Welcome to K12EduBuzz.com. I am Jean Tower and I appreciate your visit to my blog. I encourage comments and look forward to online conversations with my readers.
Every New England state has state ISTE affiliate organization, and together, we form NEISTE .
From our web site:
NEISTE is an organization representing the ISTE affiliates in the six New England States (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont). The goal is to provide a forum for coordination and support of state technology organizations through a regional effort.
Our NECC NEISTE reception was last night. It was well attended by educators from all of the New England states. At the reception, NEISTE announced a new partnership agreement between our organization and CDI computers. The agreement provides a 10% discount (from the already very low prices) for any school or government agency from New England purchasing CDI’s refurbished (off-lease) computers. The New England customers will also get a free extension of the typical three-year warranty to FIVE YEARS. Additionally (drum roll please) the offer extends to ALL of our educators and students! This is a wonderful agreement, sure to benefit teaching and learning in New England.
I am proud to be an active member of the NEISTE group. Go New England!
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Tuesday at NECC 2009 I enjoyed the keynote address. It was in Oxford-style debate format, moderated by NPR’s Robert Siegel. The two sides argued the premise: Bricks and Mortar Schools are Detrimental to the Future of Education. For or against? The against side won (audience decision using response system) but they argued that education had to change substantially and that a hybrid of face to face and online was the key. Lots of fun.
See link below for more details:
http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/program/keynotes.php
The most memorable experience of the day was my participation in the Storm the Hill event. ISTE organized the event for hundreds of educators to meet key staff people from the offices of senators and congressional members. (See http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/glance/dc_hill_visits.php for details.)
I, along with about ten colleagues from Massachusetts, met with Bethany Little from Senator Kennedy’s office and with Nicholas Christiansen of Senator Kerry’s office. Then, we split into smaller groups to visit our region’s member of Congress.
Deb Donohue and I met with Lisa Salerno, a staffer in Jim McGovern’s office.
In every meeting, we talked about the following:
- the importance of funding the Enhancing Education Through Technology program (EETT)
- funding Preparing Teachers for Digital Age Learners, and
- simplifying Erate, fully funding erate, and supporting the bill to permanently exempt Erate from the Anti-Deficiency Act in order to prevent a repeat of the temporary shutdown that occurred.
Every staff person we met with was charming and welcoming, informed, and on board with our recommendations. I hope that this translates into some active support on the part of our senators and congressional members.
On a side note, it was so fun to walk through the halls of our government, armed with purpose, conviction, and appointments to make a difference. Thanks to ISTE for organizing!
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Terrific conference day at NECC 2009.
We started the morning at a 7:30 breakfast hosted by Polyvision. Attendees got an advanced look at some of their new developments. I continue to be really impressed by the Eno board.
We raced right from the Grand Hyatt back to the convention center to attend a preparation session for our visit to Capitol Hill tomorrow. I look forward to meeting with staffers from the offices of: Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and James McGovern. We will be talking about the importance of technology in education, funding, erate, and 21st century skills.
From the Storm the Hill session we went directly to a CoSN CTO Leadership Forum , How 2 B a Disruptive Technology Leader! This was an interesting session examining how web 2.0 tools are (and will be) disrupting schools.
After a quick lunch I picked up my advocacy packet and t-shirt (to wear to the hill) and then visited the exhibitor’s floor. It is so big I was overwhelmed. Every exhibit I visited had something interesting to share.
At 2 pm, I attended Leslie Fisher’s Gadget Class: Now with Web 2.0 Freshness! I saw more new software tools, useful web 2.0 sites, and cool hardware in ONE hour than I could have researched and found in weeks. Favorite things I learned? The turntable with the USB port (digitizing your old vinyl); jott.com; smugmug.com; and iPhone apps like Shazam, SmugMug, Yelp, and AroundMe. BONUS – it was lots of fun. Go Leslie!
From there I went to Scott McLeod’s session, Effective Leadership in an Era of Disruptive Innovation. I thoroughly enjoyed Scott’s interpretation of Clay Christensen’s work. Check out his writing on this at bit.ly/neccmcleod1 .
After such a busy day spent taking in new ideas and racing from one thing to the next, it was nice to visit School Wires reception and then to have dinner with a couple of MassCUE friends, Tom and Annamaria.
Tomorrow looks to be just as jam-packed, starting with a 7:30 am breakfast presentation. <yawn. . must sleep>
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This evening one of the events I attended was the SEDTA “Turning the Tables” state member set up . Each participating state technology director sets up a table displaying materials that tell what that state is doing with technology in education. One of the agenda items was the Virginia’s Innovative Application Contest Winners Award Ceremony. Todd Bowden won for a really cool educational app, Number Line. Number Line is available free from the iTunes store (under apps).
After the award was presented, the featured guest speakers were Aneesh Chopra (Obama Administration, Chief Technology Officer and Associate Director for Technology, Office of Science and Technology Policy) and Jim Shelton (US DOE, Assistant Deputy, Secretary, Office of Innovation and Improvement). They were both interesting and spoke with great conviction of the importance of technology as a key factor in improving schools and in rebounding the economy.
I have tried to capture here, a few of the salient points.
Aneesh Chopra:
The Obama administration does not see technology as a separate entity or program with technology centered goals. Rather, the thinking is more like “how do I bring technology innovation to the entire portfolio of projects I want to accomplish.”
My Comment: This is exactly the kind of shift in thinking I wish for my colleagues in education. Rather than ask me what is the latest and greatest gadget, I would like to have educational administrators think about how we can apply technology to core curriculum issues and to all of our strategic plans and goals.
Jim Shelton:
In talking about the role of technology directors, Jim explained how technology was becoming an ever more vital piece in the solution to many problems. “People are about to figure out how important you really are” and “expect to be pulled into conversations in many realms” he said.
“The details of The Race to the Top are not yet public” but he did add a note about technology being an important component of many solutions.
Jim said that one important goal of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was to improve the infrastructure and specifically, to ensure that broadband becomes fully deployed.
More than once, he said that our educational standards must be “fewer, higher, and clearer” and that we must use ARRA funds for “more impactful outcomes.” He said that this was the biggest one time investment in education and that we will all be disappointed if five years from now we have spent it and don’t see real impact.
ISTE CEO Don Knezek asked about an “expanded accountability system” that would assess students all up and down the spectrum and that would not be targeted at measuring against some lowest minimum standard. Neither Jim nor Aneesh brought clarity or new thinking about this topic, but they also did not come to the defense of “the test.”
In response to a question about the tension between “locked down” networks and the creativity of teachers and students wanting more freedom on computers in schools, Jim Shelton said that to make teachers really effective users of technology they had to have the following:
“Just in Time, Real Time, Support, and Professional Development”
My Comment:
Hard to argue with that!
Aneesh Chopra had a response that really resonated with me. He said that schools had to think about the requirements of the organization and “the profile of the individual who will bring technology innovation to the front office and not just do what is comfortable to the back office.”
My Comment: This is an excellent point and reflects the thinking of the CoSN committee I have been working with on school technology administrator requirements and have certification criteria. When I approached Mr. Chopra afterwards, I introduced myself and then complimented him on his insightful comment. I explained that we were working toward a certification for technology administrators, much the way other school administrators have certification. At first he suggested that he thought that two people were required, a technology administrator who understands the “techie” side of the house, and someone else who understands what to do with technology in education. I hope I made my point that the CTO must understand the business of education and that the better solution is to have a fully certified CTO who has a strong and informed network administrator (and technical team) working for her or him.
I’m so glad our state Technology Director, Connie Louie, invited us to this event. It was worth attending just to hear some of the current thinking in the Obama administration about technology in education.
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MassCUE is an affiliate organization to ISTE . I am (as I type) in a large conference room with leaders from affiliates from all across the country, as well as some folks from as far away as Australia. We are all sharing best practices at NECC 2009 .
The information, strategies, and aggregate energy in the room is amazing. I’ve taken some notes about what other affiliates do and hope to follow up with them for details.
I want to learn more about those chapters that have
- managed to hire an executive director;
- increased their conference attendance;
- make an impact in their state advocating for technology in education;
- "Master Digital Educators" certification;
- Google partnerships;
- Administrative Technology Acadamies; and
- Administrative Leadership Summits in the summer.
Lots of good work furthering the understanding of technology in education.
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T omaz Lasic comments, in his blog post entitled, How can Moodle change a school , on the "one big thing" he would bring to his school as a technology facilitator.
“Before starting to work as a part-time technology integrator at our school this year, the principal asked me to come up with one ‘thing’, one key strategy for staff and students to ICT to improve their teaching and learning. After seeing the flexibility, robustness and ‘organic’ nature of Moodle the choice was pretty simple to make.”
Read the entire post at: http://human.edublogs.org/2008/08/06/how-can-moodle-change-a-school/
I love his answer, but find myself resisting it. I, too, am enthusiastic about using Moodle in my school district. As a matter of fact, Moodle is the latest in a series of tools that I have been promoting in schools. In the mid-nineties I put together a consortium of six school districts to work together with Lotus-Ibm and a developer to create an online education space that we called Compass. It was an internet-intranet for collaborating, asynchronous discussions, and posting news and assignments. We managed to involve the support of IBM-Lotus to the extent that they donated Lotus Notes to each of the consortium districts and committed an advisor from their education sector to work with us.
We received some funding from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) to help defray development costs. A member of the ESE visited us and was so impressed that withing weeks they had their own RFP out to develop the same thing on a state-wide basis. It was known as VES (Virtual Education Space), a name that came directly from our description of our project. VES, which was never adequately funded or supported with sufficient staff, has since morphed into MassOne, an online education space for all public school educators in Massachusetts. The lack of sufficient resources in the past created both some real unreliability as well as a more widespread perception that it was unreliable. Only time will tell whether it can fully overcome its past issues and reputation, especially in light of the stiff (and free and reliable) competition from Moodle, Wikis, and blogs.
My own project (Compass) never really took wing and soared, although we had some successes. I think that educators were not ready at the time; it was a concept that still needed to ripen for many of our teachers. Of course, it was about fifteen years ago, but I still recall that one of the primary obstacles that teachers said kept them from wanting to use it was that they had to log in, and that was one step too many. We have come a long way since then.
I share this background to positively affirm the extent to which I support online learning spaces (like Moodle). I do this so that I can respectfully explain why I find myself so resistant to the idea that the "one big thing" could be software or hardware at all. I think that the "one big thing" that I would ask of a school, would not be about any specific tool. Instead it would be to use technology to further COLLABORATION. I would encourage communicating and sharing among and between groups - teachers, students, and parents. It’s not about the tool - it’s about the collaboration. In fact, I bet Tomaz Lasic would agree, and I’m sure his blog post was describing a specific answer to a question that was actually expecting a "tool" answer. I think I have answered similarly many times. My point is simply that I am going to (try) to refuse to be drawn into conversations that are tool-focused when they should be learning-centered; I will try to shift those conversations more and more toward student learning, communication, collaboration, and contributing online.
This is easy in principle, but not always easy in practice. Lots of planning and budget meetings I attend seem to gravitate toward talking about technology programs as numbers of computers, age of computers, bandwidth, and operating system. I am pledging to myself that instead of sighing inwardly, I will make more of an effort to shift the conversation to include learning outcomes. Sometimes we have to talk about the hardware and the software, but we can’t stop there.
I think it was Bill Moyers who said, "Sharing is the essence of teaching. It is, I have come to believe, the essence of civilization."
That could be the battle cry of edubloggers.
The ISTE NETS section on Communication and Collaboration appears below.
"Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance,
to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:
a. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments
and media.
b. communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats.
c. develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures.
d. contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.”
excerpt from:
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A s Director of Technology for a K-12 school district, there are times when a specific project or topic usurps a majority of my time and attention. For example, there may be a network upgrade project that commands my attention, or at other times it could be strategic planning or grant writing or goal setting or team building or curriculum planning and development (this list could go on and on) that needs my focus and pushes itself to the top of my list for an extended period of time. Lately, my recurring preoccupation has been all about professional development (PD).
I’ve been reading and writing about PD, writing grants focused on PD programs, and working with colleagues planning PD conferences (MassCUE and METAA Technology Leadership Symposium and the Fall MassCUE and M.A.S.S. Technology Conference ). In both monthly technology department meetings and in our district administrative meetings, I started a practice of having some technology PD as part of every meeting. We have held to this more closely in department meetings, but did indeed include PD using technology in some of our district administrative meetings. Lastly, the most recent issue of on Cue , the professional journal of MassCUE for which I am the managing editor, is a themed issue with a focus on PD. Phew! So much to learn, so little time.
One of the grants is to create opportunities for teachers to participate in PD so that they will become purveyors of PD to their colleagues (train the trainer, is the popular terminology). The other grant is for online courses for teachers to become proficient in online teaching. The conferences will include keynote speakers, presentation-style sessions, a cyber café, hands-on workshops, and “make it and take it” sessions (learn on a new device and take the device with you at the end of the session).
If you are a MassCUE member, you recently received (or are about to receive) your Spring 2009 on Cue issue. This issue, delivered to the post office in April, started ten to twelve months ago. The theme was developed and publicized during the spring and summer last year. Starting with the March 2008 Technology Leadership Symposium and the fall conference I connected with presenters, educators, bloggers, and authors and invited them to contribute articles about PD. The work continued through the winter, soliciting articles from around the country, reading, editing, and planning out the issue. By the time on Cue finally went to press I felt like I had been engulfed in PD forever. Not such a bad thing, since I am a “true believer.” I think professional development and personal growth are the most important factors to improving the state of education. So, in your on Cue issue, authors share perspectives, disclose personal stories of growth and learning, and offer concrete suggestions. Thank you to all of the contributors:
Justin Reich (co-author Best Ideas for Teaching with Technology )
Thomas Daccord (co-author Best Ideas for Teaching with Technology )
Miguel Guhlin (blog: Around the Corner - MGuhlin.org )
Peggy Harvey
Walter McKenzie (site: SurfAquarium )
Carol Holzberg (profile )
Romeo Marquis (The Learning Curve )
Julie Koven (at Gann Academy )
Jason Schneider (in the news )
I hope that each reader of on Cue is inspired to take steps toward building his/her own personal learning network and commits to sharing his/her journey with others.
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In the April 20, 2009 issue, Information Week ran an article entitled The Quiet Desperation of Irrelevance . I find it interesting that, in a large sense, corporate IT surveys reflect the opinions and frustrations I hear from my colleagues in school IT.
Here’s what the article said were the top 4 responses that IT professionals cited as things that would improve their job productivity.
>> Better guidance from business leaders on the most important processes, measures, and metrics
>> A clearer sense of corporate strategy from top executives
>> Better vetting and pilot testing of prospective technologies
>> More support from top execs to implement policies and procedures company-wide
Here is my attempt to translate those four into school world terms.
>> Better guidance from educators and administrators on the most important processes, measures, and metrics. That is, what are the most important things IT can do to improve teaching and learning and productivity, and how should we measure success?
>> A clearer sense of district mission and goals and strategic plan from educators and administrators, especially where IT can be most tightly coupled with these goals
>> Better vetting and pilot testing of prospective technologies
>> More support from all administrators to implement policies and procedures district-wide
I have been operating under a misperception that school leaders were less inclined to make sure they understood how to leverage technology to meet learning goals, implement the district mission and strategic plan - I guess we simply mirror the rest of the world!
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MassCUE & M.A.S.S. 2009 Technology Conference
Pre-conference: October 27 : : Conference October 28 & 29
Tackling 21st Century Learning
T he school year hasn’t even ended and I am already looking forward to the Fall 2009 Technology Conference (October 27, 28 & 29). There is a lot NEW and EXCITING about the conference this year.
PARTNER
MassCUE is partnering with the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents (M.A.S.S. ) to host the conference together. Prior to this year, each organization has held its own technology conference. The significance of this partnership is more than just two organizations working together. MassCUE and M.A.S.S. collaborating on the technology conference means that technology using educators, Instructional Technology Specialists, Technology Directors, Superintendents and other school administrators will be at the same table. Truly systemic and effective use of technology in teaching and learning requires the partnership of all district stakeholders. Bringing the constituencies together for this professional development conference represents an important step in the right direction. And what might the results be of district teams working together to evaluate the vendors and the sessions? Might there be better and more collaborative decision-making? More strategic use of technology to meet teaching and learning goals? What else?
(METAA will also be helping to organize and will have many presenters at the conference.)
LOCATION
Gillette Stadium !
Even when a conference location has served a group well, it is a good idea to shake things up and move to a new location after a few years. It is even more important to relocate in order to better serve the entire state and to improve conference amenities and technology access. So this year the MassCUE Board of Directors has been working for many months on securing Gillette Stadium as the conference location for 2009 and 2010. This project has included the input and effort of the MassCUE conference committee, and M.A.S.S. Gillette Stadium is an exciting venue that has much to offer. The exhibit area, lunch, and keynotes addresses will be on the clubhouse level and the breakout sessions are in the luxury suites, one level up. There is plenty of parking (!) and lots of restaurants and shops that make the area a destination location.
NEW FEATURES
Lots of people are hard at work to make this conference one of the best ever. In the works are:
a Cyber café, hands-on pre-conference options, hands-on classroom sessions during the conference, and more!
KEYNOTES
Tony Wagner is the keynote speaker on October 28th. He is the co-director of the Change Leadership Group at Harvard and author of The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need –And What We Can Do About It . Tony is an in-demand speaker and is widely published. I read the book and find that his idea about the seven survival skills students need is supported nicely by the framework that the Consortium for 21st Century Skills has published. Conference participants are in for a rousing keynote about 21st century learning. I look forward to hearing Dr. Wagner address Massachusetts educators.
Dr. Donald Leu will present the keynote address on October 29th with a group of his graduate students from the University of Connecticut. Professor Leu is the director of The New Literacies Research Lab at the University of Connecticut. The lab conducts research on the new reading comprehension and learning skills required by the Internet and other emerging information and communication technologies. He is often called upon to speak on Internet literacy. Dr. Leu and his co-presenters will deliver a powerful message about 21st century literacy.
I hope to see you at Gillette in October. Please consider presenting a break-out session to share your expertise and to tell your success stories.
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B ack in February (school vacation) I upgraded my blog to Wordpress 2.7.1 and Thesis Theme 1.4.2. I have been intending to make a few little tweaks to how it looked, but was putting it off until I had a little "catch up" time. So, during April school vacation (I’m noticing a trend here) I spent time researching how to make the improvements I wanted. The blog, How to Make My Blog , by Marko Saric, was a great source of tips, strategies, and code. Marko writes clearly and his directions are easy to follow. One improvement I wanted to make was to change the look of the sidebar headers, and although he had done this on How to Make My Blog , I could not find instructions on how to implement a similar style. I left a comment on his site and in a matter of hours (minutes?) I had a reply with that included the needed code. Cool beans! Nice to interact so positively with such a generous (and knowledgeable) member of the blogging community.
So, if you are interested in tweaking your own Wordpress and Thesis Theme blog in the following ways, check out How to Make My Blog .
> Move the top menu to below the header image.
> Add a shaded Welcome box at the top of the content column.
> Style the sidebar headers (see right).
I also learned a couple of little things to do in the settings area that aren’t visible to readers, but that are helpful.
link to How to Make My Blog
http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/
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