What really matters

I don't do this often, but I am going to publish something here without permission. It comes, via my daughter, from my grandson's preschool teacher down in the Kansas City area. As my daughter wrote, it's a "good reflection about who and what really matters."

The media can beat up on teachers all they want, but real teachers will always know deep within them how truly important they are - and why.

I was going to write something to post here today about how much your children have grown and changed this year, and about all we’ve learned. After all, we’ve had chicks, caterpillars, built birdhouses, read stories…but then I spent over an hour yesterday waiting out the tornado sirens with your kids.  I realized in that experience that your kids have learned so much more this year.  Part of the way through, I was holding a crying child on my lap and she kept saying, “I’m scared!” and another little girl came up to her and said, “it’s going to be okay. we’re all scared!”  In that moment it became clear that your children have learned to be patient, to have compassion, to comfort their friends in time of stress.  In short, this year, your children have learned to be a bit more human.  

The following is what I wrote about that experience on my blog.  Thank you, once again, for sharing your sweet children with me this year. 

Today I’ve been very thoughtful. Sitting in a makeshift tornado shelter with more than fifteen children under the age of six will do that to you.  I won’t pretend that I have a different or worse story than anyone – Lord knows the weather in the Midwest has done enough without my making light of it.  I was fine.  The children were fine.  But, for a while there, we didn’t really know what was going on today, other than there were tornado sirens and talk of several touch downs in our area.  We do tornado drills several times a year, but nothing quite prepares you for the real deal.

Aside from having no cell service or internet access, and therefore no way of knowing what was going on outside those walls, I think the most scary thing was that I tell my students daily that it’s my job to keep them safe.  What if, on the second to last day of school, I could not come through on a promise that I’d been making all year long?  I mean, really? I ask my little ones all the time, “What’s Miss Kate’s job?” and inevitably, they will say, “to keep me safe.” Not, “to read to me,” or “to wipe my nose,” or even, “to build giant Lego towers with me.”  All of which I do on a daily basis.  These kids know that above all, it’s my job to keep them safe.

At noon today, I wondered several things.  Fresh off the media frenzy surrounding the Joplin, Missouri tornadoes, I wondered if we’d all be blown away.  I wondered if my husband would actually heed warning and go to the underground parking garage like his employer insisted or keep sitting at his desk avoiding the “Stromboli” that was headed his way (his damn autocorrect made for the funniest part of the day).  I wondered why little Zoe thought what we were doing was hilarious, and I wondered if my Lucy was safe (though, that was a thought I kept pushing back. I honestly couldn’t even bear to think about it while we sat there).

I wondered mostly, though, if I was going to be able to keep my word to eight children who have trusted me all year long. I got to Lucy’s school today for her Grand Spectacle (her fabulous kindergarten show!) and when I saw her teacher I thanked her repeatedly.  She gave me a weird look, but after what I’d been through, I just wanted her to know that I appreciated her help in keeping Lucy safe, even if it was just second nature to her.  

We place our kids in someone else’s care every single day without ever thinking that something catastrophic could really happen.  I’m so glad it didn’t happen today, and I hope to never have that experience again. I’m way better at keeping snails from crawling out of their jars, or getting playdough out of the couch, or just wiping noses.

Teachers keep our children safe everyday. Not just from storms or from strangers or from traffic, but from ignorance, from helplessness, from feelings of inadequacy. I am blessed that my grandson has a teacher like Miss Kate. Even if the newspaper, the legislature or your paycheck may not say it, Miss Kate, you are among the most valuable people in the world. Thank you. - Miles's grandpa

Getting the most from your tech dollar 6: Head to the cloud

Over the next few days, I'll be addressing some strategies school districts use to get the most from their technology dollars. See the full list here. Any budget stretching strategies you're willing to share?

6. Head to the cloud

Cloud computing relies on applications and file storage that reside on the Internet with minimal resources stored on the local computer's hard drive. Since both applications and one's files reside on a network rather than on a specific computer, a major advantage of cloud computing is that one can work on any project, anywhere regardless of the computer being used. 

But cost savings are also important. Unlike software that resides on computer hard drives, web-based applications that perform a wide-array of productivity tasks are often provided at no cost to the user. While not as comprehensive as Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop, these tools often have a surprisingly full feature set and are compatible with commercial programs. Here are a few of the dozens of online tools you might find useful.

• GoogleReader organizes all your blogs and RSS feeds.
• Delicious and Diigo organize your bookmarks.
• Flickr is an online photo album.
• GoogleApps for Education do e-mail, calendaring, and a productivity tool suite, among other things.
• PBwiki and Wikispaces allow you to share your writing and allow others to edit it as well.
• Ta-da List lets you get organized with an online to-do list.

A school district's computing costs can be lowered using inexpensive computers just to access the cloud. Netbooks are inexpensive, file storage is free, and basic applications are free. Just appearing are netbooks that run the Chrome operating system that require virtually no maintenance, lowering support costs. Money that would have been spent on student workstations in labs, big file servers, technicians' salaries and expensive software can now be used to pay for increased bandwidth, greater wireless coverage or, maybe, just maybe, lower class sizes.

At some point, I predict that K-12 schools will ask parents to provide basic computing devices for their children as a part of the school supply list. As a parent, I was asked to purchase a $100 graphing calculator for my son when he was in high school six years ago. How big a stretch is it to ask parents to provide a $250 netbook computer today?

Here is my estimate of our district's* savings by using Google Apps over the next five years:

• No internal mailserver and mail back-up costs (hardware, software, maintenance).$12,000 (We were due for a replacement and running out of storage capacity)
• No student/staff document file server costs (hardware, software, maintenance). $84,000 (28 servers and server OSs at $3000 each on a 5 year replacement.)
• Less need to upgrade computer OS's since apps are browser-based. $150,000 ($50 upgrade x 3000 computers)
• Less printing -paper, copiers, toner, printer salaries, etc. $400,000 (Reduction of 20% in photocopying/printing each year.)
• Less need for commercial productivity tools like Office or iWork (do elementary kids really need these?) and the cost of upgrading to new versions. $100,000 ($50 x 2000 computers)
• Ability to use lower powered computers (thin clients, netbooks) in more situations and a reduction in number of separate configurations needed for machines. $1,000,000 ($500 lower price of 2000 computers) Eventually resulting in...
• Reduction in tech support costs. Or more properly stated, slower increase in the need for more tech support. $250,000 ($50,000 position eliminated)
• Less tangible savings in time, portable storage/transport devices, mailing hard copy documents. Indirect savings to users.
• More work out of staff members when they are able to conveniently work from home. (I am SUCH an administrator!) Priceless!
• And greater access to tools for students, improving their educational experience. Priceless again!

These are rough and admittedly optimistic estimates, but I think you can see the general trend. Even if only 50% of my estimated nearly $2M in savings is realized, that averages out to close to $200,000 per year. (Out of a $1.2M budget.) I am not suggesting reducing tech budgets by this amount, but I can sure think of a lot more interesting things (e-book subscriptions, a more robust wireless network, and more bandwidth) to spend tech dollars on.

*7300 students, 800 professional staff, 3000 supported computers in use.

Getting the most from your tech dollar 5: Free is good

Over the next few days, I'll be addressing some strategies school districts use to get the most from their technology dollars. See the full list here. Any budget stretching strategies you're willing to share?

5. Free is good.

One easy place to save a good deal of money in the technology budget is on software. Stop buying commercial software. Really.

No, Im not advocating becoming a pirate. Johnny Depp can pull it off, but I wouldnt recommend it for educators. (Too few of us look that good in mascara.) Instead, take a serious look at some high quality software that is now available -- at no cost.

And "just how can they do it for such a low, low price," you might be asking. There are basically three types of no cost software:

• Open source software uses code that the creator has placed in the public domain and that a large body of users then re-writes and adds to. The Linux operating system is probably the most famous open source product available.
• Minimally-featured versions of commercial products are made available by a producer who then hopes that features or capacity available only in the purchased version will sell the software. Animoto, Dropbox and graphic editing tools like BeFunky work this way.
• Web-based software applications that derive revenue from advertising are growing in popularity. Yahoo mail uses that economic model. I suppose GoogleApps for Education works this way indirectly since Google revenue is ad-based - the ads just don't appear in GoogleApps of Education.

The following small sample of free computer-based software is useful and reliable for the average Joe or Josephine computer user. All programs run both on Macs and PCs and have good track records of reliability. For more tools, see the School Computing Wikis Best Free or Open Source Software.

• Audacity allows the user to edit sound files.
• Inkscape is a drawing program comparable to Illustrator.
• OpenOffice has many of the same tools as Microsoft Office, and is compatible with Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
• Scribus is desktop publishing software similar to Publisher.
• TuxPaint works much like the childrens drawing program KidPix.
• Moodle is an open source course management system.
• Apache is the venerable webserver software.

(We'll look at a few of the dozens of online tools you might find useful in the next post about cloud computing.)

Of course, freeware has its critics as well. Librarian Karen G. Schneider observes: "Yes, I know, open source is a saint and you'd let your sister or brother marry it. But I hate the idea that for some if a particular software is open source, hands down, it's the right choice. The right choice is the software that meets the mission." ALA TechSource, 07/26/2006. (It's also my contention that the "open source movement" is more a religion than an economic model. Just so you know.)

My experience has also been that there can be hidden costs to "free" software - additional support and expertise is often needed to make it work. 

You will need to ask yourself if free software really does have both the features and reliability you need to get your tasks accomplished. When choosing a word processor for your school, you need to look at the features that people actually use. Is "Auto-summarize" and the ability to customize hyphenation sufficient reason to justify paying a license for Microsoft Word?

As educators, a commercial presence (a bit of advertising with one's e-mail) can be troubling. But if you or your district is strapped for software funds, freeware can be a reasonable alternative to having nothing or being illegal. Give it a shot. Its not like youll be risking a lot of money.

Oh, one "free" technology I would think very carefully about before accepting is donated equipment. Many businesses and individuals with the best of intentions offer to give computers and other equipment to schools. Too often this is equipment that is old, incompatible or in need of repair and licensure. Unless the stuff needed and has at least two year of life still in it, pass on the offer and avoid the recycling fee.