Lead Learners Update 5.14.12

Lead Learner Update

May 14 - May 25, 2012

"The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly."

Jim Rohn

Calendar of Events
5.14 Admin Learning (EdInsight/School Goals, etc.) @ 12:30
Advisory Committee for Gifted and Talented @ 5:45
5.15 Digital Learning Community Meeting @ 6:30
5.18 Celebrate Dick’s Retirement 4:00 - 7:00 (Program starts at 6:00) Kirkwood Hotel
5.21 Admin Learning @ 12:30

John visit with Admin (follow the schedule sent by Dick/Steve)

Board Meeting

5.23 Kathy’s retirement celebration at Edge starting at 4:00
5.24 Dan’s retirement celebration at HS starting at 4:00
5.26 High School Graduation

June 1st Oversight Meeting (Ying Ying Chen)
Time: 8:00 - 11:30
Location: High School Study Hall
This will be a very important session to decide cadre specifics for 2012-13. (e.g. Meeting schedule, tight/loose, etc.)  Be sure you have this on the calendar and plan to attend on time.

End of Year Report (Ying Ying Chen)
The end of year report is slightly revised to reflect the current language and practice.  The data components, rather than having Sheri input them on the form, we will make the resource available to you as links.  A new tab, Building Improvement Plan, is added to the Lead Learners Home Page   for your convenience. The due date for turning in this report is June 30.

Some principals asked if they can revise the plan after June 30.   I developed the following guideline to clarify this question:

There are four main components in the report

1. Needs Assessment/Data Analysis (Where are we? What does our data show?)
2. Goal Establishment (What student learning outcomes do we want to see by the end of 2012-13?)
3. Action Plans (What are we going to do to reach our established goals?)
4. PL Plans (Month by month PL opportunities to support the staff reaching the goals)

The Guideline

Components of the Report	Can you change the plan after June 30?
I. Needs Assessments Information about CSIP, APR and ICC Building based data Cause data Student results Your analysis of strengths and area of growth	Principal Considerations: Collect staff feedback in May Additional analysis to be done by principals when organizing the end of year report Many principals will work with teacher leaders to clarify strengths and areas of growth. Recommendation:  There is no reason to change this part once the analysis is done.
2. Goal Establishment Help Tips Goal statements	Principal Considerations: Principals work with Cadre in May and June to establish goal statements for next year. Principals consult with ESC administrator to clarify goal statements Recommendation:  These goal statements should set the focus for the following school year.  Generally, these statements should be student result focused and in SMART format. They should not be changed once it is established.
3. Action Plans A detailed plan in a matrix format	Principal Considerations: This is the most important part of your school improvement plan.  Without it, the goal statements will only be a statement on paper or in the cloud.  A good plan will require a principal to exercise Leadership Standards 1 (vision), 2 (Culture of learning) and 3 (Management).  It specifies team structures/norms, defines tools/protocols, sets timelines and establishes distributive leaders.  Data analysis, especially summative ones, should be established in the plan so that you can map out the year accordingly.  It should be clear and thoughtful and can be used to leverage or anchor the improvement process. Recommendation:  Some update is OK.  Most of the update may happen between June and September/early October (before the Fall  board report)  so that you still have the rest of the year to implement your plan.  The update should be made due to a new insight, new resource or new discovery as you implement your plan, not an afterthought toward the later part of the year.
4. PL Plans Month by month PL focus	Principal Considerations: This is a skeletal plan for PL design.  It records major known and potential PL activities that support the school goal.  (Ex: If X needs to happen by X, then, X must be planned in X week/month.  If we collect X data in X month, then we might have to provide X in this month. )  Educated prediction will be exercised during this process.  UBD thinking could be applied as you sketch out the PL calendar for your building. Recommendation: A lot of update could happen throughout the year (if you choose to update the plan)

Summer Boot Camp on Digital Learning and Curriculum Tool (Ying Ying Chen)
A flyer will go out to all staff by May 18 with sign up procedures.  Principals may start to promote the information via building newsletters and communications.  These are services to the staff not paid sessions.  Electronic learning such as video streaming and recorded webnar will also be available to provide flexibility.

Boot Camp Dates: June 6 and June 19 with multiple identical sessions

AM sessions (identical to PM sessions)

7:45 – 9:15  (Setting Up MacBooks Airs and email)

8:15 -- 9:15 (imovie/iPhoto)

9:20 – 10:50 (Garage Band/iTune)

10: 55 – 11:40 (Rubicon)

PM sessions (Identical to AM sessions)

12:10 – 12:55 (Rubicon)

1:00 – 1:30 (Setting Up MacBooks Airs and email)

1:30 -- 2:30 (iMovie/iPhoto)

2:35 – 4:05 (Garage Band/iTune)

Digital literacy Update:  New Staff Laptops (Craig Barnum)
We are working with Apple to have the new staff laptops here on 5/25.  This will not give us a lot of time to get the new laptops turned around and out to the buildings before school is out.  I believe we can do this, but as I referenced in Tech Hawks last week, this will be different than any rollout we’ve ever done before.  I will provide much more detail in the upcoming days. But, here’s a quick overview of the process:

May 25th-29th -- Computers arrive.  They are inventoried.  Computers are sorted into building grouping.  Labels (staff names) are put on the boxes.  Computer setup instructions (with Outlook setup instructions) are stuffed into staff computer sleeves(bags).  External hard drives are placed in staff sleeves.
May 30th -- Computers and sleeves are delivered to buildings.  Each box will have a label with a staff member’s name on it.  There will be an identical number of sleeves (bags) pre-stuffed with computer setup instructions, Outlook setup instructions, and external hard drives.  Distribution methods of the new computers will be up to the local building.  New staff computers (if the name is known) should be included in this initial delivery.

Once staff get their boxed computer and sleeve, they can setup their computer on their own.  It’s a relatively simple process.  It’s very much like what happens with an new consumer computer.  Here’s a brief overview of that process:

1. Unbox the computer and start it up.
2. The “Mac Buddy” assistant will run.  It will ask for a preferred language and other simple demographic questions.  Before it ends, it will ask teachers to enter a username and password to setup an account on the computer.  They will use their current email username and password for this.
3. The computer will restart.  Upon restart, the computer will ask which wireless network it should to connect to.  If  at Point or the High School, staff will select “CCSD-RA-A” and enter email user name and password.  If at one of the elementary buildings or Creek, select one of the networks with a building name in it and enter email username and password.  The MacBook Air will remember the username and password information.  So, this should only need to be done once.

New staff laptops will come with MS Office (Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook) pre-installed along with iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and the rest of the iLife suite.  There’s another, very simple process to setup Outlook as well.

With all this in mind, here are a few things to think about as building leaders:

Where do you plan to store the staff laptops and sleeves when we send them over on 5/30?  It will need to be somewhere secure. I will be contact to coordinate with each building, but I’ll need this information before the 25th.

What process do you intend to use to distribute the computers once they arrive?  Several buildings are requiring check in of the Byte Speed before check out of the new computer.  Please also be sure to have a way to track who has gotten a sleeve (bag).  The sleeves will come pre-stuffed with instructions for both the computer and email (Outlook) setup.  They will also include an external hard drive.  So, it’s critical that every staff member gets a sleeve.

Again, I will be sharing more  detailed information the week of the 21st on how this process will work.  There will be a brief session at the start of each Digital Literacy Boot Camp on how to setup MacBook Airs and Outlook. In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to drop me a note or give me a call if you have further questions.