Convergence Culture

We are living in a culture where information and technology are actually bringing the world closer.

Kim Desotell, a consultant from The Stephens Group and doctoral student in Educational Leadership at the University of Green Bay shares these two video clips on how the world is changing:

Download 2020 Vision (Windows Media Player format - 17 MB) - the volume kicks in on the third slide.Download 2020 Vision (Quicktime format - 97 MB).

Did you know? http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2006/08/did-you-know.html

Mary Lou Zuege, also a consultant from The Stephens Group shared this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

CoSN Conference

This week I attended the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) in San Francisco. I was able to go to some great sessions, participate in small group discussions, and interview leaders in the field. Here are some of the things I learned about:

International Gaming Symposium

I attended the International Symposium on Gaming. A fantastic cross-cultural project between the Modesto City Schools in Modesto, California and Kyoto Gakuen High School, in Kyoto, Japan was shared. Students in the project collaborated using Second Life.

In Second Life participants create online characters, called avatars, that interact in virtual environments. (To learn more about Second Life you can hear a podcast created by Kai Dupe, a doctoral student at Pepperdine University on the ACM Student Chapter web site.)
The project is featured in this month's edition of Edutopia. Students collaborate to learn foreign language, science, math, collaboration and communication skills by doing projects together on a shared island. The leaders of the project have been collaborating with Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life. They have been able to use technologies to assist with language translation. They have also imported video for joint presentations into the virtual reality world. In the future, Second Life plans to add live voice to their environment.

Originally, the two schools envisioned doing the project using video conferencing. However, they found that this would have been very expensive so they came up with the idea to use Second Life, which is free. The leaders of the project have created The PacificRim Exchange Blog to share all that they have learned.

During the much of the symposium there was time for small group discussions, panel discussions and questions. There is a wide variance among the participants on their perceptions of the future of gaming on education. However, the what came up over and over again was the word engagement. Whether it is gaming, podcasting, blogging what is clear is that these emerging technologies allow for more active collaborative learning environments. As Bob Moor, PhD., Sociologist of the Workspaces and Organizations Area in the Computer Science Laboratory in the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) said, "these technologies are allowing us to communicate and collaborate in new ways using whole new social worlds".

As Lord Puttnam, Education Advisor to the British Government said, "We need to motivate, engage and challenge students. If we fail to engage students we will face a whole variety of social consequences. There is urgency to reform education, because it is the precondition to every other social change". However, engagement doesn't necessarily mean better learning and it will be important that educators don't implement gaming headlong without carefully considering how to leverage this new technology to create conditions where meaningful learning can occur.
Marc Pensky also spoke. He also has an article in this month's edition of Edutopia entitled Sims vs. Games. He talks about the characteristics of simulations and games. He advocates using the best of both of these worlds when designing and choosing games for education.

1 to 1 Computing

As prices on hardware continue to come down, "nobody's asking should we move to 1 to 1, instead they are asking when should we? The bigger question we need to be asking is what if every student has a computer and nothing changes?" ~Bruce Dixon, President, Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation.

Bob Moore, Executive Director of IT Services for Blue Valley USD 229 in Kansas points out that we need to be clear on what we mean by 1 to 1. To some people that might mean having access to computers on wireless carts throughout the school day. While this is a step in the right direction, Leslie Wilson, Director of Professional and Curriculum Development & Vice President of Programs and Services for the Freedom to Learn and the One-to-One Institute, explains having access during the day is not the same as having your own laptop that you can take home with you. "Imagine if you could only have access during certain hours of the work day to do your work".

Moore also points out that we also need to be careful to confuse 1 to 1 computing with access to other mobile devices which could include devices such as Alphasmarts, cell phones, iPods and even graphing calculators. Ubiquitous computing means that students have consistent access to the Internet. This is not the same as 1 to 1 computing, but they are related.

Bruce Wilcox, Chief Executive Officer of Project Inkwell, cautions that as we move forward with 1 to 1 computing we need to be careful not create an "inequitable footprint" in delivery of services. Saul Rockman from Rockman Et Al, an educational research consulting firm, explains that there are several kinds of digital divide- (1) there is the traditional access to stuff (2) bandwidth (3) technology capacity- you may have a computer, but it may not have all of the bells and whistles – some don’t have adequate capacity especially with multimedia.

In talking with school leaders from 1 to 1 laptop programs all over the world I found out that there is not a one size fits all approach. In the North Daviess Community Schools, a rural school district in Indiana leaders report that they have had to rethink and make adjustments to the laptop program every year. "It's not going to be perfect," says Superintendent William Hamilton, EdD, Superintendent of the Walled Lake Consolidated School District in Michigan, "but you need to get started".

One of the most important components needed to have a successful 1 to 1 program is strong leadership. The leadership needs to encourage and motivate teachers. "
The superintendent needs to be the evangelist for integrating technology into the curriculum and needs to be prepared to deal with confrontation that will be brought forth by those who do not share this belief", says Hamilton. The school boards need to be committed to fully fund the program and sustain it. Changing teaching practices is hard.

Wilson explains that when you embark on a program of this magnitude you are actually asking people to make second order changes (MCREL, 2006) which challenges them personally and causes them to change their belief systems. This requires a lot of support from the leadership. "It's especially hard when you have high pressure from state test scores to be creative. Our Superintendent met with teachers once a week and asked teachers how he could help them and what risks were they taking" says Todd Whitlock, Technology Coordinator for the North Daviess Community Schools. Hamilton says that there "absolutely needs to be a shared vision between IT, the Curriculum Department and the Leadership in a district". It is important that you tie everything to the core curriculum. The more you can make this link, the better it is perceived by teachers and students."

In the Greenville County Schools in South Carolina administrators are given training on how to deal with discipline issues such as inappropriate surfing, email, and instant messaging. It is important to have defined policies on these issues in place. The district also provided Cyber Awareness training for parents.

Community involvement is also reported to be a critical component of a successful 1 to 1 initiative. You need to have student involvement in the community on real world problems so that they can see the impact on students. Computers for Youth is a non-profit organization that provides refurbished computers to low-income families. They provide families with Family activities that they can do together at home. Kallen Tsikalas the Director of Research & Learning Services says it is important that these activities be fun such as Educational Simulations Real Life. They also involve the local library in parent nights and sign up families for library cards at the same time. Tsikalas says "teachers are not used to planning activities that extend into the home".

A new 1 to 1 program also requires a lot of logistic planning. I saw a cool cart for mobile laptops made by PARAT Solutions. It holds 32 computers. When computers are in the cart they are both charged and connected to the network. This allows you to push media content to the computers. The cart also can be fitted with iPod chargers and other peripheral devices such as speakers, printers and projectors.

Another great session I went to was done by a company called Meru Networks. This company specializes in providing wireless networks. In the past their primary cliental was universities and businesses. However, they recently helped build the infrastructure for Philadelphia's public school system. Within this district, they also created a futuristic wireless infrastructure for the School of the Future. This school will serve 750 students in a state-of-the art, high tech facility that is to serve as a model school for the nation. The design that they utilize allows them to deliver fast wireless with multimedia applications and online curriculum. One bit of advice they have is that when purchasing wireless devices such as projectors, make sure that it will be compatible with the network infrastructure design.

The Greenville County Schools in South Carolina invested in a program where software tracks computers. If computers are stolen or lost and the company cannot recover them within thirty days the company gives the district a check for the computer. There are also companies, such as Lightspeed Systems, that will continually filter internet sites from alternate IP addresses.
You also need to have adequate tech support. Breakdowns should be expected and planned for. Whitlock explains that "you know when you have problems with the laptops that they are being used". Jeff McCoy, Director of Instructional Technology in the Greenville County Schools shares that one mistake that they made in their first year of a 1 to 1 laptop initiative was that they did not have enough tech support. In the second year they hired an additional technician for each school. Technicians are also available to assist in classrooms. This has made a huge difference.

Wilcox predicts that another change we are going to see is in how we deliver e-learning resources. In the past, these resources have been viewed as "supplementary". However, as we start using more rugged, reliable and mobile devices, these resources will become more imbedded in our curriculum. This is going to cause tension, which is healthy, in how we deliver instruction. According to Dixon, buying the computers is the easy part; all of the focus needs to be on what kids will be doing with them.

Over time successful 1 to 1 programs report that teaching practices change. In the North Daviess Community School District students bring their computers to the distance learning lab. This allows students to email instructions freely instead of waiting until their turn in the distance learning lab. At the high school level they report that students no longer want to write linear papers. Instead they want to use multimedia so that they can be more concise and teachers have had to change their teaching styles. However, leaders also point out that these changes take time. "Because students minds are wired differently, we need to become facilitators, not lecturers", says Hamilton. Leaders report that at first a lot of energy is spent just learning how to manage the technology, changes in pedagogy come later.

Regardless of the model of 1 to 1 computing a district uses, success is also dependent on ongoing professional development for both teachers and administrators. Professional development requires collaboration and ongoing dialog not just an episode says Wilson. She says that a coaching/mentoring model is ideal. This allows the school to build capacity. Hamilton estimates that a district needs to spend approximately 15-20% of its IT budget on profession development and leadership training in order to be successful. 1 to 1 computing also has the power to change professional development practices as well. Leaders in the North Daviess District report that professional development has moved from showing people how to use applications to talking about storyboarding and then using programs like Inspiration to help with that.

When evaluating programs, Kallen Tsikalas, advises not to rely on test data as your sole indicator of success. This type of data may be too sensitive to show change. One surprising finding made by Rockman was that initially the biggest gains in 1 to 1 programs are often special education students. This is especially true when students also participate in problem based learning on the same issues as every other student in the school. ESL students also benefited from the use of laptops in a problem based learning environment. Spanish speaking students also used the resources provided through the 1 to 1 laptop program to create videos to help educate families what resources in the community were available. "They became ambassadors for their communities for Spanish Speakers. You can do problem based learning without computers, however when you bring laptops together with problem based learning you see a very powerful outcome," says Rockman.

Data Driven Decision Making

I attended a great round table discussion on data driven decision making.

Ted Linquist from Farmington Public Schools in Connecticut, talked about the skills teachers need to use data to inform instruction:

1. They need the technical skills of getting data in and out of the data warehouse system
2. They need facilitation skills to talk about data with their colleagues
3. They need research based teaching strategies to adjust their teaching
4. They need ongoing support during implementation

In their district they give teachers conversation protocols to help facilitate conversations about data. The district also offers summer workshops for teachers to learn more about using data to inform their instructional practices.

As Lisa Petrides, PhD, President of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education points out, "Our research shows that when teachers were just given the data they didn't use it. They need to take ownership of it".

Utilization of Mobile Phones for Secondary Education

The last session I attended was about a pilot program in North Carolina using smartphones for ninth graders to use in Algebra. Students will be using the phones to access supplemental math content aligned with their teacher lesson plans primarily authored in Flash. The phones also allow students to collaborate with each other, access tutors outside of the school day, and create bogs. The phones contain Windows Mobile (Word, Excel and PowerPoint). Students can also author, post and view video, audio, digital images and text.

Students will only be given access rights to communicate with individuals participating within Project K-Nect. Other social networking sites will be blocked and all text based communication will be monitored. District leaders can remotely enable and disable different services on the phones such as voice, IM, and camera access.

The project is being funded by a grant provided by QUALCOMM. The project targets approximately 250 students, who have limited home access to the Internet, qualify for free or reduced lunch and have below average math performance. More information is available at the Project K-Nect web site http://www.projectknect.org/ .

Congratulations to the Kiel Area School District for winning the CoSN Team Award!
The award honors a district team that can demonstrate how they are using technology to improve the educational experiences for students and teachers, parents and administrators, as well as the community.