There is no box

This is in response to a question that Robert Pronovost recently asked me about how much technology should be used in the classroom. My initial answer was that technology should be used when it’s needed and that we shouldn’t expect to see technology being used all the time in classrooms. After pondering on this a bit more, I think that was a safe answer. It’s an answer that doesn’t reflect the world we live in and leaves room for some to say, we’re learning, so we don’t need technology. Well…

We like to talk SAMR from the teacher’s perspective but I think technology in the classroom needs to start with the students. Having access to 1:1 devices has the potential to transform how students learn. Technology does not replace; technology enhances, augments, and accelerates. Technology is a disruptor, it eliminates the middle man from traditional models. In the classroom, the middle man is the textbook, the worksheet. the memorization of facts and yes, even the summative assessment.

I am going to take a very student centered view on this answer and say that technology should be used whenever students need it. Just like we do in real life.

The challenge is, what does that really mean for the classroom? I think it means that whenever a student needs information they should be able to use technology to access resources to look it up. Those resources might be the Internet, a social network or their friend in the next classroom. I also think it means teachers need to model this behavior for their students. 

Artificially restricting a student’s access to information, their social network or their peers is a purely 20th century concept of learning. Providing a sheet of paper (or text book, digital or otherwise) that students then use to “find” and copy information into a worksheet is tantamount to teaching malpractice in the digital age. Students need real skills if they are going to develop fundamental digital literacy. Nobody outside of a classroom looks for answers in a textbook. Today, online information search, acquisition and retrieval is critical for college, career and life long learning. In every 1:1 classroom, how students access information should be radically different.

The same can be said for creating content. While paper and pencil shouldn’t necessarily disappear, the power of a 1:1 classroom to create content for a broader audience, beyond the teacher and the classroom is another critical literacy in the digital economy of today. No matter how student work is created, whether online or on paper, technology should be leveraged in the classroom to share with the outside world. Technology should be used to expand student audience to other classes on campus, to parents and community, and across the globe. A picture is worth a thousand words, sharing a picture of a student project with a broader audience, on a regular basis, in a safe classroom environment, will prepare students for the world of online sharing that awaits them outside of school.

Using online tools instead of traditional paper/pencil activities lends itself to fostering collaboration especially if students are using a collaboration suite like Google Docs where the teacher can provide feedback in real time. Students can easily work collaboratively on projects across time and space as they learn to navigate the anytime, anywhere learning that is another fundamental literacy of today’s digital age.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that the core backbone of instruction should be built around a digital ecosystem with digital workflows using the technology we have available today to access information and create content across the “curriculum”. I think students need fundamental digital literacy skills to be successful, self sufficient, lifelong learners and those sills cannot be learned without ubiquitous access to technology.

Why education chooses to focus so much on content vs. learning has always puzzled me. Facts are free, ideas cost money. We spend so much money on facts (curriculum) instead of ideas (pedagogy, professional development, learning to learn) and then we spend even more money assessing content knowledge over the knowledge to learn. It’s kind of crazy actually.

In every 1:1 classroom, the expectation should be that students use technology to access information through online resources and social networks, to collaborate with their peers and content experts, to create and share their ideas, thoughts and projects with the world. And all of this requires that we teach kids how to do this, responsibly, safely and effectively which means, we need teachers to model and teach these skills as well.

To make this happen, Teachers need digital workflows, frameworks and scaffolding. I believe this is where the focus of teacher professional development should be, instructional practice with technology infused into the process. Districts that still separate content area instruction from educational technology are missing the point. It’s all about good instruction, and today, that means technology infused instruction, where students choose when and how to use technology to empower their learning.

Thanks to Robert for making me think about this because it’s certainly a timely topic and as we push more technology into classrooms and have discussions about what that technology use should look like, I think it’s important that we take on these big questions.

I’ve decided to apply for Microsoft Innovative Educator. If you’ve followed me for a while, you might think that strange however, long ago and far away, I started out life as a Microsoft guy. I had more Microsoft certifications than would fit on a business card and I ran Windows servers at home for fun.

When the iPad, and then the Chromebook came out, I dropped Microsoft from my professional repertoire of primary platforms for classrooms. But something has changed. With Windows 10, HoloLens and a more open platform strategy, Microsoft is starting to look interesting again.

I am applying to the MIE program, not because I’m an expert in the use of Microsoft products in the classroom, but because I’d really like to see what Microsoft’s vision for education is and more importantly, hear from current educators that are using Microsoft products in their classrooms to do innovative things. I also feel that I have a responsibility to seek out possibilities and learn how I might apply them to my district. So, it’s time to start paying attention to Microsoft again.

Last year, I walked into the tail end of a network infrastructure upgrade. It was the standard fair for school districts in my part of the country. Cisco 3750X switch stacks everywhere. I always felt going with a full layer 3 enterprise class switch in building IDFs was a bit of overkill for schools. Really, only the MDF needs to be layer 3. In a simple (and elegant) school campus network design, the rest of the switches on campus only need to be layer 2. But, we were almost done with the upgrade and at that point there didn’t seem to be a reason to think too hard about what we were putting in or why.

Fast forward to a few months ago and we started seriously looking at going 10Gb on the LAN backbone. The main reason was to keep pace with the aggregation of 1Gb wireless access points. We’ve installed 1 AP per classroom, which now have the potential to drive upwards of 6-10Gbs of backbone traffic per building. We started off with Cisco 4500X 10Gb core switches to support our 10Gb fiber WAN. With those in place, we considered installing 10Gb modules and GBICs in the existing 3750X stacks, however, we also realized that we wanted more port density and POE capacity in our IDFs. After taking all of these issues into account, we decided to take a step back and look at options.

Around the same time, we were having issues with our existing wireless solution. As part of working towards a resolution to those issues, we initiated a trial of Meraki wireless access points and just happened to check the boxes for the switches too. I had familiarity with the Meraki UI and the amazing visibility Meraki access points provided into the wireless network from my last district. I was interested to see if we could get the same benefits on the wired network from their switches. So, we plugged a Meraki MS320 into the top of an existing IDF 3750X stack to find out.

Immediately, we started to see the dashboard populating with client and traffic information from that school. Our Meraki support engineer had to tweak our settings to prevent VLAN interfaces from reporting aggregate client traffic, but after that, it was very powerful stuff for us. Having been basically blind to what was going on with the network before that, seeing the traffic flowing in real time was very impressive.

Just to see what would happen, we briefly ran a Meraki switch between our district core switch and the hosted firewall at the county office. Lo and behold, we saw all our district traffic populating in the dashboard. Yes, we could see all that traffic in the Palo Alto Network firewall but really, the Meraki dashboard UI is so much faster and easier to use (although the latest update to the navigation menus is taking some of us a bit to get used to). After our testing, we made the decision to go with Meraki for our 10Gb LAN upgrade (and wireless too, but that is another story).

It’s not all perfect. We’re going to have to give up EIGRP in favor of static routes, but really, we don’t have that many routes to contend with. We have a class B for each school site. Also, Merkai doesn’t have a 10Gb capable layer 2 switch, so we’ve had to go layer 3 for the IDFs. And because the MS320 won’t stack with the 3750X, we’re doing old school patch cables into the existing stacks. With the majority of our traffic being wireless and all of the wireless access points connecting directly to the Meraki switches, I’m not too worried about the 1Gb uplink capacity to the existing stack. Printers and AppleTVs are the primary users on the wired network and we can always add another uplink port if need be.

“Real” Network Admins give Meraki a hard time for their simple UI and lack of direct console access. I on the other hand welcome it. In the old days, you had to be a magician (aka, trained network admin) to work magic at the command line. Over the years, more and more tasks have been made accessible through graphical user interfaces (GUIs). In my opinion, Meraki has perfected the network admin GUI. In a world of limited staff and jack-of-all trade skill sets with exponential demands for technology, simple and effective is a good thing.

I’ve often argued that the majority of school networks should not require a complex understanding of network topology, esoteric routing protocols or advanced sub-netting. A simple Star topology with a few key subnets and you should be good to go. Would I recommend this strategy for LAUSD or SFUSD? Probably not. But for a district our size, with 10 sites, it makes perfect sense.

We’re on our way with our top of stack 10Gb Meraki LAN upgrade. What’s your 10Gb LAN strategy?

I was reminded what rain is this week at ISTE. Visiting Pennsylvania from drought stricken California, I had forgotten that rain can go horizontal. Even when it rains in California, it generally doesn’t defy gravity to whip underneath umbrellas like it did here in Philadelphia this week. In driving to and from the airport, I was also reminded that droughts are regional. There is an abundance of water, it’s just not evenly distributed!

Speaking of evenly distributed, Philadelphia is the birthplace of our nation and as such it is steeped in rich history that I’ve had the good fortune to visit during conference downtime this week. Historical sites like Old Town are also not evenly distributed. As I was walking through Independence Hall contemplating the formation of the United States in a stuffy, hot, impossibly small room for the birthing of a nation, I wondered how many Americans will every get to see this place? I mean, it’s kind of historically important, right? I bet school kids in Philly get to visit it. Which got me thinking, how cool would it be for students around the US to connect with students in Philadelphia to discuss the founding our our Nation? Technology makes this kind of connecting stupid easy. Flat Connections, Global Read Aloud, One World Classroom and Skype in the Classroom are communities built around connecting classrooms to one another. Connections should be woven into as many curriculum maps, projects and learning outcomes as possible. It is 2015. No more pictures of the Liberty Bell in a book. Live Skype with a class or a park ranger at the Liberty Bell!

Enter PORTS, ubiquitous bandwidth and Virtual Reality.

In California we have a virtual field-trip program run by the state parks called PORTS. I know there are other organizations doing similar things across the world. Several classrooms in my district have experienced these virtual field trips. Requiring only an iPad or laptop with a video camera, decent bandwidth and a teacher willing to give it a go, the technical barrier to entry for this is effectively zero. Usually consisting of a live facilitator and a multimedia presentation, I see these types of “presentations” as very early days for this technology in education.

With the ability to stream live video via LTE, experiencing the actual historical site doesn’t need to be dependent on a recorded video or a canned slide show. Visits can be live, dynamic and interactive. Additionally, Virtual Reality like Google Cardboard, which was on the exhibit floor at ISTE this week, can be added to extend the learning experience either before, after or during a live video stream. Telepresence is an untapped technology for Museums and historical sites to connect classrooms to their experiences. With something like Double Robotics, organizations could offer virtual tours of existing physical spaces, without having to program unique “online” experiences. In other words, the Liberty Bell could be accessible to any classroom today if we wanted it to be.

Technology is changing our world. We can choose to actively shape that change or we can let the change shape us. Embracing technology in education is an imperative, not for technology’s sake but for the sake of learning. We learn through experiences, technology can connect us to those experiences.

Now, to get a PO for Double Robotics and Google Cardboard through the purchasing process…

The Missing Literacies – Networking to Learn

Kids sitting in rows of desk. Silent classrooms. Individual worksheets. This is not how we learn in the real world. It was my experience in school, as it still is for many. But I went to school BT (Before Twitter) and BGHO (Before Google Hangouts). The extent of networking to learn, if we were lucky, was putting four desks together and working in groups. And if you asked a peer a question during a test or worked on a homework problem in a group and came back with the same answer, watch out!

In college, some of my best learning experiences were working on group projects. We also used study groups to self organize around a specific course, topic or test. Both those group learning experiences were constrained by proximity and time. Enter Twitter and the rise of social media. Have you checked out an #caedchat lately?

Networking tools like twitter and Google Hangouts (GHO) now allow the formation of groups of peers and experts to assemble around themes, topics and interests. These groups (or Personal Learning Networks) allow for just in time information requests, asynchronous collaboration and archived knowledge bases. If Google is the card catalog for the world’s information, then twitter and GHO are the university hallways and the study halls that make global personal learning networks possible.

The world has changed. If we do not teach children how to build online networks to access learning resources, then we are failing to empower them as learners. If we don’t embrace technology to build personal networks of our own for learning, then we risk being left behind in a world of ubiquitous access to information and just in time learning.

Why then do we not move into an era of learning to network and networking to learn? Why do we not teach building personal learning networks as a fundamental literacy of learning?

The Missing Literacies – Learning to Search

Back in the day it was reading, righting and rythmatic. Thinking about it, being able to read well to make the transition from learning to read to reading to learn made sense when content was primarily accessed in a structured and sequenced finite resource, aka the textbook. Being able to use a table of contents and an index were a critical part of the content access experience.

How times have changed. When was the last time you used an index to look up something in a book? I can’t remember. The last time I looked up something, I used Google. My reading now is primarily done online, as is my research, but I remember long ago, the initial trip to the school library where we all sat through the lesson on using the card catalog. In college, I remember dreading having to use the much larger and more intimidating University library to lookup and find information for my class reports. Must have three references!

I had what was probably a fairly typical experience of learning information access and retrieval during my formal education. That world no longer exists except in our schools. The University library is no longer the pinnacle of information repository. The ancient Library of Alexandria has been reborn in the Web. Information is now ubiquitous, dependent only on access from a sub $200 device and wifi. Google has become the card catalog to the world’s global library.

Why then do we not move into an era of learning to search and searching to learn? Why do we not teach search as a fundamental literacy of learning?