Educational Leadership & Technology

I am finally fed up with Edublogs! I have moved my blog to http://tsbray.posterous.com/ Thanks! Please view all new posts at the new site.

I was trolling through some old files and came across a philosophy of education assignment I wrote for one of my MEd. courses. After reading it, I realized that everything in it was still true and appropriate for me as an educator, so it is time to publish it for the world to see. Enjoy!

The philosophy of education that best matches my beliefs is Reconstructionism. Although the goals of traditional education seem logical, they lack a quality that is essential for students which is purpose. Students are not seeing the connection between Ancient Rome and modern times. They do not understand the purposes for being drilled on odd bits of English grammar. The three Rs, and all other aspects of the traditional education, can be mastered through more engaging methods. A new emphasis should be placed on researching and solving problems of society and community service projects.
The most fundamental purpose of education is to improve society. Improving society can only happen through educating young minds that they possess the ability and power to change problems in our world. The time for memorizing small bits of information is over. Students now need the skills to understand how to locate, comprehend, synthesize, evaluate, and effectively use information. The students must see meaningful connections between content and skills and the real world. It must be understood by students that they can change the world with action and knowledge.
Much of our current society is built on systems that pacify the individual. People are encouraged to be watchers and observers, but not encouraged to take part in influencing or changing a situation. Traditional education feeds into this problem by making students empty vessels that knowledge must be poured into. The learner is passive and assumed a fool. It is my belief that education serves to change the individual’s personality from passive to active. Through becoming an active member of society, the individual can invoke meaningful change to the society. History can be used as a guide for avoiding the same mistakes. History can also be a guide that provides models of correct behavior, excellent achievements for inspiration, and a way to review both good and bad aspects of society. However, the most important goal for students to comprehend must be the concept that the future will be better and different from the past if they strive to shape it.
These ideals come across in my teaching in several ways. My students are asked to explore the ideas of literature and writing at the very beginning of the year. We ask questions and search for answers together. Although I do not tell the students what we will study, they often end up choosing similar concepts: why do we study literature, what is literature, how has literature been used to change society, how is writing powerful and why, how can writing be used to change and shape society. These ideas build a base that makes the study of literature more than just reading another novel, poem, article, or short story. There is a purpose for reading and writing. Reading and writing can help solve problems in society.
My school supports this style of project learning by requiring students to perform community service for graduation. My students are encouraged to build a community service projects to help make Saipan (and the world) a better place. Examples in literature become both negative and positive models. The great authors are looked to provide us with assistance in understanding how to affect the future. Writing becomes a vehicle for finding community members or institutions that can assist in the project. We write emails, business letters, resumes, journals, poems, and stories about our projects.
We can spend our time pouring information into an empty mind, but we will never keep up with the amount of information there is to know. We must give students ways to deal with information on their own. Methods to locate, comprehend, synthesize, evaluate, and effectively use information. While doing this, we need to explore how society can be improved for the future. Educating children in this way achieves all the goals of traditional education plus we receive a member of society who has the ability to make change. Reconstructionism is a better way.

It has been a rather productive week, which means that it is time to reflect on what has transpired.

On the technology front, I managed to get myself back into Twitter again. I use the Twhirl program to access my account. Many people scream the praises of Tweetdeck, but I just can’t use that thing efficiently or effectively. The interface reminds me of a student with ADHD — all over the place. My schedule has me in the classroom more this year, which gives less time for such endeavors like Twitter; but, I really enjoy more face time with teachers and students.
We discovered that Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) isn’t playing well with Snow Leopard, so we had to tell students to stop updating their software. This I find personally problematic because the computers belong to the students, but there really wasn’t another solution at the moment. We have a bunch of students who have account issues on the network and need to be worked out. Plus, Bruce, Greg, and I need to train the middle school and high school teachers how to use ARD, so when we return from vacation, we will hit the ground running… Not that we ever stopped running since the beginning of the year.

One of the art teachers has decided to use a blog as part of her class as a way for students to reflect on process. She got the idea from David Gran and we sat down and brainstormed some possibilities for it. I was pretty excited about this development because the three middle school departments that were having the most difficulty shifting in the past were art, music, and math. The music department made a giant leap last year and had students produce music videos to go along with their choir arrangements. Now the art department is seeing action with blogs and the math department has a new member who is keen to try some tech infusion. Awesome!

On the discipline front, I’m trying my best to be supportive of teachers and students, but sometimes both sides make it difficult. An example of this is a situation where a teacher lost a student’s assignment and later found it; but between the time of losing and finding, the student turned in a buddy’s assignment as his own. The teacher put the student in a difficult situation, but the student still made a bad choice while trying to solve his problem. Of course the student thinks the teacher is a little responsible for this situation. I addressed the issue, but was very curt with the student when pointing out that two wrongs don’t make a right. Overall the students are doing very well this year. The 6th graders have made the difficult transition from elementary to middle school and we have planned some orientation programing for next year that should smooth the transition even further. Also, many of the students are looking at ARD not as a policing threat, but as a way to help them stay on task during class. Nice!

Currently I’m feeling like my life is in a state of transition. Part of me wants to continue doing my role as the Dean of Students and Technology Integration Specialist (TIS); part of me wants to move back into the classroom to teach English and be a half time TIS; part of me wants to play Wii and check Facebook all day; part of me wants to start a PhD. program that is being offered on the campus of SFS. Obviously change is in the air! I know, after 13 years in education, that some of it is the fall blues — that after-the-fast-paced-start-of-the-year let down. It always occurs every year; it is cyclical like the seasons. Teachers are more prone to feel it because of the natural biorhythms of our work, but knowing doesn’t really stop the feeling or help one cope with the effects.

What is needed? Change? Movement? I’m hoping that the up coming publishing of the Middle Matters, our quarterly MS publication, will help this situation, but I sincerely doubt it will. The fact is — I miss the classroom. Administration is a very lonely job; especially, when you are the discipline guy of the middle school.

It has been a long time since the last blog post, eh? My life has really moved in those months between. I went to Peru and got the chance to visit Mili, the administrative assistant from Saipan International School, in her home country. We spent two wonderful weeks with some of Aysem’s former students from Saipan traveling around in Peru and then went to a language school in Lima for a month. Aysem got pregnant and then lost the baby. School started off in a blizzard of activity for the tech team — re-imaging computers, training for staff, and a ton of other things. Bruce Roadside joined the KIS Tech Team and is providing excellent leadership and great ideas. Greg and I formed a student club to handle the film festival this year, so the student film festival will become a student ran student film festival, which I think is a major step in the right direction. Life is happening!

On Saturday June 13, my wife and I will be flying to Peru. We will spend the entire summer traveling and studying Spanish. My beloved Macbook will be turned into the IT Office, so I will be with it for an entire seven weeks (I’m already suffering from separation anxiety). But I will have my iTouch with me, so when and if I find free wifi, I will be updating from it. This will mean that the blog is basically finished for school year 2008-09. It was been a fast, productive, and rewarding year as the middle school dean of students and middle school technology integration specialist. I will be back blogging on a regular basis in August — when school year 2009-10 kicks off here at KIS.  I plan to do some summer reflection on the school year and write in an old fashioned journal that I will be carrying with me. Thanks for reading and following the events at KIS through my blog.

Well it is time to say goodbye to another school year, but I think 08-09 will be one I remember for a very long time. It was an action packed year for me as I learned the ropes of administration and worked closely with teachers to encourage and support their use of technology. The list of achievements for the Technology Integration Specialists at KIS is quite impressive:

1. First ever Phoenix Film Festival
2. First ever Korea International School podcast
3. First ever Korea International School Youtube channel
4. First ever Technology Showcase
5. Development of the Middle Matters KIS MS publication for parents
6. Several on going Wiki projects like our technology sharing wiki and middle school advisory wiki
7. Not to mention the countless hours spent planning and supporting teachers

I feel like it was been a productive year with technology. Teachers are trying new things in the classroom and students are making amazing collaborative projects with technology. It is actually working!

First, trust me, I see the irony about writing a blog post about blogging being dead. I wrote it for all the bloggers out there, not for myself. Second, just as God was declared dead quite some time ago, and billions of people are still going to churches, mosques, and temples, I doubt that my proclamation will stop many people from blogging. So then…

“Why,” you ask, “why is blogging dead?” Blogging is the Internet’s newspaper. Just look at the competition — multi-media, video, Twitter, and podcasting websites all offer a richer exeperiences to the audience than blogs. Sure there will be some old professors somewhere in universities that continue blogging, but the majority of us will move on to other forms of communication. We will use Twitter, PodOmatic, and YouTube to micro blog, podcast, and share our self created videos. Who will blog? And more importantly why? With more and more teachers assigning blogs to students and grading the blogs like assignments, less and less students will blog for pleasure or personal reflection. It will become just another assignment to do and, as Clay Burell said, “It will be full of too much schooliness.” So goodbye blogs! Rest in peace.

Today I will continue with number 8 of the 12 Commandments for People Who Work with People: Help People More, Hassle People Less. I think when you read the commandment, it seems like something everyone would aspire to do, right? But in reality, we all know better than that. There are those people out there that thrive on hassling people, and it is our job to deal with them, but it is also our job to avoid being those people who do the hassling.

Let me tell you a little story about a high school job I had once had in my home town of Bigfork, Montana. I worked in a very popular restaurant and, of course, I started at the bottom like everyone always does in those jobs — washing dishes. We had a chef, who was in charge of the kitchen, and a hostess who was in charge of all the waitresses, but was also the owner’s wife. The chef would tell me to make salads a certain way, and she would come and demand them a different way. There was a procedure for cleaning the silverware established by the chef, the hostess would come and tell me to not follow the procedure. In this situation, I blame both of them, because if they disagree with each other, they should sort out the problem, not put me in the middle of it. Of course, being adults, they weren’t able to solve or confront their problem, so it continued to be my problem as well until I finally left that job to work at a pizza place as a delivery driver. How much money, time, and energy had been lost on having to train another worker? Who knows! But those are the type of expenses companies should avoid. The moral of the story is the commandment itself — help people more, hassle people less.

Especially in education I see a lot of hassling people needlessly. One example of this I discussed in a previous post about not making rules or policies for the sake of making rules and policies. Schools are horrible about this activity. One student, or even a small group of students, makes a mistake and then we punish all with a new policy instead of educating the few about proper usage. In 1:1 schools this tendency must be avoided at all costs; otherwise you will find yourself working at a 1:1 school with no websites available for access to students or faculty and no computer programs that can be used other than Word or Pages. Recently another ADE asked about blocking Facebook, I informed her that Korea International School doesn’t block it, because we feel it is more important for students to learn correct usage of the Internet and computer than to make a rule about it. Our computer use policy states that the teacher has the right to decide if the website is appropriate for class or not; after all they are professionals and can decide best how to use the tool, why take it from them for no reason? Facebook, and any other social network site for that matter, is a part of life; students need to know how to manage their time and use of these tools; they won’t learn it from their friends or parents, trust me on that one. It is our job to provide guidance, not to simply outlaw it. Help people more, hassle people less!

It has been a busy couple of weeks, which is my excuse for not blogging more this time… But, seriously, it has been crazy busy! I went to the Apple Leadership Summit in Hong Kong and listened to some amazing presenters discuss the improtance of shifting education and bringing it into the 22nd century (I’m not writing 21st century anymore, because we should strive to be head of the game and not behind). John Couch, vice president of education for Apple, Tom Kelley, manager of IDEO, Marko Torres, and several other educators shared the stage to impress educational leaders that it is time to move or go the way of the T-Rex. It was a huge honor to present at a conference with such giant names in educationa and innovation. There were several ADEs from my 2008 class in Singapore, so it was a wonderful chance to catch up and check in with everyone.

Also the Phoenix Film Festival finished its first ever awards ceremony on April 30th in the PAC at Korea International School. Greg Israel and I would like to congratulate and thank all the students and teachers who were involved in the process. We’d also like to thank Apple, Korea for donating 9 iPod Nanos to the event and the KIS administration and PTO for ponying up the money for the other Nanos. We had 31 films from five countries and seven different schools. The winners list can be viewed on the Youtube channel as well as the awards ceremony.