There is no box

This time lat year, I traded in my iPhone 4 for the 4S and I remember the difference being significant enough to have been totally worth it. Primarily the improved camera speed and not having to use a case to make a phone call were the big wins for me. Forgetting for a moment that I managed to scratch the screen in the first two weeks because I couldn’t bring myself to ZAGG the retina display; I could justify an upgrade in my own mind just so I don’t have to relive that horror every time I notice the scratches (which truthfully is not very often anymore). I’ve been seriously re-considering my initial impulse to upgrade just because a new iPhone is out. In fact I’ve decided not to upgrade right now.

Maybe it has something to do with the intriguing options out there from the android camp (Galaxy S III anyone?) or maybe it’s that I find the stretched out iPhone 5 oddly proportioned. Whatever the reason I’m just not feeling the need to upgrade like I did with the 4. The 4S is a great smartphone whereas the 4 had issues. My 4S is going to run iOS 6 when it comes out and the four apps I use daily will continue to do what I need them to do. The iPhone 5 for all the hype offers little incentive for me at the moment. I’m not even all that jazzed about the new camera improvements.  I recently bought a Sony NEX 5N and am getting more serious about taking pictures of the kids and I’m trying not to pull out my phone for that anymore.

So no, I won’t have the newest, fastest, thinnest iPhone and I’m perfectly ok with that (really, I am). The iPhone 5S may be another matter entirely. I guess I’ll have to wait a year to find out. Now where’s my iPad Mini?

I read this article today and what jumped out at me immediately was this passage:

However, the percentage of eighth-grade students rated as proficient declined significantly. In 2007, the last time the writing test was administered, 35 percent of eighth-graders scored proficient or above, compared with 27 percent in 2011. However, the proportion of 12th-graders proficient and above rose slightly, from 25 to 27 percent.

That looks like a significant drop in eighth grade writing proficiency. The article goes on to explain:

NAEP moved from the traditional handwritten tests — still administered to its youngest group, fourth-graders — to computers because of the significant role they play in writing and the prevalence of computers in students’ lives.

I wonder if a lack of access to technology classes and computers might have something to do with the drop off in eighth grade scores. High School’s have historically offered students computer classes and it is common for writing to take place in computer labs at the secondary level verses with pen and paper in the lower grades so it makes sense that we wouldn’t see a drop off at the 12th grade level.

Now throw the Common Core assessments into the mix when we start testing all students using adaptive computer based tests in 2014. What’s going to happen to writing scores in the lower grades then? How about math scores? Do our elementary students know how to test on a computer? How much computer time do they experience during the school day? Do elementary schools even have computer labs? I know many of mine do not. Even my middle schools are challenged with providing computer access to students.

We should be coming up with plans to address student technology access now. We need to be redesigning curriculum and classroom instruction practices to provide students the skills they need to successfully navigate these computer based tests. We cannot continue to treat technology as a bolted on afterthought. It must be fully integrated into classroom instruction. Yes budgets are bad but we can’t just put our heads in the sand and hope 2014 comes and goes without computerized testing. Common Core is coming. Adaptive Computer Based testing is coming. Whether it’s 2 years from now or 4, it’s going to happen.

Regardless of what you think about the common core standards and state testing, we owe it to our kids to start preparing them for this now while there is still time. Otherwise, come testing time they’ll be sitting down to type an essay and navigate math problems in front of a computer potentially for the very first time. And that’s just not fair.

I’ve been recommending schools go Google since 2007. Below is why, with some issues I’ve run into along the way.

Pros:

1. No more Outlook to Install. Ever.
2. Web based, works with all browsers, even IE (not IE 6 though but you really should upgrades those. You know who you are)
3. Real-time doc collaboration. You must see it to believe it.
4. No more servers to manage. Yay!
5. So easy to manage you can assign a teacher to manage their school’s email domain. Really.
6. Integrates with Chromebooks, if you like chromebooks.
7. Free Anti-SPAM included
8. Works with MS Office (Yes, teachers can continue to use Office 2003 if they want to)
9. Google Drive client for Mac and Windows
10. Great potential for 21^st Century Pedagogy in mixed OS BYOD and 1:1 environments.

Cons:

1. It’s not made by Microsoft.
2. DirSync and Password Sync with AD take some elbow grease to setup
3. It’s not MS Office or Outlook. (People eventually notice, even when you tell them you’re upgrading to the “new” outlook web access with office)
4. So easy to setup and manage even a teacher can do it, and probably already has.
5. It’s a totally new way of thinking about documents and collaboration that disrupts traditional workflows and forces people to change. (might actually be a pro)
6. Archiving options are basically Google Vault or Google Vault
7. Uses Your Bandwidth
8. No Google Drive for Linux (not a problem unless you run linux)
9. Updates often, making training more challenging. But then we should all be adaptive Just In Time Learners, right?
10. Occasionally it breaks for a few minutes and there is nothing you can do but get a coffee while you wait for someone else to fix it.

You can learn more at Google Apps for Education.

My school district has a parcel tax renewal on the ballot this November and I gladly volunteered to do the web page for the campaign on my personal time. I started by building out a site in wordpress but quickly realized that while wordpress was a great blogging platform, for the uninitiated web designer, it was probably not the best website platform. In all fairness to WordPress, my html coding days pre-date CSS and I haven’t exactly kept my skills current. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that after switching to Squarespace I had a great mix of GUI WYSIWYG editor with all the codey bits underneath just a few clicks away. Here is the site that I built over the course of a few late nights and weekends. The content and pictures were provided, which was a big relief because with the tools available, it really was all about the content. I think it all came together rather nicely and the site really looks nice on mobile. Now if only the wife would let me pay the $10 a month to host my blog on Squarespace, “There is no box” might actually look presentable.

Just when I thought I was done, they pull me back in. To the LEC Admin Boot Camp course that is. But that’s the wrong movie reference. More on that later. After having received an email titled Final Grade Update with all 3’s (the highest possible score) for my portfolio assignments, I was dutifully informed today that my final reflection did not actually meet the requirements of the assignment. Something about rubrics and missing standards. In response I posted this follow up reflection to my portfolio:

Despite receiving a passing grade on the final assignment, apparently I did not fully comply with the 7.2 reflection instructions because I did not reference each and every NETS-A Standard in relation to my readiness to support digital learning. This has left some people in a quandary as to how to pass my portfolio when it does not fully comply to the three metrics on the rubric. I would argue this is the problem with Rubrics when used to evaluate anything. Once a rubric enters the picture, people know how far they need to go and they stop trying. I guess I’m with Alfie Khon on this one. Actually I’m probably beyond even his position, since there is actually no learning value proposition for me in completing the assignment per the rubric.

But enough about rubrics, even though I’m pretty sure I did actually provide an honest reflection that had value to me versus simpy making up some association of feigned learning mapped to a set of technology standards that for the majority of school administrators is esoteric at best and a series of potential budget line items they can’t afford at worst (was the whole point of this module to change that perhaps?).

There are 5 NETS-A big standards with 21 little sub standards. You can read all about them here. There is some interesting information. Like how the latest revision was published in 2009. You know, 2 years after I started using twitter, implementing Google Apps with students and began bringing teachers together across subjects to talk about teaching in a 1:1 netbook environment. Through this course I did not learn anything ground breaking or even slightly eye-opening that would compel me to list all 26 standards and how they relate to me. If you read my real reflection I explain why this is not a negative reflection on the course but rather on me as a learner and the purpose for taking the course in the first place. I’m not taking it to learn the content, I’m taking it to become certified to teach the course. Even teachers aren’t made to sit through a year of Intro To Science before they can teach the class. I’m not sure why we were made to do basically the same thing for this leading edge course.

Turning a critical eye on the standards and this course for a moment, I would say the course failed standards 2c. These learning resources did not meet my diverse needs.

2. Digital Age Learning Culture

c. Provide learner-centered environments equipped
with technology and learning resources to meet
the individual, diverse needs of all learners

Maybe this is why I am not a big standards fan*, because you can’t standardize creativity. Unfortunately the NETS-A standards don’t address this critical element directly and yet it is creativity we need more than anything in our schools. Technology has the power to enable students and teachers to create in ways never before seen in the classroom. We can now create for near zero cost, at scale. We are all the next Spielberg. Prior to this course I had been actively engaged in support of all of the big and little standards (with the exception of 4b as it deals with data, see my reflection on Data Driven Decision Making for why) and I intend to continue to be actively engaged after this course but not because I will tailor my actions to the standards but rather because my actions and beliefs can be found in the standards.

I was also supposed to reference the “Essential Conditions: Necessary conditions to effectively leverage technology for learning“. While I would agree that organizations should have all of these conditions to successfully leverage technology for learning, we have to start somewhere and for many that means being able to provide equatable access to modern technology for teachers and administrators. Without this basic system in place I think it is difficult to promote technology integrated learning, develop a shared vision for technology integration, empower leaders, provide technical support, retain skilled personel or provide professional development. So give every teacher and administrator a MacBook (and I say MacBook for a very specific reason) and see what happens. I’m thinking a lot of the other conditions sort themselves out. Asking the community to fund technology is scapegoating the real issue, districts need to step up and recognize that technology is an essential element to the 21st Century classroom and stop asking teachers to teach on twelve year old computers running 10 year old operating systems.

*Reference Yong Zhao if you want to know why pursuing stricter math standards might be counter productive and Sir Ken Robinson’s wonderful RSA Animate talk about where we should be heading so our kids have the best possible futures.

Could I have just beamed down to the planet in my red shirt and assessed my readiness to support digital age learning in relation to each of  the standards as the assignment and rubric demanded? Sure. Would there have been any point to me doing so? Not really. It’s the no win scenario students face all the time. Complete an assignment that holds no learning value or turn something in that is good enough to pass the rubric test but doesn’t have any personal value. I never saw Captain Kirk use a rubric to save a planet. In fact when faced with the no-win scenario he chose to re-write the assignment so that he could win rather than worry about the rubric or a set of standards he was supposed to meet. He mastered the scenario by thinking outside the box. The rest of the red shirted cadets accepted their fate, learned the lesson they were told they needed to learn and beamed down to the planet to die. I think that just about sums up the problem with education today. We have a system that produces red shirts instead of Captain Kirks.

My LEC Admin portfolio in it’s entirety can be found here.

RSS or Really Simple Syndication is a pre twitter tool that really transformed how I consumed information from the web. My RSS reader of choice is Google Reader, mainly because it loads in iGoogle. Now that iGoogle is going away, I’m not sure how I’ll get to it. I might just have to open it in a new tab along with gmail and calendar. Of course I mainly access Reader on my phone these days and Flipboard on the iPad is taking over that role more and more. However while I find flipboard good for browsing the most current entries, when I really want to dig more in-depth into the 1000+ outstanding unread items, the Reader interface is still the best for me. Adapting is part of this new Web 2.0 world. Tools are created, we use them for a while and then they die and new ones sprout up with more features or better functionality. It’s the cycle of life at hyper speed.

There is another side to RSS. One perhaps hidden from everyday web use but still critically important none the less. RSS connects my podcast’s web site to iTunes and allows my co-host and I to post a link to a new episode in a blog and have it automatically available in iTunes and the world. RSS made publishing easy for the masses. It made subscribing possible before there was Like and Follow and + and it still is key to putting the 2.0 in web 2.0 today. That’s why it is important for current and future Education Administrators to understand what the Orange icon means and how they can use it to start building connections.

This post is part of the Leading Edge Certification for Administrators Bootcamp program I am currently participating in. Hope you enjoyed it.