Innovation Everywhere!

     Yes, it has been a couple of months since my last post. Sorry about that, but I took a Blogging break. Life has kept me busy. My Father-in-Law had a stroke, and we just returned from a trip to visit him up north. Health tragedies TRULY make me grateful for my life more than anything else I know. I lost a mother to cancer, my father had a heart attack, and now I have experienced stroke in a very intimate way. All of these debilitating events put life in perspective and have caused me to value every minute of every day as a miracle.

     This past couple of weeks, I have been paying close attention to the changes I have seen in the medical industry. For example, when my Father-in-Law had the stroke, they were able to take an image of his blood clot in his brain. The brain is a remarkable piece of work. Here is that image in black and white. Such imaging along with the amazing new medicines and things like robotics being used for surgery make our medical industry better. Innovation has improved this industry and many others.

     When we returned from our trip to Ohio, I had my own appointment with a physician. Being on vacation, like many educators, I was trying to fit as many appointments in to this week as possible. The doctor I was visiting was switching to paperless documentation. Many doctors I have visited over the years have made the switch, but this doctor was using the "latest and greatest". His staff took my picture with the iPad, they had me sign waivers on the iPad with an index finger signature, and everything was documented via the tablet. There was no paper involved in the visit at all. 

     If you know anything about me, you know that I am stoked by technology and futuristic trends. I LOVE how quickly all the fields around me are shifting to use technology tools. Innovation is so exciting, and my Twitter Feed is full of articles and retweets about technology and ed. tech.

     During the last faculty meeting of our school year, I showed a video about Innovation (I have added it here) to our faculty. I wanted them to be inspired by the comments of Geoffrey Canada, president of the famous Harlem charter schools that are featured in the movie, Waiting for Superman. The movie talks about some of the struggles of public schools. I love his philosophy in this video where he talks about the need for innovation in our schools and how so little has changed in our pedagogy. He describes the things that research shows us need to be changed, but they have not changed. Just today, I read a tweet from another local principal. She was quoting a speaker at the PAEC Conference being held at the Bay Point Marriott this week.  The tweet was:

     Some of the changes that Educational Leaders will be making in the coming years are going to be difficult. As Geoffrey Canada says in this video, we are out of time. We need to begin changing now. If you get time, consider the things he says.....and dream of the future.

Musings from the Florida Educational Technology Conference -

The first time I attended FETC (Florida Educational Technology Conference) I was a beginning teacher. It was 1994. Exactly 20 years ago, I began my journey into #edtech. It has advanced much in that time, and some predict it is about to entirely transform education as we know it. I would like to take a team of teachers with me next year to attend this conference. We all have a lot to learn about #edtech in the coming year. The first thing I learned is that I am proud of how much technology our campus is using. We have students using email, Prezi's, Google Docs., BlendSpace, and more for writing. We have numerous teachers using Class Dojo to assist with classroom management. We have faculty with websites, and several of them have Voki’s. Cherry Street is using numerous technology tools to support elevated engagement by students. We use FaceBook, Twitter, Remind 101, and the MySchool App. to keep families involved in our campus events.

Here are some quotes from the great speakers:

“We are preparing our students for jobs that don’t exist with tools we have not made yet.” and, “Broadband is the new electricity.” or, “The best technology you have today is the worst technology your child will ever see in their lifetime. It will be a relic to them. Are our schools ready for that 5 year old?”

Jamie Casap, Google Education Evangelist  

“Schools have to be agile in the same way the world around them is evolving. There will be an eradication of the line between school/ and home/ and anywhere anytime learning.”

Lucien Vattel, CEO GameDesk 
     and Playmaker Schools








    

“The sum of all human knowledge is at our fingertips.” We used to go to a library or research in books. We have access to 100,000 libraries in our back pocket.

                 Will Richardson
           Author of Why School?  

                                     

In the session called "Run Your Classroom Like Google," Juan De Luca demonstrated the new virtual resume using the Vizify site. I made one in about 10 minutes that just pulled content from my various social media accounts. I have started an early version of it, and I will add to it over time.



Click here to preview MY Vizify Bio at:
   Enrjtk-educatr's Vizify

·  During the numerous TechShare sessions, I picked up multiple new tools. Here is one that is so EASY to use called Google Story Builder. It took me about 5 minutes to create: My Google Story about FETC

·   Also, check out this great YouTube video for a laugh that was shared in Adam Bellowes’ session: Font Conference. Caution, there are a few incidents of profanity in this, so skip this video if you prefer.

·   Here are several sites that I shared with our classroom teachers that I felt most valuable and worth exploring for classroom integration:

·   Class Badges

·   Fotor

·   eduClipper

·   Recite This

·   If This Then That     

The transformation of education is something I want to be a part of--the more personalized, engaging, interesting learning environments.

Involving Parents with a New Vision for Schools #SAVMP

Week 12- Involving Parents with a New Vision for Schools #SAVMP

There are so many amazing new tools for schools to use to increase parent communication and involvement.

For instance, at our school we use our “old school” school website, but we also use the more exciting and versatile Face Book, Twitter, and Iris Alerts (which are Robo calls).  More recently, we have added a new app that our district provides called the MySchool app where we also push out information to our parents. Essentially, we want to reach our parents in every way possible because the more communicating that we do the better chance we have for increased parent involvement.

Since I became Principal last year, each of our teachers has created their own classroom website. I am so proud of every single one of them. In addition, we have a few teachers who have gone above and beyond. One gleaming example is our rock star teacher who – last year -- created her own classroom blog.  She entered many of her classroom lessons on the blog,  and she included the steps that she took with the students in the form of pictures and posted them so that the parents could understand how to work the homework assignments with their students. Many times, the kids would login and give input on the lessons and their work. It's really an exceptional way to communicate with our families. We have another grade level at our school that uses the Remind 101 app to send out text messages to their parents each week keeping them stay  informed of everything from assignments to events. Our teachers are adopting as many ways to inform their families as are available. Also, our teachers that use Class Dojo can have a parent logging in at any time of the day to see behavioral data on their students as they progress through the school day. This is exciting stuff!

Amber Teamann, @8Amber8, a mentor in the SAVMP group, reported in her recent post about some evidence pertaining to parent involvement. We basically knew this information be true:

A New Wave of Evidence, a report from Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (2002) found that regardless of family income or background, students with involved parents are more likely to:

*Earn higher grades and test scores, and enroll in higher-level programs
*Be promoted, pass their classes, and earn credits
*Have better social skills, show improved behavior, and adapt well to school
*Graduate and go on to postsecondary education (Henderson & Mapp, 2002)

The information says, and I believe, it is critical that we communicate to parents. Even more importantly, we also have a duty to inform our parents just how different education is within each of our classrooms in the year 2013. For example, at Cherry Street Elementary and across our district, each core classroom is equipped with the 21st century classroom technology. This means that teachers have Smart boards, they have document cameras, and they have more. They have multiple methods for embedding baseline technology, but many teachers are using things like Google Docs and Google Drive or even email accounts with their students to make the learning relevant and engaging. There is a plethora of technology out there, and we need to share with our parents the different type of learning that is happening within the classroom walls for their students. This isn't your grandma’s classroom anymore. Just the sheer power of analytics yielded by technology has increased the ability of all teachers to hone and sharpen their instructional practices.

And, yes, a high poverty school may be a bit disadvantaged in getting the message out exclusively through the use of technology. The savvy teachers will combine traditional practices like the paper classroom newsletter that is sent home WITH the modern methods of leveraging social media.

In the same SAVMP post, Amber Teamann also quoted that she often hears nay-sayers respond:

“all of our parents don’t have computers”.

Amber’s response is:

In 2011, 75.6 percent of homes reported having a computer, with 71.7 percent accessed the internet. Statistics still vary across ethnicity, but the bottom line is that we are still making strides.  

Certainly, it has been my experience, we have seen our students who come from high poverty homes walking around with smart phones. Let’s not be naive and think that we're not reaching a majority of our parents with these outlets. We need to give it a concerted effort to reach our families in as many ways as possible.

Parent involvement efforts will not be in vain. If we try five different methods to reach them and one of them succeeds, then we are successful!

Week 6 -- Roads to Innovation #SAVMP

Well, for this week's assignment, there were many ways to tackle it. I really didn't even have to BLOG. I could have just commented on someone else's entry, but instead I am trying to build my BLOGGING MUSCLES and blog more often. So I chose to answer the assignment via this question:

How do you go about creating innovative practices in your schools?

Certainly, as a new principal, at a turn-around school, I believe that I have not focused on innovation as much as I would like to; however, I do recognize innovation when I see it, and I know how to support it. 

I believe the easiest way to create innovative practices in our schools is ......simple......
YOU JUST SAY YES!

I have some brilliant and daring faculty who are true innovators. When they come to me and ask, "What do you think about this?" or when they inquire, "Would it be okay if I tried this?" my answer is always YES! YES! YES!

As the experts in the classroom, the teachers need my support when they are feeling courageous and want to branch out, especially in areas connected to technology integration.

I can recall multiple times over the course of the year where a teacher wanted to try something new. I fully supported them, and their idea blossomed, was a success, and it resulted in increased student engagement in learning. Risk-taking leads to innovation which leads to growth and success!

Step 2 for creating innovative practice at our school has been my Promotion and Praise of those who have taken the risks leading to innovation. I have 3 venues where I promote the practices of those who are taking the road to innovation. I promote and praise in my Monday Memo called the Cheetah Chat, in my Friday Focus called the Cheetah PUPdate, and during faculty meetings and/or after-school professional development sessions. The way to continue risk-taking behavior is to make certain it is rewarded. 

Innovation is critical in our ever-changing world. The technology is advancing so quickly that I can hardly keep up, and I am pretty close to the cutting edge of many types of tech. The problem will reach the tipping point  in education when the majority of children entering our schools know more about the technology than the teachers teaching them. In actuality, this might already be true in most high schools and many middle schools. Teachers MUST be innovators and need to embrace the culture of innovation to maintain relevance. I have set a new goal for myself this fall to try a brand new technology that I have not used yet. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I get there next month. May we all be innovators. Our students need it.