I’m pleased and excited to announce that the VCU School of Education is running our first Emerging Technologies Institute this summer. It’s a fully online professional development program for educators. There are six courses available to educators, and each can be taken for university credit and/or for recertification points (non-credit). You can obtain details about the courses and registration by clicking on the image above.

I do want to direct particular attention to the course I’m teaching, Educational Technology for School Leaders. As I wrote on the Institute site: “This course lies squarely at the intersection of educational technology and school leadership. We will explore a range of issues, from pedagogical considerations and associated tool choices to more pragmatic leadership issues of planning, funding, and faculty development.”

The ideal “student” for this course is a sitting or aspiring school leader who is at the early stages of exploring the affordances of technology for teaching, learning and leading. But, even technologically literate educators who want to more deeply explore leadership issues such as technology planning/funding, legal/ethical issues around technology, tech.-focused professional development, etc. would be great co-learners.

If this isn’t the right opportunity for you, it might be for one of your friends/colleagues. If so, please share this post with them.

And, of course, if you have any questions about the course (or the Institute), please contact me (jbecker@vcu.edu).

Let me see if I can make the argument I make in my last post a little more viable through the use of a hypothetical. This is a common technique in legal training to learn to flesh out the issues. So, imagine a principal gets an email like the one below (click on the image to enlarge it)…

As the principal, what would you do?

On Sunday (Easter) morning, I noticed a bunch of public school educators who I follow posting religious material on Twitter. The posts ranged from a simple “He is risen!” to longer passages from the Bible to links to live streams of religious ceremonies. In response, here’s what I posted:

That was a not-so-subtle nod to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. I am not stating definitively that public school educators are in violation of that clause by tweeting scripture, but I do believe there is an argument to be made. Here’s the logic of that argument:

• Many, many public school educators have made claims to the effect of “Twitter is the best source of professional development I’ve ever known…” Or, “Twitter is an amazing part of my personal/professional learning network (PLN)…” These same folks participate in education-related Twitter chats, use Twitter to announce blog posts related to education, etc. In other words, their Twitter account is very much a part of their professional identity.
• IF Twitter is part of one’s professional identity, then one must consider all legal and ethical obligations that come with being a professional public school educator.
• While public educators have 1st Amendment rights around freedom of expression and even around freely exercising their religion, those rights are not unbounded. The Establishment Clause is one such constraint.
• Citing scripture on Twitter, therefore, is potentially a violation of the Establishment Clause.

Without going in to a full lesson on Establishment Clause jurisprudence, state actors (including, of course, public school educators) cannot “endorse” or “promote” a religion. That’s not quite the full legal standard, and, actually, the legal standard is not quite clear. Different courts and different judges are using an array of legal standards/tests. But, suffice it to say that there are clear ways that state actors can express themselves, and clear ways they cannot; everything in between is a little fuzzy. So, for example, public school educators are well within their rights to wear a necklace with a pendant of a cross or a Star of David. They are not, however, within their rights to post scripture on the walls of their classroom(s). Teaching about religion is fine (I’d even venture to say it’s important, particularly around the study of world history), but teaching a religion is not. Those are the “easy” or “clear” cases.

So, one could claim that citing scripture on Twitter is akin to wearing a necklace with a religious symbol. I believe it is more than that, putting it into that fuzzy area.  Even with a protected account, posting to Twitter is a very public act; it is a broadcast that can be seen by virtually anyone (students, colleagues, community members, etc.). Nobody is forced to see what you tweet, but by posting to Twitter we are SHOUTING OUT LOUD!

Dr. Justin Bathon wrote about this issue with respect to Indiana University head basketball coach Tom Crean, whose Twitter postings have change considerably from his ealier usage. There was a period of time when Coach Crean was posting scripture throughout the day. Now, he’s much more basketball-focused. I’d wager that someone in the IU counsel’s office gave him a little lesson on the Establishment Clause. And, remember, Coach Crean came to IU from Marquette University, a Jesuit institution with a very different culture and set of expectations. There’s still the occasional tricky tweet like this one:

That’s “mild” compared to others, but does Coach Crean tweet about how great it is to see Jewish students going to a synagogue or Muslim students entering a mosque? As a state actor, Coach Crean is legally obligated to not promote a particular religion. And, his Twitter account is unquestionably tied to his role as the head coach of a prominent basketball team of a state university.

None of this is clear, and, again, I’m not stating definitively that public school educators cannot use their Twitter account to cite scripture or link to live streams of religious ceremonies. However, there are also moral obligations (especially around inclusiveness) we have as public educators.

Also, let me be clear that I am not suggesting that if you want to post religious material on Twitter you should create a separate “private” Twitter account. I’ve long argued that Twitter (and all social media) causes us to re-consider the private-public distinction and that our online selves are part of our personal AND professional identity. What that means, though, is that we, therefore, have decisions to make about how we express ourselves in these spaces. I don’t criticize my students, colleagues, bosses, etc. online; at least not by name. That’s an ethical bound for me. I don’t post hate speech; that’s a legal bound. As state actors, there are limits to how we might express ourselves in public. If our Twitter accounts are part of our professional identities, then we should consider the limits of how we express ourselves in that space.

This is a follow-up plea. In my previous post, I asked you to consider helping my dissertation advisee, Mr. John Andrews, by completing a survey for his dissertation. The study is about educators’ use of social media and the First Amendment. We have received approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) to carry out the study.

If you are a currently practicing K-12 educator based in the United States, and you haven’t already done so, please consider completing the survey. Also, if you have already taken the survey, would you please consider sending the link to this post (or the link below directly to the survey) to other educators who you think are unlikely to see this blog post or related tweets? 

We have over 250 responses, but we need about 150 more to allow us to make certain generalizations and do certain statistical comparisons with some semblance of confidence.

Finally, please know that all responses will remain confidential and that we ask for no names; no individuals will be mentioned in the reporting of the findings.

CLICK HERE TO BEGIN THE SURVEY

If you have any questions about participation in this study, please contact me (or write in the comments section below): jbecker@vcu.edu

Thank you very much for your consideration.

Dear educators,

The dissertation of my advisee, Mr. John Andrews, lies at the intersection of educators’ use of social media and the First Amendment. We have received approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) to carry out the study.

The study is designed around a survey. If you are a currently practicing K-12 educator based in the United States, would you please consider completing the survey?

Please know that all responses will remain confidential and that we ask for no names; no individuals will be mentioned in the reporting of the findings.

CLICK HERE TO BEGIN THE SURVEY

If you have any questions about participation in this study, please contact me (or write in the comments section below): jbecker@vcu.edu

Thank you very much for your consideration.

At Educon 2.4 a couple of months ago, I co-facilitated a session called #chats and #camps: Examining the Impact of Social Media-Fueled PD on Classroom Practice and Student Learning.  That conversation was driven, partly, by a blog post I had written called “To What Effect?”

Tonight, I’ll be hosting a kickoff meeting for a potential virtual, distributed action research project aimed at documenting the impact of informal, social-media driven professional learning. Meredith Stewart and Bud Hunt will be co-facilitating with me.

Those who attended the session and indicated an interest in following up have been contacted, consulted and notified about the kickoff meeting. If you were not in that session and you’ve not been notified, consider this an invitation to join in the fun. The meeting will be tonight (Wednesday, March 21) at 8:30 p.m. EST. The meeting will be held in a Wimba Live Classroom, which you can access at http://bit.ly/w5wdtH. You might need a little time to make sure your computer is configured properly for Wimba, so please consider trying to access the room in advance.

I hope you’ll join us tonight… and beyond!

Something Something Something: I’m Only Adding This Because All Good Titles Have A Colon.

I’m sure I’m not the first to write about this…

but I read this really interesting article over at  [insert hip magazine here]…

The author of the article…

writes about [insert phenomenon X here]..

The author really nails it when she says…

This phenomenon is not new, but I am an expert on this topic now because I read a couple of articles that confirm my hypothesis.

This got me thinking about my particular area of expertise…

where I see this same phenomenon all the time…

One time…

So, in conclusion, we should all think about the phenomenon the author wrote about and how it applies to our practice…

photo credit: geraldford

[NOTE: this blog post was entirely inspired by this video. You didn't expect me to have an idea of my own, did you?]

This coming semester (Spring 2012), I’ll be once again teaching a course called Educational Technology for School Leaders. This is a masters- or post-masters-level graduate course. The course is fully online (almost entirely “asynchronous;” there will be webinar-style sessions held at specific times, but “attending” those will not be mandatory and they’ll be recorded/archived/posted for after-the-fact viewing). The course is also an “open” course in that (nearly) everything we do will be “public.”

The course is also “open” in the sense that there are slots available for registration from anyone outside of VCU.¹. Maybe you’d like to learn with us this semester? Or, maybe you know someone who should or would like to? A little more about the course:

The “official” course description (i.e. the one in the VCU course catalog) reads:

Provides an overview of the impact of technology, particularly Web-based technologies, on K-12 instruction, from pedagogical considerations and associated tool choices to more pragmatic leadership issues of planning, funding and faculty development. This course is designed for administrators, teacher leaders and other interested professionals who are or intend to be leaders in technology.

In other words, this course is designed for sitting and/or aspiring school leaders who want to explore the intersection of school leadership and educational technology. Furthermore, the course is loosely framed around the National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A).

Fun will be had and lots of learning will happen. If you, or someone you know, would like to take the course, please contact me (or have them contact me).

NOTE: there is tuition associated with registering for the course. Including fees, tuition for the 3-credit course for VA residents is $1,119. For those outside of VA, the tuition is $2,727 (I’m just the messenger!).

 photo credit: IntelFreePress

1. The course is not SO “open” that I’m accepting students who are not formally registered for the course. There will be many opportunities for peripheral participation, though

Unless you live under a rock (or if you don’t track education policy matters through social media – same thing), you know about the “big” study about teacher effects that was conducted by Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff, disseminated through NBER and reported in multiple outlets, most notably the New York Times.

This is an important study for at least a couple of reasons. First, methodologically, the study is massive and novel in some important ways. Second, from a policy perspective, even if the authors overreach in their interpretation, the study adds to the growing body of literature on teacher effectiveness and value-added measures. The more empirical evidence we have, the better; that’s the nature of scientific research.

I haven’t read the paper yet, so I won’t comment on it. What stood out to me over the last few days, though, is how scholarly communication unfolded. The authors published the paper through the National Bureau of Economics Research (NBER), which is a reputable research organization, but one that publishes working papers that don’t undergo traditional academic peer-review. The paper is dated December 2011, but it was essentially “released” when the New York Times reported about it on Friday (January 6). Within the last 48 hours (over a weekend!), we already have a number of scholars/academics who have issued a range of reviews of the study. Consider just the following:

• Bruce Baker, professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, offers a fairly comprehensive review.
• Sherman Dorn, associate professor of education at the University of South Florida, has already written two posts about the study: one is a brief review of the study and the other is about the reporting of the study.
• Cedar Riener, assistant professor of Psychology at Randolph-Macon College, writes about the study and about the reporting.
• Matthew Di Carlo, a senior research fellow at the Albert Shanker Institute, offers a comprehensive critique of the study.

Through traditional forms of scholarly communication, this would have taken months to a year+ to get published and hashed out. Instead, we get the paper and 4 thoughtful reviews, all within 48 hours! Our traditional forms of scholarly communication are broken and woefully outmoded. And, education scholars wonder why research is ignored and ill-respected.

One other note – consider the disciplinary backgrounds of the four reviewers: Baker (economics), Dorn (history), Riener (psychology), DiCarlo (sociology). Publishing to the open web also helps us break down disciplinary silos.

In the span of the last two weeks, three articles were published about the role of for-profit corporations in K-12 online learning. Individually and collectively, they are serious and comprehensive pieces of investigative journalism and they all reach similar conclusions and raise serious concerns about the role of these companies, especially K12, Inc., in the public education landscape.

I encourage you to read all three articles.

Virtual schools are multiplying, but some question their educational value (Washington Post, November 26, 2011)

K12 has hired lobbyists from Boise to Boston and backed political candidates who support school choice in general and virtual education in particular. From 2004 to 2010, K12 gave about $500,000 in direct contributions to state politicians across the country, with three-quarters going to Republicans, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

How Online Learning Companies Bought America’s Schools (The Nation, December 5, 2011)

Corbett, a Republican who rode the Tea Party election wave in 2010, supports a major voucher expansion that is working its way through the state legislature. The expansion would be a windfall for companies like K12 Inc., which currently operates one Pennsylvania school under the limited charter law on the books. According to disclosures reported in Business Week, Pennsylvania’s Agora Cyber Charter School—K12 Inc.’s online school, which allows students to take all their courses at home using a computer—generated $31.6 million for K12 Inc. in the past academic year.

Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools (The New York Times, December 12, 2011)

The New York Times has spent several months examining this idea, focusing on K12 Inc. A look at the company’s operations, based on interviews and a review of school finances and performance records, raises serious questions about whether K12 schools — and full-time online schools in general — benefit children or taxpayers, particularly as state education budgets are being slashed.

I’m not opposed to online learning in K-12 education. In fact, I’d say I’m rather bullish on the possibilities and affordances of online learning, especially for children with limited opportunities or access to meaningful learning environments. But, with some forms of educational research, we view triangulation as an evidentiary hallmark. So, while I was critical of the policy brief issued by the National Educational Policy Center, I can’t read those three articles and not conclude that we are in desperate need of oversight and regulation here. Dr. Justin Bathon’s legal brief and model legislation is a great starting point.