Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Leadership in the Digital Age – Apple 1:1 Informational Event #ok1to1

These are my notes from the Apple 1:1 Informational Event at MetroTech in Oklahoma City on December 1, 2009. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. This is an all-day event, sponsored by Apple Computer, but I am just able to stay for the morning. Today follows the Oklahoma State Department of Education’s Pre-bidder’s conference for our Oklahoma SDE TitleIID ARRA Grant for 1:1 RFP. (PDF) My session notes from yesterday included:

  1. Opening Remarks from AALF / Oklahoma SDE 1:1 Learning Conference
  2. Leadership and Vision in a 1:1 Reality by Ron Canuel
  3. Models of Contemporary Learning by Carolyn Thompson
  4. Leadership, Vision, and Student Achievement (Panel)
  5. 21 Steps to 21st Century Learning by Bruce Dixon

Representatives from the following Oklahoma schools are here:
Covington Douglass
Putnam City Schools
DP Schools
Liberty
Catoosa PS
Lowrey Schools
Crescent PS
Guthrie PS
Woodward PS
Frontier PS
Morrison
Darlington PS
Ponca City
Shawnee PS
Dover Schools
Inola
Afton PS
El Reno
Millwood PS

Today we are discussing:
– Leadership in the Digital Age
– Apple’s Digital Learning Environment
– afternoon (I’ll miss this): Technologies for Reaching All Learners

Now hearing from Tom Burnett with Apple

Innovation
– when people come to Cupertino with Apple, we ask people to give us one word when they think of Apple, what comes to mind
– innovation always comes to mind

Transforming industries
– personal computer
– music
– mobile phone

Our CEO was just named innovator of the decade
Key is how this impacts us from an educational perspective

How do we take these wonderful technologies and talk about new ways to create knowledge with our studetns
– new ways to create content
– new ways to distribute content (iTunesU)
– mobile learning devices

Now let’s look at iTunesU and content distribution
– how many of you have iTunes accounts and download content from iTunesU
– it is platform agnostic
– I encourage each of you to do this

MY COMMENT: IT IS INTERESTING TO SEE HOW APPLE IS LEVERAGING ITS ROLE IN THE CONSUMER CONTENT WORLD IN THE EDUCATIONAL WORLD VIA ITUNESU

iTunes and iTunesU blocked

iTunesU started as a project about 5 years ago with universities
– now this has grown into a full-fledged part of what iTunes is
– there are 400 colleges and universities participating in iTunes (forward facing)
– all of the content in all these universities is free to you

iTunesU: Partial list of colleges on as of 1 Dec 2009

I WISH THERE WAS AN ITUNES CLIENT FOR UBUNTU LINUX

There are over 20 free lectures from Tom Friedman available in iTunesU, as an example

Second group that really pushed us was the “Beyond Campus” group
– public TV stations
– public libraries (like the Library of Congress)
– others with digital content that want to share it

Now showing an example about baseball, a science physics video about how physics is a huge part of baseball
– there are teacher guides that go along with this
– so teachers can use this content

Next group were state-level sites, examples are Virginia, Ohio, others

US State iTunesU portals as of 1 Dec 2009

MY QUESTION ABOUT THESE STATE LEVEL SITES CONTINUES TO BE WHAT IT WAS IN FEB 2009 WHEN I WAS IN OHIO FOR ETECHOHIO AND THE LAUNCH OF ITUNESU FOR OHIO: WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT PROCESSES, RULES, AND GUIDELINES FOR THESE STATE LEVEL ITUNES SITES FOR THE PUBLICATION OF CLASSROOM / STUDENT CONTENT ON THESE SITES?

In Tennessee the governor created the study partner’s program
– there were 193 podcasts that were a part of this
– grade level by grade level
– what objectives do our schools have the most problem with
– PDFs accompany many of the lessons

Now showing an example from that project, of student work

US Dept of Education came to Apple
– “Continuity of Learning” link on iTunesU is an effort to get as much content online so if a pandemic happens, kids can have access to all this content at home if they are homebound

Continuity of Learning on iTunesU

VERY INTERESTING. REMINDS ME OF CONVERSATIONS IN HONG KONG IN SEP 09 ABOUT HOW H1N1 HAS PUSHED SOME INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS TO

Expertise: Another reason to partner with Apple
– Apple Ecosystem for Education
– working to make sure everything fits together seamlessly
– evolution of thought and practice came out of ACOT
— shows ACOT stages with descriptions (UCLA research)
— types of training goes from use, to integration, to “lead and plan”
— relationships change…

When Apple Professional Development is offered, we use this research
– we know that leadership training is critical
– yes, as an administrator you have to go through this training as well

In some states that have found that the LACK of leadership training for administrators was the main thing holding back the schools

Foundations for APD:
– leadership
– digital leadership

We know implementation phase is critical
– we go through a very detailed set of checklists, timelines, who is the responsible functions

We have a sample schedule

ACOT2 is an effort to help schools develop “challenge based learning modules”

MY COMMENT: I THINK “CHALLENGE BASED LEARNING” IS APPLE’S TERM FOR PROJECT-BASED LEARNING / INQIRY-BASED LEARNING
– I AM NOT CLEAR ABOUT WHY APPLE HAS TO HAVE THEIR OWN TERM FOR THIS

ACOT2 is working to gather best-practice lessons for

Now showing dynamic photo of Apple 1:1 implementations around the US

MY COMMENT: TOM SAID HE DOES NOT WANT THE PHOTO I TOOK OF THAT SCREEN TO BE SHARED ONLINE. SO, I WON’T….. INTERESTING… (HE SAID LATER HE WAS KIDDING, BUT I’M STILL NOT GOING TO POST IT HERE)
– WE SHOULD SETUP A COLLABORATIVE GOOGLE MAPS PROJECT TO SHOW ALL THE 1:1 IMPLEMENTATIONS WORLDWIDE

It was very exciting when TCER concluded in “Third Year (2006-2007) Higher Technology Immersion Schools and Teachers:
Most of the higher immersion schools [were Apple]”

Schools with **** computers reported delivery delays, difficulty in adding tracking software, and problems accessing technical support.”

ACOT Research: If you implement correctly, you can expect these results to come out of your project
– creating better writers in Maine

TCER Research: “Students who had greater access to laptops and used laptops for learning to a greater extent, especially outside of school, had significantly higher TAKS reading and mathematics scores.”

Floydada ISD Results
– 18 of 19 areas TAKS tested in grads 6-12 showed overall positive test results and growth
– Jerry Vaughn is just as proud that they’ve moved up on state recognition, are graduating more students, and students have more college hours in their pockets (big savings to their families)

Apple Ecosystem for Education

Now asking Steve Shiever (Crescent Public Schools, Oklahoma) and Scot Trower (Lowery Public Schools, Oklahoma) to discuss important elements of leadership

Scot:
– I always look at my job as everything starts with me
– loyalty to the kids is the most important thing
– we have to do everything we can to meet the needs of those kids)
– years and years ago when I had this dream of rolling out a 1:1 initiative, I found out when I became superintendent that I couldn’t just make this happen alone
– I could find the money, but I had to do more
– I had to work directly with my teachers, with my tech director, work in the PD
– my job was not to dictate what teachers were and were not going to do, my job was to provide every opportunity for teachers to have everything they could possibly need
– we did a 4 day training event for teachers, to use this as a tool and not a glorified typewriter
– my teachers had no idea of what this tool could do to help their students learn
– if you are a superintendent, that is where you will get that buy-in and loyalty: if they see you at work in the trenches, they will support you
– Steve Shiever had been an inspiration to me for years
– watched Steve at “Superintendent’s Academy” in year 1
– find somebody like I did with Steve that you can watch and learn from, and don’t be afraid to pick up the phone
– sometimes supt’s get caught up in ego issues and are too proud to ask for help/assistance: you can’t do that- ask for help!

Steve:
– to do a total 1:1 implementation, the superintendent has got to be involved
– I think everyone here knows that
– if you don’t have the funding source, you can’t sustain it beyond a grant
– As you heard yesterday, we’ve been working 12 years at Crescent to build our program from the ground up
– you always have the shining stars in your building
– you have to have the principal in board too
– you have to have a good tech person you can rely on
– Michael and I are on a team, we’ve been on that team since we started
– make sure your technology person is user-friendly
– many times tech people are territorial: they have to be willing to work with those teachers on a daily basis: if you get asked the same question over a period of 10 weeks, you have to answer it consistently
– that is really a key factor
– leadership starts with your supt, the board – keep your teachers involved in the loop, principals too
– principals and superintendents have to attend PD training
– train before you get it!
– we asked our teachers to explain and justify how they were going to use technology (like IWBs) before we bought it for them
– you have to sustain that money, the money comes from you (supt) and you have to build that into your budget

Question from rep from Covington to Steve: Do you bring in outside people for your weekly PD?
– we eliminate the excuses

Comment from Scot: There is a huge difference between an instructional technology leader and an IT director
– I believe it is my responsibility to be willing to educate all students
– I would hire the teacher from New Orleans to come work with my teachers at any time

THIS IS WHY THE K-12 ONLINE CONFERENCE IS SO KEY FOR SHARING WITH SCHOOL DISTRICTS. WE ALL HAVE A CRITICAL NEED TO BRING INNOVATIVE MINDS TOGETHER

Scot: I encourage all schools to develop their own open source curriculum to replace the textbook
– that becomes an incredible resource to use year after year, and build on

Question from Jay, supt from Morrison: Isn’t the biggest scare factor with the teachers how to take their PASS objective and go find the things that align with
– who is going to teach the teachers how do this? in football we teach them how to run the wishbone offense, we don’t assume they can figure it out themselves
– we need that kind of sharing among the schools, to show teachers how to develop the curriculum

HE IS EXACTLY RIGHT

Scot: I shared with my teachers it was just like the first day I walked onto the job as superintendent
– having to deal with finances in the red, federal program issues that haven’t been addressed for 2 years, needing to build a schedule for the next year, etc…
– I wrote out my resignation and almost turned it in…. but I didn’t
– [I use this story to share with my teachers how we face challenges and fears, and work to overcome them]
– documenting those expectations in their evaluations are important, teachers don’t want their permanent record to reflect “I was non-compliant with my supervisor”

Steve: I hired Jim Askew and has worked with teachers to create web-based curriculum, make them aligned
– he’s worked with our US History grant and our teachers
– we could have moved in 3 years time to implement our 1:1 from the ground up

Now hearing from Tom Burnett again:
– ACOT research: All teachers went through these 5 stages in order, researchers found you don’t jump through those phases
– focus of Apple: can we help you move more quickly through these stages, to get you from entry to innovation (can I do that in 3 years, in the way we structure training)

THIS IS GREAT. FOR SOME REASON APPLE HAS TAKEN ALL THE ORIGINAL ACOT RESEARCH OFFLINE. TODAY I SEE, HOWEVER, THAT THE 10 YEAR ACOT SUMMARY DOCUMENT (PDF) IS AVAILABLE FROM SACRAMENTO STATE UNIV.

If you are going to write this grant with us (Apple) you are going to be successful
– Sept 2011 will come with the grant is OVER
– when you’ve got a successful project, your school will be in a good place at this time

Technorati Tags:
, , , , ,

If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, subscribe to Wes’ free newsletter. Check out Wes’ video tutorial library, “Playing with Media.” Information about more ways to learn with Dr. Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after.

On this day..


Posted

in

, , ,

by

Tags:

Comments

2 responses to “Leadership in the Digital Age – Apple 1:1 Informational Event #ok1to1”

  1. Tammy Parks Avatar

    Wes, Thank you as always for providing a thorough overview of the presentations you attend. Proximity to this meeting location prevented me from attending, however, your post gave me the information I needed.

    Quick note: In reference to “Steve: I hired Jim Ascue (sp?) and has worked with teachers to create web-based curriculum, make them aligned
    – he?s worked with our US History grant and our teachers
    – we could have moved in 3 years time to implement our 1:1 from the ground up”

    Jim’s last name is Askew. He was our (Howe’s) HS Science teacher for several years prior to joining Steve at Crescent. Readers will find this link very informative as it relates to Jim’s “web-based curriculum” and pedagogy. http://www.crescent.k12.ok.us/staff/jaskew/ISR/index.htm

    He has spent endless hours developing his online resources, and is a teacher who “gets it!” Kuddos to Crescent Public Schools for the innovative leadership in technology integration and transformational learning.

  2. Wesley Fryer Avatar

    Great, thanks for that correction, Tammy! I fixed Jim’s last name in the post and also linked his name in the post to the webpage you provided. 🙂