BFTP: One staff development approach does not fit all

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post February 10, 2007. This is the introduction to a longer article I'd fogotten I'd written for the MACUL Journal. The complete text is here.

Consider these teachers and their technology professional development needs:

Judy has just come back to teaching after a ten-year stint as a stay-at-home mom. During new teacher orientation, she learns that she is now expected to keep her grades using a computerized gradebook, take attendance online, read the staff bulletin as an e-mail attachment, use the district’s “mapping” software when writing curriculum, create all student materials using a word processor, and keep her classroom webpage current. There is also this strange looking device called an interactive white board in front of the room. “How, after only ten years,” she wonders, “can I feel so out of touch? And how do I learn to do all these things?”

Tom’s just about had it with the “personal narrative” unit in his writing class – he can’t get the kids interested. But he’s been reading that when students write for a wider audience than just the teacher, their level of concern and writing quality goes up. He thinks he’d like to try a class webblog so students can post their narratives and get reactions from other students. Ah, but where to start learning how to create a blog?

Juanita is a part of the site team that is responsible for the building improvement plan. One of the big tasks this year has been looking at student test scores and disaggregating the data for specific groups of students like English Language Learners. While the district uses a giant online data mining/data analysis program, its complexity baffles, not just Juanita, but the rest of the site team as well - including the principal.

Do any or all of these scenarios sound familiar to you? Judy, Tom and Juanita are all modeled after real teachers in the Mankato (MN) schools, but can be found in any district across the country. Each of these teachers has a very real, but very different need for “technology" staff development experiences. To think that any one training program or any one training approach will satisfy the requirements of all teachers in a district would be a mistake.

But how can any district meet the diverse technology training needs of all its teachers?

Can you spot Tin Tin at our staff development session? ->

So you want to write a book

Thanks to Miguel Guhlin's Around the Corner blog post, I found out that my new book can now be pre-ordered from Amazon (and it looks like at a pretty good discount.) I was told end of February was the expected publication date. Who knows?

My most sincere thanks to Miguel for the very kind comments he's made about the book (as have all the early reviewers). I am always humbled.

While I won't deny that I'll appreciate any royalties this book earns, I hope even more that it has a positive impact on teachers, schools and kids.

Unless you actually write a book (or are in a close relationship with a book author who grouches aloud), it's difficult to realize the amount of time that goes into such a project. Hey, slap a few word on the page, ship off the manuscript and just wait for the royalty checks to come rollin' in. Not quite.

Here, as I remember it, is a sort of general timeline I experienced completing my five commercially published books:

1. Initial contact with the publisher. For most of my books, I've had the benefit of sitting down at lunch with a publisher representative at a conference. In some cases I initiated the contact; in others the publisher contacted me. Either way there is a verbal "pitch" about the need for the book and why you should be the one to write it. Takes about an hour.
2. Formal book proposal. If the publisher and you are both interested, the next step is completing a formal, written book proposal. This includes author information, a proposed table of contents, a sample chapter, initial marketing information about target audience, and a survey of books that may be considered competition. Takes about six to eight hours to complete this.
3. The contract. If the proposal is accepted, a contract is sent out, spelling out deadlines, royalties, etc. Depending on how much negotiating and questioning you might have, devote a few hours to studying this.
4. Writing the first draft. This is the biggie. The words have to get on the page or screen. A lot of my efforts here are taking pieces of blog posts, columns, articles and other materials I've already written. But even when writing a book "500 words at a time", selecting, organizing, updating and editing for tone, voice and currency takes time - no way around it. For two books, I've gone on a week-long writing retreat to a small hotel in a warm, but boring place so I could focus on just the first draft without distraction. Plan on 80-160 hours for this stage.
5. Asking for endorsements. Once the first draft is readable and submitted, the publisher will ask you to solicit those one-line "blurb" endorsements. It's at this stage you have to remember the old saw, "If you can't take advantage of your friends, who can you take advantage of?" I do seriously appreciate those folks who are more than just professional acquaintances who are willing to put their own reputations on the line to offer kind words for the work.  Time spent: six to eight hours.
6. Obtaining permission for quoted materials. All my books contain quotes, graphs and other materials written by others. If you want to use your own previously published work, you may need to contact the original publisher unless you have a "first rights to publication" agreement. Yes, I was surprised too. Publishers are pretty anal about all this. Figure up to 10 hours.
7. Major revisions based on first readers. The publisher will send the first draft to a few content experts who will then make major revision suggestions. Once the initial shock subsides, you realize these are pretty good suggestions but will require major changes. Hard to estimate the time spent here, but let's just say another 20 hours.
8. Revision based on editorial comments. This book had probably 3-5 editorial "questions" regarding grammar, vocabulary and such on every damn page. (Of course, this is why most published authors sound smarter than they actually are.) 30 hours to go through the manuscript again, line by line, page by page. If you aren't getting sick of the text by now, you have a stronger stomach than I do.
9. Follow-up editorial questions. Whew, all the questions answered. Not quite. At least a dozen or more will need clarification. Five hours.
10. Layout questions. This is your first chance to see what the published pages will look like and to make sure headings, bullet points, numbered lists, graphics, and call-outs make sense. This is another time suck. Figure 20 hours to add your comments.
11. Review of final layout. Very, very last chance to see if the layout artists actually understood your comments and made the right changes to the final pages. Five hours and severe nausea.
12. Sending complimentary copies to those who helped and your mother. While authors get a few complimentary copies, I always order 20 so additional copies to send to friends and colleagues. I make sure my mom and my boss get a copy. Autographing, stuffing and mailing take about three hours.

Figure about 230-250 hours of actual time-on-task* and 18 months between the time of conception and birth of a book. I have also self-published a book (Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part) using a vanity press. They suggested using a free-lance professional editor and I took their advice and am glad I did. Just as a doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient, a writer who edits his own work is an idiot. I forget to run spelli-check on my blog posts half the time.

A few other things to remember for would-be authors. Most royalties are pegged at 15% of the price the book is actually sold for. Despite having nothing to say about it, you will be blamed for the book's price tag. Don't expect many visitors at conference book signings (at least compared to children's book authors.) Paparazzi ought not to be a big problem.

But - and this is important -  if you have a story to tell, if you have experiences to share or lessons to teach, if you have a message to spread, if you are on a mission to change the world for the better, hell, even if you are motivated by somebody saying you can't do it - write your book.

* You can easily double this amount of time if you have children living with you.

Project ELF-Tech

Miguel Guhlin in Are Your Ready for BYOD? writes:

If XYZ school district is doing [NAME OF PROGRAM GOES HERE], why can't we? ... The implication is simple--if that organization can implement this successfully, why aren't you--or your department dependent on your placement in the hierarchy--up to the job?

I had a similar thought (ephiphany is too strong a word), when I heard Tim Wilson* from Osseo Schools speak at our state technology conference on his district's BYOD project earlier this month. While I'd been putting the pieces in place for some time, Tim's words pushed me into making things official. Here is the memo going out to district leadership and then to staff next week about our BYOD project - ELF Tech. 

Project ELF-Tech (Extending Learning Forever through Technology)
BYOD project in District 77

This a proposal for the Mankato Area Public Schools to officially adopt a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) project throughout the district. The effort will be identified by the title Project ELF-Tech - with elf having the connotation of a small thing that is both helpful and mischievous.

The primary purposes of the project will be

• to increase motivation and engagement in the classroom
• to help provide access to a wide variety of resources that support differentiated instruction efforts
• to help provide increased student access to school provided e-books, e-textbooks, and Moodle units
• to provide the means for online collaborative work in the classroom
• to develop workable rules and standards for classroom teachers to help manage student-owned technologies

Project ELF-Tech will help enable teachers to take advantage of personally-owned technologies - laptops, tablets, netbooks, cellphones, etc. - as tools in the classroom learning. Students will be encouraged to bring these devices to school rather than banning or restricting their use.

The district has laid the following groundwork to get ready for Project ELF-Tech:

1. Assessed the percentage of students with personal technology access.
2. Defined the capabilities of personally-owned technologies needed for school work for parents.
3. Built the infrastructure needed to support student access with personal devices, including secure wireless network access and on-line tools such as MAPSApps and Moodle.
4. Created district policies that do not prohibit the use of student-owned devices, but describe appropriate and inappropriate use (in the ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY).
5. Encouraged professional BYOD opportunities though paperless in-services and meetings of teachers and administrators.
6. Supported the current, self-initiated use by teachers of student-owned devices in classrooms..

Building infrastructure and designing policies at the district level can only go so far. The stage is set, but to be truly effective, this project needs to be driven by individual schools and individual teachers to support specific curricular needs.

The technology department is asking for volunteers for pilot ELF-Tech projects at the elementary, middle and high school levels in the district. The purpose of these pilots will be to:

• provide experiences that will help long-range development of technology policies in the district.
• provide an assessment of the capacity of the wireless network infrastructure and an upgrade plan based on need
• provide a cohort of classroom teachers with practical experience with using student-owned technology in the classroom who can serve as guides and mentors to other teachers

If you would like to participate in Project ELF-Tech, please provide the following information: (This will be a GoogleForm when it goes to the district):

1. Your name, school and position. If you want to participate as part of a group, please provide this information all members of the group.
2. What are your goals for you or your group and what might be some activities for achieving these goals? (For example, I would like to use student-owned technologies to improve student writing by increasing the frequency of peer editing with GoogleDocs.)
3. How might you assess whether your goals were met?
4. What resources would you like the technology department to provide? (Training, supplemental devices, additional wireless bandwidth, assessment help, etc.)

Please let me know if you have questions or concerns. - Doug

Neilson, Lisa. 7 Myths of BYOD Debunked, T.H.E. Journal, November 11, 2011.

* Tim's early adoption of GoogleApps gave a lot of Minnesota Districts the courage to do so as well. Oh, and naming projects is his practice as well.