mitt pin-on sets which she sells and then donates all the money to local charities. She’s a great lady!

#1 - Live one day at a time - many people look forward to “tomorrow” without paying attention to the day they are in. Planning is a good thing and spending time looking forward is necessary but we need to remember to be in the present, day by day.

#2 - Be in the room - I don’t know where I heard this but it is something that I remind myself about all the time. When you are doing something or with someone, focus on the activity or the person not something else. Give the person your attention and be open to them.

#3 - Take time to get off the road - my grandmother reminds me of this regularly. Life is the accumulations of our experiences and encounters. We need to take time to slow down and enjoy our experiences with other people, especially those who are close to us. One of the worst statements is “Not now, we’ll do that ……..” because it may not happen that time will come again. Our commitments need to be met and kept but we don’t need to fill each moment. Leave time to enjoy our experiences and encounters.

#4 - Meaning - find what gives your life meaning and follow it. “Money isn’t everything.” is completely true. Being fulfilled and happy will bring greater joy than money.

#5 - Learn to laugh and do it often. Laugh with friends and family. Be able to laugh at yourself!

#6 - Hug those you love - human contact does something to us. It brightens our day and makes feel wanted and connected.  In our fast paced world, we sometimes don’t take the time to be with the one’s we love and care about.

#7 - Be willing to try something new. Learn a new skill, read a new author, meet new people. Life has so many options for us but we often get caught in a rut because it is comfortable and the rut becomes so deep we don’t know how to get out.

#8 - Be willing to make mistakes. That is how we learn. In being willing to make a mistake, we are not worried about always being “correct” which frees us to try new things. Mistakes help us to learn what we did wrong and change - they deepen our understanding.

#9 - Be humble - we all can do things well but often our ego gets in the way and we close ourselves off to others’ ideas and knowledge. Let others know that you appreciate their efforts and assistance.

#10 - connect with the spiritual - not necessarily a religion but that which is larger than you. My faith has given me the strength to try new things and go new places knowing that there is a larger plan to life than just mine. It sustains me during times of difficulty and helps me to be humble when things are going well.

These are things that I believe help me to have “success” in life.

Tagging - missprofe

misscofino

Susan Ens

Brian Saxton

David Truss

My 9th new voice is: Claudia Ceraso. Claudia is a graduate teacher of English from IES Lenguas Vivas “Juan Ramón Fernández”. She is currently studying Literary and Scientific Translation at IES Lenguas Vivas and a postgraduate course Licenciatura en Enseñanza de Idioma Inglés at CAECE University. She has been teaching FCE courses at AACI -Asociación Argentina de Cultura Inglesa- since 2002. I found her blog after finding her profile on Explode. She has interesting and provocative posts discussing various topics dealing with technology and learning. Her blog has many interesting topics and, considering she has only been doing this for a very short period of time, she has covered a wide range of topics. Drop by and give one a read.

CyberCompliment Day , Blogging So Far, Blogging Matters

Enjoy the reading!

Previously - Susan Funk , missprofe, Steven Michaluk, Jeff Boulton, Kimberly Moritz, Carolyn Foote, Janet Clarey, Lynn

Warning, what you are about to read is nothing but my own ramblings about being an administrator.

I want to write. I feel I need to get some of this out but I’m not sure even how to begin and when I look at the suffering in other places I know it is insignificant. Yet, even with that knowledge, I feel really lousy because of my mistake.
My mistake involved me dialing a wrong number and leaving a message for a parent to call me about an incident with their child. I didn’t check as I dialed and, when I got the answering machine, I just left a message as I was dealing with another issue with another student. Bad excuse. Bad move.
So, when the parent received the letter I sent home, they were very upset I hadn’t contacted them. They tried to reach me but I was in a meeting after school, an hour from where I live and didn’t get home until late. I received their message to phone and did, explaining that I had phoned and left a message. She didn’t get a message and I realized I had phoned the wrong number. I apologized. The parent was understandably upset that now their problem was out and other people knew that their child had been in trouble at school. We discussed the problem, which involved some punches being thrown by her child and another and the consequences. The parent was still upset and I apologized again.

This has added to my “angst” as I had already been reflecting about my interactions with another student and what I could have done differently. The whole 20-20 thing. It’s not that I did anything wrong but I see how I could improve on what did happen and improve my interactions with the student. Good learning experience. When this phone call mixup happened it really threw me. I usually don’t make mistake like that because I’m very careful when I dial as I have a learning disability with numbers. This time, my mind was on a couple things and, voila, mistake.

As an administrator, I really can’t afford to make mistakes like that, or that is how it feels right now, since I have a few other things going on .  I want to walk out the front door and shout “It’s not fair!” but, hey,  life isn’t fair. I have developed pretty thick skin but it doesn’t help when I do this to myself. The worst part is that I care so damn much about what is happening with these kids and what is going on in the school and this doesn’t help my cause in any way. I know that this has happened for a reason and there is something important to be learned from this whole thing.
Like most of us in education, I am constantly striving to improve what I do. Being an administrator, I am always trying to build the relationships between families and the school, improve the communication and bring parents into the school. Then something like this happens. It’ not the end of the world but these things sure seem to come at the most inopportune moments. So, while others are exploring web2.0 improvements, connections with students and building upon the accomplishments of their web2.0 experiences, I’m using this great tool to wallow, mostly in self-pity, wondering why I’m writing this. Is this what we should be doing? Does this serve any purpose to what we are doing? What can we learn from such a post? Or, have I, in some way, made the digital shift to seeing this as a place where we, as educators, can work through such things as part of our discourse on education? Does it all have to be about great advancements, new tools and the digital frenzy that I seem to be lacking of late? Maybe that’s part of it. As I read through my aggregator, there are no mistakes. Am I the only web2.0 Shleprock? Or is this not the place for such discussions? In a small town, I really have few people with whom I can talk about such things. But is this the forum? I’m not bashing anyone but I’m, how does one say, feeling isolated.

Well, thanks for reading. If you got this far, you are pretty dedicated - or you are feeling much better about yourself because you aren’t doing yourself in like I did. So, if this did make you feel better, great. At least it has helped someone

t was a long week. As my last post indicated, I was hoping it was Friday at about Wednesday. Friday finally did arrive. It’s now Saturday. Yesterday evening I read through some blogs and some forum comments over at Classroom2.0 which I’ve joined and am enjoying meeting new people. As I read through the posts and forums, a strange thing happen. Maybe it was my frame of mind or maybe it was because I was tired but I began to get a bit frustrated with the number of discussions discussing the lack of teachers “getting with it” and using web2.0 tools. Some expressed frustration with administrators not being tech savvy and central office not seeing it as a priority while some expressed a frustration with vast majority of teachers not giving it the time or making it a priority. I’ve felt this similar frustration while taking a class and having people post about the lack of other teachers interested in technology or wanting to use technology.

Now, I’d be the pot calling the kettle blue if I said I hadn’t had these same feelings and I’ve more than likely expressed them here, especially about administrators and leaders not using these tools. Whatever the reason for my point of view, I began to view it, not from a “I don’t want to” point of view but from a “I really can’t do it or have huge trouble with it or I can’t remembe how to” point of view. Much similar to someone with a Learning Disability.

As early adopters, I’d say that most people that are blogging and using these tools have a digital intelligence that makes most of what they do intuitive. So, they see an application, begin to use it and start to see possiblilities in what they do, how it could be used in their job and how they could adapt it for their teaching or work. Now, in the business world, there is no option, you use the technology or you leave. But, and this is a big thing, how many of those people using the technology are doing so without really knowing what they are doing, without upgrading or looking for new tools and without really understanding how to improve what they do? Could it be that, in education, because we haven’t dumped the technology on people, we are seeing a more natural split between those who can and those who struggle? So, like in any area, are the early adopters those with the intelligence and ability and the rest are, well, just the rest?

I guess I look at this as a person who has had to overcome many different obstactles. One huge one was my struggle with math. Now, if we measured how good a person is by how much time they spend working at something, I should have had top math marks in highschool. Instead, I struggled to pass with a mid-60 although I had a tutor and spent hours working on it. On the flipside, give me a computer with a set of programs and away we go. Don’t care the OS or what is there, I’ll figure them out. I love all the new web2.0 apps. I’ve often wonder how many people who are using them at the start need to read through the manual? Is there a manual? How many are trying them in a host of unique situations and then trying to fix the bugs? How many just seem to be able to figure it out?
My one daughter is LD. She struggles with reading and writing. But, if she were to be marked on her effort and the amount of time she spends trying to improve her reading and writing, she’d be an A student. However, if you were to ask any person about her, they’d tell you that she is a very content and happy girl who is full of love for other people. She has very few friends in her own grade but she’s not unhappy. For some reason, she has an ability to find that one person on the playground who isn’t feeling happy and spend time with them. She has a gift that way. She makes people smile, has a hug for everyone and, for the most part, is a very happy person. You can’t teach that! She moves to the beat of her own drum and is okay with it. As parents, we really work with her but we’ve come to accept that she has gifts that may not be academic. We don’t stop trying but we accept her for whom she is and what she can do.

Some people have suggested that if those teachers who aren’t using technology would just prioritize in a different way, they would be able to use the tools. Try telling that to any parent with a LD student that if they were to just have the student prioritize correctly, they’d do better. Please don’t do that while I’m around! I’m beginning to suspect that we are viewing teachers, and education for that matter, from an particular advanced viewpoint, like the student who does well in math without any trouble and doesn’t understand how someone like me just couldn’t get it and, maybe if I just applied myself, I’d do better. I just wanted to slap…… sorry, I digress.

Over in Classroom2.0 there is a forum discussion similar to this. Maybe, instead of judging or rating or whatever, we need to look at this a bit differently. Just like many of us see that this will be the way education and teaching will travel in the not-to-distant future, so does a person with a reading disablilty see that reading will be a very important part of their future but, try as they might, they still struggle no matter how much they may want to get better or dream of doing particular things. This is the frustration I’ve heard from many teachers as they do try to use the technology. Even after spending time with them and working through things with them, they struggle to use the technology. Could it be that someone who could use the technology became frustrated with them and, without saying it, made them feel inadequate or worse, stupid.

We are the early adopters. The 2 or 3%. Look at most early adopters in any area . They aren’t usually the norm and, usually, they have an intuitive ability to use the tool which most other people do not possess. I could give you many examples but I’m sure you can think of quite a few on your own. With those examples in mind, we will have to realize that the extent of the use of the tools will vary depending on a number of factors. As these tools begin to grow in use and a shift in the overall view of the tools goes through the usual steps of change, we will see a growth of use by teachers. Our role, I believe, is to not become overly frustrated by the lack of adoption but to persist and provide that much needed support so that success is achieved making people want to continue their learning. Turning people off makes them not want to see technology as a priority. Finally, we need to accept that not everyone will use these tools. That is reality, just as there are many people who, for whatever reason, continue to struggle with reading or math or whatever. Heck, it might be an inability to throw a ball or participate in other athletic activities. Just out of curiosity, how many people from warmer locations can skate? Wanna race?