Schoolbinder blog

Step Up Your Goal Consciousness.

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:21:05 GMT

Step Up Your Goal Consciousness.

Posted by Roderick on February 23, 2010

Let’s be honest. A million articles and books have been written about the importance of goal setting. Everyone agrees that goal setting increases your chances of success. If we agree on that then we also agree that individual goal setting increases a student’s chances of success. I’m not just saying that. Robert Marzano (2003), What Works in Schools, found that student learning can increase anywhere from 18 to 41 percentile points when goal setting and monitoring is used to guide instruction. That is huge!

Many departments, school districts and individual schools are starting to realize that somehow, goal setting needs to be implemented. It is becoming more and more common to see school-wide improvement goals. Most school goals, class goals and individual student goals are set with the right intentions. The problem is that, in many cases, those goals are set and then slowly forgotten.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that educational goal setting isn’t easy! It takes time to analyze data and assess your students. Then you need to set up actual goals. After that you need to devise the strategy for achieving those goals. Don’t forget your measurements either. Without your measurements you will never know if you have achieved your goal or not. If you really want to do things right then you should all work cooperatively. In order to work cooperatively you need to ‘put yourself out there’ and make your goal, strategy and measurements known to your colleagues. I’m sorry to say it but that was all the easiest part of goal setting. Setting goals and sharing goals makes them ‘official’ but it does not drive behavior.

To drive behavior we need to be goal conscious. We need to constantly monitor progress. We need to revise our strategies. We need to adjust our programs. I am talking about change. We need to Get Uncomfortable! I know it is not easy. Going back to how you used to do things is easy. In order to leverage the power of goal setting and make real progress and improvements with our students, goal setting can not be ‘what’ we do. Goal setting and monitoring should be ingrained into the fabric of the school; part of the school culture and class culture.

Step up your goal consciousness!

Get Uncomfortable!

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:09:08 GMT

Get Uncomfortable!

Posted by Roderick on February 23, 2010

Tomorrow I want you to do things in a way you normally wouldn’t do. Try brushing your teeth with the opposite hand, lock the front door with the opposite hand, etc. You get the picture. Just make sure you don’t drive on the opposite side of the road! How long will you stick to this before you go back to the old way? It’s easier to stick with what is comfortable.

I know there is no advantage to brushing your teeth with a different hand so it only makes sense to doing things the easier way. What about in our professional lives? We all know that technology has found ways to make our everyday tasks easier. It may not be the answer to everything but it is the answer to many things. So, why is it that we work with people that never change? We all know people that are using antiquated systems to get things done. Why? Because they are comfortable doing things the old way.

Stretch yourself. Start learning new things. Be honest with youself. Ask yourself what it is that you can learn to make your job easier. Do it the new way. While you are doing it you’ll notice that you are paying closer attention to what you are doing. When it starts to get tough resist going back to the old comfortable way. So, go get uncomfortable!

Let's hear the results: #uncomfortablemonday

There Are Two "P"s in Collaboration

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:04:42 GMT

There Are Two "P"s in Collaboration

Posted by Roderick on July 13, 2009

Collaboration is an essential element in designing a powerful learning environment for schools. When designed properly, a collaborative network will cultivate relationships that thrive on the exchange and formation of knowledge. An effective platform will provide students and teachers the opportunity to reflect, discuss, agree, debate and challenge their existing knowledge. How is collaboration designed?

Purpose

Purpose can guide decision making. It is the motivation to improve. It is why you take action. It gives meaning to your actions. Collaboration will not exist without a meaningful purpose.

When students are involved in academic goal setting they take ownership of their education. Standards based goal setting gives students and teachers a clear picture of where they currently stand and where they need to be. Once they understand what needs to be learned, the standards and goals have meaning. It gives them a purpose.

Platform

Collaboration occurs through communication. The proper platform will allow individuals or groups to interact. Whether it is a face-to-face conversation or an online application, there needs to be a vehicle for collaboration to occur.

Like doctors practice medicine and educators practice teaching, we at Schoolbinder practice collaboration. Schoolbinder was developed to allow users to easily set multiple goals for multiple people. That is the easy part. Managing the setting, monitoring, and approval of hundreds of goals, while actively collaborating with hundreds of users, is the hard part. Schoolbinder is built around a collaboration framework. We keep in constant communication with the users and actively make changes to the interface. Eventually the user interface disappears and the collaboration becomes natural.

Schoolbinder is creating a scalable collaboration application that will allow students and teachers to build a strong personal learning-network of users that will work together to collectively increase their knowledge. It is a learning community where knowledge grows exponentially.