National Education Technology Plan - A Quick Look at Changing Infrastructure

I'll dust off the blog for a moment to reflect on one section of the National Education Technology Plan (linking the Executive Summary). It's an interesting document and worth more time than I'm giving it. This morning, I'm reflecting on the recommendations in the 'infrastructure' section and comparing it to past standards we've had in Kentucky over the years. The goal in the infrastructure section of the NETP is stated simply enough:

All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning when and where they need it.

One shift we can see over the years is the emphasis on access anywhere and anytime. Our devices are smaller in size and more powerful than those of a few short years ago. Remember when we had processor wars and a race to a higher and higher gigahertz rating? What processor is in your iPhone or Droid? Do you know? Do you care? Our older state technology plans called for standards on student-to-computer ratios, number of data drops and phones in the classrooms. Since that original plan - a visionary document back in 1992, by the way - we've seen wireless access grow, devices change immensely and we're surrounded by projectors, IWBs, document cameras and other teaching tools.

For the sake of time, let's skip to the recommended actions. First:

Ensure students and educators have broadband access to the Internet and adequate wireless connectivity both in and out of school.

Broadband and wireless are the words I'll key on. With "broadband", what does that mean? How fast must it be? The plan goes on to use the word 'adequate' and stresses the need for that speed in the community and at home. What the CIO can fix is the school, so let's focus there. It sounds simple, but one call to action should be that your technical staff should try to do some basic research from a few random workstations and make sure that the performance is adequate. If it isn't, that's a problem. With the word "wireless", my thinking has come around over the past few years. Originally, I would have said to hold off on wireless implementation and invest when you foresee wireless devices that would actually take advantage of the wireless infrastructure. At this point, it seems that virtually all of the growth and development surrounds wireless connectivity. If your school district doesn't have adequate wireless connectivity within its schools, now is the time to act. With the changes that need to take place in education, the mobility of the learner is key and our schools need the wireless infrastructure to support that mobility.

Ensure that every student and educator has at least one Internet access device and appropriate software and resources for research, communication, multimedia content creation, and collaboration for use in and out of school

This one is certain to generate discussion. Years ago, the talk was to get to a 6:1 student-to-computer ratio. In most area schools, we're probably in the neighborhood of 2.5:1. Statewide, we've seen a bit of movement as it pertains to 1:1 initiatives but, even in those districts, it's usually limited to high school students. I've heard nobody speak of a device for EVERY student and I think we can agree that the reasons tend to center around lack of funding, inability to support the environment and, at this point, a teaching environment that isn't ready to take advantage of a device in every K-12 student's hand. In fact, if you'll permit one more copy/paste, I like the follow-up statements to this goal, as they reference several concerns that we rightly recognize and need to address:

Only with 24/7 access to the Internet via devices and technology-based software and resources can we achieve the kind of engagement, student-centered learning, and assessments that can improve learning in the ways this plan proposes. The form of these devices, software, and resources may or may not be standardized and will evolve over time. In addition, these devices may be owned by the student or family, owned by the school, or some combination of the two. The use of devices owned by students will require advances in network filtering and improved support systems.

This paragraph hits several key points. Why a device for all? Engagement, student-centered learning, and online assessments. What type of device? It may not be standard. Who pays? It could be a mix of district-owned and personally-owned. Of course, no standardization of the device and the mention of 24/7 access causes concerns about filtering and network security, and those are mentioned as well.

Maybe I'll come back and address the others, as I'm short on time at the moment.

Change: Inevitable (and fast, it seems!)

I guess anyone can be a prophet if they predict the obvious and wait for it to happen. In a previous post, I had discussed the increasing pressure to implement personal devices in the K-12 environment. Of course, I was only writing based on what I was seeing and reading elsewhere. Fast forward a few months and it seems that the pressure is increasing... and quickly.

I've talked to at least three school districts in the past week that are all getting pressure to implement some type of new device into the environment. For districts that think it's only happening to them or that it's only in our area or state, this isn't true. It's across the country and across various enterprises. Take a look at this Gartner blog post. I'm not as concerned about the market share of a particular company, but note the initial comments about consumerization affecting the enterprise and the "...increasing number of Macs being brought into the enterprise." These are the conversations I've been having, so I suppose I simply wanted to get a few thoughts down to state to the K-12 CIO that "you're not alone."

It feels that way for some, though. Administrators see these new devices (the iPad being the most common example) and demand that their IT staff get these in the classroom. I've seen some of the applications that are out there and I can certainly see the educational benefit. For the things they can do, devices like this have been built for ease of use, fast response and crisp audio/video output. Their cry is "why not?"

The local IT staff has been conditioned to look out for the district. They know that they are most likely the ones that will field the calls when things don't work as well as first imagined. Do you want to print? Does this need to hook to a projector? Do you want to use Flash-based applications? Do you want these apps to go to the web through our required proxy solution? Who's handling the iTunes synchronization? Are these being signed out and in? How are we keeping these charged? If we're in an Active Directory environment, are these devices supposed to communicate with local servers?

You get the idea. By the way, some of these hurdles can be overcome. Right now, though, this seems to be the latest example of one segment of administration pushing for implementation while the IT staff begs for time and resources to better understand and account for the business requirements. As an IT leader, you're right to ask these questions. However, be aware that there are times where the situation dictates that you implement or be viewed as a roadblock to progress.

A quick search will reveals countless articles about consumer devices entering the enterprise and the need for our security models to change. This is one blog entry discussing this trend and it's easy to find others. Without dragging out the crystal ball again, I'll simply state that we're probably all facing major change in the way we've thought about our networks and securing them. For now, take some solace - limited though it may be - in the fact that it isn't "just you". It's all of us. As that blog entry indicates, it could be more about the data than the device moving forward.

The thought of data driving it all made me think of the Web 2.0 video "The Machine is Us/ing Us".

Mission US and educational gaming in general

At a recent regional meeting of integration specialists, we went through a brief tutorial of the Mission US 'game' funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The goal of Mission US is to take several historical events and create an interactive multimedia experience. Students would go through the simulations and experience the event. Lesson plans would be developed around the events to allow students to reflect and, with any luck, learn about the experience in a different way and think through his/her decisions on a higher level. The first of these games, "For Crown or Colony", is available for use right now and is based in 1770 Boston. I've gone through the simulation and I can see where it would be engaging if used in the right way.

One point to note, though, which leads to a broader thought about educational gaming in general. Even during the tutorial, the instructor noted that the pace of this game might be slower than the students would like to take. She mentioned that the temptation would be for the students to fly through the game and proper planning would be needed to be certain that the students grasped the appropriate concepts.

Is that the right approach? I'll let that question sit for a moment. Here's why ask it. I enjoyed the blog post and following comments on Scott McLeod's 'Dangerously Irrelevant' blog regarding educational games. He compared, for example, graphics on a PBS game to that of something like Madden NFL and asked rhetorically which one kids would gravitate toward. It led to a larger discussion of whether it was fair to measure graphics of 'educational' games with these big-budget entertainment games. Like it or not, those games are our competition for the eyeballs of the children. It isn't too far outside the realm to imagine that any educational gaming experience needs to be entertaining enough to be somewhat competitive with whatever else may be out there.

Back to the 'right' approach for Mission US. I don't pretend to say that playing the game straight through without pausing for reflection is the best method to learn. However, I will say that my own attempt to speed through the game left me wanting to speed through it again and purposely answer questions and confront scenarios in a different manner... just to see how my changes would impact the end result. I would contend that I'd learn something, though it may not be via the traditional learning method.

With entertainment games today, you learn by failing. Using the Madden example, I'll assume that a new player would get crushed by the computerized opponent if playing against them on the highest difficulty level. Some kids choose to start at the hardest level and get beaten repeatedly until they are competitive at that level. Others might choose the easiest level and smash the novice opponent until eventually increasing the difficult due to boredom. Some choose their favorite team, while others would try to win with the worst team or choose to play as the best team against the weakest possible opposition. In every case, you're learning something about the game (and, for that matter, those choices might tell you something about the player as well).

I think we'll see the day where self-directed learning will lead itself toward an educational environment where failure isn't seen as a bad test grade but, rather, as a necessary step to a completed objective. It happens all the time in the gaming world. Heck, when I was cramming for an industry certification, I can recall force-feeding myself sample questions from books and CD's. I missed a TON of prep questions and, along the way, memorized answers to many others in order to get certified. Somewhere in the midst of that, I learned a few things about the concepts that the questions were covering. It may not have been the intended or traditional learning style, but some type of education took place.

What are your thoughts on educational games? Do they have a role in today's classroom and will they (or should they) have a role in tomorrow's classroom?

The future of the blogging platform...

While following offshoot links from linked articles (!), I ran across a couple of interesting articles from over a year ago. One is a NY Times article cleverly titled "Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest" and the other, referencing that article, is a Guardian blog entry about the future of blogging. There is some relevant insight in those articles as well as some of the comments that follow those articles.

One comment compares the state of blogging to the Gartner 'hype cycle'. I would agree with the comment that, for various reasons, blogging as a concept may have fallen into the Trough of Disillusionment. With this blog, I certainly never sought book deals or notoriety that some bloggers seem to have been seeking. This is one premise you'll find stated in the linked articles. I do agree, though, that blogging is time-consuming if done well. In some circles, it has likely been replaced with easier and more immediate tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

To me, that comparison is somewhat of an apple-to-orange comparison. When using Twitter, it's difficult to expound on anything too meaningful in 140 characters or less. Granted, when time is of the essence and you simply want to share an article you read, a tweet makes sense (unlike a forwarded email with an entire article attached, which I get my share of). For the Facebook crowd, I'm not sure how the blog comparison works, but I will say that a Facebook status update I make will likely have more readers than this blog post may have. It's apples v. oranges, though, because the purposes are different.

Blogging, to me, is a chance to share thoughts on a given topic. My topic of choice, in this case, happens to be my job. For many, the topic of choice is a hobby of theirs. Your readers - should they happen to exist - are naturally going to be those who share a common interest. Blogs specific to an interest should naturally lead to a group of people using that mechanism to share insight on that interest. It would be difficult to share many details in 140-character bites via tweets and responses. Facebook is more general in nature and, while you could certainly create a Facebook group for a particular interest, it doesn't have the same look and feel as a blog post.

I use Twitter and Facebook on occasion and it's obvious that I haven't been blogging as much lately. However, I think my reasons are due to work and personal obligations eating into my time rather than the blog being replaced by some other medium. Also, as previously stated, it requires some time and effort. I'll turn right around and tweet a link to this and it will certainly take much less time than this post took. If you have to choose between a retweet, a comment on this post or a blog entry of your own, which would you choose and why?

To complete the hype cycle thought, I feel like the blog will remain in some form and that the 'Plateau of Productivity' will be seen as common interests are found and expounded upon by writers who choose to take the time to write about what is important to them.

Pew Report on Cell Phones and American Adults

While browsing around, I ran across one of the many interesting reports from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. This one is entitled "Cell Phones and American Adults" and, as is typically the case, there is quite a bit of interesting data that I can't analyze quickly enough (and isn't THAT what the Internet has become?) Just some random stats of interest from the report:

* 82% of American adults own a cell phone
* Adults who text send/receive about 10/day on average. Teens who text average 50/day
* African-Americans and English-speaking Hispanics are slightly more likely to own a phone than whites and they are also more frequent and intense users of the phone
* About 2/3 (65%) sleep with the phone nearby. It's over 90% for the 18-29 demographic
* (Only) 58% make voice calls on a cell phone for work-related purposes
* 86% think it's rude when someone regularly interrupts a conversation or meeting to check on their cell phone
* 31% of teens send more than 100 texts/day
* 39% of adults use the cell phone to entertain themselves when bored. 69% of teens do
* About 79% reported having a desktop or laptop computer - that's the same or slightly less than the percentage having a cell phone

I guess this is where I should add some level of in-depth analysis of this data. That's tough, because I can only really speak from my own perspective and it differs in a few areas. I can't imagine NOT using my cell phone for work-related purposes. I suppose the number could be artificially low due to the ages or work status of those surveyed. It's also hard for me to imagine that there are as many or more cell phone owners than computer owners, but that simply goes to show how quickly that market has grown and how necessary the cell phone is thought to be.

I confess that I'm quite surprised that a higher percentage of minorities own and use a cell phone (as compared to the white population). I see this as a potential wake-up call to those of us in education. Admittedly, I haven't traditionally been a big fan of cell phone use as part of the educational process. However, if this technology is helping to close the 'digital divide', how can we NOT embrace the use of this technology to help close achievement gaps?! There are some very interesting trends in minority use of technology brought up in this article that mirror these thoughts.

When I see the number of texts that our teens send, I'm reminder of something that David Couch brings up on occasion. I've heard him compare the depth of text conversations to the phenomenon of CB radios when they were first introduced. Many people wanted to talk on the CB but, if you read a transcript of the conversations taking place, most were fairly useless in nature. The cell phone data reveals that many text simply to say hello or chat - particularly with teens - so I can only assume that the nature of a printout of the texting conversations between many teens wouldn't necessarily be groundbreaking thought.

The data shows that most of us have a cell phone. Is there a way to use this device educationally? Should it change the way we teach? If virtually every teacher has a cell phone, is THAT how he/she should communicate with parents (rather than a phone in the school or classroom?)

"The Cloud" and 21st Century Learning

I probably have too many thoughts going on at once to make a sensible blog entry, but I've got to get with the program and keep the cobwebs dusted off of this site. An article was brought to my attention by a teammate. The article concerned student learning and cloud computing and the potential that's out there. Some of that article talks about advantages of students in a university setting creating their own 'cloud' of learning tools rather than relying on school-provided resources. It made me think of the possibilities we have in the K-12 space and, honestly, I took a detour and began to think more broadly about "21st Century Skills" and spent some time looking at the framework established by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

As I look through the details of those framework definitions, I see mention of core content subject knowledge accompanied by a huge number of necessary 'other' skills lumped into "Learning and Innovation", "Life and Career" and "Information, Media and Technology". These are the desired student outcomes and I'll rattle off several of these:

Think Creatively and Work Creatively with Others
Implement Innovations
Reason Effectively
Use Systems Thinking
Make Judgments and Decisions
Solve Problems
Communicate Clearly
Collaborate with Others
Access, Evaluate, Use and Manage Information
Analyze Media and Create Media Products
Apply Technology Effectively
Adapt to Change
Manage Goals and Time
Work Independently and Be Self-Directed Learners
Interact Effectively with Others
Manage Projects
Guide and Lead Others

I tired out and skipped a few here and there, but you get the idea. The design mentions several necessary support systems such as properly integrated standards and assessments, PD, learning environment and curriculum and instruction. Keep in mind that we're just now adopting common core standards for English and math. If we've struggled for years to adopt common standards in a few of the core subjects, how will we ever be able to properly assess how well a student applies technology effectively or reasons effectively. These skills are necessary but are also very subjective and, I think, would be difficult at best to properly assess.

Touching on the cloud-based computing article, I believe there are many readily available tools to help with some of the 21st century tasks noted above. I manage goals and time with a calendar application within my email client which, with any luck, I use to communicate clearly and collaborate with others. I can also collaborate with others using web-based productivity software from any number of providers. I can at least try to guide and lead others with blog posts such as this. And so on...

I could develop a lengthy list of conundrums we find ourselves in, only one of which being "how can teachers allow students to be self-directed learners when they are so hard-pressed to cover a list of content standards within the specified number of days/hours of instruction?" Technology alone isn't the answer, but it is a tool that can help get us there if properly leveraged. Some students are honing their 21st century skills on their own, using modern tools such as smartphones and any number of collaborative web resources. Some are undoubtedly using it for the wrong purposes, but I look forward to the day when we collectively allow more of this collaboration to take place as part of the classroom experience. With any luck, the benefits gained will far outweigh the issues that might arise.

Freeware feature: OldCMP

I recently ran across a freeware tool called OldCMP that's been around for quite some time. OldCMP is a command-line tool that helps you find old user or computer accounts in your Active Directory environment.

To those outside of technology, it doesn't make sense that you could "lose" user or computer objects. However, if you regularly use scripts and imaging software to create, replace update or delete massive numbers of users and computers, then the concept of "lost" objects makes a great deal of sense. In addition, in Kentucky's environment, we leverage ePolicy Orchestrator to keep antivirus software updated and, as you might imagine, it's difficult to gather useful reports on antivirus coverage if your machine counts aren't accurate.

** A quick 'cover yourself' type of note that this is a freeware tool and it is what it is, you get what you pay for, etc. Also, it's a command-line tool that is interfacing with Active Directory, so note that you can really do some damage to your directory if you don't use this tool properly. **

With that out of the way, let's cover a few details. You can download the tool at the link provided above. You can review many of the command-line switches available here. Switches that you'd use in our particular environment would likely be:

-b basedn (to specify the directory location to begin - in our case, you'd use several "DC=" settings to establish a district domain in our forest)

-age x (to specify the minimum age for a password change - we might use 90 days or even longer to increase the likelihood that results are machines/user that are really not being used)

-llts (This allows us to use LastLogonTimeStamp for some of the age stats. Some trust this more than the password change statistic in AD and, between the two, you will likely be able to verify that machines/users are really as dated as they appear)

- format dhtml (For IE, this would allow the report to generate in dynamic HTML format, which would allow you to sort the resorts by clicking on column headings, etc. This is very useful.)

-report (simply to write a report of the objects found)

So, if I run OldCMP from a command prompt with this format:

oldcmp.exe -b DC=adams,DC=kentucky,DC=org -age 90 -llts -format dhtml -report

If I were in the adams.kentucky.org AD domain, I should generate a dynamic HTML file that shows the computers in my domain that have a LastLogonTimeStamp setting of older than 90 days. It could be that some machines haven't logged on in years and you could find that by sorting on the proper column.

Perhaps some of you have used this tool in the past or, for others, perhaps you can use this to some benefit. In our environment, this could be a very useful tool for districts to clean up their AD domain and more easily identify machines that need to be removed.