Leadership at Its Most Powerful is by Example

I once knew an executive who routinely displayed displeasure and sometimes contempt for his subordinates. Meanwhile he would preach to his team how they needed to improve staff morale. Unfortunately, the lieutenants emulated the leader. His team may have been told what to do, but they did as they were shown.

If the leader does not do it, there is actually a disincentive for someone in the rank and file to move toward the cutting edge. Whether intentionally or without awareness, a leader's actions (or inactions) are setting the thermostat for the organization. We want the acceptance and appreciation of our leaders, so we emulate them and their actions. This is particularly why we gravitate toward dynamic leaders. They epitomize the courage, determination, and enthusiasm that we would like to see in ourselves.

I understand why many educators are slow to personally embrace modern technologies in their schools and leadership. Schools are people-centric organizations. We are held accountable primarily for how we interact with others and build relationships with students, staff, and community. There are a number of competent and highly regarded school administrators who meet the current expectations of their schools without an extensive skill set in using technologies. And as technology races ahead of us, we wonder if it is truly worth our effort to include this vast territory in our domain.

I have had my personal experiences with these doubts. As a young educator entering the profession, I embraced desktop computing very quickly. I recognized how it could enhance my work, and I have taken pains to remain current in this area. However, after several years in the professional, I saw the emergence of the new social medias, and I did not understand them. Late-night comics made jokes about the banal "tweets" that celebrities issued. Twitter seemed unintelligible, and Facebook seemed prosaic. I did not understand why these were relevant, and I finally concluded that the concept was maybe a generational thing. I decided to let the younger set move ahead with social media and its applications to education.

Then I had a small epiphany. A few years ago, I attended the National Conference on Education hosted by AASA. I joined several sessions focusing on technology, and all the speakers said the same thing: "A leader has to lead by example."

I responded, "Of course! I knew that. Why did I forget that simple principle?" I left the conference with a personal resolution to get back ahead of the technology movement.

I believe my attitude toward technology and all it can do for our students is making a difference in how our staff view the future of education.

All leaders need to remember this simple truth about leadership by example, and we need to recognize that technology is the future for the students we serve. With this simple understanding, our direction is clear.

Be the leader. Set the example.

Every School Needs a Facebook Page

If your school does not yet have a Facebook page, it will soon. And if you do not create it, someone else will do it for you. Will you be controlling your message?

Launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates, Facebook is a social networking service with currently over one billion active users. People everywhere are accessing Facebook. More than half of users are accessing Facebook on a mobile device. Facebook is the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users. In April 2010 an estimated 41.6 percent (129.5 million) of the U.S. population had a Facebook account. Between 20 to 30 percent of Facebook users are "power users" who frequently link, poke, post, and tag themselves and others.

Your students are using it. So are your teachers, staff, parents, and patrons. They are engaging in a conversation about your district right now. It is important that your side of the story gets shared as well.

Schools have been slow to recognize change as it happens on the Internet. Years after "web surfing" became part of our parlance, many schools still did not have a web presence. Still today, more than 20 years after the Internet began to change education, many schools have a very plain, informational web site that does little to promote a positive image.

So too with Facebook, many schools feel it is beneath them to dabble in social networking. We like to think of education as a serious business and hope others will take us seriously as well. So we have little time for social trends or fads that may come and go.

But business and industry are involved. They recognize the serious profit potential this market creates. Politics takes it seriously too. It may have been one of the difference-makers in the last presidential election. Online social networking is something that schools need to take seriously as well.

Schools can use it simply enough. Someone needs to be the manager and take the primary responsibility for the page. But that person does not need to fly solo. Others school team members can be added as managers, content creators, or moderators. Together this team keeps the content relevant and the message positive.

Create content your public will want to read about. Catch kids doing well; compliment staff when they successfully achieve. Link your smartphone to your school Facebook page so you can update it on-the-go. Then snap a photo and/or add a quick comment when you see kids doing things worthy of recognition. Bring attention to the good things in your school. People care about good information flowing from your Facebook page. You will be surprised how quickly your message spreads.

The messages will spread anyway regardless of whether or not you are engaged in it. Be part of the conversation to spread the good word about your school.

Varied Visions of 21st Century Learning

I recently listened to a vendor talk about the role of video in the classrooms of the future.

He described a classroom where the teacher is at the front of the room before students but also captured on video and broadcast to classrooms miles away where the teacher's lecture would be heard by many students beyond the traditional classroom. The video system would allow students to watch and listen, but also to interrupt to ask questions or comment.

The vendor said, "Imagine, a teacher reading Dr. Seuss to students hundreds of miles away!"

First, I want to say that foremost I applaud people and organizations who try to envision classrooms of the future.

However, finding a new vision can be difficult. With no obvious alternatives, we all tend to default to visions of classrooms past. I have been there too. Eager to transform education for the 21st Century using the advantages of modern technology, I planned and even took part in training teachers on how to move their worksheets and quizzes to online web applications. Teachers could continue to instruct their classrooms with traditional methodologies but use technology tools for drills and assessments.

Of course my error is obvious. Education does not have an issue with finding a variety of ways of drilling or testing our kids. The quality of the classroom experience is determined entirely by the quality of the instruction in the classroom.

To improve our classrooms for the 21st Century, we need to change our focus from one where the teacher is the star of each classroom. The more actively engaged students are, the more they learn. This is where technology becomes the fulcrum that makes the difference. Students can use modern technologies to research, to break their learning into parts, and to reassemble it into new knowledge. Our students need to be working together in cooperative situations using project-based learning and evaluated by authentic assessments of the work they have done.

When technology is engaged in a manner where it makes a difference in actual instruction, we will see that it offers the leverage we need to make positive change in education.

Educators Must Embrace Change to Fight Obsolescence

My grandfather Arthur was born in 1889. Descending from a long line of blacksmiths, he became a blacksmith too. One of his first jobs as a young man was working as a blacksmith for the Texas Rangers. He became very adept and expert in his vocation and became a farrier too, a blacksmith who watches the gait of the horse then trims the hooves and fashions the shoes to improve the horse's walking and running. An orthopedist for horses, essentially. He was indispensable to the local farmers who relied on horses.

But agriculture evolved and farms were worked with tractors. My grandfather's shop transitioned from smithing to mechanics. He learned how the engines worked on early tractors and automobiles. It was a huge change from working with live animals to working with machines, but it was the nature of his business at the time. And he became indispensable for his mechanical skills.

During my grandfather's lifetime, schools remained largely unchanged. The only option for a student was to attend the local school within whose district he or she resided or drop out of school altogether.

But education is changing rapidly. Online learning is revolutionary. The options for our students are no longer the neighboring districts or the local parochial school. The competition is across the state, across the nation, and around the world. It is estimated that by 2019, half of high school courses will be online.

My grandfather could have ignored or fought the transition to mechanized farming. What would have happened to him if he had? But he adapted and remained successful.

Teachers cannot afford to fight technology and online learning. Those who do could go the way of the blacksmithing profession.

If we have teachers that can be replaced by computers, then we should, and quickly. Fortunately, the teachers I know will always have the capability to be far more valuable than the instruction that can be offered strictly through a machine. What we need our classrooms and courses that are so engaging that they remain relevant and become invaluable. The key is that we all must embrace the change, adapt to the new nature of today's education, and make ourselves indispensable for the educational services we can provide.

With our technology, we are within a year or two of developing a supercomputer that can exceed the computational powers of the human brain. But no computer will ever exceed the power of the human soul.

Finding a New Vision for 21st Century Learning

Educators need to recognize that education is changing . . . schools are changing. We need to find a new model of education for the 21^st Century.

There was a time when schools served the students of their school district. District lines were drawn, and students were required to attend the school within their district. Schools set their expectations, and students had little choice but to meet the expectations of the school. In those days, if schools had competition, it was probably the local parochial school. The other option was for students to simply drop out, and many did.

Then in the 1980’s, schools opened their boundaries due to open enrollment. Competition was suddenly the neighboring districts. Schools had to be as good or better than their neighbors to prosper or even survive.

But here in the  21^st  Century the game has changed again and dramatically. With online learning, our competition is state-wide, it’s nation-wide, it’s world-wide. And to look at the evidence, a person cannot say these online schools are not offering quality. They are. But they are also doing something more. They are custom tailoring the education programs to each individual student. They are using a business model and providing exceptional service to their customers.

To compete in the 21^st Century, schools will need to emulate, and even surpass, this model.

The best schools now are challenging their students with active learning where the students are the center of the classroom. The teacher is no longer the holder of knowledge. Facts today are but a click away. Students today need to become independent learners and critical thinkers. The classroom must then be a place where students research, find their own answers, work together to solve problems, create new knowledge, and teach each other. The role of the teacher is then changed to a facilitator of learning, i.e. a guide, a problem presenter, a questioner, a librarian, and a collaborator.

The best schools are also utilizing technology tools to facilitate this higher order thinking and learning. And please understand that we should not buy technology because it is cool, or because other schools are investing in it. We need to use it because it is necessary to fully implement our vision of  21^st  Century learning.

If you are not yet there, this is the year we all need to find our vision.

The above was part of my address to faculty and staff as part of our back-to-school workshop.

What Superintendents Can Learn From Twitter

Below is an article in the August 1, 2012 issue of School Administrator magazine that I wrote in partnership with my colleague superintendents Pam Moran, David Britten, and Joshua Starr.

Can a message of only 140 characters really affect change in the world? Twitter is doing just that one message at a time.

Twitter is the world’s second most popular social network with 140 million users. Members send microblogs or “tweets” of a maximum of 140 characters. Twitter forwards 340 million of these tweets every day. Educators around the world are using Twitter for conversations on significant educational issues. Joining the confabulation, a growing number of school superintendents are realizing the power of Twitter as a tool within the profession.

Twitter is helping superintendents overcome the isolation of the office. David Britten (@colonelb) of Godfrey-Lee Public Schools in Michigan said he found it lonely at the top. “Along came Twitter and although I didn’t really know how to use it effectively at first, when I began meeting other superintendents like Pam Moran (@pammoran), Dave Doty (@canyonsdave), and John Carver (@johnccarver),” said Britten, “I quickly realized the value of connecting on a nearly real-time basis with my professional peers.”

Pam Moran, superintendent of Albermarle County, Virginia, connected with Britten over Twitter and has participated in collaborative project work with him for two years. “Our work together often begins with a tweeted question or a shared resource,” said Moran. “As a result of our twitter professional learning network (PLN), Dave and I first connected about his district’s BYOD (bring-your-own-device) implementation. It wasn’t long before I had a commitment from @colonelb to Skype into our back-to-school leadership team meeting.”

For Britten, Twitter fits his philosophy of transparent leadership by providing him with a vehicle to communicate on the move to staff, students, parents, and his Board of Education. He links Twitter to the district’s web page, his personal blogs, and the district Facebook page, which her personally manages. “One of the immediate benefits of real-time communications is the growing level of trust between my administration and the professional staff,” said Britten.

Joshua Starr (@mcpssuper), superintendent of the 147,000 student district of Montgomery County Maryland, uses Twitter to promote best teaching practices. “If I am visiting a school and see a powerful lesson or an effective teaching strategy, I can take a picture and send out a Tweet,” said Starr. “It takes 30 seconds and not only let’s people know I’m visiting schools, but gives them a glimpse into my educational philosophy and what I value in teaching and learning.”

The depth of Twitter increases as users follow “hashtags,” key words beginning with the pound symbol (#). This makes them easy to search and connect. An on-going dialogue is taking place daily at #suptchat.

Lists also make Twitter more usable. “I follow @DanielLFrazier/supts and it’s a key list for me,” said Moran. “I can click in anytime and find any of several hundred other superintendents in the stream. Some days, I may lurk in watching what my peers post because I just need the reflective space. On other days, I will retweet and add to the conversation, bringing in other people to the conversation.”

Beginning users are cautioned to take it slowly but be persistent. The cacophony of messages can drive people away shortly after they start. Taken as a whole, the messages make little sense at first. But users watch and learn. It takes time to acquire an understanding of the power of the tool.

“Even if a superintendent is not actively tweeting, they should be monitoring Twitter,” said Starr. “There is an important conversation happening about education right now, and much of it is happening on Twitter. By following the right people, you can quickly understand what is going on in the world of education, know what you need to read or, at least, ask your staff to get up to speed.”

Moran describes Twitter as, “a tool for learning, re-energizing, engaging, and searching collaboratively with people from all walks of life and background experience. Twitter helps superintendents sow their seeds of curiosity and reap the benefits of exploring beyond the boundaries of our districts.”

Here’s to meeting you online! Find me @DanielLFrazier.

Where to Go with 1-to-1 Laptop Learning

"It is not about the machines; it is about teaching and learning." I have heard this so often when discussing one-to-one laptop learning, I wonder if it bears repeating. I hope this fact is becoming common knowledge.

Sioux Central School District in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, just completed its second year as a one-to-one laptop learning school for grades 3 through 12. The school has enjoyed great success in grades 6 through 12, so that it upgraded laptops and infrastructure this year for grades 4 and 5 and added laptops to grade 3 as well. With the year ended, I use this blog post to reflect on where we should be heading for the future of our school and its students.

There is another prolific statement I hear when discussing technology for the classroom. When someone asks the questions, "Laptops or tablets?" or "PC or Mac?" I hear the reply, "Well it all depends on what you plan to do with the technology." Although it is an accurate response, it is also a little smug. It leaves unexplained what schools should be doing with the technology

Simply put, our aim should be high-order thinking skills. We want our students to be creators of knowledge, not simply consumers. Using Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy, we want our students involved in project-based learning where they are evaluating their sources. We also want them re-teaching, so they are breaking down the information and reassembling it into a new whole.

I get very excited about what is happening in our classrooms when I visit and I see students highly engaged in non-traditional instruction. They are using their laptops, but they are relating personally to each other. They are working in groups, arguing what is relevant and how they should present their findings back to the rest of the class. Now that is a worthy goal for any classroom.

One-to-one laptops are allowing students to learn and retain at higher levels. The difference can be explained using the Learning Pyramid from the National Training Laboratories in Bethel, Maine. The pyramid reveals how content retention is related to the methodology used by the teacher:

Average Retention Rates

5% - Lecture

10% --- Reading

20% - Audio-Visual

30% --- Demonstration

50% --- Group Discussion

75% ------- Practice by Doing

90% ----------- Teaching Others

Laptop learning changes the classroom dynamic from more traditional passive learning, i.e., lecture, reading, and audio-visuals, to the active learning of practice by doing and teaching others.