Tools That Do Not Make a Teacher’s Life Easier

Originally posted on EdTech Digest 

I’d like to thank all of those who recognize how difficult a teacher’s job is and who want to make it easier—but let me help you realize what I as a teacher do not want. Let me help you recognize what tools do not make my life easier so that we understand each other better.
First of all, don’t buy me any technology without planning for and giving me plenty of professional development on how to use it. You see, I wasn’t born with this stuff in my hands — and even if I could figure it out — it doesn’t mean I know the best way to integrate it into my daily teaching. I need your help. Let me tell you, there’s nothing I hate more as a teacher than to see money wasted. I say this because I have so little of it. In case you didn’t realize, I’m not paid much and yes, I often take some of that hard-earned money and spend it on essentials you don’t supply for me. Because of this fact, there’s nothing worse for all of us to see, than great technology thrown in a corner because I was never shown how to use it nor given any time to figure it out.
While we’re on the subject of time, don’t try to provide training for me always on my planning period. I seldom get to plan on my planning period — let alone, learn something new. There are some days when I could do this, but those are hard to come by. Before and after school — are better, but there are other things going on in my life. If you want me to pick up using this technology and to do it quickly, then cover some of my classes so I can be in class myself where I can concentrate and focus on what you are teaching me.
Giving me technology to figure out on my own does not save me time. Instead, it takes much more time even if you gave me help. The best situation would be to give me a true Technology Facilitator. You give me a Reading and Math Facilitator to help me better teach Reading and Math, yet I’m not a Reading or Math teacher — yet I can use technology in every subject and you still don’t provide me with a Technology Facilitator — yet another way of wasting my time.
Do not give me hardware to better track data, I don’t have a secretary to enter and manipulate this data, so I’ll only be able to do a basic job with it at best. Give that job of tracking, managing and manipulating data to someone else. They will actually give me more time to focus on what is important — and that’s teaching.
If you need me to gather the data for you, then give me technology that makes it easier to do that. Don’t give me a lab full of testing software that every student in the school has to use a few times a year to gather this data. Doing so will make the lab off limits many times when I would actually like to get a class in there to work on projects.
On that note, don’t give me two or three computers in my classroom. You’re simply wasting your time thinking that I’ll get my students on them in any fair way. Having twenty-five students in my classroom and three computers is not a good mix. Have you ever tried telling a child you can use the computer for only fifteen minutes and then not again for a few weeks? What can they get done that is meaningful on a computer in only fifteen-minute chunks every few weeks?
I could give them more time on the computer, but giving each of my students an hour to use the computer once ever month or so is just not practical, either. This only causes more problems in my class and doesn’t make it any easier. Give me technology that I can put in every student’s hands all at the same time — even if it means I can only have it once a week. Having no computers in my room so that we can afford laptop carts that I can schedule out and use for a block of time each semester — is much better than having a few computers in my room that are near impossible to use because I can’t get everyone on them in any fair way.
Do not give me a webcam and expect me to collaborate. Do you know when (and which) other schools can work out the issues of time zone difference so that we might be able to collaborate on the same topic at the same time? Figuring this out and making arrangements for me would help because I often don’t know where to start, nor do I know what do once I know this. Skyping with a class half way around the globe is cool, but it won’t make my job easier unless there’s an easy way to constantly plan with people to collaborate.
Do not think that by giving me interactive whiteboard equipment, this will transform my classroom. There is still only a few people who can use it at once at the front of the room, unless you help me to realize how I can transform my teaching while using it — by making my students become the teacher of each other while using it. I need to get my students engaged, or I lose them. Once again, I need someone to help me make this happen by giving me some of those skills.
Do not give me a district website that is just that, a website. I need it to be so much more. I need it to be my own classroom website with a Dropbox space where I can place homework and assignments for all my students to access. Let me be able to add content to my page. Writing up things and getting them to someone else to add to my page is not practical and I will not use it.
Give me a LMS where I can post assignments and my students can access those assignments from anywhere. Do not give me something where the parents of my students can’t also see what assignments and activities they are working on. It does not make my life easier having to pick up the phone and call my student’s parents for everything.
I am not okay with any BYOD policy. Sounds great on the surface, but I can see the writing on the wall. What happens when I plan to use these devices in my lessons and students forget to bring then? Better yet, how does it help me when they all bring in different devices that I’m not familiar with and they need help on it to better use it on our lesson? I also can’t stop them from loading content on their own device that isn’t appropriate for school and/or results in being a distraction for my students and their learning?
Any technology that you use to better judge my performance based on my students and their performance on standardized tests — does nothing more than make me nervous. Ease my concerns on what you are actually recording on that technology by letting me play around in it as well.
As you can see, I could go on for hours. There are things such as educational content that I really need. I need a one-to-one program giving every student access to this technology so that I can differentiate instruction for all my learners. Doing so makes my life easier. Give me technology such as a tablet in my hand so I can capture and share true data about my students all the time. Give it to me with Internet access. That’s important. I need to have access to the outside world at all times.
The problem, as you can see, is that I’m busy and I don’t have time as it is. If you’re going to give me technology and tools to make my job easier, then you need to do so with just as much detail being put into giving me support. Give me an online group where I can collaborate and learn from my peers. Give me the support I need and the tools that can and will save me time and make my life easier — but by not doing so, you are sure to waste more of my time and definitely not make my life easier. Realize this: I have a curriculum to teach and I need to engage my students. I need them using tools in school that they use at home. I need learning to be fun, yet at the same time, purposeful. Give me direction; give me guidance — and most importantly, a network of support.
Help me join a professional learning network. Collaborate with me. Give me training. Share great lessons and ideas you have used and that you know work. Technology will always be changing — but good, engaging learning has stood the test of time. Help give me the tools that make that happen and you will make my life as a teacher easier.

Futuristic Schools

An educator wonders if, despite our challenges and limitations, we couldn’t all do a little bit better for our students.
Cross Posted on Edtech Digest by Greg Limperis
Let’s face it: school can be boring. When I was a kid it was boring. Given stacks of textbooks, learning meant doing countless worksheets, chapters and sections of those books — not to mention countless hours of rote memorization.
In some ways it was simpler: teachers stood at the front of the classroom and taught you everything you needed to know to be successful in your grade. Measuring success was certainly simple: How well did you do on your quizzes? How about your tests? Most importantly, how well did you do on your report card?
Summer? It couldn’t come fast enough. No more rulers, no more books; no more teachers, dirty looks! The biggest letdown of the year was when it was over. Worse than missing out on that one Christmas gift you hoped for that wasn’t under the tree, the end of summer meant back to work in the boring classroom. Like a boring education factory, all that was produced were boring facts. I can still hear the echo of the countless times my peers or I had asked our parents (or God forbid, our teacher) “When will I ever need this in real life?”
Today, I ask you: what’s changed? How different is learning now?
For many of us, a good quarter of a century later, I’m sure a lot of us can say without hesitation, not much.
Reality is, for so many students, learning still isn’t fun.
Let’s have a quick look at so many schools today: students are still given countless worksheets, numerous textbooks and hours of rote memorization. My very own kids go to school every day, backpacks loaded with countless artifacts no longer relevant to the world in which they live. Every one of my kids has an iPod touch. With wifi, there’s an endless amount they can do. My oldest daughter has an Android with a data plan. At age 10, she has access to all the content she wants. She’s used to constant access to computers, tablets, laptops, netbooks, e-readers and more, sometimes all at once.
A lot of kids are like that: true digital learners. Funny thing is, not in school. They walk in and power down. Often, it’s required that they do so. Learning has become foreign to them. They’re asked to power down from their home life and learn in a way that’s not a bit engaging to them.
When I was a kid, we went to Plimoth Plantation, a living museum in Plymouth, Mass., showing life on the original 17^th-century English colony. Today, students take a field trip back in time every day — to their classrooms. It would be funny, engaging even, if it were only once a year, but for more than 180 school days, they’re picking up a pen and paper, opening a textbook or filling out a worksheet. They’re neither visually nor intellectually stimulated. For a place that is dedicated to our future, doesn’t it follow then and shouldn’t schools be, well, somewhat futuristic?
Sometimes out of necessity, schools actually request that their students power down. BYOD is great in theory, but with diverse socioeconomics at play, can it in reality really be fair? Or what happens when you rely on students to bring in their devices for an important lesson but they leave it at home, or worse — they have it but it’s not working? How about if it becomes a distraction? What if that iPod or iPhone or Android contains inappropriate content? How do you control this? Can it even be done? Sure you can — but often it takes money, knowledge, time, and personal attention. This is exactly the stuff that schools are not made of.
Okay, so you decide to try to integrate more technology as a district so you can engage these students and meet them on their level. Where do you start? What do you invest in? Where will you get the money to fund it and how can you support it on a limited staff?
Do you put a few computers per classroom because this is all your district can afford? Do we honestly think that in this day and age twenty-five students will be okay with sharing a measly three or four devices in their classroom? How do we equitably ensure every one of the students in the class gets equal time on the computer without the ever-so-present chorus of, “That’s not fair! He got to use the computer longer than I did!”? Will each student get five minutes on the computer during an hour class in middle school, or do we tell them they can get their turn for a half hour two weeks from now? How about giving schools a computer lab to use? Do we use that lab as a specials class and the student only gets to use technology once every six days, or for ten days — and then not again for fifty more?
There’s no easy answer to integrating technology well. Making learning fun and engaging takes buy-in and passion for doing so from everyone. Training and support have to come first. Without these, teachers will find it very difficult to constantly locate workable and dependable resources. What do you do when the equipment breaks, is it still under warranty? Does it have to go back to the manufacturer? How do you know of all of the great free resources out there that you can use as an educator without getting support from someone either in-house or through a PLN (personal learning network)? Even the best PLN out there right now isn’t putting everything educators need in one location. Finding what’s new, fun and hot, and finding it quickly and easily is not always possible. What is needed now is a PLN of PLN’s.
There are plenty of sites that are fun and aligned to the Common Core Standards. There is BoomWriter, BuzzMath, Storybird, Glogster and so much more. I could go on for hours. The problem is, once again, where do I find time to find out about all of them? How do I integrate them into my lessons and more without support?
Everything has to be made easy. I love the idea of districts using something such as Blackboard’s Engage or another central LMS that is also a location for web pages in a district where educators can share and collaborate with students, each other and the community. If we can give educators the resources they need, the ease of implementation and excitement of engaging lessons to students, most everything else will take care of itself.
I know as a parent that if you can make it so that my child wants to learn, then you can engage them and give them a love of learning. I would rather spend money on buying a tablet, iPod touch, phone or, heck, even allow them to take one they already have from home into school to help make this happen. I would even be willing to give you access to it, to control what is seen and done on it on your network. I would even allow my child to get one supplied from you — if I could not afford it — and if it meant that he or she saw ads on it during the day or he or she had to do some things to help pay for it.
I want my child to be successful and I want them to be engaged. I realize they need access to the hardware and you cannot afford to put a device in every child’s hands. But prove to me you will support it, train teachers to use it well — and have a plan that puts it to use most of the school day for the next few years and, hey, I might be able to not buy markers, pens, notebooks, backpacks and you could offset the cost from not having to buy textbooks, paper, whiteboard markers, erasers, reading books, dictionaries and on and on.
We can figure this out if we want to; we all know it will make learning fun for our kids. We just have to be willing to let go of the old-school mindset — it’s called old school for a reason.

E-Learning and Public Education

Cross-Posted on August 21, 2012 

CLASSROOM 21 | by Greg Limperis

 

Let’s face it:great blended, online, virtual digital public schools and courses will always be few and far between. The problem with public education is that it is habitually underfunded. For years, I remember being in a classroom and struggling to get things such as paper to use in my class before going paperless. Today, we want schools to build great online virtual lessons and courses for our students. Before last year, my wife used to be one of the best classroom teachers out there. She has the skills to come up with great lessons, but lacks the technical prowess—and the time—to bring those lessons to fruition.

Creating great online courses are a lot of work, and I know this from personal experience. Last year, when I took on my new position as the Supervisor of Instructional Technology and Media for my school district, my wife left teaching in the classroom for multiple reasons. She became an Instructional Designer consultant working with Elearning Innovation as a representative of Technology Integration in Education. Their products are excellent. The company develops custom online learning solutions for universities and other educational entities. While the output they create is very professional and top quality, it takes lots of hard work and planning. It’s literally a full-time, blossoming company and there are simply not enough hours in the day. They create great courses such as the one offered this month on TIE. If you haven’t checked out the series of Balanced Literacy workshops offered for free this month on TIE, check them out.  They’re very professional, but they weren't created by a single person. It took a team of people to create what you see.

According to Edudemic.com and one of their latest infographics, creating effective e-learning takes at least five people and hundreds of man hours. It requires a project manager, instructional designer, multimedia designer, e-learning developer, and a quality assurance manager. As the infographic states, “effective online learning requires approximately 200 total man hours per instructional hour of enhanced e-learning.” Two hundred man-hours per instructional hour for any professional can get expensive real quick. Creating the courses offered this month for free on TIE was not easy, nor was it cheap. It took lots of planning, hard work and money in order to create these workshops.

Can today’s public education support this? Do they have the expertise or the money to ensure the creation of excellent and effective online digital learning?  Can they go it alone? The answer is, it will take companies such as Elearning Innovation to create mass amounts of content that can be chosen from and accessed by schools and districts for a fee. In the future, schools will provide the necessary teachers to moderate these courses that were created by someone else, for them. Various teachers throughout a district will use the courses. Cost of creating these courses will be offset by the advertisement space that will be sold within them. They’ll be created in such a way that the course facilitator can customize them in order to meet both their individual instructional needs and the needs of his or her students.

Who creates your e-learning courses for your district? How dynamic are they? Could they be better if you had a staff of professionals to dedicate to them? It’s time we start to work together to bring great content together. Dynamic lessons can be created and shared across districts and states. Thanks to the new Common Core Standards, this is now possible. We can and must share the burden and cost of creating these courses, but we can also share in the final product. We can create a repository of courses to choose from with online digital professional development created in the same way. We can pay for it through advertising and company sponsorship.

Regardless of how we approach online e-learning in public education, we have to think of doing it in a way that is not just cost effective, engaging, and well planned; we have to do it in a way that doesn’t overburden our already-strained public school educators. It’s time for real, effective e-learning in public education.

The Connected Educator

Cross Posted on EdTech Digest| by Greg Limperis

August marks the U.S. Department of Education’s month-long celebration of the connected educator. What exactly does that mean to you, to me, and to millions of students we educate daily in this world? Well, years ago, I began teaching students before I even knew I wanted to be an educator. Growing up I was a Boy Scout and later on earned my Eagle Scout status. One lesson I took away from the experience: no one ever does anything successfully alone. Earning badges, acquiring skills and gaining knowledge all took help, guidance and collaboration. Through this I increased my skills. In my acceptance speech for Eagle Scout, I thanked everyone who helped make it all possible as do many humble people who also know this secret of success.

For sure, I was growing my connections, but my connections were limited. In a mid-sized city, my reach extended only so far. I could only connect, learn and grow from so many. My inability to cover more territory left me wanting more, and this was one reason I went off to college. To learn more, see more and experience more were great incentives. To meet others with different experiences meant the world to me.

Little did I know that, at the time, I was increasing my connections but still limited to the here and now. I had to connect with people next to me who were living and experiencing the same things as me in the present time.

Nonetheless, it was amazing that this urge forward, this desire to learn from others and share, connect and collaborate brought me to my first real job. Out of college with no goal or plan in place, I became a National Park Ranger. I met people from around the globe. They visited my place of work for a short time and in that time, we connected. I learned from them in ways I hadn’t been able to do before. I developed real and meaningful connections and learned about others from across the world, through their eyes and the experiences they shared.

During this time, one of those connections suggested to me that I might return to school to become an educator. And so it was that I found myself heading back to the place I first began to open my eyes to the world, where I learned to share and help others. I was again growing my connections.

Upon completing my master’s degree in education, I began working as a teacher in a classroom situation that felt foreign. Trapped within four walls with very little connection to the outside world, I was able to learn and share through text and pictures, but it wasn’t the same. Everyone I worked with, taught to, and experienced things with were entirely too similar to me. We all grew up in the same region. We all lived there, worked there, experienced many of the same things. Yes, I had technology 15 years ago in my classroom. And yes, I used it all the time. But I was still stuck within my four walls every day. We could imagine, but we couldn’t truly experience.

As the years went by and technology improved, I never lost my passion to be connected. I constantly sought out ways to grow and learn from others. Four years ago, Steve Hargadon turned me on to the power of Web 2.0 and the ability for all of us to be connected. Once again, I gained back that connected feeling. Then along came Facebook, Twitter, build-your-own social networks, LinkedIn and more. Now, I was connecting in ways I never thought possible.

These connections allowed me to bring knowledge, experience and global awareness to my students I taught each day. More importantly, through these connections I gained knowledge and experiences I never had before. I was learning from others in ways I never thought possible, sharing valuable knowledge and experience.

It’s fitting that we celebrate the Connected Educator in August, but I think it is something  that shouldn’t be confined to the U.S.  That’s nearly silly when our classroom is so much larger than that. Why not connect and share with the world, on a global scale? Why not celebrate it worldwide? I have nearly 2,000 personal connections thanks to LinkedIn. I have nearly 25,000 people I connect with in one way or another globally, each day. That’s right—globally. I am now a truly connected educator, and I call on you to be one, too. I blog monthly, sharing my insights, thoughts and experiences with others worldwide. I participate in the exchange of resources on a daily basis. I talk live thanks to technology with people halfway around the globe. I learn more about them and they about me in experiences that forever change my life. I don’t see a way that I can continue to teach and to not be connected.

So, I challenge you: connect with others. Celebrate connectivity! Not from the U.S.? Call on your country to join ours and let us all be connected educators, learning from each other daily, learning from others who see things from other people’s point of view. Let’s live, grow and learn together. Let us all become true connected educators.

The Best Professional Development I Never Had

Posted on July 5, 2012 

CLASSROOM 21 | by Greg Limperis

As summer quickly approaches so does the time for teacher professional development. While teachers frequently attend professional development throughout the school year and after school hours, we’re also asked (or required) to take additional professional development over the summer months to keep our certification up to date or to prepare us for the next school year as new initiatives roll out. Recently, I began to reflect on some of the best professional development experiences I’ve ever had — and it gave me pause. The best professional development experiences I’ve ever had were the kind that I didn’t have to go to.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against professional development in any way. I’m also a big believer in continuous learning. Thanks to technology, the teaching profession is changing at exponential speed and we certainly need to stay ahead of the curve. Nonetheless, looking back I realize that any professional development I had to go to — wasn’t the kind that I personally would have chosen for myself.

Often, professional development provided for teachers is not in the subject they teach. Focused on raising test scores, it’s test content centric and not otherwise instructionally or generally helpful. There is no love of learning, no love of teaching woven into it. Only a love of learning and teaching will result in creating students solidly prepared for life in the real world as productive, contributing citizens and responsible leaders. Only those students who follow their passions will achieve true success in what they do.

Donald Trump once said that his success came from finding his passion. Trump said when you find your passion, doing the work to succeed in that passion no longer seems like work. Putting in extra time to be successful isn’t a problem, therefore, because you’re enjoyingwhat you do. That’s a mantra to live by.

So, ask me to sit in on professional development that I didn’t choose and I come in with a preconception that it doesn’t pertain to me nor will it necessarily interest me. Precisely because you haven’t consulted my power to choose, you’ve got a bit of an uphill battle on your hands. Now you’ve got to win me over. Allow a teacher choice and they select what interests them — and they move forward with an open mind. Then I’m excited about what you’re going to show me, and I want to learn more.

Of course, this means there should be many choices. And it follows that I would need to be provided with at least some opportunities that would likely align with my passions. This type of professional development would more likely result in my sharing what I learned with students or other staff. But I really need this PD to happen whenever it’s best for me. Because — let’s face it. Life gets busy for us all. Sometimes PD is inconvenient. I have things I have to get done, PD is only one of them. Offer it to me when I’m in the midst of grading papers late at night after a long day or working on progress reports or report cards and my mind will be elsewhere.

On the other hand, it would be easier to participate in something I’m both passionate about and that interests me. I can always watch an inspiring video, take part in a stimulating simulation, be part of a conversation, webinar, chat or professional learning network.

Even so, I need to be given skills that I don’t already have. How do you know what you’re showing me isn’t something I’ve already mastered — but perhaps someone else in the room has yet to grasp it? I need my PD to be individualized, just as my students need the same sort of instruction from me. Are we not, as educators, expected to be lifelong learners? Dare we ask our staff to participate in PD that doesn’t mirror the instruction we ourselves need to provide? We ask our students to sit in groups to really engage, but we sit through slide presentations? We don’t engage teachers, we do little to help them pursue their passion — and yet, we expect them to go back to the classroom and engage their students, to get them to get their students to pursue their passions and have their students assume the role of a lifelong learner?

I’m a lifelong learner. I am passionate. But please, don’t work that out of me by providing PD that doesn’t engage, that isn’t convenient, and that is geared for the masses and ignores my individual needs. Why not give me PD that I seldom get: the kind I go out and seek on my own. I go to conferences whenever I can. I sign up for workshops that interest me. I go home and try out these things I learned on my own to help myself to become a better educator. I belong to a Professional Learning Network (PLN) that allows me to converse with like-minded professionals in ways that allow me to develop and grow — on my own time and frequently online. Give me an avenue to find the answers I need from my peers, as well as experts in the field in which I need the help. Do so at a time and place that’s convenient to me. Let me be the professional that I am, and I will want to become better at what I do.

However, if I am not and if I don’t, then perhaps I’m not in the right profession. Maybe I need to consider finding somewhere else to go to find my passion. But if you help me do this, we both will be forever grateful. Otherwise, keep forcing PD on me I did not choose at an inconvenient time and that isn’t individualized and you’ll continue to get results from your PD that you never intended to get.

Driving Miss Daisy and Her Data

Cross Posted on EdTech Digest May 21, 2012

CLASSROOM 21 | by Greg Limperis
These days more than ever, data is driving our instruction. In this day of standardized testing, formative and summative assessment, MAP testing, and so much more—there’s a ton of data that follows our students everywhere. All of it has to make sense in order to be worthwhile, to not waste students’ time and educators’ efforts. However, not all student data that we collect is needed by every person at every moment—and here’s exactly where a well-developed data dashboard comes into play.
For many in education, ‘data dashboards’ are something new—but just think about a car for a minute. Driving along, you glance down. Just the right amount of data is always within easy view. While driving you can take a quick glimpse to find out how fast you’re going, how much gas is in the tank, what the engine temperature is at, if the lights are on, is the air low in your tires, and if any doors are still open. Sure, there’s much to know about how the car and the engine works, but we aren’t told everything—just what we need to get us safely from point A to point B. The dashboard doesn’t assume we’re a mechanic, it simply alerts us—in just a couple seconds—to what might stop us or slow us down.
As a vehicle for success, education might benefit from not just the analogy, but actual development of a good, solid data dashboard for educators and other professionals working with our students. Just the right amount of information within their view when they need it will help educators help our students reach academic proficiency in an effective and efficient manner. Teachers need access to all formative assessment, summative assessment, standardize tests, and much more.
Problem is, today’s teacher might see over 600 students in any given year; getting to know a single student may well be difficult. Some teachers have one-on-one time with the same individual student less than once a week. Now, let’s not forget to inundate them with Individual Education Plans (IEPs), content objectives, language objectives, rubrics, lesson plans, differentiated instruction and a wide variety of other must-be-dones and a teacher isn’t just out of time—they’re beginning to sleep less just to get half of it done.
Let’s break it down even further: during that 60-minute class that week, the teacher has to pay attention to about 25 students at any one given time. Assuming that there aren’t any students in the classroom demanding more of a teacher’s time than others, then a teacher can spend about 2.4 minutes with each student. Take away time for attendance, introduction to the lesson’s agenda and more—and it’s possible for students to go days without ever interacting with a teacher.
In The Secret Teacher Writes an Honest Letter Home one teacher hits the problem on the head. Our educational system is broken and we know it. Our educators know they are not able to reach the needs of our students but as the teacher states, “I am part of the System, and I had to confess.”
Collecting data, giving it to a teacher and asking them to dissect it, understand it, put it into action all on their planning period or after school is simply unrealistic. If you are an educator, you know: a planning period is often not for planning. It is for IEP meetings, parent meetings, phone calls, school activities and just about everything but planning. If teachers are expected to dive deeply into data and to understand it, then they should at least be able to take away what’s important and discard what’s irrelevant. What’s left is knowledge they can use to drive their instruction. That’s what “data driven instruction” is ideally all about.
In reality, all the data they collect or that is collected is usually input after the fact. It’s not real-time, so parts and pieces are forgotten, lost or simply made up. And in reality, teachers are mobile. It might not look that way in pictures, but teachers don’t stand in front of a chalkboard all day long, nor do they sit with clasped hands at a desk with a shiny red apple on the corner from 8:15 am to 2:30 pm. Often a teacher walks around the room trying to remember a student’s name, let alone useful data about that student.
When school lets out for students, they might begin to take a seat, jotting down what they can recall, and move on from there. They correct tests, record scores, gather additional information—all before they often leave for a second job in order to make ends meet.
Then, after getting off their second job, they get their own kids, or finish afterschool activities and finally have dinner. After getting their children off to bath and bed, they sit down to correct papers, provide comments, contact parents and more, but delving deep into data right before bed never ends well. Before they know it, they’re waking up to an unforgiving alarm clock to do it all over again.
It’s not a gift Ferrari, it’s no superhero, but the right technology can help make a teacher’s day a lot easier. By providing teachers with a solid data dashboard, we can help our teachers so much. Out of old habits already set forth, out of resistance to change, out of the same everyday pressures so many teachers feel, or out of whatever unhealthy place they are coming from—very few leaders are willing to make such an investment.
Nonetheless, imagine with me a day when a teacher can walk around the classroom connected to the intranet or Internet and speak a question that’s automatically transcribed, assigned to a student, responded to, and relayed back to the teacher to help a student.
With instant data collection, a teacher can pinpoint and diagnose student trouble points, know who lacks understanding in precisely what area, and offer up precise, on-the-spot, real-time remediation. With a teacher-held device, student data could pop up on their screen about the student in their immediate proximity. An RF tag in a student ID would assist in obtaining the most vital data for a teacher to help reach that child’s need at any given moment on any given day.
Funny thing is, all of this technology is already available, yet it doesn’t exist in the hands of our teachers. The best data dashboard for our teachers is one that they know they need, that we know we provide for them, and that technologists know we can produce. The problem is, we’ve got to be willing to fund it. We have to be willing to invest in the technology that will give teachers the tools they really need. Without it, we’re spinning our wheels in the pit of data with nothing but remorse to show for it. We have a real chance to put our teachers in the driver’s seat. Why don’t we?

Is the U.S. education system ready for a bailout?

Cross Posted on EdTech Digest

 CLASSROOM 21 | by Greg Limperis
A few years back, the American auto industry was in serious trouble. Manufacturers such as Ford, General Motors and Chrysler were panicking. In tremendous debt, they were falling increasingly further behind their foreign competition by the day. Things did not look good. Sound familiar?
Today, the American education system is also failing. We are falling increasingly further behind our foreign competition; countries such as Finland and South Korea do much better than the U.S. when it comes to results released by OECD’s PISA report.

Well, let’s have a closer look. The U.S. government saw the importance of the auto industry and how a complete failure on their part would have tremendously negative consequences on our economy. They took action and the now well-known bailout of the industry is already history. Ford, Chrysler and General Motors subsequently made drastic changes. They restructured their businesses, looked at what works and what doesn’t, and borrowed on some of the successful actions of their competition.
Because of all of these changes, they have taken back some of their losses in the past few years, and today, the Big Three are making a comeback.

While the government had to put forward a ton of money, they got it all back and then some. Some investors will tell you it was a great deal with an unimaginable return on investment.
Let’s have a look at the similarities to our education system.

Like the auto industry, for so many years we were the unequivocal world leaders. Other countries sent their richest, top students to the U.S. for the best education on Earth. While it may still be that way to some degree in the higher education sector, that’s not the case with K-12 education. America has fallen from the top. We no longer graduate the highest-scoring students in the world. We don’t bring out the best. Other countries are doing this much better than we are doing.

So what’s going on, here? Where have we gone wrong? What are those other countries doing right? And where can we go to even find out those answers?

Why haven’t we taken our cues from the auto industry? What did they do right that brought about such quick change?

I’ll tell you, they looked inward and outward. They saw what worked and what didn’t—and they started over. They looked at what other countries were doing differently, and they modeled their improvement after them. Are we doing this with education in the U.S.? I would argue that no, we are not.

Education needs help. The government stepped into the failing auto industry and demanded change. And it happened. The government steps into education and demands change—and different results happen. Why?

With the auto bailout, the government didn’t say how to do it. They left it up to the people who were doing it on a daily basis, the ones who had a ground-level view and experience, but needed help nonetheless. With help, they could save themselves.

Education needs the same consideration.

The government needs to demand that education change, but not tell us how to do it. They need to be willing to supply funding to improve a failing infrastructure, to upgrade our connectivity and wireless, and to demand that funding only comes when they see serious changes taking place.
In this day and age, why are we still holding onto the textbook? Why? Because we don’t have the infrastructure to support anything else. Bandwidth, wireless connectivity and hardware just isn’t there. Do you doubt that our students aren’t engaged when properly instructed through the use of technology?

I can tell you first-hand the change that happens when students have technology in their daily lives. Teachers are re-engaged; students are informed, connected and engaged—but it will take more than just giving them technology.

Our educational system is broken—from how educators are educated and trained, all the way to retirement—things are not working as well as they could be. We are not setting the bar high enough, and in so many places we are currently on a steep fall down.

We need to take a serious look at our system and how it has changed over time thanks to technology. We need to scrap  everything and start anew.

What do we know works in education? What do we know about education that does not work? Are textbooks still a valuable tool, or is there some other way? Do agrarian calendars work? Does a standard school day make sense? How should schools be designed? What should a standard classroom look like? Do standardized tests truly provide us with useful information? What do other, successful countries provide that we do not? How do their educators prepare and train to be teachers? 

These questions could go on for a long time. Change can and will be hard, but we owe it to our students and to our country. Just like the auto industry, America cannot afford to see its education system fail. The longer we wait to make these difficult changes, the harder it will be. Is there any amount that is too much for our youth? How much will it truly cost us, if other countries continue to outperform us?

I can tell you, I do not want to wait to find out. The American education system needs a bailout, and I for one am ready to answer some of these difficult questions. Are you?

Where There Is No Path: Making a Great Leader in EdTech

Cross posted on EdtechDigest

What makes a great leader in education and technology these days? As I travel down the road of my professional career, I am constantly asking myself this question. Who out there is someone I can turn to, emulate? If I want to be considered a great leader, then what qualities should I possess? Is it knowledge of content? Should I be proficient in all use of technology hardware and software? Should I have a vision for the future and lead on the edge? What will it take for people to look at me and say, “He made a difference”?
Having started my teaching career in a very poor, inner-city school where over 85 percent of the students live at or below poverty level and just as many are Hispanic and speak English as their second language, I have learned a lot. Sixteen years ago, I was placed for my student teaching in a state-of-the-art, brand-new school where urban-trained educators out of Boston College such as myself were recruited and encouraged to come and stay in Lawrence, Mass.
During my student teaching, one of the most trans-formative things in my career happened to me. I took part in a study with Harvard Smithsonian Institute with Annenberg Media. I was asked to take a look at a single aspect of the curriculum that I was teaching, to find out what I didn’t like about it—and change it. Part of the curriculum that was given to me was for Science. It was pathetic. The whole curriculum was based on big discs called “Windows on Science”—the teacher was expected to follow a script from a book and to share science with their students through watching a video.
To make a long story short, I wanted to bring the fun, excitement and inquiry back to Science. I actually wanted to pull some of the technology out of it. I wanted students to get their hands on learning. In any case, the best part of the study was that—for the next two years—I was asked to be reflective on my teaching style. During the study, I was asked to regularly watch a video of myself after my teaching and to comment on it. I was asked to reflect on my teaching style. After it was over, the following year Annenberg came back and asked me to reflect on how the study had changed my teaching. To this day, I still do just that. I reflect. I look back on what I have done, and I ask myself, How can I do it better? A great leader will do just that, reflect.
My first few years of teaching, I was given six computers plus a teacher computer—a laptop. Though I had more access to technology than most of my peers did, the problem was that most teachers at this point had no idea what to do with it. Yes, my school was “cutting edge”—we had spent more in our K-8 school than most other schools. We had a built-in television studio, access to loads of software and plenty of opportunity to integrate technology in learning—but most of us had no idea where to start
At the time, I was given access to the whole Lotus suite that existed then. It was much like the Microsoft Office we know today, only made by IBM and Lotus. I had no idea how to use half of it, but I told myself that was no excuse. Near that time, I joined a group that helped transform our school from a K-8 school with over 1,300 students into a school-within-a-school. We were going to make our school one of the first middle schools in the district. During that summer, while planning for this change, I taught myself how to create and work with a database. I had never seen one before, but we needed a custom schedule for our students that first year and I wasn’t going to shy away from a challenge due to lack of knowledge; fear of not knowing was not going to stop me from finding out.
I started teaching myself the software, staying up countless hours at night—and I figured things out. I started having my students do project-based learning while using technology. They were presenting, making slide shows—they were integrating. I helped launch the television studio within our school and our students were producing a live broadcast daily. I was not going to be intimidated. I had received next to no formal training, but I knew this would engage my students. In my eyes, a great leader doesn’t shy away from a challenge. Instead, they face it head on and they do not back down. To this day, I still love to learn from those leaders who are blazing the trail. I know that they may make mistakes along the line, but mistakes are what help us grow.
A few years later, I was transferred to one of the oldest schools in my district, a marked contrast to where I had spent the first five or six years of my teaching career. I found myself in borrowed space while waiting for my transition to another, brand-new school. Man, was I humbled. I used to complain about things where I worked, but these people had nothing. They were teaching in a school building over 100 years old and most of what was in it looked like it had not been updated in nearly as long. In my room alone, the wiring was so poor that the fuse would blow about every 13 minutes. Things were changing, but not fast enough for me. Nonetheless, what I learned was immeasurable. I learned to be humble. I realized that there were many teachers out there operating just like these teachers, and had been for years.  They didn’t have the tools they needed to help them succeed. If they did, those tools were purchased with their own money. I realized that great teachers know when they may not have everything they need, but can still manage to inspire their students, other teachers and people around them. We as educators can still make a difference in the lives of many, even when we have so little. I learned the meaning of the old saying, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Even where most see failure, great leaders still see potential.
The next year, I was transferred to another state-of-the-art school within my district. Here is where I started to think I had reached my peak. Everything I could ever need or want was given to me. Once again, I was given a brand new television studio and the gift of being able to launch it and mold it into what I thought was best for our school. Every classroom had four PCs plus a teacher computer. Every classroom had a large-screen TV. My room had started as a wireless laptop lab, but was quickly transformed into a desktop PC lab and the laptops were placed in carts for teacher use.
Within a few years, we were given additional hardware such as business-quality video conferencing equipment and software such as Discovery Education streaming content, as well as many other resources. Problem was, there was lack of vision. Many people didn’t know best on how to use and integrate the equipment. Little if any training existed. It was here I learned that, if I was going to learn any of it, I would (once again) need to teach myself.
I had so many tools at my disposal; I started to figure things out. Every teacher computer had a video card installed. With this card, I figured out I could connect the computer in the classroom to the TV hanging on the wall, so I simply went around and started connecting computers. I reached out to others in the district and I sought help as needed. Boy, I thought I was the cat’s meow. I was giving up my planning period and I training others in my building. I was transforming my school and I thought I knew everything a great technology teacher needed to know, but I was also starting to feel like I was no longer being challenged any longer, and this began to worry me. I knew from back when I first started teaching that a great leader is one who knows that a day where nothing new is learned is a wasted day. I was not ready to start wasting days. I had too long to go.
One day, I reached out to a career counselor to give me guidance. I knew there was so much more potential for me to become a great leader, but I didn’t know where to start. I had to learn much more if I was to become that great leader I wanted to be. What happened there changed my life.
Of the many things she taught me that I found useless as an educator, one thing in particular stuck: she told me that I needed to get myself on “LinkedIn”. Little did she know at the time how powerful professional networks could be. I joined and started looking to others for guidance. I had a look at what other great leaders in the instructional technology world were up to. Steve Hargadon was one of the many who turned me on to the power of professional networks. It was then that I learned there was so much more I could learn from others. It was here that I found my passion to share with others what I was learning, too. A great leader, you see, doesn’t live on an island. If he wants to truly lead, he has to realize that his true strength is in helping others realize their potential by being that support in times of need. A great leader realizes just how small our world truly is and helps others realize the impact we all can have on each other.
So, here I am tonight—still contemplating the questions: How can I become a great leader? What qualities does a great leader in educational technology truly possess? What do I have to do to help others reach their potential and give them the training and skills they truly need so to become just that leader? How do I truly support them and in turn become that great leader?
One thing is for sure, a quote I learned back in my Eagle Scout days still rings true in me today. It’s from an unknown source—undoubtedly some great leader (sometimes Ralph Waldo Emerson is given credit for it), and it goes like this: Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Who Needs Ed Reform Anyway?

Origionally Posted on EdtechDigest

Whatʼs all this talk about tech-fueled education reform lately, anyway? Why change anything?
Why can’t kids simply learn like we did when we were little? Look, I turned out okay and I never had access to all of that tech gadgetry and blended, mobile mumbo jumbo thatʼs out there now, when I was a kid. Don’t people know that all of this technology is expensive? Whatʼs wrong with students carrying around a bunch of big textbooks in their bag, anyway?
Okay, okay, so you child carries around twenty-five to thirty pounds on their back all day? Considering the current Letʼs Move movement, moving that kind of weight is good exercise! Yeah, I know. They do take up a lot of locker space, but how much trouble can it be for a student to go to his or her locker every time he or she needs a book? Sure, most trouble happens when students linger at their lockers chatting it up and hang out unattended, but teachers can figure it out, right?
Whatʼs that? Your school doesnʼt have lockers? Well, canʼt students just store their bags in the classroom? They donʼt take up that much room, do they? You say that a problem with this is that you know what else a student might have in their bag that they take out during class instead of the needed book? Well, surely you can figure that out, too, canʼt you?
Whoah, hold on—wait a second. Okay, youʼre saying that your textbooks are five, even ten years old? Worn? Written on? Written in? Missing pages? Well, how bad is that, really? How much can this world change in a decade, seriously? Plutoʼs still a planet, Bush is still President, and whatʼs all this talk about Common Core, anyway?
Sure, digital textbooks and content are cool—so what? You think they can be rapidly updated? Alright, alright. Well, fine. Who doesnʼt want an iBook? You canʼt get everything you want. Sure, I wish I had one when I was growing up. I suppose, if I had one back then, I guess Iʼd probably love learning on it, watching the videos, digging through interactive images, getting real-time, immediate information, taking instant- feedback quizzes, digital notes, even creating my own book.
But really—thatʼs gonna cost a pretty penny! Wayyy more expensive than any textbook! I mean, whatʼs a textbook cost these days, anyway? Canʼt be nearly as much.
What?! iBooks are much less expensive? Seriously, how do you figure? Well, canʼt a teacher just fill their students in on what theyʼre missing, anyway? I mean, an iBook isnʼt that cool, is it? Think about it: we could save double.
Sure, sure. Kids these days. Theyʼre interactive learners. Theyʼre growing up in a new media age. They watch more television than we ever did, play more and better video games, and are always online. Sure, most carry a thousand songs in their nano pocket device thingies, anywhere, anytime, blah blah blah. Theyʼre mobile, theyʼre totally wired, connected, plugged in and so on. They can connect to anything anywhere anytime anythis anythat and get any answers theyʼre looking for if they can just formulate the question. But letʼs stay focused—what does that really have to do with learning?

Granted, all of this new social media mobile yeah yeah technology is definitely cool— donʼt get me wrong. I myself have an iPod, iPad, Wii, laptop, netbook, desktop PC and smartphone. Sure, a lot of that stuff really helps me—with my job, communication, filling downtime, socializing with far-away friends and family, my whole life depends upon it— and yes, when itʼs down or I totally misplace it for about four seconds I totally freak out—but cʼmon, really? Why canʼt kids go for eight hours or so without it? Itʼs a learning environment! Theyʼre not business people! Let them read tattered texts.
Okay, really, Iʼll be fair: they can just bring the devices they have from home—to school! Problem solved—errr, wait a sec. District what? Policy? Youʼve got policies against it? Well, teachers are great for that. Theyʼre on the front lines—Iʼm sure they can figure that out, too.
In any case, all of this talk reminds me of when I was a kid. What I mean is, whenever I didnʼt do (or didnʼt want to do) my homework—Iʼd tell my teacher how my little brother destroyed it on our way in, or how my dog ate it, and Iʼd ask the teacher if I could bring it in the next day—or, Iʼd just not do it. Sometimes Iʼd just lose one of those million papers they would give me, Iʼd run out of notebook pages, or I had no way to get it on paper that day and Mom and Dad worked, so I just wouldnʼt do it. Other times the worksheets were just too boring. Boy, those were the good olʼ days! At the rate weʼre going, kids today canʼt get away with that. Technology solves too much. But Iʼm sure the teacher…
I know—Iʼve been leaving quite a bit for the teacher to figure out. And sure, they have to teach my child every day. Yes, Iʼve heard it all: overcrowded classrooms, mile-wide, inch-deep teaching to the test, aligning to Common Core State Standards, busy answering calls, requests, and emails, emails, emails from parents and administration. They go on for hours about all they have to do. When I have a lot to do at work, I just sit down at my computer and get it done! I surely canʼt do it at home—the kids are running around—itʼs so distracting! A nice quiet office is so much more conducive to optimal production.
Whatʼs that? Some teachers only have one computer in their class? And the students are on it? Seriously, when do they ever get their work done? No wonder teachers take so long getting back to me! Canʼt they just find a quiet space and respond immediately? When I need to type something, it only takes a few seconds. Gotta print something? Even faster. Whatʼs that? Teachers have to print to the photocopier? Hey, thatʼs not so bad. Oh, you’re saying that other teachers have been using it for lack of great content and theyʼve made so many copies itʼs now broken? Well, hereʼs their chance to learn something about technology, right?!
Seriously, though. Canʼt we change some of this? I mean, how do they work this way? This would drive me crazy, Iʼm quite sure.

But you know what? Iʼm also quite sure with all those students they serve and keeping track of all that learning that those teachers get paid like doctors. Theyʼre making it possible for our students to succeed in life with 21st-century learning, after all—and god knows I want my student to get a first-rate education, to be able to compete in a global economy, to be ready for their future, to have access to the best at home and at school.
I want them to have the best education in the world. I do. I want it all! Truly, I do! So…what will it really take? Maybe this is something teachers could use some help on—I’m betting, somehow, we might be able to figure this out together.

Technology and its Power to Transform Education

Cross Posted on Edtech Digest on January 18, 2012 by Greg Limperis

I’ve been lucky enough in my new position this year to see the power technology can play in transforming education. Thanks to a huge investment by our district in interactive whiteboard equipment, document cameras, student response systems and interactive slates, classrooms across the district have been transformed. We have rolled out nearly two million dollars in new equipment. I started in August and, for the last five months, we have worked on getting teachers all the right wires, we’ve solved problems—and most importantly—we have offered training.
I hear it daily as I go into a school. The equipment has transformed classrooms, it has improved engagement, and student discipline is down. Teachers have naturally started off using the document camera—it’s what they’ve been able to associate with most. The teachers are already familiar with overheads—now they’re finding out that this new overhead is so much more.
They’re finding out that they can’t live without this new equipment. Some have started to incorporate the other tools as well. There are classroom everywhere that are producing interactive lessons projected onto their whiteboards and students are starting to get to be that teacher. They are heading to the front of the class and doing something that some of them have never done before: they are engaging in their learning.
For some, these lessons are even being tied into their student response systems. Students who, in the past, weren’t being heard—are now giving their their input. Teachers are passing the slate pad around the room and students are interacting with their learning on the board in a whole new way. They are engaging.
I am out at schools daily either helping with equipment issues or training staff. This is transforming the staff as well. They are realizing that they have another resource at their disposal. They have built-in help. They call—and I come! I am joining them in their team planning meetings. I am training them after school. Some are volunteering to stick around and get better at using this equipment.
When I go into these schools to help teachers, this is typical of what I hear: “I no longer photo copy anything.” “I have some of the toughest kids and they beg me not to turn the equipment off and promise to not misbehave.”
The equipment is re-igniting the passion in my teachers.
Could we be doing more? Sure.
Are the lessons all as interactive and dynamic as I would like to see them? No.
Thanks to the equipment, we are transforming our schools, teaching and learning. We’re purchasing netbooks. We’re installing wireless hotspots in order to make schools wireless. Teachers are starting to bring their own equipment. Tablets are popping up everywhere.
We’re now starting to do walkthroughs with a focus on technology use. The students, teachers and administrators in our schools and our district are all moving into the 21st century. It has been five months and things are different.
You can feel it. You can see it.
There are still classrooms without this equipment. I am getting calls often asking if we have more of it for classes who do not have it. We are now starting to plan for our next phase. It’s exciting to think where we will go next. How can we get better at incorporating other technology we already have? How can we transform our schools even more? What will this mean for our chronically under performing students? Will it help prepare so many of them who struggle to pass the state mandated standardized test? Only time will tell, but I can’t wait to see just what this transformation will bring about.