Technology & Learning - September 2007 - (Page 26)

SCHOOLBIZ The output is performance indicators.” Ultimately, the district determined professional development was its hedgehog, and now budgets accordingly. “The year we had to cut $5 million from the overall budget,” says Hanline, “we put in $1 million for professional development!” Additional resources for helping to clarify values and goals are the Baldrige process with its seven core values and concepts and IBM’s Reinventing Education Change Toolkit, a Web-based collection of more than 175 change management tools based on the work of Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter. 381 schools. This comparison helps schools identify priorities for improving their own security. Other tools on the market that address security include 8e6 Technologies’ Threat Analysis Reporter, Nevis’s LANenforcer, and Security-Assessment.com’s risk assessment application. 5. Benchmarking Used by many Fortune 500 companies, benchmarking involves identifying the specific process you want to improve, finding an organization (or unit in your own organization) that excels at doing the same thing, arranging a visit, and studying how it accomplishes the process. Then, you make a plan for how to use what you learned to improve your own results. California’s San Jose Unified School District benchmarks at both the school and the district level. For example, last year all underperforming schools in the district used Just for the Kids, a nonprofit that provides tools and resources to help schools increase achievement. The process began with a self-audit. Then, each school identified one school inside the district and one school outside the district to benchmark against. The district encouraged its staff to visit the benchmark schools to observe and to talk with staff there and to learn as much as possible about how it achieved their outstanding results. Numerous commercial benchmarking tools, such as Micrograms’ Easy Track, the Northwest Evaluation Association’s Measures of Academic Progress, and STIAssessment are also available. 7. Highly Competent Hires Another of Jim Collins’s good-to-great practices is “getting the right people on the bus”—that is, if you’re going to be a great organization, you need the right people working for you. Microsoft’s Competency Wheel is one tool that can help you select the right people for your bus. Based on the process that Microsoft uses internally, the Competency Wheel has two primary purposes: to support organizational development and to create a strong selection of candidates. The education version of the Competency Wheel was developed as Microsoft worked with the School District of Philadelphia to create the High School of the Future. “Particular attention was paid to the hiring process of the chief learner and educators at the school,” says Stacey Rainey, academic program manager for Microsoft’s U.S. Partners in Learning. “It is crucial that all assets are aligned to a critical success factor.” Sustained high-quality training also means that ongoing professional development and online resources are valuable for the flexibility they offer. The PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection service builds a customized professional development program; Annenberg Media’s Learner.org offers comprehensive resources by course subject; Teachscape provides onsite and online teacher coaching services; and OnlineLearning.net offers courses geared toward integration. 6. A Clear Mission Business consultant and former Stanford professor Jim Collins’s 2001 book, Good to Great, describes five hallmark practices of “great” companies. One he calls the hedgehog concept, a synthesis of: what a company does best, what drives its “economic engine,” and what it is passionate about. The hedgehog concept provides the focus for all of its efforts. In California’s Ceres Unified School District, Superintendent Walt Hanline is a fervent advocate of Collins’s work and cites the hedgehog concept as perhaps the most important of the Good to Great practices. “The fundamentals revolve around that concept,” states Hanline. “What is our hedgehog? At first, we thought reading. We were most passionate about responding to every student. Then the whole aspect of producing results. In the social sector, money is not an output, it’s an input. 8. Business Ethics In an era where unlimited digital access makes it increasingly important for students to behave responsibly, a focus on ethics, citizenship, and integrity is more important than ever. In the business world, ethics and “green” behavior have become emerging emphases, as concerns about global warming and natural resource conservation have created a serious customer demand for eco-responsibility. Companies concerned with reducing a “carbon footprint” include 26 | www.techlearning.com http://Security-Assessment.com?s http://Learner.org http://OnlineLearning.net http://www.techlearning.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Technology & Learning - September 2007

Technology & Learning - September 2007 Contents Editor’s Desk News & Trends Product Guide Reviews Getting It Wrong Cover Story: SchoolBiz School CIO Higher Ed Integration How To What’s New Bottom Line

Technology & Learning - September 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.