#leadingonline

Yesterday I mentioned that one of my three big projects for 2013 was writing a book. My colleague, Stephen Valentine (@sjvalentine), and I are making a bold attempt to both articulate and model leadership and collaboration in a time where access to information and people are ubiquitous and  The challenge is to produce something that is relevant, interesting, and innovative while not presuming, overstating, or generalizing. Steve has written about this project on his blog: www.refreshingwednesday.com.

Last year I attended a talk by Dr. David Reinking about his work with design experiments (same vein as design-based research). In this presentation to Teachers College doctoral students and faculty, he said that one of the best things about this type of research was that even if a design study appears to be a failure from the outside, there is always something to write about as the reasons for the perceived failure are helpful for other design researchers. So if Steve and I should stumble, or even 'fail,'  we still will learn and acquire new insights to share with others. I don't see how any aspect of this experience can be a failure.

There is a community that gets together on Twitter every Saturday morning for something called #satchat, a conversation for school administrators and educators to discuss different ideas and challenges. We want to add to this type of dialogue by engaging a conversation about leading in an online world. So starting this Thursday 1/3 at 9 PM ET (after the kids have gone to bed) Steve and I are going to moderate a weekly chat with the hashtag #leadingonline to share and explore ideas that up until this week have been brewing in a shared Google Doc only accessible to me and him.

The first topic will be: Asking For Help. This is timely, as Steve and I will be asking for help from the greater education leadership community as we work on this project.