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success

Three Key Areas to Leadership Success

by Dr. Bruce Ellis January 17, 2023

written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

Regardless of whether you are the leader of a content department such as math, special education, or technology or whether you happen to be a principal, superintendent, or oversee the business department, visibility, credibility, and profitability lead are critical to having sustainable and meaningful outreach. Plus, they’re good for job security! Let’s look at how visibility, credibility, and profitability can impact your success.

Visibility

Visibility is essential for any leader to be successful. In order to build relationships with members of staff and the school community, leaders must be visible and easily accessible to them. This means having a strong online presence with a well-designed website, active social media accounts, and being present in day-to-day activities, relevant meetings, district events, and local gatherings. By increasing your visibility, you can reach interact with people in your community and establish yourself as a go-to leader.

Credibility

Credibility is crucial for a leader to gain trust. In order to be credible, a leader must be able to demonstrate expertise and knowledge in their field. This can be done through sharing relevant research and case studies, responding quickly to needs with appropriate solutions, and tracking data to identify (and anticipate) trends and problems that might need to be addressed. By building credibility, you establish yourself as a trusted source of support, guidance, answers, and more because you can be counted on and are reliable.

Profitability

Profitability is essential for sustainability and growth. Granted, as educational leaders, we aren’t in charge of selling goods and services to meet quarterly income goals as businesses, but profitability doesn’t always mean financial profit. We do still have ways to show profitability in the sense of advancement toward objectives. It could be as simple as making wise purchasing decisions, or it could be as complex as identifying various key performance indicators (KPIs) that your department has control over. This may include satisfaction survey responses, student learning data, employee turnover rates, the turnaround time for repairs and responses, or even summaries of logs of events and services provided.

As you reflect on your leadership, you may find that one or two of these key areas are going well. But to really maximize your leadership and success means focusing on all three areas. Visibility, credibility, and profitability are all essential for successful leadership. By focusing on these key areas, you can increase your reach, gain the trust of your staff and community, and be sustainable in the long term. If you want to thrive and make an impact, make sure to focus on visibility, credibility, and profitability.

January 17, 2023 0 comments

Leadership

Five Ways to Promote and Share Campus Ed Tech Success

by Miguel Guhlin March 1, 2019

written by Miguel Guhlin

“Toot your own horn,” my dad often advised me. “The squeaky gate gets the oil.” The advice to self-aggrandize often went against my shy nature. As a campus leader, don’t let your shyness stop you from sharing successful campus stories, especially those that include the use of academic technology. In this blog entry, we’ll explore five ways you can promote and share successful campus ed tech success.

#1 – Create Posters and Infographics

Making an infographic that captures ways students are creating and sharing works. You can make impactful infographics with various tools. Two tools include Venngage’s free creative infographic templates and/or PosterMyWall.com (another free infographic maker). Or take advantage of some of these free infographics.

Digital Stories are multimedia movies that combine photographs, video, animation, sound, music, text, and often a narrative voice. Digital stories may be used as an expressive medium within the classroom to integrate subject matter with extant knowledge and skills from across the curriculum (Source).

Here’s one idea on capturing and sharing digital stories from people who were there. The poster is adapted from this source.

You can print these infographics or posters on walls, in teachers’ lounges. Don’t be afraid to brighten a restroom stall with a three-step tutorial on an ed tech topic of choice.

#2 – Connect the Physical Space to the Virtual

Libraries represent literacy. What space in your school does the same for ed tech-powered learning? This might be an office or space educators can get quick help on creating with technology. It may be a place they read technology-related websites and/or view short video tutorials. Yes, they could find this anywhere, but physical space sends a message. The message? Learning ed tech has a tangible impact. Combine a physical space with online professional learning. Advertise upcoming PD in Your Pajamas, as Sharyland ISD’s Alfonso Mendoza, Jr. (@SharylandEdTech) has done.

You can use tools like Certify’em or Autocrat to create digital certificates for both face to face and virtual professional learning opportunities, including self-paced ones.

You can set up an old fridge box or large appliance box as a video station. This could be a green screen room or a place where teachers and students use video apps. They can conduct interviews about technology innovation lessons. Have them reflect on a successful project they have participated in. Then share those video creations via social media.

#3 – Compete for Prizes

I didn’t appreciate the power of contests and prizes until I tried out Kahoot and Goosechase. Teachers, as well as their students, can do awesome things when motivated. Not sure how complex this could be? Keep it simple and age-appropriate, like this Santa Sleigh Construction Challenge:

One motivation may be a STEAM contest for a grade level. Check out this fun Facebook post from Joy Freeman Schwartz, TCEA Area Director. She writes (adapted for length):

Congratulations to Blanchette Elementary’s 3rd graders. They won the 2nd District STEM Challenge (design and Create Santa a new sleigh)! Thank you, Sebrina Dollar, for allowing them take part!! Great job and super sweet students!!

Prizes for students can be inexpensive. Prizes for teachers can be simple, such as a lottery ticket or a “jeans day” pass. And, of course, ask local businesses for coupons.

#4 – Get Sponsors to Celebrate Projects

Work with your regional education service centers and organizations to highlight success. You can invite local businesses in the community to celebrate technology projects. These could be projects students have made, or clever idea from teachers. For example, create a “Top Chef” program such as what TCEA member Debbie Boyer did for her school district.

Invite sponsors to offer prizes and deliver those in person. What a great photo opportunity for the district and the sponsor(s). More important than that, students and teachers see their work valued.

#5 – Launch a Digital Badge Program for Ed Tech Success

Adopt a technology framework, like Dr. Tony Tipton’s and Daniel Rich’s PAGER Model. The PAGER model makes use of all the key elements required for inquiry-based learning. Those include real world authentic learning and engaged student-produced, teacher-facilitated activities. Learn more about it online.

Take that model and go one step further. Follow in the footsteps of Van ISD’s “Bold School Badging” program. Their vision is to focus teachers’ attention on impacting student learning. How? Focus on student-centered learning. Educators earn badges as they complete professional development and receive incentives.

Don’t be afraid to “Toot your own horn!” Celebrate the exciting work teachers and students are doing. Use these approaches to promote and share campus successes.

Featured Image Source: Featured Image. Beaumont ISD.

March 1, 2019 0 comments

CTO/CIO Leadership

Setting Your Staff Up for Success

by Dr. Bruce Ellis August 27, 2018

written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

While we all want our staff to succeed, we need to admit that there is a major role that we play in making that possible. By doing (or not doing) specific things as leaders, we can inadvertently hinder their ability to succeed. And, when you think about setting them up to succeed, many of the same strategies that we use for students will also work with our staff. Daniel H. Pink summarized it best when he identified the three things that motivate creative folks: “autonomy, mastery, and purpose.” Let’s take a look at how these might play out on your campus or team as you set them up for success.

Give Your Staff Members Choice

Just as with students, allowing our staff some choice in various decisions or activities can help build buy-in to the activity. Granted there are some things that may have to be assigned. But if the end goal can be accomplished by a variety of folks, why not let them choose who will take responsibility?

Differentiate Your Communication

Sometimes we get frustrated with our staff because they don’t fully understand the vision, goal, or reason why we are doing something. When I find myself in this situation and take a step back, it is usually because I have failed to communicate clearly and adequately with my staff. Unfortunately, I’ve never had any mind readers on my staff! If you have a similar situation, then you might take a look at how you are communicating. To break it down further, think about differentiating how you communicate by considering the medium that you use. Some folks respond better if they have information in an email while others may not check their email regularly because they find texting their go-to method of communication. Still others may prefer the face-to-face communication that couples body language and tonal inflection for them to catch the “aha!” that you want them to grasp.

Provide Strategic Scaffolding

Whether you have new staff, staff that lack specific skills, or you are the new one to them, it might benefit them (and you) to think through how you can scaffold expectations for them. Those that need the additional support can take advantage of it while others that do not need those supports can bypass them, only taking advantage of fewer resources or procedures to meet your expectation.

Detail Your Criteria

Though you probably won’t have a rubric for folks to use that may be working on specific projects, it couldn’t hurt to write out your expectations in such as way that they understand what the minimum expectation is and what needs to happen to hit it out of the ballpark. With these, though, as with students, you need to review the indicators so that everyone understands what the various levels of quality mean. If not, you may find that everyone may share the same vocabulary, but have very different understandings of the definitions of that vocabulary.

Play to Their Strengths

You might consider doing some type of inventory with your staff to help them (and you) identify their strengths, preferences, and natural inclinations. There are a variety of personality tests on the Internet that are free. If using these, it is best to set the context of why you are providing the test and that there are not any right or wrong answers. Consider providing these at the beginning of the year as an ice-breaker or getting-to-know-you activity. You may find that putting these online in a Google Form can help everyone look at their (and others’) information. The better we know each other, the better we can support each other and move forward. Playing to each individual’s strengths can also increase the quality of their success and possibly connect with more intrinsic rewards.

Start Small and Build

Granted that you may have had a lot of expectations dumped on you that you are now expected to pass on. That doesn’t mean that dumping them all at once on your staff is the best way to go. While you may be able to handle it, you may have staff that find themselves overwhelmed and become shut down or distracted from the end goal, therefore unable to perform up to expectations. Consider how you can start small and add expectations as you go along. It’s like when you see a skilled juggler that is able to juggle seven sharp knives successfully; it’s good to remember that that’s not how he started. He most likely started by juggling silk scarves or just two small balls and then worked his way up.

So, whether you are an educator at heart or have a heart for your staff being incredibly successful, consider implementing these strategies. You might be surprised at the outcome! There are many other strategies that could be listed when brainstorming what you can do in setting up your staff for success. Jump in the comments below and add to our list. We’d love to continue the conversation.

August 27, 2018 0 comments

Social Media

Five Tips for School Social Media Success

by Miguel Guhlin September 23, 2016

written by Miguel Guhlin

“All the education in the world is worthless,” wrote an 18-year-old blogger for A Boundless World, “if you never unlock what makes your heart beat.” He asserts that passion, determination, and a positive attitude equal success. This story of passion captures readers and raises a question for communications directors in school districts. If students and communities can easily share what they are passionate about in their lives (via Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, or Posterous), will they share stories about school?

Changing expectations for how we share heroic narratives have implications for school district administrators who feel pressured to represent social media
change to a wider audience as positive, enabling, and encouraging. Our classrooms, our schools, and our districts are defined by the stories the community tells about them. School districts may garner better results when they empower educational communities to share the compelling, everyday stories. Here are five tips for K-12 educators, communication professionals or not:

1. Engage Your Audience with Content About, and Featuring, Them

Content that’s been prefabricated and written in third person is lifeless, but that which is authentic, transparent, and open about success (as well as failure) will be read by your constituents. Start your social media with a story and integrate multimedia such as text, audio, and video. Blend all of it in so that your audience can choose their preferred media. The multimedia portions can be downloaded and put on iPhones and/or Android devices. This is a great way for students, community members, and staff to find out what is going on from others in their organization.

2. Make Content Sharing Easy

Press releases on a website just do not work anymore. Traditional websites that can’t be subscribed to using RSS feeds or that don’t allow email subscriptions are dead sites. Many web users just aren’t taking the time to come back to those sites, instead preferring to subscribe to content that will come to them via Feedly, Twitter updates to their phone, and more. Use a blog (e.g. WordPress) and add plug-ins that make it easy for people to share your content with others. Teach others to use tools like Medium.com, Flipboard, YouTube, Touchcast, and Microsoft Sway to create, share, and respond to content online.

3. Create a Content Calendar

In your district, there are many wonderful things happening that your community wants to know about. Unfortunately, providing print copies of short articles via email do not allow you to explore and share everything great that is happening; however, online, you have an unlimited number of pages and a global audience. Why not create a social media content calendar that enables you to map out what you will be sharing with others online? Take it another step forward, and invite your “audience co-creators” to speak and discuss what they would like to see on a content calendar. The dialogue process can be powerful as you begin to hear voices that previously may have gone unheard.

4. Define and Build Relationships

While it may not be popular to follow your local news reporters via Twitter, it is critical that you do so. You can raise their awareness of the content that you are sharing about your school district. While they may want to focus on the negative, you can mitigate the effect of their tweets by building a relationship of trust and integrity through the stories you share about your district, your campus, and your classroom.

5. Make Offline Content Available Online

Every speaking engagement and every meeting is an opportunity to share your ideas via social media. Avoid the mistake of creating content solely for online or offline audiences. When you create offline content (e.g. a conversation with parents at the morning coffee meet-n-mingle with the principal), take the time to write about it, maybe even debrief a parent in a one-on-one conversation. “What did you think about our morning coffee meeting? How did it impact you?” Take the time to share what you’re doing online.

A Final Point

Educators must be more proactive in spreading the word about all of the amazing things we are doing with and for our students to innovate teaching and learning. Encourage your staff and students to learn how to appropriately use social media tools to share their own stories of passionate engagement.

September 23, 2016 0 comments