There is no box

I found this in the updated FAQ on the cde website today:

Q. What is SBAC computer adaptive testing?

A. This type of testing is a form of computer based testing that adapts to the student’s ability level. The SBAC summative assessments are being developed for use with technology known as computer adaptive testing (CAT). The CAT assessment “engine” begins by delivering a short series of moderately difficult grade-level test items to the student, and then, depending on the student’s initial performance, delivers items that are either more or less difficult. This process continues until the student’s level of proficiency is determined.

With CAT, every student essentially receives a unique assessment, eliminating the need to test all students at one time. Schools will be able to group and assess students in a configuration that matches their specific capacity. CAT also permits a much longer assessment window to run all the students through the assessment. This will allow California to move into the next generation of computer-delivered assessments without causing disadvantages to some schools because of limited bandwidth or computers-to-students ratio. (emphasis mine)

So it looks like they are going to bypass the need to test all students at the same time, never mind how we are going to teach all students to be ready to take the computer adaptive test. Apparently that’s not their problem anymore. Welcome to the wonderful world of equity in education at it’s finest.

I’m currently enrolled in the Leading Edge Certification for Administrators program. One of my fellow students Burt Lo wrote about the value of an Administrator blogging for his assignment this week. I thought it only fitting to complete my assignment by responding to his post. I think Burt is right on when he says;

I’m not convinced of the the use of a blog as a conversational tool for the following reasons. I have posted on and off for several years, and I can probably count on one hand the number of comments that I have received on my blog posts. (Of course, I realize that one of the potential reasons for this fact is that my blog posts do not contain any information worth commenting on.) So, unless someone an administrator is motivated to blog for the sake of the writing process, they could quickly become discourage at the lack of response to their blog posts. Most of the time spent on my blog has been spent deleting spam comments and installing updates so that my blog is not taken over by phishing websites, etc. Again, not reasons that an administrator would want to start blogging.

He continues:

However, as a communication tool, I see tremendous value in blogging. As has been pointed out by Susan Brooks-Young, Bill Robinson, and Greg Ottinger, a number of tools exist that allow parents to easily receive information posted by an administrator. In fact, it is so easy to receive information from blogs through RSS feeds, that it is easy to become overwhelmed by the information (similar to an email listserv). In fact, when I check my Google Reader account, I’m often discouraged by the number of posts that have piled up that I often don’t end up reading many of them.

Blogging is a great medium for sharing information but unless you’re this principal and can get 10,000 hits a month on your blog, where else might you be able to go to engage your community? As Burt pointed out, participation can be an issue as well as dissemination and consumption of the information. How many parents even know what RSS is anyway? Twitter is certainly an option. There are educators out there using it every day to connect and share. However, some may find the 140 character limit lacking for sharing lengthy information with parents and community. No, for real engagement we should be going to where the parents are. Any guesses where that might be?

If you answered Facebook, congratulations. Parents and students are on it regularly (constantly?) but they may only visit the school web site once or twice a year if we’re lucky. That’s why every school should have a Facebook page and every administrator should be publishing to it actively. Period. Blogs are great, RSS is awesome but Facebook is where the people are and so we should be there too.

Full disclosure: I don’t use Facebook, but I hear others do.

I sent this out to the Leadership Team in my District. Maybe it will spark some discussions.

I was lucky enough to attend the ISTE conference inSan Diego last week. Three main themes stuck out for me. iPads were everywhere, Social Networking was being used to collaborate and share and Google Apps has finally come of age in the classroom.

Many sessions were dedicated to iPads in one way or another. There was a lot of focus on specific Apps and how to use iPads in the classroom.

iPad resources:

http://flippingwithkirch.blogspot.com/2012/06/iste12-real-apps-real-classroom-ipads.html

http://www.scoop.it/t/ipads-and-tablets-in-education

http://macdonaldtechforteachers.wikispaces.com/iPad+Apps+for+Education

http://smartclasstech.blogspot.com/2012/06/there-app-for-that.html

This is the first conference that really showed me how social networking tools and the power of being connected can really leverage a Personal Learning Network (PLN). Adam Bellow, creator of http://www.edutecher.net/ used a tool to tweet out his presentations from Keynote in real time. Teachers were sharing links and resources on twitter so the ability to see what was happening in many sessions was greatly expanded. It was very powerful. Also, I sat in on a global classroom session where the flat classroom folks talked about connecting classrooms around the world. I listened to two elementary students from Mexico present their digital news letter on their iPad and saw many other examples of students showing off their work to the ISTE audience.

http://www.flatclassroomproject.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w2j1vJmEIs&feature=autoplay&list=PL8A5F88F3A2E9A7DC&playnext=7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyoafgmUhis&feature=autoplay&list=PL8A5F88F3A2E9A7DC&playnext=8

The keynotes were about change and what our Education System should be striving towards. They are available on YouTube.

Opening Keynote – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mleHwdP_2ds&feature=related

Tuesday’s Keynote – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFIkkmaBD9A

Personally I think Sir Ken Robinson is better in these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Someone tweeted out this link on iBook Author student publishing – http://www.cultofmac.com/169745/these-7th-graders-have-already-published-their-first-ibooks-author-bestseller/

Some other general resources that were shared out via twitter:

A collaborative Notes document – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c9cpBaUqfPne9y6B9kJIkr1LyPUYb2qXGQqQXnYQgEQ/edit#

The Official Diigo group – http://groups.diigo.com/group/diigo-iste12

ISTE YouTube Channel – http://www.youtube.com/user/istevideos

Blogs:

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

http://www.patrickmlarkin.com/

http://www.thethinkingstick.com/

http://www.stevehargadon.com/

http://blog.iste.org/

The conference was overwhelming and it was impossible to see everything but the themes were clear to me; Mobile (iPads), social networking tools and the rise of Google with everything pointing towards students and teachers as content creators who use technology to facilitate collaboration, engage in project based learning and deliver individualized instruction.

Six years ago I attended NECC in San Diego. The two things that I remember from my very first edtech conference are the 4th of July fireworks show and Steve Hargadon‘s Open Source Pavilion. NECC 2006 was one of those pivotal moments in my professional education career where I realized there were a bunch of other educators out there that believed technology was important to education. It set me on a journey of exploration and discovery of  technology in education in my role as an education technology leader.  It’s also probably where I first saw Jim Klein’s Life 2.0 presentation which fundamentally altered my view as an IT Director of technology and education. I went back to my district and immediately started setting up open source LTSP computer labs and installing Open Office.

Fast forward six years and I’ve become fully engaged in the edtech community. First I started by attending conferences where I saw David Thornburg speak about the future of technology in education and was told that I teach kids and not business apps by Chris Lehmann. I watched Jon Corippo demonstrate 100 free web 2.0 tools in 50 minutes. I’ve seen Jim Klein‘s message about Life 2.0 become ever more relevant and watched teachers like Chris Scott, Diane Main and Matthew Schwartz grow into their own as edtech influentials. I created a twitter account in 2007 and then took about a year to figure out how to use it to build my Personal Learning Network (PLN). I became a classroom teacher, joined CUE, became a presenter at IT and edtech conferences on google apps, IT, open source and other topics, I started a podcast about edtech with my former co-worker Danny Silva and implemented 1:1 linux #ubermix netbooks and 1:1 iPads. I was selected to become a Google Certified Teacher and met awesome edtech leaders like Adam Bellow and James Sanders. I got taken to school on YouTube and Video for the classroom by Mr. Video himself Jim Sill. I had my teachers classroom’s flipped by Ramsey Musallam and his flipteaching.com website.

NECC 2006 got me excited about edtech and helped me see the possibilities that were out there.  It ignited a passion and a drive to do something more. Since then it has been a roller coaster ride of new technology and new experiences. My primary focus has shifted from keeping servers up and running to empowering teachers and students with technology in the classroom. The zero server server room is within reach for schools of all sizes and with limited resources it makes sense to focus what little we have where it matters most. In the classroom.

Now I’m back in San Diego for ISTE 2012. With my recent job changes, I almost didn’t make it but I’m really glad that I did.  While the name may have changed from six years ago, I’m confident the impact this experience will have on me won’t. There has never been a more exciting time to be talking about technology and education. We’re solidly into the 21st Century.  Technology is becoming disruptive and enabling pedagogy and learning opportunities that didn’t even exist five years ago.  I have been privileged to be the IT Guy with access to amazing California ed tech professionals that are redefining education through the innovative use of technology every day. My plan for this international experience is to further broaden my horizons, meet twitter friends in real life, listen, learn, connect, take back and share. I hope everyone attending does the same.

With the release of the Samsung Series 5 550 chromebook  I have been seriously considering going google for my next mobile computer. But As I started evaluating what it is I need from a mobile workstation, I realized I won’t be able to do everything I need with the chromebook. While I do spend the majority of my time in a chrome browser using cloud apps, I’m also an IT guy that needs to be able to access Windows Servers remotely. The most basic and universal way to do this is with RDP. Chrome OS does not support RDP and the HTML 5 options that Google points to are pay to play and require installing more access infrastructure on my servers than I care to.

While there is a native Citrix ICA client, I’m not running a Citrix environment. My school district has invested heavily in VMWare View and I don’t see us moving away from that just so that I can connect to a few servers. Not having a native RDP client in Chrome OS (or a VMWare client) also limits the opportunity to give my users chromebooks because I can’t provide access to those legacy windows applications they use daily  without adding another layer (and more costs) onto my current infrastructure.

Having provided Teachers and staff first Ubermix Netbooks and then MacBooks as we migrated away from locked down Windows laptops, I was always able to provide access to those pesky legacy Windows apps through a generic RDP session back to a Terminal Server or a VM of their old desktop. I could easily do this because both Linux and Mac have free RDP clients that can connect directly to the server without additional components. So why isn’t there a native RDP client for Chrome OS? We all live in a Windows world. To pretend otherwise is silly. This is shifting, but not providing native access in the short term is frustrating. I don’t see what would be so hard about porting rdesktop to Chrome OS since Chrome OS it’s basically linux. The only people that can do this of course are at Google, since they control the OS. It would open up an entire migration path for users to switch quickly to Chromebooks without having to invest in expensive infrastructure just to connect to legacy windows apps.

It’s very disappointing in a way. I’m basically being forced by Google to buy a MacBook. PC Hardware (and battery life) is all just Blah to me after having been on a MacBook for the past year. I was hoping the Chromebook Series 5 550 would be the one to free me from Apple’s clutches. I really do use Chrome 90% of the time. Unfortunately the other 10% is invariably spent in RDP rebooting a Windows server…

Buyer Beware. That’s the first thought that popped into my head when I saw my previous position at East Side advertised on the Edjoin.org job site. The position pays, $136,404-$141,825, which coming from the central valley, seemed like a lot of money four months ago. In fact it was considerably more than the other offer I had back in December when I chose the IT Director job at East Side over a certificated edtech Coordinator position a bit further north. I was seriously leaning towards the Coordinator job but the 30% pay difference was hard to overlook. In hind sight, I should have asked why the East Side position was paying more than the surrounding districts at the time (and still is). Had I done a bit of due diligence I might have discovered the district’s reputation and got some heads up on the state things there. But I didn’t and my wife really wanted to move back to San Jose and not an hour north of San Jose; so the decision was made and four months went by but I would not have made it to Berryessa if I had not taken that particular detour. So the moral of the story is, look before you leap and if you happen not to, hope your luck holds long enough to bounce onto a nice sturdy ledge somewhere further down the mountain.

I’m at Berryessa Union School District now and it’s been like night and day. The on-boarding process was incredibly efficient. My new boss threw a bagel and pastry reception the first day to introduce me to the district staff. They got me a plant for my office, which reminds me, I need to remember to water it. My business cards were ready day one. It’s all textbook employee retention stuff but it has been very well executed. And everyone is very friendly. Not that people at the last place weren’t. It’s just that the culture is noticeably different, more sunny. Maybe that’s just the elementary way, I don’t know.

I’ve only got a staff of four now but so far it appears that they have very good processes and procedures in place that make that number work for what they need to do. The infrastructure is solid and well documented.  Wireless is still Cisco and they’re on Exchange email but I guess you can’t have everything.

I’ve got a lot of technology to get up to speed on. The VDI infrastructure is probably the biggest. Almost all of the computers in the district are virtual. Reminds me of my Terminal Server days back at Le Grand. So I’ll be brushing off my Lone Ranger IT tech skills and getting my hands dirty again. Something about that has a zen like appeal to me.

Did I mention how supportive my boss is? Any reservations I had on day one about my decision to move were cleared up by day three. I’ve started building the white board map already. The challenges here are different. With the infrastructure basically stable, the discussions I’ll start having are where do they want to go from here. 1:1, mobile, social, individualized instruction, teacher technology training? I’m here to make it happen. There is already a planned pilot this summer with Khan Academy using Google Apps for Education. I setup the Apps domain on day two. Looking forward to seeing how all that goes.

I can’t wait to start visiting sites and meeting the Principals, Teachers and Students of Berryessa. Time to get out there to where the magic happens.