Microsoft just announced the release of a co-authoring feature of Office Web Apps. This was a definite hole in their product, one that Google Apps for Education did not have. Some of my colleagues have been on the fence about whether they should implement Google Apps or Office Web Apps (Live @EDU) I wonder if this will nudge anybody toward the Microsoft cloud solution.

from Microsoft:
“We’re always listening to suggestions about how to make Office Web Apps better, and as an Office Web App user, we wanted to make sure you were the first to know about any new improvements. That’s why I’m thrilled to share with you the new co-authoring feature in Word Web App.

Starting today, when you use Word Web App on Skydrive, you can collaborate with anyone, at the same time, no matter what version of Office they have.

Using co–authoring in Word Web App you can:

• Work with a group on the same document at the same time from different places
• See who’s editing which parts of the document in real time
• Make changes in a controlled fashion – your edits aren’t visible to others until you’re ready
• Work without distraction – the section you’re working on is locked so others can’t jump in with their changes until you’re done”

Read more

I worked yesterday with 3 teachers writing a grant to the local education foundation. We are hoping to have some iPod Touches funded. The grant project is focused on reading fluency.  What impressed me most about the meeting were two things.
O N E – Everybody contributed to the process. It was very collaborative with people jumping in a making suggestions and tweaking both the project, as well as the grant proposal.
T W O – Nobody tried to focus on the hardware (the tool) and we were all really talking about and excited about the possibilities of increasing reading fluency using digital audio.

Now cross your fingers for us!

Collaboration, partnerships, and communication across organizations are key characteristics for today’s successful organizations. We are stronger and can offer more when we build strong partnerships with other organizations whose missions and interests align with our own.

In this brief slide deck that I presented at a MassCUE board retreat, my points were about serving our members, using social networking and other tech tools to communicate and connect with our members.

Another important characteristic is a focus on growing your network, and this should include partnering with other organizations. The MassCUE annual technology and education conference has become exponentially better, has grown in attendance, and has improved in reputation in the last two years. What did we do? We moved to a better location (Gillette Stadium) and we partnered with the state school superintendents’ organization (Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents).

The importance of this partnership almost can’t be overstated. Vendor sponsors like that teachers, technology staff, and superintendents are all at one conference together. We see more districts sending teams of educators, now that more central office administrators are aware of the conference and the quality keynote speakers, sessions, and sponsors.

This partnering and collaborating is a trend I am now spotting more often. I read this week that The National School Boards Association and the American Association of School Administrators will combine their annual conferences into a single event beginning in 2013. This makes sense. Instead of competing for attendees, they work together toward positive results for both organizations.

The National Association of Secondary School Principals recently changed their logo. It dropped the word principal from the logo and it now says  “leading schools.” The announcement mentioned appealing to a broader audience and recognizing that there are many leaders in a school.

What is your organization doing to partner with others? Are you planning joint conferences, or professional development?

I am reading Sherry Turkle‘s book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, and am finding it really interesting, so far. If you are curious about the book and want to read an interview to learn a little more, check out this interview on the Fast Company web site.

In this interview, as in the book, she makes the point that technology is useful for things like having a virtual meeting with distant colleagues or business partners, but can be intrusive when used at a face-to-face meeting.

Turkle says:

What I’m against is a kind of technological promiscuity, where that technology, so perfect in that [Abu Dhabi] circumstance, is the technology you think is perfect for people to bring into a board meeting, when they need to be working on a problem together. In that case it’s not the technology of choice. They’re not physically present with the people they need to bond with and deeply connect with, and need to make very consequential decisions with.

Taking this thought and applying it to the face-to-face meetings we have in school districts, I began to wonder about the various norms of behavior and what is acceptable from one school or district to the next. Is it an acceptable part of your school culture to “stay connected” during meetings? Are people checking their email or twitter feeds with part of their attention, while focusing only partially on their colleagues and the conversation in the room? Or, have you established norms of behavior that require people to power down when they come to a meeting? If so, are exceptions made for urgent communication or work?

Do you know where you fall on the question of electronics at a meeting? I have to admit I am ambivalent. I tend to pull out my iPhone and check email two or three times in the course of a two-hour meeting. Additionally, there are some meetings that if I could not bring my laptop and work on something I would have to ask to be excused from the meeting – some deadlines are hard and fast. I’d rather be there participating on half-steam than miss it altogether.

On the other hand, I agree with Turkle. The screen that pops up between people can serve as a real barrier to connecting deeply, engaging in a meaningful way, and making decisions that are truly reached by collaboration and consensus, an agreement arrived at by all members together.

What’s your preference? Technology on or off at meetings?

Tomaz 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 within 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:

http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForStudents/2007Standards/NETS_for_Students_2007_Standards.pdf