The annual holiday letter to parents

The ads are out. One like this appeared in the Shopko flyer last week:

My worry when I see ads for products like these is that parents will purchase such devices for their kids, the kids will bring them to school only to discover that they will not meet their academic needs, parents will get upset with the technology department, and kids won't be happy. "You want kids to bring their own devices, but you didn't say which ones!"

So as a precaution and as an assist to gift purchasers, we again sent out the letter below to all households in our student information systems. Use it to create your own if you are a BYOD district....

Dear Parents and Guardians ,

As the holiday season nears, gift buying will move into high gear for many of us. I am sure that some sort of technology device is on many of your children's wish lists. New products like the iPad Mini, the Microsoft Surface, various Android tablets like the Nexus and the Galaxy, and color e-book readers along with netbooks and latops are adding a lot choices (and confusion) to the low-cost computing market. Powerful smartphones, both iPhones and Androids, are popular with many children and young adults.

We thought it might be helpful if we outlined some specifications of any device you might buy Mankato Area Public School students if you'd like them to use it to complete school work (and not just play Where’s My Water?, watch YouTube, or send text messages.)

While we won't recommend specific models or even kinds of devices, I would encourage you to buy a piece of equipment that meets these requirements if it is to be used for most school work. Your child's device should have:

• an 802.11x wireless networking capability (the district provides filtered wireless access in all buildings to students)

• a virus protection program (if running a Windows or Macintosh computer operating system)

• a color screen

• an on screen or external keyboard or other means of entering text

• an audio out port and earbuds or headphones

• a minimum 4 hours of use from one battery charge

• a full functioning, recent web browser (Firefox, Explorer, Chrome, Safari) that will allow it to access GoogleApps for Education tools and documents, the Infinite Campus student portal, Moodle 2.0, the state of Minnesota's ELM content databases, and the Destiny library catalog along with other e-resources the district provides

You may wish to consider getting a device that has

• a camera that takes both still photos and video (front and rear cameras are most versatile)

• a microphone

• ability to run Flash (this is to view some online videos and animations until all sites convert to HTML5)

• machine-based productivity software (MicrosoftOffice, Open Office, iWork) for use when an Internet connection is not available

• the capacity to run graphing calculator software

Many smartphones, netbooks, tablets, or a full-sized laptops (new or used) can do the job.

You might wish to bring the above list into the store to ask the salespeople if the devices you are considering meet the requirements.

When writing a paper, solving a math problem, researching a topic or collaborating with fellow students, technology can help your child do his or her school work and develop good technology skills along the way - and maybe even text when the studies are done.

Please e-mail one of us if you have any questions.

Happy holidays,

Your school tech department

Control - reinforcing Taylorism?

Control is an illusion, you infantile egomaniac. Nobody knows what's gonna happen next: not on a freeway, not in an airplane, not inside our own bodies and certainly not on a racetrack with 40 other infantile egomaniacs. - Days of Thunder 

I've been thinking lately about the ideal qualities of a worker - especially a computer technician. A number of factors including a shortage of tech hours, increased amounts and kinds of technology for which techs are responsible, and the growing "mission critical" factor of technologies in the classroom have led to our district experiencing something this fall that it's not really experienced before: significantly delayed responses to technical problems in offices and classrooms. 

The immediate, no-cost "solution" to this problem, it may seem, is better use of the technicians we have. Following the old Taylor efficiency model, we need to do a better job monitoring the Precision, Reliability, and Endurance of our technicians. Let's follow these folks around with a clip board to make sure they are using every hour of every day to the fullest. Punch the clock. No wasted motion, right?

Good luck with that. 

Technical workers are among those for which Taylorism is least effective. I don't need these folks working harder, longer, or necessarily more uniformly. I need them working, as the cliche goes, smarter. Instead of looking for Precision, Reliability, and  Endurance, i need technicians who model Innovation, Tenacity, and Intrinsic Motivation. For 90% of their days, they are among the biggest trouble-shooters, problem-solvers, and detectives we have operating in the school. The best techs analyze a problem, try creative solutions, and keep working on the problem until there is a satisfactory resolution. And only the intrinsically-motivated will consistantly demonstrate these qualities.

So here is my question: Are the qualities of a good teacher really any different? Instead of shoe-horning every teacher into a one-right-approach to instruction through control, shouldn't we be encouraging Innovation, Tenacity, and Intrinsic Motivation? 

Oh, and if that's true for teachers, why not for students? Will children who demonstrate Innovation,  Tenacity,  and Intrinsic Motivation as students rather than compliance and conformity of be more likely to have these qualities as workers one day? Does attempting to control student behaviors work against building the dispositions needed to be successful in an entrepreneurial economy? Let's all face the same way, be on the same page, and get the same answers on the same tests. Hmmmmmm.

One of the things that got me thinking about this was watching Seth Godin's TED talk, “Stop Stealing Dreams” about his book of the same name.  It's worth a watch and/or read if you haven't done it for a while.

Image source

BFTP: Problem or Dilemma?

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past.  Original post, November 13, 2007. If you aren't already, you should be reading Larry Cuban's blog, containing some of the most thoughtful writings on school reform going. I was fortunate to have Dr. Cuban as a teacher in a leadership program some years ago. It was one of those experieces with a teacher who simply reshaped your entire world view.

... a problem is a situation in which a gap is found between what is and what ought to be. ... How a problem is framed depends on who is doing the defining.

... Dilemmas are messy, complicated, and conflict-filled situations that require undesirable choices between highly prized values that cannot be simultaneosly or fully-solved.

Larry Cuban, How Can I Fix It: Finding Solutions and Managing Dilemmas. Teachers College Press, 2001 

Dr. Cuban's definitions come back to me regularly when educators talk about tech issues. In short, he says problems can be solved, but dilemmas can only be managed. Here are just a few examples:

Our media specialists want access to a management program (ARD) so that they can take control of computers in the labs during instruction (look at student screens, freeze monitors, share the instructor's screen, etc.) Our techs see this as huge drain on network bandwidth, slowing the network for the rest of the building's users.

A classroom teacher wants to video, digitize, and then upload as a videocast his classes so students who are absent or want to review can download and watch the lesson. The tech director is concerned that students' privacy rights (and board policy) will be violated if students can be recognized in the videocast.

The building techs are upset because another program has been adopted by a curriculum area without any involvement by the technology department. Not having new computer applications vetted by the department for compatibility and need for maintenance has been a long-standing source of frustration, no matter how many reminders are sent to department chairs and administrators.

I would categorize each of the above scenarios as dilemmas - conditions that can only be managed, not solved because they involve conflicts in values. Because of individual priorities and "problem frames," it is impossible to deal with these issues so that everyone gets what she/he desires. And to some degree, everyone with an opinion in these situations is "right."

So how are these situations best dealt with? Personally, I like using my advisory committee, a task force, or simply an informal F2F meeting comprised of all stakeholders affected that can fully air the issue, suggest actions, and make a recommendation. Does everyone always like the result? No. But everyone knows why the decision has been made and has had a chance to have had his or her concerns heard. (See also, Ending the Range War workshop resources.)

Sorry folks, that's about the best we can do - other than putting tranquilizers in the school's drinking water. Get Cuban's little book. You'll gain from it.