image credit: http://gothamschools.org/

At a time when most school districts across the commonwealth and around the country are feeling the pinch and being asked to tighten their belts, some schools here in Massachusetts are still moving forward with exciting technology plans and purchases.

In a recent Boston Globe article both Burlington and Beverly High Schools are mentioned because of their one-to-one initiatives. The article states that Burlington High School will provide iPad2s to all students, using a lease to spread the cost over three years. Beverly High School, according to the article, plans to provide students with laptops. “Students will be able to lease the units for about $25 a month with the option to purchase them for a nominal price upon graduation.”

Natick Public Schools has their long-range technology plan online, and the budget allocates $260,000 to purchase devices for students in grade 8, and laptops for teachers. Framingham has made a multi-year commitment to spend $500,000 on technology for each of the next four years.

All of these planned expenditures come at the same time as many schools are looking at growing class sizes, budget shortfalls, and possibly losing staff.

Why?

I think it is because many schools are realizing how vital it is for students to have ready access to technology all the time. Obviously, technology cannot be a 45-minute class that a student goes to once a day or a few times each week – the challenge for many districts has not been the concept of anytime, anywhere learning with technology, but has been funding.  Teaching with technology, allowing students more ownership of their learning, imparting 21^st century skills, encouraging BYOD (bring your own device), building networks that are end-user-device-agnostic, the ubiquity of smart phones, better cell phone coverage maps, learning what you want when you want by connecting to experts online and viewing you tube videos – these are all driving forces that cannot be ignored.

In the long-range technology plan is the district I work in, we say, “Student achievement is the driving force behind this technology plan. Student learning is at the core of what we do. We believe that the infusion of technology must be incorporated up front into the design of curriculum units, as an essential component that enhances and expands the learning experience. [..] Students will have ample opportunities to meet the state technology skills and information fluency standards. Students will have equitable, high-quality, and frequent learning experiences using technology across the district.”

To me, these all seem like pretty obvious goals. If they were vitamins, they would be the recommended minimum daily allowance. I’m very interested that some local districts are making commitments to fund their visions, and I will be watching closely to see 1) if they can garner and maintain the community support to continue, and 2) their results.

I say go for it. We are cheering you on.

I want our students to have opportunities to become expert at “21st century skills” but have yet to be successful in getting a widespread conversation about what the term 21st century skills means to us, in our schools. Several different organizations have developed frameworks defining the term, but the frameworks are not all the same. This lack of clarity may lead to confusion – we mean different things when we say 21st century skills – and this confusion may well lead to inertia – “we can’t ‘do’ it until we define it.”

Current Frameworks:
Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Metiri Group with NCREL

ISTE Standards for Students

In addition, there are books like:
21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times by Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel

21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn (Leading Edge) by James Bellanca and Ron Brandt

Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World by Heidi Hayes Jacobs

Advancing Differentiation: Thinking and Learning for the 21st Century by Richard M. Cash Ed.D.

Integrating Computer Technology into the Classroom: Skills for the 21st Century (4th Edition) by Gary R. Morrison and Deborah L. Lowther

Accelerated Learning for the 21st Century: The Six-Step Plan to Unlock Your Master-Mind by Colin Rose

The New Literacies: Multiple Perspectives on Research and Practice by Elizabeth A. Baker EdD and Donald J. Leu

Who wouldn’t be confused? The good news is that the various frameworks are very similar. Some include skills that others do not and the emphasis on certain skills varies plan to plan, but reviewed at a macro-level, they are fairly consistent. (Dede, Comparing Frameworks for 21st Century Skills)

Given broad consistency, I suggest that a school district choose any of the frameworks – simply pick the one that appeals to your community of educators and learners. I think the real work (the interesting work) will come when a school system endeavors to define what it means to bring these skills into the curriculum and to include them in teaching and learning on a daily basis.

Typically, in school decisions like this, I think the process is as important as the outcome. That is, in deciding what framework to adopt there will be worthwhile conversations and school and district leaders will have to confront local realities and teachers will have their voices heard – this is all very important. I never read a school mission statement that was as impactful as I assume the process of writing it was.

Nonetheless, I still suggest schools simply adopt a 21st Century Skills Framework and start moving. Think of it as a straw man or pilot – something to get things going and to at least react to. Plan on an annual review of the 21st century skills, and an ongoing cycle of review and re-adoption. It may even be satisfactory to start with an abbreviated framework for the first year or two. One could take the top five or six skills that appear in all the frameworks and start with that and refine on an annual basis.

The reason I suggest ACT first and PROCESS later is that if we do not act immediately, we are educating students for a past that is not their reality. One reason I think it is reasonable to adopt any framework is the consistency between them.

Here’s an (almost) irrefutable set of 21st Century Skills – not complete but included in all the taxonomies. Adopt these, get going, and review and revise as needed!

Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
Effective Communication
Collaboration and Team Building
Creativity and Innovation

This question, from Scott McLeod‘s blog post, is filled with stats, but the question goes beyond the numbers and pierces the status quo.

The Question:

“7 billion people on the planet; 5 billion cell phones. 2 billion people on the Internet. 500 million people on Facebook. 200 million on Twitter. 85 million on LinkedIn. 5 billion photos on Flickr; 50 billion photos on Facebook. 17 million Wikipedia articles. 500 billion mobile phone apps were downloaded last year. 6.1 trillion text messages were sent last year. Apple will sell 20 million iPads this year. 35 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute (or 176,000 full-length Hollywood movies each week). When are we going to start integrating technology into our schooling lives like we do in our personal lives and in our non-school professional lives?”

What is stopping us?

This article, 21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020, by Shelley Blake-Plock, asks us to envision schools without desks, homework, paper, High School Algebra I, and computers (as we know them).

Many in our field (that intersection of education and technology) will nod and cheer as they read. I wonder, though, how many parents of school-aged children still want weekly spelling lists, books made of dead trees (paper), and the 5-paragraph essay as the  primary product of student research and thinking, all leading to higher SAT scores and entrance to a competitive college. I think we have to do more outreach to parents and our wider communities to demonstrate what education could be and should be in the second decade of the 21st century.

One of the  items in Shelley’s list of 21 obsolete things is:

IT Departments
Ok, so this is another trick answer. More subtly put: IT Departments as we currently know them. Cloud computing and a decade’s worth of increased wifi and satellite access will make some of the traditional roles of IT — software, security, and connectivity — a thing of the past. What will IT professionals do with all their free time? Innovate. Look to tech departments to instigate real change in the function of schools over the next twenty years.

School IT folks – ignore this at your peril. It is the same message heard from Bob Moore when he was the keynote speaker at our Massachusetts CTO Clinic in April. Moore spoke about the changes that will enable CTOs to focus more time and energy on educational leadership and transforming the educational experience with innovative technology, and less time on managing the “stuff” of the technology department.

As we IT directors and CTOs focus more on transforming the educational experiences in our schools and on researching and spreading the word about innovative practices and relatively less time managing servers and data centers, it becomes imperative for technology administrators to have the broad skill set described in the Framework of Essential Skills (from CoSN). Skills like working collaboratively across departments, building community support, engaging stakeholders, and understanding and articulating the potential impact of technology in education become skills that are more needed in the next decade.

Based on my own experience and on the wisdom of people like Bob Moore and others, I predict that CTOs who have, in the past, concentrated in a narrow sense on boxes, wires, geek-speak, spools, tools, and devices will be marginalized in their organizations. On the other hand, those who manage IT in ways that maximize educational opportunities and who bring an all-encompassing perspective to their jobs will create new opportunities and will help play a bigger role in moving their schools or districts into an exciting future full of possibilities.

related post

Pecha Kucha

Pecha Kucha (pronounce: pechachka) is a presentation format that limits the presenter to 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, making the entire presentation 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Some of the key characteristics of a Pecha Kucha are that they are:

• Concise
• Brief
• Focused
• Very Visual

Pecha Kucha enforces a discipline. It requires the presenter to be focused and concise. In all actuality, the 20 seconds per slide could be shifted slightly if necessary, because it is the concept that is important, not the exact 20 seconds.

I have been presenting on the topic to educators and school administrators as a way to keep professional development and collegial sharing on the agenda at every meeting. If we can set aside just 7 minutes at the beginning of faculty, grade level, department, and administrative meetings, we could create a stronger culture of professional sharing about best practices.

I started thinking and working on this because I have heard so many times that there is “no time” for technology related professional development. I think we can make the time when we agree on constraints like those that define Pecha Kucha. If I were the school principal, I would ask teachers to do a 30-second introduction, then the 20 slide presentation, then have just a few minutes for questions and answers.

In order to understand the format better, watch Daniel Pink’s video.

After viewing the video, you may want to see a couple of examples. One source is Pecha Kucha Organization.

If you are going to try your hand at this, I also suggest you look at Brain Rules for Presenters by Garr Reynolds. This is a presentation on slideshare and it provides a nice perspective on making your presentations engaging.

One aspect of engaging presentations is that they are very visual. For example, below is a Pecha Kucha that I presented. Since it is very image-centric and there aren’t lots of words, it doesn’t stand up as a presentation on its own. What I say when I give the presentation is more important than what is on the slides, or at least as important.

People tend to use PowerPoint (or KeyNote or SlideShare) in one of two ways –

• as a teleprompter, containing everything they intend to say, or
• as an illustration to reinforce what they are going to say.

Pecha Kucha definitely falls into the latter category, stylistically.

Finding Images
You want to find high quality images that really illustrate what you are talking about. The images should not just be decoration on the slide, but should help to make your point and to make it memorable. You want to be sure that the images you select are labeled for reuse. I collect images that I think illustrate big concepts. I have quite a library of downloaded images. I always keep the source URL with the image so that I can credit it when I use it.

If you are new to the concept, a good source of information is Creative Commons.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

In this related post, I list lots of resources for finding good images for your presentations.

I was talking to one of my colleagues (another Technology Director in Massachusetts) recently about the different levels of support for technology initiatives we have encountered over the years, especially in terms of support from the superintendent. She is working with a new superintendent who has taken a pretty strong stance on implementing technology, 21st century skills, and embracing digital communications with the community. The message is pretty much that if you don’t know how to do something, speak up and we’ll bring resources to bear for professional development and support, but if you won’t get on board, it would be best for all if you start looking for a job in another school district.

What a great message – if you’re willing to demonstrate continual learning and engage with the goals of the district then the district will help you get there. If you aren’t even willing, the district will help you get out of there. This position demonstrates an understanding that it is no longer optional – if you are an educator or educational administrator, then your feet have to be firmly in the 21st century and you have to be looking ahead. You can’t steer the boat very well if you keep looking at the wake behind you.

But for how many districts is this the case? Do we have a strong and viable vision that looks to the future and do we hold our educators accountable for embracing and engaging in that vision?

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhf/824461180/

NBC is hosting an interactive summit on the state of education in America – Education Nation.

The summit was September 27th and 28th, and more events are happening all week. The web site says, “During the entire week of September 26th, NBC News will highlight education stories as well as broadcast live from the Plaza.” I haven’t heard or read too much about it on the news.

I am, however,  finding lots of information on the Education Nation web site:

An Education Nation scorecard
The scorecard is interactive and you enter your school and see test results and other data, including state comparisons.

Video: Shayne Evans, director of Chicago Charter School’s Woodlawn Campus, and Shmuel Meitar, founder and principal of “Time to Know” discussing whether schools are embracing technology.
This is a brief video and both guests agree that technology is very important – a critical tool.

Video: NYC pushes to revamp teacher tenure
In an interview Mayor Bloomberg explains how NY has gone after the tenure. For example, he says that if NYC has to lay off teachers they do not want to use last in, first out, but rather, exit the lowest performing teachers.

Video: PANEL: How public schools can attract good apples
A panel discusses attracting and retaining high quality teachers.

Video: Tom Brokaw Talks to Arne Duncan
This is a 41 minute video. Secretary Duncan talks to Tom Brokaw and answers the questions of college students. He announced a national campaign to attract the “next generation” of talent and the launch the associated web site teach.gov.

From Monday, there is a video of Teacher Town Hall, hosted by Brian Williams.
This video is 86 minutes and teachers participate live and through remote video connections.

Do you have any expectations for the event? What do you hope comes out of it?

I have only three small wishes.
One is that Education Nation keeps education on the national agenda as an important topic. I believe that it’s good to have more people passionate about education and engaged in an improvement process.

The second is that Education Nation gets conversations going about the importance of technology and 21st century skills in education. I can’t believe this is even a question.

The third is that I hope the ensuing conversations don’t make the mistake of blaming educators for anything everything that is wrong with the system. So many people (even Arne Duncan) seem to make an attribution error – that it’s the dedicated people in the education system that make it imperfect and not things like lack of funding.

So how about you? Do you expect any good to come of Education Nation?

I have had some interesting conversations recently about keyboarding (touch typing, really) and the shape that keyboarding instruction and expectations takes in various schools and at different grade levels.

I work in a school district in Massachusetts. Did you know that the Massachusetts state standards for students include a keyboarding expectation?
"G6-8: 1.5 Demonstrate keyboarding skills between 25-30 wpm with fewer than 5 errors."
(From http://www.doe.mass.edu/edtech/standards/itstand.doc )

In my school district students practice keyboarding skills in various grades in elementary and middle school. In addition, at our high school all students must take, as a graduation requirement, a computer explorations course. In this course students spend time practicing keyboarding in order to meet a standard that is even higher than that called for by the Massachusetts state standards document – we expect freshmen to keyboard (touch type) forty words per minute.

Why do we have keyboarding standards at all? I suppose it is indicative of a desire to have students demonstrate efficiency at using the computer for writing. Research shows that when our students compose at the keyboard, their writing is positively impacted in several ways – they write longer, write more fluently, and are more apt to edit and rewrite. But I contend that as soon as students are more efficient at the keyboard than they are at writing by hand, then students will indeed choose to keyboard. Touch typing goes further than necessary, I think. Touch typing is a skill meant for typewriters and I contend it is an outdated skill and we should be adjusting our thinking about and requirements for this skill for the computer age.

I think we need to modify the standards to reflect the tools that students are actually using, that is, we need to differentiate between typing and keyboarding . The reason it was important to be able to type 25 or 30 or 40 words per minute without errors, was that it was not easy to correct errors on a typewriter, especially once you finished a line or a paragraph or a page. If you left a word out of a typewritten page, you might have to retype the entire page. If you misspelled a word and had to go back and insert letters, again, you may have to retype the entire page.

The same is not true for keyboarding. Touch typing on the computer is unnecessary. As you word process, the software makes minor corrections as you type. Even most online forms ( google , for example) will prompt you with "did you mean. . . ?" if a typo is detected (or suspected). Students can allow software to correct minor errors as they keyboard, they can run the spell checker when they are done in order to help catch more errors, and then they can proofread and can go back and very easily make corrections, change word order, and edit, without having to redo any of the work that comes after the error, as they would have had to do on a typewritten document.

So what really is the point of requiring students to keyboard, without looking at the keys, 40 words per minute, with few errors? My guess is that it is a legacy standard, remaining from our old Underwood or Royal typewriter days.

What should the standard be? If we agree that we want students to keyboard and to be efficient at it, what would our requirement be and how would we articulate it? My guess is that it would not be something in the form of a certain number of words per minute, blind typing, and fewer than 5 errors. What would it be?

Image from: FreeDigitalPhotos.net