Recently, I've been thinking about the death of operating systems in our educational environments. No, I don't mean to suggest that operating systems are going to disappear in the near future. Operating systems like Windows, Mac OS, Android, and even iOS are necessary to make our devices work. However, the historical problem of these operating systems has been that applications developed for one operating system wouldn't run on another without some significant amount of work. This meant that educational institutions had to make a big, up-front decision on the ecosystem that they were going to enter. Would the institution be an "Apple" school or would it be a "Windows" school? The decision was fraught with anxiety, as it truly did limit the selection of applications available.
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Regalia: A Quick-and-Dirty Guide
A number of my students at The Hill School have been asking how my regalia is different this year now that I have a doctorate degree. There's a lot of information — and misinformation — out there about academic regalia, so I thought that I'd write this up as a quick post. This is by no means intended to be an authoritative guide: there are entire academic costume codes that do that. Rather, this is intended to give the reader a quick-and-dirty primer on academic regalia prior to, say, attending a graduation ceremony.
Doctoral Robes
I'm going to, oddly, start at the top and work my way down rather than the other way around. Why? Well, the doctoral robes are traditionally the most complex, so it makes it easier. As a general rule, the robes get simpler as you move down to bachelor, so I can mostly talk about what's been removed. So, to get started, here's a wonderful image that I took at The Hill School graduation with the inimitable Dr. Kathy Malone, The Hill's Elizabeth B. Blossom Chair of Humanities:
There are a couple of easy ways to tell that a member of the procession has a doctoral degree. First, they most often wear a tam, a "poofy" hat that a lot of people think looks like a beret. (The tam, though, typically has either 4, 6, or 8 sides to it.) Second, they will have three velvet "stripes" on the sleeves. The velvet stripes tend to be your best bet for picking out someone with a doctorate, as you do sometimes see someone in doctoral regalia wearing a mortarboard style hat.
The robes themselves are most traditionally black. In fact, the aforementioned academic costume code actually specifies that. However, the Ivy League colleges — in particular Yale and Harvard — decided to start making robes in their school colors. Nowadays, it's pretty common for doctoral robes to be more colorful. Since Dr. Malone and I both hold a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, you'll note that our robes are Penn's red and blue colors.
One of the interesting things about seeing the two of us next to each other is that you can see how the academic regalia differs depending on the type of doctorate. Dr. Malone holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. D.) in history. All Ph. D. holders — regardless of their discipline — wear a dark blue associated with philosophy. (A bit of minutia: the dark blue does not represent philosophy as a discipline in this case but rather a love for learning.) I hold a Doctor of Education (Ed. D.). As a result, I wear a light blue color to signify the field of education. In the photo, you can see us both wearing our hoods. On the part of the hood immediately in front of our necks, you can see the dark blue for the Ph. D. on Dr. Malone, and you can see the light blue for the Ed. D. on me. Here is a chart of the various colors.
Note, also, that the University of Pennsylvania carries through this color onto the doctoral stripes on the sleeve as well. These stripes are most commonly black.
Master's Robes
Master's robes differ from doctoral robes in that they are almost always black. The hood worn around the neck and down the back will be shorter than the doctoral hood, though it is otherwise more-or-less the same. Just like the doctoral hood, the color in front of the neck will signify the discipline, and the color for the discipline will gradually turn under on the person's back to reveal the school's colors.
The sleeves are a dead giveaway for a master's robe: they have a squarish piece on them that hangs below the wrist. If you see long, dangly pieces on the sleeves of an academic robe, it most likely signals a master degree.
Hats are most often a mortarboard.
Bachelor Robes
Bachelor robes are the most basic of the three, and there's also a great deal of variation. Again, the default color is black, but many institutions will choose to use a single-color robe. So, if a school's colors are green and white, graduates might wear a green robe. The hood is also optional, and many institutions do not have graduates wear them at graduation. If worn, though, they are even shorter than those on the master's robe, and the portion in front of the neck still signifies the discipline.
Hats are almost always a mortarboard.
Video Series: Microsoft Display Dock – Pieces
This is video 2 in the video series about the Microsoft Display Dock. In this video, Kyle introduces you to the three components of the Microsoft Display Dock.
Microsoft Display Dock – Pieces from Kyle Jones on Vimeo.
Hello, it’s Kyle again. In this video series, I’ve been introducing you to the Microsoft Display Dock as a harbinger of the future of education, so this is less about the device in particular but more about the shift that this device represents. That said, though, it’s important to be able to understand the particular device in order to grasp what it means for education. So, to do that, allow me to introduce you to the three pieces that comprise the Display Dock.
First, there’s the Display Dock itself. It has a USB C port on the front of the unit. On the back, it has three USB ports across the top here, another USB C port here, and a DisplayPort and a HDMI port. Second, there’s this second cable, with a USB C plug on both ends of the cable. This cable connects a newer Microsoft Windows phone to the Display Dock. USB C is a new type of plug, so it’s different from the micro USB connections that you might be using with your current cell phone. USB C is technically USB 3.1, which means that it can theoretically carry roughly twice the amount of data as USB 3.0. USB C is also designed in such a way that there’s not a top-and-bottom to the plug, so you don’t have those struggles where you’re trying to plug in the cable, only to discover you’ve got it turned upside down. USB C also provides significantly more power, so it’s capable of charging devices in a relatively short time. The third piece of the system is the power adapter. Remember how I just shared that USB C cables can carry significant power? Note that this power adapter is actually using a USB C plug on the other end. USB C can carry as much as 100 watts, so it’s fully capable of carrying enough juice to power a laptop. Therefore, we may actually see USB C replacing the traditional power adapters on laptops in the coming years.
Well, those are the three pieces that comprise the system. In the next video in the series, I’ll show you how to connect these pieces in order to transform a Windows phone into a miniature computer.
Video Series: Microsoft Display Dock – Introduction
Microsoft Display Dock – Introduction from Kyle Jones on Vimeo.
In this video, Kyle introduces this new video series about the Microsoft Display Dock. While this video series is certainly about the Microsoft Display Dock, it’s more about this particular class of devices and what they mean for the future of education.
Hello. For those of you who don’t already know me, I’m Kyle Jones, and I’m a leader and expert in the field of education. Today, I’m introducing a series of videos about the Microsoft Display Dock, which I’m using as a vehicle to talk about mobile devices and how they’re changing what teachers can do in the classroom. This series is NOT a product recommendation per se — though the Display Dock performed impressively in my testing. Rather, this is more about viewing a device like the Display Dock as a harbinger of what’s to come in the classroom.
In brief, the Display Dock is a small device that allows you to connect a Windows phone to a traditional monitor, keyboard, and mouse and thereby transform that phone into a mini desktop computer. To help you wrap your head around this more fully, I’ve created a series of videos that introduce the device in greater detail. I’ll show you the device itself, demonstrate how to connect it, and show Word and Outlook in operation on the device. Then, in the final video of the series, I’ll wrap things up with some final thoughts about what devices like these are signaling for the future of education.
Again, the focus here is on that future, and less on this particular device, though I do think you’ll get a solid introduction to the device if this is something that you want to use in your classroom. In the end, the Display Dock is a powerful device, and I think you’ll instantly be able to see how this could benefit you. With those thoughts in mind, I’ll leave you to the second video in the series, where we introduce you to the actual components of the system.
5 Ways to Improve Your School’s Communications Plan
Do you feel overwhelmed by the waves of emails, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, and LinkedIn updates that come crashing in on your shores? I recently overheard two teachers talking about an opportunity at our school that both deeply valued and in which both wanted to play a significant role. However, life had intervened, and they both felt that the role that they were playing was dramatically less than the role that they wanted to play. They mentioned that the information that they likely needed to play a more significant role was buried in some emails . . . emails that one of the teachers confessed to only having skimmed. This is a symptom of a lack of having a formal communications plan. I’d like to share with you why your school should have one, and how you can go about authoring one.
If I were to approach heads and senior administrators at schools and ask them if their school had a communications plan in place, I suspect that the answer would be yes. I’d likely get some recitation about a series of dates by which various communiqués are sent home to parents, in either mail or email form. But sending a mailing to parents does not necessarily constitute communication,and a system of such mailings does not constitute a communication plan.
You see, in order for communication to happen, there must be at least two people involved. Doubt me? Well, here’s the authority of Wikipedia on the topic. There are at least two problems with this. First, we make the mistake that parents are actually reading and understanding the communications. When you consider that it’s likely that only one parent is reading your communications – and that that parent may be a non-native speaker – your communications have become decidedly less clear and less effective than you originally intended. Even for those international parents who speak English fluently, you may have leveraged subtle nuance or slang that isn’t easily understood.
Second, your message must make it through the tidal waves of other “communications” that families are receiving on a daily basis. There has been much news in the press about whether various types of ads are becoming too graphic. Realize that the reason that advertising has had to become so graphic is so that the ads stand out from all of the other information that people are processing. When your message is a drop in a vast ocean of information, it may not even be seen or heard.
With this second notion, there is some tension, to be sure, surrounding the E. F. Hutton effect. (If you’ve never heard of E. F. Hutton, please take the time to click on the link for a great vintage commercial.) If a school doesn’t communicate frequently, they run the risk of being completely overlooked in the ocean of information. However, if they communicate too frequently, they worry that they will lose the E. F. Hutton effect: that the frequency of communications will cause a loss in the power of the words when they speak. In other words, there is a fear that frequent communications will cause those communications to be ignored, that E. F. Hutton will lose his voice.
Keeping both of these issues in mind – the clarity and frequency of communication – I’d like to share some thoughts on how schools can improve their communications.
First, communicate with greater frequency. With respect to frequency fears, I’d like to propose the radical notion that the E. F. Hutton era has ended. While there are still singularly important communications – such as the Presidential State of the Union address – even those singularly important communications have lost their impact. Those who choose to live in the world of E. F. Hutton are choosing to live in a world that no longer exists, or, at best, one that is quickly fading. While schools certainly need to be worried about the boy-who-cried-wolf phenomenon, I’d like to remind schools that the boy in the story was a liar. It was the lying that caused his message to be ignored. I would hope that most of your communications are truthful.
If you’re still not convinced but you’re willing to embrace doubt, there’s a simple solution. Send the more frequent communications from a generic mailbox such as [email protected]. Then, reserve the headmaster’s email address for those precious few E. F. Hutton messages.
Second, keep your message clear across communications. Most of your communications are going to be skimmed these days. Therefore, if it was valuable enough to say in the first place, it’s valuable enough to be repeated. Now, bear in mind that you’ll need to change things up so that the message doesn’t look identical to ones that have been sent previously. If it appears as though you’re sending the same message again and again, your constituents will quickly hit the delete button so that they can move on to rest of the tidal wave of information. Remember, it is the message that is consistent, not the wording.
Third, break down your communications into smaller parts. An article on FastCompany actually advocates that every email should be just five sentences long. How long is your summer email to parents? Can it be measured in pages? If your emails are too long, they run the risk of either not being read or not having the desired action taken. Instead, match the communication medium. If you’re tweeting something, you’ll have to do it in 140 characters. Likewise, don’t treat email as though it’s a place to write a tome, because it isn’t. Instead, break your message into smaller parts and deliver them over multiple emails.
Fourth, sequence your communications. Now that you’re writing shorter, more actionable emails, take the time to sequence them. If parents don’t need to place orders for textbooks until two weeks before school starts, don’t send them the link to the online textbook store at the start of the summer. Timeliness is a huge motivating factor, and parents need to receive information when it is actionable. If you send it at a time when it is not, your information is likely to languish in the wasteland of read emails in your parents’ inboxes.
Fifth, remember that your goal is action. Some reading this are no doubt worried that parents will complain if the email volume from the school suddenly increases. This is a valid concern, to be sure, as you do not want to alienate your parents in your communications efforts. I would suggest, however, that your goal of your communication is to motivate the parents to some desired action. It might well be worth it to endure the complaint – so long as you are not alienating your parents – in order to achieve a desired end. More likely, though, the complaints stem from the message: a message about which they don’t care, a message that is too long, or a message that has no clear action.
For tips on how to go about developing a communications plan for your school, the University of Kansas has a wonderful section on developing a communication plan in their Community Tool Box, a service of the Work Group for Community Health and Development.
