Have you used video essays (vlogs) as a tool in your courses?  How did it go? Do you have any suggestions?

Wordle is one of those sites where you can enter in text and it gets turned into a word cloud.  You can copy your url, a blog post feed, your delicious account or just simply paste some text. I came across it here, and after reading Karen’s post wanted to try out my own blog to see if my ideas were being backed up by my words.   Glad to see they are.

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I’m always looking for little quirky Web 2.0 programs that I can introduce to my students so really enjoyed coming across Stripgenerator in one of Larry Ferlazzo’s many posts about about web tools.  I see it as a tool kids can use for making introductions to unit projects or spicing up presentations.

At NECC Week, I had been playing with a Flip Cam that my work bought for students taking my Web 2.0 class next semester.  I needed to learn how to use it in case kids had questions , so brought it along and recorded a few short clips.  I was more interested in playing with the camera rather than making a video, but decided to put together a pretty disjointed compilation of what I was able to record.  It has a few highlights though, some scenes from EBC including, Ewan Macintosh’s request for Pearson Learning to turn off their cameras (he was intimidating so I did too after that).  It also has a bit from David Warlick’s session, from Steve Hargadon’s Social Networking in Education session,  and a few other snippets if you’re interested.

I’ve been trying to frame this blog all day and my original thought was to call it Being Change without Being in Charge, but that isn’t quite right. Besides, the only thought I could come up with under that title was……..

Back to the book.  Here are some important things I learned about being a leader and being able to influence change, with a little commentary.

1.  The Power of One

Remember learning about Stanley Milgram?  The social scientist who had ‘teachers’ shock ‘learners’ when they didn’t get answers right, and even though learners kept messing up, 65% of the teachers kept shocking them, to near fatal levels.  The final limit was 450 volts where most were presumed dead or passed out as a result. However, if scientists added one person to the teacher’s room that said things like “keep going, its okay” that number went up to 90% of the teachers shocking to a deadly level.  But, if that same 1 person said “I’m not going to do this anymore” then the shocker stopped shocking.  The idea is that the power of one is all it takes.  One other person can influence us to do great or horrible things.

2.  Opinion Leaders, not Innovators bring about change
Innovators are often thought of as the misfits who are disconnected from the rest of their environment.  They aren’t respected because they are on a different plane.  However, early adopters / opinion leaders are connected to and respected by their peers and others in their community.  If you want real change, you have to be (or have to find) an early adopter.  You have to be connected to your peers.  You have to be respected by them.  Then, when the innovators come in with their cool new tools, you decide whether they are worthy and promote them.

This one takes some self-evaluation.  I have one other person at my school that would be considered the innovator.  He got me excited about Web 2.0 and the possibility of engaging students on a whole new level.  He has introduced some amazing ideas to our staff.  However, most haven’t taken to changing their style of teaching to meet the demands of today’s students. He is an amazing learner.  That being said, I don’t what I AM?   I don’t think I’m an opinion leader because I’m not vocal enough about the emerging technologies that I’m using or the impact they are having on the select kids using them.  In some instances I’m helping kids get excited about school again. That is a good thing.  I need to be more vocal about it, but it’s hard, especially when you don’t respect so many people in your organization.  That has to change.

3.  Influence agents have to engage the chain of command
“Smart influencers spend a disproportionate amount of time with formal leaders to ensure that the leaders are their social influence to encourage vital behaviors.”

Basically, if you want change then align yourself with the people who can make it happen in your community.  For most of us, that is our bosses who are automatically given the title of leaders when they take the job.  For those of us that have bosses that are ineffective at bringing about change, we need to pick people in our organization that can (people who are the head of cliques), and try to show them what we are doing.  If they like our ideas then they will take it to their small groups and change will spread.

4. To become an opinon leader/ early adopter:

• You must be knowledgable about the issue you are trying to change
• You must be trustworthy, people have to respect your opinion
• You must be generous with your time

This hits home really hard.  We have a knowledgable administration.  However, not all are trustworthy.  Most of our faculty does not believe our administration will handle situations appropriately.  They don’t trust them to do the right thing.  Some of our administration is very generous with their time.  Others can never be found.  Do your leaders fit these three criterion?

5.  Make the undiscussable, discussable
There has to be a public discourse over the issues that are hurting your organization the most.  The elephants in the room.

Power to change comes from the ability to force undiscussable topics into the public discourse.  Long settled beliefs are suddenly opened to question and discussed at every corner, workstation, and shop- and eventually reshaped

We can’t sit in our classrooms, complain on our PLN’s, and just talk to our spouses about what is wrong, what needs to change. We have to get our ideas moving, make them kinetic, make them a fabric of our community.

In an ideal workplace, you have an “environment where formal and informal leaders relentlessly encourage vital behaviors and skillfully confront negative behaviors.  When this happens, people make personal transformations that are hard to believe”

What are you doing to influence your environment?

Motivating students who have failed in the traditional classroom setting is a key to success for credit recovery programs. The flexible and self-paced nature of online courses can motivate; these attributes can also remove the social stigma of credit recovery. Online courses may be more engaging to some students than traditional face-to-face classes. In addition, programs that use online courses can address mobility issues of students who move regularly from one school in the district to another.

This is the hardest part of our job.  We need to develop better methods of engaging students. Florida Virtual School states they pass 90% of their at-risk kids in credit recovery courses. Does that mean online schools should just design separate credit recovery courses in addition to mainline and advanced courses? There is no separation at our school and we pass half that amount.

Online learning is particularly well suited for students recovering credit because it allows for individualized instruction, both by the teacher and through the use of course management technology. Online curriculum must be rigorous to ensure that students are learning the material, and not simply moving through the course. Diagnostic testing that allows students to demonstrate mastery of the elements of a subject that they learned in their previous attempt to pass the course, and to move on to the parts of the course that they need to focus on, keeps students engaged.

I’ve long been a proponent of diagnostic testing but none of our courses currently offer this.  The rigor of a course has to be enforced by the administration.  Individualizing instruction (and assessments) is the role of the instructor but if your school employs instructors who are trying to teach traditionally online than this won’t happen at your school.

The self-paced aspect of online courses is particularly valuable to at-risk students, who may associate education with difficulties and stress, compounded by learning deadlines imposed  by arbitrary calendars or school hours.

This is also one of the most difficult aspects.  Often these students do not have basic organizational skills or the ability to evaluate course responsibilities and schedule accordingly.

Providing credit for work or community service allows students to be engaged in a valuable activity outside of school and to have this experience count towards graduation. It also
motivates students to complete the program.

Most online programs serving credit recovery and at-risk students—but not all—have a
significant face-to-face component. The blended approach is important because it provides
expanded student support and face-to-face contact. The online component—whether fully
online or blended—provides 21st century skills to a group of students who often have less
than average exposure to computers and technology.

We have kids come in once a week for four hours of face-to-face contact.  Should we increase this to make it “significant?”

Programs that keep students from dropping out or attract students back into the school
system may pay for themselves—or at least defray costs—by capturing the state public
education dollars tied to those students. Online programs are particularly scalable and able
to expand more easily than programs based entirely on brick-and-mortar classrooms.

Success stories and anecdotes regarding the benefits and value of online learning for both
at-risk students and the schools serving them abound. The need exists for federal funding of
quantitative research in this area.

My first thought after reading this was, does knowing this change anything about how I approach teaching these kids?

I work at an online charter school which attracts a wide variety of students, many though, and possibly the top tier of kids who choose to attend our school, have failed out of their zoned school and are hanging on by a thread. These are at-risk kids in the purest form, they are almost ready to quit the system and have found us as a last alternative. I knew that already, but what I didn’t know before this report was that we had one of the worst districts in the country so our students have been failed by the system at the highest levels.

So, does it change how I approach teaching these kids?

This report confirms that our school does not have it easy. It validates some of the reasons our staff has quit on these kids. It proves that our task of educating is as difficult as any in the country. What it doesn’t do though, is change how I teach these kids. I’m not bowing out of this fight now that I found out its even harder than I imagined.

I’m not trying to come off as some sort of higher-than-thou evangelist, I hope it doesn’t sound that way. It’s just that so many of the people I work with quit. So many of them have lost faith in these kids, and it’s a lot easier to do that than to fight for them.

First, I wanted to be more persistent. I meant that I needed to try and call or visit my kids on campus more. At an online school this is difficult, but I did a really good job of this the first semester logging over 300 phone calls in 18 weeks, but came up nearly empty in the second semester. The main reason why is because I decided to build 2 new courses for next school year. That took all my free work time.

When I think about persistence as a goal for next year, I want it to mean more than communication with students. I want it to be about persisting change and progress amongst students, peers, and authority.

My second goal was to be more resourceful, to learn more and teach students more creatively. I learned more than I ever have in my life this school year; it did not improve my failure rate though. I did get kids being more creative. I did get kids to try things they had never done before. I did get kids to take risks. I just failed at getting more kids to do that. Next year that has to be the focus.

My third goal was to be more positive. More positive about my views of administration. More positive about my views of our staff, and especially more positive in my belief that our students could succeed at an online school. I did great with the kids, never gave up for a second this year. Our staff I’m still very skeptical of, and they are continually allowed to fail these kids. That’s on admin, and until that changes or the culture of our school changes, admin is accountable.

I haven’t thought about my goals for next year, but I obviously have to continue working on a couple of these.

As with every school year, if you aren’t reflecting and trying to better yourself for your students, then you are doing them a disservice.

I think the ADDIE Instructional Design model can be applied to “performance design” as well. I will Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate my educational performance constantly. I will continue to make changes. I will improve. And hopefully, just hopefully, my kids will be the evidence of that.

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Think all my Geography/Travel students need to have G. Earth on their computers for next year. I only recommended it this year because its a huge program and a lot of our student’s don’t have good computers so heavy downloads can get cumbersome, but this is a must.

I really wanted to get on here and just rant about something I saw at work a little while ago that was the ultimate insight to a problem we have had all year, but decided that there are a couple risks in doing so.  First off, you probably don’t want to hear me complain.  Secondly, I probably don’t want my work to hear me complain.  So I’ve been sitting at my computer with my blog open, and just thinking a little more in depth about why I didn’t want to write out exactly what has been bothering me about teaching at an online school.  I began having a debate. The debate consisted of three things:

1. Do I go into detail about a common problem at our online school, and possibly address a bigger problem in education?
2. If I do go into it, will anyone care since it’s a personal grumble?
3. If someone does care, will that someone be from my own school who happens to read this?

Lets clear one thing up, only a couple teachers from my school read this blog, probably any blogs for that matter, so the risk of them reading about a complaint that may alienate me from my peers is only a risk if they catch onto this down the road and go back through the archives.  But there is always that what if?

That led me to the realization that I have to pretend a little on this blog.  I have to wear a couple masks.  I have to oblige the persona that is more conducive to appeasing a broader readership.  The idea of keeping a professional presence separate from your personal presence online is something I dealt with and adapted to a couple years ago. However, I’m just now thinking about having to have multiple professional personalities if I want to be honest about the problems at my online school, which just might happen to be problems that other online schools, and other more traditional schools might also be having.

I’m sure many writers have had to worry about alienating themselves or coworkers in their blogs, and many have probably gone the easy route and just chosen not to say anything at all.  But I’m wondering if there is another way to handle this where you can still get your message out, still share your ideas, still be controversial, but not go down a path you wish you could take back later.

When I was in High School I was petrified of public speaking. It got even worse when I went to college and didn’t know anyone in the room. In fact, early on in my college career I would drop courses if I found out there was a speech involved. I hated that about myself, but hated the idea of speaking even more. Then I became a teacher.

Knocking Down that First Big Wall:
When I began college at 21, after 3 years of floating around through life, I knew I wanted to work with kids. I wasn’t interested in teaching at that point because I didn’t think there was anyway I could get up in front of a class everyday and just….talk. But after a few years of college, something changed. I had to take a speech class to move to a 4 year school, there was no way to avoid it anymore. Even though I dreaded every one of those 3-5 minute monologues ( I would shake, my stomach would get upset, and I felt flushed with heat), I started getting a little confidence in myself. The final assessment of the semester was presenting a Persuasive Speech I wrote about working with kids in the community (I still didn’t think I could teach at this point). My speech got nominated by our class and I ended up in a school-wide competition. I didn’t win but made it to the finals and the observers were about 50 students, a dean from Stanford, one from Cal Poly, and the head of my school. In about 6 months I had gone from being deliriously nervous just to talk in front of 30 kids in a community college classroom, to the finals of a speech competition in front of some very intimidating people.

Going for It:
Once I got through that course, I knew I could become a teacher. But the fears didn’t stop once I did. I still get nervous in front of my peers and large groups and there are still personal barriers that I keep trying to knock down. The main difference now is that I set goals to break down those walls. I push myself to handle uncomfortable situations. Just last week I presented at my first NACOL Webinar, which was really strange and awkward. I wasn’t happy with how I presented my ideas in that hour, but I know that next time will be better because I got through it.

How This Applies to my Kids:
I want to push my kids to do things that unnerve them. I want to teach students to play outside of their safe zones. I want to help them get through their fears at a much younger age than I did. I talk to kids about this in very limited situations right now, but as I’m growing as a teacher I’m learning that this plays more and more of a role in students lack of success. I think I’m finally beginning to understand the role of fear in a teenagers mind, and hopefully I can help them break down some of the barriers that fear creates.