Shift to the Future

I believe in teaching people to 'fish' rather than 'fishing' for them.  In practice I have found this philosophy when working with my staff and 'clients' to be a powerful way to grow people and their capacity.  It takes time and patience and you have to hold yourself back from just doing 'it' your self. Some years ago, my wife Shelley decided to create an online business where she needed to learn a ton about a variety of technologies, in a hurry.  She would call me with lots of questions and although I think it frustrated her at the time, I would respond with questions, not answers.  I would ask her what she thinks she should do and in a round about way, help her get to the answer or possible answers.  It didn't take long for her to stop calling... :-)  I often do the same with my staff and the clients I support.  It would be so much easier just to answer the specific question or do it for them but then they would be dependent on me which does no...

A recent post, The Secret to Focusing on What Matters by Dan Rockwell talks about choosing One Word to focus your attention.  His statement that “[i]nsignificant leaders focus on trivialities” struck home with me.  I find myself so scattered most of the time trying to take on too much too fast for too many people, often things that really aren’t that important in the big picture.  I know that I need to pick a few priorities and do them well.  In practice that seems to be more ideal than real.  In my work, and I see it for so many of my colleagues and staff, there are simply too many seemingly important things to do.  It is a real challenge to step back and decide what not to do.  So often we, myself included, just work harder and forget to work smarter.  Back to Dan Rockwell’s post… If I were to choose ‘one word’, I think it would be ‘focus’.  I’m not saying I’m willing to commit to this yet (procrastinating), but I’m thinking about it. I...

Once upon a time, people who could learn to read, write, and calculate were deemed competent to participate in the democracy, work in a factory, and live the good life.  Don’t you just long for the simplicity of that era?  Some days, I think I do.  Our fast paced world where “ [c]hange is accelerating, to the point where it will soon be nearly continuous ” ( Present Shock : When Everything Happens Now) is not simple, and old competencies are the very basic minimum requirements to prepare a person to fully participate.  Our world has changed dramatically since the days when learning was simple and slow. Competence (or competency ) is the ability of an individual to do a job properly. A competency is a set of defined behaviors that provide a structured guide enabling the identification, evaluation and development of the behaviors in individual employees. A key responsibility I have in my role as CIO is to develop and lead an IT group.  Overall, I am impresse...

I’ve learned a lot (through the school of hard knocks) about implementing technology for learning, teaching, and work.  I naively used to focus on the tools and the technical aspects without seriously considering the impact on people.  That was then and this is now.  Technology is very often the instigator of significant changes for people.  It should be, or what’s the point of buying and providing it?  Simply adding a new tool and carrying on with a current practice really doesn’t make a lot of sense does it.  We see this occur often in schools.  SMARTBoards, for example, often get a bad rap, perhaps unfairly.  We need to do implementation well! Principals will see or hear about how amazing these interactive whiteboards (IWB) work, then they buy and install some in their school and wonder why teachers don’t use them.  Or, worse, teachers do use them but in exactly the same way they used their overhead projector or the LCD projector they al...

I am about 75% of the way through an enjoyably informative book by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Lani Ritter Hall.  I recently met Sheryl in the vendor exhibition at ISTE 2012 in San Diego.  She introduced me to the Powerful Learning Practice (PLP) organization she and Will Richardson started to support professional development for educators.  She scanned my ISTE badge and my name and contact information entered their contact database.  I received an invitation shortly thereafter to participate in a free “ Do It Yourself Web 2.0 Tools Course ” which I accepted.  Each day participants receive an email with a new “play” – today’s is Play #4 which asks us to write a blog post reflecting on what we expect to gain or learn. My expectations are straightforward in that I am interested in the process of how PLP courses and development are run and I felt the best way to experience that was by going through it personally.  I am also interested in how the various mode...

I remember the good old days when I used to have ample time to learn something new.  Back in the late 80’s I was working for the Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans Canada as a Systems Analyst in the data centre of a fishery research facility.  I remember being given a project to plan for and execute, wait for it… upgrading the Fortran programming language on the mainframe.  Wow, how exciting is that.  I took a couple of months to learn about, research, and plan for this change.  Learning and change back then was glacial compared to now.  I remember worrying about a lot of details I didn’t completely understand and made sure to learn everything possible before acting.  Things have certainly changed…  Those of us engaged in the digital world are having to adapt, learn, unlearn, relearn constantly.  Essentially, I now subscribe to the “ fearless learner ” philosophy. A few weeks ago I was asked by the professional development rep for one of our sec...

I wonder how many of us wander through life somewhat aimlessly?  We finish high school and maybe go to university, trade school, travel for a while, get a job, do charity work, or even ‘do nothing’.  Eventually most people land in a career or a job that sustains them.  Many will marry, have kids, and ‘live life’.  Some people seem then, to go through life without any particular goals.  Some seem to wander along with a cloud over their heads.  You know, the people that when they are in your presence or enter a room, suck the air and energy out of the room.  I wonder if they just never got around to creating a personal vision?  On a personal note, I really enjoy the outdoors, and was pretty focused on downhill mountain biking (have switched for safety reasons to XC).  The picture shown here is of me a few years back living life to the fullest in the woods on my bike :-)  A quick a-side, I read this article by Michael Hyatt yesterday that ...

What does it really mean to call oneself a "professional"? For me, there's an implication that a professional is working in a field that is knowledge intensive and requires regular ongoing practice to become and remain highly accomplished and valuable to their clients. Wikipedia’s entry for Professional includes: Expert and specialized knowledge in field which one is practicing professionally Excellent manual/practical and literary skills in relation to profession In our rapidly changing world, professionals should expect to be regularly honing and upgrading their skills and knowledge so as to remain relevant and current in their chosen field.  Notice the reference to “practicing professionally”.  To practice involves the individual or professional in this context, taking some action on their part “to improve, to learn, to solve problems, to enhance or refine skills, to maintain skills”.  Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers claims that “researchers ha...

I visited a grade 6 classroom this past week where every student had a personally owned laptop.  The students were learning about basic geometric shapes such as triangles, squares, and others with more sides which I forget the names for (I could Google them if I needed to).  The teacher ask them to create a program using Scratch to prompt for the number of sides, the length of a side, and to calculate the angle between any two sides, and finally to generate and display the shape.  While I was there, the kids were able to complete, to varying degrees, the pieces to prompt and calculate an angle (not necessarily correctly, but).  Some had a display “algorithm” programmed and were generating all sorts of spiral graph type shapes (not the shape intended mind you).  It was exciting to see their engagement, actually total being absorbed, in the learning activity.  For homework, they were to at least have a correctly running program that calculates and displays t...

People have optimal learning paths involving diverse means and difference paces.  Taking that to heart should drive us to personalize learning for adults and students wherever possible.  For years, society has accepted the efficient path of teach to the middle, keep to the schedule / pace, etc.  Not only in K12 classrooms but most places training or learning is offered.  In adopting technology, I’ve learned that we must differentiate the learning of the tool, in a real context, and at a pace suited to each individual. Technology for learning is gaining new emphasis and importance in education systems world wide.  In British Columbia our government recently published the BC Education Plan .  This lead message sets the stage for change: “our education system is based on a model of learning from an earlier century. To change that, we need to put students at the centre of their own education. We need to make a better link between what kids learn at scho...

There is a lot of writing about “change” and how to make it happen and become the new normal.  Digital Technology has certainly become the prime mover of change in our modern age.  It causes significant disruption to what we know, what we are comfortable with, with the status quo – it often makes us uncomfortable.  Change can make us think that what we’re doing now isn’t good enough.  It’s difficult… In my role leading the technology portfolio in our School District, I have the opportunity to envision and test the potential of a change in technology, to create the change, and to help people join in with the change.  My last post, Why? , talks about being more purposeful in how I spend my time.  I would extend that to being more purposeful in what changes to pursue and accept – there are too many possibilities to consider and we need to be strategic in what we choose. I responded to a tweet by Chris Kennedy last fall asking about how we make change happ...