Tag Archives: early adopter

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3 Reasons I Don’t Follow You on Twitter

twitterfollowicons1Having been “on Twitter” for quite some time now, I feel I have developed a good understanding of the benefits and limitations of this tool.

In a recent post, I questioned why anyone in the educational system would not actively leverage the professional networking power of Twitter to build upon their skill set. Properly used, this tool can be a game changer in terms of professional networking and collaboration.

It takes time to build a meaningful network of associates. This can happen in a number of ways, but the end result is a cadre of colleagues with whom one can exchange ideas and seek support.

Having said all of the above, I do find that there are occasions where I have elected not to follow a particular colleague, or simply dropped someone from the list of people I follow. While I truly do want to know what people have to say, there are a few practices which will discourage me from following some individuals.

The line between personal and professional is blurred

I don’t like to “unfollow” anyone, but if my professional twitter feed is peppered with comments from someone about their personal life I tend to end that particular social media connection. Tweets about hobbies, pets, or random observations should be confined to one’s personal account.

It is important to delineate between the personal and the professional. I use my professional account to connect with colleagues in the field. My personal account is used to follow and comment on topics related to local news and personal interests. Those that try to do both from a single account may find followers within the profession driven away by tweets that are primarily personal in nature and that do not advance the professional conversation.

It is not difficult to toggle between two accounts or more if necessary. Tweetdeck allows one to manage multiple accounts. Those interested in both your personal and professional life may elect to follow both accounts.

You re-tweet too much

Selectivity is important. It is not necessary to retweet everything that one find useful. Give careful consideration to what is shared. If it enriches the ongoing professional conversation, then by all means, share what has been discovered. I find however that I do tend to reconsider following those whom I find are making a disproportionate contribution to my twitter feed.

You don’t post original tweets

I am very interested in what is on the minds of the people I follow. At the outset, retweeting may be how many people participate the conversation. However, we all have our own thoughts and opinions. I want people to weigh in on current topics. The information they share can enrich and inform our professional dialogue. Everyone’s opinion matters, and social media sites are the ideal places to make statements, solicit responses, and engage colleagues in meaningful dialogue on current issues.

I consistently promote the power of social media and seek new ways to leverage this resource for professional growth. As it rapidly becomes common professional networking practice, it is important for all of us to avoid practices that may detract from our voices being heard as they should.

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Outside The Comfort Zone: Helping School Systems Embrace Technology

????????????????????????????????Each year, our school division holds a “Summer Institute” for teachers, the purpose of which is to provide two days of professional development just prior to the start of the new school year. In examining the topics the Institute was considering last spring, I detected a lack of activities related to current learning technologies and, with a colleague, offered to fill the void.

Our offer was welcomed and despite the end of the school year being a very busy time, we managed to do some collaborative planning. My colleague is skilled at locating and implementing new learning technologies in the classroom. Selective about what she uses in the classroom, I suspect that for every app, program, or device that becomes a part of her teaching, many more fail to make the cut on the basis not doing enough to improve the learning of her students.

Take The Risk

I envisioned my role in the presentation would be less about new technologies and more about encouraging people to step out of their comfort zone. Changing our practice is rooted in risk taking. That can provoke a measure of anxiety in anyone, but even more so for teachers; the risks they take have the potential to impact on the students for which they are accountable. There is comfort in staying with the tried and true. What is to be gained from stepping away from that?

  • I often consider why, in this day and age, anyone in the educational system would not actively leverage the professional networking power of Twitter to build upon their skill set.
  • I wonder why they would not embrace powerful new communication technologies instead of relying on traditional but less effective technologies.
  • I reflect upon classroom practices rooted in traditional teaching which, while still valid, can be transformed through the use of common and easily accessed technological resources that are typically available in practically every classroom.

What’s Stopping You?

In all of these cases I believe that at least one of two conditions exists, which can be summarized by these statements:

  1. “What I am doing is working for me, so that is good enough.”
  2. “I don’t have the time learn all of this.”

Regarding the first statement, finding what works is important. But simply leaving it at that is not enough. We should expect more from people at all levels within the school system. A community of learners will continually seek out new and improved ways of doing things. From time to time that will mean changing long standing practice, as uncomfortable as that may be. Sticking with the status quo is simply unacceptable.

Regarding the second statement, it is true that time is at a premium. The challenge is to help people see how investing time in learning something new can lead to greater efficiency and actually save some of that precious time in the long run. Professional educators, of all people, should understand this. It is also not a matter of learning “all of this”, but selectively investing in those things which may yield the greatest return.

Inspiring Change

As I prepare for our Summer Institute presentation, I will need to focus on both of these statements. My task is to inspire people to look beyond the status quo and instill the confidence they need to make the leap to the next level. Professional development sessions like our Summer Institute are critical components in facilitating the system wide cultural shifts that are required for this to happen.

Some time ago, I wrote about exploiting technology for effective school administration. The barriers we faced then still exist today, but I am encouraged by the progress I have observed. That progress has only occurred where people have embraced the message I hope to bring to the upcoming PD session:

Take the risk, and leave your comfort zone behind.

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Bi-Tech: Relating to Both the Digital and Analog Generations

old phone new phoneI am of the generation that grew up in a largely pre-digital era. With the pace of technological innovation in today’s world being what it is, nearly all of us can say we have seen a tremendous amount of change in our lifetime. Yet I find myself in a challenging and somewhat frustrating position;  I need to be able to competently use the latest technology while maintaining a skill set related to that which is rapidly being rendered obsolete.

The best way to illustrate the need for this is to reference my own family. I communicate with my adult children via text messaging and occasionally through a social networking medium. Typical of most digital natives, online media is their first choice when it comes to news, sports and entertainment. We carry our smartphones with us practically everywhere and can connect in seconds, although I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we actually used those devices as telephones.  Our practice has been to exchange bite sized pieces of text information. I respect that they prefer to communicate in this fashion

My elderly mother receives a daily printed newspaper. She does not have internet access in her home, and relies on the radio and television for her news and entertainment. She has a cell phone and I continue to try to persuade her that the device is essentially useless when turned off.  (From her perspective, there is no reason to turn it on if she is not actively using it.)  She relies on her land line telephone, preferring real time conversation as her primary means of distance communication. I respect that she prefers to communicate in this fashion.

I am caught in the middle with a perspective that yields a unique understanding of both digital cultures.  As a result, I am proficient in accessing communication technologies across generations, something of which I am not confident either generational extreme can boast.

Out with the old and in with the new?

A number of my age cohorts are tech savy, others are decidedly not. As a high school principal, many of the parents with whom I interact typically fall somewhere within that continuum. Does that impact on how I communicate with them?  It most certainly does.

Consider the traditional school newsletter, which continues to be a commonly used communication tool. Stuffed into backpacks and binders, some might find their way home to their intended audience, but many do not. Recognizing that they could improve on their delivery rate, schools began to make newsletters available online or to email them directly to parents, yet they did not necessarily abandon the hard copy backpack-delivery model. This is in recognition of the fact that we are dealing with parents who relate best to a paper newsletter as well as those who prefer to receive that information electronically.

So are schools then to exploit new technologies while maintaining older, even obsolete means of communication?  My answer to that is a qualified no. While we are obliged to communicate with parents and with the community at large, it is our responsibility to enable them to receive information in more current formats and  move away from yesterday’s practice.

IMG_4446aThe Digital Divide.

It has been years since I have sent home a regular printed school newsletter. Our school sends one major newsletter style publication home each year as an insert in the year-end report card. It includes information about the upcoming school year and frequently references the school website as an information source. QR codes direct the more tech savy parents to relevant sections of the school website and it is clearly indicated that this is the one printed newsletter parents can expect to receive. Our goal is education, and that includes enabling the ability to access school information through modern means.

I recognize that some people may be incapable of accessing information through current technology, and for these people we gladly print and send the relevant sections of the school website. These are increasingly rare cases.

Straddling that digital divide can be a challenge. Parents, particularly those of high school students, are largely digital immigants.  While one may deem it necessary to preserve dated strategies to faciliate communication with all parents, the resulting reality sees the same information available in a variety formats and delivery models.  This redundancy is ultimately inefficient.

At some point we must abandon the obsolete.  As communication technologies evolve, so must our practices.

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The Right Tools for the Job: Exploiting Technology for Effective School Administration

In his Diffusion of Innovation theory,  Everett M. Rogers identified the characteristics of groups of people based on how rapidly they embraced an innovation.  Though his research was based on agricultural innovation, his theory holds true across disciplines.  Rogers’ five groups of adopters, from the most enthusiastic to the slowest to adopt included: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

Yes, there are laggards in school administration, though I don’t particularly like the connotations associated with that word.  In most cases, those who are slow to apply new educational technologies have been so not because of any lack of skill or talent, but simply because in the complex world of educational administration, competing demands for time can place technology skill development well down the priority list.

Go with what you know…?

“Go with what you know“ can be a comforting concept.  It frequently occurs that we rely on our tried and true skill set.  Ironically, setting aside a portion of the day to become more proficient at exploiting technology for educational administration has the potential to free up valuable hours for the very functions that school administrators often feel they do not have enough time for.

Email overload, and what do do about it.

Take the wonderful world of email. How often to school administrators rely on this as the sole means of communication with staff and colleagues?  While email is an effective tool, it is woefully inefficient as a means of fostering dialogue amongst a group of people.  Yet because it is the tool we all know, it is frequently over utilized as a means of communication.

Ask a group of school administrators if they would like to reduce the volume of incoming email they face each day. The majority would likely indicate a desire to do that.  Show that same group how to use a discussion board however and only a handful, if any, will embrace and enthusiastically exploit this tool.  Whether it be the anxiety associated with trying something new, the comfort that comes with simply using what you already know, or a combination of those two factors, people will generally resort to their current practice unless the new practice is seen as simple and the advantages are made clear.  Unfortunately, not everything is presented in such a manner.

One highly underutlized resource is the above mentioned discussion board.  This tool is far superior to e-mail communication when the focus is on discussion or collaboration.  In a discussion board, all members can see the contributions and replies of all members.  A question posted on the board has the potential to generate multiple responses which frequently build upon each other to create a rich dialogue.

Discussion boards are also the place to post “information only” items.  I am in the practice of posting all in school memos on a discussion board that is accessible only to school staff.   It is my experience that such items frequently generate questions that I did not forsee.  One can be sure that if one person poses a question or seeks clarity about an information item, others were likely thinking the same thing.

We are frequently sent emails from the school district office with the directive to “forward to Science teachers”, or “forward to staff that you feel may be interested in this topic”.  I don’t have the time to do that, and neither does anyone else in my school need to take time to selectively redirect such messages.  We simply place them on the discussion board where the people that need to see such items may do so.

Also underutilized is the simple tool of instant messaging.  This is effective when you are seeking a quick answer to a direct question.  Whether it is by using a web based system that is frequently built in as part of a school district’s communications system or by text messaging with a cell phone, it is one of the most efficient ways to exchange a dozen or so words with someone with whom you need to connect.  It is immediate and avoids placing yet another email in someone’s inbox – an email that may or may not receive the time sensitive attention it deserves.

I realize that discussion boards and instant messaging are neither new nor cutting edge.  Yet I am frequently surprised to observe the extent to which people continue to rely on what they know and fail to use such simple yet effective resources such as these. Email is a great tool, but if it is the only one in your toolbox, you are likely not exploiting readily available communication technology resources as efficiently as you could be.

It takes more than a single hammer to build a house.  Likewise, a variety of tools are required for effective workplace communication.

Take time to make time.

School administrators should not be afraid to try out new resources as they become available.  One needs to critically analyze how any particular resource can impact on the task at hand and to understand that exploring the resource will take time.  However, investing that time has the potential to pay off in the long run.  Developing a repertoire with regard to technology resources will ensure that regardless of the situation, you will have the right tools for the job.