Under "Normal" Circumstances?

Here, Pew Research Center does a quirky overview of the "new normal," which includes increased accessibility at home, increased use of mobile devices, and increased use of social networking by all demographics. This all leads to the 8 "realities."

The emerging information landscape The 8 realities of the “new normal”

View more presentations from Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

After clicking through this slideshow, what strikes you as concerning or inspirational? What "hits home" when reflecting upon our systems that teach kids, or that help them transition through stages of their lives? Is our blueprint agile enough? Do our information policies scale up to new medias? How do our attitudes and our skill-sets allow us to understand these revolutionary shifts?

AASA 2012

I am honored to have the unique opportunity this year to present for my colleagues at AASA's National Conference on Education. My presentation is on administrative compression in small, rural schools (PPT below). Check the current schedule of events for my most up-to-date time and location for the presentation if interested. You can follow the Twitter discussion for the national conference with the hashtag, #nce12.

The Part-Time Superintendent-WASDA/WASB

View more PowerPoint from bradfordgs

I am also exceedingly honored to be an eSchool News Tech-Savvy Superintendent Awardee for 2012. With company like William Skilling (@SuptSkilling) and Daniel Frazier (@DanielLFrazier), the award is certainly a humbling privilege, as it is a honor to serve the kids, teachers, and families of Wisconsin.

A Place of Our Own (Guest Post)

The following post was written by David Bell (@dtbell22) regarding a recent day of internal professional development. It was the single best day of teacher development that I have ever experienced, anywhere in my career. The peer-to-peer collaborative instruction resulted in high ownership. The boots-on-the-ground knowledge of actual tool implementation made for high interest. The embedded nature of the sessions substantially decreased distance between the act of development and the place where the new learning would be executed. Finally, hands-on, action-oriented sessions made for a great opportunity to play, experiment, problem-solve, and learn. I've never been prouder of the staff. 

On Friday, January 27th our faculty participated in an educational technology workshop. The exciting part is that we did not have to visit another school or have an expert guest speaker flown in. Teachers participated in 21 different learning sessions led by their colleagues. It was an opportunity for our staff to showcase the educational tools being implemented in their classrooms and to model how these technologies enhance instruction. The benefit to a professional development activity of this nature is that our teachers now have access to a local network of experts. I am confident that all teachers learned more applications that will strengthen their instruction.

Sessions included:

• Embedding Media into Websites  (Paula Niedbalski)
• Developing a Blog (Nick Bakke, @bakke3129, The Ed Tech Gurus)
• Using Google Forms in the Classroom  (Paula Niedbalski)
• A Paperless Classroom with Dropbox and Other Tools (Jodi Glaze, @KungFuSpanish)
• IPODs as a Testing Accommodation (Caleb Hundt, @hundtcaleb, The Ed Tech Gurus)
• How to Flip Your Classroom (David Bell, @dtbell22)
• Creating Screencasts with Jing (Brad Saron, @bradfordgs)
• Web 2.0 Research (Nick Bakke, @bakke3129,  The Ed Tech Gurus)
• Skyward Reports (Julie Lundeen)
• Digital photo presentations with Animoto (Nick Bakke, @bakke3129, The Ed Tech Gurus)
• Twitter:  Create your own Personal Learning Network (Ryan Alderson, @aldersonr)
• Skype and Facetime (Dawn Capwell)
• Picasa Photo Editing and Web Album (Caleb Hundt, @hundtcaleb, The Ed Tech Gurus)  
• Evaluating Apps and District Guidelines (Ryan Brown)
• The Instructional Uses of Document Cameras (Colleen Curtis)
• Google Reader as a Professional Development Tool (Colleen Curtis)
• Creating a website on Google Sites (Sarah Wallace, @WallaceSarahE and Karen Alderman)
• IPADS for Beginners (Alissa Sanders, @asanders329)
• Technology Assisted Instruction with the IPAD (Megan Menzynski, @MrsMenzy)
• Handwriting Recognition Apps on IPADS (Megan Menzynski, @MrsMenzy)
• Using Livescribe Pens on your Class Website for Remediation and Reteaching (Julie Lundeen)
• Using Google Forms for Formative Assessment (Paula Niedbalski)

A few pictures from the event:

Mrs. Sanders presenting on iPad Basics

Mrs. Lundeen leading a session on the Smart Pen and Websites

Mr. Woodhouse and Mr. in App Evaluation for District Guidelines

Mr. Bakke helping us set up Diigo accounts for research

Using iPods for testing accommodations with Mr. Hundt

This blog is crossposted here. 

My Digital Dictionary

Over the last three years, I've had the need to express particular ideas and thoughts that have not yet been captured by existing verbiage. Accordingly, I've taken it upon myself to coin the following new words:

Reader Fatigue: The cognitive exhaustion that is a result of continual flow of great information from a Google Reader. Synonyms: Mental Overload.

Digital Hording: The compulsive behavior (mostly by teachers) to save every bit of any file, program, or application on a home directory-no matter what the significance of the file.

Tweet Groupie: The sycophantic flatter who engages others on twitter for the purpose of self promotion as opposed to participating in and contributing to a digitally-oriented professional learning community. Self disclosure: I began my digital journey this way out of naivete.

Blog Crush: A high admiration and idolization of a colleague's blog, including the ideas expressed, connections made, and subsequent transformation triggered.

Post Prudence: The realization that comes once the colleagues you admire the most now follow you and your blog. Example: Once you know that @mcleod follows your twitter feed, you can't say stupid crap anymore.

Follower Balance: The idea that in a digitally-oriented professional learning community, you should be as interested in what others have to say as what you have to say. Hence, there should be somewhat of a balance between who follows you and whom you follow. Antonym: Tweet vanity.

Tab Collecting: The act of collecting tabs within your browser as a way of remembering that you want to tweet or blog about it later in the day.

4 O'Clock Push: The rush of tweets that appears from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. as a result of twitter users not wanting their bosses to know that they've been surfing the net while on the job. Note: Twitter users will collect tabs during the course of the day and then push them out after the formal end of the work day.

Tweet Noise: Random, unrelated, or hollow posts that are sprinkled into our personalized twitter feed. Used in sentence: Once I got past the tweet noise this morning, I found three wonderful blog posts that I bookmarked, and one that I commented on. 

5 a.m. Twitter Clutch: The unusual mixture of British twitterers that are just about to go to bed and the North American twitterers that have gotten up early, all of whom to converse and share insights on twitter.

One-Upman Twittery: The practice of outdoing others in one's digitally-oriented professional learning community by responding to a colleague's post with a parallel story about oneself with even more elaborate outcomes.

Have you ever experienced any of these? Do you have any terms that you have coined to describe situations or experiences you frequently encounter?

Ubiquitously Repressed

Michael Wesch 

"We are in an age of . . .

• Ubiquitous computing,
• Ubiquitous communication,
• Ubiquitous information,
• Ubiquitous speed,
• Everywhere,
• From anywhere,
• On all kinds of devices,  

Where it is ridiculously easy to . . .

• connect,
• organize,
• share,
• collect,
• collaborate,
• publish."

Scott McLeod

"We all now have a voice.
We can easily find each other.
We can easily work together."

Does your organization reflect our new digital information landscape?
Well, does it?

Tech Savvy in 4K (Guest Post)

Guest Blogger: Ryan Alderson (@aldersonr)

Even the youngest students at Cashton Elementary have learned first-hand the value of technology assisted learning. Over the course of a couple days, I visited just a few classrooms to see how teachers have continued to leverage digital tools to further engage students in learning. For this post, the focus is on our four year old kindergarten class with Mrs. Kramer, a veteran teacher who is eager to find innovative means to reach all students.

Three and four year old students in this classroom have access to a set of iPad2(s), a SMART table, a SMART board, and a couple of aging desktop computers daily as part of digital centers. Students explore a wide variety of apps and programs both collaboratively and independently based on their individual strengths and struggles. During this snapshot in time, students were working on alphabet sequence, listening to interactive digital stories, studying US geography, and using a modified ten-frame to improve number sense. Best of all, each of the activities was occurring at the same time. As I observed the students in action, I was impressed with the level of engagement and individualized instruction. Take a look, you will be too.

Ipad 2: US Geography



SMART Table: Number Sense


Desktop Computers:  Digital Storybooks


SMART board: Alphabet sequence


This is crossposted at Ryan's blog, here.

Digital PLCs for Administrators

Many administrators in the state of Wisconsin are dealing with a simple reality: Technology has grown significantly faster than our skills in using it. In an age of hyperinterconnectedness and augmented reality, some of us have faltered in technology competence and need to polish our skills.

Traditional methods of development have helped, but we need more. We need a systematic way to improve our skills as a community of administrators both learning about digital-age learning tools and supporting one another as we learn. We need to amplify our skills, our ability to support one another, and our ability to support and lead initiatives of powerful learning with digital-age tools for students.

Most of us are acutely aware of the powerful effect that a PLC can have on an educational community. For administrators, setting up the conditions under which PLCs thrive is different from participating in, and making significant contributions to, a meaningful PLC.  Although we have many opportunities to interact with other  principals and district administrators, we don’t often actually get the chance to play a part, especially relating to as important a topic as technology integration.

How do we connect the dots? How do we learn about digitally-oriented learning tools, and support one another as we implement best practice, collaborate to solve problems, and work to continuously improve the state of education in Wisconsin? The answer: We must develop a digitally-oriented, association-endorsed Professional Learning Community for administrators to learn, share, grow, and lead. This PLC must afford administrators in Wisconsin the ability to attain technology skills in an accommodating, hands-on environment, the ability to share their progress and work through obstacles, and the ability to vet results for powerful student learning. We need to amplify our community into a digitally-oriented PLC.

The idea of a digitally-oriented, certification-based PLC is not unheard of. Pioneers like Scott McLeod (CASTLE) and Jeff Utecht (COETAIL) worked to develop systematic ways to improve technology skills ahead of almost everyone. The significant work that they have done to pave the way for leaders to support leaders is prized and iconic.

Today, we launch a PLC for Wisconsin principals and district administrators.

This blog entry is crossposted at Amplified Administrators.