Replied to I’m going dark on social media for the rest of 2018. by Ben WerdmüllerBen Werdmüller (werd.io)

I’m cutting out Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Mastodon completely. (Mastodon doesn’t suffer from the organizational issues I described above, but by aping commercial social networking services, it suffers from the same design flaws.) As of tonight, I won’t be logging into those platforms on any device, and I won’t receive comments, likes, reshares, etc, on any of them.

You raise some interesting questions to consider in moving away from social media, especially the point about staying in contact. I have tried to be more mindful of my interactions this year. RSS has definitely been an important part in this (that is how I found this post).

Noting your concerns with Mastodon, I am wondering if you think Micro.blog fixes any of this, especially with its use of feeds and webmentions etc

Listened Paul Dempsey, Bernard Fanning, more Aussie all-stars unite for collaborative project Vast from Double J

Introducing the new compilation album and creative project inspired by the stunning landscape and culture of the West Pilbara region.

I have been intrigued in the place of Western Australia and sounds produced there since watching the documentary Something in the Water. This is something that Jack Antonoff touches upon a lot, often referring to Bruce Springsteen’s association with New Jersey. This album recorded with a group of artists camped out in the Pilbara is an interesting exercise.
Replied to Kidding Around With the WordPress Customizer (CogDogBlog)

In my last post I mentioned making a child WordPress theme mainly to offer customization to parts of theme footer that is usually hard coded. Maybe it’s too much detail, but I thought it a small example of how this is done.

Another reminder why I really need to play around with my child theme a bit more.
Bookmarked Transforming Schools: How Distributed Leadership Can Create More High-Performing Schools by Chris Bierly, Betsy Doyle, Abigail Smith (Bain)

The best organizational leadership models are purpose-built to accomplish the organization’s most critical mission. While every school has its differences, they all share the fundamental mission of improving teaching and learning. Groups of elementary, middle and high schools in a given system are more alike than unalike when it comes to addressing this core challenge. Standardizing as much as possible around a well-developed model makes deploying and managing it easier and more effective. If schools have similar roles and leadership processes, the system can better align critical support functions such as talent development, compensation and evaluation.

Chris Bierly, Betsy Doyle and Abigail Smith discuss some of the challenges associated leadership in schools, suggesting that distributed leadership can create more high-performing schools. Reflecting on research, they highlight five principles designed to help develop a distributed model.

  1. Make a bet on a leadership model.
  2. Create and strengthen leadership capacity.
  3. Focus leaders on improving teaching and learning.
  4. Create teams with a shared mission.
  5. Empower leaders with the time and authority to lead.

One concern that I had throughout this extensive post was the blurring between ‘coaching’ and ‘evaluation’. For more on the topic, I recommend Alma Harris’ book Distributed Leadership Matters.

via Tom Barrett

Read Distributed Leadership Matters: Perspectives, Practicalities, and Potential by Alma Harris
I have been wondering about the idea of leadership with a little l for quite a while now. I first came upon Alma Harris’ distributed leadership in an article within ACER’s Teacher magazine. This then led me to Harris’ book Distributed Leadership Matters.

What stood out was the focus on conditions of learning and trust, rather than particular actions and attributes. Coupled with Disciplined Collaboration, Harris provides something of a vision for empowering staff to lead the change from the ground on up. It clearly addresses the how and why, leaving the what up to you.

Although not designed to replace traditional leadership structures and expectations, it is hard to imagine that things remaining the same. Below then is a collection of my notes and quotes from reading.

Marginalia

Distributed leadership is primarily concerned with the interactions and the dynamics of leadership practice rather than a preoccupation with the formal roles and responsibilities traditionally associated with those “who lead.” This book argues that it is the practice of leadership that is most important if the goal, in schools and districts, is to secure better instruction and improved learner outcomes.

Leadership distribution has to be first and foremost focused upon improving learner outcomes.

It is impossible to imagine how sustainable innovation and change in complex times can be secured without broad-based and sustained distributed leadership.

Professional collaboration can be a powerful routine that effective organizations can deploy to support distributed leadership practice.

The reality is that without actively and purposefully distributing leadership within the organization, long-term survival is not guaranteed. Without leadership, that involves the many rather than the few, those in formal leadership positions will continue to be vulnerable and exposed.

Too much of what passes for professional collaboration equates with loose or unfocused professional groupings, partnerships, or networks. While professional partnerships or networks have a variety of uses including knowledge and information sharing, the jury is still out on their ability to directly change learner outcomes for the better.

While there is no shortage of anecdotal evidence about the benefits of networks and networking, in reality, it is hard to substantiate any positive or lasting impact on learners.

Distributed leadership is characterized by high levels of trust, interdependence, reciprocal accountability, and shared purpose (Harris, 2008).

While there are rare occasions when distributed leadership is a by-product of a particularly positive school culture, most usually it happens by careful design.

The fact remains that in terms of a school’s performance, leadership is second only to the influence of teaching and learning on student outcomes

High performance leaders invested heavily in building strong relationships, sharing leadership with others, developing collaborative teams, and generating high levels of intraorganizational trust

It is not just the structure of teams that keeps PBE organizations moving forward, as every organization has teams, but the vibrant nature of the teamwork itself. PBE organizations have cultures of creativity and risk taking. They allow and encourage workers to have freedom and flexibility to innovate and play.

So how do we change what happens in classrooms, where it matters most of all? How do we encourage teachers to move away from normative practice and do something new or different? How do we get teachers to step out of their comfort zone and take some risks? What form of leadership is required to support innovation and change? How do we change professional development so that there is an expectation of a change or improvement in classroom practice?

Many approaches to reform and change are “top-down,” imposed on schools without any attention to building adequate capacity or creating sufficient social capital for the change to work.

It remains the case that most systems have everything they need to raise their performance within the system, but at school and district levels, better connections simply need to be made.

The second lesson therefore is one about capacity building. It points out the need to ensure that at the system and school level, there is sufficient expertise, energy, and resource in place to actually deliver.

A third reason for the failure of so much top-down reform is the reckless and often unprincipled speed of change.
Looking at the best performing education systems around the world, like Finland, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, there is one consistent and powerful common denominator. They all invest in teachers’ professional learning and heavily subscribe to models of systematic professional collaboration

The whole point of professional collaborative learning is to generate new practices, ideas, and knowledge. It is to engage in focused collaboration that will ultimately push the boundaries of professional learning.

The real question should be, what type of leadership do we need to secure the best outcomes for young people, and how do we change our structures to make this happen?

Keeping things the way they are isn’t any guarantee of success either. In fact, it’s a certain way to hold back progress. In the natural world, the absence of change means one thing and one thing only: extinction.

The world is changing, learning is changing, and so should leadership.

The Fourth Way underscores the need for professional learning communities (PLCs) within, between, and across schools that are dedicated to improving the learning of students and adults alike.

Unless there is disciplined inquiry at the core of collaborative professional learning, it is unlikely to make a difference to learner outcomes (Harris & Jones 2012).

His book The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki (2005) argues that “diversity helps because it actually adds perspectives that would otherwise be absent” (p. 29).

Rather than waiting for the right individual, the question is, why not tap and realize all the leadership potential that already exists within the organization?

Distributed leadership is best understood as “practice distributed over leaders, followers and their situation and incorporates the activities of multiple groups of individuals” (Spillane, 2006, p.12).

Distributed leadership is concerned with two things: The process of leadership—how leadership practice occurs within the organization Leadership activity—how leadership is enhanced, extended, and developed

Distributed leadership does not mean everybody leads but rather that everybody has the potential to lead, at some time, depending on expertise and experience;

To be most effective, distributed leadership has to be carefully planned and deliberately orchestrated.

If distributed leadership is viewed as inauthentic or as simply being used as a subtle device or mechanism to manipulate others, it will be destined to fail. If so, there will be no point in trying again as those within the organization will, quite rightly, be reluctant to engage.

Essentially, if formal leaders create the time, space, and opportunity for colleagues to meet, plan, and reflect, it is far more likely that distributed leadership will be viewed as genuine and will be sustained.

A distributed model of leadership focuses upon the interactions, rather than the actions, of those in formal and informal leadership roles.

Distributed leadership involves two elements—the leader-plus and the practice aspect.

The differences between high performing and low performing schools can be attributed to different degrees of leadership distribution

Distributed leadership is not intrinsically a good or a bad thing. Like any form of leadership, it depends upon the situation and context and how it is enacted.

Much depends upon how distributed leadership is understood, deployed, and framed.

It is important to be clear about intentions and expectations as, when not adequately explained, distributed leadership can be easily misconstrued as delegation or even subtle coercion (Hatcher, 2005).

While failure in the sporting, business, or, indeed, educational world is not uncommon, the response to failure is what defines outstanding and exceptional leaders.

The real issue is not about finding extra time but in using the existing time more productively.
learning collaboratively depends on trust and authentic interdependence. It depends on generating social rather than individual capital.

Social capital is essentially concerned with the norms and networks that support and facilitate collective actions for mutual benefit

While relationship building is important, relationship building with purpose is far more likely to secure productive and positive change.

While it may be true that two heads are better than one—if the two heads think the same, then collaboration will yield relatively little.

The quality of an organization, that is, its efficiency and its effectiveness, comes down to one thing and one thing only: how far and how quickly you trust others within the organization.

Building collective capacity implies that people take the opportunity to do things differently. They opt to learn new skills and to generate more effective practice together through mutual support, mutual accountability, and mutual challenge.

For professional learning to have an impact, then systematic and sustained professional collaboration is needed

Where teachers work in self-managing teams to develop goals, curricula, instructional strategies, and staff development programs, students can achieve at higher levels.

The implicit assumption is that attending courses equates with professional learning and that by participating in these events somehow professional practice will change. Now, without question, there are some good courses, powerful programs, and effective professional learning sessions. But the return on this large-scale investment, in the form of improved professional practice that leads to better learning outcomes, is still highly questionable.

There is still far too much professional learning without impact. There is still too much professional development that makes little, if any, difference to the classroom.

If a “learning conversation,” whether in the guise of mentoring or coaching, is to really change practice, it will require much more than simply sharing or processing ideas or questions through mutual reflection or discussion.

The job of a PLC can be summed up in three words: “improving learner outcomes

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a passion for something they do and learn how to do it more effectively as they interact regularly and learn together.

The core idea behind professional learning communities or teams is that they operate as a catalyst within an organization to secure change and improvement. They have a central responsibility for generating new ideas and practices so that organizational outcomes improve. They can also drive change at scale.

Developing leadership capacity, particularly at scale, does not happen by default but has to be purposefully crafted, designed, and carefully implemented.

If we are serious about changing things in schools and districts rather than simply rearranging them, then it is imperative to invest in the most powerful forms of professional learning (PL), i.e. those that make a difference to student learning.

Within effective PLCs, professionals work together in a collaborative way, with an emphasis on mutual inquiry, interrogation of data, and scrutiny of evidence in order to establish a specific focus for the PLC to address.

Professional learning communities provide opportunities for staff to look deeply into the process of instruction and to learn how to become more effective in their work with students.

Teachers can only become more effective in their own practice through disciplined collaboration and inquiry.

The central role of the leader in a professional learning community therefore is to provide pressure and support, to ensure that the group works effectively, and to ensure that there are outcomes to show as a result of their collaboration

In professional collaboration, the learning belongs to the group; it is a collective enterprise.

The main challenge for formal leaders who want better performance and better outcomes is to actively build the leadership capacity within their organization, so that productive change and continuous improvement can become a real possibility. To build the leadership capacity within their school, formal leaders need to harness the collective will, skill, and leadership of all those in their organization in a carefully sequenced way so that the organization, as a whole, benefits

Liked The Public Necessity of Student Blogging | Hybrid Pedagogy by Travis Holland (Hybrid Pedagogy)

In order to stimulate skill development and learning for students who will be public communicators, there is an urgent need to do away with closed platforms that purport to mimic open web functionality, but actually instigate severe limitations upon students’ ability to engage with the world at large. The LMS is good at certain things — administration, secure submissions, communicating grades, distributing licensed resources — but it should be limited to those things and not claim to be something it is not.

Liked Taylor Swift makes a payout to all Universal artists a clause in her new record deal (Boing Boing,Boing Boing)

Swift’s deal is a perfect parable about how artists actually get paid: not by blindly ratcheting up copyright (giving artists more copyright just gives labels more power, since those new rights are non-negotiably acquired from the artists as a condition of doing business with the labels), but by increasing competition for artists’ services.

Liked The Great Teacher Myth by Pernille Ripp (pernillesripp.com)

So it’s on all of us. If we don’t give space. If we don’t strike up conversations. If we don’t reach out and ask for help from the very people we work with. If we don’t share more of our mistakes as some of us are handed pedestals to stand on, then we are doing a disservice to those who come to us or guidance, who trust us with their time, who call us colleagues and mentors.

Liked In the Web’s Hyperreality, Information Is Experience (Hapgood)

But whatever your take, I encourage you to think of disinformation in this way, at least for a bit  — not as the spread of false information, but as the hacking of the simulated reality which we all must necessarily inhabit. As something that does not just change knowledge, but which produces new life experiences as real as the the Iraq War, your neighbor’s fight with cancer, or your child’s illness. To see it in this way is perhaps more terrifying, but ultimately necessary as we attempt to address the problem.

Replied to |k| clippings: 2018-11-26 — it helps to press send (Katexic Clippings)

A conversation last night reminded me that I am unrepentant about (most of) my 80s rock listening…then and now. Michelle Kwan’s cover of “Sweet Child o’Mine” on a guzheng nails not just the iconic song, but one of the era’s best solos. Also: a worthy cover by bluegrass musicians Thunder and Rain & Postmodern Jukebox doin’ it New Orleans style & Scary Pockets makin’ it funky & a wistful version by Taken by Trees.

Thank you for sharing the different covers. It is an intriguing collection.

Where jazz has its standards, it feels that the (post)modern standards are songs we have ingrained in our memory to a point where we apprehend every bend and squeal, even if it is not performed.

It is interesting to think of these songs in association with algorithms and the choice of what is played and performed. Has nostalgia replaced originality or is all music copied as people like Chilly Gonzales demonstrate.

Here I am again reminded of a comment from William Gibson:

Liked What Does The Next Chapter Of Storytelling Look Like For API Evangelist? (API Evangelist)

In 2019, the API pioneers like SalesForce, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twilio, SendGrid, Slack, and others are still relevant, but it feels like API storytelling is continuing it’s migration towards the enterprise. Stories of building an agile, scrappy startup using APIs isn’t as compelling as they used to be. They are being replaced by stories of existng enterprise groups become more innovative, agile, and competitive in a fast changing digital business landscape. The technology of APIs, the business of APIs, and the stories that matter around APIs have all been caught up in the tractor beam of the enterprise. In 2010, you did APIs if you were on the edge doing a startup, but by 2013 the enterprise began tuning into what is going on, by 2016 the enterprise responded with acquisitions, and by 2018 we are all selling and talking to the enterprise about APIs.

Bookmarked ePortfolios: Competing Concepts by Tom Woodward (Bionic Teaching)

I talked to some VCU people about ePortofolios1. It’s a conversation I’ve had any number of times over the years. I think that experience is leading to a better understanding of what’s going on structurally and the space we have to navigate competing interests. I’m also in a better position to show how certain technologies might help people find a middle way. However, I’m still trying to be honest about the complexities involved in an environment with shrinking resources and expanding expectations. That’s a rough line to sell when vendors have no compunction about pitching simple answers that aren’t exposed until after contracts are signed. For the record, I didn’t start with this peppy intro when I spoke.

Tom Woodward addresses a number of considerations associated with ePortfolios:

  • Strategy: trophy case vs. progress/reflective.
  • Audience: internal vs. external.
  • Ownership: institution vs. student
  • Privacy: password protected vs. public searchable

Woodward provides a lot of nuance throughout his discussion and provides a number of examples to support this. It is a worthy addition to the discussion of ways to blog.

Listened What Facebook Knew and Tried to Hide by Michael Barbaro, Nicholas Confessore, Sheera Frenkel from nytimes.com

The story of Facebook in the past few years has been that of a company slow to understand how powerful it has become. But an investigation by The New York Times finds that once Facebook’s leaders understood the problems they faced, they sought to conceal them.

Michael Barbaro, Nicholas Confessore, Sheera Frenkel discuss the way in which Facebook has been delaying, denying and deflecting conflict. This provides a useful primer to the rise in hate speech perpetuated by the platform, Russia’s role in hacking democracy, distractions to muddy the waters and engagement with politics.

While Mr. Zuckerberg has conducted a public apology tour in the last year, Ms. Sandberg has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook’s critics, shift public anger toward rival companies and ward off damaging regulation. Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, lobbying a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic.

Alex Shephard looks at Sheryl Sandberg’s role in all of this, especially her engagement with a Republican PR firm.

That sterling reputation took a serious blow this week. A report from The New York Times shows that, while Sandberg was building her global brand, she was using aggressive and underhanded tactics at Facebook. As the company faced increasing criticism and pressure over its handling of fake news, election interference, data abuse, and the incitement of ethnic violence and genocide, she embraced a strategy to suppress information about Facebook’s problems, discredit its critics, and deflect blame onto its competitors. She berated her security chief for being honest about the extent of the Russian campaign on the site. And she employed multiple crisis PR firms that spread fake news as a defense tactic, in one instance tying critics to the liberal billionaire, George Soros, a frequent subject of anti-semitic abuse online.

I just wondering what the implications of all this is? For some it is the end of an era, however I am not seeing everywhere?

Liked Supporting your child online – pointers for parents (Parenting for a Digital Future)
  • Start young
  • Model appropriate use of digital technology
  • Agree family rules about digital technology use
  • Provide your child with access to digital technology, ideally that they have ownership of
  • Talk openly with your child about using digital technology
  • Help your child link up with trusted others who have shared interests (e.g. other Minecrafters)
  • Recognise and value the learning that will inevitably happen as your child engages with digital technology
Bookmarked Secrets of the Edu-Twitter Influencers – Educational Leadership by Tara Laskowski, Amy Fast, Larry Ferlazzo, Baruti Kafele, Pernille Ripp, Eric Sheninger, Jose Luis Vilson (Educational Leadership)

Six educators who’ve become popular voices on social media share advice for developing online professional learning networks.

This is a reflection from a collection of educational ‘thought leaders‘. What stood out was the intent of self-promotion that many started with. Most spoke about the rich possibilities associated with Twitter, however I feel the same benefits can be gained beyond. One thing that I found interesting was how much time different people spend:

Ferlazzo: Far too much time. I need to get a life!

Fast: I usually get on Twitter after my kids go to bed at night. I’m often on there for an hour or so. I consider it my professional reading. If I’m not on Twitter, then I’m reading a book or an article.

Sheninger: We all can allocate at least 15 minutes a day to learn and get better. Why not make the time to do this on a platform like Twitter where we can personalize the experience? Balance is key.

Ripp: I do the quick check-ins a lot as opposed to spending a long time at once. I do try to reply to every single person that tweets me specifically, but sometimes that is a losing battle. I am still working on the balance between my online learning life and the life happening right in front of me every day.

It makes me think that being a ‘thought leader’ is something that needs to be maintained.

via Ian O’Byrne’s TLDR

Liked ‘We wouldnʼt need to practise wellbeing if we experienced it everyday’ by Jane Caro (The Sydney Morning Herald)

Even the things that appear to be therapeutic feel like cons to me. We wouldn’t need to practise wellbeing if we actually experienced it in our everyday lives. We wouldn’t need to practise mindfulness if we weren’t so constantly overwhelmed by ever-increasing expectations. And getting up at 5am to fit in regular exercise is not agile (I don’t care how limber you may be), it’s just another symptom of a world out of whack.

Bring back lolly-gagging, daydreaming and mooching around. Bring back the weekend. Legislate a 35-hour week. I bet we’d all be nicer, kinder and less aggro within days.

Bookmarked To Slow Down Climate Change, We Need To Take On Capitalism by Kim Stanley Robinson (BuzzFeed News)

As we head for the edge of a climate change cliff, neoliberal market capitalism is chewing up the biosphere and the lives of everyone in it. But it’s not too late to act.

Kim Stanley Robinson argues that change is still possible to alivate the crisis of global warming. However, this is not individual change, but rather political change.

Any such resistance will have to emerge in forms borrowed from the system we have now, in a stepwise process using the political tools already at hand. This is a depressing thought, but as methods go, it’s the lesser of many evils. The other options include things like world revolution (messy, murderous, prone to failure or blowback); or a fall into a new Dark Age, followed by a renaissance some centuries later; or — well, what else is there? Alien or divine intervention I leave to others to imagine. In our timeline, it seems to me the only real option is politics. Or to be more specific, political economy.

This ‘political economy’ would be post-capitalism. In many respects this touches on Douglas Rushkoff’s push for more human intervention and involvement.

A political economy like this would be a “post-capitalism” one in which everyone could live at adequacy, including wild and domestic mammals, birds, fish, insects, plants, bacteria, and all the other parts of Earth’s living symbiosis. What we’re doing now makes it harder to get to that good future, but the goal is still physically possible to attain. This is the project that human civilization has to take on to survive, and one that will provide not just employment, but purpose. We all crave meaning in our lives, and by a strange twist of fate, a very meaningful project has been given to us: Prevent a mass extinction event, and build a better world for the generations to come.

Replied to Consolidation is not a dirty word by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky (the édu flâneuse)

Consolidation doesn’t mean there is no work to do. It doesn’t mean standing still or stagnating. It means doing better what we are already doing now. It means connecting in with one another to learn from each other, celebrate, challenge and share our expertise. It means continuing to develop shared understandings and shared practices, and looking back occasionally to remind ourselves of how far we have come.

I really like this focus on celebration and consolidation Deb. We can become so wedded at times to the notion of transformation, yet transformation comes as we consolidate bit by bit. To me I think this is what Richard Olsen was trying to get at with the Modern Learning Canvas. It is about the small things, doing them well and going from there.

Also on: Read Write Collect