Ephemeral Musings

Personalized Learning Myth: Isolation

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 15:30:00 +0000

Cross-posted with the OSD: Learning for the Future blog. If you want some background, you can view all posts about personalized learning here.

Myth: Personalized Learning is a Solo Sport

One misconception about personalized learning is that because it is personal or individualized, it lacks opportunities for students to work together, resulting in isolation. It is easy to see how this misconception can occur, especially if a learning environment has a large technology component. Seeing students "glued" to computers screens evokes concerns of social isolation, maladjustment, and even dystopian futures devoid of human interaction. Regardless of what the student may actually be doing on the computer, it is difficult for the observer to see what is happening. The learner could actually be collaborating with others, but it's hard to tell.

Jim Rickabaugh, director of The Institute @ CESA #1, identifies collaboration as something to look for when evaluating personalized learning:

Collaboration. Contrary to the perceptions of some, personalized learning is not isolated learning. While some learning tasks and student work are best accomplished as learners are working alone, collaborative learning also plays a key role in a personalized environment. The question is not “either/or,” but what is the best fit for the learner and the learning task. Visitors to personalized learning environments are likely to see a variety of learning approaches: students working alone, in pairs, small groups and even in large gatherings in response to the learning challenges at hand.

Unfortunately, isolation can be a result of poor implementation of some teaching and learning strategies which are used to personalized learning. Proficiency-based progress, one of the core components of personalized learning, is often associated with computer-based instruction. In this case, isolation can be real, and this is bad.

We know that there is great value in skills like collaboration, teamwork, communication, and understanding the perspectives of others. As we seek to develop each learner's maximum potential, we must be deliberate about teaching these crucial "soft" skills in addition to traditional academic skills. These interpersonal skills are more personally meaningful, useful, and practical than many purely academic skills, so it is ironic that they would be lacking in "personalized" learning.

In order to meet the needs of learners, teachers must design learning environments in which learners work in groups, discuss ideas, debate solutions, and learn how to disagree with another person's opinion while still conveying respect for the person. Some learners need to process verbally, or "talk it through," to make sense of their learning. Teachers must provide opportunities for students who learn through discussion and interaction. Teachers must also make sure that students for whom discussion and collaboration does not come naturally are still gaining these important skills.

It is challenging to design activities which teach learners how to develop these skills and practice them, while at the same time enabling learners to move at their own pace. However, what we typically call "soft skills" are now some of the most important skills we can give our students. Developing the "whole person" is a vital part of personal learning.

For more information about Personalized Learning in the Oregon School District, see http://pli.oregonsd.net

Personal Learning Myth: It's a fad

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 19:00:00 +0000

Cross-posted with OSD: Learning for the Future. If you want some background, you can view all posts about personalized learning here.

Myth: Personalized Learning is a fad that will pass

Education has a reputation for adopting fads and then ditching them a while later, so it's no surprise that some educators see personalized learning as yet another trend or buzzword that will soon be replaced by the "next big thing." This is often expressed by the sentiment, "If I wait long enough, it will go away."

I am familiar with the swinging pendulum of initiatives. Most of the time, it seems that these fads happen because one instance of a practice, technique, philosophy, strategy or product is found to be successful, and then others try to replicate it. The problem is that what gets replicated is usually the most visible, superficial aspects of the solution. Open classrooms and 1:1 computer programs are some classic examples.

What makes me more optimistic about the drive for student-centered learning is that it has been around a while. The research supporting it goes back 30-40 years, and I've seen it implemented in various forms for the past twenty years, albeit in small pockets. We are finally to the point where there is enough pressure on the system to force us to think about learning differently. My hope is that this will make us re-think the small boxes we are putting children into.

I rarely hear politicians talk seriously about systemic and structural reform of public education with any detail. The dialogue seems to be limited to "more rigor within the current system because it is failing" or "it's failing, so let's introduce market forces like vouchers to allow parents to choose any school they like" but the choices are inevitably implemented within the same batch-processing structure. Neither of these, it seems to me, are a substantial enough reform - they are both just modifications of the model.

Personalizing learning is a process of removing the artificial structures, the fads, and the superficial aspects of instruction, and going back to the essence of learning.

To be honest, are there things out there called "personalized learning" that are fads? Probably. It seems that the label "Personalized Learning" has been slapped on all sorts of stuff to try to sell it. Certainly all that stuff will be ineffective. So the challenge is to critically analyze what really "counts" as personalized learning, and what just has the sticker slapped onto it. Jim Rickabaugh uses this test:

If you see something that could be implemented large-scale without completely disrupting the current school system, then it's not personalized learning.

He supports this assertion by saying that because the current system was designed to be completely de-personalized, erasing all individuality, then achieving anything personal at 100% capacity would be incompatible with the current system.

So, if something has "Personalized" slapped onto it, ask yourself if it could exist at 100% implementation in the current model. If not, then it's probably not actually personalized.

Another reason I believe that personal learning is not a fad is because it meets the relational need that everyone has. In his book Linchpin, Seth Godin says, "Everyone is a person, and people crave connection and respect." I believe that personal learning is both enabled by, and results in, more personal connections. Godin talks about the role of people in the information age in his manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams:

“We don’t need a human being standing next to us to lecture us on how to find the square root of a number or sharpen an axe....What we do need is someone to persuade us that we want to learn those things, and someone to push us or encourage us or create a space where we want to learn to do them better.”

This is why technologies that help implement personal learning won't replace caring teachers. The technology simply frees up the time spent on clerical or organizational tasks so that teachers can spend more time with students, helping them as they uniquely can. It is crucial to keep the focus on the person who is learning. Any technique, product, or strategy that doesn't have the person who is learning at the center of its work is missing the mark.

For more information about Personalized Learning in the Oregon School District, see http://pli.oregonsd.net

Progress and proficiency

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 03:12:00 +0000

I just read a January 2014 publication by iNACOL and CompetencyWorks called Progress and Proficiency: Redesigning Grading for Competency Education. Here are some key points that I believe we need to focus on when personalizing learning for our students. (The emphasis in the quotes is mine.)

"It is important to remember that students will be starting at different points along the larger learning progression, and teachers will need to be able to assess, grade, and track learning gains...."

My takeaway- We must pre-assess continually before each unit.

"The transparent scoring system that tracks student progress in competency education shifts the power dynamics in the classroom. Immediately, students are more empowered, demanding to understand what the standards mean, to know what proficiency looks like, and to have choices in how they demonstrate their learning. Teachers who try to cling to traditional management practices from the conventional classroom — by using points as incentives or punishment — are likely to end up frustrated."

My takeaway- If you want student empowerment and ownership, make your assessment criteria transparent and give students choices in how to demonstrate their learning.

"In competency-based high schools, you may hear students talk about themselves as 'faster' or 'slower' learners. At first it sounds disturbingly like smarter and dumber. However, as the conversation continues, you find that students think of this as their pace or tempo."

"John Caesar explained, “One of the greater challenges of performance-based systems (PBS) is pacing. Pacing is easy in a time-based system because ‘time’ is the constant. In PBS, time is the variable and learning is the constant, so pacing and acceleration become a critical conversation. At Lindsay we are designing ‘individual meters’ for students that provide for diagnostic pacing to include acceleration and deceleration over time. This is critical...."

My takeaway- We need to stop having knee-jerk reactions against words like "faster," "slower," "advanced," or "accelerated." In a student-centered learning environment, these are not value judgments, just facts. These terms are only evaluative in the context of the rigidly-paced, factory model of industrial-age schooling. If we are uncomfortable with students learning at different paces, it indicates that our mindset is stuck in an "everybody is exactly the same" mentality.

I recommend reading the whole report, as it is an easy read and is a good review of the research behind why the industrial-era grading system is broken, and how to assess for learning.

Personalized Learning Myth: Students Do Whatever They Want

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 13:04:00 +0000

Myth: Personalized Learning means students do whatever they want

Sometimes when people hear that personalized learning is "all about the student," they get the impression that students can do whatever they want, or that teachers are merely observers or logistical coordinators.

This is understandable, but not accurate. Teachers are still the leaders of the instructional process, but they encourage the input of learners and try to incorporate learner interests to provide motivation. Teachers pre-assess what students already know and can do, so that students don't waste time on things they already know. Teachers use assessments that measure the depth of understanding so that they know not only what students know, but how deeply they understand it. Teachers use this information to design learning so that all students are growing and learning regardless of where they start.

In a personalized learning environment, student perspectives are invited and respected. What the students prefer may not always prevail, but they are authentically considered and when possible, are implemented. Students choose from:

multiple "starting points" depending on what they already know,
multiple methods of accessing and processing information,
multiple ways to engage with content and concepts, using strategies that encourage ownership of their learning,
multiple ways to express (or demonstrate) their knowledge and understanding.

While it is true that personalized learning can be described as "giving students voice and choice in their learning," this doesn't mean the students have absolute choice. The Institute @ CESA #1 gives the following description of how learner choice is considered.

Whenever practical, learners are given options regarding the ways in which they will engage in learning. It may be the approach to completing a task, how learning will be displayed or with whom learners will work, but choices are a part of the environment. The focus remains on clear, vigorous standards, but the paths learners will take to meeting these standards include learners as co-designers.

As you can see, there are still standards that learners are expected to achieve, but instead of being told exactly how to get there, learners have some choice in how to learn, how to engage with what they are learning, and how to demonstrate what they know.

For more information about Personalized Learning in the Oregon School District, see http://pli.oregonsd.net

Cross-posted with OSD: Learning for the Future blog.

Personalized Learning Myth: It's all About Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 16:18:00 +0000

Cross-posted with the OSD: Learning for the Future Blog

Myth: Technology = Personalized Learning

One misconception about personalized learning is that it is all about technology. While it is true that technology offers some tools that make it possible to mass-customize learning for a large group of students, I sometimes hear people say that until every student has a technology device, we can't personalize at all.

I understand how this misconception forms. Schools that have implemented personalized learning at a large scale (i.e., for all students) use technology to accomplish it. Also, technology tends to be one of the more visible, obvious components of a classroom, especially in contrast to classrooms of twenty years ago.

However, consider whether you agree with the following statement, which is a rephrasing of the misconception:

"Without technology, it's impossible to make learning personal."

This is obviously false. Babies learn to walk and talk without technology. We learn from our relationships and interactions with each other, regardless of whether we use technology to do so. (We can talk face to face, write a letter with paper and pencil, talk on the phone, send email, or video conference. All are communication, but with varying levels of technology.)

Throughout history, people have learned from mentors. Children who lived on farms learned farming from their parents. Apprentices learned trades from master tradespeople. The rich and elite learned from personal tutors. None of these require what we would consider "technology" today. So clearly, learning can be personally meaningful without using modern technology.

Individual mentoring has long been shown to increase student achievement. Thirty years ago, Benjamin Bloom identified one-to-one tutoring as the most effective way to increase student achievement. But how do you find an individual tutor for every child?

This is where technology actually does help. Although simply giving technology to students doesn't make it any more personalized (and if done wrong can actually inhibit the learning process), it is necessary in order to bring technology to full-scale implementation. One teacher described it this way:

"I can personalize a unit for one class - no problem. But that's the tip of the iceberg. If you multiply that one class by my six classes, and multiply the one unit by 36 units, it shows the overwhelming iceberg under the water. Technology doesn't make learning personal, but technology is necessary to be able to sustain personalization for all students."

So this may seem like a contradiction, because I started off saying that technology does not equal personal learning, but now I'm saying that technology is required. The important difference is that technology alone doesn't make it personal; but technology is needed to personalize.

CESA #1 describes the role of technology as:

"...contrary to the assumptions of many, personalized learning is not technology driven. Rather technology is employed thoughtfully and strategically to support learning in the most effective and appropriate ways possible from the perspective of the learner. Personalized learning environments can be enhanced and made more efficient and learning options can be expanded with technology, but at the core, it is the shift in the roles of learners and educators and the employment of key learning and teaching processes that make the difference."

It is possible to get started personalizing with minimal technology. As the scope and scale of personalization increases, teachers use technology to perform some of the clerical or algorithmic tasks, which frees up their time to meet individually with students. The impetus for technology use should always be to increase efficiency and to support learner ownership.

For more information about Personalized Learning in the Oregon School District, see http://pli.oregonsd.net

Is Personalized Learning a Fad?

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 02:53:00 +0000

Is personalized learning a fad?

"Children become 'learning persons' by exposure to caring persons and a rich environment." - Personalized Learning Environments by Amenta and Lowery

This seems pretty obvious. I mean, consider the opposite: "...exposure to uncaring persons and a poor environment."

Really, who would want that? Just thinking about the two options, it seems obvious that people will thrive among caring persons and a rich environment. I don't think those are fads. In my opinion, the idea behind personalized learning (the actual practice, not the buzzword it has become) is the opposite of educational fads. So many educational programs and initiatives have been simply different tactics, but all within the same batch-processing model of education. Personalized learning goes beyond all that and looks at what the individual child needs. I absolutely think it's true that caring people are necessary for students to thrive. It doesn't really matter what tactic you use if a student is unmotivated and thinks nobody cares. The more I learn about effective teaching and learning practices, the more convinced I am that caring relationships are necessary, and that they've been largely ignored for a very long time because the school system was designed so that people were interchangeable.

I guess what I'm saying is that we need to start by making a difference in the lives of a few learners by being the caring person who provides a rich environment for them. We can start small and then as we get better, we can all figure out how to make it work at a larger scale. But keep in mind that caring relationships between people don't scale like technology does, so we need to make some systemic changes to allow, encourage, and support these kinds of relationships.

Myths About Personalized Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 15:14:00 +0000

Cross-posted with the OSD: Learning for the Future blog.

There is a lot of talk about "Personalized Learning" these days. The Oregon School District's pursuit of personalized learning been featured in the Oregon Observer. Personalized learning is a focus of many state conferences, and is a growing trend in schools across the US and the world. But what exactly is personalized learning? Is it just another buzzword? Is it all about technology? Is it another "here today and gone tomorrow" trend?

This is the first in a series of blog posts that will discuss what personalized learning means in the Oregon School District, and will dispel some of the myths and misconceptions about it. Today, we start off by talking about what it is, and why it's needed.

Personalized learning can also be described as "mass customization of learning" or student-centered learning. The idea is that our school system in the US is based on a factory model, which did a great job of preparing people to work in factories. But the world has changed, and people have changed, and the nation's greatest need is not for well-disciplined factory workers who will perform repetitive tasks without thinking. Our greatest need is for learners who can apply their knowledge and skills to solve practical, complex problems, create new ideas and solutions, work collaboratively, and learn continually throughout their lives. The video below gives a pretty good overview of the history of the education system and why it needs to change.

Personalized Learning is the idea that school must have the learner as its focus. We know that learners are unique, and in order to be effective, we need to address that uniqueness. We know that treating everyone identically does not allow everyone to succeed. Student-centered learning means looking at the needs of the student to determine the practices, systems, and structures of the learning environment.

The result is what The Institute @ CESA#1 calls "Purposeful Learning."

When visitors speak with students in a personalized learning environment they are likely to hear students describe not just what they are learning, but how it addresses key competencies or standards, how the learning serves a purpose and how they can use it beyond the classroom.

Students who understand why they are learning something, and who take ownership of their learning, are intrinsically motivated. This makes them more successful learners, and more successful people later in life.

For more information about the Oregon School District's Personalized Learning Initiative, go to http://pli.oregonsd.net

Gizmos and gadgets make our old model shiny

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 00:27:00 +0000

Here's a promo video by Google about using tablets with Google Play and how they make school "more engaged."

I am in favor of the idea of individual instruction and customizing content to the reading level of the student. Obviously, that's not possible with traditional class sets of texts, so technology is useful in this scenario. However, I cringe when I hear a teacher say "you get to choose a math app." That's not really offering a choice, and even worse, the content is devoid of context! Of course, this may just be a reaction to the "drill and kill" type apps they showed, but I think that's probably a pretty common implementation model for many teachers.
The point of this is that unless and until we overhaul teacher training and professional development, and radically change the model of learning, the gizmos and gadgets are simply going to sustain the traditional model of "delivering instruction."
We can do better. But it starts with student-centered learning, not with technology.

My role as an administrator: Increase teacher capacity

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 01:12:00 +0000

My role as an educator is primarily to increase teacher capacity. In other words, everything I do is designed to increase the ability of teachers to be more effective at their mission, which is to help each student achieve his or her maximum potential. (That's basically our mission statement.) I don't have a classroom of students of my own. I work with educators by observing them, providing feedback and encouragement, buying them technology (and keeping it running) to support them, designing professional development experiences, teaching graduate classes, sending them to conferences, and publicizing all their great work. All of these increase the teachers' capacity to do their work excellently. So when somebody asks me what I teach, I tend to say "children and teachers." When asked about my students, I'm thinking of the teachers with whom I work.

Traditional classroom versus Personalized Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 13:03:00 +0000

The term "classroom" indicates the basic elements of traditional schooling. It happens in a specific place, and happens to a group of students all at once. I think the term "Personalized Learning Environment" is a wise choice because it emphasizes that learning is not necessarily confined to a single place, but can happen in one or more environments that have specific characteristics. Secondly, it emphasizes "learning" not "teaching" or "class." Learning can, and does, happen naturally everyday, in many environments, not just school. In many cases, the learning is far more effective outside of school than within it. This is because learning that occurs inside schools is often devoid of context and focuses on factual recall. Even schoolwork that requires students to operate at a high level of Bloom's taxonomy will still not result in effective long-term learning if it does not have personal relevance to the learner. I believe that we can improve student engagement by replicating some of the authenticity of real-world learning environments within personalized learning environments.

Environment
A traditional classroom is designed for efficiency of administrative functions, not the needs of individual students. It is created for the mythical "average" student and designed with standardization and modularity as the primary considerations. In an industrial era factory model, this made sense, because the best examples of economic success utilized standardized processes that consisted of modular parts which could be replaced or removed anytime. This included the workers themselves, who were trained on a single job and were as replaceable as the tools they used. Students were trained for the jobs they were to take. (Seth Godin asserts there was an even more insidious reason for this in his manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams - What is School For?)

A student-centered personalized learning environment is designed around the needs of each individual student. This sounds impossible, right? Thirty different classroom designs, one for each student?!? Not exactly. The student-centered classroom is not the opposite of a standardized, factory-model classroom. It's not a willy-nilly free-for-all. Rather, it is a deliberately planned structure which supports various instructional delivery methods, various paces of work, various learning modalities, and various ways of demonstrating success. The amount of structure is likely greater than that of a traditional classroom- it must be in order to make it possible for all the learning environments to co-exist so that all students will achieve their learning targets in the way best suited for them, without taking anything away from other students. In order to be effective, the supporting structure must be deliberate.

Teacher role
In order to design and deliver numerous student learning environments, teachers must be able to differentiate instruction according to learner needs. Teachers become facilitators of learning, assessment designers, Socrative questioners, and curricular guides. This is necessary in order to guide students along their personal learning path. I met a teacher at a project-based charter high school who explained his role by saying, "I don't know everything about what my students are learning, because I'm not a content expert in all areas. But I am an expert in how to learn, so I can teach students the skills they need to be effective learners, and I can guide them along their way."

The teacher is no longer the sole source of knowledge, or even the person responsible for determining if learning took place. Instead, the students identify, locate, evaluate, and use sources of knowledge that they find (sometimes with the help of their teacher learning facilitator). The student also becomes the one responsible for demonstrating that he or she has achieved a certain level of knowledge or skill. The teacher can help the student identify ways to demonstrate mastery, but it is up to the student to actually demonstrate whether they have mastered it. The responsibility rests with the student, not the teacher.

Student role
The student may better be described as a "cognitive apprentice." As described above, the student becomes the person primarily responsible for choosing meaningful work, planning activities, finding resources, and demonstrating achievement. If this sounds familiar to you, then you probably have an occupation in the modern world. Most modern professional jobs require these same tasks. How fitting, then, that students develop these skills under the guidance of a facilitator who can support and mentor them, honing their skills before taking full responsibility for their work when they reach adulthood and enter college or the workforce.

Most importantly, the student takes ownership of his or her learning. The migration from merely complying with the demands of school and teachers, to being committed to their own learning, is the most crucial transformation for the success of a student.

Why personalized learning actually needs more structure, not less.

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Sun, 24 Nov 2013 00:04:00 +0000

My impression is that there may actually need to be more structure, not less, to provide personalized learning environments for all learners. However, it is not a structure which limits students, but rather supports them. Instead of teacher control which limits student choices, it is replaced by teacher structure which provides scaffolding, support, and organizational structures which allow students to be successful as they choose different topics of interest, different learning styles, different working environments, and different methods of demonstrating success.

Is student work as important as staff work?

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 01:11:00 +0000

What if schools stopped providing computers for students and staff?

In a previous post I discussed how we (IT folks) need to make it easy for staff to bring their own devices in a way that makes it secure and safe. Writing the post made me think about the different expectations we have for students and staff, and whether those expectations are indicative of a bigger issue about our beliefs.

Working in a school, I'm aware of the hype, and the controversy, around BYOD programs for students. They are all the rage at conferences and in marketing materials. There are valid concerns about BYOD, such as equity and security, as well as some crazy objections that show a clear lack of comprehension of how students actually use their devices.

A less publicized aspect of BYOD involves staff. I suspect this is mostly because the district is expected to supply computers for its employees. There is an interesting dichotomy, though. On one hand, the district is expected to provide computers for staff, but staff want to freedom to bring in whatever device they want from home and have it work, which is classic BYOD. On the other hand, some staff argue the exact opposite for students. They say the district should prohibit students from bringing in any personal device, even though the district does not or cannot provide any computer for each student.

I understand there is a difference between students and staff, but this strikes me as an indicator of an underlying assumption which is troublesome: That teachers do "real" work and have a right to choose their tools, and have them provided to them. On the other hand, students are not provided with the tools, and are furthermore prohibited from bringing in their own. It's like telling the football team that we don't have enough money to buy shoes for all of them, but they also aren't allowed to bring their own. They have to share shoes during games.

I found the statistics in this article kind of surprising, especially the following:

A survey covering 17 countries by business technology company Avanade found that 88% of executives said employees were using their own personal computing technologies for business purposes.

If (and this is a debatable point) schools are supposed to prepare children for their future world of work, then teaching them how to responsibly and effectively use their own devices to be productive is a skill that will transfer into the workplace of the near future.

I suppose we could still keep teaching them how to use specific applications, although in my view this is short-sighted, since the programs keep changing. Even more significantly, the platforms keep changing. Intuitive (touch) UI is here to stay. Gartner proclaimed the PC as "dead," (which shouldn't surprise anyone), but which also means the mouse interface is dying. Tablets and their new OS platforms are fundamentally changing the UI and the applications that run on them. So it's more important, in my opinion, to teach students the fundamentals of how the devices move information, and how to choose the best application (even if it's paper and pencil) for the task at hand, than it is to teach specific applications, programs, or even operating system interfaces.

So ultimately we need to provide both students and staff with the technology that is most suitable for their work, to make them successful. But it still comes back to the question of whether we are preparing students for their future, or for our own past.

New Brunswick's View of 21st Century Education

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 01:07:00 +0000

This video was created to provoke thought and conversation. A couple of lines from it did make me think.

"The top ten jobs today didn't exist in 2004."

Really? That's only 7 years. I wish the video had stated what those "top ten" jobs were. And how do you measure them? Are they the top ten most wanted jobs (I doubt it because NBA players, rock stars, and CEO of Apple all existed ten years ago). It can't be the most popular jobs in terms of people employed. Maybe it's the top ten in terms of job growth. But I still wish they had cited what they were.

"Many skills learned in public schools today will be obsolete by graduation."

I would argue that many skills learned in public education today have been obsolete for quite a while already. On the other hand, some of the skills students learn in public education are timeless. Learning to read, do arithmetic, and write coherent thoughts are certainly very old, traditional skills, but I believe they are still necessary. Cynically, I think that some of the skills learned in public education today that are not obsolete are ones we really shouldn't be teaching anyway, such as how to fake interest in a topic to get a grade, how to determine the bare minimum amount of effort needed to pass a test, how to navigate (or manipulate) an impersonal bureaucracy (okay, that one is still useful, even if we aren't intentionally trying to teach it), or how to compartmentalize specific cognitive skills.

What skills do you think are obsolete? Which ones are timeless? Can we agree on them?

Why we need to make it easy for employees to BYOD

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 11:25:00 +0000

There is a lot of hype about BYOD for students, but should staff be allowed, or even encouraged, to do the same? I think so, but there are some hurdles. Fortunately, the corporate world is already dealing with some of those issues. Not that they have solved them all, but it's nice to know that others are dealing with the same issues.

I found the statistics in this article kind of surprising, especially the following:

A survey covering 17 countries by business technology company Avanade found that 88% of executives said employees were using their own personal computing technologies for business purposes.

This commentary seems to jive with our experience as well:

"It's the new reality for organisations, and IT needs to find an effective way to securely manage these devices. What we've seen is a cultural divide between IT and the rest of the organisation.
"IT thinks about security, that's their job, the rest of the organisation doesn't."
Making secure behaviour the easiest option is the best way to get employees to cooperate, says Mimecast's Justin Pirie.
"Companies need to make sure they have the facilities to support the 'right' behaviour with the proliferation of devices.
"This has to mean that the 'right' behaviour also becomes the 'easiest' behaviour."

I think the key point of this is that we need to prepare for a time when teachers simply bring in their own computers to use. This has already happened in some cases. It also means that we need to make the best practice the easiest thing for people to do. No matter how much we tell people to follow proper security measures, they are not going to do it unless it's the easiest thing to do. I learned this from the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. They would call this "shaping the path" to make it easiest for people to do what we want them to do.

If we don't make it easy for people to do the safest thing, then we'll be fighting "shadow IT" systems forever.

How well did I predict the future? A five year check

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 15:18:00 +0000

Today while I was cleaning up my files, I found this document that I wrote exactly five years ago. Along with an explanation of my plans for educational technology in my schools, it contains predictions about how technology would change in ten years.

I was struck by the coincidence of finding this document on its five-year anniversary and so I'm posting it here- not exactly for posterity, but more to reflect on my own thinking at the time, and to evaluate what I predicted correctly and what I didn't anticipate. It's also an interesting half-way point between when I wrote the predictions and when I predicted they would happen. Here's the original message, followed by my "scorecard" and some other reflections.

2007-02-23
Dear Information and Technology Literacy Team,

As you know, I've been exploring Google's "Apps for your domain" service for a while in order to find more effective ways for district staff to access and share information. The ultimate goal is to enable staff, students, parents, and the community to efficiently access, evaluate, share, and use information and technology to communicate with each other, solve important problems, and contribute to the betterment of society. (Lofty, I know, but we have to keep the end in mind.) In a small way, technology can help with that by making us more efficient, more informed, and more communicative.

If you've spent much time around me, you have probably heard my soapbox speech of how schools are becoming information-restricted zones, and about how I want to bring the information and communication tools that people are using at home, into the school. Shared calendars are an aspect of Google Apps that I am exploring, and hope to implement soon. The "OSD Portal Page" is an example of what I foresee as a more useful way to deliver customized content to each staff member. Google Apps offers services like GoogleTalk, their Instant Messaging service, which generically have evolved from personal communication services into business communication tools.

As I explored the capabilities of Google Apps (the beta version), I found some limitations. I've been talking to Google about some of my concerns, and am going to meet with them in Milwaukee in a couple weeks.

As it turns out, Google was working to address some of my concerns already, and this week, they announced Google Apps Premier Edition. I've attached some documents which explain the service so you can familiarize yourself with it. Aside from now costing money (of course), there are some significant changes which make this a more realistic possibility for organizations, including ours.

Now, I'm not rushing headlong into this. However, it strikes me that this is a major milestone in the transition from PC-based software to Web-based software, or Software-as-a-Service (called SaaS in the industry). In the past few years, the District has mirrored the industry trend to transition to web-based services. Our in-house databases are primarily web-based, and accessible from off campus. E-Funds, Esped, PowerSchool, and Lawson are all web-based. Arguably, we have already entrusted our most important systems (payroll and student information) to web access. Trusting Internet access for "office" software doesn't seem too much of a stretch.

In the short term, this gives us choices for how we choose to spend our money. I haven't completed a full analysis yet, but it appears that Google is offering services which could effectively replace our current ones, but at a lower cost.

In the long term, this has implications for the role of our work, the practical implementation of schools, and our philosophy of education. Allow me to explain the trend, as I see it.
Where has this come from?

IBM used to sell you hardware, terminals, network cables, and software all as one big package. Microsoft was revolutionary in that they had the audacity to charge money for software (almost unheard of at the time). They made an entire industry out of arranging electronic bits, putting them on media, shrink-wrapping the box, and selling it to you. You felt like you got something, because you got the box and the disk and the manual. But now software is delivered electronically. Manuals are online. And boxes are wasteful. Microsoft now gets more than half its income from license agreements. They don't give you anything except the right to continue using the bits.

Where are we now?
Google is stepping in and offering services for a subscription. Not a new idea, but they've done it in a compelling way. Instead of shrink-wrapped boxes, they are offering full services, such as email with guaranteed 99.9% uptime, 100GB of storage, and data archiving services to comply with federal regulations. (That last part is HUGE to an IT department.) They are doing basically what IBM was doing forty years ago, but using the network (the Internet) we already have to deliver all their services, and to eliminate the physical barriers of "the office" or "school." Google is already pushing access to these services and information out to the ubiquitous interface of the mobile phone. If you haven't noticed, almost everybody has a phone, even the students in our schools, where phones are not allowed. Plus, phones are not just for voice communication anymore. Phones can access the internet at speeds faster than the dialup connections of a few years ago. They have cameras, keypads, networking capabilities, and web browsers. Remind you of anything?

Where is this going?
Extrapolate this ten years into the future. It's hard to imagine. Ninety-five percent of students in grades 5-12 will have a phone which can access the internet at broadband speeds. That access will give them their email, IM, voice communication, videoconferencing, office apps, music, and more, all in their hand. Are we going to hang onto the "no phones in school" rule, or take advantage of the low cost of information and communication access that students bring to us? Are we going to continue to limit learning to a 45 minute block of time in a particular cinderblock room, or will we deliver education the way everything else is delivered- on-demand, asynchronously, transcending physical and geographic boundaries?

I know, there is a likelihood (actually a guarantee) that students will access things that are not appropriate.

That is what makes your job as Information and Technology Literacy educators absolutely vital. We will no longer be able to prevent access to information (even doing so now is an unending, and losing, battle). We will be forced to admit that students will access huge volumes of data, and they need to have the knowledge, skills, guidance, and encouragement to wisely, critically, and productively evaluate and use that information. Your role will be to give students the skills to handle the methods by which they will receive information on all other subject areas. Not just school subjects- all subjects. Aside from those who teach students how to read, you will have the most important role in preparing students to survive and thrive in the information age.

Thanks for reading this. There are some moments when a certain piece of the puzzle called "the future" falls into place for me. This was one of those moments, and I wanted to share it with you, not only to give you insight into my vision, but also to let you know how vitally important you are to the future of our students.

Sincerely,
Jon

What I got right:

Google Apps proved to be huge (we moved to it in 2008-09)
Microsoft's Office cash-cow is doomed
SaaS is common; apps have moved online; nobody buys shrink-wrapped software anymore
Wireless Internet access is replacing wired access
Learning is moving outside of traditional schools and breaking geographical boundaries
The importance of teachers who can guide students through making positive life choices

What I missed:

I don't think it will be another five years before 95% of students 5-12 have phones. It will be sooner. (In my defense, when I wrote this, the iPhone didn't exist yet. The release of the iPhone and iPod touch accelerated the adoption of personal Internet devices.)
Google Apps ended up being free for schools, not just cheap.
I didn't see tablets like the iPad coming

Interesting to note:

Every cloud-based service we used five years ago has been replaced with something else.
We have still not embraced the idea of students bringing their own devices.

So, what are my predictions for the next five years? I'm not making any right now. I haven't had an epiphany lately. Plus, I'm busy working on the implementation of these ideas- we have Chromebooks and iPad in our buildings to support personalized learning, enrollment in online learning is increasing drastically, and the factory model of school is crumbling. Fortunately, the team of people I work with are amazingly talented and dedicated. The future is bright. Let's go.

Why US Internet Access is Slow, Costly, and Unfair

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 02:34:00 +0000

The US invented the Internet. So why are we now 16th in the world in fast Internet access? Why do we pay more for less speed? Why is this tax-funded invention mostly unavailable to people who are poor or live in rural areas? Closer to home, why is Wisconsin 48th in broadband connectivity?

In this video from Bill Moyers' show, Susan Crawford explains how the government has allowed a few media companies to monopolize Internet access.

The interesting thing here is that competition is what drives innovation. But competition is only fair when there are rules to enforce it. That's where the government comes in. The government needs to establish opportunities for competition while guaranteeing access to this utility to all citizens.

Where good ideas come from

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 03:57:00 +0000

My two favorite quotes from Steven Johnson's book The Invention of Air are:

"Create enough caffeine-abusers in your society and you’ll be statistically more likely to launch an Age of Reason."

And, more relevant to our work,

"most important ideas enter the pantheon because they circulate. And the flow is two-way: the ideas happen in the first place because they are triggered by other people’s ideas. The whole notion of intellectual circulation or flow is embedded in the word “influence” itself (“to flow into,” influere in the original Latin). Good ideas influence, and are themselves influenced by, other ideas. They flow into each other.

This reminds me of Rushton Hurley's idea at SLATE, that "isolation is the cancer of education in the US."

Good ideas don't pop out of a vacuum. They happen when dedicated, energetic (and caffeinated!) minds interact. I was reminded of this again when talking with a group of teachers the other day, and they described how they felt excited and alive when talking with each other about their ideas for personalizing learning with their students. We need to continue these conversations in order to generate more good ideas!

Games+Learning+Society Workshop Proposals

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 03:55:00 +0000

GLSES 2013: Call for Workshop Proposals

2013 Games+Learning+Society Educators Symposium

June 11, 2013 at Memorial Union, Madison, Wisconsin

The Games+Learning+Society 9.0 Conference begins Tuesday, June 11, 2013 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Memorial Union with the Educators Symposium featuring innovation, inquiry, and imagination in games-based learning. We seek proposals for interactive, two-hour workshops during which facilitators engage participants in creative professional development opportunities related to games-based learning and digital media. Additional information about workshops can be found on the new GLSES website:

http://www.gameslearningsociety.org/conference/gls-educators-symposium

Workshop proposals may be submitted through the GLS submission system (https://precisionconference.com/~gls) and are due Friday, March 15th.

SnapChat and parenting

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 04:20:00 +0000

Facebook is old and stodgy, according to teens. The new cool thing for teens is SnapChat. Like many a "cool new thing" kids like, SnapChat makes us parents nervous, and for good reason. The idea is that it allows a user to send a picture to another user, and then that picture disappears after ten seconds. At least, that's the idea. In reality, anything you post or send electronically is never really gone. I think parents need to remind kids of that. You can use this article as an example.

Parents need to have an open dialogue with their children about what they are doing on their devices, and make very clear expectations. Disallowing them from using SnapChat is probably a good idea, but having a conversation with them about why they want to use it is an even better idea. Getting beyond the typical responses of "it's just cool- you wouldn't get it," or "my friends are doing it" is challenging, but beneficial. Encouraging a teenager to articulate the reasons they want to use it (or any app) may make them analyze their motivations differently.

Having this relationship with children and teens is the most important thing, so that we can help them develop the skill of thinking about the consequences of their decisions. This is harder than simply erasing SnapChat, but has more long-term benefits. After all, this isn't the first app/service/site to allow kids to do impulsive things that they'll later regret, and it won't be the last.

Personalized Learning- a reading list

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 17:39:00 +0000

I've been immersed in efforts to implement Personalized Learning in my school district lately, and thought I'd post a quick "Suggested Reading" list in case others are interested in learning about why the current educational system needs to change, and how to get started.

Some books (links to Amazon)

Unsustainable by Tim R. McDonald
Drive by Daniel Pink
Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen
The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner
Catching Up, or Leading the Way by Yong Zhao
The Element by Ken Robinson
Wasting Minds by Ronald A. Wolk
Why Gender Matters by Leonard Sax

Articles

Learning Independence Continuum by Jim Rickabaugh
Choosing the Wrong Drivers for System Reform by Michael Fullan

Who is tracking you online?

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 03:49:00 +0000

TED Talk, "Who Tracks the Trackers?"

Chromeboxes - back to the terminal era (but that's a good thing, mostly)

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Wed, 30 May 2012 01:43:00 +0000

Google's announcement of a more powerful Chromebook and the new Chromebox desktop computer make the idea of ditching Windows more compelling than ever. The Chromebox is surprisingly well-equipped, with 6 USB ports and the ability to drive dual 30" monitors. Of course, storage is small, since everything "is supposed to" live in the cloud.

I've said before that I wouldn't buy a Chromebook as a personal computer. But I'm starting to re-think that, depending on who is going to be using the computer. I was recently reminded by the experience of an extended family member of how difficult and complex it can be to not get infected by a virus or phishing scam. There is a whole host of IT "best practices" that, frankly, isn't something most people really want to know. All that patching and updating seems like a lot of work to just read email and view some pictures. It seems much more efficient to let somebody else take over that management portion, and that's what ChromeOS does. Like the old "green screen" terminals that gave you access to the power of the mainframe, without having any of the responsibility of actually running or maintaining the mainframe, ChromeOS gives users access to the features of the Internet, without having to deal with all the management of the OS, drivers, anti-virus, malware protection, etc. That sounds about perfect for somebody who just wants the features and none of the fuss.

Want to get your hands on one? You can buy a new Chromebook on Amazon to enjoy the new hardware and not have to worry about all the management stuff. Or add the management license later if you are a business or school and decide to enroll the Chromebook into an existing Google Apps domain.

"Creeping Cronyism" by Lawrence Lessig

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Sat, 19 May 2012 15:57:00 +0000

Lawrence Lessig's fascinating keynote at the WiscNet Future Technologies Conference in May 2012 contains an excellent analysis of the nature of organizations, intellectual property, and the effect of money on politics.

Also, he has some mad slide-deck skills.

Heading for an iDisorder

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:19:00 +0000

Are you (or is somebody you know) addicted to your technology? Probably. This summary of Dr. Rosen's new book, iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us, is a sobering analysis of the effect of technology on people's brains.

As parents, we want the best for our children. The people marketing technology to us know that, so they naturally appeal to our desire to provide the best by telling us that children need to learn how to use technology, or that technology is "educational."

While these claims may be true in some cases, we also need to realize that technology is powerful, and must be used carefully. We may be literally re-wiring the brains of our young children, contributing to ADHD, anxiety, and other psychological issues.

Like anything else, parents should set limits on the use of technology (and any other "screen time"), make clear expectations about when and how it should be used, and enforce certain restrictions to make sure children get enough exercise, rest, and face-to-face social interaction.

You can read the article here. If you find it interesting, you may want to read Dr. Rosen's book(amazon.com), or these other related titles:

Blue Like Jazz Trailer

noreply@blogger.com (Jon) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 02:40:00 +0000

We interrupt our regular blogging (which has, admittedly, become rather infrequent lately) to bring you a movie trailer. But not just any movie- this one has a special story. When the producers of Blue Like Jazz ran out of funding, over 4,000 fans of the book donated money to get it made. It became the biggest community-sourced movie in history, as well as one of the biggest Kickstarter projects ever. After six years and the work of thousands, it debuts in theaters nationwide on April 13. Without further ado, here is the official trailer for Blue Like Jazz.