Collaboration Project--Practice for 21st Century Collaboration

In this first year of the second decade of the new millennium, collaboration is a key word.  How do we develop synergy and do more with less?  Collaborate.  What is an essential ingredient for collaboration?  Trust (slide 12). 

Social Networking is another buzzword for this new millennium.  Wikispaces is one of the tools which enables Web 2 interactive collaboration and communication.  Wikispaces has been recognized for its efforts on the part of collaboration for education.

In the past, many businesses were organized to reward individual effort and to downplay the benefit of true group collaboration.  Meetings were sometimes the only group activity and often produced  less than stellar outcomes considering the time invested in meetings.  For this reason, many companies have explored the use of Webinars--meetings held to share information with people working from their desks.

Wiki-style interactive collaboration is a different approach that has many potential benefits for business, education, and government. 

To offer an example of how to work with Wikis on a collaborative project, I've created a Collaboration-Project page on the DrM-Resources.wikispaces.com website.  I have started one sample project for a business and will be happy to create more for other businesses or for education.  These are examples of how collaboration can be helped by Wikis and there is no fee for participating in these example projects.

As people recognize the value of this type of collaboration, I am hopeful that more organizations will become clients of DrM-Resources.  We'll see how it goes.

Christmas Open House at St Charles One-room Schoolhouse

I had the opportunity to attend a Christmas Open House at the Pioneer Sholes School (one-room schoolhouse) in St. Charles, IL, today.  Some of the people attending had parents who had actually attended the school when it was on the David Sholes farm near Burlington Road.  It was built about 1872 and was in School District 58.

Public school children had worked with the Executive Director of the school to prepare a program that included a spelling bee, a choral reading of Twas the Night Before Christmas, and general singing of several popular Christmas carols.  The open house was Sat and Sun, 12/12 and 12/13/2009 from 2:00PM to 5:00PM.

As I observed the open house I was reminded by The Secret School by Avi.  Many of the current best practices for teaching involve techniques used in these early schools in the pioneer days of America--including grouped reading, peer tutoring, game-based learning.  Those days students had personal slates (mini blackboards with a kind of chalk).  Today we use mini whiteboards and colored dry erase markers.

There are more desks in the schoolhouse today than there were in the days it was originally used.  Teachers dealt with classes of mixed ages and abilities and frequent absences caused by farm duties (or lack of academic motivation).  Many of the people graduating from one-room schools went on to become doctors and lawyers and teachers.  Some of today's problems have just evolved from similar problems in those days.

It's amazing to see how much the one-room schoolhouse reflected the essence of teaching still needed in today's classrooms.

Becoming a Trusted Advisor--Independent Consulting for Businesses, Not-for-Profit Organizations, and Schools

Syms, in its advertising, says that "an educated consumer is its best customer."  There is a problem about having educated consumers as customers in the consulting services marketplace.  While there are multiple markets, three serve as practical examples--businesses, not-for-profit organizations, and schools.  When leaders in any of these three markets feel a need for consulting services, they go to trusted providers.  Businesses usually go to consulting firms rather than to individuals.  Not-for-profit organizations look for consulting firms specializing in their kind of organization.  Schools frequently look to universities as their source for trusted advisors.

Regardless of how much education and practical experience consulting professionals may have, there is no "instant" way to become a trusted advisor.  Another challenge is that, once someone becomes a trusted advisor the relationship may be considered more personal than professional--making it more difficult to charge and to collect an hourly fee.

LinkedIn.com encourages members to solicit recommendations from others in the member's network.  Recommendations can help begin to build trust between professionals.  Rather than mastering the "Google Ad Words" promotion, it is challenging to create an electronic footprint that allows for people to discover a new "trusted advisor."  Videos on YouTube may be one source for initial connections.

Making Connections between Schools, Parents, and Students

Teachers are often challenged to make connections between schools, parents, and students.  Many times parents regard their children and school work as unrelated to the "real world" of their day-to-day lives.  The Library of Congress of the United States of America has suggested that students capture oral histories of their families.

Last year I had two projects that I introduced at the middle school (seventh and eighth grade) level that could be adapted up and down and is relevant to adults as well.  These two projects were a Family Migration History project and a Footprints Project.  You can find out more about these projects on my digital portfolio for education on YouTube.  (Follow this link for the same video on Teacher Tube.)  You can find the details for the projects on these websites:  http://drmontgomery.wikispaces.com/ and http://drm-ms-resources.wikispaces.com/.

In the Family Migration Story we used the National Geographic Human Genome Project as our starting place for everyone's stories, then picked up personal family stories as far back as the parents could remember, talking about family members and reasons for moving from one place to another across the globe.  Using a collaborative writing technique guided by the teacher students in each class created a series of questions which they translated from English to their native language.  They asked their parents the questions and recorded the answers.  They also gathered family pictures, souvenirs, and other family treasures to support their stories.  (These are called primary source documents in historical research circles.)  We made digital copies of these treasures and returned them immediately to their parents.  Our goal was to have the students write a script from their answers and to digitally record their Family Migration Stories--accompanied by the digital photographs of their family treasures.  Ideally they would make the recording in both English and in their native language.  Our goal was to record their scripts onto DVDs which the parents could then play at home.  Due to technological difficulties the audio in our recordings didn't work last year, though the rest of the project went well.

The Footprints project takes the end of the Family Migration Story and talks about what someone has done with their lives.  Middle school students can talk about what they want to do with their lives and what kind of footprint they want to leave on the planet.  Parents and teachers can talk about footprint stories from the point of view of what they have done with their lives and of the footprint they are leaving on the planet.

These are very engaging projects and are good for the beginning of a school year, though they could be a focus point for anytime during the year.  Parents could come to the school to view multiple Family Migration Stories as part of a celebration of learning.

The key to integrating parents into the school life and the life of the students is to make the connections with the real world.  Parents and students studying language together can be a help as well as parents becoming involved as subject matter experts about their own families.

Weighing Choices--Making Decisions--Assessing Results

We take these actions from earliest memory. Even babies are weighing choices--"do I do this or do that?"--making decisions--"I'll cry now because ..."--and assessing results--"I cried when I was uncomfortable (wet or hungry) and now I'm dry and full."

As we get older the weighing process becomes more complex as do the decisions and our assessment of results. Sometimes there are delays between our actions and the results we see. Have you ever decided to order something, then been disappointed in it when it arrived?

When we get much older, many of our choices and decisions and results have to do with health. My 94-year-old mother went to the eye doctor today who told her that a shot in her left eye would control the accumulation of blood caused by age-related wet macular degeneration. Mom loves to read and to use her eyes. While she knew the shot is painful (this was the sixth shot she's had over several years) she has already decided that, if something will help her preserve her sight, she'll go through the pain. She had the shot. Age-related macular degeneration doesn't get better. Treatments can at least slow down the vision loss and that was the choice she made today.

How do we weigh our daily choices. There are 168 hours in a week (24 x 7) and we get to choose how we'll use them. Most of us want to sleep some of them away. Some of us know the value of exercise in our lives and devote some of the hours to exercise. All of us want to eat some of the time, so we take time for that as well. Many of us work several hours a day. We want time for recreation--perhaps with our families. Whatever the choices, those are the hours we have to work with in any given week.

We make decisions, then assess the results--are we getting what we want? In some of my eating choices, I have chosen to eat (what or when or how much I eat) that caused me to gain three pounds this week. If I want to get that off, I have to change my eating and exercise choices this week and can check on the results a week from now.

Yesterday I read a newsletter article that talked about looking for work AGR ("after the great recession in 2007"). The author (at http://www.higheredjobs.com) said that we have to have a different approach to looking for work AGR. What we used to do no longer produces the same results that it did before AGR. (See the post about Spenser Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese.)

If you go to http://joelmonty.wikispaces.com/file/view/Meta-Learning-Affect+Models.PDF and go to slide 2, Shame-Affect-Decisions Model. It will give you a picture of some of what I am talking about here.

Social networking sites abound with the hope that people will connect with the right jobs (or dates or spouses or . . .) through their social networks. Some do and some don't.

All of us need to rethink our choices and decisions, the results I am assessing tell me that times have, indeed, changed and I (along with millions of others) need to change to keep up with the change.

What if—everything were perfect—just the way it is?-- Unemployed teachers vs. a National Reserve of Qualified (and Vaccinated) SubstituteTeachers

Many teachers find themselves without teaching positions at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year. School districts released teachers at the end of the 2008-2009 school year and have fewer positions to offer in this school year.

While frustrating to many, this situation may lead to a greater quantity of qualified substitute teachers available this year—a time when the nation is gearing up to confront the H1N1 (Swine flu) virus. The Centers for Disease Control want schools to stay open and infected students and staff to stay home. There may be a greater need for qualified substitute teachers than in many previous years.

Of course, those substitute teachers need to get their flu vaccines (starting today), to register as substitutes, and to stay healthy. Imagine, rather than being an unemployed teacher, these unemployed teachers may be part of a national reserve of healthy, certified, substitute teachers available to help meet a potential crisis in our nations’ schools.

Thanks, teachers, for being part of this national reserve. Now make sure you are registered as substitute teachers and get your vaccinations as soon as you can.

Reading Challenge--Step "Outside the Box" and Make a Difference with Me in K-12 Education

"The Economy in 2009"‐‐at a time when students are graduating from high school reading at a third or fourth grade level, when employees need symbols on keys to enter sales at fast‐food restaurants, when beginning employees and students entering community colleges cannot read the textbooks, manuals, or follow written instructions well enough to be successful at their jobs, teachers are laid off in droves.

Many teachers who are not yet tenured and who chose to come to teaching as a second (or later career) to make a difference for students often command higher salaries due to education and, in districts already operating "in the red" are let go by some school districts and not hired by other school districts.

Beyond that challenge, many interventions designed to help struggling readers improve reading skills are not proving successful enough to produce a quality change in students' abilities to read. Research indicates that many students who have problems reading often engage in off‐task behavior and bring others off‐task with them so not to have to compete in academics. Schools invest money in "positive behavior intervention and support" (variations of discipline and rewards) rather than in helping students build solid social‐emotional skills appropriate to their grade levels and use "off the shelf" interventions to build reading scores (not necessarily skills or habits). (See http://joelmonty.wikispaces.com/research
for several research articles which support these claims.)

For the last six years I have been one of those multiple‐career teachers, working with English language learners (ELLs) in K‐12 school districts in Kane County Illinois. I have gone back to school to meet state requirements for teaching and completed a post‐doctoral Master of Arts in Teaching in May, 2008, then
took 15 graduate hours during the summer of 2008 to obtain state approval as a bilingual (Spanish) teacher and as a Teacher of English as a Second Language. I earned my doctorate degree in 1992 in adult education and human resources development. Before stepping into the K‐12 classroom, I had been a teacher of adults since 1968 (starting as a volunteer with the American Red Cross). I had designed innovative programs provided to employees of businesses and corporations in North and South America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. I had also been an organizational change consultant for organizations around the world for more than 40 years.

Most recently I have been focusing on the ongoing problem of below‐grade –level reading among middle school students and beyond. While prevalent among ELLs and students whose families are in the lower economic categories (receiving free or reduced lunches), it is more widespread than that. My research and practice have led me to explore a technology‐enhanced approach which had established a good track record in the 1990s and has even greater application today, leveraging the new technology. I am referring to the use of audiobooks and eAudiobooks (which can be downloaded to iPods and MP3 players) to encourage reading and improved academic performance. (See http://joelmonty.wikispaces.com/research for an article and a presentation on this subject.)


Today, at the beginning of the 2009‐2010 school year, I am looking for school districts who would like to partner with me to introduce this approach with small groups of students, teachers, and librarians at the middle school level and above.

This is a time to step “outside the box” and to find a way to support something new that has the potential to make a real difference for K‐12 students and employers and future families in this country.

If you are ready "step outside of the box" to work with me to meet this challenge, please let me know. The website linked to the title of this blog entry takes you to the project page for DrM‐Resources and this is the “Providing Access to eAudiobooks and Audiobooks to Improve Reading and Academic Performance” project.

What have you done lately?--Common Practice vs. Common Sense

“What have you done lately?” --a question asked of me on Wednesday, August 12th. 2009.

Lately I've done what I have been doing throughout my 40+ year career, helping people and organizations learn to change to improve their quality of (business) life now and for the future.  I incorporate research-based best practices, years of wisdom and experience with more than 100 organizations and thousands of individuals around the world, what I have learned over the years--including earning a doctorate and two masters degrees--and applying all of that in practical, step-by-step approaches that can be learned by children and adults.

A better question could be--who have you done this for lately?  In the summer of 2009, my answer would be based on the different roles I have played. 

As an educator--Since 9-11-2001, I have been working with English language learners (ELLs) in K-12 school systems in Illinois, helping them learn both academic skills and how to work and learn using English.  In that time I have developed innovative techniques in helping students and adults to learn to read better by using audiobooks.

As a consultant--I have begun working on a project to do community needs analyses for chambers of commerce dealing with the workplace learning needs for their members.  The process involves developing a survey, sharing it with the membership, and analyzing the results--offering the results to local school systems who can help fill the learning gaps identified in the surveys.  The Chambers of Commerce take the credit for the survey with their members.  The outcomes help build community resources and economic development.

As a researcher and author--I have recently published 13 research-based working papers in the Education Research Information Clearinghouse (ERIC) focused on various intervention strategies to improve learning for English language learners.

As a reflective practitioner--I have engaged in the process of reflecting on what I do so that I can reach more people who need to learn how to change and have been implementing a variety of communication vehicles on the Internet that will allow more people to work with what I offer to help the people and organizations they work with.

(By the way, to see what I'm doing currently, visit my Projects Wiki space using the link above. I have a well-started pilot project and may need more participants, if you are interested.)