Don't let the great stand in the way of the good
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 05:27AM An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. - Friedrich Engles
Karl Fisch in his thoughtful post, Google Apps for Education: Is It the Right Choice for Our Students, writes:
My first concern is what happens to our students’ stuff when they graduate (or leave the district before that)? Because of the nature of Google Apps for Education, all student work (Docs, Gmail, Sites, Groups, etc.) is tied to their Google Apps domain login, which is very helpful and convenient as long as they are students in our district. The problem comes when they leave – what happens to their stuff? Most – if not all – districts are going to delete student accounts after they leave – which will delete all their stuff.
and...
The second major issue is their digital footprint. If out students produce stuff that’s worth keeping, and stuff that’s remarkable (employing Seth Godin’s use of that term), then we would hope that other people will have taken note of their work and will reference it. They’ll bookmark it, Diigo it up or Evernote it, use it as a reference, etc. When we delete their account, we delete their footprint. The Google Sites they’ve created? Gone. The Google Docs they’ve published to the web? Possibly gone. (If they transfer ownership outside of the domain I think the URL will stay the same. If they download all their docs it will not.) All the links and digital conversations centered on that work? Broken and incomplete.
And concludes..
I just can’t help thinking that we’re putting in all this time and effort (including on-going management) to go to Google Apps for Education, when really it gets us less than what we have if we don’t. Not only does it give us less, but it may actually undermine what we want to do with students. If we want them to be safe, effective and ethical users of the Internet, let’s not create a semi-walled (and only temporary) garden that limits their ability to learn, create, publish, distribute and interact.
First, go read all Karl's post. I'll wait.
I think we all realize that Google Apps is not the perfect tool, for the reasons Karl mentions and more. But the problem is, solutions like Karl's are not always viewed as as safe by the communities we serve - communities of parents, teachers or administrators.
We will set Google Apps up for our kids under "walled garden" conditions. Given the fear our thoughtfully conservative (an no, this not an oxymoron) community has about Internet safety and kids, even this may be a tough sell for some. I see that a positive first step in helping our students learn to use online technologies to collaborate, to create and to share - not the final step.
In response to Karl, I might also argue that we do our students a favor by instilling in them early that they should have an institutional/work online presence and a personal/entrepreneurial web presence, and that there different standards and uses for each. In giving our students school e-mail access, we help them begin to think about the use of that resource vs. any personal e-mail account, including its temporary nature.
Were I to wait for the perfect conditions where all our kids were given full access to all Google Tools, I think I would be waiting a very long time. And TODAY we can make great use of the tools we have TODAY.
Don't let the great stand in the way of the good?
Steve Taffee in his recent post Are You Patient Enough to Innovate reflects:
I am learning and re-learning every day the virtue of patience; patience, and faith that good ideas will win the day. This is not easy for me to swallow. I am frequently distressed at the pace of change within education, within society, within the world, and even within my own life. But more and more I am coming to see that tim-ing and not time is the key to innovation and personal growth.
Patience and innovation. Strange bedfellows.
Now I wonder who the impatient person is - Karl or me?
Reader Comments (9)
I think we might be bumping up against a changing notion of identity with this issue and a conflict of interest that comes packaged with it. The idea of creating separate online presences for institutional/work and a personal/entrepreneurial use might serve the educational objectives of a world where people left their work at the office but I am not sure it is an idea that is either appropriate or useful in an era when the lines between personal and professional life are blurring. How many people don't punch a clock? How many work from home? How many login remotely to work with team members they have never actually met face to face (did you see the segment of FRONTLINE digital_nation on Second Life and IBM?). Perhaps it is useful to teach kids to manage multiple identities in this new environment, not just two. Perhaps some of those identities can blend and blur. Or, perhaps it is more useful to teach kids now that there is going to be no such thing as privacy as we have known it in their future and they better start now by keeping a digital footprint that is in line with their own personal and professional goals and aspirations.
@Doug - Thanks for your thoughts, I agree for the most part and have used similar arguments myself (don’t let great get in the way of good). In fact, I sent your previous post about Google Apps in your district to my tech folks as support for what they’re trying to do. But I still think we can do better, and we can do better now. As I said in one of the comments to Henry on my post, I’m also not sure I completely agree with this idea of separate work and personal presences (read that comment for more).
So as I’ve been thinking about this over the last few days I’ve been leaning toward a hybrid model as the best way to address all the excellent points folks have brought up in the comments, as well as my concerns that I still feel are worthwhile. Then, as luck would have it, I moderated a PLP Elluminate with Kern Kelley about Digital Storytelling and afterward he pointed me to this post about what his district is doing. Go read the post as I think it’s worth your time, but this is where I’m leaning right now.
- Go with Google Apps for Education beginning at whatever grade level makes sense for your school/district (4th or 5th grade for most folks it looks like, but certainly could be earlier if you wish) and up through about 8th grade (wherever the break is for your high school if you have an elementary/middle/high model). This takes care of the under 13 legalities and provides all the advantages mentioned in the comments above.
- Then, like Kern’s district, transition the students to open Google Accounts in about 9th grade (whatever makes sense for your configuration). This makes them thoughtfully go through what they have created so far and figure out what they want to port over (what’s “worth keeping”) and provides an excellent opportunity to discuss issues of digital footprint, safety, ethics and responsibility at an age when they can better understand it and when they have some experience under their belts. It would then also address most of my concerns while preserving many of the advantages mentioned in the comments to my post.
- Finally, I also love what Kern’s district does when students graduate – they give the students their own domain name (paid for for a year). Wow, great idea. (He has the advantage of being in a smaller district, but still, how powerful.)
I still need to do some more thinking about this but wanted to get this comment out there for others to ponder as well. Thanks to everyone for helping me think this through. I’m still not completely happy with my choices, but I will of course do the best I can to help our students with what they have. (Which, in my district, is going to be Google Apps for Education for everyone and then probably a separate open Google Account to do other things for many of my students at AHS). I will certainly suggest to my district that we at least consider a hybrid model in the future and see what happens.
I try to help students understand that anything important to them should be backed up. I also start each student with a brand new gmail account that they use ONLY for educational purposes. I explain my concerns about personal safety, and I encourage the students to share their school gmail with their parents, for a second level of safety.
Hi Carl,
I suspect the dividing line between personal and business will continue to blur for many in the coming years. Personally, I'd be happy if we could just get teachers to know the difference between using their school and personal email accounts!
Great comment,
Thanks,
Doug
Hi Karl,
I think we are mucking around in the dark a bit here. I tend to err on the side of caution, I guess, and your points about helping kids establish accounts independent of school accounts is something we will need to seriously consider and I had not thought about before reading your post.
We are doing something similar to Kern's schook, but only having separate domains for elementary and secondary students, trying to minimize the administrative time Apps will require. I've heard rumor that Apps is working on a tool for creating user groups within a single domain, but we will do what we need to do now.
This is fun, isn't it?
Doug
Hi Todd,
Even with GoogleApps, the basic rules of creating backups need to be taught, for sure. Thanks for the reminder.
Doug
Hi Doug,
I guess I'll reiterate one of the concerns that you and Karl had and give my view on it. That being, trading security for relevance to our students. My biggest complaint about Google Apps is the difficulty or inability to migrate kids 'stuff' out of the domain for them to take it with them. I think it's educationally dishonest to have students build something for 12 years and then with a hand shake as they leave tell them, 'By the way, everything you created, well, it's stuck behind our firewall and you won't be able to take it with you." Huh? They would be right to ask, "What'd I do it for then? Practice?"
BTW, Groups is available in domains now, and like you said, this is fun :)
Kern
Hi Kern,
I appreciate this conversations since I will certainly be more aggressive in letting kids know that they need to save their "keeper" work in a non-school space. We've been giving kids file storage space for years in the district and have wiped seniors' accounts after graduation, so I guess I had not seen this as much different. My old dinosaur brain moves pretty slowly most days!
Doug
My university provided web space that I used and linked to extensively. I didn't think twice about it when I was gone.
I've always had a packrat mindset, and there are lots of full plastic tubs in my apartment that I haven't opened in years to testify to that. However, even I appreciate that, with the web more than anywhere else, it doesn't make sense to cling to everything. If something is worth keeping, you'll go looking for it and bring it to your current web presence. If it's truly important and you can't find it, you'll re-create it.
More likely than not, you'll make something better, because you're a stronger, smarter person than you were back when you made that old blog post or project.
@Dave - I see one huge problem with that solution though, you've left out the other six billion people in the world (well, at least the ones with access). Yeah, if it's all about you (or me), then finding your stuff and recreating it might work (although even that assumes that you can find it, which is tricky if it's been wiped out). But what about all the other folks that linked to, commented on, diigo-ed up, or otherwise interacted with your work? Are they supposed to find where you've recreated your stuff, recreate their interaction with it, and also track down all the other people that interacted with it and tell them they need to recreate their interaction too?
I would actually argue the opposite. With the web, it makes even more sense to not get rid of anything. Storage is essentially free and doesn't clutter up physical space. Why would we institute policies, procedures and attitudes that wipes out what we've done (especially when we've done that with others)? I'm not suggesting that it's all worth keeping, but if my choice is keep it all or wipe it all, my choice is to keep it all and get better at organizing and managing it. While you're welcome to make that choice for yourself, I certainly don't think that as schools we should be making that choice for our students.
Hi Karl,
I suspect the emphemeral nature of information, links and organization of the Internet bothers people of our generation more than it does kids. The big problem I have with Wikipedia is not that it may be inaccurate, but that it may be accurate today and innacurate in 15 minutes - or at least different.
One of the major reasons I've moved to a wiki for all the support materials for my presentations/workshops is that the materials need to be updated every time you turn around - new links, dead links, changed links, etc.
To think that we may be able to create some site for our work that will last a lifetime seems like something that our generation would value, but I am not so sure about kids.
Of course, this is coming from someone who has saved every book and magazine in print in which his articles have appeared in tubs in my basement!
All the best,
Doug