Dangerously Irrelevant

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?

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!

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

So far 85 people have completed the online survey version of the Beginning of the Year Technology Checklist. Initial results are very interesting…

If you haven’t yet completed the survey and would like to do so, it will remain open through this Friday.

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

It’s the first day of school here in Ames, Iowa. The past two years at this time, I’ve posted the following checklist, wondering if schools have made any improvement since the previous fall. This year I changed the checkboxes to a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high) and thought I’d try something a little different…

You have two ways to participate…

1. Download this checklist in Excel. Enter the name of your school organization and fill in your ratings (editable areas are in yellow). Click on the Chart tab at the bottom, then print. Disseminate broadly!
2. Participate in the 2-minute online survey. Fill in your ratings and click on the Submit button. I’ll publish everyone’s aggregated results in a future post! (deadline: Friday, August 29, 2008)

Feel free to use and distribute the Excel file and/or the survey link as desired. If you would like to conduct this online survey within your school organization, contact me about hosting a version just for you (at no cost). Hope you made some progress since last year!

NECC 2008 - SIGTC Forum

I attended the SIGTC Forum, run by Ferdi Serim, on Sunday for about an hour. SIGTC is ISTE’s special interest group for technology coordinators. Two things from the session that troubled me…

1. No recognition of principals as instructional leaders

Ferdi outlined five different roles that needed to be involved in discussions about teaching and learning:

• Guide (teacher leader) – knows about designing learning experiences; has daily experience with children
• Scholar (librarian / media specialist) – knows about research, organizing knowledge
• Hard Hat (technical specialist) – knows about hardware, software, and networks
• Pilot (principal) – knows about managing people, schedules, and budgets
• Wizard (technology / curriculum coordinator) – knows about managing systems and processes; at district level

Notice the emphasis on the managerial roles of principals. Nary a mention of the instructional leadership responsibilities of building-level leaders. Very disappointing.

2. The equity trap

There was some discussion about digital equity. Specifically, there seemed to be a fair amount of agreement in the group that – when it comes to digital technologies or whatever – if we don’t have enough for everybody, we can’t do it at all because of the complaints from the folks that don’t receive it.

How are we ever going to move forward if this is the mentality of our school organizations?

Other notes from the session

Cisco white paper: Equipping every learner for the 21st century

21st century pedagogy to teach 21st century skills which is enabled by technology and supported by adapted system reform

The goal is to move from automation to facilitation to transformation

Desired educational technology outcomes will occur only if they are supported by the entire system

Gartner’s hype cycle

1. Technology trigger
2. Peak of inflated expectations
3. Trough of disillusionment
4. Slope of enlightment
5. Plateau of productivity

Sources of information on emerging technologies

• Horizon Report and Horizon Report wiki
• ISTE Emerging Technologies Idea Library

CoSN Small District Technology Leadership Wiki

Over the past few years, I mentioned several times to Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), that CoSN was a great organization for larger districts that had CTOs or CIOs that supervised large staffs but that technology coordinators in smaller districts didn't really have an organization that represented their interests. Keith rightfully replied that many of CoSN's resources (which are superb in my opinion) also were relevant and applicable to smaller districts' needs. I concurred but still wished that there was an organization that better represented these folks. As I noted way back in August 2006 when my readership was about 12 people, there really isn't a national association that represents the majority of people in these positions like there is for principals, teachers, counselors, school business officials, etc.

Although my desire for an organization that comprehensively represents technology coordinators has yet to be fulfilled, in November 2007 CoSN unveiled its Small School District Technology Leadership Wiki. I can't take any credit for this, of course, but I'm delighted. The wiki is chock full of information for technology leaders in smaller districts and, of course, can be edited and expanded by others. I encourage you to check out this fantastic resource and to contribute and make it even better. Thanks, CoSN!

P.S. Join Keith and me later today for an online chat about PK-12 technology leadership.

I'd like an idiocy filter, please

I received the e-mail below from yet another person who can’t access my blog at school. How is CASTLE supposed to help school administrators kickstart their schools into the 21st century if they can’t even read one of our primary communication channels?

The idea that all blogs should be categorically blocked - that NOT A SINGLE ONE of the over 100 million blogs out there might have something important or relevant to educators - is both ludicrous and shameful. This type of blocking is not required by CIPA and it’s just plain dumb (see also I don’t like Internet filters).

Dr. McLeod,

I read your "D.I." (a constant reminder just in those two words), but I am unable to click through from school (as I tried today). You must be so dangerous that I really shouldn't even be reading you to  begin with (tongue in cheek).

The atomic-bomb-to-kill-flea net filter that is used here blocks anything in the "web log" area. I am dangerous as well, since my own blogger rants about soccer are blocked.

My other item to vent with you about is the school's new wi-fi network - it is completely blocked from student use (around 15 teachers use it daily). They spent a lot of money on it, and then locked it up so no one could use it. As you suggest many times in D.I., it is easy to become irrelevant - I have seen a few Iphone users on campus that don't even need wi-fi. And when I even slightly suggest to the tech guys that blocking access may not be trusting the students enough, they circle the wagons quickly and become very defensive.

Did I mention that teachers are not allowed access to any networked drive for fear of student access and destruction of data?
I'm sure you have heard of much worse, so I will stop.

Anyway, if you didn't know, you are a troublemaker according to my school. ;-)

Keep up the good work.

I plan to read some of your longer writings this weekend where my own wi-fi network is completely UN-blocked.

Teachers that aren’t allowed access to any networked drives. An expensive Wi-Fi investment that no one can use. Who is steering the ship here? How can this district’s administrators possibly show their face to their community and justify how they have used taxpayer money? This is horrible.

Responsibility for asking the right questions

The American Association of School Administrators (AASA), the national organization for school superintendents, asked me to write a column for its monthly magazine, The School Administrator. That article is now available:

• Responsibility for asking the right questions

In the article, I recommended that superintendents ask some key leadership questions:

• When and why do we use digital technology in our classrooms?
• How does our usage of digital technologies align with our curricula and instructional goals?
• How do we know whether technology is being used effectively in the classroom?
• What positive results are we seeing from our use of digital instructional technologies?
• What are the barriers to effective technology usage by students and teachers?
• How can technology better facilitate student learning?

What would you add to the list?

First impressions

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

These are the signs you see when you enter Minnesota or Iowa along Interstate 35. Guess which one leaves the better impression?

While traveling recently, I had the unfortunate experience of overhearing two male restaurant employees ogling a young female traveler as she walked through the airport. All of the people sitting around the servers’ station got to hear all about how ‘hot’ she was, what they’d like to do to her, etc. They were completely oblivious to their surrounding customers and to the fact that their sexist (and graphically vulgar) behavior reflected poorly on the national chain restaurant for whom they worked.

I have seen a similar phenomen when I visit schools. I can think of many school organizations where receptionists, secretaries, and other front office employees seemed oblivious or indifferent to the fact that their conversations, behaviors, and work environments reflected upon the institution. While waiting in school or district front offices, I have been ignored, overhead confidential conversations about students, been treated to complaints about bosses and the school system, and heard vulgar language. I have seen signs on walls like ‘Lack of planning on your part DOES NOT constitute an emergency on mine!’ and ‘I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow doesn’t look good either.’ I have seen students and parents treated poorly, either in person or on the phone. And so on…

I always wonder what parents or community members think when they visit these offices. Like me, do they wonder about the level of professionalism of the office staff? Are they concerned about the level of customer service that they are going to receive? Are they worried that their visit may become fodder for later public conversation or ridicule? Do they wonder why an administrator is ignoring this?

You only get one chance to make a first impression.

We're done with 'em. Now what?

[this post is my contribution to Blog Action Day]

E-waste is an enormous environmental issue. Digital technologies such as computers and electronic gadgets are full of toxic metals and other harmful materials. Proper disposal or recycling of these technologies is imperative.

Educators can't claim to be ignorant anymore. The deleterious effects of e-waste are increasingly well-known. As public agencies, schools have a special responsibility not to harm future generations through irresponsible jettisoning of old computer equipment.

For every school district that has a disposal / recycling plan in place, there's probably another that doesn't. There are countless stories of old computers stacked up in school warehouses and storerooms. Similarly, for every school leader that's struggling with what to do with old equipment, there are several who have never even thought about the issue.

Ask your school leaders tomorrow: "What do we do with our old computing equipment?" If they don't know, help them find out the answer. Investigate what really happens to the computers that get carted away. Even if you think they're being recycled, it may not be what you think.

My School Technology Safety and Security course at U. Minnesota included a computer disposal / recycling unit. I hope to create the same here at Iowa State. Additionally, I have begun making a conscious effort to reduce my technological footprint. It's very hard; I drool over every new cool technogadget that comes out. But, as I noted before, I've got too much stuff.

What are you doing personally to reduce your digital footprint? What are you doing professionally to help school leaders understand the scale and importance of the K-12 computer disposal issue? What are you doing academically to help students understand the technology-related environmental issues that their generation will face?

As Joel Barker notes, "No one will thank you for taking care of today if you have failed to take care of tomorrow."

It's the system, stupid

I just read this tale of woe about the start of the school year.

As Edward Deming noted, it's the system, not the worker. Administrators are responsible for the system.

Good luck, Sherry. My thoughts are with you.

It's the first day of school (again)!

In honor of the first day of school here in Ames, Iowa, here is the checklist I posted last year at this time. Hmmm... I wonder if schools have made any improvements on this list over the past year?

Can we afford to give every child in America a laptop?

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

A few back-of-the-envelope calculations here (estimating conservatively when in doubt)…

A. Number of students and teachers

50 million public school students
+
3.3 million public school teachers (full-time)
=
53.3 million teachers and students

B. Cost per laptop (a regular laptop, not the OLPC laptop)

$1,993 average district cost per client computer per year [from the three One-to-One CoSN Total Cost Per Ownership (TCO) Case Studies]
x
1.5 (I’m adding 50% just to err on the safe side)
=
$2,990 average district cost per client computer per year (let’s call it $3,000)

C. Total cost to give every student and teacher a laptop

53.3 million teachers and students (see A above)
x
$3,000 average district cost per client computer per year (see B above)
=
$159.9 billion (let’s call it $160 billion)

D. Gross domestic product (GDP)

$13 trillion (United States GDP, overall)
x
3.4% (percentage of United States GDP spent on K-12 education)
=
$442 billion (amount in United States spent on K-12 education)

E. Percentage of GDP

$160 billion (see C above)
/
$442 billion (see D above)
=
36% of the overall United States K-12 education expense to give every teacher and student a regular laptop

$160 billion (see C above)
/
$13 trillion (see D above)
=
1.2% of the overall United States GDP to give every teacher and student a regular laptop

Obviously this is very rough, but hopefully it’s also thought-provoking. It is highly possible that my numbers are incorrect somewhere. If you think I left something out or miscalculated, let me know. Also, of course, opportunities for savings abound (e.g., open source software, bulk discounts, buying OLPC laptops instead of regular ones) and those would have to be factored in as well.

So can we afford to give every child (and teacher) in America a laptop? You tell me…

The aggregate impact of individual choices

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

Individual choices add up. For example, at the moment when I eat something unhealthy, it seems like a fairly trivial thing. Over time, however, those calories and pounds add up and one day I look in the mirror and have to admit to myself that I seriously need to lose some weight.

Individual choices have collective impacts on society too. For example, the decision of an individual family to move from the city to the suburbs may be a completely rational decision, made in that family’s self-interest as it looks for a nicer house, a bigger yard, etc. But over time, the collective impact of those choices in most cities is white flight and a concentration of economically-disadvantaged families in city neighborhoods and schools. Similarly, as this PowerPoint shows, individual family choices to have a student attend a new magnet school can result in other schools having greater concentrations of students with lower social capital (because the other students’ families often don’t have the means to navigate the magnet school choice system).

We see the same thing when it comes to technology usage by teachers. A few days ago I asked this question:

Given the realities of our modern age and the demands of our children’s future, is it really okay to allow teachers to choose whether or not they incorporate modern technologies into their instruction?

Many of the comments to that post rightfully insisted that teachers must make the decision whether or not it makes sense to utilize digital technologies for an individual lesson or unit. No one wants teachers to use technology for technology’s sake and no one wants digital technologies used in inappropriate ways.

But the collective impact of all of these individual teacher choices, often made by teachers with little pedagogical fluency with digital technologies, is much like my weight loss example above (or Mike Schmoker’s example of the ‘Crayola Curriculum’). Any individual choice seems quite rational and/or trivial at the time. At the end of the year, however, we look back and see that most students have little meaningful or substantive interaction with learning technologies, which of course is of particular concern for disadvantaged students who have limited opportunities outside of school to use technology at all, much less in creative, interesting ways.

So I think we need to be more purposeful. We need mechanisms for reminding ourselves that being relevant to students’ technology-suffused, globally-interconnected futures is important for schools, and we need a greater shared commitment to make deliberate, intentional choices to seek out opportunities to integrate digital technologies into lessons. Sure, we can teach any individual lesson or unit without incorporating much technology. And, to be honest, for many teachers this would be much easier and more efficient / effective, at least in the short term. But if we don’t pay more attention to this issue and change our practices and our mindsets, we will continue to look back at the end of each year and realize that we let our students down yet again when it comes to their 21st century learning needs.

Principal blogging not allowed

On Monday I got an e-mail from an elementary principal:

Scott, it looks like I won't be able to follow through with the [Principal Blogging Project]. Our district technology person has decided not to open up access to blog sites, therefore I cannot access the site from school (our filter blocks it).

In other words, the principal cannot set up a blog to communicate with his school community because the district technology coordinator, who is in a support position, won’t let him. Here was my reply:

This is disappointing. As Director of CASTLE, I work quite a bit with principals, superintendents, and technology coordinators. I'm always sad to hear when technological decisions are made that get in the way of enabling administrators' / teachers' work. I think that technology should be about enabling good educational practices, not gatekeeping or shutting them down because of fear / safety concerns. There are many, many schools and districts where principals, superintendents, teachers, and others are blogging to both internal and external communities. Why can't your district be one of those places? How are you going to expose students, teachers, parents, and administrators to the technological transformations that are revolutionizing American and global societies if you shut it all down? If things change (or if there's any way I can help you maybe persuade someone to think differently about this), let me know.

Here is the principal’s final e-mail to me:

I agree. I tried to work it through and was not successful. I loved the blogging idea, it was nice and easy for me, and I knew that I would be able to get staff on board. Unfortunately, not everyone is as forward thinking.

This tale’s been told before. Technology coordinators who are more concerned with disabling than enabling. Technology personnel that we would hope would be progressive, forward thinkers regarding digital technologies but instead are regressive gatekeepers. Teachers and administrators that try to move into the 21st century but run into the brick wall of supervisors or support personnel. Superintendents that allow such situations to occur rather than insisting that their district figure out how to make it work (like other districts have). Educators that fail to understand that the world around them has changed and that their relevance to that world is diminishing daily.

This tale’s been told before, but it’s still depressing.

P.S. See my previous post.

Well? What's your answer?

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

K-12 and postsecondary education would be very different if we asked ourselves this question more often (thanks, Stephanie). Is your organization ready to take this inquiry to heart – to really, truly critically examine its current practices and assumptions in light of this question? Mine isn’t.

Minnesota is below average

Minnesota is used to being at the top. Our accolades include being one of the best states in the country in which to raise a family, being at the top on child and adult health measures, and being one of the highest states in terms of adult educational attainment. The state consistently is at the top when it comes to academic achievement on national and international tests as well. But when it comes to K-12 technology we're not doing so well.

Last year Education Week gave Minnesota a D when it came to K-12 technology policy and practice. This year its annual Technology Counts issue bumps Minnesota up to a C but notes that the state is still below the national average. Here are some of the relevant tables from the Minnesota report (click on each for a larger image):

You can see from the charts below that we lag the nation as a whole when it comes to closing the digital divide (click on each for a larger image). On average, our poor and/or minority students have less access to instructional computers than do similar students in other states.

How did your state do? Visit Education Week to find out.

Women of the Web Administrator Supershow

As promised, here is the link to the Women of the Web 2.0 podcast and chat transcript from March 20, 2007:

• Women of the Web 2.0 Administrator Supershow

Thanks to all who joined us, including Pete Reilly (who was a last-minute but very welcome addition) and everyone who participated in the quite-active chat space.

For those of you who are interested, here is my "money quote":

• Scott McLeod's money quote (responding to a question from Vicki Davis; 1:44 mp3)

I believe we're scheduled to rejoin the Women of the Web 2.0 on May 1 for a follow-up session. I'm looking forward to it!

Virtual leadership

I had a very interesting conversation yesterday with a woman who works for one of the Big Four auditing companies. She's essentially what I would call a virtual employee: her supervisors are in cities across the globe, her peers are across the globe, the employees she supervises are across the globe. In other words, they're basically doing everything over the phone or online using various collaboration tools. I felt like I was immersed in Wikinomics.

She then proceeded to ask me some really hard questions about 'virtual management' and 'virtual leadership development':

• How do you effectively lead a workgroup of people you've never met face-to-face (and may never meet)?
• How do you effectively supervise the work of these people?
• How do you facilitate those often ad hoc, ongoing opportunities for leadership development (for yourself and/or those you supervise) in such a work environment?

Having never been in this situation, of course I had no good answers for her. I did recommend that she contact some of the big technology companies or other global companies that are her firm's clients and ask their Human Resources people her questions. I'm guessing that they have done some work in this area as they develop their geographically-disparate workforces.

Any thoughts on this issue? Anyone know of work that's been done in the business arena on this?

Legal obligations re: technology

[cross-posted at The Gate]

Someone recently sent me the following quote from a school administrator (regarding legal concerns related to technology initiatives):

The school district is legally obligated to protect our students from the outside. It is not legally obligated to prepare them for the outside.

Ouch.

On its face, this statement gives precedence to legal concerns over whatever moral, professional, and/or ethical responsibilities schools have to prepare students for their future. This statement elevates CYA thinking over social justice concerns about technology access/usage and workforce preparation for disadvantaged students. This statement is reactive, not proactive, at a time when we desperately need forward-thinking school leaders.

Since when did schools not have a legal and societal mandate to provide an adequate education for students? As Kagan notes, every state’s constitution requires the state to provide its children with an ‘adequate’ education. Every community expects its local schools to prepare kids to be competent, functional adults in American society. How well do you think the ‘we don’t have a legal obligation to prepare your children for the world’ argument is going to play with parents and politicians?

We can reasonably disagree about the qualitative definition of what constitutes an ‘adequate education’ (e.g., we’ve seen this play out in both the school funding and special education arenas). But as people become increasingly aware that the Internet and digital technologies are necessary requirements for most adults’ productive lives and careers, this administrator’s statement that technology doesn’t fall under schools’ legally-required mandate to provide an adequate education for students is going to become increasingly unpalatable.

Decision-making department

Does your school organization make decisions because they sound good or because internal analysis shows they're the right decisions to make? In other words, what department do your decisions fall under? Marketing or R & D? 

Mac and cheese

I have three young kids, so macaroni and cheese is a staple in our household. But the box drives me bonkers.

'To open, push here.' Are there any more dreaded words for mac and cheese lovers? You know it isn't going to work. You know you're going to have to rip the entire top off the box, and yet you try it anyway, hoping against hope that this time the little cardboard button will work the way it's supposed to. But of course it doesn't and you have to rip it open with your bare claws, or use kitchen shears, or a chainsaw...

'To open, push here' is a classic example of design getting in the way of purpose. I mean, let's face it, the mac and cheese box only has three purposes:

1. to entice us to buy it,
2. to protect its contents while shipping, and
3. to allow us access to its contents so we can eat them.

The box fulfills the first two functions pretty well, but fails miserably at the third.

Now, let's extend this metaphor to our own technology (and other) initiatives in our schools. Like the mac and cheese box, what elements of our design and delivery get in the way of us achieving our purpose(s)? Lack of adequate training? Insufficient support? Failure to allocate appropriate time? Unreasonable expectations? As school leaders, if we don't want our initiatives to fail ('To open, push here'), we have to attend to these issues if we want to get to the yummy goodness inside.

Is your school organization aligned to get the results it says it wants to achieve? If not, what's getting in the way and what are you going to do about it?

Online multimedia textbooks: Follow-up

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

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

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

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

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

Online multimedia textbooks: A strategic investment

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

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

Dear Secretary Spellings,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

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

Assessing 21st century skills

If we’re going to teach Information and Communication Technology (ICT) literacy skills in schools, we need ways of determining whether or not those skills have been learned by students. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills notes that answering the question ‘How do we measure 21st century learning?’ will be critical as we try to prepare students who can be productive citizens in the new technology-suffused, globally-interconnected economy.

Over in the United Kingdom, the British government’s Key Stage 3 ICT Literacy Assessment for 12- and 13-year-old aims to assess higher-order thinking skills in conjunction with ICT use. For example, as part of a task to draft and publish a journalistic article, students must use search engines to collect and analyze employment data, e-mail sources for permission to publish their information, and present data in graphic and written formats using word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software, all within a simulated computing environment. Student actions are tracked by the computer and assessed for both technical and learning skills such as finding things out, developing ideas, and exchanging and sharing information. If you’re interested, you can download a demonstration file and see for yourself.

Other interesting projects in the U.K. include Northern Ireland’s Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment A-Level Examination in the Moving Image (students must create and assess digital film clips), the Ultralab International Certificate in Digital Creativity (students must defend their digitally-produced film, artwork, and music to a panel of peers and professionals), and the eViva e-portfolio initiative (online space where students can receive feedback on their research and communication, data analysis, and presentation skills). If anyone in the U.K. is reading this post and has experience with any of these assessments, I’d love to hear your perspectives in the comments section.

Over here in the United States, ETS also is attempting to create new assessments of 21st century learning skills. I had a chance last fall to get a personal demonstration of the ETS ICT Literacy Assessment. Like the Key Stage 3, ETS’ assessment is a scenario-based test. This is a completely new paradigm for ETS, which the ETS representative said is challenging but also exciting for its psychometricians to try and wrap their heads around. I encourage you to visit the demo site and see how the test works. It may not be ideal, but I think it’s a lot further from your typical standardized test than one might expect. It’s an interesting attempt to blend both the technology and information literacy skills needed by future generations and at least offers some food for thought. Also check out the News and Research links to find out more about the results from ETS’ pilot tests.

We will see the birth of many new 21st century assessments in the years ahead. Like these early attempts, most of these assessments will be performance-based and thus will avoid some of the objections we hear about current standardized tests. Most, if not all, also will utilize the multimedia, simulation, and tracking power of digital technologies to create more authentic assessments of real-life tasks. It should be an interesting journey.

Credits

Much of the information in this post, including some very close paraphrasing, comes from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills report, Assessment of 21st Century Skills: The Current Landscape. If you’re interested in 21st century learning skills, this report should be an important addition to your reading list.

Other resources

• Partnership for 21st Century Skills
  • Framework for 21st Century Learning
  • Assess21
  • Publications
• Calls to action
  • Are They Really Ready to Work? [Partnership for 21st Century Skills]
  • Tough Choices or Tough Times (executive summary or full report) [New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce]
  • Rising Above the Gathering Storm (executive summary or full report) [The National Academies]

This post is also available at the TechLearning blog.

Hangin' out with MPS

Listen to this post!

I had the pleasure of spending last Friday morning with the Minneapolis Public Schools Technology Planning Steering Committee. Coleen Kosloski, Director of Information Technology Services, gave me the task of energizing the group and giving them some things to think about.

We started with Karl Fisch's Did You Know? presentation. I then talked for a little over half an hour about the changes we're seeing in American society, essential workplace skills for the 21st century, Web 2.0, gaming, and other fun stuff. If you're interested, here are the materials from the session:

• Did You Know?
• My PowerPoint presentation slides
• Podcast of my presentation (35 Mb; 37:40 with intro)

GPS bus tracking

Listen to this post!

A couple of days ago Network World had a story on the latest generation of GPS technologies used to track schoolbuses. The Everyday Wireless system that was profiled also has the ability to record when and where students board and disembark the bus.

Is GPS tracking of school buses a rational use of technology to optimize bus routes? Another example of overblown fear? A call for parental action like chipping kids?

Little impact

Listen to this post!

Will Richardson blogged yesterday about a comment by Daniel Kinnaman, publisher of District Administration magazine, regarding K-12 education:

Alarmingly, there may be no sector of society where technology has had less impact.

I think this is probably true and also would add higher education classrooms to the list. I've blogged about this before.

Kinnaman notes that

K12 education persists in operating on the premise that to have school, you must physically co-locate teachers, students and curriculum materials. Teachers and students are assigned to stand-alone, self-contained school buildings that house paltry collections of mostly outdated curriculum materials. With rare exceptions, digital technologies and interactive communications are still largely peripheral to the primary activities of the typical school day.

I think as online education, rich educational gaming environments, and other options grow and flourish, many folks' deeply-cherished beliefs about what school must look like are going to be put to the test. There always will be a place for face-to-face schooling, but it will be interesting to see what the landscape looks like twenty years from now.

Chart week - Internet safety

Today is the fourth day of Chart Week here at Dangerously Irrelevant. Today’s post relates to the various technologies and procedures that public schools use to protect students from inappropriate Internet material. All data are from the recently-released NCES report, Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2005.

Technologies and procedures used by public schools to prevent student access to inappropriate Internet material

Public schools have a variety of options when it comes to protecting students from inappropriate material on the Web. As the chart below shows, nearly every school is using blocking / filtering software. In addition, nearly every school says that teachers or other staff members monitor student Internet usage.

The federal data are unclear whether acceptable use policies (AUPs) are in place in schools. What NCES asked is whether schools ask parents and students to sign written contracts regarding Internet usage. About a fourth of schools in 2005 did not ask students to sign a contract and about a fifth of schools did not ask parents to sign a contract regarding student Internet use. These percentages were the same as in 2002. Elementary schools (72%) were less likely in 2005 to have students sign contracts than secondary schools (88%). City schools (72%) were less likely to have students sign contracts than rural schools (82%).

It may be that schools have a student AUP in place but simply are not asking students or parents to sign that they have read and understand the AUP. It also may be that schools are relying on filtering / monitoring software and teacher monitoring alone. Either way, all schools should realize that AUPs can be powerful tools for school regulation and enforcement of appropriate Internet usage and should not assume constructive notice via student handbooks or school policy binders.

Other options employed by public schools to address student usage of the Internet include use of intranets to control student access, student honor codes, and monitoring software (e.g., keystroke logging and other surveillance software).

Schedule for the rest of the week

• Friday - professional development for use of the Internet in public school classrooms

Chart week - Length of student laptop loans

Today is the third day of Chart Week here at Dangerously Irrelevant. Yesterday's post on student laptops and wireless classrooms discussed how many public schools lend laptops to students and the extent of wireless penetration in classrooms. Today’s post extends those data to show the length of time that students get to use the laptops that are loaned out to them. All data are from the recently-released NCES report, Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2005.

Maximum length of time of laptop loan to students

NCES asked those public schools that said they loaned laptops to students what was the maximum length of time of those loans. In other words, how long did students have use of the laptops they received? Here is the chart:

As the data show, nearly half of the schools that said they loaned laptops to students did so for less than a week. Only about a sixth of the schools surveyed in 2005 said that they gave students laptops for the entire school year; this proportion is unchanged from 2002. When combined with yesterday’s data, which show that only about 10% of schools even loan laptops to students in the first place, we can see that few students in our country are receiving the opportunity to work with laptop computers, even for only a few days at a time. One probable explanatory factor regarding low laptop lending by schools (and thus low laptop usage by students) is that most public school classrooms lack wireless Internet access.

Schedule for the rest of the week

• Thursday - technologies and procedures used by public schools to prevent student access to inappropriate material on the Internet
• Friday - professional development for use of the Internet in public school classrooms

Chart week - Student laptops and wireless classrooms

Today is the second day of Chart Week here at Dangerously Irrelevant. Yesterday's topic, Internet access in public schools and public school classrooms, may not have been very exciting for many of you, but I needed to create some context. I am guessing that today's topic, student laptops and wireless classrooms, may be more interesting to most folks. All data are from the recently-released NCES report, Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2005.

Percentage of public schools lending laptops to students

As the chart below shows, about 10% of public schools reported that they lent laptops to students in 2005, about the same number as in 2002. In 2005, secondary schools (18%) were more than twice as likely to say that they lent students laptops than elementary schools (7%); these numbers also are the same as in 2002. In 2005, 15% of the schools with less than 6% minority enrollment said that they were lending laptops to students, while in schools with 50% minority enrollment or higher, only 7% said that they were lending students laptops.

Percentage of public school classrooms with wireless Internet connections

If you recall, yesterday's post showed that 94% of public school classrooms are connected to the Internet. The chart below shows the progress that has been made in converting public school classrooms to wireless (rather than wired) connections, arguably an essential prerequisite to having students use laptops meaningfully and frequently in the classroom.

Schedule for the rest of the week

• Wednesday - length of time public schools lend laptops to students
• Thursday - technologies and procedures used by public schools to prevent student access to inappropriate material on the Internet
  
• Friday - professional development for use of the Internet in public school classrooms
  

Chart week - Internet access in public schools

Today kicks off Chart Week here at Dangerously Irrelevant. Today's topic is Internet access in public schools and public school classrooms. All data are from the recently-released NCES report, Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2005.

Public schools with Internet access

Just over a third of public schools had Internet connectivity in 1994. Within six years that figure had reached 98% and today pretty much every public school is connected to the Web.

Public schools with broadband Internet access

NCES started tracking in 2000 whether schools' Internet connections were broadband or narrowband. Broadband is defined as T3/DS3, fractional T3, T1/DS1, fractional T1, cable modem, or DSL. Narrowband is defined as ISDN, 56KB, or dial-up. All but 3% of public schools now have broadband connections to the Internet.

Public school classrooms with Internet access

It's one thing for a school to be connected to the Internet. It's another for the classrooms within the school to be connected. We have made a lot of progress in this area too. Only 6% of public school classrooms lack an Internet connection.

We have made great strides in terms of getting schools connected. I think sometimes we forget what a massive task it was to get all schools wired.

Schedule for the rest of the week

• Tuesday - percentage of public school classrooms with wireless Internet connections; percentage of public schools lending laptops to students
  
• Wednesday - length of time public schools lend laptops to students
• Thursday - technologies and procedures used by public schools to prevent student access to inappropriate material on the Internet
  
• Friday - professional development for use of the Internet in public school classrooms
  

Advising, webcams, and Skype

After meeting with a doctoral student yesterday who drove two hours each way for a one-hour meeting, I decided enough was enough, at least with my own advisees. I made a page on my web site that encourages students to work with me to use technology to solve some typical time / travel / communication challenges.

I then sent a listserv message to the rest of the faculty in my department about my new web page because I thought that some other folks might be interested in doing this too. Within minutes another message appeared on the listserv, this time from our department technology coordinator, notifying us of the University's discouragement of Skype because it hogs resources and acts as a connective node for non-university-related data.

I encourage everyone to read the University of Minnesota recommendations regarding Skype. As I noted to our technology coordinator, the suggestion that Skype be turned off most of the time is somewhat problematic. I understand the U's concern about bearing non-university-related data traffic. That said, I wish the U would think about Skype like it does our telephones, which we obviously don't turn off except when we're expecting a call.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Experiences and/or policies from your own organization?

RFID chips and schoolkids

Miguel took exception to my ISTE point/counterpoint article on using RFID chips to monitor schoolchildren in school. I knew my stance would be controversial when I wrote the piece, so I'll take this opportunity to respond to Miguel's criticisms. Here's my thinking, using the Brittan Elementary (Sutter, CA) program as an example...

1. There's nothing on the RFID chips except a number. No demographic information. No address information. No personally-identifiable information whatsoever. Nothing except a unique ID number that's meaningful only to the specialized school software that matches kids with attendance records (and, maybe later, lunch records). There's a big difference between the information stored on the kids' RFID cards and what was on the British passports. Anyone who stole the info from the kids' RFID chips literally would get bupkis...
2. We already have to monitor the whereabouts of kids on school grounds at all times. There is no right of students to roam freely. As such, I'll stick by my argument that using technology to do this instead of expensive human personnel is at least arguably defensible.
3. Given #1 and #2, that's why I said that RFID chips as used in Brittan Elementary are a non-issue. They're no more invasive than student IDs (with or without bar codes) or biometric readers for school cafeterias or libraries. They're arguably less invasive than networked security cameras, metal detectors, drug dog sniffs, or extracurricular students' urine testing for illegal substances, all of which are commonplace.
4. Finally, I'm wary of the slippery slope argument that Miguel use ("RFID chips ... are a precedent for using technology in ways that violate our privacy"). If we decide to go down this path, wouldn't we also be against Internet cookies, secure login databases for financial web sites, GPS in cars/cell phones, Internet form-filling software, toll booth passcards, biometric scanners, security cameras, and all of the other technologies I mention in my article? Why is RFID so different than these other technologies?

The students who take my school law courses would tell you that I'm actually a pretty strong privacy advocate. That said, I also recognize that, as technology-using individuals, we make choices every day to sacrifice privacy for convenience. That trend is only going to intensify as the benefits of divulging certain types of information outweigh whatever privacy concerns most folks have.

We need to be careful to protect students' private information from theft and other improper uses. That said, I'm not sure that a meaningless number on a students' RFID chip is the red flag that others make it out to be.

Gallup questions

It's important to acknowledge when you have made a mistake. I made one that I definitely should have caught - as an attorney, I'm a little embarrassed about this one.

Michael Ayers of The Commonwealth Practice, Ltd. has helped me determine that the twelve Gallup questions I posted about in Are schools vibrant workplaces? are actually copyrighted by The Gallup Organization with the United States Copyright Office. Not only are the questions under copyright, apparently they're big business for Gallup. Gallup even sued another company to prevent it from using the questions in its own work with corporations. Apparently they're not just any questions, they're THE questions that corporations should ask to retain talented employees. Companies pay Gallup to administer employee surveys and/or for permission to use the questions. This means that I can't host an online survey for a school organization that wanted to ask its employees these questions without getting Gallup's permission first.

I don't usually find copyright issues very interesting, but this one has been illuminating for me (I guess because of my personal involvement). As an attorney, I think it's interesting to hear that Gallup is so protective of those questions. As I told Michael in an e-mail exchange, I think the concept of being able to copyright sentences or statements is a strange one. For example, could someone lay claim to the phrases, "How are you doing?" or "What do you think are the biggest challenges facing your organization?" It's not like this is a marketing / branding / commercial slogan ("Where's the beef?").

Nonetheless, even under a four-factor copyright analysis, Gallup would win if I used these questions without permission and it decided to sue me in court. It has an economic interest in this set of questions, one that's apparently large enough to justify it going all the way to the federal Eighth Circuit Court (one level below the United States Supreme Court) to uphold its claim.

Obviously I wasn't trying to set myself up in economic competition with Gallup. Indeed, I was actually trying to plug the concepts behind the questions and the book by Buckingham and Coffman (which is excellent, by the way, if you're interested in company climate / employee satisfaction issues).

In the end, it's too bad this is true. Schools aren't going to pay Gallup for this but some of them would really benefit from the information. It may be possible that I can work something out with Gallup for the occasional request by a K-12 organization.

So read the book if this is the kind of thing that interests you. It's superb. And please support Creative Commons.

Google for Educators

Google for Educators is a new web site from our friends at Google that puts twelve of its tools together for use by K-12 teachers. The list includes Google Documents (formerly Writely) and Spreadsheets, Blogger, Google Video, and more.

Very cool. Now the question is going to be how many educators are blocked from using some or all of these tools by their districts...

DDDM and Moneyball

I've been wanting to write this piece for a long time, but never figured out the right outlet.  This blog, however, is a great space for me to try it out (ah, the beauty of blogging!).  Plus, I think I did reasonably well with my Freakonomics analysis on Monday, so I figure it's safe to work my thoughts through another popular non-fiction book.

Moneyball, by Michael Lewis, is a book about baseball.  So, I don't know how many readers of this blog will have read the book.  But, for me, the book is about so much more than baseball and the lessons of the book are incredibly applicable to education.  Lewis initially set out to write a book about how the Oakland A's, a major league baseball team on the low end of the financial resources continuum, managed to compete at such a high level seemingly every year.  There are tremendous disparities in spending across Major League Baseball, and the game has been plagued by the perception that the teams that spend the most money win the most.  The New York Yankees (my favorite team!) were the face of this perception.  The A's seemed to defy this perception.

What Lewis ultimately discovered was that the A's, led by their unique general manager Billy Beane, had adopted an organizational commitment to scouting and assessing players using statistical analysis of the loads of data generated by the game of baseball.  These forms of analysis, labeled generally as sabermetrics, had been around for many years, but they were largely written off as the province of geeks and statheads who just happened to like baseball.  Beane, however, came to believe that a sabermetric approach to scouting and valuing players would allow them to make the most cost-effective decisions possible. They were able to figure out which individual statistics were the greatest predictors of team success.  Then they sought players who thrived in those key areas despite being deemed by others as flawed in other areas of the game thereby devaluing their salaries.  So, for example, sabermetricians were able to demonstrate that on base percentage (OBP - the likelihood that a player will get on base in any given plate appearance) was the single greatest predictor of runs scored.  That seems logical since a player must get on base to score a run.  But, traditionally, players were valued based more on their batting average (the likelihood that a player will get a hit in any given plate appearance) than OBP.  Therefore, there were some players who didn't have great batting averages (and as a result didn't earn very high salaries), but had relatively higher on base percentages (mostly because they earned lots of base-on-balls - aka walks).  Those players became Oakland A's.

Most baseball purists and old school baseball people fervently opposed this sabermetric orientation.  They argued that you couldn't judge a player by crunching numbers.  You had to watch the players play, get to know them as people, etc.; in other words, make value determinations by scouting the old fashioned way.  The numbers were cold and unreliable, they'd say.

Is this starting to sound familiar?  Purists, traditionalists arguing that we should not rely on numerical data to make decisions?  Numerical data are cold and unreliable, and they can't tell you what you need to know about people?  These are the same arguments you hear from those opposed to what has been labeled "data-driven decision-making" (DDDM) in education. 

I could stop here and argue that the Oakland A's commitment to sabermetrics and cost-effective decision-making has been highly successful (just look at how well they're doing in this year's playoffs!), so everyone should buy in to DDDM in education.  But, that's not the real point I want to make.

For me, there is another perception problem here.  The popular sports media has, for the most part, portrayed this so-called Moneyball philosophy inaccurately.  The popular sports media would have us believe that sabermetric analysis is an opposing paradigm to traditional baseball scouting methods.  But, the fact is that sabermetric analysis has been used by the A's (and now many other teams as well) as a complement to more traditional methods of scouting and player valuation.  It is not as if the A's have fired all of their scouts and hired all statisticians; their scouting department includes a few number crunchers in addition to all of the scouts who do what they've always done.

Similarly, in education, "data-driven decision making" is the label given to the movement to making decisions based on the scores of numerical data that are now available to educators as technological means (computers, databases, etc.) have intersected with a climate of standards and assessment.  But, to suggest that DDDM is a new movement or idea in education implies that before now, decisions were made in a vacuum; decisions were made in the absence of data.  That's not the case, though.  Decisions, particularly those about individual students, were made based on professional judgments (teacher perceptions, observations, etc.).   Like sabermetrics in baseball, (statistically oriented) DDDM is a complementary approach to professional judgment in education.  They are epistemologically different approaches, but they are not mutually exclusive. 

Finally, the Oakland A's needed to add sabermetric analysis to their organization because they were playing on an uneven playing field with respect to financial resources.  As a result, they have been able to compete successfully against the big spenders.  Education is a notoriously uneven playing field with respect to financial resources.  I hope schools and districts struggling with relatively low per-pupil expenditures see DDDM as a way to make more cost-effective decisions.

Vibrant workplaces - Part 2

Yesterday I asked, "How strong and vibrant is the workplace we create for most educators?" As part of that post, I listed twelve questions from First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently that, when answered positively, have been strongly linked to success on organizational goals, organizational productivity, employee satisfaction, and employee retention. I concluded my post with an invitation for a few school districts to maybe survey their employees on these twelve questions. I even offered to host the survey.

I just wanted to note that this doesn't have to be at the school district level. These twelve questions are equally relevant at the school level, department level, or whatever. Focusing on the needs of employees is smart organizational strategy, however big or small the organization. A survey done within an individual school would tell that principal quite a bit...

Are schools vibrant workplaces?

A friend recommended that I read First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently. Since the principalship is a classic middle management position, I thought I would check it out. So far it's pretty interesting - the authors' findings are based on interviews and other data collected by the Gallup Organization over the past 25 years from over 1 million employees and over 80,000 managers across a broad range of companies, industries, and countries.

Using factor analysis, regression analysis, concurrent validity studies, focus groups, and follow-up interviews to sift through the incredible mountain of data, the authors note that the strength of a workplace can be narrowed down to twelve questions that measure the core elements needed to attract, focus, and keep the most talented employees.

As I look over this list, I wonder how teachers would respond to these questions? How strong and vibrant is the workplace we create for most educators?

[It would be interesting to have a couple of school districts give this survey to their employees, maybe breaking out the results by school building or job category. If anyone's interested, I would be willing to host the online survey for a few districts and have made an example survey. Contact me if you would maybe like to do this.]

Posting student photos on the Web

As a technology leadership guy who also happens to have a law degree, I often get asked legal questions related to school technologies. Today, at the request of Miguel, I’m going to discuss issues related to posting student photos on the Web. I’ll preface this discussion with my usual caveats that 1) I am not offering legal advice, 2) I am not in an attorney-client relationship with anyone, and 3) I always recommend that folks consult their school district's attorney regarding legal issues.

Pictures taken for school-related purposes

Schools take pictures of students all the time - for yearbooks, at athletic events, in class, at artistic performances, etc. Often they want to post those pictures to the Internet, thus making those photos potentially available to a global audience.

Every school district should have a policy for dealing with student photos. That policy should comply with the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) as well as any relevant state statutes (for example, Minnesota has the Government Data Practices Act).

Schools should solicit parents’ permission to post photos of their child on the Web. The permission form should clearly describe the anticipated ways in which the school will use student pictures. When posting photos, schools should try their utmost not to post accompanying names at all – the next best option probably is to post students’ first names but not last names. Sometimes schools need to post students’ full names – for example, an online feature of the star pitcher on the softball team or the lead actress in the school play – but these situations should be carefully thought out beforehand to minimize parental concerns about student privacy and safety. Parents should be informed of all of the various permutations so that they can make informed choices about when to grant or refuse permission for their child’s photo to be used.

Schools have the difficult obligation to somehow monitor which students’ photos can be used online and which can’t. For example, if a photo taken of a class activity has a student in the background whose parents refused permission, that photo likely can’t be used online, even if the focus of the picture was on other students.

Another dilemma for schools is what to do with parents who don’t return the permission form. Schools basically have two options when this occurs:

• assume they have permission to publish unless parents turn in the form and opt out; or
• assume they do not have permission to publish unless parents turn in the form and opt in.

The latter option is more protective of students and is generally the one I recommend to educators.

Here are some example policies, forms, and other resources related to school use of student pictures:

• Fairfax County (VA) Public Schools
• Beverly Hills (CA) Unified School District
• Columbia (MO) Public Schools

Pictures taken by parents or other guests

In an interesting twist, Miguel and I recently had an exchange about an e-mail he received from a technology coordinator:

A parent has taken photos at school events, primarily athletic events, then posted them on her own personal web site (without permission of the students or parents involved) with prices for purchasing. I know there could be a problem if the students were identified by name but they are not. There are no captions at all.

Our superintendent is out of town. I'm sure someone has encountered this situation. Does anyone know if this is legal?

Here’s my take on the situation: if the pictures were taken in a public place, or in a place where parents / guests had permission to take pictures (e.g., inside school or on school grounds), I believe that parents or guests are legally entitled to take the photos and/or sell them. If a school district wanted, I think it could have a policy prohibiting anyone taking photographs within school buildings or on school grounds, but the enforcement and/or public relations issues would be difficult.

I found some excellent resources on this issue:

• http://tinyurl.com/93e9x
• http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf

Of course a school district can always request that photographers exhibit some sensitivity to folks' concerns about privacy and safety, particularly since most of the subjects of the photos are minor children.

Conclusion

Obviously the issues surrounding photographs of students on the Web are numerous and complex. The challenge for schools is to balance their (and parents’) desires to publicize the great things that are happening in their organizations with their responsibilities to protect children and to satisfy parental concerns about student privacy and safety. The guidelines described here also would pertain to videos of students, not just photographs.

How does your school organization handle issues related to online publishing of student photos?

This post is also available at the TechLearning blog.

School and District Technology Plans

The pressure of being the first guest blogger!

As Scott mentioned my name is David Quinn and I am an Assistant Professor of Educational Administration and Policy at the University of Florida .  I am in my second year at UF having previously taught at the University of Arizona for six years.  I am excited about the opportunities that are emerging at UF especially being able to focus my teaching, research and service around issues of technology leadership in schools.  I teach three classes at UF: Leading Change, Data-Driven Decision Making and Technology Leadership in Schools and I am excited at the convergence of literature and research in these areas that are readily applied to administrative practice.  I just read through this bio and it is sounding pretty academic, so on to my musings.

While teaching the tech leadership class this past summer, my graduate assistant, Matt Ohlson, and I were talking about how relevant or irrelevant school and district technology plans can be.  As we looked for school and district tech plans that could serve as exemplars for our students, we were amazed at the spectrum of plans.  Some might contend that a plan is just a piece of paper (or more often than not an Adobe Acrobat file) that schools and districts complete because of a mandate like receiving e-rate funding.  I would argue however, that an inclusive process of planning for technology can be a powerful stimulus for changing schools from something Frederick Taylor would appreciate into an organization that acknowledges that technology, especially the Internet, has radically changed our world over the last 10-15 years.  I am in schools on a regular basis and cringe whenever I see the same rote instruction led by lecture, while 5 networked computers collect dust in the back of the room (that’s a whole other blog entry).

Getting back to the discussion of technology planning, one of the often-referenced district plans is from Bellingham Public Schools. This is an excellent “living” document that really drives the utilization and integration of technology in Bellingham Washington.  Searching the Internet for model plans tweaked my interest in what was happening at the district level in Florida.  Being new to the state, I with major assistance from Matt began collecting and analyzing as many of the 67 district technology plans as we could get our hands on.  Out of the 52 plans that we compiled, there are some powerful documents including those from Pinellas, Sumter and Palm Beach Counties.  Many of the plans fall far short of providing a guiding vision for tech utilization.  A majority of these plans follow Florida's minimum guidelines for district technology plans without deviation.  I don’t blame these districts, they were told “if you want e-rate funding, you will submit a plan that addresses these criteria.”  Those districts that went above and beyond typically have large technology departments and experienced leadership, whereas many of the weaker plans are from small rural districts where the director of technology may also have numerous other obligations.  Colleges of education should also accept some of the responsibility because most are not preparing administrators how to be technology leaders.

This investigation has been enlightening and we have begun to collect school-level technology plans for review.  While district tech plans provide a roadmap for many schools, a school-level technology plan is essential for guiding technology implementation acknowledging the unique context of each school.  The most rewarding part of teaching the tech leadership class was seeing a good number of my students become excited about the opportunities that technology provide for schools.  Several students are using their new knowledge and enthusiasm to start leading change in their own schools.

This “stuff” as Scott so eloquently puts it, is always on my mind, and I am excited about the future of technology in schools.

Framing the issue correctly

This eSchoolNews article discusses the recent Wall Street Journal article criticizing one-to-one laptop programs and contrasts it with ISTE's new book highlighting successful laptop programs. Here's the problem...

The article title says that educators and parents are "split on the effectiveness of one-to-one learning." The concerns stated in the article, however, are not with the effectiveness of the learning that is occurring but rather the effectiveness of the teaching that is occurring and/or the lack of appropriate supervision / security measures by schools. Framing the issue incorrectly leads to incorrect solutions.

For example, if the laptops aren't being used well instructionally by teachers, isn't it a wrongheaded solution to give the laptops to them instead of the students? Aren't there better (and fairly obvious) solutions to the actual problem? Similarly, if students are using laptops inappropriately, isn't that an indictment of the school's acceptable use policy and enforcement thereof? If we're going to raise issues with one-to-one computing, we should at least be clear and fair about what the real issues are (e.g., like cost).

As Don Knezek, CEO of ISTE, notes in this article, and as David Warlick has noted elsewhere, soon the idea of students having to "go somewhere" (e.g., to the computer lab or to get a laptop from the cart) rather than having the technology with them 24/7, is going to seem awfully antiquated. Anyone else feel that this article, which actually spent very little verbiage on the supposed issue of student learning, was a little sloppy?

If you took away technology

A nation’s economy can be divided into different sectors.

If you took away technology from the primary sector (raw goods) of our economy – agriculture, mining, forestry, farming, fishing, quarrying – the work of most employees in most locations would shut down immediately. The sector would be at a standstill.

If you took away technology from the secondary sector (finished goods) of our economy – automobiles, textiles, chemicals, engineering, aerospace, energy, breweries, construction, shipbuilding – the work of most employees in most locations would shut down immediately. The sector would be at a standstill.

If you took away technology from the tertiary sector (service industry) of our economy – retail and wholesale sales, transportation and distribution, entertainment, restaurants, clerical services, media, tourism, insurance, banking, health care, law – the work of most employees in most locations would shut down immediately. The sector would be at a standstill.

If you took away technology from the quaternary sector (intellectual activities) of our economy – government, culture, libraries, scientific research, information technology – the work of most employees in most locations would shut down immediately. The sector would be at a standstill.

If you took away technology from K-12 or postsecondary educators, who are part of the quaternary sector, the work of most employees in most locations (i.e., teachers and professors) would remain fairly unaffected. Although there would be a few hiccups or inconveniences, the core work of core employees – teaching – could proceed, business as usual.

The only industries that I can think of that would remain similarly unaffected are the custodial and residential construction industries – folks with mops and hammers.

Technology tools for data-driven teachers

In addition to the white paper that I wrote for Microsoft that summarized essential data-driven decision-making concepts for teachers and principals, I also wrote a second white paper that summarized the various technology tools that school districts are using to manage summative and formative data.

Technology Tools for Data-Driven Teachers is only seven pages long and is a brief overview of data management and analysis (DMA) systems (i.e., data warehouses) and instructional management and assessment (IMA) systems. DMA systems are primarily used for management and analysis of summative data, such as those from yearly state assessments, and typically interface with districts' student information systems, electronic gradebooks, and other district databases. IMA systems typically are not integrated with DMA systems and are used to separately store and analyze data from ongoing progess monitoring efforts. I also briefly discuss in the white paper some other options that school districts have if they can't afford these often-expensive data systems.

Technology Tools for Data-Driven Teachers is a nice overview for educators who are unfamiliar with the technology options available for storing and analyzing student and school data. The white paper is deliberately written in non-technical language to facilitate easy understanding by administrators and teachers who probably are not technology wonks. Whether your district is reexamining existing tools for managing data or is looking for new solutions, the white paper can help give your educators get the big picture of what's out there as they try to make sense of different vendor offerings.

Two other resources that may be helpful are my ongoing lists of DMA system vendors and IMA system vendors. School districts often don't have the ability or inclination to do a full market scan of possible products and thus often miss vendor solutions that may better fit their needs. I don't claim that my categorization is perfect - sometimes products blur the lines between categories. If you have a vendor to add to one of these two lists, please comment on this post!

It's the first day of school!

School starts today here in Minnesota. Let's see how we're doing.

Hmmm... Looks like we still have some work to do.

District technology coordinator study

A few years back I did a nationwide study of district technology coordinators for NCREL, with help from CoSN and QED. Although our response rates were much lower than we hoped, those we did get were fairly representative of our sample and the nation at large. Some of the key findings of the study (360 respondents) were that:

• nearly a fifth of the respondents had more than one formal title in their district (can you effectively do the job of tech coordinator as a part-time job?);
• nearly a third of the respondents said that they were the only person providing technology support for their district (even in a small district, can one person effectively do the job of tech coordinator?);
• although nearly all of the respondents were considered to be district-level employees, barely half were on an administrative contract (which raises issues related to power and authority);
• rural technology coordinators made significantly less than their urban and suburban counterparts (thus raising recruitment and retention issues);
• average salaries were lower than those paid by business and industry (again raising issues of recruitment and retention when competing against the corporate world for talented people);
• respondents received, on average, a paltry 35 hours of training per year (and most of that was likely technical in nature, not leadership-oriented); and
• large proportions said that they probably would leave for a job with the same responsibilites but better pay (59%) or a job with the same pay but fewer responsibilities (34%) (again raising recruitment and retention issues).

In addition to the report, I also wrote up a short article on this for Scholastic Administr@tor.

Although the results are from 2003, my personal experience is that things haven't changed much. We have seen a trend, particularly in larger districts, toward more CTO-/CIO-like positions and/or hiring people with experience in business and industry.

What do you think? Are these findings still relevant and/or important today?