Moving ‘from Bud to Boss’

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Have you ever tried brushing your teeth with your other hand? The BBC documentary 'Get Smarter in a Week' showed that doing this and other mental exercises (like doing crossword puzzles, or using your computer mouse with the other hand) can actually boost what your brain is capable of doing!

So while you're moving your mouse over to the other side of your keyboard, consider this: if you've ever tried brushing your teeth with your other hand (or completing familiar tasks blindfolded), you'll know that it feels awkward and unnatural. Change is like that for most people too: awkward and unnatural.

Managing change is often the thing that people moving into new leadership roles find the most difficult. But after all, isn't change what leadership's all about? If people are doing the same as they've always done, surely they don't need much leadership? Or, to put it another way: if you're not leading change, what are you leading?

Kevin Eikenberry's book 'From Bud to Boss: Secrets to a Successful Transition to Remarkable Leadership<!––>' offers some really good advice for people making the transition into leadership. He says that leadership is complex; it's an action, a responsibility, an opportunity. He also says that leadership isn’t a title or position, a power grab, or a gift from birth.

He emphasises three key steps to making a successful transition:

  • Talk to your boss: It shows your commitment, elicits support, and builds positive momentum. It also help you to get a clear sense of what their expectations are of you, and a shared description of what success looks like. Establish a schedule of ongoing conversations so you have an opportunity for them to provide feedback, and for you to learn more about your role and their experience.
  • Talk with your team: Define success together so everyone knows what it looks like, set goals, and talk about the things that are in the players’ control and the things that aren't. A big part of these conversations is acknowledging the transition, the changing relationships, your role, and your expectations of them. Remeber that it's just as important to ask them about their expectations of you, and to ask for their help and patience.
  • Talk to yourself (no not literally): Just acknowledge that your world is changing, and you must change with it. You won’t get it right first time (or every time), so you need to be patient with yourself. Remember—you can succeed. Success will be built, in part, on the skills, knowledge, and experience that got you this far: draw up a list of them and refer to them often. Make sure you make the most of your strengths and manage around your weaknesses: listen to others, ask people what they think, and always be open to feedback.

​Making the transition 'from bud to boss' can feel awkward and unnatural, but by following advice like that offered by Eikenberry, you can increase not only what you're capable of, but also the capabilities of those around you.

Here's one thing you can do about this. This is one of the leadership strategies that we will explore in greater depth at the CORE Education Emerging Leaders' Summit on June 15–16.

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Google Glass – the technology to watch

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Google Glass
Photo by Antonio Zugaldia (creative commons)

While the tablet and smartphone market has buzzed with developments over the last few years, the level of innovation seems to have temporarily plateaued. New releases from the big players have been limited to making things longer, wider, thinner, higher resolution, or minor operating system tweaks—none of which are gaming changing. Apple are said to be working on a watch, but in fact the real technology to watch is Google’s Google Glass project. If you haven’t done so already then check out the demo videos.

So how does this technology work? The following infographic provides a nice simple explanation.

How Google Glass works infographic
Creative-Commons-Lizenz CC-BY Martin Missfeldt http://www.brille-kaufen.org/en/googleglass/

Why is this a technology to watch?

You might say this is interesting, but who really wants to talk to their glasses and have that information hovering in front of your eye, or given that they are $1500US a pair, they are not going to impact on my classroom any time soon. But, consider how quickly smartphones, tablets, and BYOD policies in schools have taken hold. It is likely that this technology will be in the $500 or less price bracket within the next two years, and how many of your students already have phones in that price bracket?

This technology takes ubiquitous computing to a new level. Mark Weiser, the father of this concept, defined four key concepts of ubiquitous computing:

  1. The purpose of a computer is to help do something else
  2. The best computer is a quiet and invisible servant
  3. Computers should extend the unconcious
  4. Technology should create calm, ie., inform but not demand focus of attention

The iPad and other touch surfaces have helped to bring these concepts, and the tabs, pads and boards that Weiser imagined in 80s and 90s to life. The Google Glass concept, however, takes it to a new level. The computer blends further into our everyday environment, a quiet invisible servant that can be called up with a word in order help us do something, to inform, but not to demand our attention. Just take the GPS function showcased in the Google Glass demo video. In a smartphone context, it too can be called upon to help with finding our way, but it demands our attention, it is difficult to navigate while at the same time looking at the device. In contrast, Google Glass merges the information into our field of vision rather than directing our focus elsewhere.

What is the potential impact on education?

At this stage it is anyone’s guess what the real impact will be on your average classroom. In fact, will your average classroom still exist by the time this level of ubiquitous computing is truly ubiquitous? But following are some things that educators will need to think about before this technology does start to drift in the school gate:

  1. Is it too tricky to know how to handle these devices so should they just be banned from the start in the same way that cellphones were?
  2. Is it a problem that a student could be videoing your entire lesson without you knowing it?
  3. What sort of cyber citizenship education and acceptable use policies will you need to deal with the level of capturing and sharing of photos and videos that these devices allow?
  4. Do you ban these devices from exam situations or do you rethink your whole assessment practice to, instead, integrate the use of them?
  5. Why would your students need to come anywhere near you or your classroom when you can be streaming your reality to them wherever they might be?

 

What are your thoughts about the impact of this technology on teaching and learning? Share them

below.

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CORE Ten Trends 2013: The Smart Web

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Ten Trends 2013: The Smart Web from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Drivers for this trend:

  • Social: Internet-capable consumer appliances, geo-location devices
  • Technology: RFID technologies
  • Educational: Convergence of internet-enabled devices in the classroom

The Smart Web

Has your fridge tweeted lately?

It might sound a bit funny, but shortly, not only your fridge, but most of your household appliances, your car, and even your house will be connected to the internet and part of what we call ‘the smart web’. The smart web is the name given to the developing trend to have all electronic devices connected to the internet in order to communicate and send and receive data. At a simple level, all new cars these days have computers in them. They monitor fuel consumption, check that the engine’s working properly, and warn you if there is a problem. Well that car spends its evenings in your garage, which is probably covered by your wireless network. The smart web means that your car can cut out the middleman and connect directly to your mechanic’s computer system to let it know how everything’s tracking for the coming service. It might let them know that there is only an oil change required, or that two new tyres are needed, so you better order them.

Smart shopping

You can do the same with fridges and the smart web: when you finish an item from the fridge, scan the barcode using the scanner on the door, and the fridge will add it to your online shopping list, which you can then login to, adjust, and complete the order for pickup or delivery. Saves time, and means your order is personalised to exactly what you need.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID):

An RFID TagThe idea of gains in either efficiency or in personalisation are two good places to start talking about the smart web with respect to education. A number of schools now have RFID library systems. No barcodes are scanned; a pile of books is simply placed on a reader pad and the radio frequency of the tag inside the book lets the catalogue know which items have been presented, and issues them accordingly. Library books are an obvious starting point, but soon we’ll have RFID tracking for all resources in school. With readers in traffic areas of a school, we’ll know exactly where the portable data projector is, or the DVD player. And if you’ve ever wandered around a school looking for something like that, I’m sure you’ll appreciate it. Some schools have also started using the smart web for taking the roll, which a teacher then checks and confirms.

The teachers find this easier and faster, and have more time to spend on teaching.

Making sense of the world:

This avalanche of data pouring out of our cars, fridges, TVs, and washing machines also has quite a bit of potential for creating meaningful authentic learning for students. Think about what we could do with a study on regional variations in the weather if we knew the outside temperature at all of the homes of our students—and if we could map these in real time in class. How much would our students’ understanding of geography and its effect on the weather grow if they were exploring their own house? Or think about petrol consumption, or traffic flows, or city planning if our cars used GPS and the smart web to reveal traffic patterns? Most cars have at least one GPS in them these days considering all smartphones are actually GPSs.

Coming soon:

I always know the exact temperature at my house, not because my house is part of the smart web, but because one of my neighbours has rigged up a weather station that’s connected to his wifi network, which tweets the humidity level, temperature, wind speed, and how much rain we’ve had. So the smart web means that if your fridge isn’t tweeting, something else will be, in the not too distant future.

Links:

 
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Universal Design for Learning at CORE

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Stephen and Nicole on Project Runway at CORE staff retreat

Universal Design in an engineering or architectural context is about creating solutions to problems that meet the needs of the most people possible at the outset. It is about avoiding the need for retrofitting. In the context of curriculum, how might the same principles impact on the way in which we design and organise learning environments and resources?

Practical opportunity to apply the principals of UDL

At our recent CORE retreat, focussed on, “Where are we now?” and, “What next?”, 120 staff unknowingly participated in an event that gave us first-hand experience of the potential of underpinning environments with a universal design approach.

A small team of us had been charged with creating a team building “social activity” that would be “fun” for everyone. Although our CORE whānau is predominantly made up of teachers and facilitators, we are also an eclectic bunch of developers, events managers, researchers, learning designers and administrators. So variability in people’s interests was a predictable given and we knew that a one-size-fits-all solution was not going to float.

Creative use of physical materials, goals, and ideas

An idea, all things being considered

In a rapid brainstorm over Skype, we came up with a design challenge based around the fashion show Project Runway. Now, at first glance you may think we might have missed our demographic, but as the photos attest, the punt we took captured the hearts, minds, “and hands” of our colleagues.

For those of you who might initially associate Project Runway with aeroplanes, the show is actually focused on clothing design. Each team is given a design brief and has to interpret it within a given time frame with a range of resources. Our teams were also required to give a commentary that reflected each team’s creative style and CORE’s commitment to Tātai Aho Rau – a concept related to weaving that illustrates our values.

And the outcome—it works

Creative use of physical materials, goals, and ideas on Project RunwayAs the social committee, we had hoped that we had built in enough options to capture people’s diverse interests, and we wanted each person to be able to fully participate and contribute. We thought through the potential barriers to getting stuck in, and tried to create some supports to nudge people along. What we hadn’t bargained on was the way in which everyone threw themselves into the experience with such relish, took full advantage of both hard materials and technology, and created intricate and experimental work both with words and with textiles. The result: a magical and hilarious celebration and a creative demonstration of our shared understanding of what CORE is about.

Revealed to all—why the activity was successful

The following day, the opportunity to highlight that our Project Runway event had been universally designed, was too good to miss. For many at CORE, it was a significant “a-ha” moment, and dispelled a few myths that had aligned “Universal Design” solely with “special education” or accessibility.

The Ministry's Universal Design approach

In a wider context, our shared epiphany also lines up with the Ministry of Education literature review, which identified Universal Design and the framework known as Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as an approach that can make a difference for all learners, and can be applied to “all facets of education: from curriculum, assessment and pedagogy to classroom and school design” (Mitchell 2010).

Hazel and Mark on Project Runway at CORE staff retreat

A framework for moving culturally responsive concepts into actions

As an educator who has been exploring UDL for the last few years, it is exciting to see conversations gaining momentum online, in workshops, and classrooms. At the international UDL Summer Institute at Harvard Graduate school, and whilst with Dr Sharon Friessen at the University of Calgary last year, discussions frequently revolved around the need for each country/community to take the learning around UDL and shape it for its own unique cultural context. As I, alongside colleagues such as Karen Melhuish Spencer and Janelle Riki, explore ways to underpin our own work with a UDL approach, we particularly see how the principles provide a framework for moving culturally responsive concepts into actions.

Also, hand-in-hand with a tool like the e-Learning Planning Framework, the UDL principles enable us to consider how technology can be used to provide options for the way in which we create resources, provide options for learners to demonstrate their understanding, and design environments to engage and sustain the interest of all learners.

Appeal: please share your UDL stories!

So, if you have dipped your toes in the water in this area of learning design and have a story to share, we’d love to hear from you. The more stories we gather, the more we can shape our own Aotearoa New Zealand UDL narrative.

And, if you are new to UDL, check out the links below, and watch this space—as here at CORE, we are intent on exploring how to design both physical and online learning environments underpinned by a UDL—there will be stories to tell.

And one last thing, huge thanks to Karen Melhuish Spencer for the first and last photos, and to Micheal Lintott for the middle two. Exquisite.

Useful links

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