Category Archives: Teacher Access

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Public Wants More Tech In Classrooms

eSchool News has an interesting article today: “Public wants more tech in classrooms”
Poll: Americans understand technology’s importance in schools, but disagree on approaches
By Meris Stansbury, Assistant Editor, eSchool News

The information in the article stems from a survey done in May of 7,000 Americans. The findings are good news if you support technology integration in schools.

Among the findings:

… Americans also believe that the U.S. education system should take a more global approach to its curriculum, the poll suggests. Fifty-four percent of Americans said schools should place a greater emphasis on teaching a global perspective.

… 59 percent of Americans agree that “information technology is a vital tool that can help educate our students by providing access to video and other dynamic content” and that more should be done to incorporate technology into the learning process.

The majority of respondents said technology is an important factor in connecting schools to their communities, as well as in leveling the playing field among more and less affluent schools by providing equal access to educational content.

On the downside they reported: … the poll also asked if “standardized testing is contrary to our education objectives, by placing too much emphasis on individualized testing and incentives to achieve test results that may not reflect knowledge.” While 45 percent of respondents said “yes,” 46 percent said “no.”

Read the article yourself – they also cite experts like Keith Krueger, chief executive of the Consortium for School Networking and Don Knezek, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education.

The links they provide include video of a panel discussion about the findings:

Video of panel discussion
http://www.463.com/Clients/Cisco/

Cisco Education
http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/education/index.html

Consortium for School Networking
http://www.cosn.org

International Society for Technology in Education
http://www.iste.org

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Have You Used Every Tool In Your Toolbox? Did You Throw Away Those You Haven’t Used Yet?


kitchen utensils.jpg

Originally uploaded by CieraH

Do you have tools you keep somewhere in your house? If you do, are there some of those tools you have never used? Say a socket for your wrench set that you’ve just never had reason to use?

How about kitchen utensils. Do you have some that maybe you got as a gift that you’ve just never used?

OK, one more question. Can you ever remember suddenly having a use for one of the tools or utensils and being glad you had it? I had a car once that I had for 4 or 5 years and had never used the jack, and obviously the previous owner hadn’t had reason to either because it was still wrapped in the original paper – but when I got a flat out in the middle of nowhere I was sure glad I had that tool (jack). I had no experience using the jack but the directions were there and I figured it out and I made it home safely.

What’s the point? The current Web 2.0 discussions have doubted the usefulness of applications like Flickr and Twitter (but others too). I’m not sure yet how I might ever use Twitter in my classroom … but I’m glad its “in my toolbox” because if I ever see a legitimate educational use for it I have it available to use. If I didn’t have that jack in my car when the flat occurred, or I didn’t even know there was such a thing, I would have been stuck.

Skype is a great example. Wes Fryer invited people about a year ago to join a Skypecast he was moderating about edtech. I had never used Skype, didn’t even have an account (I had used iChat once before). So I got an account, joined Wes’s Skypecast and another later in the summer. So lo and behold the situation with Celest came up and it literally occurred to me that instant that Skyping her into class just might work, just because it was in my toolbox. I hadn’t used Skype with my students before … hadn’t even been on Skype at school, but it became a possibility just because I knew about it and saw a potential use. I’m sure there are similar stories you could tell about using wikis or blogs or whatever. So whether its Twitter or Second Life or the next web 2.0 app that comes out, I just hope I have the time to put them in my toolbox so they are there when I might need them. I mean do you throw out the sockets for your wrench that you have never used?

So those that doubt the usefulness of playing with and learning these applications (Twittering our lives away) I say bunk. Its only a waste of time if it becomes too much of a distraction and negatively impacts your work. As professionals we are supposed to be able to moderate ourselves and make just those kinds of decisions.

Learning is messy.

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What If We Got What We Want?

I may not be the first to bring this up. But …

At the NECC EduBloggerCon one of the most lively discussions took place in a session where we discussed the “talking points” of Web 2.0. How do we advance our agenda about getting these tools and edtech and project based learning utilized to a much greater extent in education?

One of the points that came up was the lack of many working, successful examples of what we visualize as our model of what education and schools should or could look like. This made me wonder … I’m sure we don’t all agree on precisely what that model is, but what if you got it?

Tomorrow you get a call and your school district or whomever has decided to follow an educational plan that is basically your vision. 1:1 laptops, web 2.0 apps unblocked, time and $ for training, training, training, discussion, discussion, discussion, planning, planning, planning, whatever other hardware you feel is necessary, plenty of IT support, plenty of bandwidth, software – whether it is purchased or open-source, whatever else you envision as necessary. And this is going to cost a bundle AND everyone is watching. You have 5 to 10 years to show this makes a difference.

Now just having the tech is not all it would take obviously. How can or will students be evaluated would change the dynamic, connectivity at home (although that could be covered in the “whatever else you envision as necessary” point above – student connections at home – communitywide wireless?). What else needs to be considered?

How confident are you feeling now? You are one of the instigators here no matter what your role is (teacher, district/state edtech administrator, IT admin, ?). People are going to remember you (and others) pushed for this. They’re putting their money and resources behind you (and others). You have railed for these changes for a long time … and now you have them. Still confident this will lead to better student learning? Can you prove students are learning better or more? How? Test scores? Portfolios?

So if this really happened … are you freaking out about now … or thrilled to death?

Getting everything you want can be messy.

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Slow Average Internet Speeds Relative To Other Nations Could Threaten Innovation

I’m sitting in a session by Alan November called:

Expanding Boundaries of Learning: Designing Rigorous and Globally Connected Assignments

And I just pulled up this article:

Study: U.S. lags in ’net speed – Slow average internet speeds relative to other nations could threaten innovation
From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

Here is the first paragraph from the article:

“A report from the Communications Workers of America says the United States has fallen to 16th place behind other industrialized nations in high-speed internet access. The union warns that slow internet speeds will dull America¹s edge in competition with other countries, and it recommends a national policy to address the problem.”

So I’m at the largest edtech conference in the US – and this is what I pull up … anyone else get the irony????

Learning is messy!!!!

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Cafe Envy

Jeff Utecht wonders why those of us populating the Blogger Cafe find it more engaging than many of the sessions. Well for one, you have a group of the most knowledgeable edtech people from all over the world in the same place, at the same time sharing and mashing all that knowledge and enthusiasm – “ and that’s powerful and addictive. You aren’t tied to “the topic” of a session – you can pick and choose and blend topics.

More intriguing to me is how do we replicate “Bloggers Cafe” on the web? Of course the answer is you can’t – Blogger’s Cafe has no time zone issues (if you’ve ever wanted to do a Skype session with other places in the world you know how difficult time zones are to deal with), it has no connectivity, platform or software issues. Sharing is immediate and not bound by what you can see or hear or feel on your computer.

This is the first “Cafe” and no one could anticipate its allure and how it has leveraged the entire conference. But it does then beg the question – how could we capture any of its power over the net? Skype or Elluminate are good tools for connecting – but the time zone issue clouds them. Wikis, blogs, feeds, and so forth all have their place – could they be mashed in some way to capture any of the magic of this place? It would be more than worth it to try – so you do it – you have the time, don’t you? Hmmm – yep that’s the rub. What new web 2.0 (3.0 actually) app could we come up with that would do this – you’d be a gazillionaire if you come up with it and develop it because this is way too powerful and meaningful.

Jeff Utecht, Chris Lehman, Darren Draper, John Pederson, Janice Stearns and I Skype-chatted a great session by Will Richardson just now –  Dean Shareski, Clarence Fisher, Bill Fitzgerald and others joined from as far away as Canada – here we were live Skype-Chatting Will’s preso and sharing it with people thousands of miles away.

Afterwards Chris Lehman may have captured the essence of “Blogger’s Cafe” when he said, “Blogger’s Cafe  is the reflection time not present in the sessions.” We all literally said, “AHHHH!”

Here’s to another example of “messy learning”

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Pinch Me, I must Be Dreaming!

After finishing up our second and last day of ActivBoard training today I was talking with Mark Skoff, our school district’s Technology Program Coordinator (translation: He gets a teacher’s salary and puts out every edtech fire in a district of 65,000 students). He was explaining about what our plans are for next year. We are rolling out 200+ classrooms that will have ActivBoards, but he went on to mention that we have already purchased video iPods for podcasting and vidcasting classes for teachers next year – more digital photo classes – PDA classes – and the possibility of iPhone classes – they are serious! Realize that when you take any of these classes you get (for free to use with your students) the iPod or camera or PDA OR iPhone!!!

The reason this excites me as much as it does is that not even 2 years ago we blocked almost everything – Flickr, blogs, wikis, Skype are not blocked now and they are even talking about unblocking MySpace and other sites IF teachers take trainings in best practice use with students. Not even 2 years ago the classes offered beside one digital video class per year – a couple digital photo classes and some PDA classes were 3 classes on Word, 3 classes on Powerpoint and 2 classes on Excel … oh and classes on Groupwise (our e-mail client) and EasyGrade Pro, that was it. Attitude toward edtech was ..”just be happy doing Powerpoint presentations and Word docs with your students … and use the net, but not too much.” Those of us doing Marsopolis were hassled some about setting up yahoo email accounts in our classrooms so students could communicate with each other between schools – IT was really uncomfortable with that.

So what happened to change minds? (because pretty much the same people are in charge of Ed tech and IT now as were then). Some higher ups have been to some conferences, some of our edtech people finally “got it” how restrictive and narrow minded some of our policies are, and the few of us that were doing things anyhow raised awareness for how powerful web 2.0 is and could be. Like the title says: Pinch Me, I must Be Dreaming! Oh, and so I guess this is more news that keeps me optimistic about finally making some progress towards trying some new ways and new tools. Yea!!!

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Positive Signs

Monday and Tuesday this week I’m co-teaching an ActivBoard class with Doug Taylor. The participants in the class are all receiving new Promethean ActivBoards, projectors and HP laptops for their rooms. Many of the 40+ teachers involved in this 2 day training have little to no experience with integrating tech in their classrooms. I have mentioned several times in the last year that I have had reason to be optimistic about shifts in attitudes about change and integrating technology and I noted today that that seems to happen every time lately that I work with teachers in sessions like this one.

This has really not been the case for years. I could tell so many “horror “ stories about attitudes and lack of vision ( as I’m sure you could too).  The teachers today were enthusiastic and open to new thinking and gave me more reason to be optimistic.