The end result for me: I got a few ideas from this conference I can take back to ACTE. I’m thinking of ways we could get involved in the collaborative classroom, e-mail and blog services such as ePals and ways we could use online resources to connect and possibly help CTE teachers in other countries. I also heard “21st century skills” a lot and I think we need to start adding this phrase to our material.

The biggest benefit I have reaped is being reined in. I’ve gotten a little off-mission in my thinking of what I can do to support ACTE members through online resources. I need to make more use of resources already out there for helping our members with their education technology professional development and be more of a liaison.

Thanks for reading! Go back to the “CTE and Ed Tech” post and the “CTE Session: Woo Hoo!” post for CTE topics of interest from the conference.

The presenter, Scott Horan, presented the idea that students who spend four years in high school solving real-world computer problems gravitate to CS/CIS/engineering majors in postsecondary. Essentially, they become addicted to problem solving. The basic math of this premise is that the more IT classes offered or required, the more students get interested in and continue on in the IT field. And this is not a problem because Scott’s data shows that IT jobs are increasing (whereas I had heard they were down since 2000).

Scott also says that computer majors make up about half of all CTE majors. Any one have any data or thoughts on this?

Then Scott described the program developed in his Kentucky district (Jefferson County Public Schools), which starts in 6th grade, I believe. There are some required courses and a variety of certification opportunities along the way, as well as internships. This program also encourages students to take AP English and Math, with the result that between the AP courses and certifications, students can skip their first year of postsecondary.

Challenges he has encountered include procuring and training staff (either training teachers in IT or training IT professionals in teaching) and changes in standards, laws, certification and the industry in general. This is the program’s first year of working with core teachers to incorporate math and English into the IT courses, so no data on whether that will go smoothly or be a challenge.

ACTE’s Convention got a plug from the presenter, and a request from some session attendees for more from ACTE in the IT line. On a slightly different tangent, the hard core technology people apparently feel underrepresented at NECC, according to an informal discussion before the presentation. The presenter also expressed the idea that NECC attendees assume students have computer fundamentals when many of them don’t and therefore need a basic computer course freshman year (which his program provides).

I don’t really have any reflections on all this. It sounds like it would be a good model to replicate-I’ll see if I can get a link to the presentation. And I’m sure we’d love to have more going on with IT at ACTE. It did make me reflect on how IT courses (along with engineering and robotics) seem to be in a different category than other ACTE courses. These high-tech courses often available at magnet schools are perceived differently, I believe. I also like the concept of associating CTE with problem solving.

There were only a few interesting conclusions: don’t teach tools to the students, give them the problem first and let them figure out how to solve it. But the panel also identified one obstacle with this approach: it’s hard to get the administration to trust this “magic” of stepping back and letting the students run the project.

One woman in the audience talked about looking at the standards you need to meet and designing projects that meet as many as possible at one time. I think I will try this approach at work with what I hope to accomplish and how those goals can be most effectively met through the fewest projects.

Now I’m going to a session on CTE!

In the last session I attended, one of the panelists said that individualized education was the future and that is what technology supports. I agree with that (noting that I have no particular knowledge in this field). Do you agree? And my real question: does individualized education work for CTE? I would think individualized learning and integrating technology (computer-based) would be easier for a course such as marketing than for a course such as automotive tech that already includes a lot of technology (some non-computer-based) and a lot of exact, specific knowledge boxes to check off.

Another question off of that: is education technology just computer-based learning? What about other tools used in CTE courses?

Third question: do CTE’s goals support individualized learning given the emphasis on soft skills? Or is CTE more about ironing out the ways in which students learn or work that differ from what works best in the workplace?

EDIT: An addition to the third question: do CTE’s goals support individualized learning given that taking the course is a choice and the student may be predisposed to one style of learning best suited for that course?

A few statistics from the panel:
- More than 70% of ed tech PD programs have no courses for administration
- There are about 8 ed tech leadership courses for administrators out of 500 ed tech leadership programs
- Administrators are thought to be 2-7 years behind in technology literacy

An important point made was that middle and late adopters are the ones who shift the system, not the early adopters. Ron Canuel, a Canadian superintendent who brought up this point, also recommended a “pressure and support” strategy: hold their hand but pull them forward.

Administrators have to lead if systemic change is going to happen, Jason Hancock said. Administrators listen to vendors, he noted, which does not lend itself to systemic change.

Scott McLeod said the administrators need to be exposed to all the aspects of integrating technology: funding, implementation, how administrators can use these tools in their work, etc. He also spoke to postsecondary in particular, noting that technology is not part of the reward structure for college faculty. Legislators, accrediting agencies and other external forces must apply pressure before change occurs at the postsecondary level.

There were some answers, pretty vague:
- Develop more courses for administrators,
- Stop separating education technology from education in general
- Tell administrators success stories to get their buy-in
- Piloting
- Creative funding
- Let them know results may not be immediate
- Tell them what is in it for them

Scott McLeod, in answer to a great audience question I can’t really rephrase, said that the big item, the big change, the big point to be made is that technology facilitates individualized education and that is the future.

One woman in the audience pointed out that it’s unrealistic for a superintendent to be hands-on with technology; the superintendent should have a chief technology officer that they listen to and farm the details out to. The administrator needs to have a technology vision, though.

They also prepared a teacher and a parent guide to go along with the curriculum. The parent guide focuses on helping the child build research skills and information fluency at home. Parents can access the online tutorials to help their children or for the parents’ own use.

It sounds like CPS has a great program for helping teachers teach technology literacy. There are facilitation models for different situations: computer labs, classroom teaching, collaborative teaching and 1:1 laptop teaching. There are planning forms for individual projects. They also focus on differentiation and assessment of students, and the teachers are themselves assessed for literacy but not for integration (the area instruction technology coordinator has a rubric for assessing integration in the schools). Interestingly the reporting of each individual teacher’s progress is for that teacher alone. This makes sense and gives teachers the opportunity to improve. The administration only needs to know the percentages, I’d think: for example, 65% of our teachers have reached x level of proficiency.

A few tips I came away with:
- Teach teachers to teach themselves as a method for teacher PD
- Don’t fall in love with a tool and think how you can use it to teach—reverse that process
- Classroom 2.0 defined as a student-directed class, not teacher-directed
- Have parents sign authorization on Internet usage and media upon student enrollment

That’s it for today! I’m off to the hotel and then to sightseeing and dining. Tomorrow I’ll start with a session on technology literacy.

A: (from ISTE past presidents and business leaders)
- Technology is part of fabric of education and is integrated into all content
- Must redefine federal role in digital equity
- Need a robust, authentic assessment model that measures what we want our students to know and do
- Give the new administration better examples of efficacy, best practices
- Many schools don’t have enough technology to make it work
- Unpack what technology is doing already, success stories
- Technology is the only way to regain U.S. competitiveness
- Systematic implementation of technology is needed

Then questions were fielded from the audience. One was about better teacher preparation for using new technologies. The suggestions resulting from this question included mentor teachers that can model using technology, involving younger teachers and education students in school redesign, and getting teacher ed faculty to use technology. A point was made that many educators are getting the knowledge they need in teacher preparation but then they go to a school with little or no technology resources.

Another question was about new versus old media such as print publications. The panelists indicated that there is a difference between free content and validated content, and if you want both, regulatory structure has to be changed. A separate comment was made earlier that technology in education is overregulated.

It was interesting, but I think the one thing I walked away with is that education technology change really needs to come from the highest levels.

I just attended the best session of this conference so far, an informal panel of district IT directors that was part of the NECC Unplugged conference-within-a-conference. It shed a lot of light for me on the difficulties IT directors have with organization, eRate, teachers, etc. And that was huge part of what I came here to learn about.

A few points: organizational hierarchy that separates IT and curriculum as well as lack of communication between IT and curriculum is a major problem. IT shouldn’t make major changes and curriculum shouldn’t make major changes wihtout consulting each other.

The panelists brought up a great point I hadn’t even thought of: some teachers want to block YouTube or gaming sites because the kids are distracted. I thought we wanted to unblock these sites! The IT directors emphasized differentiating between tech problems and disciplinary problems in this regard. These IT directors also recommended due process for unblocking requests.

Other points: The technology plan required by eRate for connectivity funding should include curriculum, not just “wires and boxes.” Teachers need to have patience for changes and exercise common sense, such as knowing that a whole classful of students on one high-impact site could slow down the network. But on the other hand, IT staff has to explain why something can’t be done.

IT in schools is different based on whether staff is from an educational setting or from the private sector. It also sounds like training is often separate or an afterthought.

They briefly discussed cell phones. One director said his district had off-network access for personal devices. For the future of IT in schools, these directors talked about Web-based services, being able to concentrate only on the network (presumably because everyone will have devices), and cloud computing (access is on demand from a third-party provider).

In the Ed Tech policy session I attended after that, David Byer from Apple’s education policy division gave us some numbers:
35 Senate seats up this year
435 representative seats up for election
11 gubernatorial seats up for election
$262 million for Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT)
- down from $700 million in FY02
- there may be a small gain this year
- president recommends $0 funding
10,000 Ed Tech Action Network members (he seemed to think was impressive, and it is for a volunteer advocacy activity, but it’s a drop in comparison to stakeholders in ed tech, I’d think)
 
Then Hilary Goldmann presented. She mentioned something that I didn’t know, which is that in many states ed tech is local or federal, not state. She showed a pie chart of federal spending, pointing out all that is mandatory and the vulnerability of discretionary funds for education such as ed tech. And she said that the next administration will reauthorize NCLB and it may go back to being ESEA.

She talked about ATTAIN (Achievement Through Technology and Innovation), the new proposed EETT. ISTE voices were included in legislation, which includes more teacher professional development and improves support for disadvantaged schools. The House and Senate have released draft legislation and ATTAIN is included in both.

What does this mean? Widespread technology in the classroom must be more difficult to implement every year with this waning funding. Luckily technology is getting cheaper, especially smaller and one-item or one-service solutions. And for the brave school systems, there is open source.

ATTAIN sounds pretty good. Improved support for teacher professional development is going to be a great boon. But there was an exchange that I didn’t quite catch, in which it sounded like federally mandated professional development may not be effective or provide much choice to the individual school systems. Can anyone validate this?

Onto a discussion in NECC Unplugged (Bloggers’ Cafe) about the problems between IT departments and teachers, then one on strategic tech ed thinking wtih ISTE presidents and business leaders, then a Classroom 2.0 gathering back at the NECC Unplugged area.