This podcast is a recording of the keynote address I shared at the Massachusetts Computer Using Educators educational technology conference in Sturbridge, Massachusetts on November 19, 2008. The official conference program description of this session was: U.S. educators in the early twenty-first century face formidable challenges but are blessed with access to unprecedented tools and opportunities for shared professional learning. As teachers we must help our students master content area knowledge and skills, but also develop and refine a set of important 21st century literacy skills that are not measured on traditional, multiple- choice examinations. How can we effectively and realistically enable our students and teachers to meet the learning demands we have inherited from 20th century legislative mandates, and simultaneously embrace and encourage the development of 21st century skills? A focus on creating and collaborating within a context of project-based learning offers hope in the face of these challenges. Let’s explore together practical ways students and teachers are using digital tools to create and collaborate together, reaching new heights of student achievement and documentable learning.
Podcast293: Creating and Collaborating: The Keys to 21st Century Literacy (MASSCUE 2008 Keynote) [01:02:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (78)
Today at the MASSCUE 2008 conference in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, I was delighted to meet Diane Serley.
Diane is a leader in the Boston-area OLPC User’s Group, and owns one of only two companies (XOExplosion) worldwide authorized to resell official parts for the XO Laptop / OLPC. Since I presented four times in the morning / early afternoon today, I was not able to attend Diane’s session on the XO Laptop. I was, however, able to audio-record the session and got Diane’s permission to share it later as a podcast. It would have been so fun to attend her session! She had a “jam pack” of XO Laptops from the OLPC group at MIT, and everyone in her session was encouraged to explore and play on the XOs!
The most significant learning moment for me today was hearing Diane describe this solar panel designed as a charging device for the XO laptop. These cost $19 each to manufacture and sell commercially for $25.
I’ve actually lived this cartoon several times at official meetings in the past two years.
Somehow, having a laptop in front of you makes the reality of cognitive multi-tasking more tangibly visible to some leaders. When we’ve been in class or in meetings, we’ve always had trouble as human beings maintaining a singular focus on the speaker’s voice and topic. In a meeting with my laptop, I’m likely talking notes with EverNote, checking my calendar and adding items to it, and/or looking up something which is being discussed. I’m never playing Solitaire. Yet I find that in some cases, some people assume laptops are just toys and useless distractions when it comes to class lectures or formal meetings. Certainly digital technologies can be used to “distance and distract” (words from John Naisbitt in “High Tech/High Touch” I think) but in my case a laptop is a used in a meeting to digitize thoughts for indexed access afterwards, and to obtain additional information needed to process new directives.
Scott Adams has captured elements of this reality well in his cartoon today.
Thanks to James Deaton for bringing this to my attention via a tweet.
Today at lunch during day one of our November Celebrate Oklahoma Voices workshop, I had a chance to ask Julie Cook of Crescent Public Schools how their 1:1 laptop initiative with students in grades 9-12 is going. As far as Julie knows, Crescent is the only public school in Oklahoma currently with a 1:1 laptop initiative where students are permitted to take their laptops home to use. To take laptops home, parents of students must take out an insurance policy which costs $70 per student for the year. There were a few families who had not taken out the insurance policy, but local benefactors stepped forward to cover the costs for those students, so all students can take their laptops home at this point. Students in grades 9-12 at Crescent received their laptops this fall for the first time, but this project has been underway for over five years. Crescent is not a wealthy school district, but under visionary leadership it has mobilized to secure the resources required to make 1:1 learning a reality in very challenging fiscal times for Oklahoma schools.
Laptop initiatives here in the midwestern United States in public K-12 schools are still VERY rare. Julie thinks there are only three public school districts in Oklahoma (where we have over 500 school districts) with 1:1 laptop initiatives presently. The last I heard, the state of Kansas has 20-30 school districts with 1:1 initiatives. I don’t know how many are in Texas, but I heard of the 22 original TxTIP middle school immersion campuses only a handful are continuing now that grant funding has run out. When I was in the Chicago area several weeks ago, I learned that the Illinois one-to-one technology immersion pilot project faltered and failed before it even got off the ground. Many laptops were not given out to students before testing was over in late spring. Bureaucratic obstacles held up implementation and choked the dreams of innovative learning for both students and teachers. Stories like these can be depressing. One to one learning offers so much promise, yet many of our leaders in educational systems as well as political circles fail to understand these potentials and mobilize the resources necessary to sustain digital learning initiatives. In this learning landscape, the innovation and vision of superintendents like Steve Shiever and dedicated educators like Julie Cook stand out like beacons in a dark, stormy night.
All the high school teachers at Crescent are putting their courses and instructional materials online via Moodle this year. Julie said ideally, teachers are supposed to stay “five days ahead” of the students in Moodle, but this is a daunting challenge.
I am so enthused to learn about the progress of Crescent’s 1:1 laptop initiative under the leadership of Superintendent Steve Shiever. I believe the 1:1 learning path which Steve and his teachers have been working toward for over five years now is the path all our Oklahoma school leaders need to follow.
What do we need to help our students acquire digital literacy skills along side traditional ones in our Oklahoma classrooms? Visionary and inspired LEADERSHIP. Where are these leaders in many of our school systems? While many, many districts are scrambling to purchase as many electronic white boards as their budgets will allow, very few leaders are focused on creating student-centered learning environments where students are able to regularly create, communicate, and collaborate with peers as well as outside experts. In the United States we’ve spent over $20 billion in the past ten years on educational networking technologies via our E-Rate program, but in many of our schools educators have still not allowed the students to touch the computers for any purposes other than basic Internet research, drill and practice, word processing, and online testing. I positively shudder to think how much money we have (as taxpayers) paid Pearson in the past few years for our state’s online testing system. There are so many better ways to spend public education dollars… It is a tragedy we are wasting so many resources thanks to an NCLB-inspired, myopic focus on summative assessment. There are many factors to blame for this, but one individual stands out with clear responsibility. As a voting citizen, taxpayer, parent and educator, I for one am very glad to see him leaving office soon– to no longer be my governor ruining the school system of my former state, or my President wrecking the school systems of our nation.
In our recent election campaign, I saw a television advertisement for the Oklahoma Lottery that almost made me physically ill. The ad showed photos of smiling kids, and asserted falsely that the lottery has meant more money for students in Oklahoma schools. This is a LIE. Rather than using lottery funds to supplement rather than supplant funding, our Oklahoma legislators have kept funding for education flat and not even kept up with inflation, despite inflows of new dollars thanks to the gambling risks of thousands of Oklahomans enticed to throw their money away in our lottery system instead of saving their money or using it to help their own families. This type of marketing duplicity in the education arena incenses me. I live and work in a state whose legislators may pay lip service to public education, but via their allocation of money continue to prove over and over again that they really don’t give a flip about our schools, our students, our teachers, or our future as a state. We remain FOURTY-EIGHTH in the nation in teacher salaries. When I decided to leave AT&T this past Spring, I seriously considered going to work for Crescent public schools as a teacher or grant director. I was shocked to see the benefits package, however, which is available to ALL Oklahoma public school teachers. The lack of care and financial provision which our legislature and we as citizens provide for the public educators of our state is embarrassing and ridiculous. I, for one, am sick and tired of the failure of our state officials to adequately fund education and pay our teachers. I am ready for changes not only at the national leadership level, but also at the state level when it comes to the causes of school funding and constructive educational reform.
In this dark, foggy night of educational despair and ridiculously low teacher salaries, there is hope.
The hope I have is seated in the fantastic work I see students and teachers doing in Oklahoma to prepare students for their future, not our past. I am inspired by stories like those of Julie Cook and others at Crescent. I am inspired by the work of Creative Oklahoma and the ideas of other members of our education sub-committee. I am inspired by the work and success of Oklahoma A+ Schools. I am inspired by the amazing stories our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices educator and student participants continue to create and share, and the power of collaborative, interactive technologies to connect our hearts and minds together.
My voice is small, but my heart and dreams are big, and I know I am not alone in my desire to see the educational opportunities for our children and our students in our state grow to meet the scale of our imaginations. A new political day is dawning for our nation in Washington D.C. National political leaders can cast a vision and establish priorities, but despite increased federal spending and intervention in education it still remains largely a local and state-funded enterprise. As Gandhi said, we must be the change we want to see in the world.
Educator leaders in Crescent, Oklahoma, are casting the vision and making dreams a reality for students and families. We need leadership like this all over our state and in every one of our schools. The reality is, however, you can’t “boilerplate” inspired, passionate leadership. We can share our passion, however, and strive to inspire others to follow as well as take over a position of leadership.
Monday’s CNET Australia article “NSW to censor student laptops” is both surprising and saddening. How can a government official stand up and boldly claim, “Our Internet filtering scheme is unbreakable?” I’m not sure this can be done credibly, yet that is what officials down under are doing. In the name of “internet safety” they are whitelisting the entire web:
… [NSW Department of Education and Training (DET)] chief information officer [Stephen] Wilson detailed the “unbreakable” filtering system that would control students’ internet experience on the proposed laptops.
“Our internet filtering is unbreakable. We have a huge proxy array that does all the filtering. We’ve just brought that in-house and the reason we have done that is we want much tighter control over it,” said Wilson.
DET has developed 98 categories of websites that are accessible to students. “Every internet site that’s known is actually categorised. If it isn’t known, it’s blocked. If you go to a site and it’s not categorised you can’t get to it,” he said.
I continue to be an advocate for reasonable content filtering in schools as well as homes, but I am categorically opposed to a scheme where any official (government or otherwise) attempts to whitelist the entire Internet. Whitelisting known and approved websites can be a reasonable approach for preK and very young primary-age school children, but is ludicrous for older elementary and secondary age students.
Hyperlinked text is the foundational concept and technological breakthrough of the modern World-Wide Web. The idea of wanting to protect children from inappropriate and offensive content online is laudable as well as important, but it can certainly be carried too far. This situation in New South Wales, Australia, is a case in point.
No content filtering system is perfect and “unbreakable.” Essentially, with these statements I think Mr. Wilson has effectively “thrown down the glove” to current or would-be student hackers in Australia. Proxy servers do pose formidable challenges for school officials tasked with helping protect young minds online at school, and I’m sure the need to address proxy server risks is a driving reason behind this governmental policy to whitelist the web. We must remember, however, that our role as educators is not to metaphorically herd cattle in a pen, but rather teach young birds how to take wing and fly. How are Australian teachers and students going to learn about digital citizenship on a network where every accessible website must be whitelisted? How are learners going to use the web to regularly create, collaborate, and communicate with others? Most likely, they are not.
Are educational leaders in NSW running schools or prisons? That is a legitimate question to ask, which I posed in October 2007 in the post, “Content Filtering in Schools: Striving to CONTROL user behavior.” The censorship aspects of this type of draconian content filtering should not be ignored or taken lightly. As I noted in that post a year ago:
In a purely analog world, censorship like this could be more visible. A book burning event was held in a public square, I think, to draw attention to the fact that the authorities not only philosophically opposed but physically opposed the reading of certain “banned works.” In a digital world, censorship and content filtering like this is not as visible as a book burning event in the public square. The chilling effects of digital censorship on the sharing and communication of ideas can be just as severe, however.
Where would you expect to find more censorship of ideas and communication, in communist China or in an Oklahoma school? How about a school in New South Wales? The answers may surprise you.
Will there be a public outcry in Australia over these filtering policies? Will people brave and knowledgeable enough to openly criticize government policy be shouted down by the claim, “We’re only acting to protect the children?!”
As in so many other cases, this is an opportunity for leadership. Will the real educational leaders in New South Wales please step forward, and help the government adopt a more reasonable, proactive, and sensible policy for Internet content filtering for students?
Thanks to Brett Moller for alerting me to this article this evening.
The company Plastic Logic is advancing the revolution in electronic text access by using plastic instead of silicon in its lightweight microchips ideal for thin, lightweight electronic eText readers. (Nod to Clark Boyd and Discovery News.) If you thought (and you should) that the MacBook Air laptop is thin, wait till you see the Plastic Logic Reader. Like the Kindle, however, this device is NOT a laptop will full-blown computer capabilities. I think products and images like this provide us with a literal glimpse into the future, which is certainly ripe with possibilities. The following 1.5 minute clip from CNN gives a tantalizing preview of the size and functionality of Plastic Logic’s eBook.
According to the New York Times September 19, 2008, article “Will This E-Reader Replace Papers?”iRex Technologies has a more expensive but even smaller and more capable device on the market today a year ahead of the projected availability date for Plastic Logic:
IRex is positioning the device as a business tool, able to store 20,000 pages on its 1-gigabyte SD card; the card comes with the unit, but higher-capacity SD cards can also be used. The device displays PDF, PowerPoint, HTML, and .txt files. And if you buy the $749 1000 S version, you can make pen-based notes directly on the device, transfer the page back to a PC (but not a Mac) and then convert the handwriting to text.
The cheapest $649 model is read only; the most expensive 1000 SW, available later this year at $849, includes handwriting input as well as Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity.
On her program Friday, Oprah extolled the possibilities of eText readers like the Kindle being available for students and teachers in classrooms around the world. I certainly agree there are tremendous comparative benefits to electronic versus analog texts, in formal as well as informal learning settings. As I’ve written and said previously, hyperlinked writing is the most powerful form of writing and is a writing form in which students and teachers inside and outside of schools should engage regularly. (Many students engage informally out of school in electronic writing now via social networking sites, of course, but relatively few schools here in Oklahoma are encouraging students to write weekly or daily with appropriate and effective hyperlinks.) I noted in response to David Warlick and Clarence Fisher’s presentations in the 2006 K-12 Online conference:
…more teachers in our schools need to be specifically teaching students how to write effectively with hyperlinks, because hyperlinked writing is the most powerful form of writing that has ever existed. The ability to connect your ideas with words, thoughts, images, sounds or videos created by others is unbelievably powerful. This is the real power of blogging, in my opinion. I always try to link ideas in my blog posts to other sources or to related posts I’ve written or others have authored, because my goal in writing goes far beyond merely transmitting my own words and ideas: I want to connect others to ideas and in doing so, empower their own personal learning journeys. Since digital technologies have advanced so quickly and come so far in our own lifetimes, we are naturally more awed by the technology than we should be or than later generations will be. David’s exhortation is excellent, challenging us to avoid the temptation to be entranced by technological bells and whistles, and instead focus on CONTENT, IDEAS, and OPENING DOORS.
I did not hear Oprah mention the power and potential of mobile technologies to bring access to digital texts to students around the world even sooner than companies like Amazon (who produces the Kindle), Plastic Logic or iRex Technologies. As I did in my TechCon 2008 breakout session on October 17th, we need to be exploring the uses of mobile technologies for learning TODAY. These devices and capabilities are here to stay, and we would be foolish to ignore the beneficial and transformative ways they can be used to support learning during class and beyond the traditional “boundaries of the bell.”
Remember watching Saturday morning cartoons as a kid? A discussion about cartoon favorites is probably a good way to date myself, for better or for worse. Your cartoon memories may be quite different from mine. Some of my most beloved cartoons growing up were Speed Buggy, Thundarr the Barbarian, Space Ghost, Scooby Doo, Felix the Cat, and The Superfriends. Who can ever forget the amazing Wonder Twins (Zan and Jayna) and their pet Space Monkey Gleek? Let’s also not forget another favorite of mine, Hong Kong Phooey. Ah, yes. Those were the simpler days.
Of all those cartoon titles, I think Scooby Doo is probably the only one my own children could identify. Saturday morning television cartoons at our house in 2008 are FAR less of a big deal than they were for me growing up in the 1970s. Instead of sitting glued to the television, our children are far more likely to be mesmerized on our living room couch interacting on websites of their choice.
Access to 1 to 1 technologies (including Internet-connected laptop computers) certainly does invite more personalized and differentiated entertainment as well as learning experiences. Why settle for passively watching the same non-interactive cartoon on television when you can dynamically explore and play in an online environment like Webkinz?
My own children are growing up in an information environment very different from the one I knew as a child, and scenes like the one pictured here on a Saturday morning provide vivid proof. It also reminds me of how important BALANCE is in our lives, and the need to have limitations and boundaries on our activities. Left to their own devices, our kids might choose to spend all day on the computer and never go outside and play. It doesn’t take a lot encouragement (generally) after declaring a “lids down” moratorium on computer use to get everyone to go outside and play. Situations like this are happening REGULARLY in our house, however, and I think it’s natural with the access we have to digital technologies. It is my contention that we all (regardless of age) need to regularly practice “digital discipline,” when we intentionally choose to disconnect from our technologies and instead “plug in” to our environment and to our face-to-face relationships with others. The learning potentials latent in our online, digital world can be fantastic and very positively engaging, but they can also be addictive. I need to be reminded to “un-plug” as much as my own children from time to time.
This line of thinking always reminds me of Richard Louv’s book “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder” as well. In addition to believing we all need to practice and refine our own skills of digital discipline, I also think many of us (including our family) need to ratchet the number of organized activities in which we are involved WAY down. We’re just too busy.
Thankfully, the past five days have been “fall break” for Oklahoma students and have provided a wonderful respite from the regular fall routine of school and homework for our kids. I just wish I got a “fall break” too!
I had a wonderful day today sharing and learning at the TechCon 2008 conference in Naperville, Illinois, just outside Chicago. If the 36+ pages of backchannel chat conversations are any indication, it would appear a lot of dialog and discussion took place as a result of the presentations and networking opportunities afforded by the conference! This was the first time I’ve setup a Chatzy room for use by all the participants at an educational technology conference to use as a space for backchannel discussions, and I think it worked VERY well. I created the Chatzy room (for free) the evening prior to the conference, but created a TinyURL for everyone to use (tinyurl.com/techcon08) so it would be easy to get to. I created the room with a simple password also, to demonstrate the way Chatzy access can be limited and controlled. We ended up having over 60 different people login to the chat and participate during the course of the day, but not all were face-to-face attendees at TechCon.
I was impressed that about half the attendees brought laptops to the conference! There were some wireless network options in the hotel, but I wasn’t able to connect to any of them prior to my keynote, so I connected to the AT&T cellular network with my 3G data card and then shared that connection openly with participants. I’ve used this configuration previously with my family members on trips and in the car, but this was the first time to do this at a conference event. It worked well.
I’ve created a wiki link for the Gabcast voice reflections shared by participants, the VoiceThread I created at the end of the day in the closing session integrating many of those reflections, and links to my own presentation materials.
I posted about fifty photos from today as a new Flickr set. Here are a few of the highlights.
It was great to see, briefly visit, and hear presentations from both Charlene Chausis and David Jakes today.
I was also glad to meet Ben Grey, a former teacher and now technology director in Barrington, Illinois, who is the proud new owner (he actually got it yesterday) of a BRAND new MacBook Pro. It was/is very slick looking.
Here’s his computer with our conference Chatzy backchannel displayed:
Several folks were proudly using a few different mini-laptops as well. This one is from ACER:
All our Gabcast-recorded reflections (there are currently 14) are available on the free Gabcast channel I set up for the TechCon08 conference. At the start of my keynote I asked how many people had laptops, pencils or pens, and cell phones. I shared the toll free number for Gabcast, our channel number and password, and had participants write it down. Then during the day people recorded reflections. Many of these were recorded during my session on cell phones for learning, but others were recorded at different times. I suspect the experience of actually using GabCast firsthand was memorable for participants.
I was a little concerned that my keynote and presentations at the conference were a little too curriculum-focused for the audience, which included technology directors, principals and superintendents, but also included CTOs and business office administrators. The ideas seemed to be well received, and feedback was positive, but I still wonder.
I did learn some sad news about the fate of the technology immersion pilot initiative in Illinois. The project lost funding after two years, and evidently the evaluation phase which was to begin in year three never started. Politics, politics. Because the laptops purchased for the immersion pilot all have Absolute tracking and theft recovery software installed on them project administrators know exactly where all the laptops are (thanks to WiFi triangulation technologies) and the fact that over 1000 of them are not being used AT ALL currently. In some participating schools, lots of bureaucratic roadblocks stopped the laptops from being even rolled out to teachers and students until March of the first school year they were to be deployed, and the professional development plan teacher-leaders from the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy were prepared to share never was fully implemented.
On a positive note, I did learn about a great Ning social network for Illinois administrators created and managed by Rich Voltz, the IASA Associate Director:
As I shared in the opening keynote for the conference, for many topics our peers are our best assets when it comes to ongoing learning. It’s great to see so many Illinois educators are finding ways to bring the power and benefits of social networking technologies directly to administrators. Hopefully positive experiences with these social networking environments will eventually “trickle-down” as more open policies for moderated social networking environments being available for teachers and students in Illinois schools.
My other two blog recommendations for administrators which I didn’t mention in my sessions but should have are LeaderTalk and The EdJurist blog. Of course I did share and promote participation in the free K-12 Online Conference, which has already started with the pre-conference keynote and gets underway fully this coming Monday. I didn’t get to the slides for K12Online08 in my keynote but did talk it up in my closing session.
One of many highlights from today was meeting and visiting with James Gerry of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, who was formerly the school’s chief technology officer but now is heading up a new group focused on creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and designing a new collaborative space at the school to foster creativity. I didn’t know previously the inventors of both PayPal and YouTube are IMSA graduates. Many IMSA grads work for Google. James recently visited Google to gather ideas about how to design the new collaboration and creativity spaces at IMSA. He worked at Bell Labs for ten years, so he certainly has a fantastic background to lead a team which is imagineering new learning spaces for schools. I’ll publish my interview with James here soon as a podcast.
Igniting and nurturing creative, ethical scientific minds that advance the human condition.
Does that sound like a GREAT place to teach and learn or what? I hope the next time I’m in the Chicago area I’ll be able to bring at least one of my kids to IMSA for a visit and tour. The idea of one of my kids not living at home for high school does NOT appeal to me at all, but who can say where creativity and innovation in a school like IMSA could lead? The sky’s the limit.
Many thanks to all the educators in Illinois at TechCon08 for a fantastic day of learning!
This podcast is a recorded conversation with Doug Taylor, superintendent of Gage Public Schools in Oklahoma, at the EncycloMedia conference on Thursday, September 18, 2008. Doug discusses how students and teachers in Gage schools are utilizing netbooks like the Asus eeePC, open source software programs, Linux, and Google Documents. Gage educators are realizing the benefits of spending money which would otherwise go towards software and operating system licensing fees toward curriculum resources and other educational needs supporting literacy. Doug participated in our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices project in February 2008, and is supporting hands-on, relevant and personal curriculum projects including oral history projects in Ellis County. Doug had a bit of a “conversion experience” when it comes to the power and leveling potential of digital technologies when he investigated all the things a 21st century librarian and media specialist needs to know and help students be able to do. As the leader of a small, rural school district in Oklahoma, Doug’s enthusiasum for engaged, relevant learning is contagious and gives me great hope for the cause of school reform in our state. We need more school leaders with the vision, passion for student learning and leadership characteristics of Doug Taylor in our public schools.
Podcast282: A Conversation with Superintendent Doug Taylor about Student Engagement, Digital Storytelling, and Collaborative Digital Technologies [10:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1243)
While the report points out that three of the four “high immersion” sites in TxTIP are using Apple Macintosh laptops instead of Dell Laptops, it evidently does not mention that only 7 of the 21 studied sites went with Macs initially. With just one-third of studied TxTIP campuses using Macs, three-fourths of the identified “high immersion” campuses are using Macs. Is that merely a coincidence? I think not.
Selection of a computing platform is one of MANY issues to consider when embarking on a 1:1 project, but it is a highly significant decision which impacts multiple aspects of a laptop initiative. If I was in a formal position of authority in our state or any other and was considering a laptop initiative for large numbers of students and teachers, there is no question Apple laptops would be at the top of my list for hardware. The iLife suite and the overall approach of Apple Professional Development is much more constructivist and project-based than what I’ve I’ve seen and heard about from campuses in TxTIP and other 1:1 projects which selected a Windows-based operating system. To be fiscally responsible I would certainly consider Windows-based alternatives as well as open-source laptop options as well, but based on my past experiences along with educational research findings like these I’d be highly-biased to favor the Apple platform. As I heard one of the leaders at the University of Texas’ College of Education share in April 2005, a successful laptop initiative is based on SO much more than just the question, “How inexpensively can you deliver that hardware to my loading dock?”
This is not to say that 1:1 initiatives can’t be successful and very learner-centered / project-based on a Windows-platform or on a Linux platform, but I will contend it is more difficult and much harder to find these types of success stories at schools using the Windows platform. All Macs come with software which naturally lends itself to creating, collaborating and communicating with others. On the Windows platform that is not the case. Software from Tech4Learning, ToolFactory, and other companies certainly CAN be included in the software package included with Windows-based laptops in 1:1 projects, but all too often project directors fallaciously assume “Microsoft Office is really the only software program our students and teachers are going to need.” That assumption is both false and ridiculous if attaining “high immersion” levels as measured by TCER in this report is a desired project outcome.
I’ve had this perception for several years. It’s interesting to see my perception is now supported by the year 3 report of TCER for TxTIP. This report and others published by TCER for TxTIP are available on the TCER website for download.
Earlier this year I heard that only three of the initial 22 middle school TxTIP campuses were expected to be sustainable (continue their laptop initiatives) past the four year grant period, and of those all three were using Mac laptops and two were in West Texas. (Floydada ISD and Post ISD) Can anyone involved in TxTIP confirm or deny this rumor?
The need for and positive impact of good, strong, visionary leadership in our schools is evident everywhere, and it is certainly clear to see in a success story like Floydada ISD. I look forward to reading this entire TxTIP year 3 report in the weeks ahead, and will post more about this report as I make time to consume, digest and analyze it.
It’s been almost four years since this news broadcast segment ran in Lubbock, Texas, in October 2004. It is extremely gratifying to see those seeds of technology immersion flourishing in West Texas!
In this podcast I share 45 minutes worth of brainstorming on the subject, “Given all the resources, administrative and parental support needed, how would you imagineer the ideal K-6 classroom learning environment?” Imagineering is a term I associate with Walt Disney and Disneyland, where creative and capable individuals come together to both imagine and engineer new worlds together. Carol Anne McGuire asked me last week to share some ideas with her along these lines, and prior to our conversation later this week I did some brainstorming and created this podcast tonight to clarify some of my thoughts. In the podcast shownotes you’ll find a link to the eighteen different ideas or suggestions I offer in this recording, as well as Stephanie Sandifer’s excellent wiki for “Designing the 21st Century Global Learning Environment.” As always I welcome your comments and feedback on the ideas of this podcast.
Podcast276: Imagineering the Ideal K-6 Classroom Learning Environment (Part 1) [46:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1102)
Ed.VoiceThread (accountable environment for students and teachers to create VoiceThreads for school with individual accounts)
Consider setting up a “Team Curiosity Blog” to which both students and teachers can post using a locally-hosted copy of Wordpress. What are you curious about today? What are you wondering based on things you’ve read, seen, or heard?
I shared this entry as a new post on the TechLearning blog, but am cross-posting here because of problems we’ve had with the commenting features over there. Feel free to comment on that post (if you can) or here.
As you may know, OC along with Abilene Christian University down in Texas are among the first colleges in the United States to implement initiatives which involve ALL students in entering classes purchasing and using either Apple iPhones or iPod Touches. When I learned this professor taught at OC, I enthusiastically said, “Wow, you’re going to have all your students bring iPhones to class this year!” His response was:
Boy I sure hope not. I have a tough enough time having them keep their laptops closed all the time during class.
I almost passed out on the spot, but I was torn by a simultaneous urge to weep.
This attitude, perhaps more than any other, may explain why we have so few laptop initiatives at both K-12 as well as higher education levels here in the great state of Oklahoma.
Let’s deconstruct this professor’s statement a bit. What exactly was he saying with these two sentences? Here are some possibilities.
I don’t know how to use digital technologies to engage my students in meaningful learning tasks, so I prefer to just lecture to them as I was lectured to for years in the 20th century.
I believe the student’s only viable role in the classroom is that of passive receiver.
I reject all conceptions and theories of active learning being good.
I choose to be the only person in my classroom doing any real thinking and providing any real evidence of both hard work and cognitive exertion, therefore I choose to exclusively lecture.
As the only person in my classroom with the initials “PhD” after my name, clearly I have the most knowledge and therefore should be the only person speaking once class begins.
Students have nothing to offer me as a learner and nothing to offer each other during my classes that could be of value, relative to the infinite value of my ideas and perspectives about our topic of study.
I am not interested in the literacies or the skills of the 21st century, my job role is to strictly impart the content from the textbook which I learned in the 20th century to my students.
Digital technologies can only be used to distract and entertain, they can never be used to inform, challenge constructively and engage.
My favorite metaphor for students in my class is that of a THRALL, or slave.
I asked this professor if he had heard of the website PollEverywhere, which permits students to immediately respond to multiple choice or open answer questions using their laptop or cell phone during class. He responded that he had not, but the IT department at UC was working on writing a program that would permit students to respond immediately like that during class. He had asked repeatedly for a set of classroom electronic response systems, but the university had not purchased a set for him. He also stated he was not at all interested in any type of open answer questions during class, he wanted only multiple choice questions and answers to determine if students understood the material he was presenting.
I assured him that PollEverywhere offers this functionality NOW and could be used both with the laptops students have and the iPhones many of them will also likely have in class. I wrote down the website for him, and I hope he’ll check it out.
When it comes to embracing the constructive uses of digital technologies to improve learning, I do not believe that anyone is a “lost cause.” At any time, a teacher or professor can “see the light” and come to understand that digital technologies CAN be used in constructive ways to extend and expand opportunities for learning. I’m afraid, however, based on this brief conversation with this OC professor, that he has a long way to go on the blended learning journey.
How many professors and teachers at the VERY limited number of schools implementing 1:1 laptop learning initiatives today are like this one I talked with tonight? How many educators will insist, despite the fact that EVERY student in their classroom has a laptop computer ready at hand, to continue lecturing with overhead projector slides or a pedagogically equivalent PowerPoint slideshow, and completely miss the opportunities available to ENGAGE rather than merely ENTHRALL students?
My heart goes out to OC students in this professor’s classes this fall. Hopefully his attitude is not representative more generally of faculty attitudes at OC towards student laptops and mobile computing devices.
I learned today from Josh Pearce that Smart Technologies has changed their whiteboard software installation requirements. For the past few years I’ve been using electronic whiteboard technologies and collecting sources of free as well as commercial digital curriculum sources for teachers appropriate for digital whiteboards, Smart Technologies has been permitting downloads of their Smartboard technology software, and NOT requiring a registration code or product serial number to install and activate the software. This has been a HUGE benefit to many schools, particularly those which “image” large numbers of computer hard drives for teachers. Not requiring a licensing code had many other benefits as well. If a teacher had a computer at home and one in his/her classroom, it was possible to easily download and install versions of the software in both places so Smartboard lessons could be developed at home and used at school. In professional development contexts, I ran into the situation more than once where the computer I needed to use for a workshop didn’t have Smartboard software installed and configured on it. After downloading the software on the spot, I was able to quickly get it installed and configured. Apparently those days are over.
To successfully install the complete version of Notebook software 10, you must complete the following steps:
1. Obtain a product key.
2. Uninstall older versions of SMART Board™ software and Notebook software.
3. Download and install Notebook software 10.
4. Activate Notebook software 10.
Why did SMART Technologies make this decision to start requiring a product key to install its software? The fact that their software did NOT require a product key was one of the reasons I’ve heard several technology directors cite in explaining why they had standardized on Smartboards instead of Promethean boards. Note it is still possible to DOWNLOAD Smart’s whiteboard software without a serial number or product key, but you cannot install the latest version (10) without one.
I had heard a rumor that Promethean has STOPPED requiring serial numbers for new whiteboard software installations, but the current Activstudio Version 3 download page requires “a valid serial number for your existing version of Activstudio or Activprimary software at the bottom of this page.” Without the serial number, you can’t even download the Promethean software:
It is not clear whether this serial number is only required to download the software, but NOT to install the software. If the serial number is NOT required for installation, that would be good news for school districts imaging large numbers of computers, and would be a change from Promethean’s past procedures. In February when I presented at NCCE in Seattle I used a Promethean board for my workshop, and had to get both the software and an installation key to put it on the Macbook I was using at the time.
What do you think about this change in software installation requirements for Smartboard software? As a frequent presenter in school districts and at technology conferences, I’ve found it a hassle at times to have to download and install the software drivers for a different electronic whiteboard after I arrive at the conference. I do like and enjoy using electronic whiteboards at times, but I wish all the “stuff” the installation programs put on a computer system could be easily and completely disabled when it is not needed so it doesn’t consume system resources and slow things down.
I’ve noticed some teachers can become quite adamant about the superiority they perceive for either the Smart and Promethean electronic whiteboard. These conversations can be quite similar to the “Mac or PC” arguments which flare up from time time time. As I’ve observed previously and continue to maintain, when comparing platforms the most credible people to ask for their opinions are THOSE WHO INTIMATELY KNOW BOTH PLATFORMS. Quite often when it comes to electronic whiteboards, those arguing the loudest only know one platform well. (Sadly this is also often the case with computer operating systems.) The only school district I know about in Oklahoma which supports both Smart or Promethean boards is Tulsa Public Schools. Generally, most school districts I’ve seen choose to standardize on one or the other. I actually think the technology leaders of TPS have been smart (no pun intended) to permit schools to make the platform decision on whiteboards locally. By letting different schools try different boards, they’ve been able to obtain firsthand, in-district knowledge about different options. It is still rare, however, to find a teacher with extensive experience using more than one whiteboard platform, however.
Whatever electronic whiteboard platform you think is better (eInstruction is also a big player too, of course) it’s impossible to ignore the HUGE sums of money schools continue to spend on these devices. Unfortunately, IMHO, electronic whiteboards are not a technology which inherently encourages pedagogic shifts in instructional practices. Like most of the lessons on Thinkfinity (sadly) electronic whiteboards continue to be used in very teacher-directed, didactic learning settings. It certainly IS vital that 21st century educators have access to a functional LCD projector as well as Internet-connected computer, but rather than pour millions of dollars into yet MORE technology which supports teacher-centered instruction, I’d like to see all our schools proactively plan and implement sustainable one-to-one laptop learning initiatives. (The Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation (AALF) is one of the best organizations to join and partner with on this front, btw.) Only when we put the technologies in the HANDS OF THE STUDENTS and intentionally seek to facilitate student creation, communication, and collaboration with those tools ON A REGULAR BASIS will we be appropriately utilizing taxpayer dollars for educational technologies in our schools. That’s a strong statement I know, but I am quite tired of seeing so many teachers continue to persist in 19th century styles of teaching using 21st century tools. As Marco Torres says, if teachers are still just asking kids to read pages 1 - 20 and answer questions 1 - 10 from the textbook, but now doing it with a flashy electronic whiteboard instead of a chalkboard or overhead projector, technology dollars have just been WASTED.
Smartboards are fun to use and often represent “low hanging fruit” for school board members as well as administrators who want to find visible ways to show the public “we support technology use in our schools” but at the same time minimize the potentially disruptive impact of those technologies on the traditional teaching and learning paradigm. As much smaller and more power efficient computer processors like the Atom from Intel come onto the scene, I anticipate (and hope) we’ll continue to see laptop computer prices go down as processing power goes up. Certainly Moore’s Law suggests these trends should continue, but we didn’t see laptop prices fall precipitously until the OLPC/XO laptop came onto the scene. Moore’s Law apparently doesn’t apply to videoconferencing codecs for some reason either, and that is unfortunate. As consumers as well as educators, we should be paying far less for far more processing power when it comes to all our computer equipment these days.
Check your local electronics store advertisements in the upcoming weeks to see the amazingly low prices you can now pay for gigabytes of data storage. I saw an ad yesterday for a 2 GB flash drive for $15. A 350 GB external hard drive was less than $100. It was only about a year ago that we had to pay at least $1 per gigabyte of external hard drive storage. Technology advances continue to accelerate, but as David Thornburg observed at NECC 2008, our pedagogies have not caught up. That is OUR FAULT, and we need to continue to work on remedying that divide separating learning potential from the realities in our classrooms.
This podcast includes interviews with Scott Swanson, the Strategic Technology Coordinator at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois, recorded in March and July of 2008, as well as April Hope, a 2008 graduate of IMSA and Scott’s current intern. They discuss the activities of IMSA students in forming the first OLPC (XO Laptop) High School Student Chapter, their experiences working in and supporting a one to one laptop learning initiative with tablet PCs, and their responses to conversations at EduBloggerCon 2008 prior to the NECC conference in San Antonio in July. The first conversation with Scott in this podcast was recorded at the COSN conference in Washington D.C. in March 2008. Many thanks to both Scott and April for sharing their thoughts, experiences, and perspectives!
Podcast268: Conversations with Scott Swanson and April Hope about the first OLPC High School Student Chapter, 1 to 1 Laptop Immersion with Tablet PCs, and EduBloggerCon 2008 Student Reflections [50:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (988)
This podcast features a recording of David Thornburg’s NECC 2008 presentation “Open Minds, Open Education, and a View of Open Culture.” The official conference program description and purpose / objectives for this session were: This talk explores how open education and culture are supported by 1:1 computing facilitated with open source tools, worldwide. True universal access, worldwide, requires innovation in hardware and software. Linux and open source software play a critical role here. In addition, a shift toward a more education-friendly copyright scheme (such as creative commons) is essential in opening up the educational process for all. As liberty, equality, fraternity becomes rip. mix and burn, the remixing of educational content by teachers and students alike is quite powerful. Most importantly, the cultural elements of education around the world can finally be addressed in ways that build true understanding and appreciation for the disparate peoples of the world.
Podcast266: Open Minds, Open Education, and a View of Open Culture by David Thornburg (NECC 2008) [61:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1089)
Podcast293: Creating and Collaborating: The Keys to 21st Century Literacy (MASSCUE 2008 Keynote) [01:02:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (78)
