What's your district's TAR score?

In a comment to one of last week's posts, Jim wrote:

I doubt MY district (which I like to nickname "China") would go for [teachers bringing their own devices to school] because they seem to be allergic to anything that's not PC-based and love the ability to block/snoop. 

There a growing schism between schools who seem to allow technology to be used in an open, productive and trusted manner and those who are TAR (Technologically Anal Retentive). Judge your own district's TAR score using the checklist below. 1 point for each item:

1. My district does not allow staff to use their own devices on the network.
2. My district does not allow students to use their own devices on the network.
3. My district only supports one operating system.
4. My district does not give teachers the choice of a laptop computer they can use outside of school.
5. My district does not give teachers administrative rights to their computers (the ability to add software, access control panels. etc.)
6. My district assigns passwords.
7. My district blocks (1 point each):
   • Facebook/LinkedIn/Google+
   • Youtube
   • Twitter
   • Pandora
   • Non-school email sites
   • Blogs and wikis (including Wikipedia)
   • Anything Google (apps, sites, search, images)
8. My district must approve all software I use.
9. My district does not allow student work to be published to a public website.
10. My district does not allow access to the student information system outside the district.
11. My district does not allow students and parents access their grades and other information online.
12. My district only offers technology training by technology department members, not staff.
13. I need more than one password to get into my gradebook.
14. I feel my district actively monitors my e-mail and computer use without cause.

Bonus 5 points: If your technology director cites CIPA, FERPA, or another mysterious acronym as a reason for blocking anything.

OK, here's the scale:

• 1-5 Your school is cool. Staff and students can use the Internet as an educational tool.
• 5-15 Your school needs to figure out a better collaborative process for determining what should and should not be blocked. 
• 15-25 Your technology department should be re-named "The Prevention of Education Department". A concerted effort by all true educators in your district needs to be made to overthrow the Technology Czar running the place.

I am willing to add other criteria to the TAR list. Your suggestions? 

Image by Scott McLeod under Creative Commons license

BFTP: Web apps I use meme

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past.  Original post January 6, 2008. In this update, I've stuck out the items I no longer use, italicized those I moved, and have added new ones in bold. Not as much change as I would have guessed, and most change is the result of now using both an iPhone and iPad...

Following a meme started at TechCrunch and shared by Will Richardson, I'll list my online apps I use. I'll group them by use frequency:

Daily (or more)
Gmail (via Entourage usually) Now for both personal and school communications.
GoogleSearch
GoogleReader
iGoogle - while it lasts
Squarespace (blog and website ASP)
Firefox browser
Chrome browser
GoogleDocs (both personal and work)
GoogleDrive
Dropbox
Evernote
Facebook (OK, I admit it.)
Twitter (OK, I admit this one, too.)
Kindle app on phone and iPad 
The Weather Channel/WeatherBug
The phone app function of the iPhone 

Weekly 
Amazon
Del.icio.us (Easier to look things up again or store websites in Evernote)
Wikipedia
School website
Online bank
YouTube 
Netflix
IMDB 
GoogleMaps 
Messaging on iPad and iPhone
Camera on iPhone
Facetime
Skype
 

Monthly
SmugMug (a commercial variant of Flickr)
Wikispaces
PBWiki
Slideshare
Zamzar (Not since it no longer downloads YouTube videos)
Second Life
MapQuest
NWA Delta online flight booking
Travelocity/Kayak/Orbit etc.
TripAdvisor
iTunes
Shutterfly
Motivator
ImageChef
CoPilot Live (GPS app for iPhone and iPad)
GoogleVoice 

I can use on Pain of Death
Google+
Linked-IN
Ning

All things considered, I expect I am still a fairly moderate user of Web2.0-ish tools compared to most tech bloggers, at least one standard deviation from the norm of most educators. And like most of us, I see more and more of what I do move online, especially when using highly-portable devices like the XO and ASUS Eee tablets and smartphones. And I don't see the direction changing.

And like Will comments, the list is pretty Google-centric. Hey, even though they are evil, they provide useful and simple to use services. I've gone over to the dark side.

Readers, what's on your list? And how has it changed over the past five years?

Image source: 

Three technologies with staying power

My allergy, however, to rose-colored scenarios of a future rich with technology remains. I can only imagine how painful it must be for those hard-core advocates of more-technology-the-better who predicted the end of schooling years ago to see that public schools are still around. So what might 2023 look like? Larry Cuban

I've commented before that one human year is equal to 10 Internet years. If so, any technology that sticks around for 10 years has an analog age of 100. How well would even the most prescient scholar have done in 1913 in describing today's technology? As someone on NPR recently observed, "Instead of the Jetson's flying cars, the future has given us Twitter." 

However in Predictions about High-Tech in K-12 Schools in 2023, Larry Cuban bravely opines:

Clear trend lines for U.S. classrooms in the next decade are the continued growth of digital textbooks  downloaded on hand-held devices and tablets (smartphones, iPads, eBook variations), spread of computer adaptive testing, and expanded online learning (also see: goingthedistance). But not the slow dissolution or “disruption” of public schools.

Cuban is right on target. Digital resources accessed on individual devices, computerized testing, and online learning will continue to make gains in nearly every school. Do these technologies have the potential to be "disruptive"? Yes, but only if ....

• The digital resources and readers are actually used to differentiate instruction and make learning more active/hands-on/student centered. If they remain only a silicon versions of print textbooks, no.
• If the data from adaptive testing are actually used to develop individualized/personalized learning experiences for students. If the results are simply a means of politically "grading" schools and teachers, no.
• If online learning is actually used to provide a broader range of high quality learning experiences giving leaners greatly expanded choices in course subjects and teaching methodologies. If it is only a means of providing a cheaper educational experience, no.

Are there other 100 year predictions one can reasonably make about technology use in education? I am going to stick my neck out and make a few myself...

1. Information and entertainment will be increasingly accessed in audio and video formats with less print use. Our move to a post-literate world will continue and accelerate.
2. Technology as an extension of our mental abilities will be increasingly the norm, not the new. These extended brains will be more powerful, more biologically integrated, and more personal. Families, not schools, will provide these tools.  Memorizing anything will be seen as archaic with information literacy and problem-solving reigning as the vital skills.
3. Schools will become increasingly diverse in how technology is used rather than more uniform, and the differences may well break along socio-economic lines. The affluent will be able to choose schools where technology is used to empower students, developing problem-solving and creativity; the less affluent will be given schools where technology means programmed instruction and testing of low-level skills and concepts.

One of the reasons that educators do not embrace change is that they are asked to change too damn often. Even as a classroom teacher in the 70s and 80s, I would shudder each time an administrator came back from a conference, wildly enthusiatic about the latest "silver bullet."  As I wrote way back in 1998:

It is extremely discouraging to work diligently and faithfully toward change only to have any support of it pulled away by a new administrator, a school board flip-flop, or shifting political wind, often long before any expected desirable impact can occur. In many a seasoned teacher an internal dialog starts the minute the next “best-thing-since-sliced–bread” change is proposed: 

“Let’s see. I invested heavily in my own time and took some real professional risks the last time a change was brought into the district. I didn’t get any reward or recognition for doing so. There wasn’t much training or encouragement. Nobody cares anymore if I know the elements of quality, use cooperative groups, or buy into outcomes. This round I think I’ll just wait’em out. This too shall pass.”

Sound familiar? You mean it’s not just Minnesota that has cynical teachers?

This is why we, like Dr. Cuban, should think deeply about technologies that have staying power and focus on those most likely to last. I'm letting somebody else always try out the next new thing.

Anybody willing to take a bet on how long the term "flipped classroom" will last?

Readers, your 100 technology year predictions?