Dangerously Irrelevant

Mark your calendars! The second annual Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I) will be at the Polk County Convention Complex in Des Moines on April 20, 2011, from 9am to 5pm.

In our first year we had over 600 happy people in attendance. This year we anticipate 1,000 to 1,200 attendees (did we mention registration is FREE?!). We’ll have 120 different sessions, nearly all of which will be delivered by educators and students in the 40+ school districts in Iowa with 1:1 laptop programs. This grass-roots conference is a must-attend event; the conversations and learning are very powerful!

About the institute

The purposes of the institute are to:

• help Iowa’s 1:1 districts learn from each other about innovative teaching, learning, and administrative practices that are occurring in their districts;
• build excitement and ‘buzz’ around 1:1 laptop computing initiatives in the state; and
• help others who are interested in 1:1 computing learn more about how to get started and be successful.

The institute is open to ANYONE interested in 1:1 laptop computing initiatives in P-12 schools, whether they currently are working in such a program or just want to learn more.

Since the primary purpose of the institute is for Iowa’s 1:1 school districts to learn from each other, registration and presentation slots are initially reserved for educators in those school organizations. We’ll open up any remaining registration slots on February 24. We’ll open up any remaining presentation slots on March 17.

Want to be a vendor?

We’ve got 20 precious tables for vendors. Learn more here if you’re interested in being an institute sponsor.

Can’t attend?

Follow along on April 20 with the #i11i hashtag and/or see presenters’ materials at the 1:1 Laptop Schools Ning.

Questions?

If you have questions, please leave them below or e-mail Nick Sauers, CASTLE’s go-to guy for all things 1:1!

A video for those of you who get frustrated with others who are less technology proficient. I confess that people who still type URLs into search boxes drive me nuts too!

Happy viewing!

Chris Lehmann and I submitted our book to the publisher yesterday:

McLeod, S., & Lehmann, C. (Eds.). (in press). What school administrators need to know about digital technologies and social media.

photo © 2008 George Eastman House | more info (via: Wylio)We’re really excited about this book. Take a look at the chapter contributors below and you’ll see why [and before you ask, yes, there were many others that we could have asked and, yes, we had to make some difficult author/topic choices given the space limitations of a printed book].

The book is intended to help administrators

1. gain a basic knowledge base,
2. think critically about some key issues, and
3. get some concrete suggestions for instructional and organizational uses of various digital technologies.

Chris and I will keep you posted as this gets closer to print!

—-

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction, Chris Lehmann & Scott McLeod
• Foreword, David Warlick

Learning Tools

• Blogs, Kristin Hokanson & Christian Long
• Wikis, Stephanie Sandifer & Vicki Davis
• Podcasts and webinars, Steve Dembo & Wes Fryer
• RSS and RSS readers, Will Richardson & Karl Fisch
• Digital video, Mathew Needleman
• Virtual schooling, Michael Barbour & Rick Ferdig
• One-to-one computing, Chris Lehmann & Pamela Livingston
• Open source software, Tom Hoffman
• Educational gaming, John Rice

Interlude

• Social media is changing the way we live and learn, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
• See Sally research: Evolving notions of information literacy, Joyce Valenza & Doug Johnson

More Learning Tools

• Social bookmarking, Dean Shareski & Mary Beth Hertz
• Online mind mapping, Carl Anderson & Richard Byrne
• Course management systems, Scott Floyd & Miguel Guhlin
• Online office tool suites, Diana Laufenberg & Mark Wagner
• Twitter, Alec Couros & Kevin Jarrett
• Online images and visual literacy, Kim Cofino & David Jakes
• Mobile phones, Liz Kolb & Sharon Tonner
• Social networking, Ewan McIntosh & Jeff Utecht
• Afterword, Christopher Sessums

Joe Bower said:

Because school defines learning as passive, learners come to see education as something done to them. When students are stuck in the middle of a problem, they don’t try and figure out what makes sense to do next; instead, they try to remember what they are supposed to do. If this is the premise for learning, is it any surprise that learners become less autonomous, more dependent…

photo © 2007 Bev Sykes | more info (via: Wylio)I commented:

Well said. Replace ‘learners’ with ‘educators’ and this also describes many of the people that work in our school systems. We see a great lack of inquisitiveness, self-direction, etc. from many teachers and administrators too…

We need more ‘active learners’ at all levels of our education system. What percentage of your students – and educators – are just going through the motions (“just tell me what to do”) rather than inquiring, learning, leading, and, perhaps, modeling?

Whatever percentages those are, instead of blaming individuals we need to re-examine our systems and structures that beat down the innate human learning spirit. How’s your school organization doing at that?

If we were really serious about educational technology, we would… [here are 10 to get you started]

• show students how to edit their privacy settings and use groups in Facebook instead of banning online social networks because they’re ‘dangerous’ and/or ‘frivolous’;
• teach students to understand and contribute to the online information commons rather than ‘just saying no’ to Wikipedia;
• put a robust digital learning device into every student’s hands (or let them bring and use their own) instead of pretending that we live in a pencil, notebook paper, and ring binder world;
• photo © 2006 Michael Surran | more info (via: Wylio)integrate digital learning and teaching tools into subject-specific preservice methods courses rather than marginalizing instructional technology as a separate course;
• understand the true risk of students encountering online predators and make policy accordingly instead of succumbing to scare tactics by the media, politicians, law enforcement, computer security vendors, and others;
• find out the exact percentage of our schools’ families that don’t have broadband Internet access at home rather than treating the amorphous ‘digital divide’ as a reason not to assign any homework that involves use of the Internet;
• treat seriously and own personally the task of becoming proficient with the digital tools that are transforming everything instead of nonchalantly chuckling about how little we as educators know about computers;
• recognize the power and potential (and limitations) of online learning rather than blithely assuming that it can’t be as good as face-to-face instruction;
• tap into and utilize the technological interest and knowledge of students instead of pretending that they have nothing to contribute;
• better educate and train school administrators rather than continuing to turn out new leaders that know virtually nothing about creating, facilitating, and/or sustaining 21st century learning environments;
• and so on…

What else could we add to the list?

If we were really serious about [educational technology issue], we would [?] instead of [?].

It’s almost 2011. Isn’t it time for us to get serious about educational technology?

If you’re like me, you have trouble keeping up with all of the great videos that are out there. I love it when others help me separate the wheat from the chaff.

For my column this month for the School Administrators of Iowa newsletter, I listed a dozen videos that I thought would help spark educators’ thinking about the changes that are occurring around us. None of these are videos that we already have used in the technology leadership training that we’ve done statewide for principals and superintendents. 

School leaders and/or educator preparation programs could show these videos to practicing or preservice administrators and teachers, school boards, or community members to maintain a heightened sense of urgency for change. I usually recommend to administrators that, every time they’re face-to-face with a group, they show a video or share something they recently read or learned. They also could, for example, assign one of these videos as ‘homework’ ahead of a meeting. The important thing is to keep sharing how our world is changing and to keep discussing what it means for our educational practice.

Here’s my list, in no particular order:

1. Sir Ken Robinson, Changing education paradigms (11 minutes)
2. Sugatra Mitra, The child-driven education (17 minutes)
3. Clay Shirky, How cognitive surplus will change the world (13 minutes)
4. Chris Anderson, How web video powers global innovation (19 minutes)
5. Dean Shareski, Sharing: The moral imperative (25 minutes)
6. Henry Jenkins, TEDxNYED (18 minutes)
7. Daniel Pink, Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us (11 minutes)
8. Dan Meyer, Math class needs a makeover (12 minutes)
9. Jeff Jarvis, TEDxNYED (17 minutes)
10. Lisa Nielsen, Response to principal who bans social media (4 minutes)
11. New Brunswick Department of Education, 21st century education in New Brunswick (6 minutes)
12. Charles Leadbeter, On innovation (19 minutes)

Happy viewing!

Image credit: iPod Nano 3rd generation

Many organizational web sites are simply online brochures: static entities with a few pages of information. They’re not interactive. They’re not updated. Once you’ve read the text and seen the images, there’s rarely a reason to come back later. This is particularly true for web pages made by individuals, small businesses, and, unfortunately, schools.

Institutions like universities and larger corporations seem to do a better job of updating their Web content and making their sites more interactive, thus increasing the likelihood of visitors returning later. The reason they can do this, of course, is that they have more money, training, and other resources at their disposal. A small business owner (or a teacher or  secretary who’s the school webmaster) who knows little about web design but knows that she needs a web site may be hard pressed to do more than simply upload a few basic pages.

Similarly, a teacher that’s being asked to integrate technology into her lesson may be challenged to go beyond very basic implementation. She might have access to Google Docs, for example, but she simply has her students use the service to download a pre-designed document, fill in the open spaces, and either print it off or upload it back to the class Moodle site. She might have a class blog, for example, but her students use it simply to upload their typed text instead of handing in their written text on notebook paper. In other words, she doesn’t know how to go beyond this ‘electronic worksheet’ model and take advantage of the affordances of the new technologies. She’s basically replicating previous practices - only with more technological bells and whistles - instead of doing something differently because the technologies now allow her and her students to do so.

The challenge for school leaders, then, is to move their teachers beyond what Bernajean Porter calls ‘adapting uses’ and into ‘transforming uses.’ Another challenge, of course, is that school leaders may not be very technology-savvy themselves and thus don’t really know how to help their teaching staffs move in this direction.

What successes have you had in helping school administrators understand this issue? What techniques and strategies have you implemented that help principals and superintendents assist their classroom educators in moving beyond ‘electronic worksheets?

Image credit: Come back soon

The Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership (TICAL) is an incredible technology leadership resource for school administrators. If you have not spent some time on the TICAL web site, you should do that SOON.

This year TICAL and the Association of California School Administrators are co-sponsoring a nifty webinar series titled Administrator 2.0. The first webinar, How to Lead Your School in a Digital World, is this Thursday, September 30, at 4pm PDT.

Happy viewing!

I found this video at the Serious Games Market blog. It’s worth reading the full post.

Is this idea of creating classroom/school simulations to improve teacher/administrator preparation a good one? Are there some possibilities here? I think there might be…

It’s the first day of school here in Ames, Iowa. In past years, I’ve posted the following checklist, wondering if schools have made any improvement since the previous fall.

This year you have two ways to participate…

1. Download this checklist in Excel. Enter the name of your school organization and fill in your ratings (editable areas are in yellow). Click on the Chart tab at the bottom, then print. Disseminate broadly!
2. Participate in the 2-minute online survey. Fill in your ratings and click on the Submit button. See the aggregated results and compare them to 2008 (125 responses).

Feel free to use and distribute the Excel file and/or the survey link as desired. If you would like to conduct this online survey within your school organization, contact me about hosting a version just for you (at no cost). Hope you made some real progress since last year!