A Conversation with Michael Stoner

A few weeks back I was contacted by Michael Stoner, one of the partners at mStoner, a leading edge marketing and communications firm based out of Chicago.  Michael was researching and writing an article for the January 2010 issue of CASE Currents Magazine. We spent part of a late afternoon on the phone talking about topics ranging from social media, to marketing and communications and trends in these areas with respect to the independent school world.

I really enjoyed getting the chance to speak with Michael and encourage you to consider reading the post he wrote about WA Mash.

Opening Remarks 2009

Good Morning. I am Mr. Viva, the Associate Head of School here at Worcester Academy. And I know for a fact that many of you recognize me more from my voice than anything else. Does this sound familiar? “Good Morning, This is Mr. Viva, due to dangerous weather conditions, Worcester Academy will be closed today.” Your personal 5:45 am wake up call on a cold and snowy February morning telling you that school is cancelled and that you can go back to sleep. For some of you, this may be the first time you are putting a face to that voice.

Mr. Morse couldn’t be here today so he asked me to step in on his behalf, and welcome all of you to the start of the 176th year here on the Hilltop. 176 years. Have you ever stopped for a moment and thought about what it means to be a part of a place that has been around that long? Go back in time with me for a moment and think about how much our world has changed in that time. Consider for a moment, that back then, in the early to mid-1800’s there were a group of creative thinkers, some would call them rebels, who were pushing the envelope by rebelling against what they saw as the current situation and what they were trying to be different from. They were call the Transcendentalists and another way to look at them is to see them as a generation of people who were struggling to define spirituality and religion (our words, not necessarily theirs) in a way that took into account the new understandings that the time they were living in made available to them. This movement brought us some of the most important and influential thinkers of their time. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. And while this moment in history was unfolding, in real time, Worcester Academy students were taking classes and learning from one another and their teachers. It was all happening right around them. Continue reading…

Your Neighbor’s Story

For those of you follow me regularly on Twitter or Facebook, you know that for me, yoga is the “zen” part in zen daddio. I was first introduced to yoga 6 years ago at the UMass Center for Mindfullness training I participated in. Specifically the stress reduction course they offer which is fantastic. It wasn’t until about a year ago that I began to engage in a more serious and committed yoga practice, at a studio, with excellent teachers. In the year that I have been on this personal yogic journey of moving meditation, the transformation to both my body, mind and spirit have been significant and tangible. So needless to say, yoga plays an important part in my personal and at times professional life. The style of yoga I practice is called Vinyasa which is a flow yoga that is usually practiced in a heated room, usually between 92 and 98 degrees and has you moving and flowing from one posture to the next, using your breath as the core of the practice.

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Are we ready?

It really is a simple question, isn’t it? Are we ready? Are our schools, teachers, administrators truly ready to stop talking about teaching and learning in the 21st century and instead, start actually doing IT? I have been thinking about this quite a bit recently, and an email from a colleague prompted me to revisit Wordpress and finish my reflection on this question. He claims he is on a personal mission to “Get folks to re-think the use of the word technology as it is currently applied in school.” He says “Here at Urban, it’s all about how to improve the learning experience/learning community and NOT about learning to use technology.” Powerful right? And I can see where he is coming from when he says that his “given title is NOT Technology Director,  rather Director of Digital Tools and Practices that Support, Enhance, and Extend the Teaching and Learning Process.” Brilliant. There is a paradigm shift for you. Put that job title in your ad in the newspaper or on Carney Sandoe next time you are looking to fill a technology leadership position. For those of you who know or have had the opportunity to work with Howard Levin over at Urban, you know that he means it and is actually delivering on it.

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Using Social Media to Define the New Humanities Classroom

This presentation was made at EduCon 2.1 in Philadelphia on Saturday, January 24th.

Can we harness the power of social media to provide students with a vehicle for exploring and creating original content? WA Mash (Worcester Academy Mashup) is an online magazine where the power of social media is captured to provide creative writing students with a platform for exploring ideas and fostering and contributing to the larger global conversation. By exploring the possibilities offered by the use of social media tools, we explore how one teacher is defining the New Humanities at the secondary school level. Built off the work of Richard E. Miller at Rutgers University, students blog in a timely fashion about a wide variety of cultural, political and economic issues. Most importantly, it is about creating original content and redefining the role of student and teacher. They compliment their work with audio, video, photos and micro-blogging by integrating social media tools like YouTube and Vimeo, Twitter and Flickr. Think Slate or Salon for high school. The conversation will explore the nature and role of the New Humanities in education. How do we define it? What does it look it? What role does it play? And how do we move forward with implementation?

The resource wiki for this presentation can be found at educon21.wikispaces.com/211-3

Using Social Media to Define the New Humanities Classroom from Antonio Viva on Vimeo.

EduCon 2.1 Sunday Morning Reflections

This is my first time attending EduCon and I must admit that it has on the whole, delivered in every way. As I sit here in a Starbucks trying to catch my breath and enjoying a Vanilla Rooibus Tea latte I am thinking about the depth and breadth of conversations I have been able to have over the last two days. From our arrival on Friday afternoon, our tour of the Science Leadership Academy, the panel discussion at The Franklin Institute, the Saturday sessions, my presentation, the networking gathering and Sunday morning panel, the experience has been superb. Continue reading…

There is Never Enough Time

One of the first things I remember learning in my graduate work in education was that no matter what I did or how well I planned, there would simply never be enough time for me to get everything done. It just wasn’t possible, there were too many demands, too much work, not enough time. In the 14 years since, not much has changed. Regardless of the school you work for, or whether you are a teacher or administrator, the same mantra pervades most discussions that there is just not enough time to get everything done. The demands on students have not decreased, if anything, they and/or their parents inflict additional stress to be in every club, to compete at the highest athletic levels, to take 5 AP courses. It feels like not only has life gotten more complicated, but we try to pack 27 hours worth of “stuff” into a 24 hour day. Continue reading…

The Uncertainty of it All

Occasionally I find time to browse through some of my favorite websites looking for some good reading or an interesting resource I have yet to encounter. As I browsed through the NAIS website, I came across a letter written by John R. C. Sumner, who in 1951 was a teacher of modern languages at the Webb School of California (Claremont). That winter, he gave a talk in the school chapel which was entitled “Of Course the Future is Uncertain.” In it he describes how at the time, the uncertainty of what the future held for this chapel full of boys (Webb has since continued single-sex education in a co-educational setting by adding a girls school in 1981 ) was not an excuse for inaction.

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Should School Change Be Organic?

I have recently found myself needing to reaffirm my belief that comprehensive school reform is a failed concept. In my previous work with the US Department of Education, I worked with schools that had been identified as low performing and as such, in need of comprehensive school change. While the goals of this project were admirable and in many ways, would have resulted and did in some cases, improve the experience of teachers, students and parents, the overall approach in my opinion is flawed. Mandating substantive change to occur in our classrooms by expecting that the approach be universal and common fails to recognize the unique nature and culture that is a school community. Walking into a school community is different than running a business or company. Many of you who read this blog will say, but wait, did you write about what schools can learn from Google and Apple? I did, you can read it here and I do believe that schools can draw from innovative and creative companies a great deal of inspiration and new ideas. However, when it comes to making school wide mandates that are intended to foster change, in particular, curricular reform, the whole school, comprehensive approach just doesn’t work.

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Technology and Social Media Trends for Schools in 2009

There is no question that the rest of the world will continue to forge ahead with adopting new technology and implementing new marketing and communication strategies well before those of us in the education world will. However, I have spent some time recently thinking and Twittering with friends and colleagues (@steveritchie @ernestkoe @alexragone @AdmissionsQuest ) about how the shift to “social technologies” is going to reshape the way schools work with students, communicate with parents and alumni and forward their mission. Social media technologies function to further the digital conversation and connect groups of people with one another in ways that traditional web based technologies cannot.

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