A successful district PD day

August 15, 2014,  I took 17, 819 steps before my fitbit died.  It was a long day!  Thank god I had my #petk12adminteam there to help me.  The plan was to have the afternoon of workshops at my school.  This turned into all elementary and half of the secondary on site all morning.  Then, all 400 teachers there all afternoon.

The schedule was key.  I worked with the district office to create a schedule for the day.  I learned a lot about how to put out the schedule and the changes I would make next time in the structure of the document.  I tried to take a lead from #gafesummit, but I ran out of time to pull it off.


The morning went well.  Teachers were in the classrooms working on one of the three district goals or the year. The internet seemed ok and there were no real complaints. Lunch came the district organized a BBQ for all the teachers.  This went well and then the Superintendent addressed all teachers in the gym.



The afternoon was full of workshops.  When we hosted #nbcue in the spring, I didn't attend or teach any workshops.  I wanted to be available to solve problems.  This time I decided I wanted to teach.  My sessions on Google Draw went well.  I need to practice to #gafesummitt Marin in October.  However, not being around for tech/facility support was a problem.


I realized I should have had some of my secondary admin folks help out a little more.  I need to remember to ask for help.  I also realized how united the elementary admin are in their efforts.  I feel so honored to be included with the group of admin.

Going 1:1... and not going gray! The Roll out

Our chromebooks arrived really late.  Three days before schools started, to be honest.  There was no way we were going to get the 900 chromebooks unboxed, taken out of the plastic, scanned into google's management system, organized and to the schools without some help.

Help came in the form of our amazing admin team.  Elementary, Junior High, High School, Alt Ed, and District office all came together for 7 hours and unboxed, took out of the plastic, tagged and loaded into the management system 700 chromebooks.  As you can see, we even made 4 years help us!

There was no way we could have done this without the help of Ron Everett, Steve Bolman, Mila Kell,   Deb Richardson, Fran Hansel, Linda Scheele, Bennett Holley, Becky Lofton, Sheila Garvey, Catina Haugen, Amy Fadeji, Emily Kleinholz, Ashley Williams, and Nancy Emanuale.

Then it was time to roll out the chromebooks to the kids.  It took us 2 days to organize 476 chromebooks. The first day was spent organizing the chromebooks into classes (they arrived not sorted).  This took 3 people to complete.  The second day was checking to see who had not attended a chromebook orientation meeting and marking those chromebooks.  Students did not receive their chromebook until they attended. (My last 2 chromebook meetings were packed!) The last step was putting the chromebooks into the cases and putting labels on the cases.  We did all hands on deck for this part.  We had 3 hours and 8 people working on this.  We hit the target.  At 3pm on Friday we were done.  Roll out started Monday at 8:30am.

During the actual roll out, our Assistant Principal, Mr. Holley, addressed the students.  He reminded them of the rules about the chromebook, where you could use them, to charge them, and to be careful.  Then students were taken into a classroom where we passed out the chromebook.  We made sure every student could log into their account and wrote their email address and password on a piece of paper  with also had the chromebook rules on it. They left ready to go!  Four months into the process and the kiddos finally have the chromebooks.

The "we" is the PCS 1:1 team of +ReneeSemik (@ReneeKSemik),  +LoriDeen (@lorideen), +JaneEscobedo (@jescobedo101) and me (Emily Dunnagan).

#GAFESUMMIT reflection

I love google summit.  It is always so great to see my favorite presenters and to learn new things.  Coming of the the heals of #ISTE2014, I was worried about tech conference burn out.  I really was coming to socialize with my peeps and have a good time.  I also, of course, wanted to see my #googlecrush Jim Sill (@mistersill).

When you surround yourself with all these fabulous people, you have to learn a thing or two.  The first thing I learned was, I do know a lot.  I know I have a lot to learn, but I often doubt my knowledge.  I need to be more confident about this.

I need to put myself out more.  I have never presented at a conference, I am not nervous about it.  I present in my school, district and area all the time. Just never wanted to present at a conference, I am selfish and just want to learn.  After my ISTE and GAFE experiences, it is my turn to share.

Another take away I had was learning about Google Art Project, part of the google cultural institute.  This site is amazing! Over 70,000 pieces of art in the collection, virtual tours of museum, primary source documents, it goes on and on.  There is so many possibilities for use of this in the classroom.  You can take students on tours of museums and see art for the time period you are studying.  In science, you can look at the different materials art is made out of gold, bronze, metals, paint, and connect History to the metal.  Such as, why are most bronze pieces from a particular time period?  In Math, you can find art pieces that show fractions have students use this to demonstrate understanding. One of the most powerful things is you can create collections.  You can link videos to these collections or add text.  The possibilities are huge!! Here is a link to a math gallery or this example has a video in it.   Now, I have to figure out how to share with my staff.

The other big take away I had was about Google Maps Engine Lite.   This app allows you to create maps with data from lots of different sources.  You need to check this out. It can be used in any curricular area.
English: students collect locations, pictures and information from a story and plot it on the map
Science: students research earthquakes and volcanos and plot this on a map
History: Take a trip through the major battles in a war.
PE: Running logs with pictures
Math: DATA! (Need I say more).

I learned so much more.  But these take-aways are my "Top two".  Check them out.

My summer part 2

So, it is the first Friday of the summer I haven't work.  It is 10am, I am sitting on my sofa, with a cat in my lap, in my PJs, and what am I doing? Working!! I finally have some time to reflect on my #ISTE2014 experience.

One of the workshops I went to was the NASSP digital principals of the year.  They are Daisy Dyer Duerr (@DaisyDyerDuerr). Jason Markey (@JasonMMsrkey) and Derek McCoy (@mccoyderek).  I was so inspired by them.  They all have 1:1 or BYOD schools.  They are where I want to be in 2 years.

I heard this great idea from NASSP digital principal of the year, Jason Markey, called innovation time at #ISTE2014.  I loved it.  It was on the tails of a tweet one of my teachers sent me on June 9, three days after school was out.  She was at the #iesonoma event and tweeted "To admin: when teachers say they don't have time to collaborate, they don't."  This tweet really stuck with me.  At first, I was annoyed, because it was three days after students got out of school and I was in master schedule hell.  I was like "cut me a break".  But, hearing Jason talk about innovation time, brought me back to that tweet.  It showed me how I could support that teacher and all my teachers.

Basically, the nuts and bolts of innovation time is to create an innovation calendar, a Google Calendar that will have appointment slots displaying when either Bennett (my AP) or I are available to substitute for a teacher.  We plan on having 50+ periods available for teachers to choose from throughout the year when we will sub for their class to create a 20% release (1 of their 5 classes) from their teaching assignment for the day to work on an idea they have.  Teachers simply have to reserve the appointment slot on the calendar and then make an appointment to meet with us the day before to discuss their sub plans and share with us the idea they are working on.  

So, in my PJs, on the sofa, with the cat this Friday morning, I am making my presentation and working on the write up.  

My summer part 1

Every year I take at least 4 weeks off to vacation and recharge.  However, for the first time, I don't get this.  My summer is packed with work stuff and I am struggling with my feelings  about it.

I was asked to help my district plan a 1:1 pilot.  Part of this planning process was attending ISTE in Atlanta.  I went to ISTE in 2012 and was overwhelmed.  This time, I knew what to expect and how to navigate it.  I went with a focus, to attend all the 1:1 workshops I could.  It just scared me more.  It hit me like a ton of bricks that what we are doing is changing education.  I walked away with a lot to think about.  Some of the quotes from ISTE that inspired me were:

1. 1:1 does not meet the learners' needs, the learning it can provide does.

2. Technology is not the silver bullet.  It is a tool to enable and support great learning.

3. Collaboration is the new normal. Education is an individual sport in a team base world.

4. Iteration is the new failure.

5. Remember your end goal is to change instruction and develop thinkers!

Now, I have to work with my team to do this really big thing and act like we "got this".  The quotes above are driving my thoughts as we plan PD and the roll out of 1:1 in the 8th grade.  

After attending a bunch if 1:1 workshops, I went to a couple to inspire me (and I needed this!). I got up at 6am to make sure I had a seat for Jamie Casap (@jcasap).  I have heard him speak a few different times and he always motivates me.  I needed to connect 1:1 to my love for education.  He did this.  As I am now working with my colleagues to impliment 1:1, a quote from him runs through my head "disrespect for the impossible."  Because we are educators, it is our superpower, and nothing is impossible!

Technology is my PD superhero!

My district has the hardest time getting our secondary schools to agree on PD.  All the schools are in such different places that it is hard to come up with a plan and do "something" together.

On Monday we had a district wide PD day.  The plans for this day changed a few times and finally, on the Thursday before, the district settled on teachers working together at their sites.  So, this meant I needed to be in 7 rooms at once and overseeing 7 different groups.  Here comes technology to the rescue!

First, you have to start the day on the correct foot.  I had bagels and coffee for everyone to enjoy while they visited from 7:30-8:30am.  This was great.  I saw so many teachers in the staff lounge I never see there. Then, the day began.

I emailed staff on Friday what my expectations for the day were.  I set up a schedule for the day.  On the schedule, I included a link to the backchannel run on todaysmeet.com.  I asked departments to post their goals for the day, evidence of their work, and resources other may find useful.  Then, I would comment back on the backchannel when I was in other rooms, always encouraging groups.  As I moved around the school, the departments were doing some great work around reading and incorporating reading in all the content areas.  PE was even working on a video lecture series about health and nutrition for their students to watch in a blended environment.

After lunch, I delivered milk and cookies to all staff members.  A little sugar in the afternoon is always helpful.  I also wanted to make sure people were still on track.  A whole day of PD without a devoted leader can get off track quick.  Everyone was right on schedule and were working towards their goals they set..

In my email on Friday, I also included a link to a google doc.  I asked departments to post their completed products for the day on this document.  Then I asked them to comment of their colleagues work.  I really wanted them to see what other departments were doing, so they can integrate with each other.

The departments did post of the google doc, but no commenting happened.  Upon reflecting on this, I decided to have another go at it.  So, I send out a thank you email to my staff for the amazing day.  I also included the link to the doc and reminded them to take some time this week to comment.  I need to remember that it takes time for teachers to feel comfortable commenting on others work in public.  However, if we want the students to do it, we need to do it as well.  I started the process by making a few comments of the doc, so no one would have to be first.

As I start planning PD for 2014-15, I will remember my #pearlofwisdom from this day.  Backchannels work!  Google docs work! Growing culture takes time, but can be done.

The best staff meeting...

We had a big decision to make at the staff meeting, whether or not to change the cell phone policy.  The seed was planted via twitter one Sunday morning at 7am.  One of my #eduawesome teachers tweeted me about cell phone policies and the remainder the day was a twitter conversation about how to make change in this area.

Making decisions as a large staff is a challenge.  I am always struggling to find a way to make sure all voices are heard.  My staff meeting last week was an example of a ¨principal win¨.

The first step was discussing it at the Principal advisory committee meeting.  I made sure that teacher who started this was there as well as a good representation of the staff.  This committee decide to move forward and take the issue to the staff.

A week before the staff meeting, I had done some research about cell phone use in class for educational purposes.  I sent out the staff meeting agenda with the links and information about different cell phone policies.  I asked my staff to inform themselves.

The cell phone conversation went well.  All 50 on my teachers logged onto google moderator (conversation that occurred is here) and wrote questions.  Then, I gave them time to vote on questions they wanted to discuss as a group.  The conversation was rich and deep, just what I was looking for.  However, the online conversation is what surprised me.  The "quiet" staff members felt open to replying online.  The "quiet" staff members asked great questions.  I finally figured out a way to hear from them!!! SO EXCITED.

I will definitely use google moderator again for staff discussions.  It was a great way for all 50+ teachers to work together and make an informed decision.  Thanks +Sergio Villegas (@coach_sv) for the google moderator tip!

A life long learner, I am

We never stop learning. One of my goals with the blog is to have time to reflect on my learning and record ways I can use it now and in the future.  There are many ways I have been expanding my learning opportunities this year that have helped me with this.

1. Twitter: I have become more active in curating content off twitter.  Finding a system to save and organize this information was a challenge at first.  It also took a few failures before I found a system that works for me.  Don't be afraid to try a few different curation tools before you find your fits. I suggested my method to a colleague and it did not work with her style.  What she does, did not work for my needs.

2. More twitter: Connections I have made from twitter have be huge in my professional life. They have answered questions, provide information and asked questions that have caused me to rethink or look at a problem differently.  Some even have come to my district/school to visit and help. Thanks to @mistersill, @awesomecoachv, and @frontrowceo.

3. Conversations: talking out issues with trusted colleagues is the answer.  Having a critical friend or two to chat with is powerful.  Thank you @lorideen for being this for me.

@awesomecoachv came to do a site visit right before fall break.  The conversations we had during the visit we powerful and force me (a good thing) to reflect on practices we are using at my site and how to reframe them.  Sometime having the face to face connect allows for those deep conversations that you can't have in 140 characters (even though I have seen a lot of powerful and meaningful tweets).

4. Conferences: Obviously the more traditional method of PD.  There is something about the energy of a conference that makes you excited, renewed and so tired all at same time.  You return from a conference full of ideas and want to implement them.  Then, the energy of the people and the collaboration about it ends and you don't get everything done you had hoped for.

This weekend I attended the #elearns conference.  I walked away with so many ideas to take back to my staff.  I also went to see some speakers I know are great (@CtuckerEnglish) just to hear new things and feed off their energy.  

5. Time:  What was great about this conference was it ended in the early afternoon and we stayed until the next day.  The gift of time to share with colleagues, socialize and have work sessions was great.  We were able to discuss a #PDparty we are having on December 16 and plan it in person. Other members learned how to make a GHO on air and other tricks.  

So, my #pearlofwisdom is blending twitter and conferences is the way to go. It helps keep the energy alive and the ideas following.  It also gives you access to help who were at the conference and may not live near you.  Using technology to move your own learning forward it just one of the many benefits of tech.  How do you blended technology with another resource to improve your learning?

It was better then I ever thought it would be...

So, I have to admit, the change to Common Core SCARES ME.  I love the idea of it.  I love what it brings to schools, but getting there is so hard!  I have 50  teachers and only 2 administrators to do the work of 100s.   I added Common Core days to our meeting schedule and thought, "I'm done.  I did my part."  So, the September meeting came and I did my thing in the office.  I left the departments to work and change things.  THEN I GOT THEIR NOTES.  They were so honest about their confusions and needs.  They were open with me about needing guidance or help.  I felt like a failure.  It was time to rethink my plan (of lack of plan).

So, I drove into the Common Core.  I had spent the last year learning Math because my Assistant Superintendent said "I need you to run the district secondary math committee to move us to CCSS."  So, I did and learned all about CCSS math.  The result, I know tons about Math and nothing about ELA.  I have spent the past month going to conferences, reading the standards (not as bad as I thought they would be), watching videos and webinars, and learning.  I spent time trying to figure out how I can help my staff.  We organized the meetings and then it hit me, I can't be everywhere are once.  How am I going to do this, help move the staff forward and meet their needs?

Thank you #fallcue!  Here is my Pearl of wisdom for the day. At one of the workshops, a presenter suggested using a backchannel during department meetings.  A light bulb went off!  I set up a Today's meet for the day and encourage participation.  I post some questions on it to get the departments started.  It took off.  The departments were using it to ask questions to each other.  They were setting up future meetings. They asked for help or advise from each other.  They gave each other shout outs! It was better then I ever thought it would be! (Hence the title of today's post).  I will totally use this again!

What a day!

I know I started my last post this way, but, I LOVE MY JOB!!!  Today was an epic day for me.  I am a huge fan of Google.  I think that the introduction of Google tools to schools and what those tools allow us to do in the classroom will change education.  They are a key part of moving from teaching facts to teaching thinking.

Today was a Common Core early release day.  We sent the kiddos home at noon and the teachers went to trainings.  I really felt we needed to bring someone into the district to help all of us, teachers and admin, see the connections between technology, creativity, and where our students are today.  Jim Sill was our guy.  I should make the disclaimer that, yes, I do have a Google crush on him.  However, what he did today will help us make a culture shift in our district.  

We started the day with a workshop for principals.  He walked us through different Google tools and how to use them.  He pointed out how technology and Common Core are connected.  It was great.  Then I got to have my "starstuck" moment and have lunch with Jim.  Then he taught a workshop before being the closing speaker for the day.  Afterwards, a bunch of admin and a few board members went to a restaurant for happy hour and appetizers.  It was great networking.  Having this much time with Jim, I am going to be on a Google high for easily the next week.

During workshop time, I taught 2 workshops.  I told my staff, not to come, they have heard me too much. They need to go see other people.  It was really interesting working with teachers from other schools.  They are at all levels, demonstrating that as a leadership team, we have not come up with a plan to help all our teachers learn.  Some were afraid of the technology where others were eager to learn more.  There was the fear of  "what do I teach" if students can look up the information.  We had a long talk about teaching them to think, not facts.  It was very enlightening for me and made me appreciate my staff even more.  

The pearl of wisdom for this post is mixing "expects" and "teacher leaders" makes for great PD.  Having different teachers lead classes with Jim finishing the day, was perfect!  A big shout out to Jim to for making this day great!

Pearl(s) of wisdom

I hated writing as a child.  I was one of those children who would read everything they could, but I threw tantrums when it came to writing anything.  I remember full-on crying fits with my mother sitting there, waiting for me to get tired, and helping me through it.  To this day, I dislike to write.  The fear of writing and being judge for my grammar, sentence structure, etc (I was a science and math teacher people!) is overwhelming but I can't let it stop me.   So, why is this "hater of writing" doing a blog? I blame Kristen Swanson.

I have been reading her book, Professional Learning in the Digital Age, and it is inspiring. I have been feeling lost about my personal PD and how to get my secondary admin team on board to do anything. Kristen spends the first chapter talking about the cycle of professional learning (User Generated Learning) in today's digital world.  The cycle is (paraphrased by me) gathering information, reflecting, and applying.  I realized after reading Chapter 1, I am really good at gathering information.  I love twitter! I would say I am addicted at times.  I love reading blogs, books and articles (I am sure this is shocking from the girl who just said she loves to read).  But, I was skipping step two, reflection, and moving on to step 3, implementation. I am great at reflecting orally with friends, colleagues, etc.  However, after reading the first part of her book, I realized my reflection needed it to be more formal.   So here is my formal attempt on reflection.  Let's hope I can keep it up.

On page 4, Kristen references a website to help you organize all the resources you find on twitter (and yes, I am past page 4) called pearltrees (www.pearltrees.com) .  This is your #pearlofwidsom for the post.  You have to get a pearltrees.  To the right is a start of my pearltree.  I used to mail myself tweets that I found interesting.  Then my inbox was full of emails from myself of things.  I have a little OCD about my inbox, so then I created a folder for emailed tweets. This site is cleaning up my inbox and folders big time.  There is even a chrome extension to allow you to post to your pearltrees without leaving the blog/page you are on.  It makes my twitter so much more organized.  This OCD girl is happy!

My last taken away from chapter 1 of this book is a quote.  "Learning with technology is more important that learning about technology."  We have to remember that tech is there to help us, not be the reason we don't use it.