My journey into the digital age.

This weekend I ran my first 10km race. It was a good challenge for me, however, I didn’t reach my time that I set as my goal. I was a couple of minutes short. As it was such a clear and specific goal, it got me reflecting on what I could have done better to reach this goal. The goal was very specific and the feedback I received was immediate and easy to see if I had in fact fulfilled my goal, or in this case not.  So comes the reflection on why I didn’t achieve my goal. I know why, I didn’t train hard enough in the months leading up to it, due to a variety of issues. But in essence I could not achieve this goal as the work leading up to it was not good enough, and my standards in performance were not high enough, leading to the failure in achieving my goal. I had set out performance tasks through training plans and training goals leading up to the race, it is clear after my failure in the my run that these were not met.

As a leader I have worked with my staff looking at their collective priorities for the department. From this I set out goals for the department and outlined a 3 year plan in ways to achieve these priorities of the teachers. I know, and hopefully I have outlined it to my staff clearly enough, where we are headed, but have I created a clear enough expectation of behaviour and described what the best performing teachers should be doing in their classroom to reach our goals.

I think I need to get more specific with the goals and in turn the expectations that we set for the department. As the old principle about goals go, SMART. Looking at the goal setting related to my run, I new immediately after I had finished whether I had achieved my goal. Unfortunately, I didn’t, the goal was Specific and easily Measured, so it was easy to reflect on the accomplishment, or lack there-of. Some people say the A stands for Achievable, same say Adjustable. In this case I am going with Adjustable, as I had to Adjust my goal early on in my training due to injury. So after adjustment my new goal was Realistic. But taking all this into account, I didn’t end up achieving my goal as the expected behaviour  and performance during training was not high enough to meet the set goals. The expected performances leading up to the race were clear to see and easy to reflect on.

I think I need to apply this philosophy more closely to my own leadership. I will need to be clearer in my expectations of staff in terms of behaviour and performance, so if we do not reach our set goals, we can reflect back on them to clearly see where we went wrong and what we need to fix in the future. It will also allow for greater feedback along the way to allow the goal to be reached.

I purchased a flip video camera for the department and I could not be more impressed with it. It has been heavily used with the senior PE students. The ease in filming and downloading footage has allowed teachers to help students reflect on sporting performance nearly every lesson. Year 11 teachers are now taking their laptops to practical classes as a norm and using the flip camera on a regular basis. It has enhanced students learning as they are receiving another type of feedback on their performance. Sometimes it is better for them to see their own performance than having a teacher tell them about it.

We are doing an individual sport at the moment so I will be interested in seeing how it goes next term when we are doing a team activity.

I have now taught for 3 weeks in the new school year. I have been lucky that I have been able to secure computer labs for 2 classes, for their in class lesson. This has enabled each student to have a computer to complete their work.

One of the classes is an all boys class, that has a rugby league focus. I am ‘teaching’ them SOSE, Studies of Society and Environment. I have created a project where they are working towards a bid for a 17th NRL team. They have been working on choosing players in accordance to salary cap, designing jerseys and have started researching the geographical area that they want the team to be based in. I have not set it out as a typical assignment, and am yet to give them a formal task sheet. I am guiding them through the process and have goals for them to complete on the board in class for each lesson. The word ‘assignment’ is viewed negatively for a lot of these boys, as some, but not all, have failed often at school.

I have seen a lot of boys helping each other in class with various activities which is fantastic.

A little annoyance though was the failure of Google Maps, when I needed to do an activity where it was vital. I also assumed wrongly that Google Earth was installed on the computers.

My senior class, has also gained access to a computer room. I am guiding them through what is expected in this course, and am trying to get them blogging about their physical performances. They have done it in class, however it needs to become a task done at home.

I have created a virtual classroom, where all 11PE classes can connect, share and comment on others work. We are creating wikis on research that students have gathered.

I am starting to create podcasts of lessons to upload onto the VCR, that way students can view them at anytime convenient to them.

It has been a tedious task getting students usernames and passwords for the sites they are using, but once that settles down hopefully they can start accessing the site from home, where it will reach its full potential.

I have been frustrated with the amount of web 2.0 tools that I have found that are blocked or against our strict guidelines on internet usage.

I am moving forward albeit slowly.

I have arrived back to my department after a year away. It has been a hectic start, a little disorganised as I had no department meeting to start the year or any days to really settle in. However, I have reached some of my goals.

Staff completed a basic review of the PE department. The part I took great interest in was the section where I asked them “What a perfect PE department would look like?”.  All spoke about the need for collaboration and thought it was an area that we needed to focus and improve on. I had already placed this as a focus for myself this year, and will incorporate more collaboration in department meetings rather than ‘management’ issues. Management issues well be dealt with via email, and will be discussed at department meetings if emails will not suffice.

Discussion on all areas of our department based around curriculum have also provided a starting point to implement a 3 year plan for the department. Feedback on each component of the curriculum was quite good and the discussion surrounding it will help with the 3 year plan. Many staff thought our results in the senior school needed to improve, however noone really came up with any ways to improve them. This will be a major discussion.

The first two weeks were still ‘management’ heavy. Day to day dealings with teacher issues, behaviour issues, facility issues, still took a large part of my time. I have to still keep focussed on leading and creating a vision where the department should be heading. It has not helped that time as a full department has been non existent with camps and the usual stresses of the start of the school year taking up time.

I am leading from the front with digital pedagogy the best I can. Having discussions with many staff about pedagogy and how we can focus more on project based learning, and less ‘lecture’ style teaching. I have as much as possible spoken about the need for students having the ability to choose their pathway to the end result, with the teacher playing the facilitator.

So it has been a solid start, but I need to stay focused on leading more, and managing less. My first full department meeting will be an important one to lay the foundation of not only this year but the years to come.

Over the last month I have read a lot about digital pedagogy within education. My major goal is to successfully integrate this digital pedagogy within my department. But where do I start?

This is going to be a significant change for teachers within the department. The biggest area of our department is the junior curriculum (Yr 8 and 9 students). We have up to 8 different teachers teaching the same curriculum. At the moment teachers use workbooklets to teach classes, it is an easy way to have all classes doing the same curriculum. However it flys in the face of ‘good’ teaching practices, and especially the move to a digital pedagogy. It will be hard to move teachers out of this way of teaching, it is easy to walk into a classroom with everything in front of you in a safe environment, and in a lot of cases, planned by someone else.

Most teachers have had exposure to digital pedagogy. We had a collaborative Olympics unit that 10 classes did at once, allowing collaboration across all classes. It was fairly successful and used blogs and wikis. But it was a one off unit and the practices did not stick.

The challenge will be to change the practices so they become integrated into everything we do.

I think at the moment our junior curriculum is fairly content driven, and by that I mean it would fall into the lower order thinking skills within Blooms Taxonomy.

This is where I have chosen to start my quest, Blooms Taxonomy. It is not new, it is not about technology, it is basic teaching. The only thing new about it is that it will focus on the revised digital taxonomy.

I think too often we have fallen back onto ‘chalk and talk’, we (the teachers) are giving students the information to ‘learn’ for the exam or to ‘gather’ for their assignments. However, starting with the end in mind, a project for the students to accomplish, may lead to:

-  what does the student want their end product (project) to look like?

- how does each student want to get to the end product?

- what tools do they need to get there?

- where can the students get the information from?

Nowhere have I mentioned the word technology, it is not about ‘digital’ pedagogy, it is about good pedagogical practices. The digital part provides the tools to present/produce the end result.

I think this may be less scary than to start talking to staff about blogs, wikis, social bookmarking etc etc

With the new year nearly in full force I have given much thought as to what I want to focus on in 2010. My main focus in 2010 is creating digital pedagogy within my department. But to do this a few steps need to be completed.

I have never sat down with my staff to determine a ‘vision’ for our department, what do we want our department to look like? I feel this has been a weakness in my own leadership, not really knowing where I want to lead the department to. I have managed the department well but not lead it well.

My first goal of the year is to develop a ‘vision’ of what they staff feel the department should look like in an ideal world. From this vision, create a 1,2 and 3 yr plan for where we want to take our department. I have already given much consideration to this and what I think the vision should encompass. However, I want the staff to collaboratively build this vision to ensure they feel they own it.

Second, is to increase the digital pedagogy within the department. I want to start small as a whole department, with one major project within the 11PE cohort. The main goal for increasing the digital pedagogy initially is to map our curriculum against Blooms revised taxonomy, which incorporates digital tools. A great resource and starting point. Firstly highlighting to staff that the curriculum and thinking skills that we pass onto the students is at the focus of any curriculum shift. The digital technology is there to provide a means to enhance these thinking skills.

It will be a necessity to plan out PD for all staff in the department and lead a commitment to learning new skills and a new mindset to move to a digital pedagogy. This will enable trials of learning experiences within their own classrooms that adopt a digital approach.

On a personal level by the end of the year I would like to work towards my Advanced Pedagogical Licence. My ‘project’ with my Yr 11 class should provide me with plenty of opportunities to demonstrate the criteria. However, it will be essential for me to establish myself as a leader within the school within the digital pedagogy.

Although at present I have no followers, I wanted to change the name of my blog so I could get my own head around my focus as an educational leader and rookie bloggist.

My two great interests at the moment are becoming a better leader and increasing digital pedagogy in my department. I think by focussing on my journey into the digital age it will better serve my needs for my own growth and development, whilst still allowing comment on my leadership growth.

Currently I am reading the book ‘Leading at a Higher Level’ by Ken Blanchard. It is highly thought provoking for a leader. In a chapter on implementing change Blanchard talks about leaders making decisions quickly as they use and seek out few people with the decision making process. He says this leads to the people affected by the decision only working with the new directives for a short time, then moving back into their old behaviour as they feel no real connection to the decisions being made.

I think this is true in my own leadership. I have felt it is my job to make decisions for the department. Now after reading this, and reflecting on past practices I can see that it hasn’t been the best approach.

Moving forward I think I will create teams to take control of different areas of the department.  I will still lead them through the process of what the department should look like and the vision I have. But by allowing them to have a greater involvement in decisions and the areas they have a direct link to, will help the change process. They will more likely feel passionate about decisions and changes they have had a high involvement with.

“Insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results” (Blanchard, 2009).

It is time for me to change, it is time for my department to change. Some of the changes have been forced upon us, some will be driven by the department as we focus on a new set of goals. It will require me be a strong leader.

This is phase 2 of my leadership development. Phase 1 I didn’t really lead, I managed. I was promoted at a relatively young age and during Phase 1 of my leadership development I forgot what got me there. Reading and reflecting. I stopped reading and reflecting, in essence I stopped learning.

So I have started reading again, blogs, books, listening to podcasts, basically anywhere my thirst for new knowledge led me. So my blog will be a reflection of my personal journey of Phase 2 of my leadership development.

Blanchard, K (2009) Leading at a Higher Level. FT Press:New Jersey.