The TWAIN blog

I was informed today that part of my role now includes the registration of Substitutes to our district.

I have a lot to say about this but I think it can be summed up in looking at systems. I am a systems-thinker and when I implement an idea, I follow it through as a process to show how the system will work. I have to see it operate and reverse-engineer it to work properly so I try to think of it from the perspective of a new person trying it out. It is time-consuming but in the end, I have an idea of how it will operate for the most basic of users to the advanced one as well.

I don’t think the district wants me to be over Substitutes. I think they just need help developing a system for overseeing how Substitutes are put in to the work force. As much as someone could complain about having a new responsibility to manage that belongs in another department, I actually choose to see this as a blessing! Someone believes in my systems-approach (and thus believes in me) to handle more responsibility to make such a precious commodity work better. I have to choose this perspective because the alternative is to think that someone wants me to do more than just manage the visioneering of technology and actually take on more work because they might think I have nothing to do. I hope this isn’t the case but then no one has told me that this is truth so I am putting my eggs in the basket of hope.

As I look around the web at how other districts do Substitute training, I see that they are copping to the same method as before: scheduled dates of training taking place 2-4 times a year. Large group instruction that is set within the four-walled institution of instruction usually with some sort of snack, a sign-in sheet, and a riveting presentation.

I can see why this system isn’t working.

Subs are in high demand! And they want to come in and work but are restricted to having to attend one set meeting for each semester.

How about offering online video training modules for substitute candidates that allows them to get trained as they become available. Making online training work for the commodity that districts need to help our teachers succeed: Substitutes.

As I said before, I don’t want to think that I have to be responsible for managing subs and for being the human resources department in the future. I am thinking this is a way to help a department move from an antiquated use of time to a system that takes time out of the process by making it work 24/7 to be on their side.

Maybe by doing this, we are helping someone use their time better and the entire process can be handed back to them because it is successfully implemented. Or maybe the Technology Department merges to become the Human & Technology Resource Department??!

Your thoughts? Because mine….are in a deep well of depression right now.

So tonight we had a board meeting and my thoughts wandered a bit. I was thinking about Google Voice and how to apply it for use in schools but I wonder how possible these ideas seem. Where else to post ideas and (hopefully) get feedback than this blog??

1. Meetings – A presentation tonight on Special Education referred to how the ARD meetings can be audio recorded and then give the participants a tape copy of the meeting. Now this is a district that serves a community that may not have Internet or even computer access in the home. So I can see why tape would be a necessary requirement. But what if Google Voice could record and transcribe the message of the meeting? Do you need audio of the entire meeting or could a summary at the end be the recorded message? I mean, how many people actually listen to the entire taped archive of the meeting? Is this something to listen to in my car while driving?

What if at the end of the ARD process meeting, the summary and major points were dictated via Google Voice. GV then transcribes the message and mails it. I know the tech isn’t there yet for perfect transcription but it’s pretty good. Especially if the voice sending the message is clear and speaking slowly as such a summary could be. A meeting itself may have too many voices going on at once and that could cause problems.

Apply this to any meeting and you can have a transcribed summary in your inbox before you get back to your desk?!

Actually, if you have an iPhone with 3.0 installed and VoiceRecorder, you can record the entire conversation and email it as an attachment. It might be too big of a file so I don’t see the point of archiving an entire conversation. But again, summarize and points of agreement by all in the group could be a good start. How about recording board meetings? I wish it could transcribe all that!

Perhaps in the future (and I know this is in development), the system will achieve voice recognition and tagging capability so that archived sound bytes are searchable….

Yep…it’s coming!

2. Security and Crisis Management – If I programmed a GV account to be the one number to contact all principals, security, and maintenance folk who needed to be in the loop should a crisis occur; then the system should contact all these people via email, text, and/or phone to any of their phones we have in the system. One call. One number. One message. Information sent instantly to all stakeholders who need it and sent to all their message systems at the same time. Seems like something to consider, right?

3. Work Orders – Our technology office could have the one number be our WO contact system for requests. I wonder if I could create GV account and then embed the phone badge on our website. If anyone is experiencing a technology emergency, they can call the one number and leave a message which is transcribed to all of our accounts at the same time. If anyone is in the local area, they can take care of the request. The system then archives all the requests as messages so we can still track them as work orders. Do you think this would work (or should)?

So…whaddya think? Possible? Impossible? Too much of a stretch? Too late for me to be up???

I am starting to get a little frustrated with something at work. I am seeing staff start to want my technology department to handle their responsibilities only because those responsibilities require the use of technology. It doesn’t seem fair to push the responsibilities on to the tech department because it uses technology to complete the tasks.

Can you imagine what this would look like? The technology department could be in charge of the budget because it is a database. We could also be in charge of evaluating all staff because PDAS is really a technology database as well. Why not have the technology department enter grades since it is an automated gradebook? This way, technology handles the technology side of things and people would not need to use the tools because they don’t need it. This technology fad will go away, right?

But I bet I am not the only one who fights this in their jobs. I don’t think I am the only one who is looking at how what I do impacts the others I work with and the stakeholders we serve. I hope I am not the only one who is looking at how decisions impact everyone and everything for months and years after the choice is made.

As I started this blog to vent about what is happening, I read an article posted on Business Week’s Innovation Column called “Innovation Calls for I-Shaped People” by Bill Buxton.

The second sentence hooked me as this nagging problem started surfacing today:
“If certain problems are beyond the scope of any individual—and most of them are—the way to address them is with a team with complementary skills and a common language in which they can all communicate….There may be no “I” in team, but every team needs to be made up of “I-shaped” people.”

The author recognizes how a friend of his Bill Moggridge, the co-founder of IDEO, came up with the idea of “T-shaped people”. Where the vertical line of the T represents depth and the horizontal line represents breadth. A T-shaped person has a “relatively broad domain of knowledge along with real depth of competence….”

The author adapts the idea of T-shape to the I-shape where there is a firm root in the practical world but then enough to stretch to the clouds to see above. He referenced a teacher who tied this concept to his students by saying “…outstanding students all had an outstanding capacity for abstract thinking, yet they also had a really strong grounding in physical materials and tools.”

So an I-shaped person can extend to the outside and abstract way of thinking but also knows the tools to access to work in the abstract. Mix these I-people with T-people and you can develop some interactions to solve some real problems that combine vision with the tools on hand.

Some days, I feel like I am surrounded by _ people. Underlines. I need some good I&T people and this doesn’t mean Technology staff. I need people who are I’s mixed with my T’s but I feel I am stuck with _’s. A _ person is grounded in what they’ve been doing for years. They are only looking at the grounded part – what is around them. It’s hard to develop vision when your eyes are pressed against the ground. But they sure know the ground and they know it very well! They have a real broad understanding of ground.

I guess I need to change myself before pushing the blame on others. There is a part of me that believes I could do the job better than the _s because I am not a _. But maybe I am a little bit of a _ by thinking it is someone else’s blame. It is a quandry!

I know that I need to figure out who my Is and Ts are in my district and work with them so that we can work together to solve these problems. The blame game doesn’t work and neither does moving the work around.

Even though there is a major part of me that wants to rant, kick, shout, and show how I spent the morning in Google Docs making forms that shorten the workload for that department so that one person could easily make it all work! I want to shake some knowledge into them! You know this feeling, right??

But that isn’t “I” or “T” of me. it makes me a _. Or maybe it is “I” and “T” but adds an “S” and an H” to it. Now “Y” would I want to be that?

Is it Friday yet?

I just got back from watching the newest Harry Potter movie and I appreciate how each movie and book challenges the educational system in such different ways. I promise not to give away spoilers from the movie(s) as I go through this.

The school, Hogwarts, is different than other schools. The basic foundation is for meeting students who are different than normal students. It is a school for the exceptionally gifted but those gifts aren’t necessarily tied to knowledge or passing a state exam. Some will become wizards but there are other roles they can prepare for as well.

The paintings of historical contributors to the wizarding world are interactive. They speak and move about in their frames.

Students are sorted not by grades or scores (but by a hat!). If you read the book, the students are sorted into houses based on their personalities and what they may develop into.

The hallways are ever-changing with stairwells moving around and changing direction. Some classes take place outside and in forests.

Teachers interact with the students in the hallways and during dining times. They are ever-present in the hallways and available at all hours of the day. They answer questions and refer students to the library to find more information on what they are searching.

All classes in this school use project-based, interactive learning. Students make potions, learn to fly on a broom, how to levitate objects, and how to plant screaming vegetables.

Textbooks are common in the Harry Potter world. In a previous story, a book on monsters was a monster itself complete with eyes and teeth. But a common thread in all the stories is how the textbooks are the same today as they were for previous generations going through this special school. One such book on Potions in the current movie references how many errors are in the book based on the writing by one of the previous owners of the book.

A scene in the movie has Harry prepare a potion that no one else in the class can solve based on their notes in their textbook; but Harry has notes written in to his book that allow him to solve the task.

All of this said, there is a certain “magic” about Hogwarts that does make it a place of wonder while still being a school. I wonder if the millions of children who read about this wonderful place realized that it was….school. I think this is one of the major reasons JK Rowling made such a successful storyline because most of the story takes place in a school. Not just any school though – a school built on imagination.

The storyline that carries the most themes surrounding public education can be found in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”. There is a character by the name of Dolores Umbridge who really personifies the danger of state-controlled education. Most of the Hogwarts scenes concern Harry fighting against a teacher who wants to discredit him and get more control of the school itself. Miss Umbridge removes the things in the school that make it so special. She restricts student access and even limits the teacher interaction and lessons they can teach. It is a very dark storyline but I think Mrs. Rowling didn’t just throw this in as a sub-plot. She really is saying something about education and schooling in all her stories.

Based on the wonder of Hogwarts and the world of Harry Potter, can our schools become more like these magical schools?

Can our foundation for schooling be for teaching each child as an exceptional child?

Can our schools have interactivity with images? Is there technology available to make this happen?

How do we sort our students?

Construction issues aside, can we change our hallways? Must the classrooms all look the same? How many classrooms have the same things posted on the walls each year?

Do teachers eat lunch with students? Can teachers be more interactive in the hallways? When students are not in the classroom, where do they go to get answers? Who pushes them to libraries and resources for learning?

Are we teaching kids to fly? Are we letting them learn by doing? Are they getting hands-on experience in a guided practice? Are classes taught outside the classroom?

I like the books because they take you to a place of wonder and imagination but constantly reinforce the need for education. A style of education not seen in public schools. The last book takes the characters out of the safety of their school where they must use all they have learned to fight the ultimate battle. They are tested.

What can we do to make learning, education, and our schools a place of wonder and imagination?

I made a Prezi today after a director mentioned I should add my notes to the Friday Board notes. It was a quick learn! Very cool resource! My Prezi on Summer Staff Development. And check out this creative interactive Resume for Evan Tzeng using Prezi.

What a great visual tool!