My First Year as a Tech Coach

As a classroom teacher one of my strengths was my ability to reflect.  I can remember having a lesson 1st hour and then it being completely different by the end of the day based on experiences from my other classes.  This provided to be a critical part of my success in the classroom.

So I sat down the other night was thinking, what have I learned this year in my role as an Instructional Technology Coach at Waukesha North?  What are some successes I have experienced, and what are some challenges that still face us in the coming wave of Waukesha One and a 1:1 iPad program?

1.  Teachers need support.  Classroom teachers are asked to do so much today.  Admins, coaches, and colleagues need to help each other so students can succeed.  Working in a PLC with course alikes is such an advantage for teachers and is so critical in improving achievement, instruction, and efficiency   Teachers supporting teachers is very powerful and is needed at all schools.  But, coaches and admins are a critical element.  Working together for students can help a building achieve more.

2.  Coaches must be visible.  Whether one is an instructional coach, or a technology coach, coaches need to be in the hallways and classrooms being seen by teachers and students.  This was crucial for the rapport building that I had to have in my first year at Waukesha North.  I knew...maybe 5-6 teachers, so building relationships was a an important priority for me.  Being in the hallway, talking during PLC's, and establishing trust was very important for my first year.

3.  Tech integration is not about tech, but improving instruction.  And really, that is what we are trying to do with technology...improve instruction.  There are skeptics to technology, and I get that they have concerns.  But, maybe it is not really concerns about technology, rather a difference in philosophy on the direction of education.  Technology allows for better instruction, but if you don't think students should be creating or that the role of the teacher is changing, you might not buy into certain parts of technology integration and the role it can play in student learning.

4.  Leadership matters.  In order for a school to improve it must have leaders throughout the organization.  And while it starts with the principal, you also need stakeholders from all groups including teachers, coaches, parents, students, and admins.  Improving student achievement takes leadership at all levels, and this is critical to a buildings success.

5.  Google and Apple can play well together.  While I could write a separate blog on just this topic (and I might) it is clear to me know more than ever that these two huge companies are critical in education.  The Google Apps for Education are a must have for school districts.  It is an amazing array of apps that allow students to create and demonstrate learning.  Apple's hardware solutions are 2nd to none.  The iPad is an amazing device that is not just a screen with a keyboard in front of students, but a device that allows for amazing creation, collaboration, and communication.  The combination of these two companies and the technologies they have can truly lead to better learning and instruction for students.

It was a great school year.  Becoming a technology coach was one of the best decisions of my professional career.  It has been fulfilling, engaging, and full of stuff I love (Google, Apple, and helping teachers).  We have a lot of work to do in Waukesha and at North.  I am so excited to help learn and lead in such an exciting time. 

A Teachable Moment: Helping Students to Understand Permanence of the Digital Age

Surprised parents and staff members have been emailing me this week with a concern.  Googling the keywords of our school district's name provides some information about the district along with an image that represents members of our student body, but not in the positive or academic light most of us might hope.

While there is a larger issue here of the district being improperly and unfairly represented in the public eye (we are presently working on a solution to this issue as we want the district positively and accurately represented for the meaningful teaching and learning that happens here), there is something we can use in this event to assist in a meaningful conversation with students and families.

With services like SnapChat and Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook, sharing with the world is easier than ever before.  Especially with some of these services, but true for all, users often confuse the ability to instantaneously share with the world with the appropriateness of doing so.  Add to that the sense of anonymity, the tidal wave of information that is being shared worldwide (as in "everybody is doing it"), and the false "promise" of the information existing only in the short term (services like InstaGram allow users to post to the world, but in very short intervals, as in 10-15 seconds, before the post is removed).

However, as so many of us are aware of, the truth is that once data is captured and posted in a public forum (and the Internet is a public forum), even if only for a few seconds, the potential exists for that data to live forever.

This is exactly how the image that presently represents our district in a Google search (not a decision consciously made by anybody in the district, by Google itself, but simply a result of an algorithm written and a change in the way Google presents information for ease of viewing), an image of some young people captured in a dance position while at a school dance that may have made them blush had their parents been present, came to be.  It seems to have been captured and shared online, likely by a student interested in updating others on the fun of the evening.  It probably didn't get much attention immediately.  However, it was picked up in a story by a local news outlet about the appropriateness of student behavior at dances (not just our students...students across the area).  That seems to have gained some traction with viewers, and the image has been viewed many times by many people.  That moved the status of the image up in Google's search rankings.  When the Google Knowledge Graph was created and launched publicly, the ranking of that image, coupled with the search term of our school's name, resulted in the "marriage" of the district's online reputation with a student's behavior at a moment in time.  Something the students likely had not considered or even imagined in that moment.

As unfortunate as any of this may be, there is a teachable moment in this.  In a digital world, our actions (both online and in real life) do not have the promise of privacy.  While we may (or may not) disagree with this reality, it is still, in fact, a reality.  This week's headlines about the availability of private digital data possibly available to government entities supports this reality.

Students need to hear that message -- in a digital world, our actions (both online and in real life) do not have the promise of privacy.  They need to be engaged in the conversation.  They need to consider how that information may positively or negatively impact them in the present and in the future.  These are all meaningful discussions that we, as educators, cannot be afraid to engage in.  Even if we are not technically savvy enough to know all of the latest digital tools, sites, trends, and methods.  We have life experience enough to talk about the value of students holding themselves to a standard that they (and their families and communities) deem appropriate.  We have life experience enough to talk about how decisions made in a weak moment today can forever impact our futures.  This doesn't require knowledge about technology -- let the kids bring that knowledge and experience to the conversation.  Instead, it takes us actively talking with kids and caring about their lives today, and in the future.  And we do care!

That is the teachable moment in this.

Using Tagxedo to Visualize My Blog and Twitter Themes

When I was first introduced to tag clouds, I thought they were interesting, excellent for pulling themes from longer works (trying putting text from an entire chapter of a novel into a tag cloud generator...it is so interesting to see the results), great for analyzing redundancy of word use in original works, and it has some other unique niche uses.  

One benefit I'm finding, though, as I publish and share more work digitally, is that the tag/word cloud generators give me a great idea of what I'm thinking (and writing) about.

I recently used a word/tag cloud generator called Tagxedo to evaluate the themes of this blog, Getting Tech Into Ed, and I combined that with my tweets for @brianyearling.  I think the results are so telling of what has been on my mind over the past few years.  It also made me think about how something like a digital portfolio and blog that a student produces for academic purposes could be turned into a wonderful reflection tool when it comes to a freshman or sophomore conference to determine next life steps.  Perhaps the use of a tag/word cloud generator could pull some beginning themes out of what they've studied and written about that could influence the conversation and give them some ideas upon which to reflect. The same is true of an end-of-year conference with a teacher, a student-led conference, or just a reflection on a whole class blog.  

The tool I used that produced the results below is www.tagxedo.com .