![Mac and cheese]()
by Scott McLeod | Feb 27, 2007 | Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, Miscellaneous |
I have three young kids, so macaroni and cheese is a staple in our household. But the box drives me bonkers.
‘To open, push here.‘ Are there any more dreaded words for mac and cheese lovers? You know it isn’t going to work. You know you’re going to have to rip the entire top off the box, and yet you try it anyway, hoping against hope that this time the little cardboard button will work the way it’s supposed to. But of course it doesn’t and you have to rip it open with your bare claws, or use kitchen shears, or a chainsaw…
‘To open, push here‘ is a classic example of design getting in the way of purpose. I mean, let’s face it, the mac and cheese box only has three purposes:
- to entice us to buy it,
- to protect its contents while shipping, and
- to allow us access to its contents so we can eat them.
The box fulfills the first two functions pretty well, but fails miserably at the third.
Now, let’s extend this metaphor to our own technology (and other) initiatives in our schools. Like the mac and cheese box, what elements of our design and delivery get in the way of us achieving our purpose(s)? Lack of adequate training? Insufficient support? Failure to allocate appropriate time? Unreasonable expectations? As school leaders, if we don’t want our initiatives to fail (‘To open, push here‘), we have to attend to these issues if we want to get to the yummy goodness inside.
Is your school organization aligned to get the results it says it wants to achieve? If not, what’s getting in the way and what are you going to do about it?
by Scott McLeod | Feb 20, 2007 | Assistive and Accessible, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, Online Learning, Planning and Funding, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
My letter to Secretary Spellings in the previous post about online multimedia textbooks is the outcome of a conversation that I had with Jim Hirsch, Associate Superintendent for Technology and Academic Services for the Plano (TX) Independent School District, at the TIES conference last December. I’m not the only one thinking on this front. For example, Scott McNealy, Chairman of the Board for Sun Microsystems, said last June that ‘technology trumps the textbook.‘ Similarly, four days ago Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, noted that textbooks as we know them will disappear.
To be honest, the two most visible free online textbook initiatives still have a long way to go. WikiBooks, a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, seems to be having a hard time getting off the ground; most of its content has yet to be created or is in the very earliest stages of development. Curriki, which is sponsored by Sun and has gotten a lot of media attention, so far seems to consist primarily of disparate resources and activities rather than comprehensive, meaningfully-organized textbooks. Both seem to be relying on volunteers’ efforts for most of the content. While both initiatives have potential, so far that potential remains unfulfilled. It’s early in the game, though. The National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) also is doing some interesting work but appears to be complementing, rather than replacing, print textbooks.
As my letter indicates, I think we need something more intentional and systematic. A strategic investment of monies could go a long way toward creating some pedagogically powerful, wonderfully engaging, online multimedia textbooks that then could be used by anyone in the country (or world). Can you imagine what a rich, interactive, media-saturated textbook a team of expert teachers, professors, and computer / Web programmers could create given a year’s time and $800,000 to play with (above and beyond their sabbatical salaries)? Can you imagine how fiscally and educationally empowering it would be for schools to have free and open access to 150 to 200 high-quality online multimedia textbooks created by the top experts in the country?
Clearly this an expensive venture from a raw dollar standpoint, at least to do it well. That said, the $200 million per year figure that I proposed represents less than 4 one-thousandths of the current federal discretionary funds allocated for K-12 education. The federal government clearly has the money to pull this kind of thing off. So might a consortium of states or maybe a large private foundation. As big as the numbers are, the return on this strategic investment would be HUGE.
Textbook publishers probably would oppose this idea. So might others, for a variety of political, educational, and sociological reasons. But Public Education Network CEO Wendy Puriefoy’s February 14 statement that "the new federal education budget is full of enthusiasm but lacks powerful ideas and transformative levels of funding" strikes home with me. I think this is a powerful, transformative idea whose time has come and I hope someone besides me will think big and make this happen.
by Scott McLeod | Feb 20, 2007 | Assistive and Accessible, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, Online Learning, Planning and Funding, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
[send this letter to Secretary Spellings, Director Magner, and Congress]
The
Honorable Margaret Spellings
Secretary
United States Department of
Education
400 Maryland Avenue SW
Washington, DC 20202-7100
Dear Secretary Spellings,
The United States Department of Education currently administers a budget of
approximately $56 billion per year in discretionary monies. I am sending this
letter to encourage the Department to make a relatively small, but extremely
strategic, investment that would pay enormous dividends for our nation’s
elementary and secondary students.
For $200 million per year, the Department could create phenomenal,
mind-blowing online multimedia textbooks that could be used by students all
across the country. Imagine 50 teams, each made up of individuals who took a
paid sabbatical for one year, working to create rigorous, standards-based,
online textbooks that included text, graphics, electronic presentations, audio,
video, simulations, learning games, interactive problem-solving and review
activities, etc. The teams could be comprised as follows:
- 16 expert teachers * $100,000 each = $1,600,000
- 4 university professors * $100,000 each = $400,000
- 8 computer / Web programmers * $100,000 each = $800,000
- 1 assistive technology expert * $100,000 = $100,000
- 1 national organization representative * $100,000 = $100,000
- 1 project manager * $200,000 = $200,000
- Communication and other software, supplies, travel, etc. =
$800,000
Four teachers plus a professor plus two programmers equals a workgroup; four
workgroups per team. Each team receives ongoing feedback from a representative
from an appropriate national organization (e.g., National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics, National Council for Social Studies), has an assistive technology
expert to ensure content accessibility by students with disabilities, and has a
project manager to keep the workgroups moving along. The workgroups create
content; post that content online as they go along for review, comment, and
input from others; and, over the course of a year, create several units each
that add up to a complete, amazing, deep, rich online multimedia textbook.
Each year would see the completion of 50 textbooks. Over three or four years,
these Department-sponsored teams would create 150 to 200 textbooks for common,
key courses (e.g., Algebra I, Physics I, AP English, United States History, 5th
grade reading) that are present in nearly every school district nationwide.
Textbook content would be refreshed every three or four years to ensure content
relevance and usage of the latest digital technologies. If the textbooks were
wiki-based, much of the content could be revised and updated even before their
refresh cycle came due.
Once created, these textbooks then could be hosted by the Department, state
departments of education, and other entities or could be downloaded for hosting
on local school district servers. Federal provision of these textbooks would
free states and school districts to spend funds on laptops, classroom-level
high-speed wireless connectivity, and other technologies necessary to ensure the
global competitiveness of our students in the decades to come. All textbook
material would be free and openly accessible to our nation’s K-12 students and
educators.
I hope that you can see the instructional power of teachers and students
tapping into expert-created content delivered via the latest interactive,
engaging digital technologies. Although a few organizations (e.g., Wikibooks or
Curriki) are attempting to create free online textbooks or learning materials,
their reliance on volunteers has resulted in relatively little progress. A
strategic investment by the Department could make an extremely powerful
contribution to the K-12 educational landscape and would be a powerful lever
toward ensuring that all students had access to top-quality, engaging learning
materials.
Please consider instituting a national online textbook initiative. I believe
that this is an idea whose time has come and would welcome the opportunity to
discuss this further with you.
Sincerely,
Dr. Scott McLeod
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational
Policy and Administration
Director, UCEA Center for the Advanced Study
of
Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE)
Affiliate Faculty, Law
School
University of Minnesota
by Scott McLeod | Feb 14, 2007 | Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, Pre-Service Preparation, Professional Development, Research and Evaluation, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
If we’re going to teach Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
literacy skills in schools, we need ways of determining whether or not those
skills have been learned by students. The Partnership for 21st Century
Skills notes that answering the question ‘How do we measure 21st
century learning?’ will be critical as we try to prepare students
who can be productive citizens in the new technology-suffused,
globally-interconnected economy.
Over in the United Kingdom, the British government’s Key Stage 3 ICT Literacy
Assessment for 12- and 13-year-old aims to assess higher-order thinking
skills in conjunction with ICT use. For example, as part of a task to draft and
publish a journalistic article, students must use search engines to collect and
analyze employment data, e-mail sources for permission to publish their
information, and present data in graphic and written formats using word
processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software, all within a simulated
computing environment. Student actions are tracked by the computer and assessed
for both technical and learning skills such as finding things out,
developing ideas, and exchanging and sharing information. If
you’re interested, you can download a
demonstration file and see for yourself.
Other interesting projects in the U.K. include Northern Ireland’s Council for
the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment A-Level Examination in the Moving
Image (students must create
and assess digital film clips), the Ultralab International Certificate in
Digital Creativity (students must defend their digitally-produced film,
artwork, and music to a panel of peers and professionals), and the eViva e-portfolio initiative (online
space where students can receive feedback on their research and communication,
data analysis, and presentation skills). If anyone in the U.K. is reading this
post and has experience with any of these assessments, I’d love to hear your
perspectives in the comments section.
Over here in the United States, ETS also is
attempting to create new assessments of 21st century learning skills. I had a
chance last fall to get a personal demonstration of the ETS ICT Literacy Assessment. Like the Key
Stage 3, ETS’ assessment is a scenario-based test. This is a completely new
paradigm for ETS, which the ETS representative said is challenging but also
exciting for its psychometricians to try and wrap their heads around. I
encourage you to visit the
demo site and see how the test works. It may not be ideal, but I think it’s
a lot further from your typical standardized test than one might expect. It’s an
interesting attempt to blend both the technology and information literacy skills
needed by future generations and at least offers some food for thought. Also
check out the News
and Research
links to find out more about the results from ETS’ pilot tests.
We will see the birth of many new 21st century
assessments in the years ahead. Like these early attempts, most of
these assessments will be performance-based and thus will avoid some of the
objections we hear about current standardized tests. Most, if not all, also will
utilize the multimedia, simulation, and tracking power of digital technologies
to create more authentic assessments of real-life tasks. It should be an
interesting journey.
Credits
Much of the information in this post, including some very close paraphrasing,
comes from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills report, Assessment
of 21st Century Skills: The Current Landscape. If you’re interested in 21st
century learning skills, this report should be an important addition to your
reading list.
Other resources
This post is also available at the TechLearning blog.
by Scott McLeod | Jan 23, 2007 | Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, News and Events, Planning and Funding, Podcasts, Professional Development, Tech Integration |
Listen to this post!
I had the pleasure of spending last Friday morning with the Minneapolis Public Schools Technology Planning Steering Committee. Coleen Kosloski, Director of Information Technology Services, gave me the task of energizing the group and giving them some things to think about.
We started with Karl Fisch’s Did You Know? presentation. I then talked for a little over half an hour about the changes we’re seeing in American society, essential workplace skills for the 21st century, Web 2.0, gaming, and other fun stuff. If you’re interested, here are the materials from the session:
by Scott McLeod | Jan 13, 2007 | Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, Safety and Security |
Listen to this post!
A couple of days ago Network World had a story on the latest generation of GPS technologies used to track schoolbuses. The Everyday Wireless system that was profiled also has the ability to record when and where students board and disembark the bus.
Is GPS tracking of school buses a rational use of technology to optimize bus routes? Another example of overblown fear? A call for parental action like chipping kids?
by Scott McLeod | Jan 5, 2007 | Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, Tech Integration |
Listen to this post!
Will Richardson blogged yesterday about a comment by Daniel Kinnaman, publisher of District Administration magazine, regarding K-12 education:
Alarmingly, there may be no sector of society where technology has had less impact.
I think this is probably true and also would add higher education classrooms to the list. I’ve blogged about this before.
Kinnaman notes that
K12 education persists in operating on the premise that to have school, you must physically co-locate teachers, students and curriculum materials. Teachers and students are assigned to stand-alone, self-contained school buildings that house paltry collections of mostly outdated curriculum materials. With rare exceptions, digital technologies and interactive communications are still largely peripheral to the primary activities of the typical school day.
I think as online education, rich educational gaming environments, and other options grow and flourish, many folks’ deeply-cherished beliefs about what school must look like are going to be put to the test. There always will be a place for face-to-face schooling, but it will be interesting to see what the landscape looks like twenty years from now.
by Scott McLeod | Dec 14, 2006 | Management and Operations, Safety and Security |
Today is the fourth day of Chart Week here at Dangerously Irrelevant. Today’s
post relates to the various technologies and procedures that public schools use
to protect students from inappropriate Internet material. All data are from the
recently-released NCES report, Internet Access
in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2005.
Technologies and procedures used by public schools to prevent
student access to inappropriate Internet material
Public schools have a variety of options when it comes to protecting students
from inappropriate material on the Web. As the chart below shows, nearly every
school is using blocking / filtering software. In addition, nearly every school
says that teachers or other staff members monitor student Internet usage.
The federal data are unclear whether acceptable use policies (AUPs) are in
place in schools. What NCES asked is whether schools ask parents and students to
sign written contracts regarding Internet usage. About a fourth of schools in
2005 did not ask students to sign a contract and about a fifth of schools did
not ask parents to sign a contract regarding student Internet use. These
percentages were the same as in 2002. Elementary schools (72%) were less likely
in 2005 to have students sign contracts than secondary schools (88%). City
schools (72%) were less likely to have students sign contracts than rural
schools (82%).
It may be that schools have a student AUP in place but simply are not asking
students or parents to sign that they have read and understand the AUP. It also
may be that schools are relying on filtering / monitoring software and teacher
monitoring alone. Either way, all schools should realize that AUPs can be
powerful tools for school regulation and enforcement of appropriate Internet
usage and should not assume constructive notice
via student handbooks or school policy binders.
Other options employed by public schools to address student usage of the Internet include use of intranets to control student access, student honor codes, and monitoring software (e.g., keystroke logging and other surveillance software).
Schedule for the rest of the week
- Friday – professional development for use of the Internet in public
school classrooms
by Scott McLeod | Dec 13, 2006 | Management and Operations, Tech Integration |
Today is the third day of Chart Week here at Dangerously Irrelevant.
Yesterday’s post on student
laptops and wireless classrooms discussed how many public schools lend
laptops to students and the extent of wireless penetration in classrooms.
Today’s post extends those data to show the length of time that students get to
use the laptops that are loaned out to them. All data are from the
recently-released NCES report, Internet Access
in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2005.
Maximum length of time of laptop loan to
students
NCES asked those public schools that said they loaned laptops to students what was the
maximum length of time of those loans. In other words, how long did students
have use of the laptops they received? Here is the chart:
As the data show, nearly half of the schools that said they loaned laptops to
students did so for less than a week. Only about a sixth of the schools surveyed
in 2005 said that they gave students laptops for the entire school year; this
proportion is unchanged from 2002. When combined with yesterday’s
data, which show that only about 10% of schools even loan laptops to
students in the first place, we can see that few students in our country are
receiving the opportunity to work with laptop computers, even for only a few days at a time. One probable explanatory factor regarding low laptop lending by
schools (and thus low laptop usage by students) is that most
public school classrooms lack wireless Internet access.
Schedule for the rest of the week
- Thursday – technologies and procedures used by public schools to
prevent student access to inappropriate material on the Internet
- Friday – professional development for use of the Internet in public
school classrooms
by Scott McLeod | Dec 12, 2006 | Management and Operations, Tech Integration |
Today is the second day of Chart Week here at Dangerously Irrelevant. Yesterday’s topic, Internet access in public schools and public school classrooms, may not have been very exciting for many of you, but I needed to create some context. I am guessing that today’s topic, student laptops and wireless classrooms, may be more interesting to most folks. All data are from the recently-released NCES report, Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2005.
Percentage of public schools lending laptops to students
As the chart below shows, about 10% of public schools reported that they lent laptops to students in 2005, about the same number as in 2002. In 2005, secondary schools (18%) were more than twice as likely to say that they lent students laptops than elementary schools (7%); these numbers also are the same as in 2002. In 2005, 15% of the schools with less than 6% minority enrollment said that they were lending laptops to students, while in schools with 50% minority enrollment or higher, only 7% said that they were lending students laptops.
Percentage of public school classrooms with wireless Internet connections
If you recall, yesterday’s post showed that 94% of public school classrooms are connected to the Internet. The chart below shows the progress that has been made in converting public school classrooms to wireless (rather than wired) connections, arguably an essential prerequisite to having students use laptops meaningfully and frequently in the classroom.
Schedule for the rest of the week
- Wednesday – length of time public schools lend laptops to students
- Thursday – technologies and procedures used by public schools to prevent student access to inappropriate material on the Internet
- Friday – professional development for use of the Internet in public school classrooms
