An Open Letter to Educators

Earlier today I also enjoyed a conversation with an outside consultant in which he confided to me that even though he is into selling high-tech stuff to schools, when it comes to finding a school for his 19-month old son he is looking at the values of the school before anything else. He feels too many schools now-a-days promote a big campus, tech-equipped classrooms, multimedia library centers, and ample playing fields before the offer the core values that drive their educational philosophy. I feel fortunate that I am currently at a school where technology, a shiny campus and large playing fields are not at the core of what we do. I strongly believe we have one of the best Elementary School leaders there is. These, after all, are the most important years for soon-to-be leaders of the world. Our Middle and High School students are teenagers who enjoy a rather free environment where there are in charge of their own time, and though there is discipline, they are allowed to make mistakes and given the opportunity to learn from them.

I was quite young when I was recruited to be the American School Foundation’s (Mexico City) Technology Director in 2001; I was 27 years old. I had worked a few years for the US State Dept. in partnership with the Ford Foundation on a ten-year education reform project born out of the Clinton administration. I was used to moving around, working with various teams across the US, Puerto Rico and South Africa, and with carrying out wide-ranging needs assessment surveys. I was actively working with administrations and faculty bodies across the N-12 and Higher Ed arena. I new a bit about education and a bit about technology.

Coming into the American School Foundation was a daunting task. I was naive, so I didn’t even know it at the time, but I was a bit in over my head. I feel I did a pretty good job of hiding it, though. Still, coming into a school with over 2,500 students, over 500 employees, and over 120 years – then – of history was quite a bit to deal with. Fortunately they did not have much in the way of technology, and they were thirsty to get themselves updated. Anything I had done at the time would have made a considerable difference in the lives of all involved. Of course, I did not know or realize that at the time – fortunately. I left Mexico in 2008 after having accomplished quite a bit. I consulted for various schools during my tenure there, and I was asked to opine on the state-of-technology of many of them. At the time the big question was about the need for a Technology Director. Often I recommended to Board members and administrative teams that having a Technology Director on staff would focus their strategy in this regard. This position would consolidate often disparate efforts already underway in various forms. It would centralize spending, and control. It brought many benefits, not just an added expense line item on the operation budget of the school. I was asked to participate in many hiring efforts to recruit/hire a Technology Director at various schools. It was great to speak to many candidates, and to find out that for the most part it would be the first time any of them would step into this role. Many were seasoned teachers, a few were techies looking to make a transition from corporate to education, and even fewer were administrators looking to make a horizontal change in their careers. After some of them were hired I  kept in touch, and some of the newly hired people asked me many questions about getting started. Right or wrong, I tried to lead them in the transition, offering what advice I could to help them out.

After much thought, I think this is what I would offer any incoming tech director who asked for my input now-a-days:

Head straight to your academic leaders, and afterwards sit down and have lunch with as many faculty members and students as you can. Find out what is going on in the classroom. What is the bare minimum of services needed? Alongside this needs-assessment effort comb through your entire personnel and gadget inventory. Make sure the inventory matches the services required. Whatever is peripheral or a complete add-on, get rid of it. Streamline your processes such that technical support is as efficient and child-friendly as possible (Keep It Simple Sam). Make sure folks know how to get help, where to get help, and that help gets to them as soon as they request it. Make yourself and your team invisible; if people are talking about you, chances are they are complaining about something that’s not working right.

Now that the basics are covered, start looking out, way out. Think about scalability when putting together your systems. These need to be flexible and robust, …and low-cost. Simplify. Open source is not always the answer, but there are many great options available, so don’t go for brand-name right away. Make friends, rely on colleagues and keep your eyes open.

It’s a learning process. There are no out-of-the-box solutions out there, even though salespeople will always claim so. Everything requires an investment of someone’s time and effort; be sure to account for that up-front.

Make some perfectly-timed mistakes, and ask stupid questions…Don’t forget; it’s all about the learning

My 3cents.

These kids are fantastic, enthusiastic and totally given to the project. Sure, they have no script, not much of an idea of how to operate the equipment, nor much of a crew – only 3 of them because the other 3 or 4 managed to get themselves grounded last night – but they are committed to finishing a 3minute short within 48hrs. This is what I love about video in the classroom. Even though many of the students in school who work on videos are not my actual Digital Moviemaking students, the word gets around that we have decent equipment for them to use and they gravitate towards my neck of the woods.

Once kids have an interest – and if they are in school on a weekend they sure have an interest – the rest is easy. Teaching them how to operate complicated equipment, how to deal with editing issues using post-production effects, or how to make better audio for their projects is simple when they are actually paying attention. When students get together to create video projects they employ all the good stuff employers are looking for these days; group work, leadership, good communication, [some] planning, troubleshooting, quick-problem-solving, creativity, imagination. As long as they are interested I watch as they develop these skills all on their own….I’m there to guide the process, but they get to do all the work. It’s a joy really!

Check out what Dimitris and company churned out in 48hrs: 

Later on I will include short capsules on this site that further explain each piece of the following document. Stay tuned!

RBaldizon Executive Summary

The way I see it, in the Middle/High School years, very little academic content motivates students more than their social life. At that age, a day can be the single worse or the single best day of their lives. What they learned in math or science on any given day is overshadowed by what their best friend said or did, or even what that special someone posted on their Facebook profile that morning. Each student’s relationship/status with their own circle of friends is above anything else.

I am not claiming students don’t learn. They do. It’s just that there are other more important things going on in their lives that trump any academic information we try to give them. This is where is gets really easy for me. Students come into a computer lab hungry for information, one they can use to get better at their social “job/life”. Teaching Communications Media in the Middle School, I get to walk them through how to create graphics, publish information via their own website, and how to create voice/video recordings they can then share to the world via YouTube or Vimeo or their own website. In the Digital Moviemaking class in the High School, students learn about making movies, creating stories and how to interpret composition in still images as well as images in motion. These two classes that I teach already engage the student even before I say one word. They are hungry to know more. This I take advantage of!

This is why my students have an A+ when they come into my classroom. They walk into my class with intense interest and motivation. They are willing to make really incredible mistakes during the first few weeks, and their work gets better as time moves on. They work on the creative as well as the technical, simultaneously and interchangeably. They stick to deadlines, they write, they edit, they manage themselves, they find ways to move the story forward even if one whole scene must be taken out during post production. They make decisions, they mess up, they ask questions, and go right back to make it better. I sit back and I enjoy!

More later as the plan comes together….

Barcelona, Sunday morning, in the middle of a sigh!

Anyone who knows me will have undoubtedly heard my “fortunate” comments around work, life, family, travel, opportunities, or other things-life at some point. Yes, self righteous, I know, but there is no other way I can express how I feel when I live these scenes.

Not long ago, in the late 70´s and early 80´s while I was still a kid in El Salvador, life was very different. Having no money, my family could barely afford to dress me in the required school uniform. One of my older sisters was a dress-maker and she made me my one uniform which I had to care for in order for it to hold up the whole week of school. Shoes were worn until the sole came off. Pencils where used until the eraser what the only thing between little fingers trying to write. Clases where multi-grade multi-age classes where one teacher was in charge of 30+ students of many different grades/ages. Going home presented the challenge of staying away from army soldiers who would, at will, take young boys into an immediate draft. Forget about bullies, I don’t remember any bullying problems back then.

Afternoons or weekend walks to the center of town often included a must-visit to the town hall where the day’s previous casualties of the ongoing civil war where laid out in wooden boxes in public view such that families could come down to claim the loved one(s)’s body. It was part of growing up.Though morbid, it became my source of news for the day and I got to go home to tell my older sister who I’d seen. If I knew the family of the deceased I would pay a visit to their house to let someone know that they should go to city hall to claim their loved one. I didn’t know better.

Sleeping in a one-room, one light-bulb room, my bed space was right below my sisters’ bed, on the floor. My memory of childhood dreams is filled with middle-of-the-nigh waking up biting down on the bed sheet that served as my pillow as I rarely went to bed with a full stomach and the hunger and dreams of eating would wake me. So, now that I’ve traveled, done, seen, eaten, slept, loved, life is sweet. Seeing the sky every time I step out of my apartment is a delight, it is something to savor. Walking the streets and hearing and smelling the lazy Sunday come to life brings a smile to my lips. I can’t help it.

Education is the number one practice throughout the world that stands a chance of truly improving the lives of us all. It is through education that we have the opportunity to instill in children a sense of respect for the unknown, inquiry, understanding and awe. Awe at the possibilities of the human mind, the creative power of our brain and of the imaginative resourcefulness of our forbearers. It is through formal education that we introduce young students to the wonders of nature, the grandeur and mystery of our galaxy and to the potential of creation and imagination within them.

It is my belief that in formal education teachers are placed in a privileged position. We are experts, guides, leaders, specialists, and at times, even heroes. Indeed, teachers are superheroes. With that designation comes a great responsibility to use any superpowers responsibly, and to use them to do good. It is up to us to engage and to interest. It is on us to create a channel for the energy, hunger and creativity within each student who walks into our classroom or teaching space. It is our responsibility if a student falls out of love with a subject that at first seemed interesting to them. It becomes our job to keep up with students’ pace if indeed they are interested in the subject we are teaching them, as they will want to know more and more.

Teaching is an incredible specialty. Anyone who takes it lightly aught not be in a classroom. The young mind always wants to know more, wants to experiment, is eager to create, and is open to learning from mistakes. It is this last component of learning that needs to be at the top of the list of any good teacher; that students feel safe to make mistakes in the classroom. A perfectly timed mistake is the single best teacher in life, and thus should be a formal part of any classroom. Students should be fearless when entering new territory of learning, they should want to do it all, and they should have comfort in knowing that their superhero-teacher will be there to support them when they realize a mistake has been made. I love teaching!

Often, Tech Directors come into a small school community as a foreign species. We are technologically savvy, experienced in the workings of day-to-day classroom instruction, and are able to navigate quite comfortably within the hierarchy of the political makeup. For the most part, however, we are transient. It takes a lot of effort to get a team to become a team with you included in it. Most often, Tech Directors will end up serving the role of an outside “manager” to an already established team. Team members know that in the end they are the ones left to deal with the long-term effect of the Tech Director’s decisions. This can make it very difficult to gel a team together.

This is what I’ve done in the past to get teams to collaborate and to work together more closely. More importantly, teams made up of smaller teams within such as a larger tech office which takes care of training teachers, providing tech support, coding applications and perhaps offering other types of services to the community.

I’ve been very fortunate in that for the past 13 years or so I have been asked to come into a place to build the infrastructure thus giving me latitude of bringing a team together to accomplish it within a given period of time. The number one thing I look for when bringing in people to form a team is interest. Of course, each person should be people-friendly, able to interact and work within a group, and responsible/professional/showered, etc….but nothing works better to bring a team of learners together than each of them being able to dig deeper into things they are actually interested in. So, each member of the team is interested in expanding their understanding in something they hold a common interest in. Yes, they should all be tech savvy/friendly, but they should also be interested in either doing more things in moviemaking, playing a particular sport, going out to venture into hiking/running/biking, or something. Anything that is either connected to – or not – to their collective daily work that becomes the glue for the team to really bond when not seriously at work. They should all be interested in knowing more about something their colleagues are equally interested in. If I find myself running a team I have not brought myself together, finding out what their common interests are is my one priority coming in.

Team member interests becomes that social glue which yields results in the workplace during the normal operation of the team. Whenever any of them are in a bind, others will come to help. When weekend hours, or evening support is needed you’ll notice you will have less resistance. This helps in so many ways. When negotiating contracts with providers, learning the political landscape of your school, knowing which members of the community are key in getting your mission accomplished, and many other things. Your team mates know more than you as they are on the ground day-in and day-out and thus can give you a heads-up whenever action is needed to fix a situation or to prevent disaster. Always look to them for advice before making major changes they will need to enact.

Going bowling, hiking, to amusement parks, skydiving together, traveling, movies, pool, a bar, trying out different restaurants to get a better taste of a different culture, r/c cars, robotics, slot racing or videomaking are some of the things I’ve had teams come together for periodically in the past. These activities work. Moreover they help the incoming – often foreign – director build camaraderie amongst team members.