I was at a meeting today where we were asked to summarize in six words what was on our minds. The coach to my left said something that blew my mind.

Use the tool, then ask why.

It is a good phrase. Remembering the importance of experimenting with new tech tools, and balancing that with reflecting on why that tool may or may not be the right thing. Using the tool is not enough. And asking why is not enough. You need to think of both.

Then I realized it was something I needed for myself. Use the tool, then ask why.

We are working on self-directed, professional development groups at my school. Each group is supposed to takes notes.

• Use the Tool: Google Apps to Take Notes
• Then Ask Why: Uhhh, because teachers takes notes after meetings?

What else could I have tried? FlipGrid. Maybe reflecting with Flipgrid might have a different impact. How about a WordPress blog? Twitter? I move everyone towards one tool, and gave it really no thought as to why.

I might put it on a poster.

It has been an interesting process, but I’ve sort of hit a roadblock.

Well, two roadblocks.

Roadblock one: My idea was to have a bot to help teachers find the resources they might need. How do I find which websites are approved? Where do I find the OneNote note for my grade level?

The roadblock is embedding it on a webpage. I would have to use a separate website or service to embed it on my webpage. It is important to pay websites for their work, but I jut do not have 30 dollars a month in my budget.

Roadblock two: The brilliance of Dialogflow is Knowledge section. In theory, you can create a FAQ and Dialogflow will scan the document and you can search it with natural language. So if I ask the bot “install printer” it will scan through the FAQ and know that I want the second on installing printers.

I setup a FAQ, but it only responds to an exact match on the question. If you type “install printer” you get no results. You have to have an exact match with “I need to install a printer.” Which makes it a bit of a waste.

I am sure it is my fault, but I can’t figure out how to solve it.

Evernote (which I do love) will call their product an Outsourced Brain, remembering the important details for you.

But I still have to remember where I put it or how I tagged it. Knowledge workers always have a mass of information to pull up and process.

So maybe the answer is to build a bot. Google has product called Dialogflow.

And you are really just mapping out possible conversation paths. But instead of remembering where the you put the link to the financial forms on the internet. What if I built it into the bot.

The added benefit is I can share the bot with people. People will ask me where something is. Well, I could look it up in the bot or they could look it up in the bot. Either way my cognitive load is reduced.

And working through this, it might be outside my skill level.  But, it is worth a try.

I keep thinking about parent nights (Back to School Night. Parent Night. Curriculum Night). During these events  schools tend to focus on educating parents. Schools educate parents on the curriculum, the school procedures, or volunteer activities to support the school. The teachers are the sage on the stage and educate parents on topics.

Educating parents. I think it is the wrong focus.

Schools should focus on parents parenting, interacting with there children.  When a parent is in the building, schools should build opportunities for parents to interact with and their child.  More than that, schools should focus on guided parenting.  Guided parenting (like guided reading) gives parents scaffolded activities to allow parents to have a different interaction with their child.

Two scenarios as examples

1. Parent teacher conferences.

• Traditional: Parents and teachers meet to talk about students. 
• Invite Students: Have students attend the conference. Students put their best work in a portfolio to share at the conference. 
• Guided Parenting:  Give parents some ways to interact in the situation, a rubric to help them reflect, and parents discuss the portfolio with the child. 

2. Curriculum Nights

• Traditional: Teachers lectures group of parents about curriculum topic.
• Invite Students: Students attend curriculum night.  Students and parents work together on something dealing with the curriculum
• Guided Parenting: Teachers give guidelines on how to give good feedback to the students. The student does the work, and the parents’ job is helping the student reflect.

There is a place for sit and get as well. But we need more opportunities for parents to have different interactions with their children.

I don’t like the phrase “guided parenting.” I just don’t have a better phrase for it. It is very teacher-y, but doesn’t feel very parent-y.

I feel there should be a better way to take digital notes. Most of the digital reading notes I see are substitutions for paper.

So here is one thing I am trying, Padlet. You can see it below.

And, at this very moment, it is really just a substitute for paper. But, it has lots of potential and that is what I want to play with.

Evaluations are stressful and your boss has enough stress. She does not want to have an uncomfortable conversation about how you could improve, unless she has to. So, unless you are terrible (or your boss is) your evaluation will turn out fine.

Make it uncomfortable. Tell your boss you feel you do not meet expectations. Find a hard or soft skill you need you need to improve. Look at your resume and find the hole in it.

So the school year started and some health issues happened in my family and it is really hard to take time to reflect.

Stephen Covey referred to it as sharpening the saw. Working on the best resource we have, ourselves. Covey writes about it on four dimensions

• physical – Taking care of your body
• mental – Learning and Growning
• emotional/social – Connecting with others
• spiritual – Expanding your Spiritual Self

Part of the idea behind this blog was to give me a space to write about what I was working on and thinking about, the mental aspect of sharpening the saw. It sort of skews to work Kevin.

I know Seth suggests writing every day. But, right now I can’t handle it.

Recently everything has been super hectic so I need to find ways to reincorporate this into my workflows. And lower my expectation, because twice a week would be better than zero times a week.

 

 

 

 

Google Site Project:

Focus: Support and Advertise

Objective: Create a Google Site which will be a place to collect my work.

This is the central hub for when I am creating stuff for my evaluation, most of it should be here or documented in some way.  It is organized by keywords from my evaluation document.

I’ve added the Google Site to my email signature. When people ask “how do you . . .” I try to make a video, upload it to youtube, and post it here.

After pulling the 44 standards from my evaluation document I narrowed this down to 11 major projects for this year. Some are ongoing. Some are very short. But all 11 will hopefully move me toward being better at my job.

1. Google Site Project
2. Newsletter / Staff News Project
3. CLT Visits
4. Personalized PD Project
5. Data Conversations
6. Time Management Skill Improvement
7. Collaboration Project
8. Self Improvement Project
9. Professional Development Project
10. Social Media

 

At my school we have a potential watch-list of students who are in danger of not being successful.

So, what could I do to support them? I do not mean the teacher, how can I support those students directly. I am not their classroom teacher, so I would not see them on a regular basis. They are spread over 40+ classrooms, so I would not be able to go support a lesson for each student, because that would take all of my time.

Here is one thought. What if I made it my job to do two things.  First, know everyone one of those students and try to make a connection with each of them every week. If I went in at random times through the week I would see them in different contexts. I could take a picture and ask the teacher to forward it to the parent.

Second, what if any time one of those watch-list students were absent, the next day I went and checked in on them. If I just made sure they were ok and told them that I was happy to see them.

I think this does a few things. First, it gives the student another adult in the building that cares about them. Second, emailing the parent helps build a connection between the parent and the school. Third, any time the student is absent they have an adult checking on them and hopefully helps with their attendance.