BFTP: Age, Energy, Privacy, and Morals

I suspect my New Year's Eve plans this year, as in most recent years, will involve staying at home, eating a pizza, watching a movie, and retiring long, long before midnight. "Planning" these activities reminded of this observation...

In my experience, most morally questionable activities tend to be committed late at night.

So as I get older and my bedtime gets earlier, my opportunities, temptations, and need for privacy/secrecy diminish. This may be why I am less concerned about privacy issues than some of my younger colleagues. No one has yet to respond to my question: 

Why do we as humans value privacy so highly?" One doesn't need to be a criminal or a pervert to still not want all of one's life in the public eye. The need for privacy is at a gut level, an inalienable right, and must have some primitive survival component behind it. But what are the tangible benefits of choosing what to share - and what to keep to oneself?

While I don't keep the "location" services turned on for most of my phone apps, I have yet to discover a concrete reason I should not.

The age/energy continuum may also explain why it seems people become more judgmental the older they become. My guess is that they condemn the things they not longer have the energy to participate in themselves. Personally, I don't think I behave better because I've gone older, wiser, and more ethical - I just don't have the energy to be bad. Being bad is usually a lot of work and just takes more energy than I care to expend anymore. I save my energy for more important things like breathing and remaining upright.

They're my theories and I'm sticking with them. 

Original post Nov 15, 2013

What's keeping your ed tech from being used?

...70% of districts’ software licenses never get used, and a median of 97.6% of licenses are never used intensively. Arnett, "There's a Reason Why Teachers Don't Use the Software Provided By Their Districts." Education Next November 30, 2018

Quite frankly, I find these numbers rather shocking. Am I blind or naive, or is my district simply an outlier? We also use BrightBytes to analyze our tech usage, and while the numbers may not be as good as we would like them, they are nowhere close to being this grim. Not every teacher in our district uses all provided software, of course, but our LMS, our GSuites tools, and IWB software are all used by the majority of teachers and on a regular basis. Tools like SeeSaw, MyOnReader, and WeVideo are growing in popularity with student access to their own devices. We study the usage stats of the commercial software we license each year and drop those programs from which we are not getting our money's worth.  

Arnett's theory on software needing to help teachers get "jobs done" is a good one. For many teachers, the expectation that they reach and teach every student, especially those from culturally diverse backgrounds, has been a major challenge. Higher expectations for parents about home/school communication have grown. And the expectation that students not just memorize and apply factual information and skills, but problem solve and create is becoming more common. We try to focus on those expectations in collaboration with our curriculum department when selecting software.

I personally have been trying to understand why some educational technologies soar and others crash for 25 years. In PLSA Predictors (Education Technology Solutions (Australia), Vol 22, May 2008, I offered the following criteria based on observation and experience:

About this rubric, I asked:

Getting a “zero” in either the Usefulness or Affordability categories would seem to negate high scores in the others. Should these be more heavily weighted? And usefulness in itself seems to be a trump card – if the need is great enough, other factors are less important.

I believe Arnett would agree. 

In 2007 when I was writing this piece, I asked "Right now, what are the chances of large scale adoption in your district of these technologies?

• Internet 2
• MUVEs (Second Life)
• Wiki spaces
• Interactive white boards
• Voice amplification systems
• New reading/math programs
• Online testing"

What are the new technologies today that are being touted in your technology conference vendor areas? How will you evaluate them?

As an educator, a child advocate, and tax payer, I find the numbers from Arnett's study appalling. Especially when dollars spent on un- or under-used resources could be better spent in so many other areas of education.

Happy holidays - however you celebrate

Wishing everyone a good time with family and friends this season.