ProfessorTOSA Blog

I think that every blogger or journal writer should re-read their work from time to time.  Being an artist (I am, don’t you know?), I know the importance of taking a step back to analyze your work from a distance.  Often you’ll find things you’ve been missing, or things that you’ve so vigorously focused on that you’ve totally ignored the good of the whole, therefore ruining all that you’ve worked so hard to construct.  Let this summation be my step back.

Two years are nearly gone and my TOSA position has had many faces.  Currently, my work has blossomed into days of little work.  To be clear, I have work and a mass of pending jobs to do, but I’m slower than I was.  This is my point and I see this as a good thing because I feel that to a large degree, I’ve worked myself out of a job.  Because of my work, teachers have learned the tools, integrated technology of some kind that speaks to their creative strengths, and if in trouble they know which colleague they can run to for some help, should they need help fast or more quickly than they can get to me.  Ideal?  Yes. Only if ALL teachers were working at this level would it be better, but that optimum isn’t too far off. And so to describe the work I’m currently doing would resemble that of a proud district employee, an IT staff member (with minimal abilities), and the free-safety of project based learning.  Do I get into classrooms as I did when I started this position?  Hardly.  Am I more invested into the broader goals of the district, absolutely.  Am I happy with my work? Totally.

Am I a happier individual because of my time in this position? That’s a tough one.

If you’re Mr. Stark or Ms. Tremble, you know (because you’re my only readers) my near obsession and passionate plight to transform schools. You’ve read about my investment in instructional technology and as I re-read my work and ideas, I’m pretty astounded at how good everything sounds.  But it’s not so much of a passion anymore.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe everything I’ve written and I remain a tech geek when it comes to education, but the fire is dwindling and the passion has lost some of it’s heat over time. I’m ready for a change and moderation.  Not a reinvention or total change, I’m just ready  to vary my perspective.  I’m ready for kids again.

Bummer? Not for me. Tough one for some folks in my district?  Maybe.  For me I’m just reaching the end of my ability to remain positive towards a change that may never come without the tough conversations I’ve mentioned in the past.  Maybe I’m not one to enjoy the mantainence of work of this kind and that I only enjoy the ramp-up of the beginning, as one principal put it.  More likely, however, I’ve realized that my research doesn’t all point to technology as the savior for our kids’ futures.  Technology certainly has a significant place and I’ve definitely helped my colleagues with that area, but I’m more than the one trick pony I’ve shown myself to be, and I know I can moderate more of the urgent requisites for a healthy and successful future and make more of a difference for our kids as a teacher of all subjects, not just one.

And so what now?  Well, that’s easy for me to answer, but because of the current economy, I can’t give any definitives, those will come from my supervisors.  Not their fault, there’s just too much uncertainty.  For me, I believe that I’m going to learn to be a teacher again.  Won’t take long, it will just take energy and passion.  I have that.  As for the technology in my life, I won’t soon lose that.  In fact, I’d like to continue with what I’ve been doing, training, helping teachers with tutorials – all of that project based talent I have – but we’ll see what administrators would have me become and if there is a place for such a person in the district.  But when I think about what will come now, the most important and exhilarating bit to my foresight is working with kids again.  My own class of sons and daughters (like mine), that look to me, not just for Mac tips, but for an example of a man, a dad, an athlete, and academic, and as a valued member of this world.  I’ve never gotten past appreciating that portion of my job and I bet I never will.

So, in summation of my work, I’ve done well to take on this task of being a teacher and done well to accept this work that has filled two years of my life.  But I’m ready for a change.  I’m ready to have a team, to have a class, to look to parents who in tern look to me, and I’m ready to parse my time between subjects and tools and finally walk the walk I’ve been promoting for so long.  We’ll see how easy it really is.

Okay, time to power this thing down and talk to someone.

Again, Palm Springs beckons me to join the geeky and wire-minded educators of the country and get into the technology that I breathe and teach Monday through Friday.  It’s a great conference in a friendly town and I look forward each year to these few short days.

More to come.

Here’s the wiki to my sessions, research and links.

I just want to state here that I do not like the advertisements that recently sprung up like so many weeds.  Apparently there is a paid level of Edublogger that I “need” to purchase in order to keep the ads off. Currently they’re off because I can push them away for a spell.  Unfortunate, because the unpaid element without the confusion of ads is what made this service so great for me and teachers to use with kids.  Unfortunate.

It is Getting close to the holidays, and besides a freak flu that put me out for a few days (I only missed one day of work), all is blissful.  Really, what’s better than seeing your family prepare for the holidays?  Santa, reindeer food, and all that mystery and gift giving is the ultimate, and it’s one of my favorite memories from days past to pass to my daughters.   Funny how everything else about Christmas has changed — shopping online, registries, digital holiday cards ordered from home, stamps online, store sales coupons announced and then printed from email.  Trees, fairytales, and love are the same and that’s about all.

My one reader, Mr. Stark, surely has seen that my general tone throughout recent posts has turned to a more critical one.  Lately I’ve been writing less about tools and apps and favoring the institutional reform stance of a man who is ready for change.  Globally we’re ready, and nationally we’ll soon be far behind if we don’t allow our system of education to meet the demands of our students’ futures rather than continually pump money into programs that were designed to meet the needs of another era.  This era, as the panel, Tough Choices or Tough Times describes, is “…an era in which most workers needed only a rudimentary education.” The panel goes on to explain, “It is not possible to get where we have to go by patching that system.  There is not enough money available at any level of our intergovernmental system to fix this problem by spending more on the system we have.  We can get where we must go only by changing the system itself.” Read this panel’s findings if you have the interest.

I recently finished the book, Transforming Schools with Technology, by Andrew A. Zucker. The book was given to me by a mentor of mine and given at a very appropriate time in my career.  The book discusses how the smart use of technology can help our educational goals and, most pertinent to my current thoughts, how educational reform is hindered by halfhearted attempts with technology integration.  One of my favorite quotes from Zucker’s book is from Harvard professor Chris Dede.  Dede says, “The fundamental barriers to employing new technologies effectively for learning are not technical or economic, but psychological, organizational, political, and cultural.” Not economic.  I believe this.  I believe that if our educational leaders saw that technology was truly going to be a vital part of our students’ careers and an integral part of our National longevity, and ignored the possible political and cultural repercussions, then there would be enough money, there would be a plan for change and technology’s integration would not be a choice, but the vehicle for the change we need.

Of course I don’t think this is easy, and I am blatantly ignoring the agreement of a few thousand other elements in our system of education.  In truth, while I believe that my district is taking a very progressive stance on this topic and my superintendent and school board are the envy of all districts I’ve visited, but it’s the cultural conversation that Dede describes that has us the most restrained and the most fearful, and ultimately this decision for change needs to come from more powerful individuals than local administration.  And, lastly, I admit that change at this level is difficult, but in order for our Nation to remain successful while so many other countries are making 21st century shifts, we must have these conversations with our communities.  We need a vision and action steps to achieve that goal and we need to do this soon because everything is changing … even the holidays.

I like to take some time to digest the contents of conferences prior to offering any global perspective on the event.  This year, as stated in the previous post, was a bit disappointing because of the turnout and overall conference offerings, but in many ways the trip was a great success.  Although I find it hard to recall at first, when I’m frustrated at something I deem lacking, but it’s most often these lessons that I learn the most from. This event was valuable because of it’s inability to be great and because of it’s success getting me to think about my judgments.

Years ago, when I first attended one of these conferences, I was amazed at the urgency I felt to integrate podcasts and blogs, and to connect on a global level, and promote 21st century skills, and improve authorship and…. well, you get the idea of the immense volume of content I was exposed to. I was astounded and I was intimidated.  In many ways, I was impressed with what I hadn’t known and the enthusiasm I gathered far outweighed any apprehension that formed.  I think I’m different from many other educators in this way – because I see this sort of potential for strife as a challenge, and that motivates me.

CLMS, in comparison, has failed only because it was very similar to the initial tech conference that had amazed me.  This conference had sessions on blogging and wikis and websites and Web 2.0 tools, and the sessions failed because of this redundancy.  They failed to introduce anything powerfully new or reintroduce familiar ideas in more developed examples.  Finally, I came to realize, that this conference seemed to fail because what I’m looking for aren’t tools to digitize teaching or tools to offer more options under the Web 2.0 umbrella, but rather, what I need are sessions on how to promote change.  I don’t need anymore tools for the tech hungry, I need examples of how to transition our educational systems into a more powerful system.  Right now my district is doing very well in small successful pockets, but in order to prepare for our children’s future, these pockets need to collaborate and our students need to be systematically considered.  Change needs to occur on a broader and more deliborate scale before I consider any new animation tool or interactive anything.

Most recently, I’ve been reading a few books, Remix, by Lawerence Lessig, and Transforming Schools with Technology, by Andrew A Zucker.  Both books are quite interesting, but what is most enjoyable about these books, and others like them, is they do not linger on tools and creative recipes for using tools, they discuss larger topics, introduce research to support their points, and they leave many conclusions up to you as the reader.  Now, I understand the difficulty of getting Zucker or Lessig to speak at some of these conferences, but why not extend the current Keynote speakers’ roles into conversations, or accept questions, or promote more large scale thinking among the general sessions.  Tough, I know – to change protocol.  I understand the impossibility here, but big ideas need grand follow through and I’m simply looking past the tools and asking the tech-converted to look with me.  Certainly I’m still into my work of training with tools and such, but my goals search the horizon daily and I see more clearly everyday that my work, as David Jakes suggests, isn’t to integrate technology, but rather to show how it’s integral and very much a part of our students’ lives and part of any career our students will strive to earn.  Isn’t it time we work together to address this, by, at a minimum adding another level to our professional development and making it more worthy of everyone’s time?

Currently I’m in Monterey, CA, at the CLMS conference.  Last year I was here with some colleagues and had a tremendous time.  At that point I understood the need to transform our educational system and I was invigorated by assisting others to come to similar conclusions.  Of course the social aspects of that trip were tremendous as compared to my current situation of solitude due to our economic downturn, but I would complain that not much has happened at CLMS since last year and, if anything, this conference has gotten smaller and taken it DOWN a notch since I was here last.  Not good.

And so, what do I expect from a conference promoting expensive teaching tools in our current economic environment?  And, how might any district afford to purchase technology and further this “idealistic” plan to prepare our kids for this 21st century, their college, their lives, and our countries future.  In short, I don’t care about current economic constraints.  I do very much care about education, our economic downturns and our districts throughout the country, but I care more for our students, my future, and paramount, my daughters’ futures.  It’s clear that our world has changed and is changing, but this is about priorities. In China, there are more “gifted” students than we have students. In India, Hungary, Mexico, Korea, and many other areas around the world, governments are building their Internet Infrastructure and developing educational systems that are, or will be, superior to ours in a short time.  Our country needs to put down the bubble sheets and teaching pedagogy from the 50’s and meet our future prepared to compete with the world.  We need to be confident that in order to help our kids to live lives similar to ours, if not better, we will need to change the way we do things.  We need to throw a bit of caution to the wind, have some tough conversations, and stop looking at the obvious reasons not to fully integrate technology and, instead, make some changes that will change our perilous future.

That being said, this means we need to disappoint some teachers, scare some administrators and thrill an entire generation of students.  Will I do this?  Not quickly, but as I’ve said many times, what my daughters deserve is what I describe.  It’s different, and scary, even to me, but this change reflects a global demand and I’m comfortable with that.  I don’t have a choice about that.  I know that if there was actually a reader to these words, they might be disturbed by this, but realize that I see a very different educational world coming, and the United States does not lead this change.  Rather, we’re going to struggle to compete with the world and our kids will suffer for our pride and hesitations.

If you’re anything like me, you not only enjoy music, you surround yourself with it at all times.  As a teacher I played music often and played my guitar (pathetically I admit), but the point is that I go through music quickly and am in a constant search for new tunes to listen to.  Pandora is an online radio station that caters to music you enjoy and creates custom playlists based on your interests.  Now, Pandora might seem to have little to do with tech integration, but I believe that you teach who you are and you use technology with your students only so much as you understand how it pertains to you as an individual first.  Certainly you could integrate technology just for the sake of doing so, but, like any subject or method, not until you internalize how it benefits an individual will you powerfully impact children with it.  And so, try pandora.com and put in Patty Griffin as an initial artist.  Maybe using online radio will help you to refine your clicking and dragging, maybe it will help you to navigate the Internet, but at a minimum, it will help you to live in our students’ digital world and understand what it means to be digital learners.

The other day three colleagues and I had the pleasure of visiting Fisler Elementary school. Fisler is a k-8 school in Fullerton California and, although I wrote previously about Fisler because of a tool they use called Notetaker, what I found most interesting is that Fisler is a one to one school. At Fisler, all 2-8 students have personal laptops and teachers vigorously make use of that abundant technology. As a pseudo-tech coordinator, this situation is particularly interesting and particularly useful as I try to get my arms around any “goals” that I, or my district or colleagues, might have. Is the goal 1 to 1? Are students’ needs best met by a 1 to 1 program? Well, I’m afraid I will not describe a definitive answer to that question here, but what I will say is that what I saw was tremendous and what I saw would be the type of program I would want for my two daughters. If this program is best for the children of Solana Beach will have to be determined by perspectives greater than mine.

A 1 to 1 program is just as it sounds, full of technology, and rampant with little tech savvy students. During our tour, each student actively worked from their little Macbooks and each demonstrated a comfort in such tools as Notetaker, science probes, hand-held Responders, Keynote, Pages, Garageband, the Internet, as well as demonstrated an understanding of the school’s server and the process for both grabbing class information and turning in completed projects. It was a sight to see and I was amazed to witness technology integration that had less to do with instruction and more to do with student interaction with technology. In this manner, technology became a vehicle for students to gather information and an efficient, glamorous and powerful means to demonstrate their learning, not simply a sugar coating on teacher pedagogy.

And so why would such a initiative be so appealing and why would my girls benefit from Fisler? In my job, I’m inundated with tools and “hip” applications, projects and technology trends, and, aside from a few, most do little to convince me that they alone can improve student performance. And, on the same coin, few teachers are comfortable integrating technology to the extent that it’s raising student achievement at a marked level. At Fisler, to the contrary, the structure and the commitment has created an environment where students are able to navigate their school work with a mastery of the “tools” and teachers’ collaborative efforts take advantage of this mastery. For example, in this 1 to 1 setting, kinder and first grade students are not offered laptops, but they do utilize laptops carts regularly. Their goal? Their tech objectives during those formative years, is to become conversant in the applications and procedures they will need for the coming years of regular laptop interaction. So, when those students get to second grade, they understand the server (the general steps), Keynote, Pages, etc.. and can complete assignments with little instruction of the tool itself. Teachers can then focus on the standards and the objectives and know that whether they teach 2nd or 8th grades, their students have already learned the skills needed to succeed with technology-rich projects as well as become better thinkers, problem solvers and more accomplished learners for the 21st century. In this sense, Fisler has achieved a super-charged version of what all other schools have accomplished with the integration of crayons and pencils. At some point students are introduced to a pencil and that pencil is utilized for years to manage the tasks of school. A trite and outdated example, but valid none-the-less considering that if a district is truly trying to integrate new technologies (like that of the pencil), and committed to creating 21st century learners, they need to realize the power of a school-wide 1 to 1 vision and and see if such a vision, in some form, can assist their goals. Thankfully, my district is taking a good look.

Food for thought . More on this to come…

The other day I visited Fisler Elementary, in Fullerton California.  The school is touted by Apple as the shining example of a 1 to 1 (computers to students) school. That’s right, in 2nd through 8 grade every student has a laptop and, from what I could see, instruction utilized this often.  Thankfully for me, after a day of observation, Fisler was in many ways, everything it is cracked up to be.  I’ll post later on the school, as I am currently working to get more details from a teacher at Fisler, but one great tool I learned about that day was this notebooking software, NoteTaker.

The teacher that was using NoteTaker, was Mrs. Round, an middle school science teacher who easily used this tool as a resource, teaching aid, and digital worksheet, of sorts.  NoteTaker, in brief, is essentially like Word or Pages or another word processing application, but NoteTaker allows so much more than simple text and shapes.  NoteTaker is a simple digital version of what you might wish to accomplish with pencil, paper, scissors, markers, and so forth.  It allows the user to type, draw, paste in images, color, and then goes further to record voice, allow audio files, movies, and much more.  The interface is like that of a bound notebook and acts as such when you turn pages or even rip pages out to deposit in your teachers drop-box (if you’re doing that sort of paperless work).  Really it’s the combination that is so fascinating and exciting.  To be able to have kids type, doodle and take images or movies of inquiry, or really anything, takes pressure off of the teacher to manage multiple applications with the kids and embeds technology further within the curriculum.  That’s a good thing.

I can imagine using this application in a 1 to 1 setting or in other ratios where students need to do research, document work or ….?  Really, because of the variety of uses and the intuitive use, I can see this tool used well beyond science.  Consequently, it’s this sort of tool that makes me wish I was teaching students again.  Researching tech tools, and teaching teachers to use them is fun, but sometimes actually getting to play with some of the toys I promote might be refreshing and easier than reaching students through a teacher.

It’s been a few weeks since posting, but I’m not the type to write for the sake of writing.  Nor am I the tech obsessed guy who wants to clutter this blog with resources.  There certainly is a place for that sort of resource database and a niche for individuals to trudge the myriad of tools out there and pick the gems, but I’m not that guy.  I’ve decided I’m a creative guy, a specialist in clarifying the purpose of technology in education in a holistic sense.  So, you might say I’m good at finding meaning with technology and helping others to do the same.

Lately, however, the ubiquitous technology topic in Solana Beach hasn’t been meaning, it has been safety.  More specifically, the talk has been around the balance of safety and an educator’s ability teach and make meaning with tech outside of teaching norms.  Blogs and wikis have become a very popular tool in my district.  They should be.  Their ability to promote communication at all levels and foster collaborative projects is unrivaled (in my opinion) and their use prompts interest in students that used to be reserved for subjects like PE and splatter painting except, unlike PE, these tools increases literacy.  And so why should safety be an issue?  For those who don’t understand wikis, blogs or publishing to the web in general, safety for students means keeping private or personal information private and offline.  It means there are no photos or insight allowed to a public audience that might lead a questionable viewer to that child.  We’re avoiding the ability for a person to form a profile of a child and then cause harm. Simple, but in this locked-down environment, the sterility makes dynamic projects, like wikis and blogs, that publish to an audience other than your nearest peers next to impossible.  This is why I’m conflicted.  Of course safety must precede an other goals, but is utilizing a tool that is stripped of some of its power worth the effort.  Only time will see.  Currently, teachers are excited and students are actively using their wikis and blogs.  We’ll have to see how the demand to publish outside of the class walls determines our next steps.  We’ll have to look outside the box, perhaps, and find a compromise between letting the world in and remaining anonymous for the sake of safety.