What motivates you?

What motivates someone to do something?  Is it peer pressure, authoritative power, self-motivations or something completely different?  In Daniel Pink's Drive  or a Great visual of Drive he speaks to the lack of success of the carrot and the stick.  If the fact is that increased rewards don't equal increased success why do we do this in our schools?  I wonder about this topic as I work with students in their classrooms, the new adults coming into our work force and our teachers in our every changing education system.

How are students motivated to learn?  We change their curriculums, their grade level expectations, and the devices they use to solve things and they continue to "complete the assignments".  Many students complete these assignments because they are told to do so by the authoritative figure (i.e. the teacher).  I find it interesting that many teachers will tell me that the times that they had a student's attention was during a certain type of activity usually involving working with peers creating something (visual, audio, paper/pencil, with a device).

As I am sure I am at least two generations removed from the generation of students that are entering the work force I find it interesting to hear about people's expectations and motivations in the world.  With social media, 24/7 video/news, and always being linked in many new employees need constant praise and attention. We are working with the trophy generation, children that have always been told that they are "great", they will earn a ribbon/trophy for their effort, and that things come easy.  I have found that this it is difficult to figure out what motivates these individuals.  Is their motivation to seek approval from their peers or bosses or is it what they get from completing a task?  As a person that works on many tasks throughout the day and week I don't expect a "way to go" for all of the tasks that I complete, my motivation is to mark it off my list and move to the next item.

In our education system with over worked and underpaid teachers, support staff and administrators it comes down to doing what you love.  As mentioned in a July article in the Huffington Post If you are motivated by Money and Power you will fail.  This essay speaks to the fact that most educators are driven and motivated to come to work and work with students because they love what they do.  When I went into education it was beaten over my head that I wouldn't get rich and would not be compensated for my craft. Many of my peers in college saw that this was not a life that they wanted to pursue and switched majors.  As I have worked in a school system for the past fourteen years I have seen many of my peers leaving the education system.  I would say many of them enjoyed working with students, but at some point they lost their passion or love for teaching.  Did they lose their motivation?

I look at what motivates me....I am motivated by a sense of accomplishment for a task I marked off my list, a teacher getting a resource that they need to be effective, a student getting a great result on their project or test that they worked hare on and my two children learning something new or being able to do something on their own....is it enough motivation?

Tech Hardware man in AP role

So these last three weeks have been quite interesting in our year round school.  Due to budget cuts, we were unable to rehire our technology assistant for this school year.  So I have had the dubious honor of filling in that role.  Let's just say that it has been a learning curve and an eye opening experience.  I love technology and I love using it, but I am not a big fan of fixing it.  I have learned about network printing, smart board wiring, and a variety of computer errors.  I am fortunate to have the "help desk" to help out, but I received an email from them that they are backed up with a high volume of request (hmmm sorry). Now that I have "fixed" repaired most of the problems it is time to start using the technology with teachers and students.

One things that we would like to work with is  Live streaming of our morning news, events, performances, etc.  We feel that this would provide our extended families and traveling family members the opportunity to see are wonderful performances even if they are not on site.

Another area that I would like to model for teachers to use with students is the creating and presenting apps or sites.  We are using imovie, puppet pals, prezi, voice threads, and etc.

Lastly, as a school leader I would like to dive into podcasting and video chatting (or google groups) as a way to send out information.

It's funny that I started this in August and it seems like we have made some strides in the areas of concerns...We have been able to convert our studio news into a student ran show that uses a mini ipad and a mac air to create and edit their segments of the show.  Students are able to do interviews, report out and create the news using iMovie.
On the administrator side we create a weekly vlog to share out school news.  We are also adding in the video portion of the news into our daily world.

Bookmarking using Diigo

This is a short attempt on How to Book Mark sites and blogs in one place to be able to retrieve as needed anywhere.  Take a look....

How to Diigo (not Dougie)..

My Diigo Page -- https://www.diigo.com/user/tjshillings21/teaching?type=all&sort=updated