Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Preparing Students for the 21st Century (the one we’re living in now!)

Photo Courtesy of Flickr: giulia.forsythe

In Wisconsin, there are a great number of school districts going Google since WI DPI negotiated the Google statewide contract. As with any thing new, critics and skeptics can be heard in the background trying to put such shenanigans to a halt. The most recent evidence of this was when I was recently asked by a colleague  if I could help address the concerns one of his business ed teachers had on their district going Google. The teachers concerns were on security, phishing scams, not preparing kids for the business world since no businesses use Google, and that teachers and students hate to use Google Apps.

So, how do we prepare students for the 21st century if we refuse to embrace change?  Google Apps, or any other open source or free product, are not the enemy of our future.  They are, in fact, essential tools for preparing our students to live in the 21st century.  And, I must note, our kids ARE living in the 21st century – TODAY!

On to Google Apps for Education …. I believe Google Apps for Education IS taking a positive step forward in preparing our students as 21st century learners.  Even if we take a very narrow look at Google Apps as a replacement for eMail and an Office Suite, these are powerful tools to embrace.

To belay concerns for this teacher, or others, on the trouble with “going Google” in your district ….

Security

Google Apps is actually quite secure. Google believes in the mindset that they should “eat their own dog food” and use Google Apps for the work they do. In addition, a number of government agencies (WI DPI, City of Los Angelas, Washington DC) are now using Google Apps for a host of reasons – including security. The truth is, there isn’t anything a typical school district could implement that would be as secure as Google Apps.

For Wisconsin schools, you may be comforted in knowing that DPI negotiated the Google Apps contract, through their attorneys, for Wisconsin schools and you can now be confident in going Google as well.

Phishing Scams

Phishing Scams are going to occur no matter what email provider you are using. Many districts have been incredibly happy with Postini and its ability to filter these out.

Google Apps in Business (and Education)

There are over 4 million businesses using Google Apps. Business include giants like Motorola, Salesforce.com, United Bank and Trust, Konica Minolta, Brady Corp, National Geographic, KLM, and certainly. In addition, there are quite a few universities who have also made the switch, including Notre Dame, Yale, U of Michigan, Kent State, University of Wisconsin Madison, and a slew of others.

In addition, there are hundreds of schools in Wisconsin who are now using Google Apps!

Preparing Students

Limiting students to proprietary software actually harms students and does not prepare them to be 21st century learners. The days of simply having to know how to use a piece of software are gone. The NET-S (National Educational Technology Standards – Students) calls for students to “use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.” In addition, students need to ” Select and use applications effectively and productively” and ” Transfer current knowledge to learning of new technologies.” Be sure to read the other six standards to see how Google Apps could help meet some of these standards.

Limiting students to proprietary software (like Word or PowerPoint) is, indeed, hurting students and I would argue the teacher is engaged in educational malpractice.

From a Teacher, Parent and Child Lens

Teachers have really come to embrace Google Apps and all that it can do – aside from simple word processing, spreadsheets and presentation tools. The ability for students to be highly collaborative, while being remote from each other, is an incredible strength of Google Apps. Many teachers have now gone paperless in their classrooms and simply (and securely) share documents, etc… back and forth with student in real-time.

Parents, like myself, love Google Docs because they no longer have to worry about having the correct version of Word (or some other proprietary product). They can now be assured that what their child works on at school can be brought home and doesn’t require them to have any special software or version of software for their child to complete their homework.

From a personal perspective, I have a straight A seventh grade daughter who, in order to get an A, brought all of her books home every night just to be sure that she had everything she needed (she’s one of those disorganized smart kids). I can’t begin to tell you how many meltdowns we had in previous years when she either forgot to save her files to her flashdrive or didn’t save the right version, or forgot to bring her flashdrive home! This past year, we’ve used Google Apps with her and haven’t had a single episode. She simply works on her documents at home and at school without incident – files are never lost or forgotten.

Students around the country actively use their Google Apps accounts and love them for the same reasons parents love Google Apps. For my daughters (4th and 7th), they’d much rather use Google Apps than Word or PowerPoint (for example). In fact, they both put up quite a bit of stink if they have to use “an old program” as they refer to it as.

What are your thoughts?  Does Google Apps (or other free or open source products) support 21st century learning?

Posted by dhanrahan at 9:03 pm  |  View Comments  | Tags: 21st century, Google Apps, open education

Friday, February 24, 2012

Vermont DOE’s Transformation of Schools Report …

VERMONT STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION: THE TRANSFORMATION OF EDUCATION IN VERMONT Website:

http://education.ver…sformation.html

The State Board of Education charged an Education Transformation Policy Commission in early 2009 to propose key policy actions that could support transformation. This report is the results of their nine months of work.

The report is title “Opportunity to Learn” as it focuses on how every student can attain 21st century skills when provided with focuses and personalized opportunities for learning. The report is organized into five policy sections and addresses many specific policy actions, including new 21st century skills and revising the Vermont Framework, multiple ways of learning, learning outside of school, greater interdisciplinary learning, routine early college opportunities, multi-age small learning communities, learning focused on deep understanding of concepts rather than content details, proficiency based grading and graduation, and true personalization. The recommendations also address setting new standards for education quality and educator quality.

While the report offers 41 distinct policy recommendations, it asks the Board to consider them as an integrated whole. Their successful implementation is interdependent. Maps of the 13 and 20 proposed governing regions were added to the document on December 17, 2009.

Posted by dhanrahan at 3:45 pm  |  View Comments

Thursday, February 23, 2012

2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning

The following was recently posted in the futureofed.org. Some very interesting perspectives that match-up with much of what was envisioned in the Next Generation Schools model.

Learning Agents for 2020

Learning Fitness Instructor
Learning fitness instructors will help learners build and strengthen the basic cognitive, emotional, and social abilities essential to learning by using simulations, biofeedback, and hands-on activities to reduce stress, hone mental capabilities, and learn brain-friendly nutrition.

Personal Education Advisor
Assigned by certified local education agencies, such as schools, resource centers, and libraries, or selected and contracted by families, personal education advisors help families create, nurture, and maintain personal learning ecologies.

Community Intelligence Cartographer
Community intelligence cartographers will tap the collective intelligence of their local communities. They will leverage social networking strategies to develop swarms and smart mobs in order to identify emerging learning opportunities in the community, organize community members, and locate community resources.

Education Sousveyor
Education sousveyors will keep the learning process transparent and will stimulate public discussion around it. Through mechanisms such as blog posts, pictures, podcasts, and videos, they will keep learning on the forefront of stakeholders’ minds.

Social Capital Platform Developer
Social capital platform developers will link the social capital infrastructure to teaching and learning practices and outcomes. They will use tracking programs to provide an accounting of people’s contributions to open education resources and collaborative processes.

Learning Partner
Students who test for compatible personalities but who have different cognitive strengths will be matched to support each other throughout the year, maintaining a constant thread amid shifting peer relationships.

Learning Journey Mentor
Learning journey mentors will work with personal education advisors, learning fitness instructors, community intelligence cartographers, and assessment designers to co-create and navigate learning itineraries with small groups of students.

Assessment Designer
Using social networks and insights into cognitive functioning, assessment designers will create appropriate methods for evaluating media literacy, learning discovery journeys, and other innovative forms of instruction.

Posted by dhanrahan at 3:28 pm  |  View Comments

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

10 Major Mobile Learning Trends To Watch For 10 Major Mobile Learning Trends To Watch For 10 Major Mobile Learning Trends To Watch For

Recently published on OnlineCollege.org were the 10 Major Mobile Learning Trends to Watch For. In this article they identified the following Top 10 Trends :

• Location-based integration
• Online class management
• The domination of eBooks
• Cloud computing in schools
• Bring your own device classrooms
• Online collaborative learning
• The rise of the tablet
• Social media for eduction
• Snack learning
• Mobile learning in workplace training

You can read details on these 10 trends here.

Posted by dhanrahan at 3:12 pm  |  View Comments

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

CESA 6 Announces the Effectiveness Project

Answering the call for effective teachers and leaders in our schools

It is imperative that we have effective teachers in every classroom and effective leaders in every school/district. CESA 6 is committed to partnering with Dr. Stronge and our 42 regional school districts to recruit, support, assess and retain effective teachers and leaders in our schools/districts.

Join us on this journey of excellence as we work together to review the research and create a regional system of tools and technologies to support the development and sustainability of a highly effective corps of teachers and leaders that will insure high levels of student learning and success.

“Teaching IS complicated.  It IS rocket science.  We must be willing to measure and monitor our own ranks!”

-Dr. James Stronge, 2012

To learn more about the Teacher and Leader Effectiveness Project, see the CESA 6 website here.

Posted by dhanrahan at 4:26 pm  |  View Comments

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Texas BOE Adopts Digital Science Book

The following article was posted in School CIO magazine this past fall ..,

Excerpt:
After an extensive review for this all-digital adoption, the Texas State Board of Education officially selected the Discovery Education Science Techbookas an approved resource for use in Texas middle schools. Built from the ground-up to be specifically aligned to TEKS, Texas’ science education standards, and CSCOPE, Texas’ curriculum management system, the Discovery Education Science Techbook serves as a key digital instructional resource, creating learning environments that promote collaboration, creativity and participatory learning..

Click HERE to read the full article at School CIO

Why is this important in Next Generation Schools? Moving away from typical paper textbooks is a first step to personalized student learning.  Now, if electronic textbooks are simply a digital version of the classic versions, we are no better off than we were before.  Creating interactive textbooks that engage students in learning, allow them to tap into additional resources and extend their learning are a positive step forward!

Posted by dhanrahan at 3:06 pm  |  View Comments

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

New London’s New Career Academies: Getting Ready for the Future Now

When this year’s freshmen at New London High School graduate in 2015, they will walk through the doors with more than a diploma. Whether bound for college, technical school or a job, they will leave with a clear vision of where they fit into the workplace and what it takes to be successful in their chosen career.

“This is why we exist,” said Bill Fitzpatrick, the New London School District administrator. “Our job is not only to get kids to graduate from high school. Our job is to make sure they’re equipped to be successful after high school.”

This fall, New London launched an ambitious new project to do just that. This year’s ninth graders are the initial members of what will eventually become a schoolwide transformation of curriculum and instruction that groups students into a series of small schools within a school called career academies. Each of the three academies will focus on a general career emphasis. Teachers will offer instruction in core content areas – math, English, science and social studies – but will tailor their lessons to reflect skills and knowledge specific to the career emphasis of the individual academy.

Students can also have specialized training in specific careers, either at the high school or with other educational partners. Instruction will be project based and there will be multiple opportunities for students to get hands-on experience at local businesses. The career academies, which will be fully launched during the 2012-13 school year include: Health and Human Services; Communications, Arts and Business (CAB); and Science, Technology, Engineering, Agriculture and Math (STEAM).

There is also a Freshmen Academy that helps prepare students for the new Read more…

Posted by dhanrahan at 4:15 pm  |  View Comments

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Making Change Happen: Jobs To Be Done

It’s often easier to say you want to be innovative and make real change than it is to actually be and do.  To be innovative, we need to first be able to articulate what the real problem is that we’re trying to correct.  To identify what’s at the core, one may use the Jobs To Be Done technique. [1] The Jobs To Be Done technique is simply that – the 20,000 foot purpose for why people buy (product, service, solution).  This is not the check-off list of “buy iPads.”

The beauty of this approach is that it causes you to really think about the “why” and not get pre-focused on the “what.”  Simon Sinek [2] gave a wonderful TED talk on how great leaders inspire action by focusing on the why.  He uses Apple Computers as an example.  In this scenario, he shows how Apple could have approached things …

If Apple were like everyone else, a marketing message might sound like this: ‘We make great computers.  They’re beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly.  Want to buy one?’

Instead, Sinek gives us an alternative where Apple focuses on the why …

‘Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo.  The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and suer friendly.  We just happen to make great computers.’

The approach is profoundly different.  In the first we try to tell people what they want, in the second, we find out what people want, why they want something, and build/serve from there.

Another example may be that most people say they use the lawnmower for the purpose of cutting the grass.  If we step back and look at the purpose, or the why, we may realize that it is to keep the grass cut and beautiful at all times.  So, our solution, if we being innovative, is not to look at building a more powerful lawnmower, but rather to generate a genetically engineered grass seed that never needs to be cut.

Too often, the design answer is to try to answer the question with something we already have or do.  To be innovative, we need to truly listen to what the Job To Be Done is.  To be innovative, we need to look at the different types of Job To Be Done.

• Functional jobs describe the task that customers want to achieve.
• Emotional jobs are related to feelings and perceptions.  This can be broken into two sub-jobs
  • Personal Job is one which describes how customers want to feel about themselves
  • Social Job is one in which customers want to be perceived
• Ancillary Jobs are other jobs that customers want to get done, but are not at the core.

How do we take these types of jobs and apply them to educational innovations?  Some schools may say they want to have better test scores.  In an overly simplistic statement, one may say that the primary job of schools is not to have better test scores, but, simply put, to reduce ignorance.  That is a rather blunt way of stating it, but is that not our primary function or job?  Better test scores or out-ranking the neighboring district is not our true Job To Be Done. Better test scores may tell us that we’re doing a better job of reducing ignorance, but the reality is that test scores are not the Jobs To Be Done.

Breaking down the Jobs To Be Done in schools may have been approached differently in the past. If the job was to search for information, we may previously have simply looked at the library.  To be innovate, the internet came to being.

The most important thing to remember about Jobs To Be Done is that they are completely neutral of the solutions we create through innovation.

So, what steps do we need to take?

First, we need to look at the Focus Market.  Who is it we are trying to serve and innovate for.  Second, we need to identify what the jobs are that are trying to be done.  What are we truly trying to accomplish (reducing ignorance, not raising test scores).  Third, we categorize the Jobs To Be Done. We need to understand the functional, emotional, and ancillary jobs.  We need to see the big picture in its completeness.

Once we understand the Jobs To Be Done, we can begin the design process and build innovative solutions to the true Jobs To Be Done.

Sources:

1. S. Anthony, M. Johnson, J. Sinfield, E. Altman, Innovator’s Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work, Harvard Business School Press, 2008
2. http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

Posted by dhanrahan at 6:57 pm  |  View Comments

Thursday, December 1, 2011

First Iterations of Next Generation Schools

The Next Generation Schools model requires a massive paradigm shift.  Moving from where we are to where we want to be becomes exponentially more difficult when the place you want to go to is so much different from where you are now.  Such change is paralyzing for many.  What is my first step when there are so many steps ahead of me?

When looking at change through a systems-design lens, one must understand, and plan for, multiple iterations before the final design is achieved.  It’s also important to know that the final design may change as context changes and iterations evolve.  At a recent meeting of superintendents in CESA 6′s 42 school district region, a dynamic discussion occurred around first iterations of the Next Generation Schools model.

Through this discussion, superintendents began to identify initiatives in their own district, as well as in neighboring districts, that were part of an incremental iteration towards the new model.  This discuss empowered superintendents to realize that can move forward in meaningful ways even if they aren’t able to take the 200 step leap to the final model.  In addition, this discussion provided insight into what others are doing that are aligned with the Next Generation Schools model.  Through sharing and collaborating, understanding multiple iterations will occur, and identifying what those iterations may look like, we can collectively achieve schools based on the Next Generation Schools model.

Sometimes, we need to start with a pencil drawing before we can achieve the full-color drawing.  What is your first iteration of the Next Generation Schools model?

Posted by dhanrahan at 10:57 pm  |  View Comments

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Start From Where You Are

Often times, when people think of truly transformative changes to public education they become stuck in not knowing where to begin. The task of change before them seems insurmountable. While some aspects of the Next Generation Schools model will take a complete flip of how we education students today, some aspects of the model can be done incrementally through various iterations of change.

One aspect of the Next Generation Schools is the Student Structures design key. Here, we look to work closely with businesses and the community to create learning opportunities for students, and development opportunities for the community. Through these partnerships, student will help find solutions to real community issues.

Today, schools are already partnering with businesses and community in select areas – generally career and technical education.  What the Next Generation Schools model looks to do is expand this into all areas.  For example, schools may look to partner with a local media outlet to create opportunities for English and Journalism students.

What are you doing to create the next iteration of community and business partnerships beyond career and technical education? Share your story so others can learn and be motivated by what’s possible – even if it’s a small step forward.

Posted by dhanrahan at 8:32 pm  |  View Comments