CPVPV

The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) is the official name of the religious police in Saudi Arabia. I rather like the name itself (where can I get a t-shirt?), but I wouldn't want to be in charge of such an organization in my school. Unfortunately, the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice are roles that some tech departments have assigned themselves. Heaven knows why.

Wes Fryer, the IT Guy at TechLEARNING.com gets it partially right in his article Blocking MySpace.com and on his personal blog writing mySpace and iSafety. Bless his heart, Wes does advocate for a least-restrictive environment as the best place to teach kids how to use the Internet. As Carol Simpson likes to say, teaching kids Internet safety in an over-filtered environment is like teaching kids to cross the street by never letting them out of the basement.

But what Wes alludes to, but does not address is who, in the end, makes the decision to block or not bock mySpace or any site on the Internet? He only says:

Whether or not the final decision of the district is to block in-school student access to MySpace.com, these issues must be raised and publicly addressed. 

How?

Some readers may know this is a real pet project of mine - getting every district, with the help of our professional associations, to have formal processes in place to determine what web resources are blocked and which are not. And such a process IS workable. We folks on the tech side, need to quickly determine a means of establishing a process for making choices about whether resources should or should not be blocked - or we are in for a world of hurt. And here's why..

• Today a teacher asks that a game site is blocked. The IT department complies.
• Tomorrow a parent asks that a site on gay marriage, evolution, or a right-wing Christian fundamentalist be blocked.
• The day after that, another parent or teacher asks that those sites be unblocked.

Who is left in the middle?  If we have established a past practice of blocking (or unblocking) any request,  we will always have to block (or unblock) every request AND we will probably be spending an inordinate amount of time doing so. 

The decision of whether to block or not block should be done formally, openly, and in the same way any other material challenge is handled in a school district. Period.

IT folks, you really don't want to be considered  your school's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Don't we have more important jobs to do?

I Will (as a teacher)

Once again, I am riffing from a John Pederson posting, I Will.  This was posted on the Abilene, Kansas High School Dialogue Buzz website:

Let’s have a little competition at school and get ready for the future. I will [as a student] use a laptop and you will use paper and pencil. Are you ready…?

• I will access up-to-date information - you have a textbook that is 5 years old.
• I will immediately know when I misspell a word – you have to wait until it’s graded.
• I will learn how to care for technology by using it – you will read about it.
• I will see math problems in 3D – you will do the odd problems.
• I will create artwork and poetry and share it with the world – you will share yours with the class.
• I will have 24/7 access – you have the entire class period.
• I will access the most dynamic information – yours will be printed and photocopied.
• I will communicate with leaders and experts using email – you will wait for Friday’s speaker.
• I will select my learning style – you will use the teacher’s favorite learning style.
• I will collaborate with my peers from around the world – you will collaborate with peers in your classroom.
• I will take my learning as far as I want – you must wait for the rest of the class.
• The cost of a laptop per year? - $250
• The cost of teacher and student training? – Expensive
• The cost of well educated US citizens and workforce? - Priceless

Could a teacher offer the same challenge?

Let’s have a little competition at school and get ready for the future. I will use a laptop and you will use paper and pencil. Are you ready…?

• I can provide up-to-date information to my students - you have a textbook that is 5 years old.
• I can find and change all my instructional materials, worksheets, study guides, tests, every year - you better hope the master is good enough for one more photocopy.
  
• I will model 21st century skills - technology, information-problem solving and life-long learning - you will lecture about them.
• I will provide my visual learners an accessible means of grasping concepts through multimedia resources - you can use simpler words..
• I give my students a world-wide audience for their creative work – you will share your students' work with the class.
• I will give my students access to study materials and resources for my class 24/7 - you hope they remember to bring home the textbook.
• I will communicate with my students and parents electronically - you can hope to catch them after class or at home in the evenings.
  
• I will give parents real-time access to how their children are performing in my class - you send our report cards and have two parent-teacher conferences a year.
• I will use the information gathered from computer enabled value-added testing to know exactly what my individual students' strengths and weakness are - you will use whole group instruction.
  
• I will communicate with educational leaders and experts using email – you will try to remember the advice of the instructor in your college methods class from 1980.
• I will honor the variety of reading abilities of my students by providing materials on a topic at a variety of reading levels - you will use the basal reader.
• I will collaborate with my peers from around the world – you will stay behind your classroom door.
• I will allow my students to take their learning as far as they want – you must keep everyone at the same place at the same time.
• The cost of a laptop per year? - $250
• The cost of teacher training? – Expensive, but no more so than other staff development activities
  
• The cost of effective schools? - Priceless

 And what might you add?

Looking forward

What might the next 10 years bring using the "look back" to examine the forces that might make significant change in technology use happen?

 This is what my crystal ball (the defective, cloudy one) showed me when I wrote our district's 2004-07 long range technology plan in 2003:

Directions - 2004-05 to 2006-07
As quickly as technology changes, it is almost impossible to predict or plan with any accuracy the specific challenges that will be facing us over the next few years. We can speculate on some general trends:

1. Less emphasis on “technology’ as a separate area of concern; more emphasis on technology as a means to achieve goals of other areas.
2. Greater need to train students and staff on ethics, safety and civility when using technology, as well as the ability to evaluate the reliability of information found and to use it purposely.
3. Greater need for a secure source of adequate technology funding. Strategizing for decreasing “total cost of ownership” through maintenance outsourcing, use of thin client architectures, use of single-purpose devices (e.g. AlphaSmarts), adopting handheld computers by staff and students, and purchasing upgradeable devices.
4. Continued integration of technology skills into the content areas to meet specific state standards as well as being able to meet NCLB requirements that all students be technologically literate by the end of eighth grade.
5. Increased demand for individualized technology training by staff.
6. Continued, accelerated move to information in digital formats such as e-books, online databases, electronically submitted student work, web-based video conferencing, and video on demand.
7. More emphasis on anytime, anyplace access to personal information through web-based personal file space, calendars, and wirelessly networked hand-held devices. Increased access to tools that allow teachers to supplement classroom instruction with online learning opportunities such as class chats, threaded discussion groups, online syllabi and study materials, collaborative work spaces, etc.
8. Increased desire by parents for real-time student information available via the web. Higher parent expectations of schools and teachers to provide comprehensive information about school programs and individual student achievement.
9. Increased importance of the tools and knowledge need to do good data-driven decision-making by administrators, building teams and individual teachers.
10. Increased efforts to assure data privacy, data security, and network reliability.
11. Increased educational options for all learners including more choices of schools, more online course offerings, more interactive video offerings, and more computer courseware options. This will result in an increased need for school marketing efforts and increased “consumer-driven” attention.
12. Higher accountability for technology expenditures and impact on school effectiveness.

On reflection over the past two years since this was written, what  I don't think I recognized  was the impact that state and federal laws/mandates have had on how district technology efforts and expeditures have been prioritized. Since my career in education started in the mid-70s, I don't remember a time in which the state has played a bigger role in dictating curriculum and policy of its own making or in enforcing federal laws. So, based on state and federal education policy, here might be some bold, not very encouraging, predictions:

• NCLB will continue to be enforced with little change in emphasis on "basic skills." This means more tech dollars spent on record-keeping, testing, datawarehousing/datamining, and instructional reading and math programs directed at low-performing students. The "technology literate" requirement of Title IID will not be enforced.
  
• The state will continue to empahasize content-based standards and not recognize the need to teach or assess process-based skills such as technology or information literacy. This means any requirement that all teachers teach and expect the use of technology, HOTS, and information-problem solving will come from district mandates, not from the state or feds. At the present, the state of Minnesota's only interest in the school use of technology is in online testing. These state tests will be normed or criterion-based, not "value-added." Authentic assessment will continue to fade as fewer teachers practice the skills learned when the state standards were performance-based.
• The district will continue to focus its efforts on skills tested as required by the state (in enforcing NCLB and its own content standards.) The major effort of the board and building improvement/staff development committtees will be in keeping the district and schools off the "does not meet AYP" list, which will be increasingly challenging to do. At this time, despite my personal campaigning, I do not see the district adopting technology/information literacy skills as a major goal.
• Competition for students will not come from online courses, but from charter schools. While some teachers will choose to supplement F2F instruction with online resources, there will be no mass migration to online high schools. Parents who recognize that their kids need 21st Century Skills will gravitate toward charter schools that have project-based learning as a focus (and don't seem to worry about their scores on state tests).
• Brick and mortar public schools will around for as long as we are still the cheapest day-care going.

A few things that might - might - make a real difference in business as usual are:

• The availability of a truly functional $100 laptop for students. Even if the schools don't buy them, parents will. The change in instruction will be driven by student expectations and abilities rather than from planned efforts by curriculum committees.
• In the 2006 elections, there is a backlash both in the state and nation to the right-wing educational agenda. Of course, both Democrats and Republicans signed on to NCLB, so it would be interesting to see if national organizations like school board associations, library organizations, technology organizations, teacher organizations etc. can find their own Jack Abramhof who can move congress  to make 21st century skills an important and enforced part of NCLB. I am not holding my breath on this one. (A future blog entry on why we should be lobbying for student skills requirements, not dedicated funding for libraries and technology.)
• A bunch of bloggers who have seen the light and decide to get political by joining professional organizations who do do lobbying. At this point, we all seem to be rather happy talking only to each other, so I'm not holding my breath on this one either.

Wish I could be more optimistic. And what does your crystal ball tell you?