Dangerously Irrelevant

Dr. Yong Zhao at SAI 2009

Here are my notes from Dr. Yong Zhao’s presentation, Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, at the 2009 School Administrators of Iowa (SAI) conference…

• Dr. Zhao’s book will be out soon from ASCD.
• Thomas Friedman: “When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me: ‘Finish your dinner — people in China are starving.’ I, by contrast, find myself wanting to say to my daughters: ‘Finish your homework — people in China and India are starving for your job.’”
• When something bad happens in America, it has to do with education. When something good happens in America, it has to do with some politician.
• March 24, 1958 article in LIFE magazine comparing Russian students’ work with American students’ was very similar to the rhetoric of 2 Million Minutes.
• 1983, A Nation at Risk: “a rising tide of mediocrity” and “we are raising a new generation of Americans that is scientifically and technologically illiterate.”
• Achieve, the College Board, and ACT are writing the upcoming national standards. Ask yourself who stands to benefit from the new standards?
• 2 Million Minutes: now the ‘enemy’ is China and India. Dr. Zhao grew up in China and is back there almost every month. He disagrees with Bob Compton, the director.
• The USA continues to be the most economically competitive country in the world. We continue to be the most innovative, as measured by patents issued. And of course we are the most open, democratic.
• No other country comes close to the US when it comes to exports of intellectual property / knowledge (patents, royalties, copyrights, license fees). China dominates toy exports, not knowledge exports. China is a country built on cheap labor, not knowledge.
• If the US educational system is so bad, why are other countries (like China) trying to emulate us (see, e.g., China’s 2002 and 2005 curriculum and assessment reforms).
• Singapore is emphasizing the explicit teaching of critical and creative thinking skills.
• The correlation between the 1964 First International Math Study test scores (FIMS) and economic output, hourly productivity, quality of life, etc. 40 hours later are all negative. Democracy, creativity, livability all have no relationship or a negative relationship with the FIMS scores.
• Recommends reading Day of Empire: How HyperPowers Rise to Global Dominance – And Why They Fail, by Amy Chua, and The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida. Diversity of talents, creativity, entrepeneurship, and passion are what allow nations to thrive.
• We are busy closing the achievement gap. Asian countries are busy closing the creativity gap.
• The strengths of American education: school talent shows (value individual talents, inspires passion and responsbility, tolerate deviation, cultivate entrepeneurship) and children are popcorn (some pop early and some pop late; respect individual differences; have faith in every child; second, third, and fourth chances)
• Creativity is fundamentally to be different. America is a society that tolerates, values, and celebrates difference.
• We do face new challenges. For example, globalization (i.e., the death of distance). Columbus took about 3 months to get from Spain to the Bahamas. Now it takes 13 hours on airplane. Electronic information, money, voice phone calls, etc. now get there instantly.
• Global supply chains: corporations can fragment their production and distribute it wherever it makes sense (outsourcing of labor). Products are now made from parts that come from a multitude of different countries.
• New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce: “Today, Indian engineers make $7,500 a year against $45,000 for an American engineer with the same qualifications. If we succeed in matching the very high levels of mastery of mathematics and science of these Indian engineers - an enormous challenge for this country - why would the world’s employers pay us more than they have to pay the Indians to do their work? They would be willing to do that only if we could offer something that the Chinese and Indians, and others, cannot.”
• Equalling China’s or India’s performance on standardized tests doesn’t differentiate ourselves, doesn’t allow us to offer what others cannot.
• Problems in other countries also affect everyone now (e.g., swine flu, poverty, violence, financial meltdowns). We no longer can keep ourselves isolated.
• Where does the new hope lie? With Madonna and eBay! Many people don’t like Madonna. But across the globe, there are enough who do for her to be successful. Globalization allows us to find the other crazy people across the world who find value in what we offer. eBay allows us to find others outside our local area who will buy our trash. Globalization expands our audiences and allows our skills, talents, products, etc. to find new places that they can thrive. What do you have that others don’t? What can you contribute to other markets? What’s your niche?
• Societal changes create new job opportunities. Right now, for example, we need people who understand other countries’ cultures, languages, politics, etc.
• Technology demands new skills (e.g., virtual designers). Virtual “gold farming” is now a $2 billion industry worldwide.
• The Partnership for the 21st Century Skills framework is too long and complex. Our problem in America is that we keep adding, we never take away.
• See Jenifer Fox’s www.strengthsmovement.com.
• We need to take technology and the digital world SERIOUSLY.
• Every child should have a personalized curriculum. This is happening in other countries (e.g., United Kingdom).
• We should think of schools as global enterprises, not local entities, and draw on global resources.
• Never send a man to do a machine’s job. Let people and computers each do what they do best.
• Slides available at http://zhao.educ.msu.edu

Should schools be thinking of netbooks as electronic book readers instead of laptop replacements?

The best-selling netbooks typically fall within the $300 to $400 range and their capabilities are increasing rapidly as manufacturers figure out how to include more features. For example, we are seeing larger or solid state hard drives, additional external ports, more included software, touch screens, and the emergence of tablet netbooks or netbooks with removable displays.

Netbooks traditionally have been positioned as laptop replacements and are selling briskly because they can do what we need most of the time. However, many K-12 educators feel that netbooks are not a good option for student 1:1 computing initiatives because they lack the capabilities of a full laptop computer.

I’ve been reading lately about attempts to get electronic book readers (e-readers) into the hands of students. I wonder if schools should be thinking of netbooks as e-readers intead, particularly as tablet-style netbooks and free / low-cost online or electronic textbook initiatives both become more prevalent. The cost of a netbook is comparable to a Kindle, for example, and has greater functionality than the typical e-reader (rather than lesser functionality compared to a laptop). A student carrying around a $400 tablet netbook could use it primarily as an e-reader and also as a laptop replacement. This dual functionality might make netbooks a smart bet for many schools, particularly as the cost decreases - and availability increases - of online and electronic textbook options. Savings on textbooks might offset or even pay for the cost of the netbooks.

Does thinking of netbooks as e-readers make them a more attractive option to schools rather than considering them solely as laptops? Do dedicated electronic book readers such as the Kindle or the Sony e-Reader make any sense for K-12 schools? Thoughts?

School mobile phone jammers and shoe organizers

The Des Moines Register reported today that the St. Ansgar (IA) Schools have given up on their proposal to purchase a device that would jam mobile phone signals after confirming that such equipment only can be used by federal agencies. The district had looked into the possibility of buying a jammer because it was struggling with inappropriate student mobile phone usage. One of the school board members said:

I don't think they have a place in the educational environment. The educational environment is supposed to be about students learning and teachers teaching and teachers can't teach over a cell phone. If a student is busy on the cell phone they aren't learning. It's a distraction ... and we need to minimize the distraction.

The interim superintendent also noted that he was concerned about students using mobile phones for cheating.

I e-mailed the interim superintendent a couple of days ago and asked him to consider a different, less hard-line approach, noting schools’ responsibility to prepare students for a digital, global era and that other districts have had success with more-accommodating strategies. Maybe I’ll hear from him sometime.

One of the comments to the Register’s article cracked me up:

Oh, For Crying-out-load. Just hang one of those shoe orginizers next to the door and require each student to check in thier phones on entering the classroom, then they can retrieve them after class. Just drop your phone in your slot and pick it up on the way out. Hey look, I solved the problem for less than $5.00

I don’t know if this is a fantastic idea or not, but it sure made me laugh. Sometimes easy solutions to our problems are staring us in the face if only we have the courage to think creatively. As we head into the new school year, who thinks their local school has an effective solution for inappropriate student use of mobile phones?

Do most educational games suck?

Since my preview of Conspiracy Code: U.S. History at NECC, I’ve been thinking again about educational games…

Here are a bunch of screen shots of different online games for learning. I found them by typing into Google variations of learning games, educational games, learning games high school, educational games middle school, and so on. Most of these appear to be aimed at kids of middle or high school age.

FunBrain Math Baseball

PBS Kids You’re in Charge

Quiz Hub U.S. History Timeline Quiz

Math Playground Math TV

UPDATE: The creator of this would like me to note that Math TV is a 'learning activity' rather than an educational 'game.' See the comments below for more on this.

eSchoolOnline eMath Pretest

Asian Countries – Level Seven

Hotmath Number Cop

Teach-nology Diner Dash

CoolMath Pool Geometry 2

Eat or Be Eaten

Just from a graphics standpoint, I have to wonder how interesting these games are to preteens and teens when the games below are more along the lines of what they see at home.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Madden NFL ‘09

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

Super Mario Galaxy

Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships

BioShock

Plants vs. Zombies

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

So I’ve got some questions…

1. Does the quality of the graphics matter when it comes to educational games? Or is the quality of the learning experience enough?
2. Speaking of the learning experience, just how bad are most of these so-called ‘educational games?’ I wasn’t too impressed with the games shown above. In terms of gaming complexity, many of them are using pretty simplistic techniques to try and reach what I’m guessing are fairly-savvy students. Also, many of them seemed to be games from many years ago that still are being pitched to educators and adolescents. I found two of the learning games as links from a high school web site (Asian Countries – Level Seven and Eat or Be Eaten), which made me feel really sad for the students who were in that school.
3. Maybe it’s completely unfair to compare online learning games with commercial games that are downloadable or on CD-ROM/DVD. So what is out there that’s comparable in the commercial downloadable/DVD educational games sector? Anything good? Vendors, if you think you’ve got educational games that are worth looking at, feel free to comment!

Your thoughts?

Article: Classrooms go high-tech to engage students

I was one of the faculty members interviewed by the Associated Press for an article on technology integration in higher education. I think the article came out pretty well. It’s appeared in a number of different online outlets, including U.S. News & World Report. Here’s a short quote:

"They're going to use it no matter what," said [Beth] Simon, of the University of California, San Diego. "How do you use this ubiquitous technology that's out there to change the dynamic of the classroom, to engage the students?"

Happy reading!

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.’

Technology boot camp for administrators

A few weeks ago we decided to offer a technology ‘boot camp’ for administrators. CASTLE is working with the School Administrators of Iowa to make it happen. For those of you who are interested, here is some information on what we’re doing:

• Promotional flyer
• Boot camp wiki 
• The signs we have all around the room

We started yesterday. Unlike our Transitioning Schools into the 21st Century workshops, which focused on technology leadership issues, the purpose of the boot camp is solely to ramp up school leaders’ technological skills. Our emphasis is on providing a safe space for administrators to learn and empowering them to walk away from the workshop with the ability to actually do this stuff. We’re taking our time, answering lots of questions, and covering whatever we can in the time that we have. We had participants blogging within the first hour yesterday. They were pretty excited!

We’ve got a great bunch of school leaders in this first boot camp. If today goes as well as yesterday, we’ll do a few more next academic year.

Any feedback that you have on what we’re doing would be most welcome. Anyone out there doing something similar? If so, how’s it going?

Video - 21st century schools (Stephen Heppell)

Thanks to Wes Fryer, I found this new video from Dr. Stephen Heppell on 21st century schools. Happy viewing! 

What do students want in an e-textbook?

Technology & Learning has a great graphic in the May issue of its magazine that highlights the features that secondary students would like to see in electronic textbooks [click on image below to see larger version]. Be sure to read the whole article. The data are taken from Project Tomorrow’s latest Speak Up survey.

If you’re not a regular reader of the free Tech&Learning magazine, you should be! Here are a few other articles from the latest issue that may be of interest:

• Nine reasons to Twitter in schools
• Profile of Max McGee, President of the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA’s cool.hub project sounds really awesome!)
• The AV Club Next Generation

Model 21st century schools - Update 2

Here’s how we’re doing at collectively creating a list of model 21st century schools that are doing a nice job of infusing 21st century skills, digital technologies, problem- or inquiry-based learning, and other innovative practices into their school organization:

Those 59 United States schools represent 26 states. The International schools are in 10 different countries.

So we’re making GREAT progress. However, we still have a number of states (and countries) that don’t have a single school organization listed. I know that there are schools in every state that are doing wonderful things in the areas of problem-based learning, 21st century skills, or technology integration. Would you help us identify more model schools, either by adding them yourself or passing this quest along to others? We are in desperate need of good models that educators can learn from and visit. Thanks!

Videos - The future of the humanities in the Internet era

Here are two presentations by Dr. Richard Miller, Chair of the English Department at Rutgers University, that are well worth any university instructor's time to watch.

The Future Is Now: Presentation to the RU Board of Governors 

This Is How We Dream, Part 1 and Part 2

Frerichs v. Mao: Showdown at the netbook corral

Chad Frerichs, Director of Technology for the Okoboji (IA) Community Schools, listened to Episode 4 of the 4 Guys Talking podcast and disagreed with Jeff Mao’s assertion that netbooks were not viable options for 1:1 laptop programs.

Here is Chad’s Tweet:

Here is Chad’s follow-up e-mail to me:

We've not been using them yet. I have been demoing varioius units for the last 2 months for consideration for purchase for next school year. I have been loving them. I have to admit I was skeptical and had the same reservations going in, but I have proven myself wrong. I have upgraded each demo unit to XP Pro (we have available licenses), and they have all ran smoothly. I await Win 7 which is supposed to have Atom specific things in it. I have been using Google Earth, Movie Maker, Gimp, OpenOffice.org, etc. without issue. Granted Google Earth is slow during the 3D stuff, and Movie Maker takes a little longer to do massive amounts of transitions/effects, but it is very workable. I have made a 'news cast' on each of the netbooks demoed with multiple transitions/effects with the built in camera and mic. A project I envision students doing. I have edited photos in Gimp and applied multiple filters without issues.
 
I have been proven wrong about these things. I think they are a viable solution for us, and possibly others. Are there drawbacks? Absolutely, but viable none-the-less. I think we will be ordering 72 or 96 of them for next year.

Your thoughts?

Model 21st century schools - Update 1

A week ago I asked for your help identifying model 21st century schools. Although I knew of a few schools or districts that were good models of what the new learning paradigm might look like, I was sure that there were many more schools out there that were doing great things when it came to project- or inquiry-based learning, technology integration, and so on.

Here’s what we have so far:

• 36 schools/districts in the USA, representing only 18 states
• 6 international schools, representing 5 countries

So, as you can see, we have a long way to go toward meeting my goal of at least 2 schools in each state and at least 50 in other countries.

Why don’t we have more? Several reasons, I’m guessing:

1. My readers don’t know what the exemplary 21st century schools are in their state/country,
2. I wasn’t persuasive enough for my readers to actually go to the Moving Forward wiki and enter the schools that they know about, and/or
3. There just aren’t that many exemplary 21st century schools.

While #3 is probably true to a certain extent, I’m guessing (hoping?) that each state has at least 2 schools that can serve as models for others. And I’m positive that some states, like California or Texas, have many more than 2. So I’m asking for your help again. Please go to the United States or International wiki pages and enter schools in your state/country that you know about. Also pass this quest along to others who may have knowledge in this area. We’re in desperate need of models of 21st century schooling. Help me create a shared resource that will be of value to everyone?

4 Guys Talking - Episode 4 (Jeff Mao)

Yesterday was Episode 4 of 4 Guys Talking, the new ‘talk radio’ podcast series from CASTLE. We spent the entire time talking about 1:1 laptop programs. Our first 50 minutes was spent with Jeff Mao, Learning Technology Policy Director for the State of Maine. Among other things, Jeff talked about funding models, professional development for teachers and administrators, pedagogical frameworks, challenges faced by the state over the past few years, and, perhaps surprisingly, the relative lack of emphasis on standardized test scores as measurable outcomes for the initiative. He also shared his strong feelings about laptops v. netbooks for 1:1 programs. After Jeff left us, we spent the last 10 minutes debriefing, sharing thoughts, and raising further questions.

You can download the podcast or listen to a Web-streamed version here:

• www.blogtalkradio.com/uceacastle

You also can subscribe to the 4 Guys Talking feed using iTunes or a RSS reader.

Thanks to those of you who joined us live yesterday, either by calling in or listening over the Web. Future dates/times are as follows (all times Central):

• May 11, 9am to 10am
• May 26, 1pm to 2pm

[Yes, I'm still reworking CASTLE Conversations, the old CASTLE podcast channel, which will include all previous and podcasts (including 4 Guys Talking). I'll post about it when it's ready (probably not until summer).]

Happy listening!

Photo credit: An Apple in the dark 2

Help wanted: Model 21st century schools?

Which schools are good models that others could (should) visit to see what a new educational paradigm might look like?

This is the #1 question I get asked when I work with K-12 educators. I know a few, but I’m guessing that you know more. So I’m on a quest…

1. Think about who's doing a nice job in your state/country of infusing 21st century skills, digital technologies, problem- or inquiry-based learning, and other innovative practices into their school organization.
2. Go to the United States and/or International page at CASTLE’s Moving Forward wiki and add the name of the school organization and contact person in the appropriate place. If your state/territory/country isn’t listed, please add it.
3. Using the category list at the top of the page, indicate the category of innovation at the end of your entry so that visitors know which schools to visit for what. If you need to add a category, please do so.
4. Hyperlink the name of the school organization to its web site.
5. Repeat Steps 2 through 4 for each school organization that is a model of 21st century learning.

By Monday, April 27, I’m hoping that together we can identify at least 150 model school organizations, including at least 2 in every state and at least 50 overseas. I will be reporting out daily on our progress both here and via Twitter.

Please pass along this quest. The more model 21st century schools we get, the better resources these two pages will be for everyone. Feel free to use the logo as desired. Thank you!

Equity or idiocy?

Yesterday Ben Grey highlighted an issue that often arises when educators think about technology initiatives:

If a public school teacher writes a grant for technology, but the district can’t sustain the program in other buildings or potentially refresh the equipment once it reaches end of life, should the grant be granted? Is it better to deny the students in the classroom where the grant would be in effect so as to ensure equity across the district, or is it better to afford students an opportunity to reach higher, even if it means others won’t have that experience? Would allowing the grant to go forward specifically advantage one group of students over another, and thus present ethical issues for a public entity?

The person I was talking with was adamant that we should not allow classrooms to have that which other classes in the district can’t.

Is this all-or-none mindset equity or idiocy? Head over to Ben’s blog and chime in on the conversation.

[hat tip to Kelly Hines for pointing me to Ben’s post]

What would you ask university students about technology in their learning?

Tomorrow is Iowa State University’s first-ever symposium for the new ComETS group here on campus. Modeled after a similar group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, ComETS is an attempt to bring together all of the folks at the university who care about technology integration into one place. George Siemens from the University of Manitoba is our headliner; he’s doing a morning workshop and an afternoon keynote for us. Other events on the schedule include affinity group meetings and ‘lightning strike’ sessions on interesting technologies.

To conclude the symposium, I’m moderating a panel of students that will be discussing how they think about technology in their personal and academic lives. I’ve set up a wiki page where we’re generating questions for the students. If you’d like to add a question, please do!

I’ll probably be live-blogging George’s keynote and/or workshop tomorrow. Stay tuned at my Twitter feed for more details…

A seemingly simple question - Follow-up

Neither Todd Seal nor Dan Meyer agree with my assertion that teachers should be able to identify at least 10 good web sites for their classes. Todd says:

I’m typically looking for lesson plan ideas, handouts, and audio/video resources. What I’m finding are half-baked thoughts, poorly articulated assessment, and soft lessons that only barely cover the material I want to cover.

Todd and Dan are both reflective, innovative educators, so I’ll take them at their word and say that perhaps I overestimated the quality, if not quantity, of the online resources available to K-12 teachers. If so, this paucity of high quality online resources for educators is pretty sad given the longevity and history of the Internet as well as the ability of any educator to now easily have an online presence [Dan, yes, I’d include blogs and other teacher expressive channels in that general category of ‘web sites’].

I’m not really concerned about teachers like Todd and Dan that at least have looked around the Web and made the pedagogical decision that most of what’s out there is crap. I’m concerned about the ones that haven’t even looked.

Todd challenged me to come up with 10 good sites for one of my educational leadership courses. I’ll have to chew on that a bit. There aren’t as many folks creating resources for administrators as for teachers, but I think I can do it…

A tisket, a tasket, a netbook in my basket

I greatly enjoyed Clive Thompson’s recent Wired article on netbooks. For years laptop manufacturers have been giving us more and more powerful computers: bigger hard drives, more memory, faster processing chips, etc. What netbooks have shown, however, is that many laptop users actually need less, not more. When 95% of laptop use is for things like e-mail, instant messaging, basic office productivity software, Facebook, YouTube, and so on, people don’t need a super workhorse computer. Instead, a less-capable computer works just fine and other concerns such as portability (size and weight) and cost become more important.

I recently purchased my second netbook, a HP Mini, to go along with my Dell Mini 9. I have used these netbooks for a full day of presenting – which usually includes showing very large PowerPoint presentations with embedded videos, Web surfing, and using Microsoft Office – without a hiccup. I tote along in a small bag my 2.4 pound netbook, wireless broadband dongle, portable external hard drive, and presentation remote and I’m all set. Throw in my cell phone, iPod or iPod Touch and headphones, a paperback book, and a Moleskine pad and pen and my road warrior status is downright bearable (shhh - don’t tell my wife!).

For many schools, I think netbooks can make a lot of sense. At $300 to $450 per computer, the price is low enough for many districts to start thinking about a 1:1 deployment for students for the very first time, either for entire schools or for smaller grade- or class-level pilot projects. Scatter a few more-powerful machines around the school building for students who need to do heavier-duty work (e.g., photo or video editing) and this becomes a workable solution for a number of school organizations. Of course full-fledged laptops still have their place and many schools may find that the more-traditional approach works better for their 1:1 needs.

Schools that are considering purchasing netbooks should do a careful job of comparison shopping. For example, I wouldn’t recommend either of my netbooks for schools. The keyboard for the Dell Mini 9 is just too small for me and my right pinky finger is always looking for the dang apostrophe key (which Dell moved to the bottom row). In contrast, the keyboard for the HP Mini is wonderful (it’s 92% of the size of a full keyboard) but HP in its infinite wisdom decided to use a proprietary VGA port, necessitating the purchase of a separate converter cable to connect to a projector (which has resulted in a lot of angry customers). Schools may find that other models such as the Acer Inspire One, Lenovo Ideapad S10, or Asus Eee PC 1000HE are more workable solutions. Since the technical specifications of netbooks are all basically the same right now, design issues such as the keyboard layout often are the distinguishing factors. I strongly recommend a hands-on test drive of a particular netbook model before you make any kind of large-scale purchase.

I really like my HP netbook a lot. Like others, I have been quite surprised to find how useful this less-capable laptop has been to me. Because of its small size, I take it places I never would consider taking my Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Tablet and indeed am gravitating more and more to using it as my primary computer whenever I travel anywhere. What’s really exciting to me is to think about what these small laptops will look like just a year or two from now. I’m guessing that they will have much larger solid-state hard drives and include much of the capability that currently give larger laptops a performance advantage. A netbook that can do what today’s laptops do, in just a couple of years? That’s a winning combo!

Photo credit: HP Mini

A seemingly simple question

This seems like a seemingly simple question for teachers:

Could you identify 10 excellent web sites for your grade level / subject area?

Ideally, of course, teachers would know 10 or so excellent sites for each unit, not just for the overall course that they’re teaching. After all, the Internet has been around for most people for at least a decade now and there are an incredible number of valuable resources on almost any topic.

And yet I’m guessing that many (most?) teachers would have trouble answering even the simple question above.

Would you send your child to school with a laptop from home?

I found out recently that my local school district now allows students to bring their own laptops from home. I think that this is GREAT (even while simultaneously understanding the digital divide issues that accompany this policy).

Imagine that your local district allows the same. Would you send your children to school with a laptop/netbook? If so, would your children take one (or would they be too worried about standing out because other students weren’t also bringing computers to school)? This latter question’s of particular interest to me since my tech-savvy daughter starts middle school next year…

Thoughts?

Photo credit: Netbook Skin using Wordle.net (Lenovo S10) [cool use of adhesive photo paper!]

Help wanted: Sites that connect classrooms across the globe?

I confess that my knowledge is sparse of web sites, wikis, etc. that aim to connect classrooms together for projects. Yet I’m starting to get asked more and more often by educators for places where they can go to connect their classrooms with others from across the globe. Suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

Slide - Banning students' computers

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The Iowa series - Wrap-up

I've had a lot of fun guest blogging over at The Des Moines Register this week. For those of you who would like to have a single link that you can forward to others, you can use this web address:

http://snipurl.com/iowaseries

Here are links to each of the five posts here at Dangerously Irrelevant:

• Iowa - 21st century curricula
• Iowa - A robust system of online learning
• Iowa - A computer in every hand
• Iowa - Invest in leadership
• Iowa - Better information

Happy reading!

Iowa - Better information

[This is Post 5 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. Earlier I discussed the need for 21st century curricula, a robust system of online learning, providing a computer for every student, and investing in leadership. Today’s post concerns the need for better information.

Although the Iowa Department of Education does not collect school district technology plans as many other states do, it does have other mechanisms for collecting some information about technology in K-12 schools. Much of that is reported out in the annual Iowa Condition of Education report. For example, the most recent report tells us that back in 1997–1998 Iowa school districts used to spend nearly $100 per pupil on computer software and hardware. By 2006–2007, that figure had dropped to an average of only $77. Adjusted for inflation, that figure is only $61 ($1.00 in 1998 had the same buying power as $1.27 in 2007).

In other words, our world is becoming increasingly technological but our expenditures on technology in Iowa schools have decreased substantially. Iowa public schools spent $37.3 million on technology last year. It would take a 27% increase – another $9.9 million – to get us back to the spending rates of a decade ago. Adjusted for the reduced buying power of the 2007 dollar, those figures are 48% and $17.8 million respectively.

The Iowa Condition of Education also contains other useful information, such as the state average number of pupils per computer (supposedly at 3.2) and the percentage of high schools (87%), middle schools (81%), and elementary schools (71%) that reportedly have wireless networks. The Iowa Department of Education has all of this information in its database by school and district. But as useful as these data are, there is a lot of information that the Department doesn’t collect. As a result, there are a number of questions that have no useful answers.

Here are some questions that we should be asking in Iowa:

• What percentage of Iowa schools and districts have a technology plan? For those that do, what do those plans cover?
• What percentage of Iowa schools and districts have technology teams that advise the organization on technology-related concerns? Who’s on those teams?
• What are schools purchasing with their hardware and software money? What proportion of expenditures goes to teacher-centric technologies versus student-centric technologies? What proportion goes to software that provides powerful learning opportunities for students versus software that simply focuses on drill-and-kill remediation?
• How new are the computers in Iowa schools? What percentage of Iowa hardware and software is more than 2 years old?
• How many Iowa school districts have a student information system? a data warehouse system? electronic gradebook software? electronic student assessment systems? financial, human resources, food service, special education, or other management systems?
• On average, how much time per week do students get to use digital technologies as part of their classroom learning? What proportion of that time is spent using office productivity software, doing basic Internet research, engaging in online social media environments, or utilizing other technologies?
• How many districts have a technology coordinator? Is that person also doing other jobs?
• What is the average number of technology support personnel per teacher? per student? per building or district?
• What is the average number of technology integrationists per teacher? per building or district?
• What percentage of Iowa classrooms (not buildings) have wireless access?
• What percentage of Iowa classrooms have LCD screens or projectors large enough to display a computer screen image that the entire class can see easily? speakers so that the entire class can hear audio or video easily?
• What percentage of Iowa teachers have a webcam?
• What percentage of Iowa students have ever taken an online class? For those that have, what are they taking? How many wish that they had better access to online learning opportunities? What about the same set of questions for teachers?
• What percentage of Iowa students are involved in 1:1 laptop programs?
• What percentage of Iowa schools have the Internet bandwidth and other supports to effectively implement a 1:1 laptop program?
• How do Iowa students think and feel about technology integration in their classrooms? How about teachers, administrators, parents, or school board members?
• On average, how much time per year do Iowa teachers spend in technology-related professional development activities? How do they spend that time?
• What are the technology-related training needs of Iowa teachers and administrators? the technology support needs?
• What does Internet filtering look like in Iowa schools?
• What percentage of Iowa students’ families have Internet access at home? For those that do, is it dial-up or broadband?
• What percentage of Iowa students have computers at home? cell phones? digital cameras? portable music players? video game consoles? other devices? What percentage of teachers or administrators?
• How often do students use the Internet at home and for what do they use it? How about teachers or administrators?
• and so on…

These are all questions for which I’m pretty sure we don’t have much data. Yet the answers to every one of these would be highly informative to how we think about K-12 technology policy, funding, and implementation. So we have a disconnect. And because of that disconnect, we are making purchasing, staffing, funding, and other decisions without the necessary data to inform ourselves. 

Who would collect this information? Well, the Iowa Department of Education could take on more of this. Or perhaps the Iowa State Education Association, the School Administrators of Iowa, and/or the Iowa Association of School Boards. Or even a university research center like CASTLE. But the will and the funding for this has to come from somewhere.

So, like everything else, there is a cost involved. But the bigger cost is that we’re navigating blindly because we don’t have the critical information that we need to adequately and appropriately make instructional, operational, and policy decisions. Some money and effort expended now on gathering better information could save a lot of money and effort later on…

Read Kindle books without a Kindle

I was really excited to read David Pogue’s article today on Amazon’s new Kindle for iPhone application that allows you to download e-books from Amazon onto your iPhone or iPod Touch. That’s right – no need to buy a Kindle to access Amazon’s ever-increasing book selection. I was quoted today in the Des Moines Register as saying that in many ways the iPhone represents the future of mobile computing. Sure, there’s still a place for the larger screens and keyboards of laptops and netbooks, but it’s awfully handy to have a device in your pocket that does so much.

I’m off to the Apple app store! Wouldn’t it be really great if Amazon made its source code public so that others could improve upon its free app (and thus result in Amazon selling more books)?

At $10 a book (or maybe a little more for textbooks), I think this opens up a lot of possiblities for K-12 classrooms. What do you think?

Photo credit: And a good book

Iowa - A computer in every hand

[This is Post 3 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 online learning opportunties for students. Today’s post concerns providing a computer for every student.

It is hard to believe that the personal computer is nearly three decades old. Our computing devices have come a long way in that time and they now permeate nearly every aspect of our personal and professional lives. At the individual level, this movement has been driven by mobile computers and phones, wireless access, and the rise of the Internet. Every generation of computers seems to be smaller, cheaper, faster, and more powerful than the one before. Every new device or online service allows us to do things more efficiently, more effectively, or that we never could do before. And of course the pace of change is quite brisk.

As a result, it’s extremely difficult to find a well-paying job in America these days that doesn’t involve significant use of digital technologies. Unlike other sectors of our society, however, our schools still view the use of computers as a marginal add-on, as something that’s optional rather than essential to the everyday core of teaching and learning. Our schools still pretend that it’s an analog paper world rather than a networked digital world.

This has got to stop. We have to stop believing that we can adequately prepare graduates for a technology-suffused world by immersing them in paper-suffused learning environments. We have to look critically at student-computer ratios in schools – which mask the reality that most computers belong to teachers or are in labs – and ask a different question instead: On average, how much time per week do students get to use digital technologies as part of their classroom learning? The answer to this question is dismally low in almost every Iowa classroom.

There are a number of reasons for the lack of technology-facilitated learning opportunities in our K-12 schools. One is funding, of course. I recently did some back-of-the-envelope calculations for Iowa’s Institute for Tomorrow’s Workforce. At $300/year, the costs each year to provide a laptop to the 480,000 students in Iowa would be:

213,000 K-5 students = $63.9 million
114,000 6–8 students = $34.2 million
153,000 9–12 students = $45.9 million

These numbers look daunting, particularly given difficult economic times. But it is possible to do this by sharing the cost between state monies and school districts’ general funds, levies, and referenda. Other potential ways to reduce costs include, but are not limited to:

• utilizing federal or grant monies,
• leasing instead of buying,
• purchasing netbooks instead of laptops,
• allowing students to bring in their own laptops,
• making use of the mobile computers that most students bring to school every day (i.e., their cell phones), and/or
• only purchasing laptops for economically-disadvantaged students.

In the end, we have to balance the costs of doing this versus the costs of NOT doing this.

In addition to funding, numerous other challenges exist as well. One of the biggest is the current predisposition of schools to invest in teacher-centric technologies like televisions, DVD/VCR players, projectors, electronic whiteboards, and document cameras. They’re important and useful but they’re also primarily used as yet another way for teachers to push out information to students. In contrast, laptops, netbooks, digital cameras, small high-definition camcorders, digital voice recorders, webcams, digital scientific probes or sensors, and other devices are primarily used by students to facilitate their own academic learning. If we want Iowa students to gain the technology skills they will need to be productive citizens and workers, schools should be making as many investments in these latter, student-centric devices as possible. There also are a number of free or low-cost online software and tools that students and teachers can use in creative and productive ways.

Another large barrier to students’ technology usage is teachers’ inability to effectively implement digital tools into their instruction. One of the dirty secrets of K-12 educational technology is that many of the computing devices that already have been purchased are rarely used. This may occur because of teachers’ lack of training; most educators need a lot more help in this area. Or it may occur because of a lack of adequate technology support, which results in teachers inability to rely on the technology actually working when they do decide to use it. Or it may occur because of teachers’ outright refusal to integrate technology because of lack of interest or comfort.

Other barriers include the often-draconian Internet filtering systems that are in place in most schools, the increased pressure on schools’ Internet bandwidth capacity from additional computing devices, and the lack of adequate wireless and/or electrical capacity in many of Iowa’s school buildings.

The state of Maine provides laptops to 36,000 students and 11,000 educators (at a cost of just under $300/head, which is the basis of my calculations above). The New South Wales province in Australia has announced that it will be purchasing 197,000 laptops for its secondary students. A number of schools and districts across the country (and a few in Iowa) are piloting or implementing 1:1 laptop programs for students. It is these graduates, who have had the opportunity to regularly utilize in productive ways the same technologies that the adult world uses, who will be best prepared for a digital society.

Chris Lehmann, Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, notes that technology in schools should be like oxygen: ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible. This is how technology is in adult workplaces. Can you imagine how unproductive you would be in your job if you had to schedule a time next Thursday for 45 minutes in order to use the computer (as teachers now have to do for students to use the lab(s) in their schools)?

There will be a day when we look back and realize how foolish it was that we waited so long to get a computing device into every student’s hands 24–7. Until that day, however - until we find the collective will to enable Iowa students to productively utilize in their schools the technologies that are transforming our society - they will continue to be disadvantaged compared to their more fortunate counterparts in other states or countries.

Recommended reading

• Rethinking Computers in the Classroom
• Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger
• Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky
• Wikinomics, Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams

Recommended viewing 

Using the iPod Touch in the classroom

I tweeted:

Here are the responses I got. Thanks, Twitter network!

A $10 laptop?

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

India’s quest to create a $10 laptop is getting a lot of press this week. Fast Company notes that the proposed design will have 2 GB of RAM, wired Ethernet, and Wi-Fi and probably will run Linux. The laptop initiative is part of India’s National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology, an effort that also includes attempts to expand basic and digital literacy, extend wireless Internet access to rural areas, and provide free or low-cost access to online textbooks and other e-content.

Ars Technica is skeptical of India’s potential for success:

Can India do it? The inner philanthropist hopes so, but the realist who buys technology says, "No way." Why? Component prices are simply too high. The screen for the XO laptop, which is probably the single most innovative thing OLPC has to offer, was estimated to cost $28 per unit, in volume, by Merrill Lynch. OLPC has said that the complete motherboard/CPU package will cost roughly $75, and based on the Merrill Lynch estimates, it looks as though a third of that cost will be for the CPU alone. In other words, the CPU itself, the motherboard, the screen, the NAND flash storage, and the RAM... each of these costs more than $10 to manufacture for inclusion in the OLPC. India's $10 price hopes appear to be nothing more than pure fantasy.

Contrary to these assertions, however, India is claiming that the actual cost of the laptop currently is $20 (or $47 if you factor in labor costs?). The hope is that mass production will bring down the price to the desired $10.

I don’t know if India can do this or not. The country already has served as the place of origin for the $2,500 car and the $20 cell phone. But one only has to look at the difficulties of the One Laptop Per Child project to see that India’s quest is quite daunting.

In the end, it may not matter whether the cost of India’s laptop is $10, $20, or $50. The bigger picture is that countries, companies, and other organizations are working really hard to come up with low-cost computing devices that expand access to the global information society. Like TIME magazine said back in 2006, this is going to be a good thing:

We're looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it's just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.

I’m excited about the future of all of this. The next few decades are going to be interesting!

A taste of honey

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Imagine that, day after day, all you have to eat and drink are bread and water. When that’s all that you’ve ever had, it tastes good. Even wonderful, sometimes. 

Imagine that on one special day someone gives you a little taste of honey. Maybe a small smear on your piece of bread. From then on, of course, your normal diet never tastes as good again.

So what? Well, I think that increasingly our schools will have to recognize that…

Our kids have tasted the honey.

When our kids go home, they get the opportunity to interact and connect and collaborate with people all over the globe. If they wish, they can do this on a regular basis.

When our kids go home, they get the opportunity to learn about areas in which they’re interested and to act on issues about which they’re passionate. They get the opportunity to be creative. They can make and share videos and stories and pictures and other things and, if others see value in them, find audiences in the hundreds or thousands or even millions.

When our kids go home, they get the opportunity to be immersed in personalized, individualized learning environments. We call them ‘the Internet’ or ‘video games.’ These environments are characterized by active inquiry and – in the case of video games – continual problem-solving.

What do our kids get when they go to school?

Do they get the chance to regularly and frequently interact with diverse people from all over the planet? Nope. If they’re lucky, they might get the chance to interact with other students in their class, who like as not come from the same place and/or culture that they do.

Do they get the chance to be active content producers rather than passive information consumers? Do they get the chance to reach authentic audiences? Nope. If they’re lucky, they get to be creative every once in a while for a ‘special project’ or occasionally exhibit their work one evening at school for the local community.

Do they get the chance to experience individualized learning? Nope. Instead, they’re exposed to a mass model of education, one in which they’re lucky if occasionally the lesson is at “their level.”

Of course there are some exceptions to what I’ve written here, but for the most part this holds true for most students in most schools. 

Our kids have tasted the honey and they have no interest in going back to what was.

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

Slide - Teachers and technology

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[from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Letter to My Colleagues]

Teaching administrators about Wikipedia

[cross-linked at the TechLearning blog]

Last year a middle school librarian in New Jersey received a lot of media attention for her anti-Wikipedia campaign:

Linda O'Connor regards Wikipedia the same way former first lady Nancy Reagan campaigned against drugs. . . . She put up a sign saying "Just Say No to Wikipedia" over the computers in the school library. . . . Wikipedia is blocked on all computers in the Warren Hills Regional School District.

At the time I said that I was highly skeptical about this librarian's stance. On any given day, approximately 1 in 10 Internet users visits Wikipedia. This fact alone should indicate that there's something going on worth paying attention to, something that warrants a more nuanced approach than simply prohibiting access. If it was terrible, it wouldn’t maintain its audience. Folks who take the time to understand Wikipedia learn very quickly that it's actually an amazing site. It's already 8 times larger than the Encyclopedia Brittanica, is growing incredibly quickly, and has been created entirely by volunteers. Peer-reviewed studies published in our top scientific journals have shown that it is as accurate as the Brittanica too, particularly those articles that reside in its mainstream core (rather than at the fringes).

If all of this is true, then why are so many educators, librarians, and media specialists upset about Wikipedia? I think the concerns stem from several different sources. One is their beliefs about accuracy. We tend to assume that print materials such as the Brittanica and school textbooks are error-free when in actuality they contain numerous mistakes. Even when identified, these mistakes usually linger until the next edition is printed and purchased (unlike Wikipedia which corrects known mistakes almost instantly). Second, the idea that volunteers can create something as valuable as that created by experts strikes us as ludicrous. But in this case it happens to be true. Sure, at any given second, some vandal or incompetent may have inserted something inaccurate into a particular article. But over time (and often unbelievably quickly), Wikipedia is remarkably self-healing, unlike the paper materials on our bookshelves. Wikipedia also is a counter to outdated information. How many of the reference books in libraries and school media centers contain incomplete or inaccurate information simply because they're old? Wikipedia doesn't have that problem.

Our students deserve better training about how to navigate our new, complex, online information landscape. They don't learn about information literacy, bias, media literacy, assessment of online validity, and other critical online skills by being denied access to that information. They don't learn how to cite and use online resources appropriately if they can't use those resources and learn from their mistakes because the materials are banned.

If you take half an hour to show administrators these things, their mindset changes. I like to have school leaders visit some Wikipedia pages with me. I start by showing them the asphalt article. After we look at the article itself, I show them the history tab (and take them all the way back to the first few revisions) and then the discussion tab. We talk about what we see and what their perceptions are regarding accuracy, quality, and neutrality. Then I put them into groups to check out more controversial articles like Sarah Palin, Islam, Vladimir Putin, or Pluto. They examine the articles for bias and inaccuracy and spend some time in the history and discussion areas.

The administrators inevitably walk away with a deeper understanding of Wikipedia and a greater appreciation for the safeguards that have evolved to protect against abuse and inaccuracy. Many of them also begin to see the site as an excellent lens for teaching students about how, as a society, we construct knowledge, negotiate meaning, and develop collective understanding. Some even begin to think about how their students might be able to serve as Wikipedia contributors. In the end, that richer understanding may be more valuable than the content of the articles themselves.

How are you using Wikipedia to teach information literacy and critical thinking?

How do you get the conversation started in a disinterested district?

Andrew said:

It often seems like my school's technology curricula are ten or fifteen years behind the curve, probably more, although our technology hard- and soft-ware are utterly up-to-date. the students feel (and are) disempowered, and the administration is uncurious about how to make technology work better for everyone — students, faculty, administrators.

How do you get the conversation started on these subjects?

My initial response (at the risk of every problem looking like a nail to my leadership hammer) is to focus on the administrators. Without their buy-in and understanding, nothing meaningful or substantive is going to happen in that school organization. There are a variety of ways to do this…

Your thoughts for Andrew?

Help wanted - Using online games in K-12 classrooms

Each month, Cable in the Classroom Magazine has a page called InterActive that asks educators to answer a question related to the issue’s theme. The magazine usually prints at least five answers from readers.

The magazine editors have requested my help finding contributors for the February question:

How have you used an online game to enhance your students’ classroom experience?

If you’re a K-12 teacher to whom this question applies, please send your thoughts to Ellen Ullman. If you know a teacher who’s done this, please pass this post along. Thanks!

Student-delivered PD: An idea whose time has come?

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

A collection of thoughts about P-12 professional development, with a (hopefully) whiz-bang ending…

Big idea 1: Most current staff development is awful.

We have known for decades what leads to powerful adult learning and what constitutes effective professional development. Yet the 3– or 4–days per year, ‘sit and get,’ one-size-fits-all training model still persists on a large scale. Shame on us.

Big idea 2: School vision statements are feckless.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a school organization that doesn’t have a vision, mission, or purpose statement that says blah blah blah life long learning blah blah blah. And yet we don’t really model ‘life long learning’ very well. Administrators feel that they can show no weakness in front of staff or parents. Teachers feel that they must be the experts before they can ‘teach’ students. No one has tried to operationalize the concept or delineate what it actually looks like. In terms of impact on daily practice, it’s a meaningless feel-good aphorism (much like all kids can learn). Shame on us.

Big idea 3: Schools have a great deal of internal expertise.

At the risk of impacting my occasional consulting income, I’m willing to say that most districts would be better served by having in-house experts deliver training rather than paying some outside guru big bucks to come in for a day (or hour). There’s a tremendous wealth of in-house expertise that goes ignored within school organizations. Shame on us.

Big idea 4: Students are experts too.

Tapscott & Williams note in Wikinomics (2006) that this is the first time in human history when children are authorities on something really important (p. 47). In other words, when it comes to digital technologies, our kids often are (or, given the chance, could rapidly become) the experts. We ignore this expertise in most school organization. Shame on us.

All of this leads me to…

Big idea 5: Have students deliver technology-related training!

Put Big Ideas 1 and 3 together and it’s clear that school organizations should do a better job of peer-to-peer training. Throw in Big Ideas 2 and 4 and we see that many school organizations could easily structure technology training opportunities for educators, parents, and students where children and adolescents were the instructors or co-instructors. The kids get the learning power and social/emotional benefit of being teachers and leaders. Adults and other students learn from the true experts.

All we have to do is walk away from our egos and our fear and embrace our mission statements, the ones that say that we all should be learners and say nothing about from whom we must learn.

How about it? You ready to start doing this?

Generation We

I love both these videos. Will you join them? 

Generation WE: The Movement Begins... from Generation We on Vimeo.



Generation We: The Movement is Spreading! from Generation We on Vimeo.

Can a computer lecture better than a human?

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

I’m going to prime the pump a little bit for my K12 Online presentation next week…

My fifth-grade daughter’s math homework this weekend required her to find out what a radian or a grad was (hint: both are ways besides degrees to measure angles). We hit ye olde Google and quickly found this helpful (and free) learning activity from Wisconsin Online:

Bam! Ten minutes later my daughter and I had learned what a radian was (the animation was much more helpful than the mere definitions that we found), answered correctly all of the self-assessment questions, and were ready to move forward.

Okay, we actually weren’t ready to move forward because we thought the animation was so cool that we set up a Wisconsin Online account and dug around for other interesting tutorials. In other words, we were passionate, self-directed, engaged learners, prompted by a single question from my daughter’s math book.

I’ve thought about that moment quite a bit the last couple of days. Of course my mind started wandering to the K12 Online Conference, the TED videos, various podcasts, the MIT Open Courseware project, and other similar online multimedia resources. As my mind meandered around, it dug up a question:

Can a computer lecture better than a human?

That question’s not quite accurate, because there’s still a human behind every online learning activity. What I mean is that there are quite a number of examples on the Web of ways that we can learn and assess ourselves on fairly complex material using video lectures, animations, simulations, video games, and the like. As these resources grow in number – fueled by easy-to-learn, increasingly-powerful software that allows average citizens to create learning objects – and are organized and collected by individual experts, organizations like Wisconsin Online, or group efforts, it’s going to become unbelievably easy to find a variety of ways other than text to learn about almost anything we want. This will be especially true if we are intentional about it and actively work to fill in needed gaps.

Would I rather learn about a radian from a book or the Wisconsin Online animation? The animation – hands-down – due to its better explanatory power. Would I rather learn about a radian from a person or the animation? Well, the animation is infinitely patient – it doesn’t get irritated with me if I don’t understand the first time around. I can replay the animation as often as I need to but probably can’t ‘replay’ the person. The animation is more accessible – it was available to me in my home, at a time when I wanted to access it. And if the animation still doesn’t do the trick, there are other ways to learn the concept just a mouse click away (but other people who can explain radians usually aren’t so easily found).

Don’t get me wrong. There’s still a lot of value in human teachers when it comes to explaining difficult concepts, working through students’ misconceptions, inspiring students to want to explore deeper, and so on. We’re not replaceable by robots and software just yet. But it’s easy to see that simulations, animations, and other online text and multimedia resources can carry a great deal of the initial instructional delivery load.

There is a wealth of research showing that around 80 to 85 percent of classroom work is low-level factual and procedural work, exactly the kind of work that can easily be facilitated by the kinds of technology-mediated learning activities that I’ve alluded to this post. So why waste an expensive human on those things? If there’s going to be that much lecturing (and similar low-level learning work) going on, why not let the computer ‘lecture’ and free up our valuable humans for the stuff that software can’t do yet?

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!

ITEC 2008 - Alan November

Here are my notes from Alan November’s keynote today at ITEC 2008 in Des Moines. ITEC is Iowa’s statewide educational technology conference so it’s always a good time. I actually had never seen Alan present before so that was fun for me. He was extremely entertaining and I got to go up and meet him afterward. He said that I was younger than he would have guessed!

• There is a gap between what we teach children and what is needed in the global workplace, and the gap is growing.
• Students need to be able to do three key things
• Have the capacity to do good research on the Web
• Have good global communication skills
• We should evaluate teachers on their ability to directly engage children with people all around the world
• Be self-directed
• Our system is based on the concept that teachers own the learning
• Corporations need people who don’t need a boss to tell them what to do
• The top skill learned in school is to learn how to be taught
• West Point is requiring its instructors to teach Islam across the curriculum
• The Internet, rather than being a tool that will expose you to other beliefs and perspectives, is instead becoming a place to simply validate one’s own beliefs.
• We need to teach teachers good assignment design when teaching them technology.
• Why not teach students how to debate kids in Britain regarding their perspectives on the Revolutionary War?
• We vastly underestimate kids’ ability to create rich academic content that contributes to the learning of the rest of their class.
• We need to teach children to have a global voice that people all around the world can hear.
• Paper gives you a little voice – paper stays in the classroom.
• Bob Sprankle has 2nd graders asking for their own writing / math podcast shows. A sign of a good classroom is kids asking to do more.
• The Internet has made people realize that they are really, really poor and their work ethic is almost scary to watch because they think education is the ticket out of poverty.
• Showed part of the Digital Kids @ Analog Schools video.
• Check out Screencast.com: MarcosMath’s Library, Mathtrain Podcast, bob.primefactor?
• Have the kids help you build learning objects (using, e.g., Jing)! This is a “shift in control” problem, not a technology problem.
• Demonstrated how to set up a custom Google search engine. Can set one up so that students only search the sites that the teachers select (e.g., FunBrain, BrainPop, IKnowthat). High school students can help create the sites that go into the custom search engine.
• Have an official researcher every day at the one computer the teacher has in the classroom. That person is in charge of finding answers to questions that pop up and also in charge of adding relevant sites to the class search engine.
• You can create a search engine for just a particular topic (e.g., Revolutionary War). Have your class’ British ePals contribute to the search engine too!
• You can access other people’s custom search engines.
• Showed TinyURL.com
• Too many “technology-enabled” assignments involve using the computer as a $1,000 pencil.
• Collaborative class notes in Google Docs are even better than presentation notes because students can add on extra resources, etc.
• Google Docs gives you a running history of the flow of writers’ thinking through version control. About 4 people can write concurrently.
• Google Docs is ideal for collaborative writing. We should be teaching kids collaborative tools. The content should add up to something greater than the sum of the individual parts.
• Kiva – a great web site to teach children how to make a contribution to other parts of the world. A community of contributors invests in a person / project. If the Web needed a reason to be invented, this is it. Linking people around the world to help people.
• Three elements of video game design that are not present in schools
• Students go to the most challenging level – they don’t want to be bored
• Students get instant feedback (less than a second) – hard to reproduce in class
• Third? [never got to it; we went off in a different direction]
• If blocking is your only strategy for protecting children, you’re setting them up for failure in the real world. This is immoral. It’s a manipulative world out there. We have to teach kids how to navigate it.
• Kids think they can take down their MySpace / Facebook content when it’s time. Show them the Wayback Machine!
• We’re blocking them instead of teaching them. This is not the way to prepare kids for a web-based world.

I sat next to Angela Maiers. Vic Jaras, Evan Abbey, Carl Anderson, Leigh Zeitz, Rob and Magda Galloway, and bunch of other fun people also were there (including a good showing by Iowa State folks!). Iowa may not be where we’d like it to be but there are some fantastic educators here who are trying hard to make it happen!

Update: I added a picture of Alan to this post. It's not the greatest picture in the world but it's hard to get him to stand still!

All NECC content should be shareable

There is a lively conversation occurring on the NECC 2008 Ning regarding fair use of NECC sessions. My reply to the original post is below. As you can see, I’m afraid we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture…

ALL CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS SHOULD BE SHAREABLE

I would like to see ISTE take a different stance on this. I thought ISTE was in the business of trying to make change in education, specifically around the utilization of technology in K-12 schools. How are we going to make that happen if we allow folks at the ISTE-sponsored conference to lock down content? How are we going to help facilitate true, meaningful technology-related reform if we aren't making important resources like NECC presentations available to the teaching public at large?

Instead of ISTE saying:

"Written permission from the session or workshop presenter is required prior to capturing a video or audio recording."

ISTE should be saying at the time of proposal submission (and when inviting keynote speakers):

"Any presentation given at NECC falls under a Creative Commons and/or other open use license. We encourage you to share this content with educators to enhance their knowledge and facilitate change in K-12 school organizations. Here is a publicly-editable wiki for web addresses of public repositories (such as ISTE recordings, Technorati tags, uStream archives, etc.) that may be useful to you."

All presenters - even the expensive ones - should fall under this rule. If they don't like it, they don't present.

If necessary, ISTE could help speakers understand that their own visibility, reputation, and potential income are enhanced, not hurt, by this policy. Think about the recordings of Clay Shirky, Seth Godin, and others that are out on the Web. Think about all of the TED videos. Are those individuals losing income because their presentations are available on the Web? Absolutely not. Instead, they are gaining bigger audiences and more customers precisely because they're more visible than they would be otherwise.

Charles Leadbeater says in his 'We Think' video that we now are what we share. He's absolutely right.

Given its larger mission, ISTE should be thinking more outside the box on this one.

To sum up: Instead of requiring participants to get permission to record, ISTE should be requiring presenters to give up their copyright for the good of the larger cause.

Do you think I’m right or completely off-base? Head on over to the Ning discussion and participate in the conversation!

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]

Slide - Asking better questions

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[from David Warlick, Chris Quotes]

Not so irrelevant 014

My latest roundup of links and tools…

America is not competitive

A majority of Fortune 1000 executives surveyed give the American pre-college system a failing grade. As Andrew Trotter reports from Education Week’s new Digital Education blog (check it out!), 95% of the survey participants think that the U.S. is in danger of losing its global position because of students’ disinterest in STEM fields. Be sure to check out the other Bayer Facts of Science Education surveys.

Chris Lehmann rocks out

As others have noted, Chris’ presentation at IgnitePhilly is a must-see. Forward on to others using this URL:

• http://snipurl.com/ignitephilly

This is the kind of passion I strive for on a regular basis. I don’t always get there, but this is my desired goal. 

Hot for teacher

I wonder what the NEA thinks about this SinglesNet ad.

Teach students about dating violence

Rhode Island has made school training about dating violence mandatory. This is a fantastic idea. Did you know that 1 in 5 female high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner?

Americans who want Americans to be dumb at math

Jo Boaler has an interesting Education Week article on the ‘anti-knowledge movement.’

This just in: Teenagers like to text message

The New York Times reports that cell phone users send more text messages than make phone calls. Teenagers are the most prolific texters, which of course will impact their communication habits when they hit the workforce.

Wireless school buses

I love this creative thinking in Arkansas about using wireless Internet access to turn long school bus rides into learning opportunities.

WeDo joins MindStorms

Andrew Trotter reports on Lego’s upcoming WeDo kits for schools. Calling all junior robotics engineers!

Two great Campus Technology articles

Article 1: 5 common mistakes using blogs with students.
Article 2: Educators and the generative nature of the digital economy.

Hill Street Blues meets K-12

Did you know that over 12,000 K-12 employees in the U.S. had a nonfatal occupational injury in 2006? As Sergeant Esterhaus used to note, Hey, let’s be careful out there!

My netbook is on its way!

Netbooks are hot, hot, hot! (see, e.g., the articles in GigaOM, ZDNet, and PC Magazine). Between netbooks and smartphones, the mobile Web is well on its way to penetrating every nook and cranny of our lives. This has positive implications for getting a computing device into the hands of every student! I thought it was time to dive into this computing sector and will share pictures of my Dell Inspiron Mini 9 when it arrives later this month. Now all we need is ubiquitous wireless broadband…

Slide - If the leaders don't get it

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Help wanted: Digital citizenship resources?

I recently got this message from an international school:

I've organized [our] Tech Leadership Team to discuss and develop a Digital Citizenship program for our school. There are 27 members of the TLT and they will be exploring 6 elements, identifying issues associated with the element, brainstorming examples of appropriate and inappropriate use, developing guidelines for use (e.g., guidelines for e-mail, cyberbullying, social networks, piracy, health), and identifying how the concept and guidelines should be shared with the community.

1. Digital Communication
2. Digital Etiquette
3. Digital Law
4. Digital Rights & Responsibilities
5. Digital Health and Wellness
6. Digital Security

I'm looking for a good book for them to read -- any recommendations?

What resources have you found valuable regarding digital citizenship? Here’s my contribution…

• Darren Draper’s edublogger etiquette series

Slide - Should teachers get to choose?

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[a remake of an earlier post]

Help! My IT director's locked me down!

Here’s a message that I recently received from a middle school science teacher:

I am a technology-loving science educator. I need your help and here is the short version of my story. I have tried to be a front-end user of educational technology. However, I have lost the ability to effectively utilize technology due to the IT director’s philosophy of restricting all computers for all staff. Last week the IT people took my MacBook and removed administrative privileges – something I have always had. This has coincided with the loss of our curriculum director, who always empowered educators that wanted to be progressive. I was hoping to spend a few minutes talking on the phone in more detail, at your convenience. Please reach out and help a fellow educator! I look forward to your response.

I gave him some empathetic support when we chatted on the phone. I also asked some tough questions about his IT director’s need to restrict his privileges. It didn’t sound like he had abused his administrative privileges. Thoughts for this educator, anyone?

Slide - The 21st century is here

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Best designs for a computer lab?

A technology director in Indiana asked me:

What are the ‘best’ designs you are seeing for a ‘traditional’ computer lab setup? I am looking for a lab design that allows for collaboration and team work and yet is flexible enough to move if need be (it would be a desktop lab with hard-wired connections to the network). What are you hearing or seeing? Any innovative designs?

Got any suggestions for him?

Survey results - It's the first day of school (2008)!

About a month ago, I posted my annual Beginning of the Year Technology Checklist and wondered (again) if schools had made any progress since the previous year. This year I also invited readers to fill out an online survey rating their own school organizations. I am pleased to announce that 125 of you took me up on the offer. Here are the results!

As you can see from the mean responses for the items on the checklist, participants rated staff development and principals’ understanding lowest of the ten items (note: clicking on each image gets you a larger version).

While participants felt fairly positively about their infrastructure, I thought that the modes show quite clearly that we have a long way to go in other areas:

I also looked at the distribution of responses within each item. For example, over 70% of the participants gave low responses to their district’s technology integration-related staff development.

I also plotted the responses for each item individually. As expected, the staff development item had the most skewed distribution. 

Finally, I calculated simple correlations for the items. The strongest correlation (.726) existed for the technology plan and vision items (Q8 and Q10).

Here are the results in various downloadable formats. These results include a number of additional charts.

• PowerPoint
• Acrobat PDF
• Excel (raw data)

Feel free to use the results to spark some conversation in your school organization. If you want me to host this online survey for your school or district, let me know!