Help Me Help MACUL

[Ben Rimes]

It's that time of year again, the MACUL annual leadership retreat. All of the board members and SIG leadership go camp out in the woods outside of Cadillac, and are forced to survive the weekend with only a pair of USB flash drives and an old 5 and a quarter floppy diskette :D

On a more serious note, the retreat this year is going to be spent with a heavy emphasis on strategic planning and the direction of our organization. There's currently a survey available to the leadership that I've had a chance to peruse, and thought it might be beneficial to hear some of the general memberships' thoughts. An organization as large as MACUL tends to have a rather large number of members that aren't familiar with the inner workings of the group (although this site is helping to improve upon that), and before I go voicing my opinion, it might be nice to hear what my fellow colleagues have to say on a few matters.

Below are a few of the questions from the survey that I'm particularly interested in, and while I can't guarantee that I'll champion your opinions (because I have a few of my own), I'm very interested to hear what attendees to the conference and general members think about the direction of the organization.

First up, "...describe why MACUL exists. In other words, what difference do we make in the lives of the people we serve?" This one's pretty easy for me. I originally ran for the board with the belief that MACUL and it's resources should be accessible by the average classroom teacher. Not tailored specifically to the techies or the ed-tech leaders, but rather MACUL should be providing differentiated development and resources for teachers at all skill levels. Keeping our efforts tied to such state standards such as the GLCEs and the METs helps make what we do more relevant to a wider audience of educators.

The next one is a bit trickier..."What benefit does our organization provide for members?" This question is an increasingly difficult one to answer, as the presumption is that the benefits MACUL provides are benefits that aren't offered elsewhere. Unfortunately, in this increasing networked world, the unique benefits and resources that MACUL can provide outside of the conference can often times be easily obtained for free on many websites and outreaches of commercial entities like Discovery Learning or Microsoft. As MACUL looks to secure new benefits in the form of online classes, tutorials, and resources in return for membership fees, there are many more larger organizations and websites where the same information can be found such as TeacherTube, Twitter, or any social bookmarking site.

But that argument would imply that all MACUL has to offer are videos, workshops, and "cool" websites. In fact, MACULs BEST resource is the connection its members have with one another. Being able to chat with an educator in a similar situation across the state when none of the teachers in my building have similar experiences with technology is a blessing! Thanks to the conference, the journal, and now MACUL Space, I can better stay connected with people I've met on MACUL events and want to tap their knowledge from time to time. If we can find ways to make the conference more connected, as well as the membership throughout the year (in addition to the journal and MACUL Space), then that's the best benefit we can provide.

There are many more questions from the survey to choose from, but I'll finish up with this call for a critical look at what MACUL should be careful of..."List the three most critical internal issues facing MACUL today. Critical issues are those which if not addressed, could have the greatest negative impact on the ability of the organization to achieve its mission. (i.e. shortage of resources, staffing, leadership)." Personally, I think losing relevance to the average classroom teacher should be a HUGE concern. When it comes to membership, and I may be jaded here, K-12 classroom teachers are our largest group of members. If we let ourselves focus too much on Higher Ed or "uber techies", we rick losing many of those members. That's not to say I don't value both of those groups either, as individuals from all three groups help make for a more rounded conversation. Too narrow of a focus could drive members away.

Leadership is another critical issue that should be addressed. Since joining MACUL several years ago, I have yet to see many newer teachers such as myself take up leadership positions. If we don't continue to cultivate young leaders from within our ranks, there will be a vacuum of quality leadership with a good understanding of the history and working of the organization. My presumption is that with a 30 year history, MACUL will soon be seeing (if the numbers haven't already been telling us) that a large dip in membership is approaching because of retirements. I've noticed that with each election cycle, many of the names on the ballot and in leadership positions stay the same (which isn't a bad thing). Finding ways to encourage younger members to consider becoming SIG leaders, or finding ways to make a leadership position more palatable for members' school districts might be something to consider at this retreat.

As I said earlier, there are many more questions, and I intend on wrestling with them this week before the survey is due on Thursday. If you have the time, I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on MACUL, it's leadership, and the direction you would like to see our organization take in the next 5 years.

[Ben Rimes]

A place to aggregate and upload lessons would be fantastic. Truth be told, there's a lot of what Ning does that could be used in such a way. Uploading of files to a specific forum category called "Lesson Plans" could do it, but I would love to see resources like lessons, activities, etc. published to the main MACUL site. In all likelihood they would either have to be vetted by an individual or include some sort of a rating and commenting system ala YouTube so that people would have a nice visual and textual reference before downloading the lesson plan. Users would also be able to post comments for the author to improve the lesson or adapt it for a diverse learning audience.

I really like your thoughts about what the average classroom teacher is thinking on a daily basis. It's true that most of the time we're looking for that "magic bullet" of a tool or learning device that will help improve whatever learning deficiency students are struggling with in a particular week. But I would have to argue that as we move away from the more generalized standards and focus more on what the GLCEs mean and how they evolve, teachers will start to see how they can better drive their planning and choice in curriculum. When I taught 6th grade, I stuck mostly with the curriculum, but when it came time to plan assessments and critique how well the students were working with more abstract concepts I always turned towards the GLCEs. I see many teachers in my building increasing thinking about which GLCEs they want to be "power standards"; focal points for their units or assessment pieces.

I don't think we need to gear every last resource and development opportunity towards specific GLCEs, but it would be nice to see more of the subject areas and curriculum bleed into what we do at MACUL. Like you said earlier, rather than just having the students do clay-mation for animation's sake, what about presenting on making movies in high school literature classes to help bring visualization to concepts and themes that traditionally only exist with written words. Or what about going through the process of writing, editing, and planning out a script of the book a 4th grade class has just read, so that they can create their own movie rather than simply watch "the movie of the book" that so many classrooms do. Enhancing already effective teaching practices is what MACUL needs more of, and I'm hopeful that next year's conference will really start to show that.

[Kelley Irish]

Ben,
Check out http://www.ictopus.org.uk/ . It's the site in the UK. England has a hge ICT intergration process happening.

Ictopus (ICT online primary user support) is a free support service for primary education which was launched on 1st September 2007. Each week registered members of the service have access to a six page printable magazine (Sharing Good Practice) and a set of activity suggestions (lessons2go). There are also frequent news postings and a variety of other resources and projects. All the resources are available from the web archive and members can also opt to receive alerts offering a one-click download service for each item. Ictopus builds on the highly successful Becta Direct2U service and also the legacy of MAPE (Micros and Primary Education).

They have invite me to be a guest writer, so you be seeing much of stuff posted there as well. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to have MACUL include some of the organizational structure of ictopus. They have over 6,000 members and are very popular across the pond. When I have a teacher ask for something I have not done- I can usually find a lesson there that I can download and pop in the teachers mail box.

Just a few thoughts. to add to you great ideas. Have fun in the woods with the other techee's....

[Jay Bennett]

Ben,

I'm going to throw a couple of things out there and I'll let you decided where they fit or even if they do. Here I go...

I think that MACUL exists to help educate others in the uses of technology in the classroom. Does it achieve that goal? This is hard to say. I think that the MI Champs program was a great start to one of my problems with the conference. I always saw the same people, and these were usually not the ones that needed to be there. I think that the MI Champs introduced the conference to a whole new group and hopefully they took that new found knowledge back to their home district and shared it. I hope that each year we see new educators come to the conference. I was just talking to a 3rd grade teacher in my daughter's school and he had never heard of MACUL. I was encouraging him to use PD money that our PTA had given him as a way to attend the next conference. Hopefully we'll have a new convert!

I agree that more of the younger teachers need to get involved but I think that that applies to many things, not just MACUL. I think that it takes a few years to firmly grasp the job and anything extra just looks like more work. I have always encouraged my colleagues to get involved in professional organizations for the various opportunities and additional information that they provide.

I think that the conference is a major benefit but I agree with you about the increased opportunities for PD, some are much cheaper or even free. I think that one thing that really needs to be stressed to the participants of these conferences is the need to take that info back and use it and share it. I know that this is easier said than done. I am always amazed at the amount of information that changes hands at these gatherings only to be lost and never heard from again. I hope that some of the latest and greatest Web 2.0 tolls will aid us in keeping these ideas alive and fresh, only time will tell.

Well there's a couple of things right off the top of my head. Maybe I'll share the rest at one of these board retreats in the future. I talk the talk, maybe I'll eventually walk the walk!