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!

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!

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.

How many times have you been in a faculty meeting and heard, “We can’t do that,” or “We tried that before,” or “That never works.”? I bet you can’t even count the number of times on all of your fingers and toes combined. I hear it all the time with administrators, teachers, and students. In fact, some administrators think it is their job to say this all the time, but the best results come from having the Can Do Attitude. When educational leaders step forward with the Can Do Attitude, things get done; plus, the attitude is infectious. The can’t do attitude is infectious as well, but the Can Do Attitude really moves quickly, especially if you have a few other positive staff members to work with. My personal mentor, Dr. Larry Creedon, once told me if you want to make progress in a school, take the ones who are willing and move ahead, the others will eventually come along or leave. It may sound a little rough, but that really is the way it works in international schools. During one of Larry’s staff meetings, he was explaining some changes he wanted the school district to make in order to improve student learning and teacher instruction. One teacher stood up and said, “Why should I listen to you? I have thirty years of experience?” Larry responded, “Do you have thirty years of experience or did you have one experience thirty times? There is a difference!” The point being that experience isn’t an excuse to not improve and change with what research says works.

When Rich Boerner arrived at KIS, there wasn’t a process in place for teacher evaluation. When he proposed the idea, several teachers asked him why, but there were other teachers who celebrated the giant step ahead in teacher professionalism. A few years later, the teacher evaluation process is still here and being improved and the teachers appreciate it; the ones who didn’t want it have either changed their opinions or left the school. In the end, it was Rich’s Can Do Attitude that moved the school forward as a learning community.

Greg Israel and I could have decided that doing the Phoenix Film Festival was too much work, too hard to arrange, and simply too difficult to deal with, but instead we approached it with the Can Do Attitude and now KIS has a student film festival of its very own, a website for the festival, and a Youtube channel. The festival also had several international entries. Not bad for a first effort! Never underestimate the power of positive thinking, positive energy, and positive attitudes.

Also, we have a Youtube channel now up and running. We will be adding some content in the next few days. I was busy, busy, busy dealing with wave of student discipline last week as well as collecting samples of students’ digital work to display during the parent-teacher conference going on this week. The whole thing almost killed me, because I also came down with a cold in the process, but it is finished. The parents and students are enjoying watching the short movies I put together with iMovie about different things that have happened in the middle school this year. After the conferences I will upload the movies to the Youtube channel. The idea for making a school channel came from a colleague in Shanghai — thanks Amanda!

So, “What is this post about?” You ask yourself. It is about movies. Independent movies to be exact. When I was at the Asia ADE Conference back in December, one of the best activities we engaged in was a field trip to Sinema Old School. A small independent movie theater in the heart of Singapore. Sinema Old School features independently produced movies from Asia and the one we watched that wonderful evening was called 18 Grams of Love. After the movie the ADE’s had the chance to talk with the director about movie making and film. This is Han Yew Kwang’s second movie in a trilogy of movies he wrote about communication. 18 Grams of Love is about written letters and the powerful messages that the written word conveys told in the form of a romantic comedy with deep under currents of how couples communicate and miscommunicate with each other in every day life. The movie was clever, emotional, and humorous and had none of the typical Hollywood plot line that fills normal theater screens. I encourage you to check out 18 Grams of Love if you get the chance.

On the topic of independent films, the official launch of Korea International School’s Phoenix Film Festival has come and gone. Many of the students around school are talking about it and many of the teachers are providing assignments that will nicely fit into the festival. Please feel free to encourage the students in your life to pick up a camera and enter the contest, because it is open worldwide. Final submission date is April 6th and the awards ceremony will be April 30th on the KIS campus in the lovely suburb of Bundang.