Mobile Learning Mindset

The Principal's Guide to Implementation

Carl Hooker

• Publisher: International Society for Technology in Education
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781564845818
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Normas de la educación

Mobile Learning Mindset: The Principal's Guide to Implementation offers lessons learned and examples to help school principals successfully implement a mobile device initiative in their school. The six-book Mobile Learning Mindset series shares practical knowledge and strategies for successful implementation of K-12 BYOD programs and 1: 1 initiatives. The collection provides district leaders, principals, teachers, IT staff, educational coaches and parents with the information they need to make any mobile learning program a success.Tools and activities throughout the book will help principals:

• Effectively model technology use.
• Identify stakeholders and cultivate buy-in.
• Build a culture of creativity and shared ownership.
• Evaluate and adjust a mobile device program.

With this book, you'll gain a better understanding of the effect that mobile learning can have on your staff, students and community and get guidance on modeling, risk-taking, building a culture of creativity and shared ownership, and leading the various components of a mobile device initiative. Audience: School/district leaders

BEING A “FLAT LEADER”

You hear this phrase a lot lately: “When it comes to leadership and running my organization, I want to be a ‘flat leader.’” No, this isn’t some sort of strange parallel universe run by people who look like Flat Stanley. This is a common belief in style of leadership that the old, “top-down” pyramid structure of traditional leadership needs to adapt.

Wikipedia defines a flat organization as one with “an organizational structure with few or no levels of middle management between staff and executives. The idea is that well-trained workers will be more productive when they are more directly involved in the decision making process, rather than closely supervised by many layers of management.”

In some ways, schools and districts have been forced to resemble the model of a flat organization because of reduction in funding. While we in education have little to no middle management, we do have some support staff (assistant principals, instructional coaches, librarians, etc.) who support the teachers but have no direct authority over them. This means a couple of things could happen when you place a certain type of leader in a somewhat flat organization.

A tyrannical leader, or someone with a real god complex, can absolutely rule over a school because of its flatness and lack of political structure. I’ve worked in a school before where the principal told us at a staff meeting that if we didn’t like her or our jobs she would help us get a job at 7-11 (adding insult to injury, there, implying we couldn’t get our own job at 7-11). These types of leaders don’t last very long, luckily (unless their test scores go up), and so we generally have someone between tyrannical and flat.

A flat leader enables others to take the leadership role at certain times. One company that prides itself on flat leadership is Google. There, the owners and CEOs commingle with the coders and the designers. In a New York Times article titled “How to Get a Job at Google” (http://tinyurl.com/otypeno), columnist Thomas Friedman questions senior vice president of people operations, Laszlo Bock, about what traits that company looks for in employees. Laszlo said the top two traits are leadership and a willingness to learn. He goes on to say that a good leader knows when to step up and take control and when to step back and allow others to take control (and, in turn, build capacity).

The trick in being a leader in a mobile device initiative is that you can be too controlling or too loose with your leadership style, and possibly lose focus on why you are doing the initiative in the first place.

Why is it important to share leadership in a mobile device initiative?

There will come a time in your initiative when as a campus administrator you are faced with some tough decisions. Maybe it’s a parent who’s irate about the fact that their child now has a mobile device for the first time, or it’s an app or program that just doesn’t seem to be working right. Regardless of the conflict or issue, you have to remember why you are doing all of this in the first place. I’ve seen cases where mobile device initiatives have either failed or succeeded simply because of the way a leader addressed conflicts or issues.

In many ways, the more people a principal has as a part of their leadership team, the better. With each member of the leadership team on the same page, when issues arise, anyone can handle it, not just the administrator with the reserved parking space. You have to think about what would happen if you were out sick or on vacation. If an issue arises and the leadership team is all speaking the same language, it doesn’t matter who addresses the issue—the outcome will be the same.

Another big reason to have a shared leadership, or a “transformative” leadership team as we call it, is that more staff are likely to buy in and be a part of the initiative. Think about what happens when two parents aren’t on the same page in a household. What do the kids do? I know that in our house, if we aren’t constantly supporting each other and upholding each other’s decisions, the kids will eventually go to each parent until they hear the answer they want. Staff, students, and parents are not much different when it comes to testing a leadership team.

If you have a strong team that meets and communicates regularly, it’s like having a multi-headed principal. No matter what the issue or who’s asking, the answer will be consistent and the same. Also, members of the team each have relationships with a variety of staff members, so when concerns arise, team members will communicate those concerns back to the core team.

Optimizing Team Dynamics

Anyone who has been a principal or leader of a group or team knows that dynamics of a group can change as personalities change. Being a flat leader sometimes requires shuffling teams up a bit across the district. Since you are trying to start a new initiative or make it better, that also means making sure that the teachers who are comfortable integrating technology aren’t all on the same team. It’s a lot easier for a group to accept something if someone in their group is already a believer.

Unless you are implementing a mobile device initiative campuswide, most projects will start with a pilot of some sort. When we started our 1:1 at the elementary level, we made the grade-level teams apply to see which wanted to start as a 1:1 team first. This helped get our initiative off the ground and ensured a level of success for two reasons. First, the team had complete ownership before the initiative even started, so there wasn’t any “selling” of the idea to the team that started it out. Second, because part of the application process was a commitment to training, they inherently agreed to learn and grow via professional learning.

When you do have a dysfunctional team, the chance for success doing anything will be extremely limited. Keeping low expectations and looking at ways to “shake up” the negative dynamic is the ideal way to overcome a negative team. In the end, you’ll want to make sure every team has someone who’s either on the leadership team or a voice for your initiative.

Hiring the Right Fit

Now that you’ve built your leadership team and started to re-arrange your group dynamics, you need to be keenly aware of those dynamics when hiring new staff. There is a misconception that younger staff or millennials will be able to integrate technology more easily than an experienced teacher will. Bear in mind that preservice university programs typically do not prepare teachers for schools that have a mobile device program. New teachers may be comfortable with technology, but don’t overlook older teachers who may have experience with 1:1.

Some traits to look for when seeking new team members are self-motivation and a growth mindset. Look for teachers who are willing to learn and grow along with the program and who can verbalize the benefits of the purposeful use of technology in the classroom. You’ll want team players who are willing to collaborate with colleagues and who do not teach in silos. Ultimately, you want teacher leaders who can create magic with learning in their classrooms.

Creating Avenues for Creativity

Most jobs in the world have some menial tasks that no one enjoys doing. When I spent a couple of years in the technology services department, it seemed that every time the phone rang, there was some sort of problem. No one called to tell us that the WiFi was running great. While I knew that our jobs were making a difference, it was not direct teaching, where you could see the change and growth of students.

In an environment where you have no means for growth or ways to explore your passions, work can become deflating. Teaching can be very rewarding, but at times it can be very stressful. Secretaries in the front office spend hours on the phone, coordinating and communicating with families and sick kids. Everyone on your campus has a job to do, and figuring out ways to ignite passion and allow staff to explore creative outlets can make the day-to-day grind not seem quite so painful.

Google was one of the first companies to create time during the week for passion projects. Their “20% time” was centered around the concept that part of your day or week as an employee was spent working on something you were passionate about. Some of Google’s most creative ideas (like Gmail) were invented during this 20% time.

In education we don’t have the luxury of dedicating 20% of our time to creating or working on passion projects, but as a leader, making sure there is opportunity for that is important. Not only does that give your staff an opportunity to think creatively, it also creates avenues of ideas to improve teaching and learning.

Web of Communication

Finally, to make all of this work, you need a strong web of communication (Figure 1.1). In a hierarchal leadership model, there is a funnel of communication that slows the higher up the chain you go. If you create a flat leadership model, empower your staff, and give them multiple avenues to connect and communicate, things can happen much faster. While some things do need approval from the boss, creating this web means that whenever issues arise, the group as a whole will hear about them. Also, whenever ideas happen, they have many ways of accelerating from idea to action.

Figure 1.1 The web of communication.

The strength of this web depends on each of the nodes on it. Hiring the right staff, putting people in places that address their strengths, and building trust among the leaders in your staff make this web very strong. However, if there is a weak link, the web will weaken, and so will communication. With weak communication, it is harder to share ideas and get concerns addressed. Without strong communication, your initiative will begin to cripple.

As you embark on this initiative, think about your leaders and the web you have created within your school. You’ll need strength in both to make this a success.

Sometimes, knowing what to avoid can be as useful as knowing what to do. In the next chapter, we explore the top 10 things not to do when launching a mobile device initiative at the campus level.

TOP 10 THINGS NOT TO DO

Sometimes the best advice is to tell people what to avoid. Every district and school is different. There is different parent support, demographic makeup, teacher readiness, technology proficiency, and campus leadership expectations. This top 10 list should be a warning list for campus leaders who are either starting or currently implementing a mobile device initiative. Please know that this chapter could easily be 20 things, but these 10 items are the most crucial to avoid when embarking on this journey as a leader.

1. Do Not Forget to Set Expectations

It’s amazing what a difference some minimal expectations have versus having none when it comes to staff using mobile devices for learning in their classrooms.

Let’s make this analogous to what happens with students in a classroom and see how things turn out. In this first scenario, you give the students an important assignment that is completely different from any other assignment they have ever done. You tell them not only the expectations for completing the assignment but also that they may use each other, the internet, and yourself as a resource to support them. You also give them a list of expectations and timelines to complete it. Students struggle with this new type of assignment at first. They work together and share ideas on how to complete it. They ask you for clarification. They make mistakes, too—but in the end, they accomplish the task, even if they all went their own way to do it because you shared your expectations, offered support, and set timelines.

Now imagine you took those same students and told them you didn’t really care when or if they completed the task. They still might have all the same support systems available to them, but without any expectations, only a few extremely self-motivated students actually finish the assignment. The rest continue working on what they’ve always been working on and what they are comfortable working on.

These scenarios aren’t that far-fetched among staff, yet that’s what we do with teachers all the time when it comes to goals and initiatives. You have to have at least some minimum expectations when it comes to the purposeful use of a device. It’s a good idea to use something like the SAMR Swimming Pool model shown in Figure 2.1 (http://tinyurl.com/njwcv3d) as a way to get staff to identify one or two lessons they’ve done in the past that they want to take a little deeper with technology. SAMR is an acronym that stands for substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition. The SAMR ladder, which served as the inspiration for the SAMR swimming pool model, is a framework that teachers can use to assess and evaluate how students use technology in their learning. (To learn more about the SAMR ladder and how to use it, visit Dr. Puentadura’s blog at: http://hippasus.com/blog/). The SAMR swimming pool allows teachers to have some comfort in choice, but also sets some expectations that they must use new technology in their classrooms.

Figure 2.1 The SAMR swimming pool analogy was an idea that originated with Greg Garner’s take on Dr. Rubin Puentedura’s SAMR ladder.

2. Do Not Be Surprised by Resisters

Even staff that you have worked with for years and have built up great rapport with may see a change like a mobile device initiative as a challenge to their teaching style and pedagogical beliefs. The more successful the teacher, the harder they might be to change. After all, if they’ve been doing this teaching thing so well for so long, why should they change? While you might have the majority of your staff on board, you’ll still want to work with those who don’t see the value in the project by stressing to them that the goal is to improve student learning and success later in life. One value (I hope) that all your teachers share is that they want the best for their students. This can be a strong leverage point toward getting those resisters to change.

Parents will likely make up the largest group of resisters, depending on how supportive your community is and how well you communicate your expectations and goals for the initiative. Let’s not forget that mobile devices are disruptive in both the classroom and the home—but unlike your teachers, parents rarely get any additional support to manage this change. Try to stay as open and proactive as possible when working with parents on their concerns. I think the parent support piece is such a huge part of making a mobile device initiative successful that I’ve dedicated a whole book in this collection just for parents. If they are on board and they get support from you and your staff, things will run much more smoothly for the students when they hear consistent expectations at both home and school.

3. Do Not Pass Parent Concerns to the Technology Department

It’s tempting to blame the technology department for discipline or parent concerns. After all, the t...