I often hear it said that technology hinders relationships. Face-to-face interactions are always best for building relationships, but the truth is that people can't always be together. Technology has the power to enhance and further face-to-face relationships.
Three specific tools come to mind that can link people together when face-to-face meetings aren’t an option: Voxer, Glide, and Google Hangouts. Voxer is a walkie-talkie app that allows for voice only communication between two people or a group of up to fifteen people. Glide is an app with a similar concept, except it sends video messages instead of just voice messages. Google Hangouts allow for video calling in real time; you can have up to 10 people in a Hangout. You can also record a Hangout and publish it to YouTube for future viewing. All three of these tools have amazing potential in education because of their ability to connect people anytime and anywhere. When people are connected, they can use these tools to foster relationships. They can also be vital tools for teaching, student learning, professional learning, and leadership. Here are just a few ideas on how to build relationships using these digital tools: PROFESSIONAL LEARNING I learned how to use these tools to grow relationships first hand. It all started when Jaime Vandergrift introduced me to Glide and wrote this post titled “When you can’t run, Glide” after we talked about the idea of using Glide to help support teachers. Then, she invited me to a Voxer chat with Stacia McFadden, Cat Flippen, Amy Pietrowski, and Rodney Turner. This chat turned out to be one of the most rewarding things I've ever done for professional development. What started out as professional conversations quickly evolved into sharing personal stories, which ultimately established true friendship among our group. Read our Voxer chat story here. We recently discovered we were not alone after reading Joe Mazza’s post on how he uses Voxer, learning about the hashtag #eduvoxers, and this list of other educators who use Voxer. Join the growing group of educators who use this tool. Connect with your PLN: Twitter is already the best place on the planet for learning, but when you throw in Voxer to expand conversations, you don’t just foster learning, you develop deeper relationships with people you may have never even met face-to-face. Book Chats: Get a group together to discuss a professional book. You can use this idea with any of the three tools, but we have established a #voxerbookchat hashtag. So far, I have been a part of two book chats, and the conversation with people who are passionate about the topics and education is refreshing and rejuvenating! Join us for our book chat on Digital Leadership - if you are interested, let me know! LEADER COMMUNICATION Build better relationships with your faculty or team as a leader. Eric Sheninger’s book Digital Leadership explains that one of the secrets to change is to "love your employees" - being intentional about developing relationships is a key factor of change. Sheninger also emphasizes the importance of leaders modeling the use of technology tools for their faculty. Using one of these digital tools to communicate with teachers could help them see the tool's potential. Announcements: Use Google Hangouts to record your faculty announcements or Monday Memo and post to your blog instead of sending another email. Meetings: Use a Voxer chat with your faculty to request agenda items for the next faculty meeting. Keep the conversation going after the meeting by posing additional questions or agenda items you couldn't discuss in person. Observations: Use Voxer to provide a teacher a record of their feedback after a walk-through or informal observation, or better yet, schedule a follow-up discussion using Google Hangouts. Increase Morale: Brighten a teacher’s day by sending encouraging Glide messages on a regular basis. Follow Up: Use Voxer or Glide to follow up with people on tasks instead of checking in via email; they can respond much more quickly and provide more detail on their progress. CONNECTING WITH STUDENTS Adults in every student's life must earn the right to be heard and earn respect. Those two things come with teachers showing their students how much they truly care and about them. Meet your digital learners where they are comfortable and build relationships with them through digital tools. Office Hours: Office hours are always open when you have students Vox you questions. You can answer as time allows. You can also set up a Google Hangout at a specific time for a study session with students. Writing Feedback: In this great Teaching Channel video, Sarah Wessling explains how she uses podcasting to provide feedback to her students. Even easier than a podcast - use Voxer! Book Clubs: As an English teacher, I always want my students reading more. To increase engagement or link students who are reading the same personal reading books, put students in book groups and allow them to connect about the book using Voxer. Or pose discussion questions for a group during your novel study. The possibilities are endless here and all you have to do is include yourself in the Voxer group to listen in to a group's conversation. Foreign Language Lab: My school doesn't have a foreign language lab, and our French teacher is always looking for ways have her students hear themselves speaking French. Voxer, Glide, and Google Hangouts work perfectly here. Try This Tomorrow! Use Voxer, Glide, and/or Google Hangouts to build connections in unexpected ways, and strengthen relationships, and learn from anywhere! I would love to hear from you! Leave me a comment below and share more ways you have used these digital tools for leadership, student learning, or professional learning. --- Allison Petersen @alcp
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I got a challenge today, and it sent my mind whirling! Maureen Devlin (@lookforsun) probably didn't intend much when she wrote me this tweet:
But it gave me an idea that sparked a fire! I truly love how blogging can be so inspirational! If I really do want to make take the ideas from the book Quiet Leadership, which I have written about in two previous posts, and turn them into habits, what do I need to do? This also aligns with David Rock's method of coaching, which explains how to instill new habits and ways of thinking into the person across the table from you instead of telling them what to do. David Rock says: "A new habit is a delicate and fragile creation, Through different conferences and books, (like @kdwashburn's Architecture of Learning), I have learned the basics of how the brain works. New ideas can only stay in your mind for a matter of seconds before they are gone. Your brain needs to make connections to existing information for anything to stick. And even then, you need to be dwell upon it, write it down, and think it through for the idea to be made into a true habit.
So, the first step to turn ideas into habits is to intentionally transfer them from working memory to long term memory. Here are some ideas on how to do that: 4 Ways Turn an Idea Into a Habit: 1) Mindmaps or Diagrams: Toni Krasnic (@conciselearning, www.conciselearning.com) explains the power of a mindmap extremely well in his book How to Study with Mind Maps. By creating connections in your brain between an old idea to a new one, you will begin to solidify the new concept in your mind. By using a visual tool like a mind map or any type of diagram, you can take a higher level idea and bring it down to something your brain can manage. I am currently doing this with my each of the coaching models David Rock presents in Quiet Leadership, and it has helped tremendously. Think about the potential with students - when they are having trouble understanding a concept ask them to draw a mind map of what they do understand and help them fill in the gaps! 2) Visual Reminders: One of the things I always find myself saying is "out of sight, out of mind" because it is a literal thing for me. If I do not have a visual reminder, I honestly will not remember to do something. I try to blame this on mommy brain, but really I just have too many things to remember to do. So the more I can do to create visual reminders (i.e. a checklist, sticky notes, images, diagrams, reminders on my phone, etc) for myself the more likely I am to stick to something. Also, the more colorful the better. Your brain is able to trigger memories of where things are placed on the page more easily. I will be pasting visual charts and quotes on my desk to remind me of details from Quiet Leadership. This is also true with students - they have been away from your class for 24 hours; they've done a lot in between. Help them by creating visual reminders that will trigger their memories as much as possible. This is why I often use Poster Sticky Notes to take important colorful notes. This way I can paste it back on the wall when they return the next day. 3) Planned Action: Habits don't become habits if you forget about them. You need to set up some specific actions to transform it from an idea to a habit. David Rock says "Do something tangible yourself to anchor this model into your thinking. Some possible ways could do this include, explaining it to others, creating your own diagram of the model, or doing some writing. Anything you can do to give the circuits holding this concept in your thinking some attention will make a difference" (172). Rock also recommends accountability, find someone to talk to this habit about so that they can help you form it more solidly! Peer accountability can be key in building student habits. For example, I am always harping on them to write their homework down in their planners. But what if the routine was to have your seat partner check to see if you had written it down correctly? Then, that forces both students to check the accuracy of what they wrote down, and they each have peer accountability. 4) Don't Give Yourself a Crutch: If you truly want to form that new habit, don't allow yourself to go back to the old way. Not even once or twice. You will slip back into your old ways in no time. For example, I recently decided that I wanted to go digital with my To Do Lists. I was really sick of losing sticky notes, but I always have my phone with me. So I started using the Any.Do app (after trying several others, I landed on this one and love it!). To make this true change in habit, I needed to stop writing down notes to myself. So anytime I attempted to take a note on paper, I stopped myself and went to my phone. This is still a work in progress, but I think I'm getting there! With students this means stretching them. They are going to most likely revert to their usual way of doing things because that is easier. You have to stretch them and gently remind them that this is the new way and they can't go back and lean on the old way instead. I recently taught a Study Skills class where I emphasized the importance of students transferring the information from a lecture or class into long term memory to help them study. Here is the link to the Prezi and Visual Posters for that class if you want to check it out. Try This Tomorrow: What habit are you working on forming? Any new ones at the start of the school year? I am so interested to hear! Please leave a comment. And try out these tricks to help you make them stick! --- Allison Petersen @alcp My last blog post was a reflection from the book Quiet Leadership by David Rock. As I continue to read, i am bombarded with insights and helpful information as a leader and as a teacher. These tidbits are too good not to share. At the end of each step or section, Rock summarizes his approach. I've collected these summaries and my other insights below for you as quick take aways. I highly recommend that you read this book - it is eye opening! All the statements below are direct quotes or paraphrases of David Rock with page numbers from the paperback edition included for your reference. QUIET LEADERS...
And these are only from the first 3 steps of David Rock's "Six Steps to Transform Performance at Work." More to come soon. Try this tomorrow. Put even a few of these leadership qualities to practice and see how they change your interaction with people. Even your family - it amazes me how much this book applies beyond leadership and expands into the classroom and at home with my husband and son. -- Allison Petersen @alcp Ok, seriously. You have to read this book. It's called Quiet Leadership by David Rock. I am 50 pages in, and I cannot stop underlining almost every sentence I read. (I always tell my students not to underline too much, and here I am NOT taking my own advice). At first, I bought this book to learn more about leadership. I was planning to apply the concepts to my new role as an Instructional Coach. It came highly recommended to me by Kevin Washburn, who does a lot of research in neuroscience and has great book recommendations along those lines. But as I have been reading it, I am realizing that it applies to many more elements of my life. David Rock uses neuroscience to discuss how to truly change a person's performance by changing a person's thinking. This also relates back to the idea of changing a person's mindset (Mindset by Carol S. Dweck), which is not easy. He explains seamlessly how the neuroscience and true understanding of how people handle situations can play an important role in influencing a person to change their perspective and/or behavior. There are so many elements of the book that have my mind whirling so far, but this one about how people tackle new ideas really stuck with me today. Rock explains how the brain handles new ideas: "Anytime we try a new activity, behavior, or way of thinking, we are literally forging a new pathway in our brain. We're creating circuits that don't currently exist. Doing this takes energy and requires extensive use of our conscious mind...Before we feel comfortable with a new idea or behavior we have to own it, we have to develop our own hard wiring for the idea. Getting to this point requires we go though a stage of mild discomfort, uncertainty, and often even frustration and fear" (52). As I read this section titled "The Challenge of Changing Behavior," I immediately thought out three places I have seen this happen lately: My Son - Cooper is almost 3 years old. Whenever he tries something new, from a toy to a game, he will react quickly with frustration that he doesn't know how to do it. Just today, he was playing with the water hose in the back yard, and it stopped working because the line had kinked. He almost started throwing a full blown fit over the fact that he couldn't get the hose to work. I had to talk him down and walk him through the steps to stretch out the hose. His natural reaction to something new is immediate frustration. My Students - This past year, I taught many students who held a firm fixed mindset about their abilities as students. So whenever I presented something challenging or anything that forced them to think, they would immediately give up. Analyze a poem? They would freeze. Stare at the wall and do anything to avoid the assignment. Give a hard test? Sulk through it, coming up to ask questions that they hoped would lead to me just giving them the answer. Their natural reaction was to shut down when presented when new challenges or anything that stretched their thinking. Teachers at a Workshop - We were fortunate to host Architecture of Learning on our campus this year. (Side note: You REALLY want to bring this to your school!!). Kevin Washburn puts best practice teaching strategies into a sequential order based on neuroscience and brain-based research. This workshop is very challenging and requires a lot of brainpower because participants begin embracing a new way of thinking when it comes to teaching. The teachers who came to this workshop were truly challenged by the new content; some of them were just unsure how to wrap their heads around it all. Being strong teachers who wanted to learn, they worked hard to understand, but the initial reaction to some of this new ideas was frustration and a need for clarity. They immediately wanted to discuss the new material with each other to better understand. Not long after that, the new ideas became energizing and exciting, but only because they began to "own" the ideas themselves and understand how the new concepts applied to their individual classrooms. So, knowing how common this is around me, I realized that these three concepts are going to be vital to me as a wife, mother, teacher, and leader: 1) New ideas require mental energy and evoke strong emotions. 2) The initial reaction will most likely be frustration and fear of the new. 3) People have to begin to "own" an idea themselves before they can accept it. David Rock goes into detail in the next sections of the book to discuss how positive feedback and encouragement can help as people try to tackle new ideas. Can't wait to share those thoughts soon! This is just a snippet of the great thoughts coming from reading this book. So I encourage you to pick it up - try out some of these new ideas tomorrow as you interact with the people around you. You will be able to understand their thinking better. Who doesn't want that?! --- Allison Petersen @alcp |
About AllisonAllison is an K-12 Instructional Coach. Her goal is to empower educators to grow continually. Recent Posts#5Tips4LMS Series
Cast a Vision Create Momentum A Problem and a Solution HIGHLIGHTED POSTS Re-Center on Vision Letting Go of Control The Power of Positive Feedback Inspiring a Love of Reading Turning Ideas into Habits The Truth About Writing This I Believe Essay Quiet Leadership Qualities Thinking About New Ideas Goals Provide Focus The Power of Twitter Use Storify to Organize Tweets Build a PLN Categories
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