Reshan and I are as busy as any other folks who work in schools and have growing families. If you are one of us, or married to one of us, you know what that means -- we race from one end of the day to the other and then fall into bed until the alarm throws us back into the ring.  

A common question we've been hearing lately, then, is, "how did you find the time to write a book?"

Over the next few weeks, I will answer this question as systematically as I can. I'm very proud of our product, but I am even more proud of our process.  It involves discipline, collaboration, giving, rules, games, friendship, humor, social media, idea capture, momentum indicators, and a bunch of other ingredients. I look forward to sharing . . . after I put the kids to bed.  

We're going to be facilitating a conversation at Educon 2.6 in Philadelphia, PA on Saturday, January 25th. Our session is titled 'Engaging as Networked Thought Leaders: Let's Write a Book in 90 Minutes!' Our plan is to create an environment where all participants engage in the same type of thought generation, articulation, and sharing that we learned about as we constructed our book (Leading Online). It's a bit ambitious, but we think it will be a lot of fun to try and pull off. You can find out more about our session and the wonderful Educon conference by clicking here.  

We're putting finishing touches on the book cover. The artwork is by the talented Brad Ovenell-Carter (@braddo on Twitter), who also provides sketchnotes for each chapter throughout the book.

You'll also notice from the cover that Dr. Scott McLeod (@mcleod on Twitter) has done us a great honor by writing  the Foreword and sharing his perspective on the future of leadership.

Please sign up for our mailing list to receive an email as soon as the book is available in the iBook Store.

Next month, Leading Online: Leading the Learning, Leading by Learning will make its way to the iBooks Store. Please subscribe to our Mailing List and connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ for all of the latest news and updates.

Below is more information about this project, which Steve and I have been working on for almost one year. It is entirely self-designed and self-published.

What is our book about?

This is a book about organizational leadership, framed through the lens of school leadership. Published online, in the very world it seeks to describe, this book offers instruction, examples, and a network with which to connect. Reading it and interacting with it will, indeed, help you to build some of the skills needed to thrive in today's rapidly changing leadership landscape.

We both love paper books, but we wrote this electronic book to see if we could make a text that, as much as possible, performs the ideas it expresses. It's best to think of it as a demo. Our goal from the beginning was to demonstrate the potential of what we discuss (technology, the Internet, emerging models of leadership) as our discussion unfolds.

Unperturbed by the rapid development of technologies, the savviest leaders understand that, increasingly, leadership happens in a mix of online and offline spaces. They take this condition as reality, and an inspiring one at that, working to become as adept at leading screen-to-screen as they are at leading face-to-face. In fact, some go even further, planning and maintaining the online aspects of their schools with as much care and expertise as they would a new brick-and-mortar facility.

Regardless of your online orientation, we hope that Leading Online will serve as an essential guide for you if you believe that school doesn't just happen in the buildings we call schools.

Part of the proposed value of Leading Online is the network of leaders it presents through its drop-in contributors. These are leaders you will want to follow and know. These are leaders with whom you will want to connect. Why? Because they are doing interesting work and making that work visible online so that others can learn from it.  At the same time, they ask great questions — also visibly, online — so that others can see them in the act of learning.

They are leaders who, we're guessing, will be doing their most interesting and important work in the near future, making them both established and emerging. You will want to see what they do next. They are seizing the momentum made available to them by advances in technology. You will notice that they understand the fundamentals of leadership but also actively push against and question traditional approaches. Finally, and most important, they understand that relationships mediated by technology can be as kind and humane and generous as face-to-face relationships.

Who are we?

Stephen J. Valentine serves as Assistant Head of Upper School and Director of Academic Leadership at Montclair Kimberley Academy. He blogs at www.refreshingwednesday.com and is the coordinating editor of the Klingenstein Center’s Klingbrief. He is the author of Everything but Teaching (Corwin, 2009). 

Dr. Reshan Richards is the Director of Educational Technology and a Middle School Math Teacher at Montclair Kimberley Academy. He blogs at www.constructivisttoolkit.com and is the creator of the Explain Everything app. He has an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University, an Ed.M from Harvard University, and a B.A. from Columbia University.

Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D. has written the foreword, and we also have contributions from many wonderful educators, innovators, and leaders including Patrick Larkin, Jennie Magiera, Don Buckley, Michelle Cordy, Curt Lieneck, Kristin Swanson, Tejpaul Bhatia, David Malone, Scott Rocco, Nabeel Ahmad, Raul Cuza, and Brad Ovenell-Carter (who did all of the sketch-notes).

- Written by Reshan

We are starting to put some more pieces into place in anticipation of our planned January 2014 release of the book.