Can't Seem to Escape the Technology Issues

I had the opportunity this evening to meet with our board and building members of our leadership team. It is an opportunity for board members and administrators to share in a more informal environment and one that the board has initiated. One of the topics of conversation was our Classroom 10 initiative that quickly led to the topic of technology.

The board members heard a variety of issues and concerns related to technology, some that have been expressed before and some that they may not have heard before. They responded with questions and comments expressing concern with the situation as described. If someone had been present with no attachment to our system they would probably be asking who was in charge of this zoo.

As I was listening to the conversation, three things came to mind. First, I was the only one present that had a system context related to this issue. There are others with this same context, but not in the room. It would have been interesting to watch the reaction had they been present. The issues and concerns being expressed are based on personal experience and are real for the individual. Viewing them from this context, the answers and solutions seem simple enough. If they were that simple, I would not be blogging on this topic this evening. We are engaged in what is still comparably new work to ours and other educational systems and the solutions require more than technical tweaks. We have begun to look for adaptive solutions, but they will take time.

This system context leads to my second thought. Those of us with this knowledge have and continue to do a poor job of communication. We have made some changes in the department, but based on the conversation there is a lack of clear understanding of how the pieces fit together. What we thought was appropriate engagement in the planning and implementation was not effective. Back to the drawing board.

Lastly, it became clear that there is a sense of urgency developing with those in the room. This is welcome and has not been present. The combination of having money through a technology levy for purchases and training, seeing the potential for some of this "stuff" to truly impact learning, and the third party (Meteri) audit of our buildings and system has resulted in some creative tension. We know from experience the importance of urgency in creating and sustaining successful change so we need to take advantage of this opportunity and respond to
the concerns.

The stakes are high and the potential is great resulting in a wonderful learning opportunity. On the agenda for Thursday as our combined tech groups meet for the second time to move toward forming a team we will need to spend some time discussing this opportunity.

Thanks to Assorted Stuff

I thought I'd share this post from Assorted Stuff about classroom rules in a college art class. In the post he shares the following rules.

Rule 2 - General duties of a student: Pull everything out of your teacher, pull everything out of your fellow students.

Rule 3 - General duties of a teacher: Pull everything out of your students.

Rule 5 - Be self disciplined: This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.


Going to the source of the rules I found two others that caught my attention.
Rule 4 - Consider everything an experiment.

Rule 6 - Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make.

I can see how these "fit" an art class, but shouldn't they also apply to our work in public schools, especially 4 and 6? With rules like these maybe kids wouldn't lose the sense of wonder and discovery that they bring to kindergarten. We wouldn't be stifling curiousity by the journey to find the right answer to get the right grade, that leads to the necessary grade point average needed for continued learning to prepare for a world where curiousity and creativity will again be part of the currency for success.

Kind of leaves a lot of time in between that can be seen as very boring for many of our young people that have been conditioned or refuse to be conditioned to the norms for success in traditional K-12 learning. If curiousity and creativity are requirements for success in the 21st century we need to ensure that our curriculum and instructional practices provide opportunities for all students to continually use and enhance their capacity with these tools.

(Spell check isn't working and didn't for my last post. Normally this would bother me and force me to read the post multiple times before publishing. Iv'e decided, however, to reread only one time and if I miss anything so be it. My self worth is no longer tied to spelling and typing errors on my blog. I will though, accept any guidance one can give me about my problem. Thanks for listening and overlooking the errors.)

Building A House

Last Friday I had the opportunity to meet with our technology staff, both those that are responsible for the back end work and those responsible for the curriculum and instructional component of our work. Like most systems, we have had our share of problems with implementations and communication between these two groups. Our problems don't seem to be at the same level as many that I read about probably because of the size of our system, but they are evident and result in finger pointing and questioning.

I scheduled the meeting and as I reflect on and read the exit slips it was a good decision. These two groups had begun to change how they communicated on their own, bringing them together reinforced and energized this change effort. I learned many things during the course of this meeting. Among them are the following:

• These two groups want to become a team with a shared vision around Classroom 10 and structures for effective planning and implementation.
• We do a good job of creating a vision with teaching and learning staff while ignoring those that work the back end. I guess we think that they can create their own purpose for being and then somehow make sure that it is aligned with the system vision. This doesn't, however, stop us from making judgments when these two don't align.
• We don't share a common understanding of what Web 2.0 means though we have been using the term for quite some time.
• To a person, these people want what is best for our teachers and students, they want to be perceived as caring and competent and are tired of doing business as usual.

During our conversation a house building analogy emerged (thanks to Kimberly and Craig) to describe the tasks of the two groups in this work. The system has a vision of what we want young people to know and do and what that should look and sound like in classrooms, Classroom 10. Teaching and learning staff are the architects responsible for designing the content and process learning in these classrooms. Back end staff are the engineers responsible for designing, installing, and supporting structures that ensure effective implementation and continued use of the technology used to support learning in classrooms.

To be effective, the architects must engage their system engineers early in the process to ensure they understand not only what they want built, but the intent and purpose for the various parts of the house. This is one area we have done a poor job of, engaging the engineers in a timely way around not just the desired rooms in the house, but what the intent and learning outcomes are. Knowing this we believe, will enagage the engineers at a deeper level, will allow us to take better advantage of their expertise and experience, and will result in technology implementations that support 21st Century teaching and learning.

We will continue to meet. In fact, we have decided that the work is so important that we will meet more often than originally planned. I am encouraged and excited with the attitude and energy that these people are bringing to this effort. I am confident that they will design and implement adaptive changes to meet the challenges of supporting teaching and learning with new and promising tools. We should have seen this need long ago. Why does it sometimes seem like we lose sight of common sense? And, why can't I just feel good about this without it creating dissonance in another area? What would that be? Where do the teaching and support staff and students fit in this building analogy? Don't the users usually have significant influence before the architects take over?

Oh well, enough for now. Have a great day!

Easy Call

Well, it was an easy call, just not the one we thought we would be making. Technology, weather prediction software? Maybe we should have checked the almanac.

Have a great day!

School or No School Difficult Decisions

Normally, I like to peruse the blogs I read before deciding on a topic for my blog, but tonight the big thing on my mind is snow and ice. I can look forward to little sleep, waking up multiple times and worry over the decision of whether it is safe to have school or not. So many variables to consider and so little time to decide on what is one of the hardest decisions to make.

Why so hard? Partly because of the processing time, usually less than 30 minutes unless the snow and ice come at the right time in just enough quantity to make it an easy call. Partly because of the consequences of a poor decision; I've been there and don't want to revisit that anxiety and worry. Partly because someone almost always takes exception with the decision. Most importantly, because of the need to make the right decision for about 7000 students, their families, and the approximately 850 staff members and their families. Is it safe for the buses? Can staff get to the job site safely and on time? If we can get them to school safely, will the return home be safe? Can we trust the weather report and what one should we use? Are the parking lots and sidewalks safe? And on and on and. . .

Fortunately, I have good people collecting the necessary data and making recommendations. I hope that the weather report we are reviewing for tonight and tomorrow is accurate. If it is, tomorrow's decision should not be that difficult. And what would that be?

Guiding Questions for Technology Use

I found this blog entry by Jeff Utecht to be interesting. It reminds me somewhat of nested objectives and the work we are doing with Classroom 10. He shares his thoughts about evaluating the use of technology in classrooms using the work of Prensky as a starting point.


I remembered a Marc Prensky article in Edutopia in which he talks about the typical process of technology adoption:
1. Dabbling with technology
2. Doing Old things in Old Ways
3. Doing Old things in New Ways
4. Doing New things in New Ways

He then takes Prensky's process and turns them into the following questions.

What if we turned these stages of technology adoption into questions that an evaluator could use during the evaluation process?
1. Is the technology being used “Just because it’s there”?
2. Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in Old ways?
3. Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in New ways? 4. Is the technology creating new and different learning experiences for the students?

I believe we can and should consider using them in our walkthroughs and observations to collect data on implementation practices and for program evaluation. It would be interesting to hear what Cheryl and her Meteri colleagues think about this model. We should also be sharing our answers to these questions with each other as a way to check for common understanding of practice and developing system knowledge.

They can also serve as guiding questions as we make decisions on how to use technology to support learning and teaching in our classrooms. They can help keep us focused on the learning and not on trying to fit the tools into lessons. I know there are also many other considerations such as those around literacy that will also provide more direction, but until we have that direction these questions can help. If we find that our use is focused in the "because it's there" or the "old things in Old ways" areas, it should force us to ask some reflective questions about our practice and goals.

In the blog, Utecht goes on to share his thinking around each of the questions and another Prensky quote that makes one think about change in our profession related to our own experience. Are we examining all the elements he identifies for change. No, should we?

What's Important?

I'm sitting here enjoying catching up on my blog reading and not really wanting to blog, but I had to share this one with you. We spend so much time wondering what to buy and worrying that what we buy won't last four years until we can replace it, as if it will still be what we need in four years. By the way, what is so magic about four years?


I believe I shared my thinking earlier that it isn't the vehicle that matters, it is access that is important. The teacher's comments in this blog reinforce for me this distinction. They also make me thankful for the opportunities we have with our tech levy and the community support. So much to be thankful for and so much to learn. Enjoy the reading.