Dangerously Irrelevant

Video - An open letter to educators

“If institutional education refuses to adapt to the landscape of the information age, it WILL die and SHOULD die.”

The video is An Open Letter to Educators. Happy viewing!

LeaderCamp 2010: An online unconference for school leaders

Scott Elias and Dave Meister are sponsoring LeaderCamp 2010, an online unconference for school administrators, on June 24, 2010. As they say, “it’s gonna be awesome.” Follow LeaderCamp on Twitter and save the date!

CASTLE adds 3 new blog partners!

As part of our never-ending quest to tap into the potential of social media to enhance the practice of school administrators (and the university programs that prepare them), I am pleased to announce that CASTLE has added three new blogs to its portfolio. Two of the three blogs have been in existence for a long while; the third is a new blog by a faculty colleague.

Are we trying to become the Weblogs, Inc. or Gawker Media (or Education Week) of the edublogosphere? No, not exactly. But we ARE trying to assemble a portfolio of blogs that meet the various technology and/or leadership needs of practicing school leaders.

Our blogs

Here are the blogs that we’ve initiated to date (and their topical focus):

1. Dangerously Irrelevant (technology, leadership, and school reform)
2. LeaderTalk (school leadership; group blog)
3. Edjurist (school law; group blog)
4. 1to1 Schools (1:1 laptop programs; group blog)

To this mix, we’ve now added the following (which fill in a few significant topical areas in which we were lacking)…

5. Virtual High School Meanderings (online schooling)

Dr. Michael Barbour, an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University, has been blogging about online schooling for years. As you’ll see if you read it for a while, if it has to do with online schooling, you’ll likely find it at Michael’s blog. Michael posts A LOT; the comprehensiveness of information he provides is astounding. Michael also maintains a virtual schooling wiki or you can follow him on Twitter. Michael’s blog soon will be renamed Virtual School Meanderings to reflect the growth of online schooling in earlier grades. 

Here are some representative posts to get you started:

• Idaho needs our attention
• Documenting Clovis - End of semester edition
• The impact of opencourseware on paid enrollment in distance learning courses
• Virtual schooling in the news
• Virtual schooling presentations at SITE

6. Educational Games Research (educational gaming)

John Rice is an educator, author, and speaker, as well as a doctoral student at the University of North Texas, who has been blogging about educational gaming since February 2007. I am a learner in the area of educational gaming so I always gain a lot from John’s posts. John does a nice job of looking at K-12 and higher education and also includes a post now and then on corporate simulations, serious gaming, and the like.

Here are some representative posts to get you started:

• Learning STEMs from McLarin’s Adventures in Oklahoma
• Animating the news: How videogame technologies can alter our perceptions of real live events
• How to design an educational video game: Three important considerations
• Study: Reaction times lowered via video games
• Toy spy robots: A practical way to teach programming

7. School Finance 101 (school finance / policy)

I have known Dr. Bruce Baker, school finance professor extraordinaire, for many years. Bruce is a fantastic scholar. His interests extend far beyond school finance to include a variety of policy and leadership issues. Those of us in educational leadership academic circles know that Bruce is not afraid to take on the establishment and confront uncomfortable political and educational truths. I was delighted to see that Bruce started blogging more extensively last fall and was even more pleased when he agreed to join us. Bruce writes about deep, significant school funding and/or policy issues, but does so in a way that’s accessible to those of us who aren’t experts in this area. You also can find Bruce on Twitter.

Here are some representative posts to get you started:

• Racial achievement gaps and within-district funding inequity
• Why do states with the “best” data systems have the worst schools?
• Pondering the usefulness of value-added assessment of teachers
• NCTQ teacher quality ratings: Where’s the “quality?”
• New Jersey teacher salaries: Spiraling out of control?

I encourage you to subscribe to all three of these blogs for a while. There is some really important information and thinking coming out of all three of these channels. I can guarantee that you’ll learn a lot and gain some valuable resources for your own work.

Next steps

What lies ahead for the CASTLE blogs? Well, we will be shifting a couple of our existing blogs over to WordPress, so you’ll see some visual changes and added functionality in the next few months. We’re going to add some new authors to our group blogs, particularly LeaderTalk and 1to1 Schools. And we’re in conversations with our sponsor, the University Council for Educational Administration, about initiating a blog that deals with school leadership for social justice. If you’ve got some other suggestions for us, or know of a blog that might be a good addition to our portfolio, let me know!

Happy reading!

Video - Online learning

Here’s a 10-minute video I helped make that advocates for P-12 online learning. Created by Intermediate District 287 in Minnesota, which heads up the Northern Star Online collaborative, the video features Mike Smart, 2007 Minnesota Teacher of the Year, and a number of other Minnesota educators and students. The video will be used for educational and policy advocacy purposes with community members, parents, administrators, and legislators.

Here’s my favorite statement I made in the video (at 7:20):

One of the things I think we have to ask ourselves as school leaders is ‘What’s our moral imperative to prepare kids for a digital, global age?’ Right now we’re sort of ignoring that requirement. . . . I think you would take a look at much of what we do in our current schooling system and just toss it and essentially start over. So the question for school leaders and for policymakers is ‘How brave are you and how visionary are you going to be?’ And you don’t even have to be that visionary. Just look around right now and see the trends that already are happening and just project those out and see that it’s going to be a very different world.

Happy viewing!

A day with Will Richardson, Part 3

Here is Part 3 of my notes from our day with Will Richardson. You also can see the live chat and/or follow the Twitter conversation and/or participate in EtherPad.

• We started with a visioning exercise (and accompanying discussion)
• Are we suffering from information overload or information overchoice?
• The nichification / ghettoization / balkanization of society
• Communities of interest don't look like communities of geography
• The #1 characteristic of a healthy network is diversity of ideas. (Stephen Downes)
• Adolescents are growing up in a much more transparent environment than previous generations; whatever they do is likely going to be public (whether they like it or not)
• We are spending a lot more time interfacing through screens
• We are failing to teach adolescents how to use these technological affordances in socially responsible and productive ways
• This is because the vast majority of educators aren't information literate themselves
• If you can't figure out who's behind http://www.martinlutherking.org/, you're illiterate these days
• It's not hard to make the case that the world is now 24/7/365 anyone anytime anywhere. But we need access to it.
• Turning to the National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A). We used this document as a self-rubric.
• 1a: share the story of what it could look like for kids, lots of meetings with stakeholders, showed videos/inspiring tool usage by educators, visited other places, created cognitive disconnects, built partnerships with business/industry
• 1b: has to be an ongoing process/conversation
• 2b: making videocasts, using iPod touches for teacher observation/evaluation, moved to Google Docs, using digital discussion forums, using blogs/wikis/EtherPad, school board is now paperless
• 2e: working with SETDA or iNACOL, being active in the blogosphere / Twittersphere
• 3c: are you creating opportunities for staff to do this?
• 5c: give credit when you use photos (modeling attribution),
• We've got to share more with each other and with others (can CASTLE collect some of these stories?)
• For example, Todd Abrahamson (Sigourney) is doing podcasts
• Could we fill in the rubric examples as a group and then share with others?
• Networks are about people who are cooperating and sharing; communities are groups of people who know each other, roll up their sleeves, and collaborate (go even further than networks)
• We now live in an era of perpetual professional development
• Check out the Electronic Crime Institute (John Carver)
• Digital literacy/safety/security issues need to infuse everything; it's not a stand-alone unit
• Are our safety/security efforts both everywhere and nowhere?
• I want my kid to fail safely in the vicinity of some responsible adult that can help her recognize the ramifications of the mistakes that she is making
• It can't all happen at school (Dave Keane). Where else is it going to occur? (Will Richardson)
• Modeling by adults implies intentional, visible behavior
• Models that Will has seen
• Science Leadership Academy (Philadelphia, PA) - inquiry-based laptop magnet school, students are patenting a student-created biodiesel generator, SLA is tough to scale, defining questions = how do we learn?, what can we create?, and what does it mean to lead?, core values of inquiry/research/collaboration/presentation/reflection
• High Tech High (San Diego, CA) - very tech-infused but not getting the global/networking piece yet
• Australia is getting every kid a netbook/laptop by 2012
• Can we do this? Is it possible? What choice do we have?

A day with Will Richardson, Part 2

Here is Part 2 of my notes from our day with Will Richardson. You also can see the live chat and/or follow the Twitter conversation and/or participate in EtherPad.

• How are you personally taking advantage of these online / technological affordances?
• If you're not, can you participate in the conversation? 'Cause you don't have the context.
• The business sector is behind this; they want specific policy initiatives (can ISEA / SAI / Iowa business leaders / etc. all get behind these?)
1. Get every kid/home connected (broadband)
2. A device for every teacher
3. A device for every (secondary?) student
4. Do you have a curriculum that supports the things that Will is talking about? (does the Iowa Core go far enough?)
5. Community forums that educate the average Iowan / statewide visibility initiative
6. More online coursework options (e.g., statewide virtual high school)
7. Education of teachers / community members about workforce / 21st century skills / globallization needs/issues
8. Greater flexibility for schools to use existing funding streams
9. Repeal / revise Dillon's Rule?
10. Different / better assessments
11. Allow schools to use/create free textbooks and use textbook money for student computers
• We are the last generation that had a choice about technology (Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach)
• I am amazed that schools are investing in all of these technology tools
• Schools should be in the curriculum business, not the hardware business or connectivity business
• We need learners, not teachers, in the front of our classes
• Teachers are no longer the smartest people in the room; the smartest people in the room are the ones you invite in from outside
• Teachers come in all shapes and sizes from all parts of the world
• We need to create learning communities, not teaching communities
• I don't know any kids or teachers that have SmartBoards in their bedroom; why aren't we focusing on the technologies that our kids have in hand?
• We need a new graduation requirement: Students will be able to create, navigate, and grow their own personal learning networks in safe, effective, and ethical ways
• In Iowa, we need a movement!
• If folks aren't at the table, get them there!
• The world is about networks right now (how can I get the answer I need when I need it?), it's not about textbooks and memorization
• Check out fanfiction.net to get a sense of user-generated communities
• We're preparing kids for a world in which they're going to be Googled over and over again in their lives
• If you don't share, you don't get hits / visits; you're not visible
• If you can't be found, you're irrelevant (Scott McLeod)
• You have to put yourself out there in ways that people can find you
• Kids are doing this every day without us
• Kids don't care about much of what we have them do in school - it's inauthentic, it lacks meaningful and relevant purpose, it's disconnected and decontextualized
• MIT is offering all of its courses online
• Tough questions from Will
• Can you please teach my child to read and write in the context of <insert student's interest here>?
• How many of your schools teach Wikipedia (how it works / how to contribute / etc.)?
• How many of your schools teach kids how to read/write in hyperlinked environments?
• How many of your schools teach kids how to be Google-able?
• It's just not us edublogger blowhards; see, e.g., the NCTE Framework for 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment
• Gut check: How many of these bullet points can you do? Are you literate according to NCTE? And if you're not, how are you going to teach our kids?
• This stuff is here already; this is not future stuff
• Will demonstrates Diigo using this Science Daily web page
• Annotated web pages, for example, are social reading. No one is teaching our kids how to be social readers.
• We gotta rethink "Do your own work." Collaboration is everywhere.
• Schools spend money on a lot of things that they don't need to be buying except in limited numbers: software licenses, textbooks, etc.
• It's increasingly an open source / Creative Commons world
• See the Flat Classroom Project 2006, 2007, and beyond
• Will collected all of the work that got sent home in his two kids' Friday folders for a year; the stack was 2.5 feet tall
• This didn't include all the work that stayed at school
• His kids never went back and looked at all that paper; they had zero investment in it
• Will showed Radio WillowWeb
• Will showed the 2009 Horizon Report
• "Increasingly, those who use technology in ways that expand their global connections are more likely to advance, while those who do not will find themselves on the sidelines. With the growing availability of tools to connect learners and scholars all over the world — online collaborative workspaces, social networking tools, mobiles, voice-over-IP, and more — teaching and scholarship are transcending traditional borders more and more all the time."
• Is your own personal learning practice transcendent? Are you learning / interacting differently? And if not, why not?
• Will quoted Howard Gardner: "[A]fter millennia of considering education (learning and teaching) chiefly in one way, we may well have reached a set of tipping points: Going forward, learning may be far more individualized, far more in the hands (and the minds) of the learner, and far more interactive than ever before. This constitutes a paradox: As the digital era progresses, learning may be at once more individual (contoured to a person’s own style, proclivities, and interests) yet more social (involving networking, group work, the wisdom of crowds, etc.). How these seemingly contradictory directions are addressed impacts the future complexion of learning."
• The reality is that the way we've done professional development for the last 30 years doesn't work.
• You have to create a culture in your teaching staff where, if they need to know how to blog, they can go online and learn themselves (in communities)
• We've made teachers as passive about learning as kids - kids wait for teachers to tell them how/what to learn; teachers wait for us to tell them how/what to learn
• NSDC agrees: it should be long-term, job-embedded professional development that really shifts practice
• There aren't enough educators / policymakers that are looking at the current system of schooling and saying "Oh, crap! We need to stop tinkering."
• Leadership is a choice. It's a choice not to do nothing. (Seth Godin)

A day with Will Richardson, Part 1

Here is Part 1 of my notes from our day with Will Richardson. You also can see the live chat and/or follow the Twitter conversation and/or participate in EtherPad.

• I'm going to make you uncomfortable; you should be uncomfortable
• If you're not uncomfortable right now in education, you're not paying attention
• Conversations are spreading far beyond physical space, in ways that previously were not possible
• My learning today looks nothing like the learning that's occurring my kids' classrooms
• There are no adults right now teaching kids how to LEARN, not just be social, in these networks
• Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuFsDN8dsJU
• He assumes there's an audience and that they'll respond
• He's comfortable asking for help
• He views YouTube as a learning tool (Elliott Smith)
• This is inquiry- / problem-based learning
• After 101 views, he had 10 comments (10% hit rate); all 10 had specific feedback/suggestions for him
• This 12-year-old kid can throw out a question to 1.7 billion people
• Shirky: We are experiencing a tectonic shift in how we form groups and self-organize
• Wesch: This is not simply a technological revolution, this is a cultural revolution.
• Outside of school ALL of our learning is inquiry- / passion-based
• That's the way that world looks for anyone with an Internet connection
• Finland has legislated nationwide broadband access by 2012
• Schools have a lot of tech, but nothing's really different
• Still memorizing a lot of stuff
• Curriculum hasn't changed
• Instruction hasn't changed
• This group-forming ability is everywhere
• Obama's use of social media for Presidential election
• Flickr tag: iranelection
• Raw information is being released rather than it being edited / filtered first
• We now can live stream video from our phones; imagine a world in 5 years where everyone's phone is iPhonish
• Justin Bieber became famous by uploading his talent show videos to the Web
• Check out surfthechannel.com
• Today, instead of writing a letter to the editor / Better Business Bureau / CEO, you make a video
• Business is different today because people can form groups,
• Allstate (and others) has hired people to monitor the Twittersphere; don't call; tweet!
• Best Buy has 1,200 people monitoring TwelpForce; don't call, tweet!
• Alvin Toffler: if you're a cop with a speed gun, the car going by at 120 mph is business, the car going at 5 mph is education
• This MacArthur Foundation report is a must-read
• Kids are using social networks to connect with their friends / peers
• They're also connecting with adults around the world in interest-based networks
• Educators need to teach kids how to do this responsibly and powerfully b/c this will be the majority of their online interactions in the future
• Adults are uncomfortable with the idea of being hyperconnected and hypertransparent
• They're wary of being open and findable
• How are we going to think differently in 3-5 years when every kid comes to school with ubiquitous access (via cell phones) and has the world's sum of knowledge in their pockets? (see Will's post on this, along with the 130+ comments)
• Research shows that the online predation issue is not nearly as big as we think; the threat is overblown; we've been Datelined to death; and that most kids are pretty good at navigating the Web safely
• It's a basic risk-reward equation
• Adults are not having these conversations with kids, they're simply blocking and/or ignoring the issue
• Just like we have driver's ed, we need Internet ed (Dave Keane)
• There's nothing personalized or passion-based about what we're asking kids to do in school
• How can we square this with entrepeneurship, innovation, creativity, 21st century skills, etc.?

The end of teacher sameness and solidarity

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

[I]n American education, policy making is not guided by what is best for children or the larger public. It is a political process driven by power. And the most powerful groups in that process are special interests, led by the teachers unions, with a stake in keeping the system as it is. . . . Reforms of real consequence are vigorously resisted and watered down. (p. 149)

Traditionally, teachers have taught students face-to-face in classrooms. This is the standard role, common across virtually all teachers, and has allowed for a pervasive sense of occupational sameness that has long been a very good thing for the unions. It encourages teachers to see themselves as having a common set of work interests, as being equally deserving, and as sinking or swimming together. And all of this promotes solidarity, which is critical to the unions’ ability to attract members, gain their financial and emotional support, and mobilize them for economic and political ends. (p. 158)

[T]eachers unions are steadfast in demanding sameness . . . [t]he idea is to minimize all sources of differentiation, because they undermine the common interests and solidarity that so contribute to union success. . . . [H]owever, technology gives rise to a differentiation of roles among teachers. Some may still work face-to-face with students in classroom settings. . . . Some may work with students in computer labs, handling much larger classes than today’s teachers do (because the computers are taking over much of the actual teaching). Some may work with students online but still do it in real time. Some may engage in distance learning but do it asynchronously . . . Some may work mainly with parents, monitoring student progress and assuring proper student oversight. Some may oversee or serve as mentors to the front-line teachers themselves. And more. These and other jobs . . . require different skills and backgrounds, may call for varying levels of pay, . . . offer teachers a vast array of occupational opportunities they didn’t have before, encourage a level of entrepeneurialism and individualism among them . . . The profession of the future will be a much more differentiated and entrepeneurial one, and such a profession spells trouble for the unions . . . it is destined to be a profession that will no longer concentrate teachers in common geographic locations and monopoly employers – and the resulting dispersion of teachers to new locations, combined with the diversity of employers that goes along with it, cannot help but create additional layers of differentiation that affect how teachers see their own interests. (p. 159–160)

[T]he pervasive sameness that the unions have always counted on will slowly fall apart. As the years go by, they will have a harder time generating the solidarity they need to motivate teachers to join, to keep them as members, to mobilize supportive action - and to do the things successful unions need to do if they are to wield power in politics. As sameness and solidarity decline, so too will their political power. (p. 160)

[Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education]

Previous posts in this series

1. Education’s resistance to technology will be overcome

2. It would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and NOT have transformative implications for how children can be educated

3. Technology will free learning from the dead hand of the past

4. Technological change is destined to be resisted by the teachers unions

5. Correlation or causation? Teacher resistance to state technology initiatives

6. Greater use of technology allows for decreased numbers, but improved quality, of teachers?

Greater use of technology allows for decreased numbers, but improved quality, of teachers?

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

There is every reason to believe that technology will only become more effective with time. The same cannot be said of the traditional “technology” of education - teachers and classrooms - unless that world changes fundamentally. (p. 77)

Scores of technology-based instructional programs are being used in schools throughout America. . . . A recent survey indicated that the two main issues holding back technology use are “It doesn’t fit in the schedule,” and “There is not sufficient time to train teachers.” Nowhere does it say that the software is inadequate or that technology has dubious instructional value. (p. 77)

If elementary students spend but one hour a day learning electronically, certified staff could be reduced by a sixth. At the middle school level, two hours a day with computers would reduce staff requirements by a third. High schools, with three hours of usage, could reduce staff by up to a half. This level of computer usage is quite feasible given instructional technology that exists today. (p. 80).

The quality of teachers would benefit from the increased use of technology in at least two important ways. Even after investing in hardware and software, which are trivial compared to the cost of teachers, schools would have funds from staff savings to increase teacher pay and to provide more time for teacher training and planning. Added time for professional development, with proper supervision and accountability, would improve teacher quality. Added pay would help attract and retain better talent. Better talent is the most important ingredient of better schools. The [Dayton View Academy and Dayton Academy] charter schools . . . are already demonstrating the feasibility of these ideas – in the toughest of circumstances. (p. 80)

[Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education]

Previous posts in this series

1. Education’s resistance to technology will be overcome

2. It would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and NOT have transformative implications for how children can be educated

3. Technology will free learning from the dead hand of the past

4. Technological change is destined to be resisted by the teachers unions

5. Correlation or causation? Teacher resistance to state technology initiatives

Correlation or causation? Teacher resistance to state technology initiatives

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

A. “The average technology score [from Education Week’s Technology Counts 2008] drops as union membership grows. . . . technology seems to be advancing more quickly in states where the unions are weakest” (p. 107). [chart is from p. 108]

B. “The percentage of states with state-level virtual schools drops steadily as the unionization of teachers grows” (p. 118). [chart is from p. 119]

C. “[We] look at the percentage of states . . . that have data systems with the capacity to link students and teachers . . . [and see] the same basic pattern as for virtual schools – which is telling, as virtual schools and teacher identifiers have little to do with one another aside from their impact on union interests” (pp. 138–139). [chart is from p. 139]

[Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education]

Previous posts in this series

1. Education’s resistance to technology will be overcome

2. It would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and NOT have transformative implications for how children can be educated

3. Technology will free learning from the dead hand of the past

4. Technological change is destined to be resisted by the teachers unions

Technological change is destined to be resisted by the teachers unions

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

The fact that [technology] offers enormous benefits is not enough to guarantee that it will be embraced by the public schools and its potential fully realized. Technological change will run into the same political roadblocks that all major reforms have run into, and for exactly the same reasons. Powerful groups will try to block it. (pp. 29–30)

It is a fact that the teachers unions have vested interests in preserving the existing educational system, regardless of how poorly it performs. It is a fact that they are more powerful – by far – than any other groups involved in the politics of education. And it is a fact that in a government of checks and balances they can use their power to block or weaken most reforms they do not like. To recognize as much is not to launch ideological attacks against the unions. It is simply to recognize the political world as it is. (p. 54)

If anything is stone-cold certain about the current structure of power, it is that technological change is destined to be resisted by the teachers unions and their allies. This is “their” system, and they are compelled by their own interests to preserve and protect it. They will go to the ramparts to see that technology does not have real transformative effects. (p. 55)

[Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education]

Previous posts in this series

1. Education’s resistance to technology will be overcome

2. It would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and NOT have transformative implications for how children can be educated

3. Technology will free learning from the dead hand of the past

Technology will free learning from the dead hand of the past

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

The American education system faces much more than a performance problem. It also faces a political problem that, in the grander scheme of things, is more fundamental than the performance problem itself - because it prevents the performance problem from being seriously addressed and resolved. . . .

What sets technology apart from other sources of reform is that . . . it also has a far-reaching capacity to change politics - and to eat away, relentlessly and effectively, at the political barriers that have long prevented reform. Technology, then, is a double-barreled agent of change. It generates the innovations that make change attractive, and at the same time it undermines the political resistance that would normally prevent change from happening. . . .

This will mean real improvement, and real benefits for the nation and its children. It will also mean something still more profound: the dawning of a new era in which politics is more open, productive ideas are more likely to flourish – and learning is liberated from the dead hand of the past. [Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education, pp. 10–12]

It would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and NOT have transformative implications for how children can be educated

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

Even today, with educational technology in its earliest stages:

• Curricula can be customized to meet the learning styles and life situations of individual students.
• Education can be freed from geographic constraint.
• Students can have more interaction with . . . teachers and students who may be thousands of miles away or from different nations or cultures.
• Parents can readily be included in the communications loop.
• Teachers can be freed from their tradition-bound classroom roles, employed in more differentiated and productive ways, and offered new career paths.
• Sophisticated data systems can put the spotlight on performance [and] make progress (or the lack of it) transparent.
• Schools can be operated at lower cost, relying more on technology (which is relatively cheap) and less on labor (which is relatively expensive). . . .

Information and knowledge are absolutely fundamental to what education is all about . . . and it would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and not have transformative implications for how children can be educated and how schools and teachers can more productively do their jobs. . . .

Precisely because technology promises to transform the core components of schooling, it is inevitably disruptive to the jobs, routines, and resources of the people whose livelihoods derive from the existing system. [Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education, pp. 7–9]

Education's resistance to technology will be overcome

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

The revolution in information technology is historic in its force and scope: reshaping the fundamentals of how human beings from every corner of the globe communicate, interact, conduct their business, and simply live their lives from day to day. Education has so far resisted this revolution, as we could have predicted. But . . . we believe the resistance will be overcome – not simply because technology generates innovations of great value for student learning (which it does), but . . . because it is destined to have surprising and far-reaching effects on politics and power . . . . Technology will triumph. But the story of its triumph is a political story. [Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education, pp. xi-xii]

NECC - My adventures with Horse & Hound magazine: Florida Virtual School, Achieve3000

A few days before NECC I was invited by a publicist to interview Julie Young, the Executive Director of the Florida Virtual School (FLVS), and also speak with the folks from Achieve3000. I accepted because I’ve always wanted the chance to talk with Julie. I had no idea in advance that I would end up having a Notting Hill Horse & Hound magazine-type experience (and, yes, I was Hugh Grant).

Florida Virtual School

I knock on a door and am quickly ushered into a hotel suite. I meet and shake hands with Ben Noel, CEO of 360Ed, as he walks out the door. Then I am offered a beverage, plunked onto a couch, handed a packet of publicity materials, and given 30 minutes to talk with Julie and Andy Ross, VP of Global Services for FLVS. The topic: FLVS’ new online video game / American History course, Conspiracy Code. I’m a little bit disoriented but gamely dive in…

Conspiracy Code runs on a custom gaming engine designed specifically for FLVS by 360Ed. It cost $1.5 million to develop; costs were shared equally by FLVS and 360Ed and spread over three years ($250K per partner per year). Two hundred FLVS students are in the game now. Several other districts are piloting it. Conspiracy Code is designed to be an integrated, full-year course / gaming experience. Students take about 90 to 100 hours to complete the game. They dip in and out of the gaming engine throughout the year, assembling clues and completing missions. The game includes 51 assessments (both oral and written), 270 mini-games, numerous interrogations, 30 ‘agent eliminations,’ and 371 clues. Teachers monitor student progress; each of the 10 missions takes 2 to 3 weeks. Most students spend about an hour a day working for the class, some of which is in the game environment. Historical facts are interwoven throughout the gaming experience and student-teacher discussion. Sometimes the game requires students to do outside research to complete assignments and proceed forward.

• Conspiracy Code Product Overview
• Conspiracy Code Press Release
• FLVS Consipiracy Code web site
• FLVS Presskit
• Education Next article about FLVS

The first evaluation report on the Conspiracy Code is due in a couple of weeks but anecdotal evidence looks extremely promising. The students who seem to like the game the most are the ones who ‘hate history.’ The game requires students to write, create data maps, make timelines, ask questions, make associations, solve problems, etc. Students must apply their knowledge and facts in a number of different ways to be successful. Some ‘barriers’ were put in place to ensure that students didn’t play more than work (e.g., students can’t move forward until they work on their data map, write in their journal, get feedback from their teacher, etc.).

 

The first two teachers were ‘gaming people.’ It still took them 2 to 3 months to get comfortable with teaching this way. All FLVS teachers receive extensive professional development before they’re allowed to teach. The first few teachers will train those that follow. There is a ‘Teaching Online 101’ course plus a separate gaming module for Conspiracy Code.

 

Now that the gaming engine has been built, FLVS will use it for other games/courses; I also suggested that FLVS release it to students to design their own games. The next Conspiracy Code game will target reading and comes out in August. All in all, it appears to be a solid attempt at integrating gaming into the education experience. It will be interesting to see the evaluation results when they come out. FLVS is a data-driven organization and is committed to reworking the game/course as need be to ensure students are both engaged AND learning whatever facts they need for success in the standardized-testing era.

Achieve3000

Throughout our conversation, people are coming in and out of a door to another room in the suite (reporters? other bloggers?). When my 30 minutes with Julie and Andy are up, I’m swooped into that room, replaced by someone else who gets my spot on the FLVS couch. I’m handed another publicity packet, do the quick meet-and-greet, and away we go…

Achieve3000 is a ‘differentiated instruction solution.’ In essence, students are given an article to read on the computer that’s aligned with their reading level. The company recommends a minimum of 1 or 2 articles a week but there are articles available every day if desired. Great care has been taken to avoid stigmatization of low-level readers. For example, even though the article text and corresponding assignments are geared to students’ individual reading level, the overall layout of the article, font size, graphics, etc. all are extremely similar to what other higher-level readers in the class are experiencing. There is little to no difference in reading experience; it’s actually fairly difficult to tell at a glance at what level another student is working. The student reading at first-grade level also is reading the same content as her peer at the ninth-grade level. This allows low-level readers to still contribute to class discussions. All of this is in contrast to schools’ typical practice of having separate books or textbooks – often on separate topics – or pullout programs for struggling readers.

Results so far seem to be impressive. Expected student growth in a year is 46 lexile points. Students who read one article a week average 102 lexile point gains; students who read two articles per week average 124. The program accommodates Spanish-speaking students (and, soon, those that speak Haitian Creole). The New York City and Miami-Dade school districts (as well as the State of Hawaii) are using Achieve3000. Average gains in one year for ESL/ELL students are 166 lexile points (compared to 27 points expected). Good results also are being seen with students with special needs (see, e.g., the Arrowhead (WI) Schools).

Achieve3000 is working with the Associated Press and now has an archive of over 16,000 nonfiction articles. Next steps for the company are to 1) create a number of specific science units, and 2) identify and/or write articles that target specific career clusters and can be aligned with the WorkKeys job skill assessment program.

Final impressions

My time is up. I’m whisked out of the back room toward the hotel suite door. Julie and Andy are talking with someone new on the couch and I’m soon in the hallway, left at last to collect my thoughts. As I walk toward the elevator to return to my own hotel room, I’m left with one thought: Man, was that strange. Quite informative, but strange nonetheless. Who knows what else goes on in the back hallways, hotel suites, and meeting rooms of NECC?!

Disclosure: I received no incentives from either organization (other than a thumb drive from FLVS that contained the above Conspiracy Code materials) and was not pressured to cover them in any particular way. In short, I believe I was treated much like any media representative, despite being ‘just a blogger.’

Online instruction, stubborn resistance, and stupid faculty

A two-part tale of higher education and online instruction…

“Students demand free beer too”

A May 29 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education reads as follows:

Opponents of online instruction believe that traditional, face-to-face teaching is always better. A colleague of mine, wary of caving in to students’ demands for online courses, remarked recently that “students demand free beer, too; that doesn’t mean we should give it to them.”

What her academic colleague somehow, incredibly, fails to realize, of course, is that students don’t have to attend his institution. Since postsecondary students vote with their feet and their pocketbooks, the institution does indeed have to give students online courses if that’s what they want. Otherwise, the university literally won’t have any tuition revenue because its potential students went elsewhere instead.

I can’t wait to see what happens over the next couple of decades. As online courses become even more prevalent than they are now, colleges and universities either will have to get in the game or be left behind. There are too many options available to students for anything else to occur. Some postsecondary institutions are going to realize that they must become more responsive to student needs and desires in order to survive; others won’t realize it until it’s too late and will disappear altogether. It should make for interesting times.

In the meantime, all I can say is… stupid faculty.

“I’ll never do it again”

Another article in the same issue of The Chronicle describes one faculty member’s woeful experience teaching online. The author goes into detail regarding all of the problems that she had with the course, including (but not limited to):

1. there was a ‘lack of immediacy’ in communication;
2. she was ‘only able to introduce students to a limited amount of material outside of the textbook readings;’
3. it is ‘simply impossible to replicate a lecture online;’
4. there wasn’t ‘enough time or a proper forum’ to help students ‘develop writing and critical thinking skills or to foster original ideas;’
5. online courses are too big;
6. she had no time off during the week like she would with a regular 3–hour, once-a-week, face-to-face class;
7. she got too many e-mail messages from students; and
8. she suspected her students didn’t like her very much.

This faculty member obviously has no idea that 1, 3, and 5 are dependent on how the course and the technology were structured. Setting up the course in a different way might have alleviated many of her concerns. Issues 2 and 6 seem to be the result of her own decision-making, not any inherent flaw in online instruction. Issue 4 doesn’t make any sense to me; didn’t she have the same number of weeks as for her other courses? It’s hard for me to be sympathetic regarding Issue 7: My students contacted me too much and asked me too many questions! Waaahh! I guess she prefers it when her students stay out of touch and don’t try to get their questions answered. Finally, can she really blame Issue 8 on the fact that the instruction was ‘online?’ There sure are a lot of faculty who teach online and also have students who like them.

Again, my main thought on this is… stupid faculty.

Wrap-up

Whether we want it to or not, the paradigm shift is occurring around us every day. As postsecondary faculty members, it behooves us to learn about it and adjust rather than dismissively rejecting the new learning landscape and stubbornly trying to stick to the status quo.

[Okay, calling these faculty members stupid probably is a little harsh. But I think clueless fits quite nicely…]

An amazing lineup of Classroom 2.0 events

Steve Hargadon over at Classroom 2.0 has an amazing set of webinars lined up for us this week. Here’s the relevant portion of Steve’s recent e-mail message:

Tuesday, May 5th, at 12:30pm Pacific / 3:30pm Eastern [/ 7:30pm GMT]:  Keith Krueger, the CEO of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN.org), discusses the Education Stimulus package and reviews the results of school CTO and superintendent survey.  Keith takes a holistic view of the costs of technology, discusses proactive strategic and tactical approaches to minimize the damage from reduced technology investments, and explores how technology can be used to save time and money.  Part of the http://www.EdStimulus.org project, join the event at https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?password=M.58F396AF09B4D1D0DEC23158F489CB

Wednesday, May 6th, at 5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern / 12am GMT:  Don Tapscott, the author or co-author of 13 widely read books, including Wikinomics, discusses with me the future of education, Grown Up Digital (his latest book), and the Net Gen Education Project.  Log-in and other details at http://www.futureofeducation.com/forum/topics/don-tapscott-talks-about

Thursday, May 7th, at 5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern / 12am GMT:  Michael Horn, co-author of Disrupting Class:  How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, and the co-founder and Executive Director (Education) of Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank devoted to applying the theories of disruptive innovation to problems in the social sector.  We'll discuss his book, Web 2.0, and more.  Login and other details at http://www.futureofeducation.com/forum/topics/michael-horn-disrupting-class

I don’t know how you get all of this great stuff arranged for us, Steve, but THANK YOU! I think I can make the first two and would do the third one too if my son didn’t have baseball practice. I’ll have to catch it on replay. Hope to see some of you participate in at least one of these!

Iowa - A robust system of online learning

[This is Post 2 for my guest blogging stint at The Des Moines Register.]

Archimedes said “Give me a lever long enough and I can move the world.” This week I am blogging about 5 key levers that I think are necessary to move Iowa schools forward and help our graduates survive and thrive in this new digital, global age in which we now live. Yesterday I discussed 21st century curricula. Today’s post concerns online learning opportunities for students.

When most people think about online learning, they think about adults taking online university classes. Or they might think about the online training that occurs in many workplaces. But online learning opportunities occur in the K-12 sector as well and are increasingly popular with students and their families.

The Sloan Consortium estimates that at least 1 million K-12 public school students took an online course last year. This represents approximately 2% of the national K-12 public school student population and is a 22–fold increase since 2000. About 20 states have statewide virtual high schools that deliver online courses to students across the state. Others, like Iowa, have state-led programs that help deliver some online courses to students.

Florida appears to be the model for the rest of the country. The Florida Virtual School offers almost 100 online courses and is expected to serve more than 80,000 students this year. Its enrolllment is growing at a pace of 50% per year. North Carolina, Utah, and Alabama also have very robust statewide virtual schools.

In addition to creating statewide virtual schools, states are enacting a number of other policies to facilitate online learning. For example, both Michigan and Alabama now have state laws requiring that students have an online learning experience before they graduate. Florida recently passed a law requiring every school district to provide online courses (either itself or by contracting with others) for its K-8 students.

The reasons are numerous for the popularity of online courses with schools, students, and parents. For many school districts, online courses are the only way to provide high-level classes such as Advanced Placement, foreign language, advanced science or math, and other courses. Other districts are finding that online coursework can be an excellent option for at-risk students or credit recovery; for homebound, incarcerated, or home-schooled students; or for meeting the needs of students who simply may not be successful in a more traditional classroom environment. Meta-analyses of existing research show that student achievement in face-to-face and online courses is approximately equivalent. Students and parents value the flexibility, accessibility, and convenience of online coursework. Many online courses also allow students to proceed at their own pace; collaborate with students from other schools or countries; and/or incorporate digital technologies into their learning.

Online learning opportunities for K-12 students are exploding across America. The United States Department of Education found that four years ago over a third of school districts already had students taking online courses. Unfortunately, here in Iowa we are NOT keeping pace. The most recent data from the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) show that only a few hundred of the 480,000 K-12 students in Iowa are enrolled in online courses. Entities such as Iowa Learning Online, the Iowa Online AP Academy, and Kirkwood Community College’s High School Distance Learning Program all are delivering courses to students. The Des Moines Public Schools also are exploring some online learning options. However, even if online enrollments in Iowa soon will number in the low thousands, the overall availability of online learning opportunities for Iowa students still is extremely low.

A robust online learning infrastructure for students makes a lot of sense for the state of Iowa (and I’m glad there’s a bill in the Iowa House to consider it). If we’re honest with ourselves, we will recognize that most of our school districts will NEVER be able to provide the curricular diversity that most of our graduates need to be effective digital, global workers and citizens. If we’re truly honest, we also will recognize that the Iowa Communications Network (ICN) is not a viable future option. The ICN is a closed, aging network and the course offerings (and monies) there, like everything else in the world, must move to the Web. Whether it’s a statewide virtual school or some other model, we must significantly increase the number of online courses available to Iowa students if we are to provide them access to the high-quality learning opportunities envisioned in the Iowa Core Curriculum. 

Recommended reading

• Learning Virtually: Expanding Opportunities
• iNACOL’s resources page
• University of Florida Virtual School Clearinghouse

Recommended viewing 

Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and coordinator of the Educational Administration program at Iowa State University. He also is Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE). He blogs regularly at www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org.

After class

I love winter. But I'll admit it's been a bit nippy here lately. Here was the temp when I got out of my class in Mason City Wednesday night:

My class is a blended model of instruction: some face-to-face meetings and the rest online. In this kind of weather, that means fewer long drives through blowing snow for me and my students and fewer frozen noses. We can cozy up inside our warm homes and yet still learn from each other... Awesome!

SETDA's Class of 2020 Action Plan for Education

The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) has been on an unbelievable tear this year. Back in February it released its annual Trends Report on NCLB Title II, Part D (Enhancing Education Through Technology, or E2T2). Previous national reports are available at the SETDA web site. You also can access state-level reports at the Metiri Group’s web site.

Now SETDA’s Class of 2020 Action Plan for Education project is releasing its reports. The first three already are available:

• Powerful broadband access for all: Breaking through the barriers
• STEM education: Achievement and innovation
• Technology-based assessments improve teaching and learning

Two more reports are coming out this month and next:

• Empowering teachers: A professional and collaborative approach
• Robust, rigorous, and right-on-time learning through online courseware

Be sure to tap into the incredible wealth of good information on the Reports, Research & Tools page of the SETDA web site [warning: it’s easy to get lost in here for hours…]. There are numerous high-quality resources available for K-12 educational technology advocates and change agents, including the 2007 report, Maximizing the impact: The pivotal role of technology in a 21st century education system.

Keep up the great work, SETDA!

DRAFT - Statewide 21st century learning system

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to outline what it takes to get your state or province from ‘here’ to ‘there.’ In other words, what would it take to get from our current system of schooling to a robust, province- or statewide system of 21st century learning? Here’s my first attempt at this task (click on the images for larger versions)…

PART 1

What needs to be done

The first step is to figure out what needs to happen…

1. Curricula that emphasize 21st century skills. Instead of simply adding on 21st century skills to our existing content-based standards, put them at the core of new, more focused curricula.
2. Preservice and inservice training for teachers and administrators. Training in colleges and universities. Training on the job. Regular, frequent, strategic, and ongoing.
3. Robust statewide online learning infrastructure for students and teachers. Because of resources or geography, high-level and credit recovery courses aren’t available to many students. Training opportunities aren’t available to educators. A vibrant system of online courses can help.
4. Computing device in every student’s hands. Laptops. Netbooks. Smartphones. Devices that have some power, are mobile, allow students to type, and can access the Internet.
5. Statewide no-cost or low-cost broadband wireless access. High-speed wireless in every corner of the state.
6. P-20 coordination, cooperation, and vertical articulation. Curricular, programmatic, workforce development, and other alignment across the P-20 spectrum.

Environmental supports

Some supports need to be in place to facilitate effective implementation…

1. Federal, state, and local laws, policies, and funding support. A thoughtful, helpful array of legal, policy, and funding supports for what needs to be done.
2. Monitoring, assessment, and evaluation. Regular, frequent, ongoing. To inform practice, not just for accountability.
3. Mindset shift. The digital, global age is here. It’s time to learn how to survive and thrive in it rather than being afraid of it or ignoring it.

PART 2

Marketing

There’s also a marketing piece to this. Who needs to be informed about what needs to be done in order to facilitate a broad base of support and buy-in?

1. Parents and community members
2. School board members and P-12 educators
3. Postsecondary faculty and officials
4. Employers
5. Legislators and policymakers
6. Media

PART 3

Cost

I’m working on this part…

YOUR INPUT IS DESIRED

I could use some help on this not-so-theoretical assignment. This is a draft. I need a final version by November 5.

• What would your system look like? How would you organize things differently? What did I leave out?
• How can we calculate some rough, back-of-the-envelope costs of these activities (e.g., just how much would it cost to get wireless broadband across the state)? I could really use some assistance costing this out.
• How is my thinking flawed? What am I forgetting? What is particularly important to emphasize? What else should I be considering?

Angela Maiers and Mike Sansone have been of great assistance with this first draft (any mistakes or logic flaws are mine alone!). I hope you will be willing to lend your thoughts as well. Thanks in advance!

[Feel free to download and play around with these files: png1 png2 ppt pptx]

Not so irrelevant 013

My latest roundup of links and tools…

When did the IT staff get promoted above the superintendent?

Will Richardson notes:

[A] school superintendent I spoke with … lamented the fact that his IT staff wouldn’t give him access to YouTube and even Wikipedia.

See also my older post: Principal blogging not allowed.

Math and motocross

Check out this sweet series of motocross math videos at HotChalk. The brains behind the math? Former guest blogger Jason Dyer!

“I didn’t know Sasquatch was real.”

Fun with the Pacific Tree Octopus!

Maybe we should do this for teachers and administrators too

"Seventy-one-year-old Peggy McIntyre needs to learn as much as she can about Windows before 8 a.m. Or else."

Post-Gutenberg economics

It’s now a publish-then-filter world. Clay Shirky notes that “we’re clocking a singularity a week at this point.”

We need to educate our educators

Seth Godin says:

It’s easy to be against something you’re afraid of. And it’s easy to be afraid of something that you don’t understand.

Open your brain, open your model of education

The Education Innovation blog has an interesting post on closed v. open models of education. [Note to self: this might be the world’s longest URL]

Some good thinking going on here

Thanks to Mike Sansone, I recently discovered the Union Square Ventures blog. In Power to the People, they state:

[W]e believe that we are only at the beginning of the web’s impact on the fundamental structure of education. We expect much of that change to be away from the existing educational institutions and towards empowering individuals and newly-formed groups.

In Why the Flow of Innovation Has Reversed, they note:

[T]he vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consumer. Today, it is the reverse. All of the most interesting stuff is being built first for consumers and is tricking back to the enterprise. . . . [O]ne reason this is happening is that the success of a web service is more often determined by its social engineering than its electrical engineering.

Students aren’t the only ones missing the big picture

The Florida Department of Education is concerned that students are missing the big picture when it comes to science. A task force stated that “teachers should provide a broader focus on scientific concepts and process in a 'big picture' sense.” Hmmm… I wonder if that means the Department is going to narrow down the list of required science standards and also pare down the size of approved textbooks. I’m guessing not. Download the full report if you dare.

Disempowered today = disempowered tomorrow

I left this comment at Jim Gates’ Tipline blog:

Students who aren't fluid technology users today will be the low-wage workers and disempowered citizens of tomorrow.

I want it right THERE

Finally, if you’re anal-retentive about your Windows taskbar like I am, check out Taskbar Shuffle.

Interview: Mike Vitelli, The Gaming Krib

As promised, here is my interview of Mike Vitelli, CEO of The Gaming Krib:

• Conversation 29: Interview with Mike Vitelli

Happy listening!

Great blogs for busy administrators

One of the things we do at CASTLE is try and expose administrators to modern technology tools with which they may be unfamiliar. For example, if we want principals to understand the power of blogging, one good way to do that is to show them (and maybe even sign them up for) some blogs that are directly relevant and helpful to their daily work.

I have updated our list of blogs that we recommend for school leaders:

• Great blogs for busy administrators

You can subscribe to each blog individually or I also have created a feed that will allow you to read and/or subscribe to all of the blogs in one place:

• Read posts from the overall feed on a web page
• Subscribe to the overall feed via RSS
• Subscribe to the overall feed via e-mail

Here's the code if you want to add the blogs as a clip on your web site or a blogroll:

• Web site clip code
• Blogroll code

1 year ago: What do students need to memorize?

Educational benefits of social networking

Check out the transcript of Will Richardson's live online chat about the educational benefits of social networking. Part of the fun at this year's T+L conference!

FYI, tomorrow is an online discussion with Thomas Hutton, senior staff attorney for the National School Boards Association, on navigating the legal landmines associated with new technologies. You know I'm looking forward to reading that!

2007 recipients of the Technology Leadership Research Award

It is my great pleasure to announce that Dr. Chris Gareis and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach are the recipients of the 2007 Technology Leadership Research Award. Here is the abstract from their co-authored article, Electronically Mentoring to Develop Accomplished Professional Teachers:

With nearly half of all new teachers leaving the classroom within five years, schools are faced with the challenge of retaining early-career teachers while simultaneously providing them with the support they need to develop into effective professionals. Mentoring novice teachers by pairing them with experienced teachers in schools is a widely adopted practice for addressing these needs; however, face-to-face mentoring is subject to challenges. A promising complement to face-to-face mentoring may be found in the innovative use of computer-mediated communications, such as online forums. In an effort to support, develop, and retain novice teachers, The College of William and Mary has partnered with the Center for Teacher Quality to create ENDAPT – Electronically Networking to Develop Accomplished Professional Teachers. ENDAPT is an asynchronous online forum that brings together novice teachers and teacher leaders in a virtual mentoring community. This article provides an overview of the program model and presents research findings from a study of participants' postings using content analysis methodology to identify and describe the nature of professional conversations among mentors and novice teachers.

Although we can’t share the actual article with you (because it’s currently under review by a journal), Chris and Sheryl will be giving a presentation on their paper at the UCEA conference in November which we will try to make available to folks.

I would like to publicly thank the other practitioners and academics who took the time out of their extremely busy schedules to participate in the anonymous review process this year:

• Kurt Bernardo, Technology Coordinator, Orange City (OH) Schools; 2005 Ohio Technology Coordinator of the Year
• Dr. Jim Morrison, Editor-in-Chief, Innovate
• Dr. Chris Sessums, Director of Distance Education, University of Florida College of Education; Best Individual Blog, 2006 Edublog Awards
• Dr. Jon Voss, Coordinator, Northern Star Online (MN) Schooling Collaborative

The Technology Leadership Research Award is jointly sponsored by CASTLE and the UCEA School Technology Leadership Special Interest Group.

Kudos to Chris and Sheryl. I'm looking forward to the submissions for next year!

Social networking in schools

I received this question recently:

What resources (contacts, advisors, print, online, etc.) do you recommend to our school leaders - and lawyers - so they can make informed decisions about student access to social networking tools?

Anyone have any suggestions? Is there a place for current social networking tools in our students' education?

Largest U.S. universities

Surprised? Two primarily online universities and one community college among the top five. FYI, the University of Phoenix has more than twice the number of students (117,309) as any of the next four (which range from 54,169 to 50,663).

[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education. Campuses with the Largest Enrollments, Fall 2005. August 31, 2007.]

Communication Workers of America

Earlier this month I featured a report from the Communication Workers of America (CWA) as my Report of the Week. Although I know that each of you usually reads every comment on this blog (hah!), Beth Allen of the CWA left a later comment that I thought was worth bringing to the forefront:

Hello all.

I am very interested in the challenge of articulating the vision as well. I work with the Communications Workers of America, on the Speed Matters project, which Scott kindly highlighted as a Report of the Week.

We are in the initial stages of gathering real stories about how universal, affordable broadband can make a real difference. Our research shows that even people who don't want broadband for themselves have a vague idea that it is important for kids and schools and the future of education. We need to move from the abstract to the specific.

We are interested identifying educators who would be interested in talking about their vision of what they could do if every child had home access to a computer with a real high speed connection (think FTTH [fiber to the home] with speeds of 30 mbps or more).

We are also interested in getting kids to imagine the future - what would they do or invent if everyone in the United States had a real high speed connection. It might be the world's most awesome video game. It might be a video phone system so that they could communicate with their grandparents who live far away.

If any of you are interested in participating in one of these projects, drop me a note at http://www.speedmatters.org/contact.html

Anyone willing to talk with Beth? If so, drop her a note! For what it’s worth, Beth, here is what I’d talk about:

• Online multimedia textbooks: A strategic investment
• Online multimedia textbooks: Follow-up

Virtual world tidbits

A few choice items related to virtual worlds...

• Dr. Judith Donath hypothesizes a day when spammers will use avatars to scam money from us.
• Dr. Edward Castronova, author of the fabulous book, Synthetic Worlds, is finding that gender bias may also occur in virtual worlds. For example, female EverQuest avatars fetch 10 percent less in the market, even when they have the same powers and skills as male avatars. Check out some of his other work too.
• Virtual Congress, anyone? (I wonder if it will include scandals...)
• Finally, check out this funny real-world simulation of Second Life (brought to you by Blackboard).

Interview with Chris Craft

Is it already July 3? Way back on June 20 I had the pleasure of talking with Chris Craft about online learning for a class he's taking. The focus was mainly on higher education but much of our conversation was relevant to the K-12 world as well. Chris posted our discussion as a podcast in case you'd like to hear it:

• Interview with Chris Craft (23:46)

ROTW: Virtual high schools

Okay, it's time to try out a new feature here at Dangerously Irrelevant: the Report of the Week (ROTW). Can I find and feature an interesting education-related report each and every week? I think I can!

This week's report is from Education Sector:

• Laboratories of Reform: Virtual High Schools and Innovation in Public Education

Here's a quote from the report:

There has been no shortage of solutions for improving the nation’s public schools. School leadership, teacher quality, standards, testing, funding, and a host of other issues have crowded reform agendas. But an important trend in public education has gone largely unnoticed in the cacophony of policy proposals: the rise of a completely new class of public schools - “virtual” schools using the Internet to create online classrooms - that is bringing about reforms that have long eluded traditional public schools.

All Reports of the Week will be listed under the Reading category (and, in most instances, the Research and Evaluation category). Happy reading!

Learning Spanish virtually

Yesterday I uploaded our third CASTLE Conversations podcast. I interviewed Julie Sykes, a doctoral student here at the University of Minnesota, about her Spanish Pragmatics Project, which is using virtual world software (like Second Life) to help postsecondary Spanish students learn how to communicate effectively with native Spanish speakers. Screenshots are included with the podcast.

The intent of CASTLE Conversations is to interview folks that have expertise and are doing interesting things but may not have much national visibility. Keep giving us feedback and let us know what you think. As always, we're interested in your nominations for interviewees. If you know someone interesting that you think we should interview, get in touch!

Happy listening!

Yesterday I uploaded our third CASTLE Conversations podcast. I interviewed Julie Sykes, a doctoral student here at the University of Minnesota, about her Spanish Pragmatics Project, which is using virtual world software (like Second Life) to help postsecondary Spanish students learn how to communicate effectively with native Spanish speakers. Screenshots are included with the podcast.

The intent of CASTLE Conversations is to interview folks that have expertise and are doing interesting things but may not have much national visibility. Keep giving us feedback and let us know what you think. As always, we're interested in your nominations for interviewees. If you know someone interesting that you think we should interview, get in touch!

Happy listening!

Online multimedia textbooks: Follow-up

My letter to Secretary Spellings in the previous post about online multimedia textbooks is the outcome of a conversation that I had with Jim Hirsch, Associate Superintendent for Technology and Academic Services for the Plano (TX) Independent School District, at the TIES conference last December. I'm not the only one thinking on this front. For example, Scott McNealy, Chairman of the Board for Sun Microsystems, said last June that 'technology trumps the textbook.' Similarly, four days ago Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, noted that textbooks as we know them will disappear.

To be honest, the two most visible free online textbook initiatives still have a long way to go. WikiBooks, a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, seems to be having a hard time getting off the ground; most of its content has yet to be created or is in the very earliest stages of development. Curriki, which is sponsored by Sun and has gotten a lot of media attention, so far seems to consist primarily of disparate resources and activities rather than comprehensive, meaningfully-organized textbooks. Both seem to be relying on volunteers' efforts for most of the content. While both initiatives have potential, so far that potential remains unfulfilled. It's early in the game, though. The National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) also is doing some interesting work but appears to be complementing, rather than replacing, print textbooks.

As my letter indicates, I think we need something more intentional and systematic. A strategic investment of monies could go a long way toward creating some pedagogically powerful, wonderfully engaging, online multimedia textbooks that then could be used by anyone in the country (or world). Can you imagine what a rich, interactive, media-saturated textbook a team of expert teachers, professors, and computer / Web programmers could create given a year's time and $800,000 to play with (above and beyond their sabbatical salaries)? Can you imagine how fiscally and educationally empowering it would be for schools to have free and open access to 150 to 200 high-quality online multimedia textbooks created by the top experts in the country?

Clearly this an expensive venture from a raw dollar standpoint, at least to do it well. That said, the $200 million per year figure that I proposed represents less than 4 one-thousandths of the current federal discretionary funds allocated for K-12 education. The federal government clearly has the money to pull this kind of thing off. So might a consortium of states or maybe a large private foundation. As big as the numbers are, the return on this strategic investment would be HUGE.

Textbook publishers probably would oppose this idea. So might others, for a variety of political, educational, and sociological reasons. But Public Education Network CEO Wendy Puriefoy's February 14 statement that "the new federal education budget is full of enthusiasm but lacks powerful ideas and transformative levels of funding" strikes home with me. I think this is a powerful, transformative idea whose time has come and I hope someone besides me will think big and make this happen.

Online multimedia textbooks: A strategic investment

[send this letter to Secretary Spellings, Director Magner, and Congress]

The Honorable Margaret Spellings
Secretary
United States Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue SW
Washington, DC 20202-7100

Dear Secretary Spellings,

The United States Department of Education currently administers a budget of approximately $56 billion per year in discretionary monies. I am sending this letter to encourage the Department to make a relatively small, but extremely strategic, investment that would pay enormous dividends for our nation’s elementary and secondary students.

For $200 million per year, the Department could create phenomenal, mind-blowing online multimedia textbooks that could be used by students all across the country. Imagine 50 teams, each made up of individuals who took a paid sabbatical for one year, working to create rigorous, standards-based, online textbooks that included text, graphics, electronic presentations, audio, video, simulations, learning games, interactive problem-solving and review activities, etc. The teams could be comprised as follows:

• 16 expert teachers * $100,000 each = $1,600,000
• 4 university professors * $100,000 each = $400,000
• 8 computer / Web programmers * $100,000 each = $800,000
• 1 assistive technology expert * $100,000 = $100,000
• 1 national organization representative * $100,000 = $100,000
• 1 project manager * $200,000 = $200,000
• Communication and other software, supplies, travel, etc. = $800,000

Four teachers plus a professor plus two programmers equals a workgroup; four workgroups per team. Each team receives ongoing feedback from a representative from an appropriate national organization (e.g., National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, National Council for Social Studies), has an assistive technology expert to ensure content accessibility by students with disabilities, and has a project manager to keep the workgroups moving along. The workgroups create content; post that content online as they go along for review, comment, and input from others; and, over the course of a year, create several units each that add up to a complete, amazing, deep, rich online multimedia textbook.

Each year would see the completion of 50 textbooks. Over three or four years, these Department-sponsored teams would create 150 to 200 textbooks for common, key courses (e.g., Algebra I, Physics I, AP English, United States History, 5th grade reading) that are present in nearly every school district nationwide. Textbook content would be refreshed every three or four years to ensure content relevance and usage of the latest digital technologies. If the textbooks were wiki-based, much of the content could be revised and updated even before their refresh cycle came due.

Once created, these textbooks then could be hosted by the Department, state departments of education, and other entities or could be downloaded for hosting on local school district servers. Federal provision of these textbooks would free states and school districts to spend funds on laptops, classroom-level high-speed wireless connectivity, and other technologies necessary to ensure the global competitiveness of our students in the decades to come. All textbook material would be free and openly accessible to our nation’s K-12 students and educators.

I hope that you can see the instructional power of teachers and students tapping into expert-created content delivered via the latest interactive, engaging digital technologies. Although a few organizations (e.g., Wikibooks or Curriki) are attempting to create free online textbooks or learning materials, their reliance on volunteers has resulted in relatively little progress. A strategic investment by the Department could make an extremely powerful contribution to the K-12 educational landscape and would be a powerful lever toward ensuring that all students had access to top-quality, engaging learning materials.

Please consider instituting a national online textbook initiative. I believe that this is an idea whose time has come and would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further with you.

Sincerely,

Dr. Scott McLeod
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational
  Policy and Administration
Director, UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of
  Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE)
Affiliate Faculty, Law School
University of Minnesota

What if? - Online courses

What if every student, not just those in Michigan, had to take at least one high-quality online course before they graduated from high school? What if every teacher and administrator also had to participate in at least one high-quality online professional development experience every three years or so? What would our schools be like? What would our children's lives be like?

Blended Courses and Online Programs

I just finished teaching my Thursday night class "Leading Change" and decided to blog about the changing paradigm of offering courses and entire programs entirely online or through a blended model using face to face and online instruction.  Over the last 4-5 years I have taught under a web-enhanced model.  Classes would still meet weekly but I used the web to provide additional opportunities for collaboration, uploading assignments, posting readings, etc.  This is a model that many professors use and I personally believe that it has been very effective. 

This past spring I taught my first completely on-line course - "Data-Driven Decision Making".  While I am a huge advocate for technology, I still believe in the power of personal interaction and the synergy that can emerge from a group of people deeply engaged in group discussions and activities.  I was somewhat trepidatious, wondering how I might engage students as meaningfully as I had within a classroom setting.  However, as the course progressed, I was extremely pleased with the level of dialogue and interaction that emerged among the 21 students in the class.  In a "good" face-to-face class meeting (like the one that I led tonight), students may deeply engage in discussions with four or five other peers, and may hear other classmates share out briefly in a whole group setting.  However, the online forums and wikis that I utilized in the DDDM class, allowed students to interact with all of their peers, not just a small group.  Many of my students commented that the depth of interaction in this online class was much greater than most of their traditional courses.  This didn't just happen though. I put in much time preparing for the course and establishing expectations and norms to create a community of learners.  I have seen many of my own colleagues successfully transition to on-line learning.  I have also seen those who did not put the time and energy necessary for their on-line classes to be successful and the results were as bad as expected.

My preferred teaching mode is probably a blended approach.  I used this model this past summer to teach "Technology Leadership in Schools".  We met in a computer lab the first 6 class meetings and met face to face about every third scheduled class.  The remainder of the content was delivered in a similar method as my DDDM class with online discussions, wikis and other tech leadership related activities and assignments. 

I hope to continue teaching courses under these various modalities: online, blended,and face to face, because they acknowledge interactions needed for effective adult learning while utilizing new technologies to allow some of those interactions to occur from a distance.  Good night. DMQ

NACOL California symposium

NACOL, UCCP, and Pepperdine University are co-sponsoring a regional online learning symposium in Los Angeles, California on October 11, 2006. The web site for the symposium states that the presentations, workshops, lunch, and discussions will explore and inspire strategies about online learning, including math and science, credit recovery, meeting the needs of gifted students, alternative students, remedial education, and increasing access to advanced courses and college prep. I like how they included a panel session for symposium participants to hear from virtual high school students.

Registration is limited to 150 participants. Sign up soon!