On being a Connected Educator, Part One

My friend (and fellow Iowa native) Gordon Dahlby has asked me to submit a professional profile as part the U.S. Department of Education initiative –Connected Educators. This initiative is described as:

...promoting and fostering the benefits of educators being networked and connected through online communities and social networks.  ... In collaboration with a wide range of educational organizations, the Connected Online Communities of Practice project is increasing the quality, accessibility, and connectedness of existing and emerging online communities of practice through several activities including undertaking case studies of both interesting communities of practice and of individual educational professionals’ use of online communities and other forms of social media. 

Part of the profile is to select and answer three or four questions reflecting on what it means to be a connected educator. While my friend Joycie Valenza and I did this a few years ago for School Library Journal, it's always kind of fun to revisit a topic - just to see if one's own thinking has changed.

So here are my answers to the first two of four questions for Gordon...

Q: How do you plan to get more connected in the next year (or two)? Each year I find new and more effective means of getting “connected” to other educators – local, national and international. My first real online personal learning network was LM_Net, a highly interactive mailing list started by Peter Milbury and Mike Eisenberg in the pre-WWW Internet days. A group of about 100 school librarians (a number that increased rapidly) used the list to share resources, questions, problems, empathy, and humor on a regular basis. While the tools have evolved and grown in number, the essence of connectivity has not really changed.  Connecting is about peers being supportive with physical distance not being a limitation.

While I already feel well-connected, I plan to explore more formal experiences in interacting and learning from others this year. I will increase my involvement with projects like the Global Education Conference <www.globaleducationconference.com> and Library 2.0 <www.library20.com>. I am also planning to participate in a MOOC. I'd like to do more online sessions like the one I did for Steve Hargadon's Future of Education program. 

Locally, I am upping my game in using our district's Moodle server to offer and take online PD experiences. For the past two years, three districts in our area and our local state university have offered a two-day, face-to-face “Innovation Zone” conference to share best practices in the use of technology. Our commitment this year is to extend that learning by having participants “connect” throughout the year. 

Q: How do you think the definition of a connected educator will change in the next five years? I anticipate that the term “connected educator” will be redundant – every educator will participate in both formal and informal online interactions as a matter of standard practice. There is no area in education in which the pace of change, the release of new best practices and research, or cutting edge methodologies is so slow that educators can afford to wait for an annual conference or the editorial process of a print journal or book.

The best research going on in education is “action-based” – teachers trying new practices that lead to better learning. While our district offers teachers two hours a month to gather as “professional learning communities,” we also have to gather with educators outside our district and for more than just a few minutes each month!  

For our younger teachers, the Web has always been a two-way street – a place to share information in social networks as well as a place to find information. The “connected educator” is not just a reader or viewer, but an active participant in ongoing discussions and planning efforts. The same level of interest and activity we now see on personal social networks will transfer to professional social networks very, very rapidly. I am seeing this happen already in our district as teachers start joining and using the Google+ part of Google Apps for Education.

Professional development will not be a special event, but woven into every educator’s daily routine – like having that first cup of coffee, checking one’s e-mail, or updating one’s Facebook page.  

Questions three and four tomorrow.

Library orientation - 2013

I sat in on one of our 7th graders' library orientation yesterday. It was about 20 minutes long and here is how it went....

Physical library (5 minutes):

• Here's the fiction
• Here's the nonfiction
• Here are the magazines

Digital library (15 minutes):

• Here's the student portal to your gradebook, assignments, attendance, lunch info ... and a link to the mobile versions for your phones
• Here's the Moodle link that your will need to access materials in many of your classes
• Here's the link to the digital versions of all your textbooks (so you don't have to drag the print ones home)
• Here the link to the library catalog and your space in it (Destiny Quest), where you can find lists of the 10 most popular books, 10 books most recently added to the collection, and place to post your own book reviews
• Here's the link to GoogleApps for Education for your e-mail, calendar,  file storage, and application programs
• Here's the link to Homework Helper
• Here's the link to iPad resources
• Here are the links to our e-book collections, our online reference resources, our full text magazine databases

I wonder if today's 7th graders are even the slightest awe about the wealth of resources available to them that simply did not exist even five years ago. They've used most, if not all of them in grade school, so no one seemed fazed during orientation.

Except me. I knew all this stuff - but to see it all at one time in one place left me a little gobsmacked, not just at the quanity, quality and variety or resources, but at the librarian's mastery of them. Truly, a virtual librarian.

7 tips for making your principal your ally

Librarians, you cannot afford to have an adversarial relationship with your principals. You cannot even afford principals who are "agents of benevolent neglect." You need an administrator who actively supports you and your program.

Your principal needs you as well - as a cheer-leader and co-conspirator for change efforts. As a staff development resource for new programs. As an educator who can positively affect the learning environment of the whole school. As a researcher for best practices information. How exactly does your principal rely on you? Are you important enough to be listened to?

Principals and librarians need to be firm allies in helping their schools change in positive ways.

And it will be up to you, not your principal, to create this alliance. Here are some concrete ways you can do so...

1.    Report regularly and formally. We should all be sending out a written (emailed) quarterly principal’s report and a monthly faculty bulletin. These should be upbeat, useful, and short. Every newsletter that goes to parents needs a library column. Including digital photos of happy library-using kids. Administrators HATE surprises - good and bad.

2.    Know you principal’s goals and interests. Can you rattle off right now the three or four things your principal considers important in your school? Test scores? Climate? Meaningful technology use? For what is your principal being held accountable by her boss? Where do your services and your principal’s goals overlap?

3.    Be seen outside the library. If your principal sees you on committees, attending school events and even in the teacher’s lounge, not only can you chat informally about library matters, but you send a powerful non-verbal message as well: I am full member of the school staff. 

4.    Disagree with your principal - when necessary. You may think that some ideas of your principal may not be in the best interests of your students or staff. If that’s the case, you have an ethical duty to give your reasons to your principal. But this is important: do so in private. Always voice your support in public; always voice your differences in private.

5.    Do not whine. What is whining and how does it differ from constructive communication efforts? Robert Moran in his book Never Confuse a Memo with Reality says it best: “Never go to your boss with a problem without a solution. You are paid to think, not to whine.” I know it feels good to just let it all out sometimes about things that really can’t be changed. But listening to that sort of venting is what your spouse, your mom or your cat is there for.

6.    Do NOT advocate for yourself or your library. Advocate for your library users. Advocating for libraries sounds, and usually is, self-serving. When you talk to your principal whether proposing a plan, asking for funds, telling what’s happening in the library, or suggesting a solution to a problem, make sure it clear the underlying reason is “It’s a change that will be good for our kids and staff.”

7.    Be a leader as well as a follower. Our communication efforts can and should not just inform, but persuade others, guide the directions of our organization, and improve our effectiveness. If we don’t create the positive changes in our schools that improve kids lives, just who the heck will? Clear articulation of our values and beliefs helps create strong relationships.