iSean

the house version of the economic stimulus package included a provision for $1 billion new dollars going to Title II D of NCLB, Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT). this program currently has about $267 million so this would be an incredibly substantial improvement. a good portion of this new money would go toward competitive grants and another 25% largely focused on staff development. this money could appear by this summer. that being said, the stimulus must still get through congress and much can still happen . . . and then it will most certainly get tweaked in the Department of Education. but seeing this renewed focus on technology in education is promising. and, we should also see the infrastructure put in place to bring broadband to rural areas of the country, which is great news for helping to close the digital divide for schools and students in rural areas.

so, now that Obama is going to be president, what does that mean for those of us in educational technology? i had to search through many archives to find him address technology in the classroom and came across this:

“Without a workforce trained in math, science, and technology, and the other skills of the 21st century, our companies will innovate less, our economy will grow less, and our nation will be less competitive. If we want to out-compete the world tomorrow, we must out-educate the world today,” Obama said.

He added: “While technology has transformed just about every aspect of our lives–from the way we travel, to the way we communicate, to the way we look after our health–one of the places where we’ve failed to seize its full potential is in the classroom.

“Imagine a future where our children are more motivated because they aren’t just learning on blackboards, but on new whiteboards with digital touch screens; where every student in a classroom has a laptop at [his or her] desk; where [students] don’t just do book reports but design PowerPoint presentations; where they don’t just write papers, but they build web sites; where research isn’t done just by taking a book out of the library, but by eMailing experts in the field; and where teachers are less a source of knowledge than a coach for how best to use it and obtain knowledge. By fostering innovation, we can help make sure every school in America is a school of the future.

“And that’s what we’re going to do when I’m president. We will help schools integrate technology into their curriculum, so we can make sure public school students are fluent in the digital language of the 21st-century economy. We’ll teach our students not only math and science, but teamwork and critical thinking and communication skills, because that’s how we’ll make sure they’re prepared for today’s workplace.”

this is encouraging. this was said back September. as we all know, much has happened since September and there are MANY priorities that supersede educational technology . . . as if it was ever a priority. sigh. but eventually the stimulus packages will pass, the various appointments will be made, and the Iraq war will be addressed. perhaps some of these campaign promises will come to fruition. we can hope, eh? i certainly hope that our national educational efforts begin to realize the importance of information literacy in today’s economy. we continue to focus our big attention on the core subjects like math and English and science, etc. as these are what the No Child Left Behind tests in various states are measuring. however, knowledge workers (including teachers) are often required to use skills beyond the core subjects. for example, a teacher might find effective supplementary lesson materials via an online search. having a teaching workforce that is information literate is crucial to even begin thinking about bringing our students up to a proficiency level that is adequate for the future. i’ll be keeping a close eye on the progression of educational technology efforts from Obama, congress, and the Department of Education. in the meantime, you can share your feedback , advice, and concerns here.

i can’t expect anyone to be reading this, but if you come across it and have experimented with wikis, i’d like some advice on the best wiki to use when writing a textbook. i am fiddling with dokuwiki, but i am not sure it’s best. i read it was good for writing technical manuals, which isn’t the same thing as an ed tech textbook, but at least it’s something. i am probably going to fiddle with some other options this week and even look at some non wiki options (e.g., Drupal book module). hmmm.

well i have certainly been enjoying the spring thus far. my kids are 8 and 6 and we are turning into bike riding fools. we’ve also taken a liking to geocaching as i noted last summer here. the more we seek treasures and find them, the more i see educational uses for geocaching. when we started last summer, i was pretty much the guy in charge. i controlled the Garmin 60CSx GPS unit and did all of the precursor work finding which caches we’d hunt, etc. I now allow my kids to use the GPS unit to follow the compass and map built into the unit as well as help plan the route we’ll take on our bikes and once we get off of our bikes. they are learning how to read a map and how to use the map. When we get home, we can transfer the data from the GPS and load it into Google Earth to show others the exact path we covered from home back to home (the GPS drops virtual breadcrumbs ever 30 seconds — that’s the settings we use). yesterday we headed downtown along the river next to my office and found a few caches. here is an example from the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum grounds of how one might be hidden:

the rock that my son’s hand is on was actually covering the cylinder. once the cylinder is opened there is a peanut butter jar inside with the cache. we signed the log book and removed a golf ball and left a little something for the next geocacher to find it. we then carefully placed the rock back over the closed cache and headed off for the next find.

some of the caches can be hidden so cleverly that it can take a long time to find the cache even when you know the exact coordinates. this one above took us about 5 minutes once we arrived. you can’t see it here, but there are small trees and evergreens all around us so i spent much time looking up. there are many rocks larger than the one seen here and my kids scurried around looking to and fro.

i recommend signing up to use the website geocaching.com. it’s free; though, you can pay about $30/year for some special search features and an email alert for new caches, etc. i think it’s worth paying just to support the site as it’s quite well done. i like searching for caches using Google maps as shown here from my area:

and then you find one and you can narrow in on it and even have the website send the information directly to your GPS (at least with my Garmin this works):

you can see the difficulty is 3 stars out of 5. look at the photo far above and you can see how this might be difficult to find. sometimes the caches is very easy once you arrive. my kids are getting to the point where we like to look for 3 stars and above for difficulty, but we’ll make exceptions if the terrain is at least 2 stars or so. our favorite caches are the multiple-stage caches. these typically have many steps to find the final treasure. since the steps along the way don’t have a treasure, the hiding places can be much more difficult. for example, last year we did one where the first 4 stages were just giving us the coordinates to potentially find the next coordinates. the creator was able to put these coordinates in creative and hidden places. for example, here was a stage that had the coordinates hidden behind the number 5 on a signpost along a path. the 5 was hanging on by a nail and it was sheer luck that we figured it out (you can barely see the black writing under where the 5 rests):

and another showing the final prize hidden in an ammo box that is stuffed in a cement base from a thrown out pole in an area with a lot of trash and debris. this was hard to find as well because you just don’t think that there’d be a hollow area in the cement base until you roll it over:

anyway, this has quickly become a favorite hobby for my kids and me. i like getting them out on their bikes and getting exercise while also exercising our brains to solve problems, etc. highly recommended.

the International Society for Technology in Education released new National Educational Technology Standards for students last summer as seen here:

new standards for teachers will emerge early this summer. the previous NETS-S and NETS-T were very similar. i participated in dialog sessions and in providing feedback on the new teacher standards and there will be some overlap with the student model above, but the whole model is going to be much more individualized to teachers this time around. that being said, i want to address an observation that i made when i was sitting in the MACUL session on NETS with the deputy CEO of ISTE 2 months ago. we began by going around the room introducing ourselves and came to a woman sitting off to the side. she explained that she was filling in at the last minute for another teacher who had wanted to attend MACUL and couldn’t make it. this woman is a school teacher. she had never heard of the NETS and had no idea they were being refreshed. she described how overwhelmed she feels with standards — she reeled off the names of a few she knows that they follow, etc.

this woman ended up joining my group and helping to provide feedback. our group consisted of two education professors and technology director for a k-12 school along with this high school teacher. she didn’t contribute much, but i was struck by how new these educational technology standards were to this teacher. this is a teacher who ended up going to a technology conference for educators and she didn’t even realize there were technology standards. it’s easy to forget that these teachers exist or even that this teacher represents the vast majority of teachers out there. i teach graduate students who are getting a master’s in educational technology so of course they are aware of the standards and these tend to be the teachers i interact with the most . . . but what about the other master’s programs? they don’t have a required technology course.

i coordinate the undergraduate program and i integrate the NETS-T into the core of the curriculum as these standards drive the curricular decisions i make. i make sure i explain this to my students and to make them aware of the NETS-S and their responsibility for meeting these standards in their future classrooms. unfortunately, most of my students are at least a year or 2 away from student teaching and then they won’t have a teaching job until the year after that. fat chance they’ll remember the ISTE NETS.

i wonder what ISTE is doing to better position the NETS so that K-12 schools are meeting the standards that are posted and linked in detail above. it would be great if NCLB suddenly found an interest in technology standards and even if they incorporated components (e.g., information literacy skills) into the annual testing, etc., but it is not happening any time soon. so i wonder out loud whether ISTE even has an initiative to promote the NETS in place — outside of NCLB, how do we promote the importance of the NETS-S? what’s our plan of action?

i am always on the lookout for tools that I can use in my teaching. i recently had a colleague make a very neat YouTube style video using Sony Vegas. . . but it’s only for PC users. technically I have a PC on my Mac, but I’d have to start up and select the XP partition. that’s fine and my Mac literally becomes a PC. unfortunately, i have all of the files and websites on my Mac side that I’d want to use. so, I’d have to transfer everything over and then restart into the PC just to make a screencast. yuck.

well i just came across a neat new app for Mac user called ScreenFlow. wow! this is a terrific application for screen and podcasting. i can run a Keynote or PowerPoint presentation and have it recorded while recording myself talking about the presentation content. Later I can show the presentation and the video of me at the same time or switch back and forth or only use the audio, etc. — there’s much more it can do and many neat editing features. It only works in the latest version of the Mac OS because it takes advantage of the features built into the OS including Core Animation, QuickLook, Spotlight, QTKit, Quartz Composer, OpenGL, Core Data, etc. Using the OS allows the app to be very lightweight and still very powerful. i am going to try and make something for this semester and perhaps i can post a sample here just for kicks. stay tuned.

so i attended the Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) conference this week. i had 2 presentations and they went just swell. but the fun for me was attending a session by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Deputy CEO Leslie Conery. she held a session for an hour and a half to discuss the new draft of the NETS for teachers. These standards are set to be released this June, but they are seeking feedback right now. much of the session was devoted to small group work to look through the proposed standards and provide constructive feedback. our little group made some suggestions for organizing the standards better and for improving some of the wording of the indicators for various standards. the ISTE bigwigs will be gathering together next week for a few days to go over all of the feedback they’ve received to develop the final version of the standards. i would love to have been in involved in that process just to have a few days to devote to these new standards, but it’s sort of late in the game to think about it a week before it happens {sigh}. i regret not forcing myself to spend more time in evaluating the draft. in any regard, i am excited about the changes to the NETS. in July of 2006 i posted about hoping to see the NETS get “refreshed” so now that it’s happening i really appreciate being able to be a part of the process even if i will miss the nitty gritty next week. i gave feedback to the developers last month when i found the draft of the NETS for teachers and then again at the session yesterday, but now that i have spent more time with the draft i am seeing other changes and recommendations i’d like to make . . . and i am running out of time. doh. if you’re interested in seeing the current draft of the NETS for teachers, you can find it on this website and you can provide feedback before the group meets next week at this website.

one of the biggest barriers to technology integration into the classroom by k-12 teachers is the lack of time. i am experiencing it right now myself. i decided to take an overload section of a course and I also took 8 thesis students on top of that. egads!! what was i thinking (or not)? classes are going well, but my free time is dwindling. i used to love adding to my blog because i was spending time reading other blogs and keeping abreast of the happenings in the field, etc. Now my blog seems like a burden. and this is what happens with regard to using technology in the classroom for some teachers. i wish i had answers for this, but i don’t.

i have my students each post stuff to their own blog. i also have them find other ed tech professionals who keep a blog and my students are to read and respond (and maybe even participate in a dialog with these other professionals). this activity goes well, but the physical act of managing 70 students commenting on 70 blogs is extremely time consuming. i have my students use a code name (e.g., tom205) if they want and then they post the URL to their comment and the name they used. so, to manage this i am using now free NetNewWire — one of the most popular RSS readers on any platform even though it only works on a Mac. i had to enter all 70 student blog addresses into my reader. i then have to check each entry to find the link to the blog where they commented. inevitably, some of the students will post their URL wrong where they commented (e.g., http://blogger.com/add_comment) and i’ll have to contact them to find out the actual URL. i try to and respond to every single student, particularly if the other ed tech professional does not respond to the comment my student left. while i think this is a valuable assignment and gives my students to hear other voices in the field beside my voice, i also recognize that this is eating up my time. i have 7 discussion groups for my students using phpBB forums. here we are just 6 weeks in and look at the number of posts I’ve had to read thus far and a preview of just a screenshot from one discussion to see how my forum looks:

i am approaching 2000 posts and I have very thoughtful students who put much effort into our class discussions. just for the heck of it, i pretended to print just one group discussion on 1 of our two topics this week — it was about open source software. the print preview was 23 pages. keep in mind that i have 7 groups and there were 2 discussion questions. my point is that teaching can get overwhelming and this is true at every level of teaching particularly for teachers who are new to the field and just starting out. so, technology can quickly take a back seat and then these new teachers start forming habits that do not include using technologies and eventually it gets harder and harder to shift these practices to teaching with technology. i wish i had answers for this, but right now i am wearing a life jacket myself. doh.

one key, i think, is to help students realize that technology can save time in the long run even if it takes more time in the short run. sure, we might be struggling to keep our head above water this year, but every little bit we can do to save time in the future is time gained in the future. ooh, i see a new version of WordPress is now available and i am encouraged to update right now. that update might be just what i need to help keep my site that much more secure in te future. off to do it now. ;~)

43folders has an interesting post today by a math teacher who is desperately trying to integrate technology into her teaching yet she is encountering barrier after barrier. for example:

I have found it increasingly annoying to hear from on high that we need to integrate more technology in our classroom, yet most new teachers and old teachers are still using old standbys because we don’t have the time to use and troubleshoot our way through technology. Making worksheets by copying and pasting by hand. Building test questions from book programs that only work on PCs or OS 9 on macs. Wanting to use videos from the internet only to find they are blocked. Wanting to post information to a website or build my own website to find that FTP is blocked or that online-services are clunky, restrictive, and cumbersome. Granted that I am lucky enough to have a computer, a projector, and an ELMO (video camera hookup to a projector.) But for the love of turtles! It seems that the industry ignores us!

this certainly reflects what i’ve experienced from teachers who take my graduate courses. i know going into these courses that the teachers who are enrolled are already the teachers who are using and trying to use technology in their teaching. the teachers in our master’s program are in it to learn how to overcome some of these barriers. the bottom line is that it’s not easy to do and one of the main reasons we use technology is to improve upon what we do without using technology. if technology adds complications and, more importantly, time to a task then it’s very hard to justify. the teachers i work with can justify it because they want to succeed and be a role model. sometimes the legwork in the beginning can save much time over the long haul and that’s okay as well. but when districts hamper the progress technology-using teachers are trying to achieve then that’s problematic. and districts do hamper progress as this teacher writes:

A lot of my issues stem from the limitations (or invisible limitations) of my districts computer policies. I can’t control my district IT, I can whine at them, write them letters, request things and so forth but if that is going to take time away from me making sure next day’s lesson is done and useful-forget it!

i realize schools have to deal with viruses (at least if they are using PCs), security, and safety and all of that jazz, but far too often the model for technology is one that starts from the perspective that blocking and locking content, access, and features out is best until someone can justify why something is useful or necessary. teachers just don’t have the time to have these battles. i use my own website for many of my online classes. often, teachers have to work with their district to allow my website content to be viewable on school computers. this isn’t because i have anything that is questionable; rather, this is because of the mindset that it’s all bad until proven otherwise.

but back to the math teacher who wrote the article . . . she is finding ways to integrate technology into her teaching and she is having to do much of the work at home. why is that? it’s because most schools don’t value technology and even when they do they don’t have a comprehensive plan with regard to technology. technology isn’t tested on NCLB tests and that makes it hard to go above and beyond what districts are already spending on technology in their annual budgets. it’s a shame, really. the math teacher points out that many solutions are offered in the comments section of the article she wrote and that some suggestions are really worthwhile. but the fact remains that the onus for integrating technology and overcoming the district barriers is on the teacher. that’s a recipe for ensuring that only a select few teachers will use technology beyond a token lesson here or there.

Technorati Tags: ed tech, technology integration, barriers, students, teachers, technology in education

i was just checking out arstechnica and came across an article discussing a new report out about the “Google generation.” the report looks at kids born in 1993, so they’d be about 14 – 15 now. these are kids who have grown up only knowing a word on the Internet and Google searches, etc. this report can be downloaded as a PDF here and is sponsored by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee. and while the report finds these kids are more competent at using technology, they still have poor information literacy skills just like the generation before them. one of the neat findings is that kids today are no more impatient and no more in need of instant gratification than previous students. if nothing else, it’s nice to have a little snapshot about current teens and technology.