In all honesty, working in international schools, I haven’t had too much trouble starting the projects I’m interested in.

One thing I have done at all schools is clarify to parents, teachers and administrators that absolutely no personal information will be shared online (last names, phone numbers, pictures, the usual) and that’s usually more than enough. We have the parents sign a clear permission slip and we’re off and rolling – while following a standard online safety policy.

For teachers, I recently wrote a post with a list of tips on how to facilitate successful globally collaborative projects:

http://mscofino.edublogs.org/2007/12/20/a-step-by-step-guide-to-global-collaborations/

I hope that helps!

Kim

Thanks, I saw your draft slides and uploaded mine too. I think I went a little overboard … hoping for some honest feedback from everyone before we hit the airwaves next week.

I noticed you run WordPress in your district. Awesome! I presume you’ve got a multiuser install there? I love WordPress, its power and flexibility as a publishing platform is, to me, unmatched.

-kj-

I will refer you and your readers to a column, Advisory Advice, that is now, gulp!, 10 years old, but still contains what I see as the successful elements of an advisory committee:

http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/advisory-advice.html

I recognize that such groups can be difficult to organize. In smaller schools where people might be “committee-ed out,” I would suggest asking an existing committee to take on some of the policy, planning and budgeting responsibilities that accompany tech implementation. A site council or building leadership team.

If it is clear that these groups are ADVISORY, not rule making, there should be little for administrators to fear.

All the best,

Doug

Thanks for chiming in. As a veteran drum-beater, can you shed some light on how you’d recommend building said committee … and I don’t mean ‘write the memo and invite people.’ ;-) Most everything and nearly everyone resists change and that is, in my view at least, the main stumbling block here. How can we make the powers-that-be comfortable with establishing such an entity? Who gets involved? Where do they find the time? There have to be exemplars out there somewhere…

I realize this is a huge topic, and if you want to blog about it in response and leave a trackback, that’s fine. This little bitty comment window isn’t very much fun to write in!

Best, kj

I beat this drum often, but I believe good tech policy decisions are made by an advisory committee with a wide range of stake holders, not the tech director. There will always need to be a balance of safety and freedom, and as far as I can tell, the only way to achieve such balance is by many voices being heard.

More if interested at:
http://www.ciconline.org/c/document_library/get_file?folderId=98&name=THSum07RulesforSocialWeb.pdf

Good luck with your presentation! Sounds like a good one.

Doug

You raise a very good point, we think of ourselves as being overworked, but often, many others in the district are too, particularly those who control the “gates.”

It’s a vicious cycle. If more teachers were using the technologies, the district would be more open. That’s hard for teachers to do, since the technologies are restricted at school to begin with. So, the motivated folks, such as yourself, spend copious amounts of personal time learning and exploring so they can be informed when asked by an administrator as to why it’s of value. That’s where this breaks down. If things were more open in the first place, teachers would have more flexibility and time to explore during the school day. But then, with network defenses down, there would be a greater chance of inappropriate use by students. It’s the ultimate Catch-22…

-kj-

Those are terrific results! To what do you attribute the transformation? So many districts provide the workshops you describe (though YOU led the one in your district which I am sure made ALL the difference) … in most cases, people come, get the brain-dump, process a minimal portion of the information, implement an even smaller fraction, and the resulting pace of change is … painfully slow.

Is there something specific about your environment that made your group more conducive to “seeing the Web 2.0 light” once you showed them the way?

How open is your district in terms of Web 2.0 tools? What if anything is blocked? How strong is your AUP? Have you had any problems with inappropriate use and how were they handled?

Thanks!

-kj-

Thanks for commenting! I just favorited your Networked Teacher graphic, and plan to use it in an upcoming preso, if not CoSN, several others I’ve got in the pipeline. Credit will be yours, of course!

I’ve quoted the NSBA study a lot, but as you know, it’s getting assailed as a bit of a sham:

http://www.ncs-tech.org/?p=1012

The question to me here is what communications need to exist between teachers and administrators to open these tools up in ways that don’t put the district at risk?

For every district allowing blogs, there are so many more that have had bad experiences with inappropriate content either posted or linked (my favorite: the ‘next blog’ link on Blogger.com blogs). There are workarounds for that, but, it doesn’t take much for the typical administrator to adopt a Pokemon-style defense. “Gotta Block ‘em All!”

That’s what I’d like to queue up with these people at my webinar…how to establish those lines of communication.

-kj-