 Good afternoon. My name is Chris Smeaton and I'm happy to be joining you today and looking forward to talking about leadership practices in a connected world. I'm going to have three short videos, you know, talking a little bit about being a learner and my involvement with social media and also just aspects of what I believe are really important for leaders. So I want to begin first my presentation about simply being a leader and I want to start with the question, can we do education like we've always done it and expect different results? That sounds like a rhetorical question yet I really want to ask ourselves where are we systematically doing education different? So here's a couple questions I'd like to like you to refrain or just reflect a little bit of hard. Do we still have students sitting in rows? In my world and some of the Albert Ed officials know this, I like to call that cemetery seating. Is lecture our primary mode of delivery? Do we say, and this one always irks me, do we say that all students are unique and then make them learn virtually the same material in the same amount of time? And finally, I need to talk a little bit about timetables and how many schools still have 8 42 minute periods per day? So I know that you're there's probably some very exceptional innovative classrooms out there. But the question is, have we been able to scale out and scale up? And by and large, I would say the answer is no. My thought process on that is there's a number of reasons why and and some will be external and some will be excuses. But a majority of them I think would be internal rather than speak to either one of those. I'd like to talk about the possible opportunities that we have. So beginning with this statement, being a learner needs to be non negotiable in today's world. Being learned is simply insufficient. So what I mean by that is receiving a bachelor or your graduate or post graduate degree in itself makes you learn it. It doesn't necessarily make you a learner. One of my favorite statements that I've used around this one is from Eric Hoffer and he states the following. In times of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. Again, it's a statement that I use often in my in working with our staffs in change management. And I say the following in a time of drastic change. It is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. So if we have teachers and we have leaders who have got their degree and done nothing else, they are in a world that is no longer exist, no longer exist. And really they cannot be doing what we need them to do in our classroom today. So my question to you is are you learned or are you a learner? Well, most of us would like to answer we're learners. I think we really need to reflect on that and ask ourselves what are the characteristics that would demonstrate being a learner as opposed to simply being learned. Most times the differentiation can be summed up by asking this one question and it's when did you last fail? If you're truly learning, you're going to have some missteps along the way. If you've not had missteps in your leadership, if you've not had missteps in your parenting, if you've not had missteps in your teaching, then chances are you're not learning. The acronym we use quite often and it's fairly consistent on Twitter is fail, first attempt in learning. And it's an important reminder between the difference between learned and learning. In our division, we've used the model fail forward for the last number of years. And that's a tough mentality to adopt because typically as a society, we're very failure-aversive. And so again, that message coming from the superintendent, the tone at the top, fail forward, fail forward, fail forward, that is going to discriminate between being learned and being a learner. So when we look at being a learner, one of the difficulties about that is we've grown up in a learned society. Our education and especially our pre-service training is all based on content. If you go back to when I got my first degree in 85, content was key and as a teacher, I held the content and therefore I was all powerful. But today, content is easily attained. And I'm not saying that we forget about literacy and numeracy, the foundational skills are still a must, they still need to be taught. But if we're going to really prepare our students for the future, we need to also focus on competencies and that will allow them to be successful in the world tomorrow. In my work with C21 Canada and our shifting mind documents, we talk about the seven C's. And some people will talk about four C's. Alberta has got another list of competencies, but they're very similar. The ones I like to use are the seven C's may begin with creativity and innovation, which is looking for new ideas and bold possibilities. Second is critical thinking, seeking fresh insights and doable solutions. In terms of collaboration, really what we're looking for is establishing partnerships at work, communication, making sense and expanding perspectives, character reaching higher and growing stronger. Certainly in Alberta with the immigration we have and the Syrian refugees, this is a critical competency, culture and ethical citizenship, sharing what we value. And the final one is computer and digital technologies, transforming not only how we learn, but also how we lead. And while I would suggest that some of those are common in our schools, it is the last one around computer and digital technologies that require some further exploration. We are being asked to transform how we learn and how we lead. And we've been authorized by law, and I need to emphasize that, that is the law to follow the ministerial order on student learning. And just by and large, we can't get there without being a learner period. So as a superintendent, I have many titles, and I'm probably called a few other things as well, which is that's okay, I know that. But my title of CEO cannot just be chief executive officer, it really needs to be chief educational officer. And what that means to me is I need to be the lead learner in the division. I need to be viewed as a learner, who is one who is seeking to continually improve my skills as a leader. If I don't role model my learning to my staff, how can I fairly ask them to be learners themselves? It is not right to do, as I say, I need to make sure that they do as I do. So my actions must align so that they can be learners as well. So to begin this first discussion part, I want to ask you two questions for you to ponder at the table. The first one, how have you shifted your leadership from being learned to being a learner? And the second one is, how does your staff know that you're a learner?