Rick Bowles' iLead Blog

I am now three weeks into my work with power walkthroughs and I am feeling that the information I am getting is helpful.  I am excited to have my staff work with the data.  I like that my iPad and Droid are both set up for walkthroughs.  I am able to gather a ton more data that way.  If I am on my way back from handling a behavior issue, I can stop by and complete a walkthrough using my phone.  The graphs have been very helpful too.  Now we will be faced with the “so what.”  How do we take this information about best practice and research based strategies and make improvements to our practice?

I have to say that Doodle has made my life so much easier.  With it being connected to my calendar, I am easily able to set up my available times and send them out to staff members.  I am able to set up meetings quickly and easily.  I recently set up my classroom data conversations by sending out a doodle request.  I also have set up my goals conferences by sending out all of my available times.  It has made life so much easier.

The Wikispace has really been a great way of organizing the information we need to access.  I only worry that Wikis will get out of hand and then instead of trying to find something in the maze of First Class…I will have to find it in the maze of Wikis.

I must admit that with trying to be in the classroom 15 hours a week, completing all of the plans and goals that were due, working on our presentation to the DAAC, goals conferences, observations, discipline, etc, etc, etc….I have not been able to keep up on twitter or my Google Reader.   I am trying to remind myself that not everything I tweet has to be earth shattering and change someone’s life.  Every day I have more and more leaders following me from around the US and I wonder if they notice I don’t say much.  That makes it that much more of a pressure when I do finally enlighten them.

It has been a busy first month of school.  The school effectiveness plan has taken quite a bit of the school’s energy.  I have been excited to use my iPad during classroom walks.  I am able to take notes and leave immediate feedback before I even leave the room.  This way I am able to prevent distractions that often occur before I can find the time to get the feedback out.    I have finally moved to a document camera for presenting during staff development.

Tech aside, Namaqua has a great feeling this year.  I feel optimism throughout the building.  Staff has worked hard through data reflections and root cause analysis to pinpoint some areas that can help us as we create our School Effectiveness plan.  Still trying to stay within the parameters of the new plan without spreading ourselves too thin with too many goals.

I had a great first week of school this week.  There was a positive and optimistic feeling in the building.  I have been working on my Namaqua Blog and have created a post that I will have my staff respond to at our staff meeting.  I have also been adding resources from our PD and work with School improvement to our WikiSpace.  I also used Doodle to develop my schedule for classroom visits next week (for discipline talks).

I have just updated my Wikispace to provide a resource for my staff to access our professional development work.  I am still struggling to find opportunities to keep up with all of the educational tweets and to create tweets that are worth reading.  I have also created a blog for my staff and have started by inviting commentary on my post.  I have a staff member that is excited to be another author on the blog and will engage the other staff members in thoughtful discussions.  I need to provide some time on a Wednesday for all staff members to have a chance to respond to the blog.

I am also trying to keep up with all of my educational feeds.  So many great articles out there and so little time.  I am enjoying the format of flipbook on the iPad.  I can read blurbs of various articles and find the ones that I really want to read.

So now I need to work on getting staff to get excited about technology (especially now that we finally have our Promethean Projectors mounted).

I have added some thinking around goals for myself regarding iLead.  I want to use the new information and strategies to help organize our work.  Our teachers have so much on their plate and so many documents and discussions to keep track of.  I want to help create ways to organize our best thinking so that we can all be more productive and have less nickel and diming our time as we work through the First Class maze.  I am excited to use Wikispaces to log our discussions and work during professional development and PLCs.  I would like to get each PLC to create their own wikispace to discuss progress toward goals, work with common assessments, and collaboration toward implementing best practices.

What do I hope will change as a result of my participation in iLead?

In order to give students the tools they need to be successful in the 21st century, we need to understand and utilize these tools.  I want to use the power of blogging, wikispaces, and other tech tools to help elevate my leadership and to provide good modeling for my staff.  My goals include utilizing Wikispaces to organize professional development, using the Etherpad to get teachers actively engaged in new standards work and school improvement discussions, and blogging my experiences and new learnings to help track my progress.  Over the summer, I used Google Reader/Greed2 (Droid) to subscribe to great educational feeds and dipped my feet into educational tweeting.

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