Planet+Chalk

=Planet Chalk =

**On Planet Chalk the time capsule visits the visioning to disrupt the old millenium model within faculties of education in Manitoba.** = = The Forerunners Potential Future Research Projects Proposition Strategy

The Forerunners
A poem called The Forerunners by George Herbert in 1633 ends with the lines: //Let// a bleak palenesse //chalk// the doore,. //So// all within be //livelier then before//.**...**

Those who will chalk the door for DE practitioners in the future live amongst us now. George Siemens Stephen Downes, Fritz Pannekoek, Rory McGreal, the people in the evolving communities of practice in open universities and the OER movement, and some of the forward thinking and leading edge for-profit universities and institutions who are forcing change upon other education providers. We all owe a huge debt to Charles Wedemeyer and to Lord Perry who chalked the doore so all learning havs the potential to be livelier than before.

Potential Future Research Projects
Learning about leaders and leadership has inspired me to think of my own leadership capabilities, projects and social reformer initiatives. I would like to contribute to evolving the mission and methods of faculties of education in Manitoba. Even though implosion or explosion threatens the very existence of universities, largely through the effects of ICT combined with post-modernism, the faculties of education in Manitoba carry on with sub-standard scopes of practise and out-dated methods and assumptions.

With the shift to a knowledge economy, when every organization has to be a learning organization, the future belongs to the realm of education. The focus of faculties of education in Manitoba does not match the future needs of Manitoba society. Yet, in the Winnipeg Free Press, Careers Section, Saturday edition on the 5th of June 2011, 24-7 a marketing research firm 24-7, whose slogan is "rethink outsourcing," advertised for non-educators to be Call Simulation Representatives. Call simulation representatives will deliver and score pre-scheduled knowledge assessments via phone interview/simulations in addition to scoring submitted written assessments.

24-7 has taken on a knowledge assessment project for a major pharmaceutical company in which the company needs to learn about the science/biology knowledge of their employees. Instead of outsourcing the work to an educational assessment company, the pharmaceutical firm trusts the data that will be obtained from 24-7, who does not purport to have expertise in educational testing or assessment. Perhaps an assessment specialist was brought in to develop the instruments that will be used by the call simulation representatives, still the sorry state of respect for educational credentials is reflected in this advertisement. No specialized knowledge of educational assessment is required. Today in Manitoba, the need for educational evaluation services does not default automatically to the expertise of educators. Score one for the communities of practice theorists; the educational evaluation of the pharmaceutical company's employees is being entrusted to students or graduates of nursing, science, medicine and pharmacy.

To ring the alarm bells for faculties of education in Manitoba maybe I should devote the remainder of career and my doctoral research to their awakening. Maybe, I should take on the sacred cows of faculties of education. In my doctoral research, I could pilot a education course that is delivered via DE and compare it to the results of courses delivered by face-to-face instruction for appreciable differences in achievement. I would predict that there would be no discernible difference. Then, too, I could develop an instrument for ranking education faculties according to projected learning needs of Canadian society in the future. Maybe I could conduct in depth interviews with recently-graduated, practicing teachers, their employers, and their students to learn of suggestions for improvement to the professional training provided by the faculties of education. finally I could interview graduates of the one on-line teacher training program in Canada and compare their work-place performance with graduates of face-to-face programs. Maybe I could induce Athabasca University, Centre for Distance Education to partner with a faculty of education, to round out course offerings to include the rich resources, approaches and literature streams that faculties of education need to offer.

Other factors outside my control, like developments in other provinces, exchanges between deans of education and the cry from insiders for drastic reformation cited elsewhere, might result in a wholesale change, as my project is underway- as I am not an insider and the system is complex. Also as a potential threat, I might suffer the fate of MacLean's magazine. Presidents of many Canadian universities stopped sharing data with MacLean's magazine for the university ranking issue; I could be subject to such an injunction.

Proposition
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a doctoral student charged with contributing to learning must be in want of a topic.

Throughout all of my research and efforts to bring an awakening, I would need to convert a critical number of people into a community so we could strategize together to change our faculties of education so that graduates are equipped to take on the future learning needs of our province. At a professional conference recently I tested the waters, and asked others to join me to end the restriction on DE in faculty of education courses. The silence was deafening. I thought small-scale change worked like this, through chance meetings of like-minded individuals who want to fix, agitate or advocate for their solution to a real need. I suppose sometimes it does. In my case, the stage needs to be readied with timely research. I need all the traits, the relational skills, the situational appreciation and the network and then a community to spearhead this project. Really, although it is daunting when surveying the potential work, it's just developing in me a new node in the DE approach through completing the readings in EDDE 804:Leadership and Project Management in the Ed. D. program at Athabasca University.

Throughout my studies of leadership in EDDE 804, leadership has emerged as an ephemera, it is a subject about which much is written and perhaps little is known. Leaders, in the real world, are playing high stakes games. Their knowledge, skills and approaches are tacit rather than explicit. Recently through my EDDE cohort member (community of practise), Sze KIu, I learned about the work of Tim Gallwey as applied to tacit skills. Gallwey, a Harvard-educated tennis team captain who spent many years in a contemplative spiritual practice in an ashram, began the immensely successful self-help franchise known as "The Inner Game" series, which began with the book The Inner Game of Tennis. An inner game of leadership book would help to illuminate the tactical actions made by leaders. I need to learn more about performance because leaders are actors, they perform, they act, they do things.

I applied to the EDDE program because I was fascinated by the field of educational technology, I wanted to know more about this brave new world in education but I didn't realize that I would be made over in the process. I find a level of disconnect still between the words on the screen and the person typing them into it. I never thought of myself as a leader, leaders in DE aim arrows at moving targets in the darkness; the enterprise is so fraught with peril, with ego, with uncertainty, with treachery. Even with the support of a community of practice such as Cohort II and all the wonderful DE educators in the Ed. D. program, I still need to claw for credibility and legitimacy and steel against the assault of the status quo in even using educational technology in teaching.

Strategy
"Strategy is a pattern or a plan that integrates the main aim and policies of an organization and at the same time it establishes the coherent sequence in which action has to be carried out." ( Mintzberg, Quinn, Voyer et al. in Cleveland-Innes & Sangra, in press, p. 7) The words in this definition, aim, action, sequence connote militarism and gamesmanship. Strategy could be confused with project management as both involve the execution of plans. Project management seems to be concerned with known variables and mitigating risk as opposed to change and vision. Maybe project management thinking could be combined with strategy to form a new, more transparent approach to strategy. Otherwise strategy will remain the preserve of generals and CEOs and project management the preserve of technocrats and administrators.

To realize a vision for faculties of education in Manitoba to assume a mandate to provide professional training that meets the learning needs of the knowledge economy and takes advantage of the affordances of learning technology, strategic thinking would be necessary. Although strategies in the complex, post-modern context are subject to unforeseen risks, doing nothing is far riskier. Faculties of education need to endorse, incorporate and model learning and teaching that takes advantage of the affordances of learning technologies. Education faculties must advance the learning capability and infrastructure for learning in the entire province through sharing resources and brokering deals. Athabasca University's Centre for Distance Education could be an excellent potential partner.

I need a strategy to ameliorate my Achilles heel; I need to develop an " interpersonal style that combines social perspectives or astuteness with the capacity to adjust one's behaviour to different changing situational demands in a manner that inspires trust, confidence, and genuineness and effectively influences and controls the responses of others." (Ferris in Gill, 2006, p.89) This is the definition of political skill. Controlling the responses of others seems like an exercise in deception, in camouflage and fakery that flies in the face of genuineness, trust and confidence; such are the tensions within leadership and the sophistication required of leaders and maybe the reason leadership is exercised as a tacit skill. Maybe lessons in the game of poker or on high wire balancing or diplomacy would help me to develop political skills.