End-of-life reached on "Snow Days"

It's official. I am now a full-fledged, fun-hating, joy-stealing grown up.  This post angers my inner child, but the writing is so clearly on the wall here that I'd be foolish not to take the opportunity to say something obvious.

Snow days, or cold days that cause the cancellation of school (which we have experienced plenty of in Wisconsin this January), finally have reached an end-of-life status and will be retired from the childhood educational experience in the next few years.

With the flood of student take-home devices, a fairly robust set of tools for developing online curriculum, the omnipresence of connectivity, and the ease of synchronously connecting with a teacher via a web conferencing type experience, the inability to physically make it to school will no longer hamper the ability of teachers to conduct students through a planned learning experience.  

While it will not look or feel exactly like "school as usual," the reality is that much of the infrastructure is in place, or is being put in place rapidly, to make school cancellations fodder for nostalgic "In my day" stories as I reminisce with my children.  As in, "In my day, we would wake up extra early on the snowiest days of the year, rush to the television set, and wait for the name of our school to roll across the lower third of the morning news."  Heck, even that sounds dated compared to the fifteen messages my family received this week when our three schools decided to cancel school due to the cold (and no, that isn't hyperbole -- we literally received fifteen different forms of communication combined).

In my district specifically, the devices are always available to students and staff.  The resources for hybridized learning experiences are being built out rapidly in our learning management system.  The connection between students and teachers via a web conferencing solution is a flip of a switch away (turn on Google+ for our secondary students, or build out our WebEx solution and expertise to make that the tool of choice for web conferencing).

Perhaps the missing piece for us today is the web connectivity in some students' homes.  However, looking at the partnerships forming between local businesses, support missions/groups, and some of the big telecom companies, even connectivity in student homes will soon be a concern of the past.

So kids, enjoy your last few "No School" days while you still can.  It's fairly clear that those, too, shall soon pass.

Don't worry, though.  You may just get them back in another form.  Can anybody else imagine a "No School" day due to a network outage?  Note that prediction here!

(I can imagine ill-willed school children feeding energy bars and Monster Drinks to sweet little squirrels to turn them into ravenous, cable chewing rodents willing to chew through any fiber connection in order to bring down the school network and "earn" students a "Network Outage" day off of school.) 

Technology Integration - Seeing What Tech Use Could Look Like with Technology Integration Matrix

One of the biggest hurdles many of our staff members encounter in the use of technology in the classroom centers around the idea that they aren't even sure what technology integration might look like.

This isn't in relation to the tools they can use.  While most of them probably could name a few of the tools that are available to them, the bigger struggle is actually envisioning how the tool can be put into instructional practice to yield an educationally relevant outcome.  Essentially, if our teachers could see the technology in action in a classroom, being used by real students and teachers for real educational tasks, they could begin to imagine how they might use these tools. 

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) may provide some assistance in helping educators to see what is even possible through the use of technology in the classroom.  The TIM, created by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology, provides a database of searchable, sortable videos that allow viewers to see technology in action in the classroom.  The beauty of the resource is that the videos can be searched and sorted by grade level, tools used, and subject.  They are also classified on two key scales -- Characteristics in the Learning Environment, and Levels of Technology Integration.  While we do not use this language within our district, the Characteristics in the Learning Environment can fairly easily be translated into Danielson language, and the Levels of Technology Integration can easily be fitted to the SAMR framework (Substitution covering the lowest two categories, Entry and Adoption). 

We truly encourage you to take a deeper look at this resource.  It is ripe for use at PLCs, staff meetings, and even for collegial learning sessions in your building.  Videos are short, focused, and can generally create some sort of reaction from educators about the value the technology provides.  It is an excellent way to start thinking about what is possible as the technology makes its way into your classroom(s).

The resource is available here:  http://fcit.usf.edu/matrix/matrix.php

This video introduces the Technology Integration Matrix and might be valuable as a starting point to help introduce staff members to the tool.

Risk Taking is the Way Forward: What is your #edurisk ?

Educators are being asked to take on a lot today when it comes to improving instructional practice and educational outcomes.  Whether it be increasing student engagement, embracing new tools and concepts for instructing students (or having students create and demonstrate knowledge), re-thinking educational spaces, or a long list of other topics that impact our work with students, the reality is that it can feel overwhelming.

However, in synthesizing the larger message of these changes in practice, there is one clear theme that surfaces.  Change is evident and inescapable.  A hyper-connected world is a world that is dynamically changing.  If an educator's primary responsibility is readying students for the life that they will one day face, we must prepare them to ready for a life of ongoing change.

While it's an understandable feeling to just want to throw up your hands in surrender to the overwhelming overflow of change (especially in education).  For the good of our students we can't give up that easily.  There is hope, and it comes neatly packaged in a simple idea - "risk taking."

Why is risk taking so important?

The act of willingly taking risks is the life line that makes dealing with change palatable, manageable, and survivable.  Risk taking, by its very nature, provides a platform on which we can identify our challenges, develop a plan for tackling those challenges, and then safely implement our plan without feeling the pressure to be immediately successful.

In taking a risk, we agree to try something new without fear of failure -- risks, by their very definition, embody some chance at failure.  The universal understanding of what a risk is (implying that failure may happen) provides us with a safety net to try something new.  

It is the act of trying something new, though, that is the key element. When change happens, it often requires a different response than previously offered/attempted.  The feeling of being overwhelmed by change is usually in direct response to our inability to attempt a new response; we are committed to the way we've always done things and struggle to see a different way to respond. When we take a risk, we commit to trying something new.  We accept that it may or may not be a successful attempt, but we are willing to forego the way we once did things to attempt a new way of doing things.  In doing so, we begin on our journey forward to both address and deal with change.

Taking a risk

Put simply, a risk is any change you elect to make (and actively engage in) that stretches you beyond your comfort zone.  Risks are not determined by the overall magnitude of the change or the size of the impact it has. Personal changes that impact one person are valuable risks, just as are risks that change an entire organization impacting thousands of people.  In the end, a risk's magnitude and sphere of influence is not the determining factor if it is a risk or not -- it is if the risk taken stretches the person, organization, or society  beyond an existing level of comfort.

Steps in the Risk Taking Process

1. The first step to taking a risk is acknowledging personal/organizational anxiety over a change that has happened which requires a different response.  
2. The second step is developing an actionable plan that provides an adequate response to that change.  
3. The third step is determining what success and failure might look like and accepting the consequences for both.  
4. Finally, the fourth step is taking action -- going for it by taking the risk.

Remember that every person has his/her own aversion to risk.  Some individuals are comfortable with risks that may seem monumental to others.  Others may feel that even slight changes are a big risk.  However, both are valuable and noteworthy, as both are progressive steps forward to address and deal with the realities of change. Your personal aversion to risk is a personal matter that you must grapple with and understand as a part of the risk taking process.

Sharing your risk

Witnessing risk taking is both humbling and inspiring.  Knowing that an individual has literally taken a chance, put a part of themselves out there -- this is exactly the kind of action that can encourage others to take their own risk.  In a hyper-connected world we can easily share our risks with others in ways that were never before possible.  The use of social media is one avenue for this.

Understandably, for many of us the risk we take might simply be putting ideas out there for others see.  We encourage you to think about the act of publicly sharing your risk with others as a way of building a network with others -- a network that just might be able to offer support, insight, or perspective based upon their experiences.

We are encouraging more educators to take risks and to share them out with the world!  Through the use of a common code that is easily searchable, also called a hashtag, regardless of what social media network you choose to share in your risk can be identified.  For this campaign we are going to use the following hashtag:

#edurisk

Whether you use Google + or Twitter, we would love for you to share your #edurisk with our community, both to mark and celebrate your personal risks in addressing the challenges of constant change, and also to inspire others to take those first steps forward -- steps that mark the cultural shift our profession is making to embrace and respond to a world of constant change.