Asleep at the switch?

I think almost no emphasis is being put on giving kids the skills that they need to sort credible from noncredible information. Schools have to wake up and have to give those skills to our kids. It’s the critical thinking skill of the 21st century that they’re going to need, sorting credible from not credible information. And I think we’re asleep at the switch. - John Palfrey Interview with David Pogue, July 22, 2010

Schools also owe it to their children to give them guidance in the self-censorship of materials, the evaluation of resources, and the ethical use of telecommunications. Doug Johnson, Why Minnesota Students Need Access to the Internet, 1994

Oh dear. This is the second time* in the past few weeks that I had this sinking feeling that the great unwashed public just doesn't "get" the importance of crap-detecting on the Internet. I was very surprised when one my tech-culture heroes, Howard Reingold, suggested during a spotlight session at ISTE last month that we use spoof sites like the Tree Octopus and Failure of the Velcro Crop to help educate children about trusting all Internet sites. How last century, I thought. Where, Mr. Reingold, have you been for the last 20 years?

After all, hasn't the library profession been stressing site evaluation for a very long time? Good grief, I'm never exactly on the "cutting edge," but even back in 2001, I wrote in an article for Creative Classroom:

Information jungle survival skill 3: Learn to tell the good berries from the bad berries.

Joey Rogers, Executive Director of the Urban Library Council, observes that libraries should have two large signs in them. The first hanging over the stacks that reads “Carefully selected by trained professionals” and the other hanging over the Internet terminals that reads “Whatever.”

Even very young students can and should be learning to tell the bad information berries from the good ones. Since junior high students often make web sites that often look better than those of college professors, we teach students to look:

• For the same information from multiple sources.
• At the age of the page.
• At the credentials of the author.
• For unstated bias by the page author or sponsor.

Kathy Schrock has a wonderful, comprehensive webpage on website evaluation at <http://schrockguide.org/abceval/>

As students use research to solve problems about controversial social and ethical issues, the ability to evaluate and defend one’s choice of information source becomes very important.

Why has information evaluation not become a "basic skill," as fundamental as decoding text, solving two-digit multiplication or understanding the scientific method? Maybe...

1. Teachers (and maybe more than a few librarians) themselves don't have these skills.
2. Information evaluation is often highly subjective and value-laden, making it politically difficult to teach in schools.
3. There has not been a sufficient sense of urgency communicated to our curriculum masters writers about its importance (Is information evaluation a part of the Common Core Standards? I don't know.)

Remember that guy Sisyphus who kept rolling a big rock up a hill in Hades, only to have it tumble back down each time he neared the summit? Spin the fable all you want, but Sisyphean efforts are damned discouraging.

*OK, the latest brough-ha-ha over the firing of Shirley Sherrod based on poor website evaluations skills is maybe the third time.

Centralize, economize, depersonalize

Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.
Henry Ford

Every pundit that covers MN state finance claims that the 2011-13 budget will be even grimmer than those we've been experiencing the last two years. Federal stimulus funds will be gone; accounting "shifts" and payment delays have been used up; and tax revenues are weak. The increasing number of geezers needing pensions and health care are competing with schools for state dollars. The "no-new-taxes" drum beat does not seem to be subsiding.

Especially in tight economic times, I hate spending education dollars on technology instead of teachers and library materials. I know, I know, as the tech director my goal should be to garner the largest piece of the funding pie as possible. My problem is that I sleep better at night when I think of myself first as a child advocate, second as an educator, and lastly as a technologist. The children in my district are somebody's grandchildren, after all.

The latest cost-savings proposal our district may be looking at is turning the management of our computer printer services to a vendor. This company will install, service and monitor all printer use throughout the district and somehow save us a whole bunch of money. Sounds good to me.

But this will mean a change that may not be just real popular. Instead of individual buildings making (and funding) printer decisions, the management will be done on a district level through the vendor. This means less control, less customization, and, perhaps, less immediate service in individual buildings.

The question our administrators will need to ask: "Is giving up control of our printers worth the equivalent of one first year teacher salary in the district?" I am not taking any bets on what the answer may be.

I expect this is not the last time this kind of question be asked. If it means substantial cost savings, should the district...

• Create one image and install a DeepFreeze-like program on all student and staff computers, reducing the need for tech staff?
• Increase the number of "hosted" applications we now use, eliminating the need for maintaining servers, security features and reducing (again) tech support needs.
• Tighten up on standardization of equipment, allowing bulk purchases, requiring fewer replacement parts be stocked, etc.
• Rely on on-line professional development tools like Atomic Learning, reducing staff development costs.

To me, the more centralized, more remote the service, the less personalized it becomes*. Teacher A wants this software on his computer? Ain't gonna happen since it falls outside the prescribed "teacher computer image." I am not sure this is necessarily a bad thing, but it is certainly different than the way we've operated in our district, allowing every teacher pretty free reign on what goes on her computer.

So what will it be: individualized and expensive or depersonalized and economical. Oh, we've already ruled on this for most of our students. Most communities have chose the economical route.

*One big mitigating factor is that about all most of us need anymore on our computers is a good web browser and relatively open Internet access. A huge range of tools, many customizable, are then available.

Image source: model7126.net

Do we really learn from our (tech) mistakes?

I was intrigued by the feature "Taking Lessons From What Went Wrong" in the NYTimes earlier this week. Author Broad makes a compelling case that disasters, when properly examined after the fact, lead to engineering advances.

Do we ever do this education - admit our errors and learn from them?

A few years ago, I wrote a short article  called The PLSA (Probability of Large Scale Adoption) Predictors for an Australian tech journal. It must have been so brilliant that I never had a single question about it (or other reaction). But the premise of the piece always struck me as a pretty good - an analysis, based on projects that bombed, of why some technologies are adopted and other not. I've always wondered why others never share their "mistakes and what I learned from them" stories.

In the article, I looked at

Digital Video Editing (1996) At this time we had a young and ambitious video tech on staff who wanted in the worst way to replace our analog editing equipment with the latest in digital editing software. We spent about $13K for a system that just never did work quite right. The tech became so frustrated (and probably tired of my questions) that she quit and the equipment sat unused. iMovie made an appearance not long after, and the rest is history. 

Interactive Television (1999) At the cost of about $20K (from a grant, not local dollars), we installed an interactive television hook-up in our district staff development room. Other than one university course, an after school advanced math class, and a few meetings, the equipment did not get used and we removed it after two years. We now use other ITV facilities in town for meetings when needed. 

Data-mining (2001) We contracted with a regional tech center to develop a data ware-housing, data-mining solution. About six months into the project, the tech center closed. We found another developer. He bailed after deciding his company would rather focus on online testing. Total lose of funds was about $20K and countless staff hours of planning. (We have had a more successful data mining project since then...)

Taking a serious look at mistakes is difficult to do for any number of reasons...

• It's not always clear when we've made a mistake, especially in education.
• Admitting error requires more self-confidence (and job security?) than many of us have.
• The optimist in us wants to give the project just a few more (weeks, months, years, etc.)
• Most of us are working with scarce, public dollars and feel pretty guilty when these funds don't have an impact.
• We are not accustomed to a transparent environment in which learning from failed experiments is lauded rather than condemned.

We need to change our altitudes about mistakes in education, both at a local and at a national level. It's tragic to lose the benefits of a mistake. After all, we do make enough of them.

Any boo-boos you're willing to admit - and the lessons you learned from them?