Disappointed again this year…

This past weekend I looked for the following information:

• Rules for playing the Barrel of Monkeys game.
•  The name of the actor who played Pea Eye Parker in the TV miniseries Streets of Laredo.
• A depiction of a yawk yawk in Australian Aboriginal folklore.

I found all this information quite handily without leaving the family room. Without leaving my recliner, to be honest. Having a laptop computer and wireless Internet access has changed the way I watch television and read books. It’s changed the conversations I have with the LWW. It’s changed the way I participate in meetings, workshops and classes. When any question or topic comes up, I can get information from the “datasphere” to which I am always connected.

And the datasphere is getting bigger all the time. Our school libraries, study halls areas and most classrooms now have wireless connectivity. Our district’s major meeting rooms are connected. At many conferences I attend, the entire convention center is, yes, wireless. Whole cities are talking about becoming wireless. On a rural golf course yesterday afternoon, I was able to use my Sprint-enabled Treo to check our local Kiwanis website for the name of guy who had just participated in the putting contest at our fundraiser. That’s connectivity.

So why call this blog entry “disappointed”? Because another damn school year is starting with my students not having immediate, continuous access to this same datasphere. And the simple reason is that there is still not a device available that is right for kids and schools. Where is the computing/communications hardware gizmo that:

• Weighs less than two pounds?
• Runs at least eight hours on a battery charge?
• Is 802.11x compliant?
• Can be dropped without breaking?
• Comes only with a full featured web browser for software?
• Has a screen that can be read for a long time without eyestrain?
• And sells at a price point most parents can afford – let’s say under $200?

Come on Apple, Dell, HP, Gateway, Sony, etc. Make one of these devices and you will sell (and make) millions. As it stands, it will be a cold day in hell before I encourage my schools to participate in a one-to-one computer program given the current state of laptops and PDAs – way too expensive, too delicate, too complex, too short on battery life, too high maintenance, too hard to read. I don’t want a machine designed for a rich businessperson but for an active kid!

I want my students to have ready access to the datasphere – now! Increasingly, I’m convinced such connectivity is the only thing that will fundamentally change how education is done. Teachers will need to become process, not content, experts. Education will be radically individualized. Boredom will end. Information literacy will be the major basic skill set. Independent learning will be practiced on a daily, no, hourly basis. Learning will become 24/7 – with kids actually learning during the school day as well as outside of it.

Where is the iPage that meets my few modest requirements for a kid-friendly computing device?

 

A simple question to start the year

One never knows what the e-mail will bring. Yesterday this question came:

I was wondering if you agree or disagree with this quote, and why: "the more powerful technology becomes, the more indispensable good teachers are.

Interesting idea, and quite the opposite of what many policymakers envision: that technology will "teacher-proof" education.

So I expect that whether one agrees or not depends on how one defines "powerful technology." If it is only to teach basic skills through drill and practice, integrated learning systems, distance education that retains the same pedagogies used in F2F instruction,  then no - these uses require few teaching skills.

But if the technology is used to help students become information literate, effective problem solvers, and powerful communicators, the role of the teacher becomes even more important, especially as the teacher's role becomes process expert rather than content expert.

I'm hoping others can formulate a better response...

Those Crazy Days of Summer

While I not only admit to, but take pride in, my basically indolent nature, the paucity of blog entries lately can't be ascribed to laziness - regrettably. Summer for our technology department has become its busiest time. Major ongoing projects this summer include:

1. A major upgrade to our inter-building WAN from 10mg shared to 100mg switched bandwidth and doubling the capacity of our pipe from the WAN to the Internet cloud. Disruptions to most of our sites could be measured in hours, not days, but any network down time any more results in people not being able to get their jobs done. I am thinking one of the advantages of VoIP might be that when the network goes down, so will the telephones...

2.  Creation of about 100 "smart" classrooms, installing mounted ceiling data projectors and interactive white boards and requisite cabling. Thankfully, one vendor won the bid for all the equipment and the installation, so there is but "a single throat to choke" on this project (and no throat choking has been necessary so far.) But you don't undertake a project that involves 100 teachers, 30 administrators, and 15 school sites without getting a few questions and concerns about prioritization.

3. Upgrade of our e-mail server to Exchange.  We've around 1000 staff who use district e-mail. The new server has meant new passwords for everyone and new e-mail settings on most computers, both at school and at home. We're moving everyone possible to Outlook/Entourage as a mail client to take advantage of the shared calendaring, global address book etc., that the new server provides. This has been the first real change in how we do e-mail in the district in a dozen years. And some people don't like change. But perhaps you knew that already...

4. Individual hands-on training for  over 100 teachers getting new computers. This task has grown too large for our computer coordinator to do alone, so she has recruited me as "trainer of the last resort" to sit down with each teacher getting a new computer to go over all the computer's settings, software installation, e-mail set-up, and hardware tests. It takes about an hour with each teacher. Levels of enthusiasm and ability, well, vary. This really has been one of the best parts of my summer, however. One-on-one tutoring is rewarding for both the trainer and trainee.

 

This summer has been about change and the longer I am a "change agent" the more apparent it becomes that one must wait for the pay-off. It's tough listening to folks whose network is down, can't figure out their e-mail, or hate giving up even an hour of summer vacation to learn about their new computer. But I have faith that sometime during this school year, each of them will appreciate faster  access to the Internet, the global address book in Exchange, and a Widget or two on their new computer.

Tom Landry of Dallas Cowboy fame once defined leadership as "getting people to do what they don't want to do in order to achieve what they want to achieve." That seems pretty accurate this busy summer.

So the days are full. Evenings I am pooped or working on columns that are (over)due. Or selfishly I just sit on the screen porch enjoying a book and the bird life on the lake, trying to remember how summers used to be for educators.