K-12 Superintendent, reformed IT guy, educator, 1:1 evangelist, life long learner, father, husband, geek, ex self-propelled field artillery turret mechanic, GCT, CCTO, INFP
I get this every once in a while from the folks in schools that aren’t in the classroom. Google Apps isn’t for real work and kids need to learn Microsoft Office to compete in the work force. Really?
Before there was Microsoft Word, there was WordStar. Platforms change. The world is going Google and Google Apps is the right platform for the classroom. So if the Army can run on Google Apps, schools should be able to as well. It’s better for learning and that’s what we’re all about.
I shipped out for basic a few months before my 18th birthday. My service wasn’t heroic or brave or even selfless, I enlisted to escape. That plane ride to Fort Sill Oklahoma saved me from a dark path and offered me the possibility of something better. The G.I. Bill put me through college where I met my wife and started my career in tech. As a high school teacher, when my students found out I had been in the Army, they would ask me about it. I taught in a poor rural school. The military was an out for many in the community, as it once was for me. However, I served in peacetime, Somalia not withstanding. Serving in war time, with Iraq and Afghanistan facing my students right after basic meant something else entirely. And so I would tell them that enlisting was the best decision for me at the time but that the biggest threat I ever faced during my tour was of a Soviet invasion of southern Germany in 1992 and the Great Flood of 1993.
I never told them, but in truth, 17 year old me really wanted to go to war. Too much G.I. Joe as a kid, I guess. I wanted to enlist after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 but my parents wouldn’t allow it. I had to wait the year out until finally my mom signed the paperwork that sent me on my way. And so I never did get to go to war, instead I learned all about mechanical, electrical and hydraulic systems, drove every wheeled and tracked vehicle in the Army’s inventory, ran paintball scenarios with a bunch of rear echelon paper pushers and ETS’d out after my first enlistment to go to college. Had it not been for that councilor at Rock Island Arsenal, I probably would have accepted my PCS orders to South Korea and eventually I would have seen war first hand, if only as a mechanic.
As I watch the happy veteran’s day tweets pile on today, I’m reminded that I got more out of the experience of serving than I ever put in and for that I will always be grateful. And so today, to my fellow veterans who served and to those who continue to carry the weight of our nation’s safety on your shoulders, I solute you.
Well, I just finished my reflection for Module 2 of the Professional Leading Learner LEC program. If you need something to put you to sleep, you can read it here. What I didn’t write about but was thinking about is the activity we did about presentations. As teachers I have always believed we need to step up our presentation games, faced with professional media outlets, TV and now YouTube. We are in a war for student attention and we could all use some presentation pointers. In the pre-service teacher tech class I used to teach, I used the following two videos to illustrate the difference between what it’s like for kids in our class and what we should strive for it to be like.
Every presentation I ever had in High School:
And how I wish they had been:
Where do your presentation skills fall on the above spectrum?
I received a login invite to the new CAASPP online assessment Admin interface Test Operations Management System (TOMS). The first thing I did after checking out the sparse dashboard interface was check my profile for correct contact info. Never mind the inactive user, not sure what that’s about, I went to update my contact number and was met by this gem of a message:
It won’t let me update my profile unless I provide a 6 digit extension and a fax number. I don’t know about you but I don’t have a 6 digit extension and I don’t use fax. Scary behavior for the system that is going to administer our online assessments in a few short months. Let’s hope they work on building in some common sense because right now, hope is all I have.
It is the nature of us that the few will make YouTube videos about car repair so that rest of us can be “YouTube” mechanics.
In such a reality, do we all need to learn how to make videos the same way we all must learn how to read and write? I don’t know the answer but I suspect it might be no. Just as we gravitate towards different interests, video production might not be a new required literacy but rather a craft to be pursued, much as painting and wood working are. So in that sense, media production would look more like shop class or art class in the secondary grades instead of reading and writing in the primaries.
Where do you think media production should fall in the learning process?
Recently, Jon Corippo called me out on twitter for taking the easy route with chromebooks when it comes to getting devices into the hands of students. I respect Jon immensely as a visionary educational leader who consistently challenges me to think about what I am doing and why. In fact, Jon is the person who set me on the 1:1 path. Jon is constantly pushing the boundaries of conventional thinking. We need people like Jon to challenge us. People who live ten years in the future and inspire us to be better, to do better, to ensure the future they live in will come true one day. Without visionaries like Jon, we would still be writing in the dirt with sticks and wondering what the surface of the moon was really like.
But there is a difference between being a visionary living in the future and living in the present working to make the future a reality for everyone. The reality for many districts is one of underfunded technology, understaffed technical support, non-existent edtech departments and spotty infrastructure. For districts with limited resources, easy may mean the difference between a future with 1:1 access for students and good old textbooks. So yes, to make the future accessible for students today, I’ll take easy over never every day of the week.
What devices are you providing your students and why?
Fall CUE has come and gone. What a weekend. After an hour and a half turned three and a half hour drive up Thursday night, Friday morning came way too early. CUE had a new registration system in place. One that involved bar codes and printing instead of manual hunt and peck through folders. After a slight hiccup on the server side, the line moved along at a respectable clip. It would have moved even faster, however not everyone, myself included, had their bar code ready to go but for those of us that forgot (or just plain couldn’t download the bar code) email address or name sufficed. While the line moved along, it still managed to wrap outside the admin building for most of the hour it took to get everyone through. Here’s hoping there are a few more printing stations available next year or they can convince people to come to early registration, maybe with a no host bar in the hotel lobby? Sadly missing was a dedicated speaker line, which silly as it sounds, would just add a bit more thank you to the presenters who spent their time preparing and sharing with fellow educators for this two day event.
Following a disturbing trend at CUE conferences lately, wifi was spotty on the first day.
Mike Lawrence, CEO of CUE, recognizing the basics needs of all humans.
The conference was at the mercy of the district wifi network and techs could be seen walking around with wifi test equipment searching for problems. With a series of issues identified and addressed through Friday morning, intermittent problems continued to plague several attendees throughout the first day. Personally, I would not want to host an event with over 1200 uber edtech users at one of my schools but I’d have a bit more confidence in my equipment knowing it was brand new than I would in a mixed environment of old and newish access points configured without bandwidth limits or separate SSIDs for presenters and attendees. Day two saw wireless stability return to CUE, leaving me to question whether it was the lower turnout or the disabling of band steering that actually made the difference.
Day one also saw long lunch lines. The lunch vendor arrived late and towards the end had to resort to making individual orders for folks. Multi-talented CUE Board Member Roger Wagner lent a hand making salads behind the counter to keep the line moving. Again, day two went much smoother, with short lines and plenty of food.
Feedback for the conference from my teachers and principals (including @PrincipalUMS) was positive overall with generally good things to say about the majority of the sessions. As will any pre-slugged conference, sessions can sometimes be hit or miss and with rooms packed with people, voting with two feet can sometimes be intimidating. There were a few sessions that I wanted to attend but arrived late to and wasn’t able to squeeze myself in to find a seat. I ended up hanging out and catching up with folks, which sometimes is better than any session could ever be.
Somehow I managed to miss out on the coffee on the first day and didn’t realize that there wouldn’t be any coffee on day two. Luckily a call for coffee on twitter Saturday morning brought Sam Patterson and Mike Vollmert to the rescue with Mochas from Starbucks. Coffee would have been nice to have on Saturday, especially with the rainy weather.
Diana Laufenberg‘s closing keynote was the most inspiring and on point presentation I’ve heard so far this year. She has me thinking about how I can re-design our PD to be more student focused and to inspire creativity and innovation in our classrooms. Her, “It’s not what you know but what you can do with what you know” slide should be plastered on the walls of every classroom from here to the moon.
Beyond the conference sessions, it was great to catch up with people I haven’t seen in a while. The general consensus was that we’re all way too busy. The edtech explosion seems to have all of us running around like crazy trying to keep up with the demand. Suddenly everyone wants to be (or needs to be) a computer using educator.
My overall experience this year was much better than last. American Canyon High School is a beautiful campus. I think even with a 1200 attendee cap, Friday still pushed the campus to it’s limit. Saturday was much more pleasant, even with the rain. The sweet spot for the venue is probably around 1,000 attendees. And the wifi definitely needs an upgrade. 802.11AC support would be nice and the ability to disable 802.11b and set bandwidth limits would be nice too.
I suppose the measure of any conference is, “Would I send people again?” The answer for Fall CUE 2015 at American Canyon is yes, with the caveat that a slightly lower attendee cap and upgraded wifi would be much appreciated. Of course, the alternative would be to find a bigger venue and let demand dictate attendance. I think 2,000 is attainable, but what wifi network could support us all? I wonder.
Full disclaimer, I’m a current elected board member of CUE, the non-profit organization that puts on the Fall CUE conference in American Canyon, CA.
Jon Corippo and Chris Scott debating iPad vs. Chromebook at Fall CUE in Napa, CA.
I’ll cut to the chase. There is no such thing as the perfect device. Not in our personal lives and certainly not in school. While I tend to gravitate to my tiny iPhone 5 for twitter, calendar, email, photos, video and the occasional phone call, I do my serious work on a MacBook or more recently a chromebook while almost all of my content consumption now happens on an iPad. If forced to limit myself to just one device, I’d keep the iPhone hands down. I’m guessing most people would make the same choice.
Now that we have moved beyond the debate over wether we should be providing a device to every student and onto the debate about what device we should be using, for many it’s proving to be a more difficult conversation. Too often, the device decision is made as either a technical or an instructional one. I would argue that it can’t be one or the other, but rather it must be both. Instruction cannot drive the discussion without input on the technical challenges and conversely, technology considerations should not solely define the instructional environment. As an example, iPad proponents are quick to point out that iPads offer a multitude of content creation opportunities over a chromebook, while chromebook supporters like to point to the expensive nature of iPad deployment and management at scale as being a compelling reason not to use iPads. I could be accused of doing both at one time or the other because both arguments are right.
Every device choice will involve compromise. The compromises on the instruction side generally involve one of the 4 C’s. In addition, the specter of the 5th C, CAASPP, the state online assessment, is hanging over everything. On the technical side, the C that can’t be left out is Cost. Cost of the device, cost of support and cost of ongoing sustainability are driving factors wether we like it or not. If cost wasn’t a factor, every student would have three devices and a private tutor. As much as some of us would like to think otherwise, CAASPP and Cost are very real factors that must weigh into any device decision along with supportability, sustainability and the instructional goals.
The bottom line is this; there is no one perfect device for the classroom but we are closer now than ever before to being able to provide every student with a device, and that has the potential to transform how we teach and how students learn.
Back to my thinking on devices.
Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education go together like Chocolate and Peanut Butter. It’s like they were made for one another. On top of that, Google has solved the management challenges of supporting thousands of mobile devices better than the promise of Microsoft AD and Group Policy ever did. Chromebooks with the chrome management console just work. They are ready to use when and where they are needed and they can be setup and pushed out with minimal effort. Multi-user support is inherent. Tech support is still needed but in much more sustainable ratios than with other options.
Apple iPads took the classroom by storm. They were novel, cheaper than a laptop and full of promise for a brighter future. Their ability to redefine what computing looks like is unparalleled and the multi-media creation tools are accessible and easy. And there are all those apps. The reality on the technical side is much less bright. Management in large environments increases Cost and Complexity which affects usability. Their weakness in supporting CAASPP and the high cost to fully support make them challenging to scale and sustain. Plan on a significant ramp up in tech support to ensure a working learning environment.
Windows is still around and still suffers from support challenges on mobile devices at scale. Many districts have dialed in desktop and lab support but at a Cost higher than a similar chromebook option with questionable instructional benefit. The ability to run Microsoft Office is no loner justification enough to maintain such an environment. With more and more applications moving online, the need to maintain a full desktop OS is becoming obsolete.
Too early to tell.
We’re really too early in to this transformation to 1:1 computing in school to make a definitive declaration that one device is better than the other for impacting the classroom and student learning. Truly at the end of the day, it’s not about the device, it’s about the instructional practice and the teacher mind set in the classroom that will transform student learning. The basics of ubiquitous information access and collaborative content creation tools can be met by just about any device. I believe it is the ready access to information and what teachers and students can do with the information that is the game changer. Convincing a teacher to adopt new pedagogy and new instructional strategies in this changing information paradigm is the real challenge.
Meanwhile, in the workplace and college, people are happily using multiple devices to meet their working and learning needs. Makes me think that 1:1 for kids could start looking a lot like the old 4 computers in the back of the classroom model. Too little, too late.
I am working on my last minute addition to the #fallcue presentation lineup for Saturday entitled “Going 1:1 with Chromebooks” and I’m having a hard time finding enough material to cover the 50 minutes. Chromebooks are just too easy. It goes something like this
Step 1. Go Google Apps for Education (GAFE)
Step 2. Get good wifi and decent Internet bandwidth
Step 3. Buy lots of chromebooks
Step 4. Unbox chromebook, connect to wifi, enroll in GAFE domain, repeat (In our case, 3600 times)
Step 5. Send chromebooks out to schools
Step 6. Students use chromebooks
Now, if I was talking about going 1:1 with iPads, well, 50 minutes might not be long enough.
There is no box 