Dangerously Irrelevant

Frerichs v. Mao: Showdown at the netbook corral

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

Here is Chad’s Tweet:

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

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

Your thoughts?

4 Guys Talking - Episode 4 (Jeff Mao)

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

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

• www.blogtalkradio.com/uceacastle

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

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

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

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

Happy listening!

Photo credit: An Apple in the dark 2

Equity or idiocy?

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

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

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

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

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

A tisket, a tasket, a netbook in my basket

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

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

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

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

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

Photo credit: HP Mini

The Iowa series - Wrap-up

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

http://snipurl.com/iowaseries

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

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

Happy reading!

SETDA's Class of 2020 Action Plan for Education

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

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

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

Two more reports are coming out this month and next:

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

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

Keep up the great work, SETDA!

DRAFT - Statewide 21st century learning system

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

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

PART 1

What needs to be done

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

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

Environmental supports

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

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

PART 2

Marketing

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

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

PART 3

Cost

I’m working on this part…

YOUR INPUT IS DESIRED

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

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

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

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

Help wanted: Digital citizenship resources?

I recently got this message from an international school:

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

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

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

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

• Darren Draper’s edublogger etiquette series

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!

Not so irrelevant 012

Three great questions

I especially like the last of these three questions from Rodney Trice. We should be asking teachers and principals that question more often (and just that directly).

• How do you intend to bring the global community into your classroom?
• How will you prepare students for a future that is relatively unknown?
• How you will eliminate the racial predictability of achievement outcomes in your classroom?

This just in: Teenagers play video games!

All kidding aside, the latest report from the amazing Pew Internet & American Life Project confirms that kids - even girls! – are up to their eyeballs in video games.

We’ll stick to the tried and (not) true

Nope, sorry. iPods are not allowed. Back to the old way. Too bad it doesn’t work as well. Gotta do it anyway. Oh, and I love how the music players are categorically, by definition, a ‘distraction’ (if not in actuality). Who needs reality when we have these little educational policy fantasy worlds that we can create for ourselves?

Throw da bums out!

After attempts to bring in turnaround experts didn’t work, the state of Maryland is increasingly leaning toward completely restructuring schools that are academically unsuccessful. State schools Superintendent Nancy Grasmick says:

We are very comfortable being more aggressive about this. We have seen much better results [when the staff is replaced].

Blog like a farmer

I ran across an old post by Mike Sansone, one of my Iowa blogging buddies. I really like his metaphor that blogging should be like farming.

Scorecards

I bet parents and community members would really like to see scorecards like this one (maybe with different data) for their local schools. I know some schools and districts already do this. Hopefully they use line graphs rather than tables of numbers. Could you tell the essential story of a school district with 10 key, well-done graphs? I bet you could!

No writing in journalism class?

Check out this excellent article about the NYU journalism student who got in trouble for blogging about her class. [hat tip to Tim Stahmer]

I got no money, honey

Did you catch Edutopia’s advice on how to innovate without extra money or support?

Spend hours on content you can find with Google in 3 seconds!

One of my favorite things about Wes Fryer is his ability to highlight the ridiculous. I also enjoy his irreverance (“Behold! I hold aloft the holy words!”), particularly when I have the same experience at my kids’ school.

Speaking of Google…

Finally, I’m digging Google Chrome. it’s now my default browser and I’m using Firefox less and less (and I love Firefox). Chrome is much faster. I also like that each tab is a separate process; I have yet to have a browser hang…

Not so irrelevant 011

My latest roundup of links and tools…

The critics need a reboot

David Wolman’s article in Wired Magazine is a quick and effective rebuttal of those who claim that technology is making us stupid.

Social networking for babies

Yep, that’s right. Social networking for babies: Made a mess in my pants today. Slept. Made a mess in my pants today. Slept…

The $70 PC

Using a thin client model for school computers seems like an idea that has promise. And of course a $70 price tag per computer sounds great. Does anyone know a school organization that’s working with NComputing?

Should kids learn about 9/11 via cartoons?

Gary Stager’s got a vein pop about BrainPop…

Handheld learning

Thanks to Dean Shareski, I now know about the Handheld Learning web site. Thanks, Dean!

Youth, porn, and violence

Want the latest facts on youth exposure to pornography and violent web sites? Head to Harvard’s Berkman Center!

Speaking of the Berkman Center…

There is a LOT going on at the Center. Check out its list of projects (the list is clickable thanks to Kwout) and sign up for its news feed!

Karl Fisch is big in Germany

If you didn’t catch it, Karl recently posted about a German magazine’s story about his school and the Did You Know? video. Anybody read German?

Snow in the bathroom

And, finally, here’s a good rule of thumb: don’t read Doug Johnson while you’re supposedly participating in a serious meeting. Thy guffaw mayest disrupt…

Article in The Washington Diplomat

I was a little stunned to see that I was the lead-in for this article in The Washington Diplomat:

• Thinking technology

I think I came across a little harsher than I am in real life, but that's okay. Happy reading!

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 - Other notes from the ISTE Digital Equity Summit

Here are the rest of my notes from ISTE’s annual digital equity summit at NECC…

Discussions

• Wyatt Sledge, Forth Worth (TX) ISD, told me that the district just hired a dedicated technology trainer for its administrators. Awesome!

Expert panel

Lara Sujo de Montes, New Mexico State University

• Digital divide v. digital equity
• Divide = lack of access to equipment
• Inequity = lack of access to benefits of learning and using that equipment
• Digital inequity reproduces existing social and socieconomic inequities
• The Internet is 2/3 in English but only 10% of world population speaks English
• Developing countries: rural, unemployed, uneducated farmers or unskilled wage laborers, subsisting on $1 or $2 per day, ethnolinguistic minorities
• Request distance learning courses for high school students, develop online materials yourself (even for a traditional course), install Moodle
  

David Thornburg, Thornburg Center

• Digital equity and space exploration as a STEM curriculum
• Half of workers at Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman will retire in the next decade; 15% of Boeing engineers are eligible to retire right now; we don’t have enough new people to replace them
• We need to go beyond teaching about STEM and help students see themselves in those jobs
• There is a lot of beauty and joy in STEM
• In prison they let you out early for good behavior. Schools don’t do that.
• I’m tired of corporations thinking of children as wallets with bodies.

Ashanti Jefferson, Chicago Public Schools

• Described some of the work CPS is doing with its kids

Al Byers, National Science Teachers Association

• NSTA Learning Center: significant gains in the learning of science teachers who participate in its online learning modules
• Teachers must have a voice in their own professional development if we want to see positive results
• If you include elementary and middle school teaches (who teach science but don’t think of themselves as science teachers), there are 2.1 million science teachers in the USA

Discussion

• Thornburg: Students in affluent schools use technology in creative, innovative ways. Students in disadvantaged schools use computers for decontextualized drill-and-kill exercises.

NECC 2008 - SETDA PD Roundtable

Here are my notes from Tuesday’s Professional Development Roundtable sponsored by the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). This was an EXCELLENT conversation.

Effective professional development for educators

• Peer-to-peer training is particularly effective for teachers and administrators. Training also should be job-embedded. The focus should be the project or task, not the technology.
• Alabama has found that the graduates of their Gates grant initiative constitute the bulk of the innovative school- and district-level technology leaders in the state.
• Dr. Mary Ann Wolf, Executive Director of SETDA, asked me to talk about CASTLE! Administrators need dedicated funding, training, and TIME to learn.
• Coaching models for professional development (PD) work extremely well.
• New York City has a comprehensive PD model that includes principals, teachers, etc. Principals want to see best practices and what’s working in other schools. In contrast, teachers want people to come to their classroom, to discuss ‘what works here.’ Having an in-school professional developer works really well for teachers. It’s important to have both the in-class and the off-campus components.
• A lot of people don’t really know what high-quality PD looks like.
• Brenda Williams, West Virginia Department of Education: If you get professional development right, student learning will improve.
• Steve Andrews, Intel: The politics of cost is incredible. EDC has found that If you can get one PD coach per building, the results and progress are amazing.
• Project-based administrator training needs to involve the team, not just individuals. The principals need their assistant principals, teacher leaders, etc.
• We need to get teachers into other classroom via learning walks, observations, lesson study, etc.
• Principals need to have an actionable theory of change.
• There are a number of strong PD models in existence. SETDA is going to try to collect and then disseminate some of these models.

Barriers to effective, scalable professional development

• Lack of adequate, large-scale Internet access in training facilities. The West Virginia Department of Education forced state hotels to step up or risk losing all of its workshops!
• IT people still aren’t talking to curriculum people, assessment people, etc.
• There is a fairly large number of obstructionist teachers.
• Time, perceptions of endurance, perceptions of efficiency. Teachers wonder if it’s worth investing in a technology because it is changing so fast. Teachers have seen a number of technologies come and go [and they have resisted all of them!].
• Lack of exposure to effective models for technology-related PD.
• Many teachers view technology as a classroom distraction rather than as a meaningful learning tool.
• We don’t bring IT people into the process soon enough. They need more lead time and more involvement.
• Statewide programs have trouble ensuring consistency and implementation fidelity.
• Intentionality is important. Technology training that’s driven by subject learning goals (e.g., we need to get our math scores up) is more successful. Dedicated time and focused assessment also are necessary.
• Leadership turnover and program sustainability are issues.
• Leaders need help translating models of effective PD and time reallocation to their local implementation context.
• Content area people need to be involved in the tech training. Instruction first.
• Tom Carroll, NCTAF: Are we applying the right treatment to the right teachers? One technology PD model does not fit the learning needs of all teachers (just like students).
• Students need to be the ultimate focus of teacher PD efforts. It’s not about the tools, it’s about how it benefits the students. Having students demonstrate and discuss can be a powerful motivator to teachers. Clayton Christenson: The disruptive innovation in education is not charter schools or online schools. It’s student-centered learning.
• New teachers are effective users of personal technologies and are comfortable with instructional technologies. However, they have few models of good technology integration in their schools and they also probably had instructional technology courses in their pre-service program that were separate from their content methods courses.
• Preservice teachers do not come out of college as instructional designers.
• Steve Andrews, Intel: One of the most incredible opportunities of our lifetimes is before us.
• We need to use pride, greed, hope, love, and guilt to get teachers moving.
• Schools’ poor use of technology is having negative impacts on the retention of young teachers.

Policy and practice recommendations

• Specific guidelines of 1 instructional coach per 1,000 students.
• Concrete strategies for changing how we do business (at all levels), maybe differentiated by setting, size, and locale.
• Strategies for informing and engaging parents / community members.
• A comprehensive K-20 vision and agenda – state level and/or national level – that drives forward movement.
• Mandatory interactions between K-12 and higher education. [NCATE requires that colleges work with schools?]
• We need to pay more attention to our leaders!
• Colleges of education are not going to accept any responsibility (for technology training, outreach, service, PD) until legislatures, departments of education, and/or accrediting agencies make them do so. [U. Minnesota performance review: ‘Dr. McLeod’s work with schools is exemplary but inappropriate.’]
• We need to follow up statements of ‘It’s so expensive to do this’ with the reply ‘What is the cost of not doing this?’ We need to think more in terms of investment (not cost) and return on investment.
• We have to figure out what to take off educators’ plates (the idea of prioritized abandonment).
• Most high-functioning companies spend about 4% of their budgets on employee training. We come nowhere close to this in K-12 education.
• We need to remember the interconnectedness of the success of the whole. We don’t want others to cherry pick components of what should be a comprehensive approach to systemic school reform.

Musings from Mumbai: Fostering a climate of innovation in the middle and high schools

ASB Unplugged is a 1:1 laptop conference for international schools, hosted by the American School of Bombay and the Laptop Institute. These are notes from a session I attended on technology-related change at the secondary level…

• Andrew Hoover, middle school principal
• Devin Pratt, high school principal
• Dianna Pratt, middle/high school tech coordinator

[the educators in this room are from more countries than you probably can place on a map!]

• Change is not linear
  • Expect both bursts and delays
• Complacency and resistance come from…
  • Being busy
  • Maybe being risk adverse
  • Perceived (and actual) threats to professional identity
• DyKnow software really takes advantage of the tablet PCs’ functionality, making it worth the tablets’ extra cost
• Key implementation stages (from John Kotter)
  • Establish a sense of urgency
    • Generate cognitive dissonance!
  • Create a guiding coalition
    • The leadership team has to be on board
  • Develop a vision and strategy
  • Communicate the change vision
    • Repetition of message, vision, goals, etc. is key
    • Lead by example
  • Empower educators for broad-based action
    • Lots of just-in-time professional development
    • Ongoing instrucational support
    • Reliable technology and infrastructure
    • Small, frequent, purposeful meetings
  • Generate short-term wins
    • Teacher-sponsored demos and highlights, tied into concept of enduring understandings
      • Repetition of this gradually overcomes the resisters
    • Teachers are asked to use DyKnow just once and have the lesson observed to get feedback
    • There is a curriculum to foster a sense of responsibility among students
      • Students carry around eggs first; if an egg breaks, the student has to go through a process before she gets another one
      • Later students graduate to laptops but have to leave them at school
      • Finally students get the laptops 24–7
  • Consolidate gains and produce further changes
    • “You don’t know how comfortable you are until you start moving on”
    • Keep stressing ‘here’s where we were 2 years ago and look how much progress we’ve made’
    • Andrew is using a blog to keep staff, students, and parents informed of progress
    • Work on facilitating dispersed leadership
  • Anchor new approaches in the culture of the school
    • Recognize how culture already has changed and build upon it
    • Foster a climate of continuous improvement (kaizen)

Scott’s trip to Mumbai: pics at Flickr, movies at YouTube.

Bass ackwards tech planning?

My colleague and good friend, Dr. Jon Becker, has a new blog, Educational Insanity, that’s worth checking out. Here are some excerpts from a recent post on technology planning:

There have been many great sports coaches who were successful based on a “system” they installed. . . . I think educational leaders/policymakers are guilty of installing systems without regard to the personnel. . . . In other words, the “systems” have been installed and the leaders are then forced to try to fit the personnel into the system. . . . Make the system fit the team, not vice versa.

FYI, Jon’s post references the allegedly nightmarish technology implementation at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, VA, which is the school that my two sisters attended (before the tech makeover / building remodel!) and also is the basis for the movie, Remember the Titans.

Happy reading!

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.

Motorola Innovation Generation Grants

Schools that are interested in promoting innovation, science, technology, engineering, and math are eligible to apply for one of Motorola’s Innovation Generation Grants. Recipients can receive up to $100,000 and you can see what was funded last year. The deadline for applications is March 1. Good luck!

UCEA 2007 - How national technology policy REALLY gets made

Friday was the first day of sessions at the UCEA convention. CASTLE sponsored a panel discussion on national K-12 educational technology policy, moderated by Drs. Sara Dexter (U. Virginia) and Matt Militello (U. Massachusetts-Amherst).

 Listen to the podcast! (73.9 Mb, 81 minutes)

Panelists

• Hilary Goldman, Director of Government Affairs, ISTE
• Dr. Mary Ann Wolf, Executive Director, SETDA
• Doug Levin, Senior Director of Education Policy, Cable in the Classroom

Some main themes

• In the mid– to late 1990s, there were LOTS of national funding initiatives aimed at K-12 ed tech – all were replaced by EETT, which is much smaller and more limited – today, EETT has declined from over $700 million to $272 million – in the past, the Bush administration has even attempted to zero out the EETT budget – Congress has saved the program but at increasingly lower levels
• There is a perception that the job is done
• Teachers have not been trained how to use technology to improve student learning outcomes
• Educators are moving slow – lots of missed opportunities – extremely incremental change in a revolutionary environment
• TPCK model – preservice teachers should not take separate ed tech classes – should be integrated with content-specific methods courses
• We are finally starting to get research that is helpful for policy purposes – for example, the eMints program in Missouri and other states
• The amount of education that people need is astounding – state and federal policymakers, education associations, the public – they make major assumptions about what is happening that just aren’t true
• Example: because nearly all schools are wired, people truly think that means that all kids have access to the Internet – far from being true – only buildings and teacher computers are wired – every student is NOT wired and connected
• Example: lots of money has been poured into student information systems – as a result, people think that teachers are getting data that informs their day-to-day instructional practice – again, this is far from true – in most districts, the data that are in these systems are not that granular
• You have to use sexy vocabulary – the terms of art – that capture policymakers’ attention – right now it is global competitiveness
• High school reform and other change efforts – technology is not specifically articulated as a component – it thus gets lost or left out
• Ed tech policy is still fairly immature - we’re in our tweens
• Groups like NEA, AFT, NSBA, AASA, NASSP, and NAESP are not knowledgeable about technology – they advocate for Title I, IDEA - they don’t advocate for ed tech
• The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is trying to change the conversation rather than trying to figure out how to fit ed tech into existing paradigms / models / laws - this is a real herky-jerky process
• There is not, and has not been, a systemic long-term research agenda, funded by policymakers, to answer key research questions about K-12 educational technology
• What kind of research is needed to further the cause of K-12 educational technology?
• Most education academics are naive about how policy gets made – don’t really understand the policy process – much educational research is not pertinent or helpful to policy conversations and the questions that are being asked by policymakers - we have to remember that ed tech is only one voice of many
• ETAN – www.edtechactionnetwork.org – you don’t have to get to DC – can plug in your e-mail and zip code and get resources and information – just 12 letters can make a difference – meeting in local offices back home also make an impact – asking questions at local town halls sponsored by legislators
• We were blessed in the 1990s with the folks that were in the U.S. Department of Education (US DOE) – there are lots of places where this can break down – there are not strong advocates there today – one place to focus advocacy efforts is the US DOE, not just legislators
• Why has school leadership been left out of the ed tech policy conversation and policy efforts? – historically, efforts were focused on affecting the classroom, not on changing the system – promising levers appear to be 21st century skills, data-driven decision-making, and cybersafety
• We could draft Title II legislation around professional development for administrators regarding technology leadership

[left to right: Sara Dexter, Matt Militello, Hilary Goldman, Mary Ann Wolf, Doug Levin]

Route 21 and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

At the SETDA Leadership Summit and Education Forum, we’ve been talking a lot about 21st century skills, so I thought it might be helpful to highlight some of the work that the Partnership for 21st Century Skills has been doing.

The Partnership has been quite busy lately. In October, it announced new poll results that showed that a significant majority of voters ‘are deeply concerned that the United States is not preparing young people with the skills they need to compete in the global economy.’ Here’s an excerpt from the full report:

As I noted on my blog earlier this week, on Monday the Partnership, SETDA, and ISTE released a paper on maximizing the impact of digital technologies for 21st century learning. The document contains examples of successful programs that can be used as models, guiding questions for stakeholders, and action principles for moving forward. Plus there’s also this great (if depressing) quote:

No industry or organization can remain competitive today without making comprehensive use of technology as a matter of course in all of its operations. . . . [E]ducation is the least technology-intensive enterprise in a ranking of technology use among 55 U.S. industry sectors, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Today the Partnership released a new resource, Route 21:

[Route 21] represents the first comprehensive, go-to online resource for high-quality content, best practices, relevant reports, articles and research to assist practitioners in implementing 21st century teaching practices and learning outcomes. Route 21 harnesses Web 2.0 features to allow users to tag, rank, organize, collect and share Route 21 content based on their personal interests. Individuals will continuously update the site with relevant examples as well as share their reactions and insights on implementing 21st century skills in their state, district or school.

You can read the press release, watch the 10–minute video, or dive right into the resources and tagging tools:

Also, for those of you who didn’t know, the Partnership recently updated its famous rainbow framework in order to better highlight essential supporting conditions:

[read more about the framework]

In addition to the resources already described, the Partnership has a number of useful reports, issue briefs, and literacy maps, the latter of which are intended to give some examples of 21st century literacies in practice. Many of the Partnership’s presentations are available online, as are some nifty tools for educators and policymakers.

In short, the Partnership is working hard to help us move our nation’s schools forward. There are numerous helpful resources on the Partnership’s main site and in Route 21. I encourage you to check out what the Partnership has to offer.

SETDA - Wrap-up

SETDA has been a great conference. I have appreciated the opportunity to network with the people in charge of educational technology for each state department and have had some interesting and powerful conversations about the state of ed tech across the country.

Yesterday I was on discussion panels for most of the day so I couldn’t exactly take notes. I was supposed to be on the 21st century skills panel with Ken Kay and others but was moved at the last minute to the panel on transformative leadership. The best part of that move was the chance to meet and spend time with Chris Lehmann, principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.

Chris is my hero. He’s progressive, he’s smart, he’s enthusiastic, and his school is doing really neat things with its 1:1 laptop initiative for urban kids in Philly. In short, he’s a great model for 21st century building-level leadership. If you want to get a sense of what Chris is all about, listen to his interview with Steve Hargadon and check out his blog, Practical Theory.

Today everyone is heading to “the Hill” to meet with Congressional representatives and their staff about K-12 educational technology funding. Wish ‘em luck.

SETDA - What it takes to compete

Notes from the 2007 SETDA Education Forum…

What it takes to compete: Seeing U.S. education through the prism of international comparisons

Prof. Andreas Schleicher
Head, Indicators and Analysis Division
OECD Directorate for Education

• Finland gets 9 applicants for every teaching post because it is considered a profession worth working in
• Jobs in lower skill sectors, and indeed entire sectors of the workplace, are disappearing
• In the 1960s, the U.S. was first in the world re: percentage of persons with high school or equivalent qualifications (ages 25 to 64). Today it is 13th. Within two generations, the educational landscape has changed dramatically.
• College-level graduation rates: U.S. international rank dropped from 2nd to 15th between 1995 and 2005
• By 2015, China will have twice the number of college graduates as the U.S. and EU combined
• PISA – international assessment of what students know and can do - covers 87% of world economy – how well can students extrapolate from what they have learned to novel situations
• U.S. fell below the OECD average when it came to the performance of 15-year-olds to extrapolate and apply in mathematics (dozens of countries were ahead of U.S.)
• Levy and Murnane have analyzed demand for skills between 1960 and 2002
• Demand for routine manual skills has declined
• Demand for nonroutine manual skills has declined steeply
• Demand for routine cognitive skills (that are easy to teach, easy to test, easy to break into small pieces) has declined steeply
• Demand for nonroutine analytic skills has increased sharply
• Demand for nonroutine interactive skills has increased sharply
• Percentage of students at Levels 5 or 6 on PISA has an almost linear relationship to the number of researchers per thousand people
• Money explains about 1/3 of cross-country variation in mathematics performance – U.S. and Italy have expensive education systems but get lower payoff than other countries that spend less but differently
• Best-performing educational systems have both high challenge and strong support systems
• Low challenge and weak support = poor performance and stagnation
• High challenge and weak support = conflict, demoralization
• High challenge and strong support = systemic improvement
• Best-performing educational systems have high ambitions, teacher access to best practice and strong professional development, intelligent accountability and intervention in inverse proportion to success, devolved responsibility so the school is the center of action, integrated educational opportunities, movement from prescribed forms of teaching and assessment toward personalized learning
• Only 12% of variation is across schools: the overall system predicts most of math performance
• “Knowledge poor” profession and national prescription = uninformed prescription, implementation of curricula = U.S.
• “Without data, you are just another person with an opinion.”

A perfect storm

Michael Flanagan, Superintendent of Public Instruction, State of Michigan

• “Can we agree that our kids aren’t going to work in a verb conjugation factory?”
• Michigan is facing a perfect storm: changing global workforce needs combined with declining ability of automobile factory workers to make a decent living (or even a living at all since jobs are being exported)
• Many, many educators said “those kids can’t do Algebra 2”
• Trying to move Michigan from teaching to learning
• Requirement for students to take one online course before graduation is an attempt to jump start the situation, turn pedagogy in another direction
• No longer automatically accrediting teacher education institutions every 5 years; now leaning on universities to change their preparation practices
• Showed the video of Paul Potts to emphasize that there is hidden talent in everyone and that we can bring that out if we choose

SETDA - Maximizing the impact (take the survey!)

SETDA, ISTE, and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills released a document last night called Maximizing the impact: The pivotal role of technology in a 21st century education system.

Take this survey and see how you’re doing on the ‘Guiding Questions for Stakeholders.’ Due date = November 14. I’ll publish the results on November 16.

SETDA - Awards

Michael Flanagan, the Michigan Superintendent of Public Instruction, won SETDA’s policymaker award tonight. My favorite quote: “Quit using overheads! The bowling alley had them before we did AND they got rid of them before we did!”

Lan Neugent, Virginia’s Assistant Superintendent of Technology, won SETDA’s state leader of the year award. Kudos to them both!

SETDA - Empowering administrators with professional development

My presentation today with Mary Mehsikomer from the Minnesota Department of Education went well. I got to talk a lot about CASTLE and what we do and got a few state educational technology directors fired up about focusing on the technology leadership needs of administrators. You can download my presentation (FYI, slide 12 refers to higher education). I am hoping that some interesting opportunities will arise as a result…

SETDA - Making data user-friendly for classroom teachers

More from SETDA…

Making data user-friendly for classroom teachers

Neal Gibson, Project Manager, Arkansas Longitudinal Data System, Arkansas Department of Education (along with Jim Boardman, Assistant Commissioner, Arkansas Department of Education)

• Dr. Richard Wang, MIT: dimensions of data quality (access is the most important!)
• Intrinsic (accuracy, believability, objectivity, reputation)
• Contextual (value-added, relevancy, timeliness, completeness)
• Representational (amount of data, manipulability, interpretability, ease of understanding, representational consistency, concise representation)
• Accessibility (access, security)
• The goal is to empower teachers, to have them own data rather than just having the data pushed out to them by districts and state departments
• State department is working with Triand to develop and deliver online formative assessments statewide
• The Triand system also allows teachers to upload lesson plans into the system and link them to state standards; other teachers can then search and use the lesson plans
• Neal also talked a bit about data mining with the state’s formative assessment data. Very cool...

SETDA - Hangin' with ISTE

I ran into Dr. Lynn Nolan, Senior Director of Education Leadership, and Dr. Don Knezek, CEO, of ISTE. I only see them about once a year so I talked them into a quick picture!

FYI, these are the two busiest people I know.

SETDA - 21st century skills

I’m live blogging from the SETDA Leadership Summit…

21st century skills

Frances Bradburn, Director of Instructional Technology, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction

• State has signed on to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills framework
• North Carolina requires students to complete a 4–component, performance-based graduation project (research paper, product, portfolio, and oral presentation)
• Students also must pass a computer skills test to graduate
• For licensure, has ‘executive’ standards, not principal / superintendent standards
• Joint Commission on Information Technology was a unified voice advocating for the School Connectivity Project (broadband for every school)
• LOTS of neat stuff going on in the state (Learn and Earn, New Schools Project, Learn and Earn Online, North Carolina Virtual Public School, IMPACT, Literacy to Learn, eBistro, Project K-NECT, Quest Atlantis)
• Many initiatives are facilitated by corporations working hand-in-hand with the state department
• Funding technology facilitators, literacy coaches, E-Rate personnel, and regional engineers
• Frances maintains a blog

Brenda Williams, Executive Director, Office of Instructional Technology, West Virginia Department of Education

• State has signed on to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills framework
• Secured critical policymaker support: Governor, Board of Education, legislature
• Had to show folks that 21st century skills are a little different than the old SCANS skills
• Numerous non-technology-related academic policy initiatives align with technology-oriented initiatives
• 8th grade student technology assessment is aligned with classroom assessment (following the Rick Stiggins philosophy)
• Teach 21
• Think.com

Two from Seth Godin

The Wikipedia gap

I don't know about you, but when I hire someone, or go to the doctor or the architect or an engineer, I could care less about how good they are at memorizing or looking up facts. I want them to be great at synthesizing ideas, the faster and more insightfully, the better.

Please don't tell me that Wikipedia isn't a real encyclopedia or one that can't be trusted. Perhaps it can't be trusted if you're prepping for a Presidential debate, but it is sure good enough to help me learn what I need to learn--which is how to quickly take a bunch of facts and turn them into a new and useful idea.

Here's what just about every exam ought to be: "Use Firefox to find the information you need to answer this question:" And as the internet gets smarter, the questions are going to have to get harder. Which is a good thing.

Until teachers get unstuck, our kids are going to be stuck and so will we.

This changes everything

This is a story about tools and bravery and marketing.

The tools: when you give a kid a net connection, access to wikipedia and to the rest of the world, things change fast. Things you wouldn't necessarily predict. Like a ten year old who can diagnose his dad's illness. Or a farmer that can ask his daughter to find out where to get a new part for the tractor. Or...

…

The marketing: Everything, even laptops for kids, works its way through the innovation diffusion curve. That means that most countries, most organizations and most communities aren't going to adopt this tool for a few years. It doesn't matter if it's perfect... these things take time. Smart marketing embraces the curve and doesn't insist that it must change for this project, right now.

One kid (or five kids) at a time. It's enough. It'll happen.

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?

Communication Workers of America

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

Hello all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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…

Internet in a box

Internet access in developing countries can be prohibitively expensive and cumbersome (e.g., thousands of dollars per month for speeds that often are less than dial-up). Now imagine if someone identified a wealth of high-quality educational materials on the Internet, downloaded them using web site ‘scraping’ software, and then made them available on an inexpensive hard drive that could be plugged into an existing server network. All of a sudden, individuals could access many of the incredible resources on the Web quickly, easily, and cheaply, without consuming expensive bandwidth. Can you imagine how empowering that would be?

‘The Internet in a Box.’ That’s the idea behind the University of Iowa eGranary Digital Library project, which is making web sites, books, journals, and educational software available to universities, schools, clinics, and libraries in the developing world. This is a pretty nifty idea (and I’m not just saying this because I’m a U. Iowa alum). I encourage you to check out the eGranary fact sheet, content catalog, list of subscribers, and other materials.

I wonder how this could intersect with the One Laptop per Child initiative. Also, wouldn't it be a great school project to raise money to buy these for some institutions in other countries?

$2,000 pencils

I just ran across this Alan November post on the 'laptop lashback.' Here's a great quote:

Teachers have not changed the way they teach. We are using $2,000 pencils.

Also, check out Comment 3...

Margaret Spellings wants to hear from YOU

A couple of weeks ago I posted about U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings' ed tech woes. Apparently now she wants to hear from YOU. Please give her your thoughts and opinions. Who knows? Maybe someone will actually listen (and, if you believe that, I got a bridge to sell you...).

A couple of additional thoughts:

1. I wonder if Secretary Spellings actually writes the posts on her travel log herself or if someone is ghost writing for her.
2. Her latest ed tech roundtable was May 3 or 4, when she met with undisclosed "business leaders, industry experts, and practitioners." With whom is she talking? No idea. No mention yet of ISTE, CoSN, SETDA, NACOL, ETAN, etc. No problem. They're only some of the most knowledgeable organizations in the country about K-12 ed tech. Hey, maybe next time (and, if you believe that...).
   

Leapfrogging less developed nations

I previously posted about wireless technologies in less developed nations. Kofi Annan supported this view nearly 4 years ago! One cool indigenous Wi-Fi innovation, is the Cambodian motoman. Here, motorcycle drivers equipped with with Wi-Fi contraptions, drive past schools and health centers to download and retrieve email.

"As they pass each school and one health centre, they transmit the messages they have downloaded and retrieve any outgoing mail queued in the school or health centre computer, also equipped with a similar book-sized transmission box. They then go on to the next school. At the end of the day they return to the hub to transmit all the collected e-mail to the Internet for any point on the globe."

Less developed nations are indeed making strides to leapfrog old technologies. This leapfrog effect can be seen in education, health care, information, energy, economies, and more. Thomas Friedman wrote how globalization has essentially created a 'flat' world. The globalized processes Friedman refers to have really made possible the leapfrog effect.

The question remains, how will these nations tap into digital possibilities and genuinely leapfrog industrialized nations?

ICT and sustainable development

Wired magazine ran an interesting story in their April 2007 edition about an entrepreneur in the Ivory Coast who bought a cell phone, rigged up a 'telephone booth' and earned $200 the first month charging community members 80 cents per minute. The same man bought a PlayStation and charged 10-20 cents to play a game earning him $20 in the first three days!

I mention this story because with ICT in international development, there is much promise and a lot of the best solutions are indeed indigenous (Thanks John). A main role for ICT4D planners and policy makers is localizing technology to the needs of the community. This is evident from my experiences in Cambodia where outside experts were not in touch with the needs of the teachers yet some teachers simply found applicable ways to use the skills that were outside of the scope of the training.

ICT has promise in the less developed world. However experts from more developed countries have the onus to not just plop ICTs into a nations without thinking about localization and sustainability. After all, development is not about giving fish, it is about teaching others to fish for themselves!

Networked Readiness Index

The Networked Readiness Index measures how prepared countries are to tap into the power of ICTs by focusing on the readiness of the environment and stakeholders as well as measuring the usage of stakeholders. You can read parts of the 2006-2007 Global Information Technology Report here.

The top ten nations are:

1. Denmark
2. Sweden
3. Singapore
4. Finland
5. Switzerland
6. Netherlands
7. United States
8. Iceland
9. United Kingdom
10. Norway

The bottom ten nations are (position 113-122):

• Cameroon
• Paraguay
• Mozambique
• Lesotho
• Zimbabwe
• Bangladesh
• Ethiopia
• Angola
• Burundi
• Chad

Take note that the U.S. is seventh while European nations dominate the top ten. Eight out of 10 of the bottom entries actually lost positions and fell in their rankings while six of the top ten entries gained ground and improved their NRI.

The nations that gained 10 or more position are Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Croatia, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Guyana. The nations that lost 10 or more positions are Cyprus, Pakistan, Jordan, Botswana, South Africa, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Uganda, Cameroon, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.

Since nations in Europe are dominating this list with regard to the NRI, some nations in South America are making great strides upward, and some African nations are falling further behind, what does this mean for educational development?

I give you this background data because I am often asked about the future of ICT4D and the ability of less developed nations to really embrace ICTs. In general the pressing issues for the near future of ICT4D as I see it are:

• Professional development and technology leadership issues in South America (showing the most promise for Web 2.0 advances);
• Infrastructural development issues in Africa; and
• A balance of infrastructure, professional development, and technology leadership issues in Asia and the Middle East.

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.

Overblown alarmism and empty rhetoric

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

[Law students learn to argue both sides of any issue because as attorneys they may be hired for either side of a case. Knowledge of the other side’s arguments also allows attorneys to counter those arguments and thus strengthen their own side. So with that in mind, here’s a little contrarian perspective on School 2.0. As technology advocates, we must be able to offer real solutions, not just empty rhetoric.]

 

Dear School 2.0 advocates,

We’ve heard it all before. The sky is falling. America is in danger of losing its role as lead actor on the global stage. What else is new?

National commissions? Esteemed task forces? Corporate leaders as education critics? We’ll see your Bill Gates and raise you a Sputnik.

We heard it in the 1950s:

We are engaged in a grim duel. We are beginning to recognize the threat to American technical supremacy which could materialize if Russia succeeds in her ambitious program of achieving world scientific and engineering supremacy by turning out vast numbers of well-trained scientists and engineers. . . We have let our educational problem grow much too big for comfort and safety. We are beginning to see now that we must solve it without delay. - Admiral Hyman Rickover, 1959

We heard it in the 1980s:

The risk is not only that the Japanese make automobiles more efficiently than Americans and have government subsidies for development and export. It is not just that the South Koreans recently built the world's most efficient steel mill, or that American machine tools, once the pride of the world, are being displaced by German products. It is also that these developments signify a redistribution of trained capability throughout the globe. . . If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets, we must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system for the benefit of all--old and young alike, affluent and poor, majority and minority. Learning is the indispensable investment required for success in the "information age" we are entering. - A Nation at Risk, 1983

We heard it in the 1990s:

America’s education system is broken. - IBM CEO Louis Gerstner, 1994

And we’re hearing it again today:

Whereas for most of the 20th century the United States could take pride in having the best-educated workforce in the world, that is no longer true. Over the past 30 years, one country after another has surpassed us. . . . While our international counterparts are increasingly getting more education, their young people are getting a better education as well. . . . Our relative position in the world's education league tables [continues] its long slow decline. - The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 2006

America’s high schools are obsolete. - Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, 2005

And yet, somehow, despite our educational system’s long history of alleged mediocrity, our country and our economy keep chugging along quite nicely. Our standard of living is the envy of most of the world. Our gross domestic product per capita literally dwarfs those of China or India, the latest international competition du jour. Despite our country’s creativity-stifling schools, our citizens and workers continue, quite astonishingly, to build upon our nation’s well recognized and long-standing traditions of innovation and excellence to create new products, new systems, and new markets.

We’ve heard it all before. Creative thinking. Problem solving. Independent, self-directed learning. Daniel Pink, Richard Florida, John Seely Brown…

Ho hum. Ever heard of progressive education? The turn of the LAST century? Summerhill? John Dewey? Neil Postman? The 1960s? Been there, done that. Why is THIS time any different? Why is it that THIS time we should replace the entire system?

Yes, we get it. Most kids think schools are boring. Big surprise. John Goodlad told us that long ago. As if we needed ANYONE to tell us that. Isn’t that just the way school is?

Fine. School 2.0 is the “right” thing to do. Technology has the potential to transform education. Our educational institutions could be doing so much more. Educators should feel more of a moral imperative to do things differently. Blah blah blah… Let’s be honest: isn’t this true for ANY bureaucratic government entity? Do we really expect our public schools to be any different?

We’ve heard it all before. The status quo is inadequate. Too many kids drop out, our assessment systems are all wrong, and we’re squandering our children’s future. The problem is that you offer no concrete, tangible, publicly- and politically-viable alternatives.

It’s easy to throw stones at glass houses. It’s much harder to replace a venerable system that’s served us well for a century with something else. The old saw, “Never make a complaint without offering potential solutions” applies here in spades. Just for argument’s sake, let’s say that we “tore down the walls” tomorrow. What would education look like instead? How would we ever get there from where we are now? How are you going to persuade educators, and politicians, and your local community members that this is worth moving toward? That it’s not just pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking?

What’s your plan? We mean a real plan. Not just “kids learning independently on matters of personal interest, taking advantage of the power of digital technology to help them do so.” What will the structures look like? Policies? Laws? Funding streams? How will we know if kids have learned anything important? How will we handle parents’ very real needs for someone to take their kids while they go to work?

Quit offering us wishes. Quit offering us dreams. Quit preaching to us about what is morally right and educationally appropriate. Help us realize, in terms we can understand, what this new thing might actually look like AT SCALE and how we might reasonably get here. Even if we agree with you that this is important, without a vision AND a plan we’re just as stuck as you are.

We’ve heard it all before. What else you got?

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

A new story + a BHAG

David Warlick has blogged often about our need to tell a new story. A story about the technological shifts that are occurring in our society. A story about the impacts that digital technologies are having on our lives, the workplace, and, indeed, our very economies. A story about the future of eduation and what our kids need to know and be able to do in the New Economy. A story that helps people make the move from an education system designed for yesteryear to a system that is designed for tomorrow. This story needs to be told in a compelling way so that it resonates with listeners.

I agree with David. We do need a new story. We probably need multiple new stories, told in different ways to different people at different times in different settings. We need to tailor the new story for different audiences to ensure maximum reception. But I’m also thinking that a new story is not enough. A new story alone will not get us to where we need to be.

I think we also need a BHAG: a big, hairy, audacious goal. A tangible, concrete target that lets us know when we’ve reached some crucial point. A new story (or three or four…) is a necessary component, but I don’t think it will be sufficient in and of itself. I think we need a new story and a BHAG, because the BHAG will help drive action and allocation of resources. A new story tells us what the issues are but it doesn’t necessarily help people know what to do. The BHAG helps people understand where we might go and how to get there. Together a new story and a BHAG will help educators, and parents, and community members, and politicans create the will and the action to move us forward.

I think we’re starting to wrap our heads around what a new story might look like. For example, I know that the presentation set I’ve been delivering lately, which combines diifferent resources and quotes and materials from the blogosphere and elsewhere, is resonating well with folks here in Minnesota. But we still need a BHAG.

So what might a BHAG be? What might be a big, hairy, audacious goal, a target that makes us gulp a little bit but also is focused and achievable? What might be something that would help us accomplish our goal of moving schools, students, teachers, and classroom pedagogy into the 21st century? What might be a goal that is tangible and yet energizing, a goal that grabs people in the gut and serves as a unifying focal point of effort?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this and I can’t come up with anything better than this:

1. ubiqitous nationwide high-speed wireless Internet access, and
2. a wireless-capable laptop for every student and educator.

I’ve previously blogged about variations of the first component (both here and here), and I think we’re starting to see the revolutionary impacts of giving every kid and teacher a computer, even when those impacts weren’t foreseen or desired at the outset. I think these two in coordination (and you need them both, I believe) are a BHAG worth rallying around. Now of course the question is… what do you think?

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)

What if? - One laptop per child

The federal government spent $45.7 billion on elementary and secondary education in 2005–2006. This represented about 8.2% of the overall government spending on P-12 education in our country, with the rest of the monies coming from state and local sources.

The estimated P-12 public school enrollment for that same year was 48.7 million children. Add in about 5 million private school children and another 1.1 million homeschooled children and we have an approximate total of 54.8 million students. Using these numbers, we can calculate that currently the federal government spends about $834 per school-age child.

Even knowing that many families could afford a better computer, what if the federal government bought a $100 (or so) laptop for every child in America? What would our schools be like? What would our children's lives be like?

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.

What does "technology integration" mean?

This question is at the heart of a dissertation one of my advisees is undertaking.  In fact, she successfully defended the proposal today (congrats, Jennifer!), so I thought I'd share some thoughts on this while the ideas are fresh in my mind.

The genesis of the study was my observation that I had heard the term "technology integration" used regularly, had read a lot about it, and had even studied it, but did not really have a firm grasp of what it really meant.  A quick review of the literature made it clear that most of those who studied and/or wrote about technology integration failed to define or operationalize the term.  Furthermore, where there were efforts to define technology integration, those definitions varied greatly and were either too vague or too narrow (in my opinion).

For me, this was enough justification for a study that would systematically create an operational definition of technology integration.  But, most of the discussion at today's dissertation proposal hearing revolved around why such a study was important.  In other words, why is it important to create a theory/model/definition of technology integration?  My advisee did a nice job of addressing these sorts of questions, and ultimately a number of reasons were discussed.  Certainly, there are empirical reasons for creating an operational definition of technology integration.  That is, for those of us that study technology integration, it would be helpful to have a comprehensive framework or template or lens to use.  For the world of educational practice, though, the main justification for this study is that clarity and/or understanding leads to action.  Or, vice versa, a lack of clarity and/or understanding can stifle action.  So, the argument goes, if we want technology integration to happen (and we do!!!) it is important to provide teachers and administrators with a clear and comprehensive road map or picture of what technology integration looks like.

Interestingly, the Superintendent of the district in which my advisee works has convened a technology roundtable to revisit/revise the district's "Technology Integration Plan," which, itself, fails to really define what is meant by technology integration.  So, this study will satisfy the requirements for a dissertation for my advisee, but the findings will also become a real reference piece for the district's technology plan.  I love when dissertation work has real and practical implications.

Ultimately, the theory/model/definition of technology integration that comes out of this dissertation will emanate from the data yielded through a deep and systematic review of the literature.  However, I have some biases going in.  One major bias is that I think a theory/model/definition of technology integration must be broad and comprehensive.  My sense is that most educators and researchers think too narrowly about technology integration.  For some, the focus is on access and infrastructure (i.e. we've integrated technology if we make it a part of our teaching and learning space).  For others, the focus is on curriculum and teaching (i.e. we've integrated technology if it is used to support teaching and learning in the content areas).  For me, technology integration includes both of these aspects...and more.  According to the American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary (as referenced on dictionary.com), integration is defined as, "[t]he state of combination or the process of combining into completeness and harmony." 

I hope that the theory/model/definition of technology integration that comes from this study takes into consideration notions of completeness and harmony.  I look forward to seeing what the data say and to sharing what my advisee and I learn.