Future of Education

I have a question. Should all students have the option of getting an equal education? (Equal does not mean the same). Does anyone really need to think about this? If so, what is there to think about?
The 6th largest district in the state of Ohio, nearly 21,000 K-12 students, failed another levy this week. Attached to that failure is the loss of teachers, athletics, high school busing, band, theater, all after school activities. For some students they lost the reason they come to school in the first place. Some can claim the failure was due to the economy. I don’t because two-thirds of the levies in central Ohio passed the same day. I put part of the blame on sections of the community not putting a value on a quality education for the students who live in the neighboring homes. The big question is, do those people have the right to choose the quality of education our children will receive?
I put the majority of the blame on a broken system. A system that give individuals who feel little or no tie to the local schools the ability to choose the fate of its students. All students deserve a quality education. Not just the ones coming from a community that backs it schools because they know the value of a quality education. While a high school teacher in Southwestern City teaches 155 students a day, teachers in neighboring districts will teach 120, 100 and even some as low as 80.
So, what is the solution? We need to stop relying on property taxes to fund schools. There needs to be a solution in which a set dollar amount is guaranteed to be spent on every student in the state. This amount needs to figure in reasonable loads for teachers based upon university research on class sizes. It needs to include technology. In the 21st century, technology should be ubiquitous in our schools. In Southwestern it is just old and dusty (Some labs have 10 year old computers). This money should include choices for our students. High schools should look more like colleges because of the vast experiences that are offered.
I know life is not fair, but should we be teaching that lesson to our youth through an unfair education system? Only a voice as loud as thousands can make a change to this reality.

About a week ago I asked my PLN on Twitter, “When a teacher says ‘I don’t have time for that’ do they mean, I don’t know how & I’m not willing to take the time to learn.” I will start by saying this is not my opinion, I was trying to start a discussion.

There was a great amount of wisdom in the responses.

@futureofedu It might just mean “I’m scared to try that!” from @kellyhines

I agree, many want to jump in, they are just scared of the water. In my district, there is me and the others in our educational technology department there to be their life jackets. Still, not all people are jumpping in.

@futureofedu means teacher doesn’t know how said thing fits w/curriculum therefore said thing is perceived as added on to curriculum. from @nancydevine

We must stress that it isn’t one more thing. When we talk about embedding technology and 21st century skills, it happens with the teaching of content, not separately.

@futureofedu Probably more like: “I’m being pulled in too many directions with stuff I already know to take on something else.” from @nlowell

@futureofedu Yes and no-My current workload exceeds my contractual liability.Should I feel pressured into even more with no allowance - no? from @sdisbury

@zemote @futureofedu re: teachers/time - I don’t even have time to do the things I know how to do and I desperately want to do. from @teacherc

Dear adminstrtors, please make time in your teachers schedule for them to learn and grow. Hire people in your district that can support this professional learning.

Dear Politician, Find a way for the above statement to be financially feasible for ALL schools.

Teachers need to shift their practices to embed 21st century skills and technology. This should not be an option. The problem is the lack of understanding and funding for this shift to happen at the speed it should be.  The question I am left to ponder, what do we do to change this?

A month or so ago our board of eduction asked me and my colleague’s to find some of the best schools in the country. The purpose was for us to visit the best and learn from them. I threw the question out to my twitter friends and here where the replies I received.

arvind@futureofedu 21st century school: Science Leadership Academy

jonbecker@futureofedu have you seen/read about High Tech High?

jonbecker@futureofedu they started in SD and have spread their wings: http://is.gd/kYrR

brueckj23@futureofedu Follow teacher @ this school on Plurk. Seem 2 b right there when it comes 2 things you are looking 4. http://bit.ly/CEaZq

Franki22@futureofedu I would say Center For Inquiry in SC is a model school–not sure what they do but questions and student thinking is key there

Here a few others I have found in my own searches:

Walter Payton HS (Illinois)

South Park Elementary

I’ll post more in the upcoming weeks as I continue my research. I hope to get a chance to visit the Science Learning Academy next year during the Educon conference.

It looks like the winner of this list for my travels will be High Tech High in San Diego. I am looking forward to the opportunity to go out there and see what they are doing. Hopefully we can go out there learn a few lessons and make our district one everyone wants to see in the future.

On Thursday February 19th, the Future of Education channel on uStream will have its first broadcast at 8:05 AM EST. This is a very exciting event for me. If you are not familiar with uStream, my experience so far has been great. Amazing how easy it is to setup and get running.

Thursdays broadcast will feature Billy Fischer of b & a, a 21st century advertising firm. The idea behind how the company is run is very interesting. Check out this article from the Columbus Dispatch to see for yourself.

Billy will talk:

I. about myself
II. about b&a
III. about the work we do and how we do it
IV. about how we are using social media for ourselves and our clients
V. about his recommendations to students as they move towards college and developing their own personal brand using social media

If you are free, come learn with us. If you cannot attend, I will try and have the video uploaded to this site at some point this week.

I just came across this interview with David Sherman, the principal of South Park Elementary School in Deerfield, Illinois. I’m sure he gets plenty of cracks about “South Park”. One statement he made stood out to me;

…I believe that I must model the use of Web 2.0 tools for the staff and parents. I feel that it is my responsibility to keep learning about these tools, which I do mostly through RSS feeds. I am confident that the teachers now know enough about Web 2.0 tools to start using them, so I am starting to “push” a little harder at the individual teacher level whenever the time is right. I spend a lot of time talking with teachers about ways to incorporate these tools into their teaching. Often, these discussion come from my classroom visits and teacher observations.

I don’t expect all administrators to as tech savvy as David Sherman, or others such as Chris Lehmann. What I would like to see is all administrators to have a basic understanding of technology, specifically web 2.0. I want them to understand the role technology plays in an effective 21st century school. I want them to be able to employ these technologies to increase student achievement in their district/building . When I say administrators, I mean superintendents, principals, directors and any other personnel in a position of leadership.

Once the administrators take on this role as a technology user, then more teachers in their district will take steps to do the same. At that point we will be able to push the way David Sherman is. Getting his teachers to a new level. If the teachers are moving to a new level, just think about the places they must be taking their students. I hope I can play a role in helping my district reach these new levels.

I am very fortunate to have one of the largest technology conferences in the US only 15 minutes from my front door. The unfortunate part is the lack of technology available at this conference. We have some of the best minds in the country keynote every year. This year Wes Fryer was the opening keynote speaker. He brought a great message of bringing change into the educational world. With thousands of educators in the audience he tweeted a message that he was going to have a back channel open using chazzy. As the introductions were made, he chatted with those of use that were in the chat room. WOW, chatting with the keynote speaker 2 minutes before he walked on stage, this is cool use of technology. This could have been a powerful conversation, but!

There is no wireless Internet at this conference. Ok, there is a coffee shop with one small hotspot. The only people in this conversation were those of us with smart phones (as if I needed a reason to love my iPhone, it gave me another). What about all the people in the audience who could have benefited from the conversation?

So what does this mean? Every negative has a lesson. The lessons I learned are:
•    Make sure you have the connectivity to support your audience. In schools, the wires, servers and other network hardware are more important than the computers. Feed your funds into the backbone of your network!
•    It is productive to have a digital background conversation during a lecture. I was engaged in the lecture (which is what a keynote really is). Our students can text, chat, IM during class and be productive. There need to be rules and guidelines though. I need to ponder this one a bit more.
•    Even the tech people evolve. A year ago I would have never said “let them use their cell phones I class.” This showed me as a learner how it can be done productively.

Those are lessons I have the ability to affect. One lesson I can’t affect is regarding eTech Ohio. I’ve been told for years about the dysfunction of eTech. This conference displays the dysfunction. Hopefully new leadership in the state of Ohio will bring new life to the governing body of technology in the state.

As I prepare for my presentations over the next week (school board tomorrow and Ohio eTech Conference next week) I want to use this space to thank my personal learning network (PLN). In my preparations, the responses I have gotten from my twitter friends,  Diigo Groups, co-workers, and my wife (she is my co-presenter at eTech) have been an amazing resource. I would suggest to all teachers to create an online PLN to be an add on to your face-to-face contacts. You will become a better teacher in no time because of the ideas and resources that will come your way. So thank you PLN.

Every once in a while I put together short training. They are hands on, quick, easy learning events. Yesterday I did one on making your computer read a Microsoft Word document back to you.

Why would a teacher want to have a student do this? Here are few reasons:

1. Find mistakes in their writing. I hate when my porpoise doesn’t have a purpose in my writing.
2. Learn to edit…you write and make mistakes, let them listen and find the mistakes
3. Share your ideas by adding a comment

Click here to learn

(This tutorial was made for Word 04′ on the mac. You can do this with other versions of Word, but the steps may be a little different.)

I love Animoto. It is a fun and easy way to create a short slide show video and share it with the world. It is now available on the iphone (and I assume the iPod touch). I created this video while waiting in the drive through line at Wendy’s (No I didn’t add eat healthier to my news years resolution list). It was that easy. By the time I finished eating, I opened the link and watched it. I give the app. 5 stars. It gave me a reason to take even more pictures with my iPhone. My first Animoto iPhone Video

Anyone have any great ideas on how to use this is a classroom?

Today is the Sunday many educators dread. After two great weeks of celebrating the holidays and being with our loved ones, we must now cram in all the work we have been putting off the last two weeks. I am no different. I have four videos to create for a presentation to district administrators this Friday, I need to create a wiki for a central Ohio technology integration collaborative I am working to create, come up with a 15 minute how to session for elementary teacher centered around Word, update my materials for Ohio Etech Presentation, and reply to all the emails I have received the last two weeks. So, why am I writing this post?

One of my goals for 2009 is to blog consistently. This means I may have to force myself to procrastinate some of my other work in order to write (wish my high school teachers could read that line, they would pass out from the shock). I believe I have some great ideas to share, and it is time I put my thoughts out for the world to see.

I am going to start 2009 with a series of post about what a 21st century school should look like. Few of my ideas are going to be original, but I hope it to be another place to start a conversation. The first post later this week will be about assessment in the 21st century. It is time to end standardized testing and put the technology that is available to work. From there I will branch off and discuss; taking bells out of the school, integration across curricular areas, writing, research, the use of course management systems, web 2.0, etc. By the time I’m done, this may be a 30 part series.

I’m looking forward to doing the research and hope to see what the educational bloggers think and have to share.