Deciding not to participate

NECC is generating a lot of buzz around here, particularly because it’s right here in San Antonio this year. The last time it was here, I flew down from Chicago to attend.

I enjoyed going to NECC the three years that I was in Chicago because I was new at this gig and had a lot to learn. Now, I feel like the tech conferences don’t offer me much that’s new at all.

In fact, I think most of the sessions will be about things I read about online on a daily basis.

I understand the need of some to get together in person and discuss these things, but in the big picture, it’s not helping my teachers for me to go because none of them are being offered the opportunity (and they should be) and I have family things that I’d rather be doing with my time off.

There is a general sentiment around here that it would be a waste not to go, and yet, no one is jumping at the opportunity.  I think we’re all kind of tired of the same old, same old.

After my disappointment with TCEA this year, I just didn’t feel the need for my school district to spend money for me to attend something that wasn’t going to be productive for me.  I felt that it might be more of a waste for me to go, rather than not go.

Now, that’s putting the cart before the horse a bit, but I’ve been looking at the schedule online and nothing really jumped out at me as being something I needed to learn. Besides, with all the folks I read on a regular basis going to the conference, I can just learn through them.

What does 1-1 look like?

Tim had an interesting post, which sparked some brain activity.  I actually sort of started this post in the comment section of his post, but I thought I’d pose it here too.

Does 1-1 really mean every child has a laptop in front of them, or should we, as schools, be looking at a different type of 1-1 computing?

With computing devices coming in all shapes and sizes these days, and the ed tech community at large talking about how we can use these devices with students, why is it that tech directors are still fixed on 1-1 computing looking like this?

Maybe instead of being fearful of the major outlay of funds required for purchasing and upkeep of laptops, we should be exploring other options.  Yes, the laptop can provide many different uses in one package, but how many of those uses could be accomplished with other technology?

Alphasmarts or Palms for word processing, Palms, iPods, or a cell phone call to GCast for voice recording, Palms or probeware for in the field testing, cell phones or wireless Palms for a quick google…the options are our there, and much less expensive than a laptop.

I guess what you really need to look at is what the laptops would be used for.  If the main focus of a 1-1 program is getting students to use the technology outside of class using those laptops at home for research and production, then maybe laptops are the way to go.  If the crux is to get a computing device in the hands of every student during the course of the school day, then there certainly are other ways to do that.

At the end of the day, when it comes down to dollars and cents, I’d be willing to bet we’d be a lot more successful (and not have to worry about battery power as much - the original point of Tim’s post) using a variety of smaller devices than trying to deal with the distribution and upkeep of thousands of laptops.

Professional decisions

It’s been a difficult week for me professionally.  I had to make a decision about where I wanted to go with my career, but that career is also effected by my family and financial concerns.

At the end of it all, I decided to stay put, and not move into a more prominent role in a smaller district.  As I said, it was a very difficult decision for me, but I know I made the right decision.

I’ve only been working in my current district for 18 months, and there’s still a lot of work to do here.

Proof of that was my meeting with the secondary curriculum director yesterday, which turned into a meeting with all of our curriculum folks, which ended up turning into an audience with the Superintendent.

The meeting was about whether we should do a pilot of online coursework, and it was very well received.  I was well prepared with my research and plan of implementation, and the go-ahead was given to start using Moodle to allow our students to continue their classroom discussions beyond the classroom.

I’m excited to see where this will eventually lead.  Everyone in the meeting was excited about the possibilities further down the road, and for once, I was the one pulling back on the reins trying to keep the meeting focused on the here and now, and how we were going to implement the pilot.

It’s going to be a fun summer!

A call to action…

I am writing this post today in response to a call to action from some alumni of my Master’s program.  I hope that those of you looking into online programs will give Pepperdine a look, and those of you who know people looking to get a Master’s Degree will pass this on.

I graduated from Pepperdine University’s Online Master of Arts in Educational Technology in the summer of 2003.   I decided to look into because, at the time, the Master’s programs at other universities I’d looked at consisted of a curriculum degree with maybe one or two technology classes thrown in.

The program at Pepperdine stood out to me for a couple of reasons.  First the superficial ones:

1. It’s Pepperdine, for God’s sake!
2. It was online, which meant that I didn’t have to go anywhere.
3. It was only 13 months, meaning I’d be done sooner, rather than later.
4. I had to go to California to start the program.

And then what I found when I started:

1. The group of people you go through the program with become like family.
2. You own your research because it effects your workplace.
3. You get to make a change.
4. You truly come to understand the philosophy behind educational technology.
5. Your coursework will give you the opportunity to explore with some of the greatest minds in the field.

The Online Master of Arts in Educational Technology (OMET or OMAET as it’s called by students and alumni) changed my entire way of thinking about educational and technology’s role in education.  In this program, you’re challenged in your traditional ways of thinking because you’re not in the program with people just like you.

I was expecting K-12 educators and what I got was a baseball coach, a university registrar, a homeschool advocate, a college tech director, and much, much more.  In addition to all of those job fields, your classmates are from all over the country and world.

Perhaps the best part of OMET is the fact that it’s not entirely online.  Before you even start the program, you go through a week-long, very intense “virtcamp” in Los Angeles, where you meet your cadre and some of your professors face to face.  This face to face meeting, I feel, is the thing that makes this program unique.  Because you meet your classmates and professors, and spend a week of 8 hour days getting to know them, you become invested in the program.  You look forward to the mid-program meeting and reconnecting with those same people face to face again.

You go through every course with this same group of people and their thoughts and ideas influence your research and arguments in ways you never thought possible.  It shapes your practice of what you do and how you do it.  Five years later, I still reflect on every move I make and every new product we try.  I make sure I have my arguments for or against something before I go into a meeting, and I make sure I have evidence to back things up.

Being a graduate of OMET is like being part of a big family.  Even though I may not know every person from every cadre that came before or after Bu5Alive, we all have a special bond.

Now we are hearing that OMET enrollment is dropping and that there may not be a cadre 11.  I can only hope that in the sea of copycats that have come along, people will take a hard look at Pepperdine when considering a Master’s program, and especially an online one.

There are several online programs to choose from, but in my opinion, Pepperdine offers one of the premier online Master’s programs out there.  Please check it out.  I think you’ll be surprised by what you learn and how fun this program is.

Inspiration

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, and not a lot of writing. Part of that is because I’ve been busy at work, but part of it is because I’ve felt like anything I was going to write was going to be a complaint and negative, and I’m really trying not to do that, and not get into any of the negative stuff that’s going on at work (at least not in this very public forum).

Today, I read something that inspired me to write about my own learning experience. Doug wrote about learning to fall :

I believe that teachers should try to learn something that’s hard, every once in a while. And maybe even scary. It gives us some appreciation for what many students have to routinely deal with. But, of course, it should also be something that you really want to do, or why would you bother? And how often do students get to make that choice?

I think he’s right, which is why I decided last fall that I wanted to learn to play the guitar. It’s really been a learning experience for me because I’m not learning musically, which is how I’m trained, instead, I’ve been learning by ear and learning to play chords.

Over the past couple of months I’ve toughened up my fingers so it no longer hurts when I press down on the strings, and now I’m working on my timing, switching between chords. I’m learning on my own, without the help of an instructor, but at some point, I may want to do that as I get more into the advanced techniques.

But that’s the thing about being an adult, isn’t it? We get to pick what we want to do. We tell our students what they need to do, what they need to learn, and how they need to learn it. At what point do we trust them enough to let them choose their own path?  I don’t think a junior high student necessarily needs to be given a wide range of classes to take, but giving them open ended options for completing a project sure is a good place to start.

There are always going to be students who need step by step instructions on what to do and how to do it, but just as we modify for special ed students, we should be modifying for those students who are more independent thinkers as well.

Maybe our school system is too ingrained in the corporate approach of “we’ll tell you what to do and when to do it, and you all just be good little sheep and follow along.”

Holy cow…am I becoming a radical?

Otra Vez

I know I mentioned this the other day about the national standards, but I just finished sitting through a TEA session on tech applications.

Why in the world are we doing a technology assessment on students first?  All teachers were supposed to be “technology literate,” according to NCLB, by Dec. 31, 2006.

But where is the assessment for teachers?  Where are the consequences if they aren’t?

ARRRRRRRGH!

Nothing to write home about…

I’m currently sitting in a conference room at the Austin Convention Center waiting for a concurrent session to start.  It’s the first one I’ve really been excited about at TCEA this year.

Of course, like every conference I’ve ever been to, another session that I really wanted to attend is taking place at exactly the same time in the room next door.   I’m just hoping I picked the right session to attend, because titles and descriptions don’t always tell you the whole story of what a presentation will be.

I spent a large part of the day yesterday wandering the exhibit floor, and maybe it’s that I’ve attended enough of these conventions to know better, or maybe it’s the fact that I walk quickly through so as not to get hounded by the carnies sales people, but I just didn’t see anything that blew me away.  Nothing new.  Nothing revolutionary.

In fact, it seemed to me like everyone was copying one of two companies: eInstruction, or SMART.  Everyone and their brother is selling some sort of interactive white board, or a student response system, or a combination of both.

Most of the software is geared toward TAKS and is the same  sorry drill and kill stuff that’s been around for years.

Even the session are getting stale.  There are entirely too many sessions on blogging and podcasting.  They’re what’s in, and since I already know how to do both, it eliminates about 1/4 of the sessions for me.

Maybe I’m just getting grumpy in my old age, but if this is how NECC is going to be this summer, I’d rather just stay home, even though it’s in San Antonio this year, and would be really easy for me to get to.

Bah humbug.

Bass-ackward

I received an email this morning from ISTE calling for help during the upcoming TCEA conference in Austin to “refresh the NETS for Teachers.” These were standards that were first put into place for teachers in 2000, following the implementation of NETS for students in 1998.

From the ISTE NETS web page:

NETS for Students was unveiled at NECC 2007. NETS for Teachers (NETS•T) will be introduced in 2008, and NETS for Administrators (NETS•A) in 2009.

Doesn’t that seem a bit backward? I mean, when the standards first came out, of course everyone was gunning for what students should know, but now that kids are growing up with computers, shouldn’t we be focusing more on what the adults need to know?

According to the US Department of Commerce, the percentage of households with computers rose 20% in 5 years (1998-2003) with just over 60% of households having computers in 2003. If that trend continued, then we can extrapolate that close to 80% of households in the US have computers today.

Kids get it. It’s the adults that we should be focused on, not just because they need to know, but because of the top-down effect.

Why would you release new student standards for technology without making sure the teachers knew how to teach it, or that administrators, for that matter.

I think the root of a lot of problems with technology in education is that we have expectations for students, but don’t have any expectations for teachers or administrators. If you have administration that supports and expects that technology will be used, then teachers will have to get on the ball and learn or suffer on their evaluations. If you don’t have those expectations in place from the top down, it’s never going to get to the majority of students, no matter how great your standards for students are.

“If we use Google, we get kicked off the computer.”

One of my colleagues said that her daughter came home saying this a couple of weeks ago because their school now has Nettrekker.  Now I’m all for making Internet searches easier for kids, but there has been a push around here to use Nettrekker as the only choice for Internet research.

The argument goes like this: “Do you have a good set of encyclopedias and a crappy set of encyclopedias in your library so you can teach kids the difference between good information and bad information?  Then why would you teach them to search using Google?”

I think that argument sucks.  Even back in the day, you could pretty much believe that anything in hardback had been checked and rechecked.  Information literacy wasn’t needed (as much) because you knew that publishers had weeded out the crap for you.

Today, though, everyone needs to have a solid schooling in information literacy because of the simple fact that information is so much more readily available.  No longer do I have to trek down to the library to do my research.  I can do it from my bed in my pajamas.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Nettrekker is a great tool.  But it’s just a tool, and it has it’s flaws.  When students get to the real world, they’re not going to have a Nettrekker account so they’re going to have to discern for themselves what information is valid and what is not.

So I guess the real question here is, are we trying to educate our students, or make the job of educating easier for the teacher?

Moving on over

Back in October, I decided to try out Google Reader and Pageflakes.  I had “discovered” Pageflakes first, so I was partial to it, willing to give it a chance versus the mighty Google.

Alas, Google has slayed yet another product.  I have to say it, Google Reader is a much better, much more consistent experience.

I really wanted to give Pageflakes the benefit of the doubt, but in the end, it was blocking software and the clunky interface that did it in.

At first, I thought it was beautiful.  All of my blogs in little windows.  Click and it takes you to the post.

That was the fatal flaw.

First of all, when I started collecting too many blogs, I had to scroll to see all of them.  Then, if someone added a picture to their entry, it would push them down so the look of the page was never the same.

But it was the clicking.  One day, I went to click on a post, and up came our block notification.  Of course, it’s a fun blog that I probably shouldn’t have been reading at work anyway, but it frustrated me…especially since the blog had been open for so long before that.  Anyway, I decided to put the feed in my Google Reader to see if it would pick it up, and sure enough, the entire post came through.

So I started moving everything into Google Reader.  It’s so nice to be able to see at a glance when things are updated.  Oh, that reminds me of another problem with Pageflakes.  It’s a little flaky (pun intended) with feeds.  Sometimes I would see an old post at the top of a feed…one that I knew was older than the most recent, and refreshing didn’t solve the problem.  And it wasn’t on just one blog…it effected all of them at one time or another.

So now that my transition is complete, I really have no reason to use Pageflakes anymore.  I have my weather on my desktop, my podcasts in iTunes and my blogs and news in Google Reader.

But there’s the shortcut, still in my toolbar.  I guess I’m just having a hard time letting go.