What are some key areas to focus on in an effort to enhance a schools’ virtual presence?

Reflection based on Objective 1.2 (Leardership in Technology/ MEd International Education with an Emphasis in Educational Technology)

"Students will complete a constructive critique of their current international schools’ virtual presence on the web, social media and online publications and share what strength and weakness the schools virtual presence has."

What are some key areas to focus on in an effort to enhance your school schools’ virtual presence?

A strength: a well-designed very visual dynamic website.

My school's presence on the web, social media and online publications.... exists! (And that is already an achievement). A list of mediums include a very well designed visual dynamic website. Accounts in several social networks (facebook, twitter and google+ being the most followed) and several online publications. All of these are constantly being changed. New information and pictures are being added, and that is another importan achievement, as information needs to be updated or otherwise becomes obsolete.

A strength: presence in the social networks such as Facebook.

Being a private school most of the information available was directed to advertise the school to prospect clients and this is, in my opinion, a weakness, and an area we should focus on. As a school we need to find ways of sharing information (checklists, grades, reports, events, etc). We have made much progress in this area. Many teachers complained about an overload of information* and this resulted in the creation of an intranet based in the use of google applications (docs/drive and calendar mainly) in November 2012 (previous directory attempt in April 2012). That way we can now share easily information about events and documents.   

A strength: online videos showing some of the student's preferred activities.

A weakness: different internal databases.

However, this intranet lacks of a solid structure as it has to bee used in combination with other software/intranets (PowerSchool for grades and reports and MagicMountain for Student Life (events, infractions, check-in lists, etc.) purposes mainly). It has been discussed in several staff meetings that the inconsistency of our different systems of information channels and databases is making more difficult the internal communication and it difficults staff training on the use of technology. 

A weakness: different internal databases.

It was also observed that both MagicMountain and Powerschool required launching/downloading software as well as databases, making the process painfully slow. Both of these applications might have been very useful in the past to fulfil part of our needs, but there are solutions which are cheaper, faster and more efficient.

A weakness: different internal databases.

An effort to improve: a starting point for an intranet.

I have personally designed an intranet to merge all of these applications in one single address and even provided details of a project with costs well under the budget of my school. My objectives (improving students' learning and teacher's support) did not quite match the school's (Marketing, Accounts, Business Plans...).** 

This project is now open to any school. Please forward this blog's address to whom you think it might concern. 
The project consists in the creation of an intranet programmed in PHP and using MySQL databases. A PHP generated intranet using MySQL databases could be very useful to any school. No software or databases need to be downloaded as the duo PHP/MySQL is cloud-based.
A friendly graphic interface can make this intranet very easy to use. Teachers, students, parents and other users can have access to a personalized portal once they login this intranet with their username and password (which can be the same as used to login the school's LAN, if available). All google applications (Calendar, docs, email, etc) can easily be integrated in this site.
This intranet would be able to execute efficiently any task currently executed by the different systems in use: MagicMountain, PowerSchool or Power Teacher Gradebook or equivalent packages. These include bulletins, grades, comments, check lists, database queries/printouts, etc. It would also be able to execute tasks which none of the other systems in use can execute. For example check-in reminders for students or an online live schedule. This can be done with a high level of security from any (previously accepted) machine with internet access. 

The cost is very low, compared with the costs of maintaining old-fashioned packages.  A first investment of around  twenty thousand Euros, depending on individual school's needs. A tailor-made intranet can be adapted to fit ANY school's needs and it can be operational in three monthw (a previous testing (Beta/sandbox version) can be available much earlier. 


I believe that such a useful, reliable, easy to use intranet could also be shown partially (some data protected) to outsiders, who would then see how well the school works inside and want to become part of it. 

Please note that a PHP/MySQL dynamic intranet can easily handle the number of users of a school's intranet (say, one thousand) and its frequency of use (several times a day). Facebook works with PHP dynamic pages feeding from MySQL databases!

Alvaro Serra

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* See Reflections based on the video* ¨It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure.¨
http://leadership-technology.blogspot.ch/2013/01/reflections-based-on-video-its-not.html

** See article "Why is having a clearly defined "Why" narrative so important to the success of an IT Department?"

http://leadership-technology.blogspot.ch/2013/01/the-why-of-why.html

Reflections based on the video* ¨It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure.¨

Reflections based on the video

¨It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure.¨ 

by  Clay Shirky (shirky.com) 

Clay Shriky reveals in his video a very common frustration in the 21st century. Many people talk about it. Many people complain about it. Many people moan, cry, shout, get upset....but do nothing about it. In his video Clay Shirky transforms a problem "Information Overload" into a solution "Filter".... and suggests ways to adapt to the 21st Century.

True, this century is not a walk in the park, but we shouldn't jump off the cliff either..... unless we get a parachute. And there are many models and varieties: Shirky mentions filters in his video, and encourages their use.

I would like to add that there are many techniques available to avoid the need of a filter:

For example I have several email addresses. I don't give everybody the same. My family and friends might have one. My work colleagues another. If I need to register in a website I fear might use my email to send spam I use a different one. That way if that particular address gets spam I can just cancel it. The number of email addresses one can have is only limited by lack of organization. Personally I prefer to merge all accounts to one. That way I do not have to access them individually. Most email service providers allow that.

I ask my contacts not to include me in emailing lists without asking me, and I advice them to use the Bcc field (and not the Cc) if they need to send an email to a long list of contacts. Social online networks, websites and blogs are great to distribute information to many avoiding SPAM. But when using these we need to be aware of another "modern" inconvenience: lack of privacy.

Lack of privacy is often caused by lack of adjusting settings. The example in the video could have easily avoided if the facebook account was set NOT to share certain information such as relationship status. Some social networks are obviously benefited by this lack of privacy. Many people use them because they can access more gossip there than anywhere else. It is up to us to decide.

As Shirky comments in his video, now that the cost of sharing information has gone from a month's salary (to buy a hand-written book) to virtually nothing (Internet) WE are in control. The question is: are we? 

Ten Big Ideas of School Leadership Middle school

Reflections based on the article ¨Ten Big Ideas of School Leadership

Middle school¨ by  principal Mike McCarthy

Here are some of my reflections on each of the 10 ideas.

1) Your School Must Be For All Kids 100 Percent of the Time.

I agree 100%. This idea has been written for thousands of years, but sometimes not much used.  I like to refer to this idea as “Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno”*

2) Create a Vision, Write It Down, and Start Implementing It.

Again I agree 100%. Einstein would agree too. As he said, nothing happens until something moves.  And leaders are responsible for making things move…

3) I would say hire people who agree with WHY you do things**

4) In a leadership training course I did once, a British trainer suggested that sometimes we had to pretend to be swans: smooth on top, but paddling hard underneath. In American English duck seems to be used instead of swan***

5) I do NOT agree with this! Leaders do not have to have a bad day when their underlings have one. And even if teachers had a dark magic power to force their principal follow their mood (sometimes they do) there is a mistake in the calculation. 180 can be bigger than 70 times 3….. if many teaches have their bad day at the same time.

A very good coach**** showed me how different the Spanish words “ocuparse” and “preocuparse” are. Ocuparse means to do something actively. Preocuparse means to worry. They both sound similar in Spanish, but they mean different things. Winners do the former, losers the latter.

6) Take Responsibility for the Good and the Bad. I agree with this. The same very good Spanish coach I mentioned earlier **** encouraged me to use the word “responsibility” and avoid the use of the word “guilt”. This trick works very well regardless of who is responsible for something and whether the outcome is positive or not.

7) You Have the Ultimate Responsibility. I agree. Winners assume responsibility. Loosers waste the time finding out who was guilty.  See trick above.

8) Have a Bias for Yes. YES!! I agree 100% with this. Yes makes us move forward, a “no” just stops things. If you just want someone or something to move in the other direction then the trick is indeed to think, "How can I make this request into a yes?"

9) Consensus is Overrated. I agree with this, and I think this can be extended to other contexts. Politics are everywhere.

10) Large Change Needs to be Done Quickly. I do NOT agree. Sometimes quick changes do not allow time to adjust. I would correct the sentence and say “If something needs to change, then it better start ASAP”.

* Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno is a Latin phrase that means "One for all, all for one" in English. It is known as being the motto of Alexandre Dumas' Three Musketeers and is also the traditional motto of Switzerland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unus_pro_omnibus,_omnes_pro_uno).

** See Sinek's TED talk “How great leaders inspire action” (http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html)

***(From a news story about Louisville) Mayor Jerry Abramson's first day on the job as mayor of the newly merged city and county government: " 'How's it going?' he asked, reaching for his lunch, from a café nearby. 'How wild and crazy it is?' 'Like a duck on water,' Deputy Mayor Joan Riehm replied. 'That means we're smooth on top but paddling like hell underneath,' Abramson explained." The Courier Journal, Louisville, Ky., Jan. 7, 2003.

**** A. Cortes, from www.EducationalPaths.com

The WHY of the why...

Why is having a clearly defined "Why" narrative so important to the success of an IT Department?

 I think that a clearly defined "why" is very important for the success of any department in a school or company, especially a school's IT department since its success (or failure) has an effect on the rest of the school.

 Now that I have watched Simon Sinek's TED talk : How great leaders inspire action I understand better why I feel the IT department of my school is not quite succeeding. (http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html)

I did not understand the problem at the beginning. I know the IT director personally and I can assure he is a very inspiring person. Great to talk to. Everyone's friend. The rest of the team are very well qualified and professional members, great personality too.... However, my school's IT department is not achieving what it could.

 Communication from my IT department is from the outside. Most of us know the what: what works, what does not work, what should be working better, etc. In other words: the end product. Very few of us know the how: how they get it to work, how we can report a problem, etc. However, I believe very few people (if any) in my school know the "why" of the IT department.

Personally I think that students' learning and teacher's support should be in the list of priorities, but I have the feeling that these two are hidden by others such as Marketing, Accounts, Business Plans...

 I believe that a school should be driven by the earlier, not the later and I would like one day to see how the Capital Letters are awarded to the Students and Teachers and not to our second God.

 Thanks for reading this post.

 Looking forward to your comments,

 Alvaro Serra