Dangerously Irrelevant

Here are a few thoughts that are swirling around in my brain today…

1. It’s hard for schools to teach kids how to make a dent in the universe when they’re focused so heavily on teaching compliance. It’s very difficult to reconcile ‘go out and change the world’ with ‘we’re going to tell you what to do and how to do it every minute of the day; just go along and don’t make trouble.’
2. It’s hard for schools to teach kids how to make a dent in the universe when the majority of the people working in them don’t understand how most of the world-changing tools work.
3. We’re afraid of an awful lot of stuff that never seems to actually happen.

Image credit: Think – Computer History Museum, Scott Loftesness

Most school technology acceptable use policies (AUPs) contain these kinds of phrases:

• “Students shall not use technology unless authorized by appropriate school personnel.”
• “The use of the Internet is a privilege, not a right, and inappropriate use will result in cancellation of those privileges.”
• “Students will not access or modify other accounts, data, files, and/or passwords without authorization.”
• “You will be held responsible at all times for the proper use of district technology resources, and the district may suspend or revoke your access if you violate the rules.”
• “Users have no right to privacy while using the district’s Internet systems. The district monitors users’ online activities and reserves the right to access, review, copy, store, or delete any electronic communications or files. This includes any items stored on district-provided devices, such as files, e-mails, cookies, and Internet history.”
• And so on…

That’s a lot of legalistic language. That’s a lot of negativity.

How about an empowered use policy (EUP) instead? In other words, instead of saying NO, NO, NO! all the time, how about saying yes? Here’s one to consider…

[SCHOOL / DISTRICT NAME]

When it comes to digital technologies in our [school / district], please…

1. Be empowered. Do awesome things. Share with us your ideas and what you can do. Amaze us.
2. Be nice. Help foster a school community that is respectful and kind.
3. Be smart and be safe. If you are uncertain, talk with us.
4. Be careful and gentle. Our resources are limited. Help us take care of our devices and networks.

Thank you and let us know if you have any questions.

Is there anything major that this EUP doesn’t address? Other thoughts or reactions? Help me make it better…

Image credit: YES, Transcend

I created a new resource page on Internet filtering and blocking. Hope it’s useful to you…

• Internet filtering and blocking

See some of my other resources too!

I asked 3 questions of the educators in charge of their district’s upcoming 1:1 student computing initiative. They worked in small groups and used editable Google spreadsheets to record their responses…

1. If our 1:1 initiative is wildly successful, what will we see? We tried to create vivid, concrete images that were emotionally resonant, thus helping with meaning-making. We took our answers and lumped them into ad hoc categories on a separate Google document (e.g., student independence and self-direction, student interaction and collaboration, learning cultures and processes, digital citizenship and information literacy, management and support). We now had a basic picture of desired awesomeness.
2. What will we need to do to ensure our envisioned successes? We focused on the success enablers that will lead to the positive outcomes and desired results that we identified in Step 1. [Not shown in results: We also put those into an effort-impact matrix to see which ones were easy wins or were more difficult but worth the hard effort (and which ones weren’t).]
3. Why will our 1:1 initiative fail? Instead of doing a postmortem afterward, we did a premortem up front to identify reasons that the initiative will fail. We wanted to identify the success blockers that will get in the way of what we envisioned in Step 1.

We then took the responses in Steps 2 and 3 and organized them by Bolman and Deal’s leadership frames. This helped us identify main themes, see patterns, and think about necessary action steps across the spectrum. See our final results.

See the documents that we used to facilitate our work

Tips: Two to three sentences for each response – not single words or short phrases – to facilitate depth of understanding and conversation. After each step, have them look at the other groups’ responses and discuss, first in their small group and then as a large group. Have a separate notes document ready to capture thoughts that emerge from those large group discussions. Working through the three spreadsheets takes 2 to 3 hours; this doesn’t include writing up the final results.

• Visioning spreadsheet
• Tip: Have them look at another group’s responses and highlight the 2 or 3 that are the most emotionally resonant.
• Success enablers spreadsheet
• Tip: Only put numbers in the matrix below the list, not the whole text of each response.
• Success blockers spreadsheet
• Tip: Have them look at another group’s responses and highlight the 2 or 3 most important ones on the list.
• Notes
• Final results

Tim Holt says:

[George] Couros had a really nice statement in his article “… Technology should be at the point of instruction and be as accessible in learning as a pencil; it shouldn’t be an event. How many pencil labs do you have in your school?”

Great point. Tech should be at the point of instruction. He left off a word however: GREAT.

GREAT Technology should be at the point of instruction and be as accessible in learning as a pencil…

Not “adequate”, not “ok,” not “mediocre,” not “the cheapest we could buy,” not “good enough,” not “hand me down,” not “hobbled.”

The technology we provide students should be the best we can provide.

Miguel Guhlin uses the “90% of all tasks can be completed” argument here as a way of implying that good enough is good enough. (He cites a study in the article.)

Again, a terrible argument.

This idea of providing something that ALMOST can do the job is laughable. It is like giving a kid a donkey to run the Kentucky Derby. Okay kid, that donkey will actually make it around the track just like the thoroughbreds can. Never you mind that the race will be over for 30 minutes by the time you finish. The donkey is good enough for your needs.

Here kid, we are giving you a 1975 Chevy Vega to run the Daytona 500. Good luck. It is LIKE a Nascar car, heck, it is 90% of everything that a Nascar car is: It has an engine, it has four wheels, it has a seat a speedometer, a stick shift … Heck, it does 90% of what a Nascar car can do. Be happy.

The kids coming from low SES are the farthest behind. To give them something that is already hobbled is insulting. Here kid, you are behind already, here is something that will make you farther behind, But be glad, because you can do 90%!

via http://holtthink.tumblr.com/post/71642782063/riding-donkeys-in-a-horse-race-digital-equity

I greatly appreciate Tim’s digital equity concerns and passion. We should indeed strive to provide the same for our children that we use as adults if we want their technology usage to be as authentic as possible. I’m struck by his observation that adult educators typically aren’t using cheap computers to do their day-to-day work but we seem to think it’s okay for kids:

Here is the deal: If cheap is the way to go and it is preparing kids for college and the workforce, then everybody in a school district that is IN THE WORKFORCE, every administrator, every clerk, every secretary, and every accountant at every campus all the way up to the district superintendent should be willing to use the cheap devices.

Let’s see the district architects use them.
Let’s see researchers use them.
Let’s see the accountants use them.
Let’s see the principals use them.
Let’s see the IT staff use them to run the servers.

If it is good enough for the least among us, then it should be good enough for the most advanced of us. I wonder how many upper administration would move to cheap devices if they had to use them 100% of the time to do 90% of the work?

All that said, I’m having a hard time reconciling digital equity concerns with the realities of funding during this time of mindset and paradigm shifts. I want the best for kids too, but I’d rather have 90% for them than nothing. Tim might agree with me on that point. However, he’s not framing this as a choice between 90% and 0% but rather as a choice between 90% and 100%, with iPads closing the final gap at a price point similar to Chromebooks. I think that both devices have their limitations. If you forced me to choose personally (I have both), I’d rather have an iPad than a Chromebook, primarily because of its apps and ease of taking photos/videos. I’m not sure if I’m ready yet to pillory schools that make the opposite choice as they go for 90% instead of 0%.

Lots of food for thought in Tim’s post…

Image credit: Close Up 0410, Mike Liu

I’m cleaning out my home office and I found this note I hastily scrawled while traveling somewhere:

Lack of vision + inadequate infrastructure + no training + poor implementation + insufficient ongoing support + refusal to change = tech success!

Does this sound like your wishful school or district? Hope not!

Evan Scherr is launching a new online series called The Thinking Out Loud Show. The guests for Episode 1.1 are Eric Sheninger, Joe Mazza, and myself. The topic is Leadership in Education. We’ll be talking about all types of leadership: administrators, students, teachers, and even parents!

Hope you’ll join us this Thursday at 8pm Eastern. See Evan’s Thinking Out Loud Show page for more info. Happy viewing!

UPDATE: Did you miss the show? The webinar archive is now available!

George Couros says:

As a teacher, would you prefer to work in an environment where [your] principal (who is [your] boss) wants feedback on the things that are happening in the school and actively listens? This doesn’t mean [she] always agree[s], but that you know [she] genuinely takes feedback in the workplace and figures out a way to implement some suggestions.

Or would you simply want to do what you were told, because that’s what you should do?

And in a comment to George’s post, Jim Cordery says:

We want people to act/think outside of the box, until those students end up sitting in our rooms. Then, the questioning of things is seen as defiance.

We need less submissiveness. We need more questions. We need more voice. From students. From educators. From citizens. From you.

I’m ready to kick my blog up a notch or two this year. Consider yourself forewarned…

Image credit: Shout Out Loud, Gary Denness

I’d like to extend a huge thank you to Lisa Martin, Kristin Rowe, and their students for taking over my blog for the past week. All of the guest posts regarding Online Model United Nations (O-MUN) are linked below.

This is the kind of powerful, global, student-driven learning that is possible if we adults are willing to make it happen. As school leaders, we say that we want meaningful, collaborative, cross-border interactions for our youth. We say that we want to empower students to make a difference in the world. Let’s stop talking about it and start doing it. As the O-MUN movement shows us, our children are willing and able to step up and help us…

1. Connected global youth and the Online Model United Nations movement
2. The nuts and bolts of online debating
3. Palestinian-Israeli citizen calling for peace, making her voice heard through Online Model United Nations
4. Online Model United Nations: Raising our voices
5. Junior Online Model United Nations: Connecting masters and apprentices
6. Why do teachers have an excuse when it comes to technology in the classrooms?
7. Making connected learning the norm: What will it take?

Today the Iowa Department of Education (DE) tweeted the following:

But if you go look at the application announcement, it turns out that the student participant on the State Board of Education is a non-voting member. So much for having a real voice… [sigh]

I’m not trying to pick on DE; the non-voting status of the student is encoded in Iowa statute. But it’s worth noting that, along with student councils in schools and student representatives to school boards, these types of positions mostly seem to be a way for us adults to feel good about ourselves for including students. We pat ourselves on the back for ‘listening to student voice’ and point to the token representation to say, “See? We care!” when in actuality it’s just a sop, a meaningless thing given for appeasement instead of truly honoring needs or meeting demands: “Look, you get to sit with us and listen! We might even occasionally let you speak!”

As adults we’re not willing to give students actual decision-making responsibility. We’re not willing to give them power and authority over anything that’s really meaningful. Instead, we give them these artificial input opportunities and then exercise our freedom to completely ignore them – because they’re minors, you know, and don’t really know what’s best for them or the organizations in which they’re embedded – thus patronizing and demeaning the very youth that we’re supposedly honoring.

If we want to give students real voice and real agency, that means providing them with actual decision-making power (e.g., a vote) and something meaningful upon which to decide. What do students learn from tokenistic, inauthentic, powerless participation opportunities?

I challenge us to try this locally. Let’s give a group of students majority voting power over a school’s behavior and discipline policies. Or what courses are offered. Or the daily schedule. Does this scare us to death? If so, what does that say about us?