eSchool News Item

“The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has named 16 finalists in the first round of its Race to the Top competition, which will deliver $4.35 billion in school reform grants.

Selected March 4 from a pool of 41 applicants were Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The winners will be chosen in April.”

The full proposal that was submitted by Massachusetts is available at:
http://www.doe.mass.edu/arra/rttt/narrative.pdf

I am so looking forward to the MassCUE fall technology conference this year.

Title of conference and dates:
Tackling 21st-Century Learning
Be sure to save the dates: October 28 and October 29 with the pre-conference on October 27!
Registration is open now.

There are four big reasons that have me so pumped!

1) NEW LOCATION
The conference has moved from its location of the past several years to GILLETTE STADIUM. The location is awesome. We’ll be using the clubhouse level for keynotes, exhibitors, and food, while the breakout sessions will be in the corporate boxes. The space has made it possible for us to have hands-on sessions, a cyber-cafe, and more room to just sit together and chat between sessions.
An extra bonus of this location is that it is close to Rhode Island. I have heard from some of my friends from other New England ISTE affiliates that people will be coming from all over New England, but that we should especially expect an influx of attendees from our neighbors from Rhode Island. Nice for networking, getting fresh ideas, and meeting new friends.

2) NEW PARTNERSHIP
The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents (M.A.S.S.) and MassCUE (Massachusetts Computer Using Educators) are co-sponsoring the event this year. Each organization has, in the past, each had a fall technology conference. Bringing them together, the resulting conference will be MORE than the sum of their parts. Technology using teachers will be at the same conference with superintendents…hearing the same messages, talking to vendors together, and talking over lunch about how they can move forward back in their school district. It’s a great opportunity to kick off new initiatives with a unified vision.

3) GREAT KEYNOTE SPEAKERS, SPOTLIGHT SPEAKERS, AND BREAKOUT SESSIONS
Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap, will present a provocative talk about the skills that students need in order to get—and keep—a good job in the new global economy and to be an active and informed citizen.

Donald J. Leu, with J. Gregory McVerry, W. Ian O’Byrne, Lisa Zawilinski, all of the University of Connecticut and the New Literacies Research Lab, will talk about The New Literacies of Online Reading Comprehension. Very timely and important topic!

In addition, there are so many really exciting and cutting edge breakout sessions that it is hard to select just a few to tell you about here. You can see the complete list at:
http://masscue.org/Conference2009/pdf/Complete-Workshop-Schedule.pdf

From Information Literacy to Information Leadership
In this interactive workshop, participants will have an opportunity to: 1) consider some implications of a focus on teaching and assessing 21st century skills; 2) look at a model for assessing 21st century skills; and 3) consider next steps for their classroom, school, or district.
Tony Wagner, Co-director, Change Leadership Group, Harvard Graduate School of Education

GoogleDocs/Netbooks/Moodle
Lee McCanne, Director of Technology and School Libraries, Weston Public Schools

SCORE: Winning Strategies to Conquer Information Overload
Kathy Schrock, Director of Technology, Nauset Public Schools, 1996 Pathfinder

Cyber-Bullying in Massachusetts: Current Trends & Compliance with the Broadband Data Act
Elizabeth Englander, Professor of Psychology and the founder and Director of the Massachusetts
Aggression Reduction Center (MARC), Bridgewater State
Sharon Grover-Renda, Director of Sales and Marketing, MECnet

The Educational Administrator’s Role in Advancing Technology: Issues, Considerations, and Challenges Inherent in Moving an Educational Organization Forward
Nicholas D. Young, Superintendent, Hadley Public Schools
Patrice Dardenne, Superintendent of Schools, Monson Public Schools
Suzanne Marotta, Superintendent, West Springfield Public Schools

The iPod Touch and Mobility Considerations for the School Leader
Paul Facteau, Marketing Development Executive, Apple Inc

There are sessions on using Moodle, Maximizing Collaboration using Technology, Creating Sustainable Professional Development Programs, Cloud Computing, and Using Data. I see sessions about the arts, science, math, writing, and more. Dr. Chris Moersch, the Executive Director of LoTi Connection will be presenting HEAT, and Beth Knittle, Massacusetts’ own second life expert is presenting a session. Do you use (or want to use) SCRATCH in your classroom? Want to meet Mitch Resnick, one of the primary developers? He will be presenting at the conference. Michael Purdy’s breakout on Classroom Twittering sounds really cutting edge and Isa Zimmerman’s session on STEM in pre-school should not be missed. You can learn about voicethread, robotics, universal design, smartboards, Eno boards, wikis, social bookmaking . . . . OK, you really have to check out the program yourself!

4) HANDS-ON!
Apple is back at our conference and will be running hands-on sessions all day both days.
At the pre-conference hands-on sessions attendees will take away software and all the tips and tricks about using the software.
During the main conference days there will be some hands-on (make it and take it) sessions. These will require a separate registration fee, but those who sign up for it will have a hands-on session learning to use something in the classroom (like a flip camera) and will take away the flip-camera at the end of the session – price included in the price of the session.

See you at GILLETTE in OCTOBER!!

I n Massachusetts there is some momentum around harnessing the energy and good will of businesses, individuals, state agencies, and other non-profits to partner with schools toward achieving some big technology goal for schools. This goal has yet to be determined, but the "shorthand" description I have heard is the "next net day." The name does not reflect that people think that schools still need volunteer wiring, but rather that net day is recognized as one of those pivotal volunteer efforts that started small, grew bigger, and accomplished something of value for schools. I think the idea of "net day" is that it will be an effort that uses the net day type framework to get various players to buy in, help organize, and to get the state to put their weight behind it.

Net Day was a volunteer, grassroots effort to get school classrooms connected to the Internet. It started back in the mid-nineties and was originally meant to take place on one Saturday. The first Net Day, March 9, 1996, saw volunteers show up at many schools in California to pull ethernet cable through the buildings to bring the Internet to students. According to Wikipedia , "20,000 volunteers helped to wire 20 percent of California schools to the Internet." The event was seen as a big success and was replicated in many more states and grew into a national effort and organization. And regardless of the fact that most schools have probably long since replaced that volunteer-pulled cable with newer, higher category ethernet cable, it is hard to deny that Net Day was indeed a valuable happening. Schools did get wired, computers were connected, and, perhaps even just as important, a new awareness of technology in education was generated. The photo of Bill Clinton and Al Gore standing on ladders and pulling cable lent validity to the notion that schools had to get wired and take advantage of what technology had to offer.

So is there another opportunity for a coalition of like-minded individuals and groups to accomplish something significant for schools and for the efforts of educators to use technology effectively? Is there some organizing goal that will galvanize interests? It seems to me that there is. My problem wasn’t thinking up ways that schools could use some outside help, but in limiting my ideas to just a few. At the moment, I’ve narrowed it down to three big areas: bandwidth, computers, and professional development. Everyone who has anything to say about education today is talking about and writing about 21st century skills and a 21st century classroom. But what does that mean?

The various accounts and many points of view seem to have a few things in common. They mention skills like collaboration, creativity, communication, and problem-solving, and they mention computer and information literacy. For example, The Partnership for 21st Century Skills says that students must use "digital technology, communication tools and/or networks appropriately to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in a knowledge economy."
So, as a rule, visions of a 21st century education necessarily include technology, Internet access, and using computers to collaborate, research, communicate, and solve problems. In order for schools to do a high quality job of educating students, we need high bandwidth, computers for students and educators to use, and professional development for teachers so they know how to integrate technology and 21st century skills into teaching and learning.

Bandwidth
Schools all over Massachusetts deal with their bandwidth issues separately, individually. There are a variety of providers, from telephone companies to cable television companies, that schools work with for Internet access, and erate goes only so far. I wish the state would work with businesses to negotiate really good deals for high bandwidth (synchronous 15, 20, 50, 100 Mbps?) Internet access that all schools could take advantage of.

Computers
I wish schools could, to some extent, get out of the business of providing computers (or some kind of computing device) for students and teachers. I think it would be a good idea if a "new net day" coalition created a student/educator computer purchase program that was more than a token discount. I think that if teachers and students could get really amazing deals on laptops that they would actually prefer to use their own laptop and bring it back and forth to and from school. This would free school computer dollars up for computers for the lower elementary grades, some specific application computer labs, administration, and to have computers on hand for those who, for any reason, do not have their own computer to use. This idea is not without its problems. Issues to resolve would be protecting school networks from viruses, spam and adware; making sure each computer has the necessary suite of software; developing a way for lower income students to also have a laptop, and probably a dozen other issues I am not yet thinking about. Still, I think that the more personal computers we allow into our schools and onto our networks, the fewer computers schools are on the hook for buying, maintaining, repairing, upgrading, replacing . . . .

Professional Development
It seems like there is never enough money for professional development. There are plenty of ways a "net day" group could help. One strategy would be matching fund grants for schools to get some money to use toward professional development for every dollar spent on technology. Another idea would be for a coalition to provide "train the trainer" training for corporate volunteers to develop them into a valuable support and mentor corp. Professional development might offer the most opportunties for partnerships – there is so much high-tech expertise in corporations, couple that with a desire to contribute to the greater good, a mentor training program, and a free way to collaborate and the possibilities start to become apparent.

These are just the beginning thoughts of one person, meant to get the conversation started. I would love to hear ideas from others. What might the next "net day" be and how would it work and what would the impact be?