Honestly, nowhere and everywhere all at once.  I have worked with folks in my district and folks in New Zealand.  I have worked in my kitchen and I have worked in my office.  I am continually amazed at the amount of work I can get done sitting in my own recliner.  So much is happening.  Parker, my son, is five months old and just at the right station in life to look absolutely adorable doing just about anything.  My new job had taken my to building and classroom all over the DuBois area providing me with fantastic opportunities to see some awesome educators in action. The end of graduate school is within reach and…oh yeah…my wife is as beautiful and supportive as ever.   Thanks hun.

I am not sure how often I will be able to expound on all of the good things that are happening here at DuBois, but I will tell you that I keep up pretty well over at my tips blog.  If you are interested I try to provide quick info at least once a day.  I hate to be white noise and if I have nothing to say I am not going to keep up appearances with lengthy posts about my daily life. 

I will, however, come back and pick up a professional development thread after a few of my plans get off the ground.  I am using a ning with the staff, two departments are using wikispaces and I inch forward everyday with the ideas like “Community Nights” and “Saturday Sessions.” 

But that is all for another time.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Thanks for stoppin’ by.  

1.  Rushed (Having to use or re-teach material/software within a week)

2.  Errors!  (A training model that is poorly constructed and functions sporadicly at best)

3.  The Unknown (District application is still a week away, what is it going to look like?)

4.  The Presenter (Most software people don’t speak in normal everyday terms, nor do they have the the fortitude to stick with “non-techies”)

5.  Local Knowledge (Teachers are partial to certain functionality in grading, the presenter should be somewhat prepared for how the audience works)

The list could go on and on.  Why are teachers being trained before the tech department?  Why would you show your audience the entire system in three hours?  It is extremely aggravating all around.  The bottom line is when things like this happen you leave people with the option of not adapting.  “It didn’t work,”  I didn’t get it,” “I’ll never have time to learn all that.” 

I realize sometimes time is an issue, but as the old saying still goes, “poor planning on your part does not constitute and emergency on mine”.  We will get it done.  We have a great staff and we always mange to shine no matter what is handed to us.  I just hope that in the future more voices are brought into the mix of professional development and system change.  All of this could have been avoided with a short conversation.

I didn’t learn much about our new grade book, but I did learn a valuable lesson.       

Here are some interesting responses from real teachers across the US. 

1.  If we could select ourselves what areas we believe would help us in doing a better job on a day to day basis. While I always like to learn, at times, some of the programs we must attend are not able to be used in a day to day basis. If could have a “salad bar” of PD would be nice.

2.  Direct relevance to the field of online learning. Opportunities to share as well as learn. Doing more than sitting there and listen to/watch someone present something.

3.  If it were differentiated and ongoing. Too much “spray and pray” happens in districts–I give you a too much info in one sitting and pray you implement it

4.  I would like to be offered more choices. Also, when we receive training, that is as far as it goes. There is no opportunity later to discuss what we learned or how we are using it. If something I learned fails, I have no chance of receiving insight from others as to what might have happened or what might make it work in the future. Therefore, I am more likely to try it and give up than I would be if I had an opportunity to discuss it.

5.  If there were more options and not everyone had to attend the same PD opportunities within the school district. For example, I may feel that I need to learn more about behavior management so I could choose that and another person might choose reading, and another person might choose technology in the classroom. Outside of school there are many PD opportunities and it is nice that the school district often helps with or covers the cost of these opportunities.

6.  Having release time after a PD session to reflect on and build the new learning into the classroom programme. Too often we attend PD but then get sucked up into the business of our class to be able to properly internalise the PD experience.

Bonus: To provide balance 1.  I don’t know

Honestly the last answer is one of the best.  Jim Gates brought up an excellent point when we discussed the fact that 50% of the participants said they were happy with the PD provided them.  Jim said, people are happy because they are unaware of what is possible.  How can we expect folks to want change who don’t know it exists?  Needless to say I felt like I was pushed all the way back to go.

Thus far, and I am far from finished, I find that there is a need to begin breaking PD up into smaller and smaller groups.  I like the conference approach to summer PD where a teacher/staffer can choose from a list, but how does that work during the year.  There is a need for ongoing PD, but will the current system of both school and union make it difficult for teachers to progress.  As one person said, “PROGRESS!!!..being allowed to progress and affect the changes that need to be made.” 

Will the majority of our efforts be blocked by business as usual?

(Note: I made no attempt to correct or alter any of the responses except “Progress”.  They are word for word.)

Yeah! It’s finally here and I can open my mouth.  Pageflakes, the RSS aggregator and now so much more, has released it’s new edition.  I had the distinct honor, and advantage to be among the first group to demo the Blizzard Edition.  I gotta tell you it was a blast.  Dan and the pageflakes team were absolutely dedicated to getting it right.  So much so, they delayed the release by close to a month.  Was it because they were slow and unprepared?  No, it was because they took every piece of feedback we gave them and addressed it. 

Enough smoke, check out my pagecasts and play with it yourself.  I think you will find a huge amount of personalization that is only limited by your imagination.  Be sure to use the anything flake and the web page flake.  It may become your one stop on the web.

Be Good

     In my effort to explore connectivism as a learning theory (see Conduit is King) I immediately find myself wondering, what is the most difficult part in shifting practice.  I am a child of the 20^th century.  I can’t help organizing and structuring information.  I shop with a grocery list for crying out loud.  I personally begin with the most difficult, leaving items or ideas that I consider easy(er) for last.  In the case of redefining knowledge and the learning process I am drawn to the idea of recombination.  Recombination is the act of taking anything (information, web pages, videos, ect.) and manipulating it to fit you and your specific need.  Personalization causes concern for us “industrial learners.”  (I am using industrial learner in the context of 20^th century folks who experienced a linear education from “the experts.”)   
     To us, recombination is frightening, recombination is letting go of ownership.  Industrial education had/has a structure.  We were taught there was a beginning and an end to things and that there is a specific place to go to receive information.  Set information was/is chunked up in to periods of time only to be reviled when you are ready.  It had nothing to do with you as individual it was/is a function of time.  Unfortunately for those of us with one foot in the past and one in the present, a flood of information and tools made personalization both an option and a necessity.  Teachers and schools have become white noise in the competition for a child’s attention largely because a child still has no ownership.  I believe that getting teachers to let go of content and to encourage exploration could be hurdle number one on the path to education reform.  Siemens says, the ability to connect, recombine, and recreate have become hallmarks of knowledge today (p. 82, Knowing Knowledge)  For educators to foster those abilities they will need to offer up information (possible unfamiliar information) and ideas that are intended to spark connection, individual recombination, and unique creation.
     But what will they talk about, what will they learn, and what will they create?  Predictably followed by, how will I assess it?  Those questions are indicative of a person concerned with their perceived authority.   My questions are, how do you tell a person that has been teaching a subject for any length of time that content is secondary, if not completely irrelevant to process?  Content and its mastery is the measuring stick of our profession.  I could not be considered a practicing professional until I passes a multiple choice test on communication models.  (Those have come in real handy)  Also, do they know how they themselves learn let alone how 150 students learn?  Finally, is it the responsibility of professional development to take on such an undertaking or must it be an individual choice?
 

Inbox (1) PD Opportunity: from kpruitt
You are cordially invited to a professional development workshop that will explore the process of learning.
 

Re:  From: teacherx
Are you kidding?  I have been teaching for 10 years!  What are you going to tell me about learning?  My kids learn, look at the scores!  PS.  Quit spamming my inbox, I am busy making sure kids know about the Fertile Crescent!
 

     Even now, knowing what I know, it is a little unnerving to let this post go.  I know that others are much farther along in this line of thinking and to them this is just the 1000^th definition of the same problem.  What causes even more trepidation is that this information will be posted where anyone can accept it, reject it, mix it, mash it and recreate it as they see fit.  I can only imagine what it must be like for educators who spent decades achieving the goal of content mastery. 
 

To accept recombination, you have to let go of ego.  Who among us is willing to do that? 
    
On a personal note I want to thank Jen, Ryan, and Darren for their efforts.  I look forward to participating in a growing network of change.

Ken Pruitt/DuBois, PA/Tech Integration Specialist

I say this because I am teacher and I only ever hear the teacher side.  I should say I hear the negatives more often than the positive because those folks always seem to speak the loudest.  Yesterday I had a meeting with our district superintendent and our curriculum director.  Honestly, I prepared for war.  Occupying a new position, I wanted to know what my role was going to be and what, if anything, they planned to do to support my efforts. To my surprise, my questions were answered completely and politely. 

I went in to fight for the teachers and found out that was precisely what the administration was going to do.  In fact, the three of us spent over an hour and half brainstorming and hashing out specific, measurable goals for the express purpose of helping teachers change instructional practices.

Here is what came of our meeting: 

2007-2008Technology Integration Specialist
Goals

1.  Identify teacher proficiencies
     -Create and implement a tool to measure teacher competencies
2.  Establish a common technical language or vocabulary
     – Use meetings, web tools, and email to build awareness of staff and faculty
3.  Hold one informal discussion about technology education at each building
  -Communicate with building principals finding an opportune time to speak to staff and faculty 
4.  Implement and support teacher/parent/student communication through web presents
     -Increase teacher web pages by 30+ through face to face meetings and workshops
5.  Maintain four differentiated learning experiences throughout the year
  -Groups of below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced.  Offer professional development appropriate for each group (according to data gathered by goal #1)
6.  Establish two networked learning communities for collaboration and reflection
  -One group for elementary and one for the middle school using web tools for social networking.  Connect teachers and myself to continue discussions beyond face to face
7.  Establish community academy
  -Partner with SRO and community organizations to hold community awareness meetings about internet usage and internet safety

It’s amazing what a civil conversation was able to accomplish.  For me it was both a measurable set of goals, but also a measure of respect between professionals.  How do you define quality leadership?  

You can PM me at kpruitt@dasd.k12.pa.us.

If you are creating your own, please forward your public “pagecast.”  It would be great to see this come together.  

Check out the page:  http://www.pageflakes.com/kpruitt/11201963

Read what was behind the idea:  http://kpruitt.edublogs.org/2007/06/07/aggregators-as-communities/

Use the new Box.net file sharing box and see the flyer for yourself. 

First, I can’t say that I am a big fan of the online conference.  It’s the blur of a chat room, the bad audio, and sometimes disasterous presentors that keep me watching re-runs rather than participating in real time.  (By the way, thank you to the person that thought of recording and posting presentations.  It’s like TiVo’d education ) However, Dave did it right.  He demonstarted a tool within the context of potential use.

Dave used the aggregator, PageFlakes, as a web portal.  (see it here) He set up each of his ”flakes” to aggregate certain tags (in this case foe2007scm.)  He then encouraged the students to create a blog post or tag a flickr pic.  After a few minutes and a quick page refresh, links started to pour in from the attendees.  I literally sat slack-jawed in my clunky K-Mart recliner.  It was so simple, yet so cool.  

Sure wikis and even expensive web-portals can do similar things but here, right in front of our eyes was a FREE 10 minute answer to keeping everything…and I mean EVERYTHING, in one place.  Just off the top of my head.  This is reseach, assessment, collaboration, community, and even entertainment placed into a nice neat package.

Here are two communities I am working on.  I cannot stress how ease this was.  I hope that I can energize others the way Dave unknowingly energized me.

For teachers at DuBois  http://www.pageflakes.com/kpruitt/11176389   

For PA tech Teachers   http://www.pageflakes.com/kpruitt/11201963

Obviously, I am only working on local items.  I have no idea where this is going nor am I sure what the impact will be.  I can tell you one thing, the success or failure will be clear.  In fact, it will be availble for millions to see. 

Professionally, my wish has come true and I accepted a new position.  It will be my job to help our teachers prepare our students for the future.  That’s right, little ole’ me attempting the most dangerous job in all of teaching, teaching the teachers.  Of course I am extremely pleased with my new position, but I also realize the choas I just called for in my professional life.  No class schedule, no regular students, NO SUMMER OFF.  What have I done???  

As I sat back and enjoyed the holiday weekend, I was mindful of the battles abroad (My sister leaves in a week, stay safe Traci) and of our battles right here at home.  I am proud of the men and women of military and wish them all God’s speed.  I am also proud of the work we are doing for the education of our children.  As a parent and as a peer, I know that the future of education is in good hands with you folks around.  With your tireless efforts to improve education, you will help provide our students with balance.  I know that some day, God willing, those students will provide our world with it to. 

Hopefully this blog will soon start to take on it’s original intent, to share the journey of technology integration and professional development.  So if you are growing tired of my scatter brained reflection, fret not, soon you will also experience the wonderful world of my scatter brained ideas for technology integration.  I start writing new NETS curriculum June 11th.  Wish me luck.