SMaRT Education Initiative - 1 to 1

Our world has changed (Part I)

2009-06-24T04:27:00.008-05:00

Every now and then, just to lighten things up a bit, I will share personal stories or little bits and pieces of information that prove one thing. Thomas Friedman was right. Our world has changed.

I'll start with this.

My six year old son has discovered YouTube.

I repeat.

My SIX year old son has discovered YouTube.

And what little gems did we unearth?

How about this.

The official White House Barack Obama Inauguration video (stuff I like to watch): One million, two hundred forty seven thousand, four hundred and sixty eight (1,247,468) views.

Alvin and the Chipmunks sing Crank That Soulja Boy (stuff HE likes to watch): SIX MILLION, TWO HUNDRED THIRTY SIX THOUSAND, NINE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY ONE (6,236,971) views.

I'm not making this up.

Folks, our world has changed.

The power is yours--seize it

2009-06-23T10:10:00.009-05:00

Drums keep pounding rhythm to the brain

La-dee-la-dee-dee

La-dee-la-dee-da

Wait till you have reached the age,

History has turned the page,

We still want to hear a brand new thing,

We still need a song to sing,

And the beat goes on.....

(Sonny Bono, “The Beat Goes On”)

Yes it does.

The debate rages on, hot and heavy, about the relative merits of NCLB and national standards. And so it should; these are important issues that merit careful consideration and conscientious, well-informed debate. For what it's worth, I think the idea of national standards has merit (after all, 2+2=4 whether you're in Georgia or California) and I think that all schools should be held to a measure of accountability. But this post isn't about that. We'll save that particular debate for another day.

This post is about power.

It's about what we do (or don't do) to arm ourselves with information and place ourselves in a position to make well-informed decisions about what is, and what is not, in the best interests of our schools and our children.

It's about not allowing ourselves to be swayed by hype and hyperbole.

It's about knowing.

Because knowledge, as they say, is power.

**********************

Have you heard it?

There has been a great deal of talk of late about improved NAEP test scores, particularly among African-American and at-risk students, as "proof" that our current efforts at reform are working. Words like "unprecedented, " "historic highs" and "steady progress" have been bandied about in official press releases and in print media with such regularity that it would be easy to assume, given these glowing and optimistic reviews, that we have turned a corner and that we're finally making meaningful and substantive progress in public education. I don’t think anyone expects perfection from our schools. But we do want to know, or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that we need to believe, that we’re moving forward.

But faith is not enough. Faith must be supported by facts, so rather than rely on an executive summary or someone else’s characterization of these scores, I decided to go to the best available source when I needed the most up-to-date data on the current state of student achievement.

I went straight to the New York Times.

Nah…

I went to the official Nation's Report Card. This is raw data, straight from the Department of Education, breaking down NAEP results in a surprisingly clear, concise and readable fashion. No hyperbole. No characterization.

Just the facts.

And I couldn't believe what I read.

*******************

First of all, let's talk about the word progress. It means, generally speaking, to move forward in some way. But when you carefully examine NAEP data, what will you see?

You’ll see:

A two point increase in the average 4th grade reading score from 219 in 2005 to 221 in 2007. But this is progress, right? Not really. Because the average score in 2002 was 219. The biggest spike in reading scores actually occurred between 2000 and 2002, when the scores went up by six points. But that was before NCLB was enacted into law.

Eight grade reading scores were up by only one point, from 262 in 2005 to 263 in 2007. But here’s the rub. The average score was 263 in 1998. That means in spite of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on reforms targeted at improved literacy, we show no statistical improvement over the course of the past decade. This data also shows that the gains our students make in the 4th grade are lost by the time our students reach the 8th grade.

Fourth grade mathematics scores show steady progress from 1990 (average score 213) to 2007 (average score 240). But, again, there’s an issue. The biggest gains occurred before NCLB, when scores rose from 213 in 1990 to 235 in 2003.

The same is true of eight grade mathematics. Scores were up by two points, from 279 in 2005 to 281 in 2007. However, once again, the pre-NCLB gains were larger, when scores increased from 263 in 1990 to 278 in 2003.

But here’s the real story. None of these improvements persist through to the end of high school. NAEP long-term test results show that since 1990, the scores of 17-year-olds have stagnated in math and fallen in reading.

So is this progress?

Decide for yourself. But here’s one more statistic. And this is the one that pushed me over the edge.

Over and over and over again, we hear about how our African-American children are doing better. That’s wonderful if true. But is it?

Here’s one stat. The Nation’s Report Card webpage documenting average 4th grade reading scores starts with the headline: “White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander fourth-graders scored higher in 2007 than in 1992.” Okay, fair enough. Read further. In 2007, the average 4th grade reading score for African Americans was 203. This is the “historic high.”

But then download the full report card. Go to page 21, where you’ll find the 4th grade reading scale. Then note where an average score of 203 places you.

An average score of 203 is below basic!

I was so dumbfounded, so utterly flabbergasted by this, I asked my mother, a retired teacher, to look at the report. She saw the same thing, shook her head and whispered “My God.”

Then I got angry. Really, really angry. (And I will try, gentle reader, not to have this blog devolve into an expletive-laced tirade). A 203 is NOT progress. It’s pathetic. It’s appalling. This is AMERICA not Guam! I don’t care who you are or where you’re from, 4th grade students in THIS country should NOT have an AVERAGE reading score of below basic. Ever. And then to have the temerity, the unmitigated GALL, to characterize this as progress, insults even the most basic notions of reason or intelligence.

(See, no expletives. I’m proud of myself).

Imagine this. Imagine if a teacher said to you of your child, “We are sooooo very proud of your child. S/he’s made soooooo much progress. S/he’s now IMPROVED to below basic. You must be very proud. We are.”

What would you do?

I’ll tell you what I would do.

X-Box…..gone.

Cable television……out.

Television……off.

iPod…….forget about it.

Air Jordan’s……don’t even look.

Jeans....from Sears.

Play time…..limited.

Bed time……8 o’clock EVERY night.

Homework…..constantly, all the time, every day until you leave my house, get a job or win the lottery.

Fuzzy wuzzy, feel good tolerance of woeful academic performance…not in my house. Not ever.

Folks, when I see scores like this, I’m reminded of a scene from the movie Armageddon where the Bruce Willis character is informed that the only way to save the world is to send his team of deep sea drillers into outer space to drill a hole in an asteroid and drop a nuclear bomb in the hole. The Willis character looks at the NASA rep (played with surprising restraint by Billy Bob Thornton) and says (as only Bruce Willis can), “You’ve got to be kidding. That’s the best you can do. You’re NASA. You’re geniuses. And this best you can do? Oh God….”

That’s what I think about education. Public education is full of, well…educators. You guys are really, really smart. You have PhD’s. You write textbooks. You study the human brain. You passed statistics. You get billions and billions of dollars and year, and this is the best we can do?

It is at this point that I can almost understand (almost….) some republican concerns about increased education spending. Trillions of dollars and this is our return? A generation of functionally illiterate kids who are hopelessly ill equipped and ill-prepared to compete and succeed in the world as it exists now? This is what you give me? And then you have the nerve to look me in the face and characterize THIS as progress?

Oh man……

So one of three things is true. We either:

cannot fix public education because the problems are too deep, too entrenched, for systemic change, and no one has the gumption, the courage, to say so;

can fix public education but don’t know how and no one has the gumption, the courage, to say so; or

can fix public education, and we know how to do it, we just don’t choose to do it. And why should we? Public school is for poor kids anyway. As long as our talented tenth is thriving, we still need someone to bag our groceries and to sell us Jimmy Choo shoes. So pumping out ill-informed, uneducated worker bees into our economy suits us just fine. (Of course, we can never, ever say that…that would be positively un-American).

Whatever the cause, the effect is the same. There’s not enough work for the worker bees anymore. And with about 50 million illiterate Americans and climbing, who do you think is going to pay for all these unemployed and underemployed worker bees? Look at your paycheck. See all those Federal, state and local deductions? That’s right. YOU will. YOU will end up paying for our failure to educate our children. Or more likely, our children will end up paying this debt. A debt they didn’t create and don’t deserve.

Didn’t like the bailouts? Stimulus package tick you off? Well, if we keep this up, if we don’t fix our schools, if we keep characterizing average scores of below basic as “historic highs,” if we don’t start calling it like it is, then the looming crisis, both human and economic, will make our current economic travails look like a hiccup by comparison.

Believe me, I am, by nature, an optimist. I do not ascribe to the politics of fear and polarization. But this is real folks. It’s real and it’s happening right now.

But please, please, please, don’t take my word for it. Don’t blindly accept my characterization. That’s the point of this post. Agree with me, disagree with me, tell me I’m full of it, it’s cool—but check it out for yourselves. Arm yourselves. Inform yourselves.

Then decide.

There are many forms of power; most unattainable to the common citizen. But some forms of power are yours and can never be taken away should you choose to exercise that power. One is the power of the mind. It’s yours. Use it. The other is the power of information. One of the great benefits of living in the Digital Age is that information is readily available. There is simply no excuse for not knowing.

So take it.

Power.

It doesn’t belong to Obama, or Duncan or your elected officials.

It’s yours.

Seize it.

The power to think, the power to decide, the power to act and the power to shape our individual and collective future.

I'll throw it out there...

2009-06-18T10:41:00.006-05:00

"Hey Mike, aren't you blogging anymore?"

I'm sorry. I've received several emails like this. I have been silent for a while.

It's not because I've run out of things to say. To the contrary, I've probably started, then stopped, at least a dozen new blogs. I have a great deal that I would like to say. What I've struggled with, ergo my silence, is what I should say.

I started blogging because I had all these ideas, all this stuff, just sitting in my head and on my hard drive collecting intellectual dust. I didn't know if any of it had any merit; I didn't know if it was any good, so I thought...let's just throw it out there and see what happens. I didn't really expect much. Then I received my first comment. I was floored. Then a second, a third. Then I started finding references to my blog that I didn't know existed; references that indicated, to my silent surprise, that some of the things I'd written moved and inspired.

Wow.

Suddenly, I began to feel a measure of responsibility. I didn't want to just add to the white noise that too often characterizes the ongoing, and annoyingly circuitous, dialogue about educational reforms; I wanted to say something of merit, of substance. I wanted to add something of value--especially for the teachers who I believe are on the front lines of our efforts at educational reform. And as I scanned through my first wave of blogs, I realized that I didn't really talk much about technology per se. I didn't talk about the newest or most interesting hardware and software. I didn't identify specific instructional uses of technology. As I read through the posts, one by one, I realized that I essentially offered commentary.

But is that okay? Is that enough?

A few weeks ago, my company, S mart Technology Services, launched a new Smart Tech Blog "that covers technological trends, design elements, and marketing schemes that affect us in the office, on the street, and at home." The blog is written by our marketing manager, Jeff Wichmann. Jeff writes in a concise and informative style; with his own unique wit. You should check it out or add it to your blog roll.

Of course, this still begs the question, what do I do? Where is my place? What can I add that is of meaning and value?

I guess, in the end, I have to trust what's in my heart.

I could, I suppose, talk more about widgets and gadgets, but there are already a number of people doing that far better than I ever could. I could, I suppose, focus more on curriculum design and alignment strategies, and I will certainly do more of that in the future, but again, there are already a number of bloggers out there doing that far better than I ever could.

So I will continue to offer commentary.

I will continue to do what I think, what I hope, has some value to you. Because once again, I find that I have all these ideas, all this stuff, sitting in my head and on my hard drive.

So I'll throw it out there.

And we'll see what happens.

Why do we have summer vacation?

2009-05-11T09:14:00.011-05:00

Oh boy.....

I'm venturing into very dangerous, very sensitive territory here, so please allow me to qualify a few things at the outset.

First, as anyone who follows this blog knows, my mother was a school teacher for over 20 years. So I truly appreciate how hard teachers work and the mental and physical demands of the job. I get that. I really do. Teachers, I'm on your side.

Second, as a parent, I also understand the importance of family time; of the need for a contiguous, uninterrupted block of time to play together, vacation together or just be together.

That said, I'll throw this out there.

Why do we have summer vacation?

This question occurred to me as I read the increasing number of plurks and tweets from educators eagerly awaiting the end of the school year. I understand that. I felt the same way when I was a student (14 more days to go, 13 more days to go...), and would undoubtedly feel the same way if I were a teacher. But as the parent of a school age child, and as someone who has only worked in the private sector, I find myself increasingly confused by the uniquely American phenomenon of taking nearly 2 months off from school. I addition to being out of sync with virtually every other facet of our society, I'm beginning to think that this practice has disastrous implications for the cognitive development of our children.

I'll elaborate.

Being a lawyer just sucks. Really. You work all of the time. Even if you're one of those large law firm lawyers billing $500 an hour and making a kings ransom in salary (which is the benefit), the attendant cost is that you work constantly and you have to be reminded about your children's birthdays. I know there have been entire years where I did not take a week off. There was a three year stretch where I did not take a vacation at all. I have never taken two consecutive weeks off. If I took a month off, I may as well stay wherever I landed because I'd become irrelevant or get fired.

Here's a bit of insight from behind the veil. I don't care what employers say, they don't like it when employees take vacations. They really don't. I've huddled up with enough business owners when vacation requests come in to know that they might give you the Cheshire cat grin and say: "Have a really nice vacation (toothy grin on cue)." But what they're thinking is: "I ought to fire you, you thankless sack of [expletive deleted] because while you're busy hanging out at Disneyland with the wife and kids, I'll be here running the business that allows you to pay your damn mortgage. Yeah, have fun and pray to God that I don't come across someone while you're busy getting a tan that I think is better suited to do your job."

Two months off just doesn't work in real life. Not for anything. Until Congress made it illegal, women were getting fired for getting pregnant and having babies! (An extreme and awful practice by the way). My point is this, business is not seasonal. Life is not seasonal. The "real world" for which we are preparing our kids is not seasonal.

Three words for everyone. "Employee at will." Look it up.

Point #2.

If our kids aren't in school, especially Pre-K through 8th grade children, what the hell else do they have to do? Work for the board of trade? Really, what are they going to do? Watch video games? That's healthy. Play sports? They could do that and still be in school. Go on vacation with the family? Great. Take two weeks. Now what?

Right now, parents from sea to shinning sea are scrambling to figure out what they're going to do with their little bundles of joy when that final school bell rings. I know I am. And that's all fine and good for parents with means and options; they can send their kids to camps or summer programs. But what about the millions of parents who are struggling just to keep the lights and gas on? Who can't pay their mortgage or their rent? Free summer school is an answer for some; especially in Title I schools, but this is not a systemic solution available to everyone.

All that takes a back seat to the biggest problem.

The BIGGEST problem, in my humble opinion, is that kids get REAL dumb REAL fast during the summer. It's amazing how much of the stuff we just spent the last 10 months cramming into their still developing brains gets lost. After Christmas break, my son seemed to forget how to write his name. (So now time away from school does not mean time off from school--much to my son's disdain and vocal displeasure). We take this time off, kids get a great tan and then spend the first month or so of the next school year playing "let's catch up" instead of "let's push forward." The more I think about it, the more I think this whole summer vacation thing just doesn't make sense.

Yes, there should be some time off. Some sort of summer sabbatical. According to my friend and colleague Kelly Tenkely, the schools in her county take a three week summer break and three additional three week breaks throughout the school year. This seems to make more sense to me. Kids, take your three week break and then, to use my mama's words, "get your rusty butt back in school." Now we could (and probably should) change things up a bit in the summer. We could have a shorter school day. We could change the hours so we're not getting our kids up before the crack of dawn. (Who's BRILLIANT idea was THAT anyway?) We could allow the children more free time or the ability to craft individualized lesson plans. Perhaps we could also use this time to focus on subjects that get the short shrift during the standardized test driven school year such as art, music, and yes, sports and physical exercise. We could have school camps where the kids are learning, having fun and developing a stronger sense of community. This time could be used for meaningful, more deliberate professional development rather than those awful (and generally ineffective) in service days during the school year that many teachers seem to hate.

And finally, but most importantly, perhaps this could be a time where teachers are encouraged to experiment with innovative instructional practices, such as the use and integration of technology, because they’re not consumed and driven by standardized test prep. There's a whole lot we could do during the summer that’s different if we're creative and willing to think outside of the box. It doesn’t have to be more of the same.

So what do you think? Is a summer vacation a needed and necessary respite? Or does putting the brakes on learning and saying, "we'll see you in two months" do more harm than good? Is this really right for our times; especially in high-poverty communities with a large number of at-risk students where the school might be the only stabilizing factor in their lives? Sure, this time off made sense when most of our students spent the summer harvesting crops or helping out on the farm. But if I may, this is 2009, not 1909. If you were to poll most kids in inner-city public schools today, I suspect very few of them spent their summer shucking corn.

So is “summer vacation,” like so many other traditions in our schools, something that we should take a long look at and ask ourselves, “Is this really in our student’s best interests?"

I'm open here. I'm not dogmatic about this and I'm not necessarily trying to make a case. So by all means, let me know what you think. Am I off? Are there alternatives? I'd like to know. Because I don’t need to be right. But I would like to arrive, logically and dispassionately, at the right answer. Because a lot of what we’re doing right now just isn't working.

Kids first, remember? It's a motto I see prominently displayed in most schools.

So what do we do?

13, 12, 11….the final school bell is about to ring.

What should we be doing when that final bell rings to truly put our kids first?

Yes I can......(Happy Mothers Day)

2009-05-10T02:03:00.011-05:00

A flower is a beautiful thing.

It is fragile; easily damaged. It must be watered and nurtured. It needs good soil. It requires the warmth of he sun.

But when all of these things work together, water, earth, sun and a kind and gentle hand, a simple seed can grow and bloom into something more; something extraordinary, something.......beautiful.

And so it goes with a life.

All life.

*******************

I was a geeky, skinny little kid. My teeth were too big for my face, I wore coke bottle glasses, my hair was like steel wool, utterly impervious to combs, and unlike my brother, who was born cute, I was, well, pretty darn funny looking. I cannot count the number of times that girls in my grammar school class would say to me, "Your brother is fine. What happened to you?" Kids can be cruel in that way. It did not help that I was one of those really "smart" kids that could NOT be cool even when I tried (and I did try), I could not dance (that stereotype about all black folks having rhythm....nope, not true), and unlike my brother, who could bring it, I lacked a whit of athletic ability.

I wanted to be Michael Jackson.

Instead, I was Tito.

No worse.

I was Marlon.

But I loved to write. Writing was my escape, my refuge. Writing is what I did well.

And virtually everything I wrote, I shared with my mother. No matter how busy she was, no matter how exhausted from the physical and emotional demands of waking before the crack of dawn to teach school all day and then raise two rambunctious boys at night, she received everything I wrote with genuine enthusiasm. She carefully and conscientiously read whatever I presented, whether it was a comic book, a short story, a poem or a play, and after wading through the misspelled words and my barely legible cursive handwriting, she would look up, smile, and often say, "This is really good honey."

I knew some things were better than others. Everything I wrote couldn't be the next great American novel. But that's not how my mother made me feel. Everything was special. She made me feel special. Powerful. She made sure that I understood that what you do, what you think, what you take the time to create, means something. It's a gift. It matters.

You matter.

*******************

I will never forget one particular incident. I wrote a poem for a homework assignment. I think I was in 4th or 5th grade. My mother loved the poem. I turned it in, got a B. I was a bit disappointed, I thought the poem was better than that, but what can you do? But my mother was having none of that. She was enraged. And you have to understand something about my mother. She doesn't do enraged. Annoyed? Yes. But not enraged. My mother is the ultimate moderate; even tempered, solid, steady.

But not this day. This day, she was not pleased. She thought I got jobbed.

So without telling me, she took my poem, sent it into a magazine and they published it along with my picture. At the next parent teacher meeting, my mother hard charged in, magazine with published poem in tow, and presented it to the teacher.

How's THAT for your B?

To this day, we laugh about that.

God bless mothers.

Mother, may God bless you.

*******************

Everything I am, I do or become; all I create, all I impact, however small, I lay at your feet. There would be no blog, no JD, no me, without you. The words would not flow so freely if not for you.

If not for you, I would not have the courage to gaze into the great unknown, into the future, and think silently, but confidently...

Yes I can.

So thanks Mom.

Your lima beans, which you would make by the vat, were simply horrendous; beyond description. To this day, I will not eat a lima bean. Ever. I will not make my children eat lima beans. Ever.

But lima beans notwithstanding, you were my wind, my blessing.

You rock.

Happy Mothers Day to you and to mothers everywhere.

A vision for School 2.0...

2009-04-24T09:16:00.004-05:00

This is my shortest blog....like ever.

It's less a blog and more just a thought I'd like to share. Do with it what you will.

Thanks to my wacky, wonderful PLN, I started my morning listening to The Age of Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In. Then I started thinking about this whole "School 2.0" thing and what it means to me.

For me, in my vision of the future, School 2.0 is all about school repurposed as a community center. Classroom cohorts give way to communities, both local and global. And technology is not a cold lifeless thing, but is used to edify, educate and to create connections.

For me, School 2.0 is all about connections. It's all about bringing us together; learning together, growing together, living together.

Pretty neat, huh?

Happy Friday everyone.

And wherever you are, take a moment, open your blinds, open your windows, and let the sun shine in.

Inspiration from Earth Day

2009-04-22T09:16:00.006-05:00

Every child should have a laptop.

Every child?

Yes. Every child in every school, whether rich or poor, should be handed a laptop, netbook, or some other portable, wireless device on their first day of school along with textbooks, pens, paper and other school supplies.

Impossible you say.

Nutty idea.

Ok. Here's another one.

Wireless access should be a public utility. It should be available to every household in the same way that electricity is available to every household. It should not be the province of the few. It should be a resource for all.

Never happen you say.

Nutty idea.

Well how about the idea of an "Earth Day?" Back in 1969 when the idea of Earth Day was proposed, I'm sure there were a number of naysayers who thought...yeah right. This is stupid. More hippie, commie nonsense. This will go nowhere.

Earth Day is now observed in 175 countries. It is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities. More than a half billion people participate in Earth Day Network campaigns every year. It is now, by some estimates, "the largest secular holiday in the world."

How's that for a nutty idea?

My last blog post was titled: You take inspiration where you find it. That sentiment is certainly very true today.

Every great event in the course of human history begins with an idea. An idea becomes a cause. A cause can become a movement that, one day, changes the world.

So I'll say it again...

Every student should have access to a laptop.

Every home should have wireless access.

Crazy idea, right?

Maybe.

But maybe, just maybe, it's an idea that could become a cause that, one day, changes more than just our schools, but changes our world. Think of a world completely connected. Think of a world where the barriers between "us" and "them" become blurred, then broken down. Because if you think of it, there really is no "them." It's just "us." One world, one planet, one cause, one destiny.

Happy Earth Day everyone.

You take inspiration where you find it...

2009-04-21T14:35:00.010-05:00

It's funny where you find inspiration.

I am not a big fan of beauty pageants. When I was a boy, the Miss America pageant was a really big deal. (Yes, I'm that old). My family and I would crowd around our Zenith for 2 plus prime-time hours and eagerly await for Burt Parks to say the magic words:

"And the title goes to..."

People may forget, but when Vanessa Williams won the Miss America pageant back in 1983, that was almost as big a deal then as Barack Obama is now. That might sound incredulous, but it's true. For decades, the Miss America pageant was as much a part of Americana and American folklore as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet.

But that was a long time ago. The Miss America pageant has been relegated to cable television and beauty pageants now seem, I don't know, strangely out of place. Young women parading around in poofed up hair and bathing suits, while not the worst thing in the world, seems kind of dated; passe.

That said, I was kind of intrigued when I opened my web browser this morning and read the headline: "It's Blogger vs. Beauty in Gay Marriage Tiff." I thought...alrighty now. This should be interesting. So I read the article.

Apparently, during Sunday night's Miss USA competition, Perez Hilton (a pageant judge) asked Carrie Prejean, Miss California, a question about her views on same-sex marriage. She answered that it was "great" that the option is available in some states, but that "in my country and in my family, I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman -- no offense to anyone out there."

Prejean later told Fox News that "God was testing my character and faith" by making her answer the controversial question in front of such a large audience. She reinforces her point by telling Fox that "I have nothing against gay people and I didn't mean to offend anyone in my answer."

Prejean also went on to state that she believes her comment on gay marriage "cost me my crown," but she "wouldn't have had it any other way. I said what I feel."

Following suit, Hilton appeared on MSNBC as well as CNN's 'Larry King Live,' arguing against Prejean's point of view. Following the show, he called her a "dumb b----" on his Twitter page, and though he apologized for it, later rescinded the apology.

My first thought after reading the article was to think that Hilton overreacted a bit. He asked a question, it was answered politely and respectfully (albeit in a manner he did not like) and that was that. He had the right to disagree with her answer, but to get personal, to attack the person, I thought was a bit out of bounds.

That's just my opinion.

And as I moved through the day, the more I thought about this young lady and her answer, and the more I thought...Right on, Miss California. NOT because I agreed with the substance of her answer (I'm not touching that issue here; wrong place, wrong time) but because she stuck to her convictions and said what she believed when she had to know, given who was asking the question, that her answer would not be well-received.

That took guts.

And I think there's a lesson in that for those of us in education technology.

**************

This is, by turns, an exciting and trying time. What we are trying to do in our respective spheres of influence; to integrate technology into our curriculum and classrooms, to change deep-seeded pedagogical practices, to usher in something new, is a very, very difficult thing to do in education. There have been times when I will readily admit that I find myself mired in frustration. I have never ever in my professional career encountered a system so mired in its traditions and so institutionally resistant to change.

Do you sometimes feel as though you’re baying into the wind? I do. Do you sometimes feel completely alone? I have. Do you sometimes feel as though your ideas are merely tolerated, but not embraced, by your peers and colleagues? I have often felt that way.

So what keeps me going?

I find comfort and inspiration in these words:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

"Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
Theodore Roosevelt

What keeps me going is faith.

It is my fundamental and passionate belief, it is my faith, that we are on the right side of the educational equation. Modern interactive technologies, when used in a pedagogically sound manner, are the most powerful tools for teaching and learning ever invented. But more than that, technology is the great equalizer. It knows no bias. It does not discriminate; it takes no account of race, faith or gender. It simply allows the user to access, learn, and ultimately, to create. To that end, it renders the limitations imposed by time, space, scarcity and lack almost irrelevant. When fully integrated and equitably available, technology allows 21st century schools to be what they are ideally supposed to be—an avenue to the American Dream for all children.

So, yes, to that degree it is about the technology.

Let’s call it like it is.

Let’s stop apologizing for being advocates of technology integration and talking about technology by talking around technology. Let’s be clear about what we believe and why. Let's fight the fight that needs to be fought, head on, with courage, conviction and clarity of purpose.

Tell the world what you believe.

I'll go first.

I believe that every child in every school should have ubiquitous, one-to-one access to technology.

I believe that technology should be fully integrated into our curriculum and classrooms; not to replace but to augment and support current learning strategies.

I believe that there is a time, place and undeniable value to lecture-based instruction. But I also believe in student-driven, constructivist learning and believe that constructivist, project-based instruction should be integrated into our core curriculum and not relegated to special projects.

I believe that the "either/or" dichotomies that have plagued efforts at education reform are just silly. The presence of technology does not mean the end of books, art, talking or teachers and people who raise that red flag need to stop.

I believe that basic skill proficiency is critical, especially in high poverty and minority communities, because basic skills are the building blocks of all knowledge. But too narrow or singular a focus on basic skills, and assessments which merely reward the ability to ram, remember and regurgitate, do not prepare our children to compete and succeed in the world as it exists now.

I believe that public education has failed a generation of children, especially poor, black and inner-city children. The drop out rate in our 50 largest cities is stunning; tragic. I'm not faulting individuals. The problems are systemic.

I believe that teachers, on the whole, get a raw deal. We hand you chalk, recycled textbooks and maybe a functioning overhead projector and then expect you to engage a generation of "fast twitch" kids who live in a world "fueled by technology, knowledge and innovation." Then we blame you because our educational outcomes are not up to par. That strikes me as fundamentally unfair.

That said, I have not lost hope.

I believe that our strength and resiliency as a nation revolves around our extraordinary ability for change. As a nation, we have shown, time and time again, that we can change, that we can stop, that we can dig our heels in the metaphorical sand and say...

No more.

And so it will be with education.

It may take my lifetime, but we will reform our schools. I truly believe that. (How we get there is a topic for another day). But I also believe that ubiquitous access to technology should be an integral part of school reform. Technology should be as accessible to children inside of our schools as it is outside of our schools and in virtually ever other facet of our daily lives. So if asked, I am staunchly pro-technology, and my mission from now until the day I retire (or until I'm fired for writing blogs that link beauty pageants and education technology) is to help schools acquire the technology they need and then use that technology in a pedagogically sound manner. I know not everyone agrees with that, technology integration is a hot-button topic, but that's cool.

Because sometimes, you just have to step up, stand up, and let the world know what you believe.

Come what may.

So well done Carrie Prejean. Well done. You may have lost a crown. But in my book, you're a winner.

Call your shot...

2009-04-08T18:25:00.015-05:00

I've heard that Arnie Duncan is a baller.

That's black folk speak for "he can play basketball."

Whether this is literally true or not; I don't know. I've never seen him play. I do know Duncan and Obama used to play together here in Chicago. But does he have a game? Who knows. But Arnie Duncan is a tall guy, he looks like he's in pretty decent shape, so I'm inclined to give our Secretary of Education the benefit of the doubt.

***************

This weekend, I had the unique pleasure of wading through the minutia of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Fun. Fun. Fun. Can someone please explain to me why all Federal legislation is virtually incomprehensible? I mean...everyone is DC is a lawyer! Seriously. Go to DC and check it out. Your senator? A lawyer. Congressman? A lawyer. Hotel concierge? Underemployed lawyer. Cab driver? Unemployed lawyer. So why is it that finding someone in DC to construct a basic sentence is so hard? I thought the ability to write was a prerequisite to passing the bar exam. I guess times are a changing.

In any event, as I waded though rhetoric and conditions, qualified by caveats and assurances, sports metaphors kept racing through my mind. (Maybe it was because I was watching the Final Four while trying to figure out where all of this money was going). After spending hours reading, cross-checking, extrapolating and analyzing, I thought to myself....I think I know what Obama and Duncan really want to say here but can't. It would be...uncouth. But when you break ARRA down, when you get to the heart of the matter after all of the regulatory gobbly-gook, what I think they want to say is:

Rethink everything.

Or to use a basketball metaphor, I could see Arnie Duncan standing in the lane like Shaq, guarding the hoop (or in this case, a $5 billion dollar fund that he controls) like a hawk, saying to school boards, superintendents, school districts and principals from sea to shining sea: Bring it! Show me what you've got. You've got some money, but I want to know what you did, how you did it, and what you came up with that's new. And don't even TRY to come into the lane with some soft, tired, unoriginal retread masked as reform. If you do, I will knock that weak garbage back in your face. Come strong or not at all.

Show me something!

***************

A true baller is also a shot caller. A shot caller is someone who will tell you what they're going to do before they do it, dare you to stop it, and then do it. Jordan was the ultimate shot caller. I'll never forget one game where Dekembe Mutombo of the finger wagging fame was playing one of his typically annoying "I-just-blocked-your-shot-so-I'm-going-to-wag-my-finger-in-your-face" games against the Bulls. Jordan was fouled and walked to the free throw line. He yelled: "HEY MUTOMBO," closed is eyes, dribbled the ball and proceed to make the free throw with his eyes closed.

Yeah baby!!

THAT'S a shot caller!!

And THAT'S what we need in education.

With an unprecedented 5 BILLION dollar fund in his back pocket, $5 billion that schools will only get for showing innovative instructional practices, it's as though Duncan and Obama are daring the shot callers to step up. Shot callers are doers. Shot callers are innovators. Shot callers are Don Quixote; people who dream the impossible dream. People like my girl Ginger Lewman knocking it out of the park at Turning Point Learning Center doing GREAT things with GREAT people in the heartland of Kansas. People like Kelly Tenkely, rocking it out with a website on technology integration that you can actually use, creating something with her hands, her mind and her passion for absolutely no money that is of use and value to anyone, anywhere, anytime. People like my guy Korbus who is, I think, writing a primer for the educational uses of laptops for, like, all of South Africa.

Shot callers.

So you know I think? I think if I were a board member, superintendent, principal or a teacher in the trenches, I wouldn't be satisfied with that first wave of stimulus money. That's basically back fill and catch up money. I would want want more. That 5 billion Duncan has? That my money. I would call my shot. I've got kids who need me, parents who depend on me and 5 billion reasons to bring it; to come up with something new; something strong, something truly innovative.

So at the end of the day, don't fixate on the words of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. (Unless, of course, you're a lawyer and you like doing that sort of stuff). Focus on the meaning. And what is the meaning? That the status quo is not good enough. Come strong. Bring it like Jordan. Come get this money. But don't do it for yourself. Do it for your kids. Because they need you. Because if you don't do it, who will?

So create.

Think outside of the box.

Fight for the future of your kids.

Innovate.

Rethink everything.

*****************

I'm sending a shout out to all of the ballers and shot callers.

We've got a MAJOR one-time infusion of new funding. Kudos to Obama and Congress. But more is waiting.

Bring it!

Show Duncan and Obama what you've got. Show the world what you've got.

We're watching......

Waiting.......

Call your shot.

Pedagogues--gotta love 'em

2009-04-07T09:23:00.005-05:00

Pedagogues.

Gotta love 'em.

I remember the first time I heard the word. My younger brother, who works as a teacher in a high-risk, special needs school, was offering up his opinions on the difference between educational theory (or those who prattle on endlessly about educational theory) and the reality of life in the classroom. My brother is a black and white, "either/or" kind of guy; all right angles, no shades of gray. If he likes you, you'll know. If not, leave the room very quickly.

Anyway, many of his exact words on this particular occasion were largely unprintable, but I perked up when he used the word "pedagogue." I knew the word "pedagogy," but this one was new. Pedagogue. But every time he said it, it rolled off his tongue the same way someone would use the word excrement.

I remember laughing and asking my baby bro why he was being so harsh. Wrong question. He let loose with a expletive laced tirade about pedagogues that would make our mother seriously rethink our private school education.

****************

On occasion, I will volunteer my time in my son's kindergarten class. Six words come to mind every time I do this: "Oh...my...dear...God" and "controlled chaos." It's insane. I have no earthly idea how the teacher, God bless her, does this everyday. There are too many kids in the classroom, classroom management is an ongoing battle, there are kids with wildly different learning abilities and styles and if you drop your gaze for a moment to focus on a single child, classroom chaos will soon ensue as the other children, now bored, begin to (literally) take their education into their own oh-so-curious little hands.

After each one of these visits, I better understand my brother's frustrations with pedagogues. They talk. And talk. And talk. They write white papers. They give lectures. They theorize.

They have PhDs.

They know....

And you know what?

Most of them don't know a damn thing.

****************

It seems there are reform hawks on one side and teacher unions on the other. I sit squarely in the middle. I am a reform hawk that vigorously defends and supports our teachers because I think that meaningful eduction reform must begin with engaging and motivating teachers. I also really appreciate the work they do. The pay is crappy, the hours are terrible, the work is often thankless and the working conditions are often antiquated and hopelessly out-of-date. But when something goes wrong....bad test scores, lousy graduation rates, truculent, underachieving kids, who do we blame? Teachers. It's a lousy deal. An unfair deal.

And I don't like unfair.

So here's my deal. My thought for the day. There's a lot of talk about education reform these days, especially with all this new stimulus money swirling about. But if you've never been a teacher, spent time in a classroom, managed thirty kids that are not your own; if you've never been in the trenches; if you've never been a teacher, then all you are to me is a citation. Go write a white paper or give a lecture at Harvard.

Because I have no use for pedagogues.

I'd rather spend my time talking to teachers.

I rather spend my time taking to someone who actually knows something.

21st Century Skills-- Use it or lose it?

2009-04-04T17:16:00.010-05:00

It's funny how an entire lifetime can boil down to a few seminal moments. Fleeting images, mental and emotional vignettes that flash through the recesses of our minds, little things...small things...but ultimately, the things that both shape and define our lives.

I clearly remember one such moment from my youth.

I was a chatty little lad. (Which I'm sure stuns those of you who know me). I liked learning new and fancy words and then impressing my friends and family by using these new and fancy words in new and fancy sentences. My mother once joked that I started talking fluently at 2, and over 40 years later, she's still waiting for a pregnant pause.

Rimshot, please.

Anyway, one day when I was in the 7th or 8th grade, I heard the word "gauche" for the first time. I think it was during an episode of Gilligan's Island; from the lips of one of the most iconic characters in broadcast television history--Mr. Thurston Howell, III of course. I remember thinking, what a cool sounding word. I liked the way it rolled off the tongue. Gauche, gauche, gauche. Saying it made me feel so grown up. Like a man.

The problem is I had no idea what it meant.

I thought it meant "sophisticated, proper, something classy." (After all, if Mr. Howell said it, it had to be something good). So I vividly remember the day when my father (a very, very large man), my mother, my brother and I were in our kitchen talking casually after dinner and as everyone was about to leave the room I had one of those "let-me-show-mommy-and-daddy-how-grown-I-really-am" moments.

I said, "Mom, Dad...."

All eyes turned to me. I had the floor.

"Our house is so gauche."

Silence.

Dead silence.

Then my Dad's upper lip did this thing where it quivered, got really thin and turned kind of blue.....which meant he was really mad. My mother, an even tempered person if ever there was one, looked at me without a hint of amusement and said, "What did you say?"

At this point, I began to suspect I had done something terribly, terribly wrong.

I got as far as "Um...." before my mother said:

"Don't ever say that again."

Now I was in full-blown retreat.

"But Mom, gauche is a good thing."

Her expression softened a bit but I could tell she was still not pleased. "No, it is not a good thing," she said.

"Michael," my mother looked me squarely in the eyes and spoke in a cool measured tone.

"Don't ever use a word unless you know what it means."

With that she left the room along with my father whose upper lip had thankfully returned to its normal size and color. I breathed a sigh of relief. But they never did tell me what "gauche" meant. Since I couldn't even spell the word, I was unable to look it up in the dictionary. I didn't find out what gauche meant until years later.

I remember that day too.

For years, I thought the word "gauche" was spelled "gosh" (which explained why I couldn't find it in the dictionary). But when I finally figured that out that the "o" was in fact an "au" and the "sh" an "che," I was able to pull out our twenty pound, eleven inch thick unabridged dictionary (remember those...I am such a digital immigrant) and look up the cool sounding word with the really funny spelling. As my finger worked its way down the page, I remember feeling what could best be described as an uncomfortable mix of intellectual curiosity and anxiety. Then I found it.

Gauche.

Awkward, clumsy, inept, unsophisticated, inelegant, graceless, unpolished, uncultured, ill-bread, ill-mannered.

Each word was like a punch in the stomach. I grew up at a time when there were certain things you simply did not say to your parents. Like calling your house gauche. My parents were hard working people. We did not have a lot, but whatever we had, they worked really hard to get. And even though my intentions were good, I'd insulted them.

I felt like a fool. Worse than that, I felt like an educated fool. I'd gleaned what I thought was a bit of knowledge that I thought would make me sound more intelligent, but I ended up sounding far less intelligent than had I said nothing at all. I have no idea if my parents remembered this incident (they certainly never mentioned it again) but it was a lesson I will never forget.

Never use a word unless you know what it means.

Which brings me to phrase "21st century skills."

I'm sure you know what they are.

But do you know what it means?

Because I don't.

***************

A few weeks ago on on plurk, a teacher posed the following question:

"What would you say if asked to give a one line description of 21st century skills?"

Now you can usually send out a "plurk" or a "tweet" on virtually any subject, including whether or not you should put pickles on a tuna sandwich (you most assuredly should not) and get a host of responses. Micro-blogging networks like twitter or plurk can be an enormous source of information, so I'm not being at all critical of the forum. I like the forum. But I was really curious about this particular plurk because I had yet to find a single, cogent definition of "21st century skills" myself.

So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, a response:

"I can't think of anything at all."

About ten minutes later, a second response:

"Wow...that's hard...I'm thinking."

Then a third:

"I'm game. Here's my shot--it is the ability to use tools of technology to adapt your environment to create active responses."

That was it.

And I thought, if that's the best we can do we have got a REALLY big problem.

I recently read a "tweet" from Gary Stager that said, in part, "ed tech needs to get its act together...." I'm not sure what Mr. Stager was referring to on this particular occasion, but I think our use (or overuse) of the phrase "21st century skills" may be one such example.

The importance of developing what we term "21st century skills" is at the very core of our case for education technology. But have you found an actual definition? What I've found are "frameworks" (a grossly overused word), a matrix or lists itemizing and describing what "21st century skills" are. But as any good English teacher will tell you, there is a fundamental difference between a description and a definition. So while we're pounding the pavement, shaking our fists and baying into the wind about the need for pedagogical change, change, change...we're doing so predicated on a premise--the importance of developing "21st century skills"--that we struggle to define.

And that folks is a problem.

Remember, I want us to win this fight. But those of us "in" the ed tech camp; those of us who think that technology and other multimedia tools should be fully integrated into our curriculum and classrooms are still the minority. If I may put on my lawyer hat for a moment, we have the burden of proof. We have to convince the majority to move away from something, to something. So if we're going to succeed, and to date we have not succeeded, at least systemically, we had better be very, very clear about why.

So let's try and break this down. What exactly is the problem here? Why has the phrase "21st century skills" become such a lightening rod of confusion and controversy?

The problem, and I will try to tread lightly here because I respect and admire the work of organizations like the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, is that the phrase "21st century skills" is problematic. It is, at best, misleading and, at worse, offensive to a large segment of our audience. If nothing else, it creates an unnecessary and counterproductive distraction that potentially leads us away from more substantive discussions on the merit of education reform through meaningful technology integration.

Vision if you will a conversation with the most truculent and technology-resistant teacher in your school. We'll call him Don. Don's been teaching without computers for about 25 years and you're trying to make your case for technology integration. You're really passionate, your arms are flailing about, you've got charts, graphs, stats and a really cool power point presentation. Don is not moved. You show him "Shift Happens." Don is still not budging. You show him "Pay Attention." Still nothing. Then you give him this:

"Don, in order for our kids to compete and succeed in the 21st century, they have to have 21st century skills and they're not developing those with the way we're teaching now."

Now Don perks up. "Excuse me?"

Don folds his arms, a wry smile forming on his face, and he asks, "What do you mean, 21st century skills? What exactly are 21st century skills? Give me one such skill.

You say:

"Creativity!"

Don starts to laugh. "Excuse me? Creativity? That's a 21st century skill? I'd take Mark Twain over most of the drivel that we spew out today as art, literature or music. Are you suggesting that we didn't need to be creative in the 20th century? I know a few hundred highly successful people, all former students of mine, who might take some umbrage at that. Try again. Give me another 21st century skill."

"Communication skills!"

At this point, Don looks visibly annoyed. "Communication skills? What have I been doing for the past 25 years? What have my students been doing for the past 25 years? Writing on scrolls? Communication is not a 21st century skill. It is a basic human necessity. Please explain to me how something as fundamental to our existence as communication is a 21st century skill? Have you ever read Plato? He was as skilled a communicator as has ever existed in the course of human history and he lived over 2000 years ago. Barack Obama was a product of 20th century education and I'd say he was a pretty skilled communicator. Communication is most assuredly not a 21st century skill. Unless of course you're referring to communicating via text message, a practice that I think is compromising our student's ability to read, write or speak effectively. Give me something else."

Now you're starting to sweat a bit. This time your voice is a bit more sheepish. "Critical thinking?"

Don rolls his eyes. "Yeah, and I guess those of us unfortunate enough to have been born in the 20th century are just plain stupid. Oh however have we managed to survive, develop a vaccine for polio, send a man to the moon and build your beloved supercomputers without the ability to think critically."

Don looks you squarely in the eyes.

"What you're giving me are important life skills. I'll certainly concede that. But these are not skills that are unique to the 21st century or the 20th century for that matter. So help me out here. Explain this to me as though I was one of your students. Can you give me a simple, one sentence definition of what a 21st century skills is?

You pause. Reflect. Then say: "Don, 21st century skills are the skills our kids need to compete and succeed in the 21st century."

Don sighs and says, now almost sympathetically, "Isn't that where we started?"

And you've lost. Don's gone and no matter how many times you show him "Shift Happens" or thrust PISA results under his nose, you probably won't get him back.

*************

In the law there is something called a "red herring." A red herring is defined as "a diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue." By basing our case, in whole or in part, on the importance of "21st century skills," we may be handing those predisposed against technology integration the perfect red herring. We find ourselves so busy defending what is and what is not a 21st century skill that the main point about pedagogical change gets lost.

So let's try to get down to the heart of the matter.

What are we really trying to say when we refer to the importance of 21st century skills? What is the point? Can we offer up something simple, something straight-forward, something that fully, but succinctly, embodies the essence of what we're trying to say?

I've come up with this:

Rather than talk about the importance of "21st century skills," I point out that our first job as educators is to help our children survive and thrive in the world as it exists now.

That's it.

John Dewey, whose views on “progressive education” provided the theoretical foundation for constructivism, once wrote: “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.” Dewey did not say that our kids needed "20th century skills" because he did not need to. His premise, as true now as it was then, is that as our world changes the way we teach must reflect these changes. When most of our children left school after the 8th grade to work on farms, we taught one way. When industrialization changed our means of production, our economy and our world, our schools adjusted accordingly. (Perhaps not for the better, but they changed). Now the personal computer, wireless technology and the global reach of the internet have changed every facet of our world. And to paraphrase Thomas Friedman, "we ain't going back."

So what do we do?

Our job, as educators, is to adapt and adjust to that change and to prepare our children for that world. For their future. And a part of that challenge is to make sure that our kids are familiar and fluid with the tools of the 21st century and can use those tools to be and create something of value to the world as it exists now. If we fail to do that, then we fail them. There's no better or worse here. It's not about 21st century skills versus 20th century skills and no, kids today don't have to be smarter than we were.

But they do need to be different.

Because our world is different.

Now we can explain what some of those differences are. Now we can discuss some of the cognitive and practical skills that students need to have mastered before entering the workforce in order to compete on this new, flattened global stage. But note, I present it this way to avoid throwing up the red herring of so-called "21st century skills." The "Don's" of the world might object to the idea of technology, they might balk at the concept of "21t century skills," but no good educator should balk at the idea that our common challenge is to prepare our children for the world as it exists now. How you define and characterize that world is up to you. But going forward, I will shy away from the catch-all phrase "21st century skills" whenever possible because I don't think it helps our case.

Now having trudged through all this you might think: "Mike, this is all about semantics. All this who-shot-John about a phrase. It doesn't really matter. We shouldn't get tripped up over words."

Oh really?

Teachers.....front and center here. How many times have you heard your students plead to you in their most long-suffering voice when unhappy with a grade or your assessment of their work....but [Mr./Ms.______________], you're not being fair. You know what I mean."

And how do you respond?

No, I don't know what you mean.

I know what you said.

We're making a case for change. Right now that case has not been terribly successful. So I ask you to reconsider one element of our case. I ask you to consider this.

21st century skills.

Yes, we know what they are.

Yes, we know what we mean.

But does our constant reference to "21st century skills" help or hurt our cause?

Should we use it?

Or lose it?

You are who you choose to be...(It's about the choices we make, Part II)

2009-03-23T18:56:00.023-05:00

I thought, "This cannot be happening."

I am a GUY.

I eat food off of the floor.

I think bacon should be a food group.

I think tofu is just wrong.

During football season, I am in front of my big screen television, butt firmly on couch, remote firmly ensconced in hand, from the Thursday night ESPN game through the Monday night ESPN game.

I am a GUY.

A GUY does not CRY.

Especially at some flippin' cartoon featuring the voices of, who, Jennifer Aniston and Harry Conncick, Jr?

**********

I use to channel surf a lot, especially on lazy Saturday afternoons. (This was loooooong before I had children; since then I have not used the word "lazy" and "Saturday" in the same paragraph, much less the same sentence). Remote in hand, day old pizza by my side, I would shift aimlessly from channel to channel. Click. TNT. Click. ESPN. Click. TBS. Click. The Oxygen Channel. Shudders and convulsions. Click. Quickly back to ESPN.

Anyway, while channel surfing some time ago I literally stumbled upon a movie, a cartoon of all things, called "The Iron Giant." I vaguely remembered that this movie was given two thumbs up by Siskel & Ebert, and I had absolutely nothing better to do, so I thought, "What the heck. Let's waste a few hours and a few hundred thousand brain cells watching a cartoon."

I didn't expect much. After all, I am a GUY. A GUY does not watch cartoons.

I won't provide a recap of the entire movie other than to say it is one of the best movies EVER made. I mean EVER, EVER, EVER. It's that's good. But what really killed was the end. (Spoiler alert).

The year is 1958. The location, a small town in Maine. An atomic missile has been fired and is descending on the town in a misguided effort to destroy the Iron Giant, a giant metal machine that becomes a gun when confronted with a gun. The Iron Giant, who is feared by the townspeople and relentlessly pursued by army, is told by nine-year old Hogarth, his only friend, that when the missile comes down "everyone will die." The Iron Giant understands. He places a large metallic finger under Hogarth's chin, raises it gently, and says, "You stay. I go. No following."

The Iron Giant takes off, flying towards the missile. The missile reaches its apex, starts down. The score by Michael Kamen begins to swell. The Iron Giant can see the missile. Hogarth's words to the Iron Giant, spoken earlier in the movie, voice over the scene:

"You are who you choose to be."

The missile, now very close, is bearing in on the Giant.

The Giant utters only one word:

"Superman."

The score reaches a crescendo. The Iron Giant and the missile collide. The Giant is destroyed. But the town is saved.

I sat there is stunned disbelief. First chills. Then, my eyes narrowed. I blinked involuntarily. I thought, no way. No FREAKING way. This is NOT happening. But I could not stop. My eyes misted over.

I cried. At a stupid, moronic cartoon of all things. I was absolutely dumbfounded. This is just not what I do. But something about this scene, something I couldn't quite fathom, really moved me.

Click. I changed the channel. I needed to get back. Back to football. Back to blood and bruises. After all, I'm GUY.

And a GUY does not cry.

But I would mentally revisit that moment many times during the ensuing years.

***********

While writing a series of new blogs yesterday, and weighed down by various pressures, I stumbled across the following post on You Tube. It is the ending to the Iron Giant. Just the ending. If you have the time, you should watch it.

I did. And it still gave me chills.

So what is it about this scene? And why do I share it with you?

Two reasons.

Sometimes I get tired. I never imagined that convincing educators about the educational value of technology would be so difficult. I knew education had its traditions, I understood some of the financial constraints, but I never imagined it would be so hard. Thank God I work for a great company and great people. For visionaries. Smaller minds probably would have fired me a long time ago.

Sometimes I think, screw it. Sometimes I think we should just incorporate a charter school or establish a school within a school, write some grants, raise some money and do it ourselves. It couldn't be any harder than having to convince truculent board members or "on-the-8th-day-God-made-me" administrators about anything that smacks of pedagogical change. Sometimes I want to say: You keep on trumping up those 50% graduation rates. In the meantime, we'll keep fighting the good fight to prepare our kids for something more than a career flipping Whoppers.

But then I'm reminded why we're here. The kids. That's why we fight. Because we should be able to say to every child in every school, and really mean it, "You are who you choose to be."

What a beautiful thing to say. What a powerful thing to say. And we have the power, we have the means, to make this true, or certainly more true than it is now, for millions of children who depend on our schools and the decisions we make today.

Change begins with choice.

And with who you choose to be.

So with the Michael Kamen score swelling through the recesses of my mind, my resolve, though tested, remains firm. Launch the missiles. Slam your doors. Hold on to your industrial-age traditions. I understand.

I'm ready.

Progress can be slow. Change can be painful. But I'm going to keep moving forward.

Because that's who I choose to be.

It's about the choices we make

2009-03-18T03:37:00.023-05:00

Let me start by saying that I'm no longer really angry.

When I picked up a newspaper and read about the AIG bonuses, I was stunned and fired off a rapid fire, stream-of-consciousness blog about the hypocrisy of unconditionally bailing out an AIG while our schools and the students who depend on our schools continue to suffer. Apparently, I was not alone in my outrage. But today my mood has changed. Anger has given way to introspection. This morning, I find that I am far more more reflective.

I find myself thinking a lot about choices.

Life is not a zero sum game. Too often, we create these arbitrary ideological splits, these unnecessary "either/or" dichotomies that fail to account for nuance or shades of gray. I try not to do that. I try to look at the big picture, at the totality of opinions and varying points of view, but I also think it is fair to say sometimes life requires that we take a side and make a choice. In fact, I will go one step further. I think, in the end, our lives and our legacy are defined by the choices we make.

AIG was not the only news of the day. I also learned that over 1000 people have died as a result of the Mexican drug wars. (You might be thinking, what does this have to do with education technology? Please bear with me for just a moment, I'll get there). Over 1000 people dead is a staggering number. A tragic, stunning loss of life. It was this fact--over 1000 people have died--coupled with the news about AIG that made me focus so much about choices.

In a world too often defined by political correctness and efforts to offend no one while concurrently trying to appeal to everyone, we often find ourselves afraid to voice a simple opinion. We're afraid to make a choice. I absolutely abhor most of Rush Limbaugh's politics, and I find his self-aggrandizing style alternatively amusing and offensive, but, like it or not, the man has an opinion and he's not afraid to let it rip. I respect that. I sometimes wonder if Hillary Clinton's political fortunes would have been different had she simply told the American people what she thought. I thought her speech at the Democratic National Convention was amazing. I thought, where was that Hillary for the past 18 months? She finally let it rip. Sometimes it's okay to stand before the world and say, "Here I am. This is what I believe. Tear it down if you want, but this is where I stand."

Choices, everyone. We must all make choices.

I've made mine.

How many more innocent people have to die before we realize we can't win a war against drugs? Our jails are filled beyond capacity with poor black boys and poor Hispanic boys many of whom will be denied the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the American Dream because they have criminal records. How many more young children simply walking down the wrong street at the wrong time will die in a crossfire of bullets as rival gangs fight over "territory" and the right to control a street corner? We spend billions of dollars on this war, but what ground have we seized? Where is our Normandy? What have we gained? More importantly, how many innocent souls have we lost?

The point I'm making here isn't about drugs. It's about choices. We can only do so much. Our tax dollars will only go so far. Average people have to make difficult choices everyday about where and how they will spend their money. You may need a new car. But your child needs braces. What do you do? You may need a new suit, but your child needs clothes for school. What do you do? The house needs a new roof, but your son or daughter also needs tuition for college. What choice do you make?

I'm not a politician. I'm one man writing a blog that only a relatively few number of people will read or see. But if asked to make a choice, I will say it again and again and again...we have got to invest first in our children. We have got to invest more in our schools. Our schools should be models of innovation that educators from every nation follow and admire. Students in every district, rich or poor, should be able to walk into any classroom in any school and put their hands on the very best, most sophisticated, most powerful learning tools available to 21st century learners.

But that is not now the case.

So if asked to choose, I'd rather we took the monies fighting a war that it seems we cannot win and invest this money in the war we must win--a war for the hearts, minds and future of our children. Let's invest this money, dollar for dollar, in education. Let's refurbish our schools. Let's create 21st century classrooms. Let's get technology out of the labs and into our student's hands. Let's make wireless access a public utility; available to every household. Let's create new scholarships, fund new grants and provide universal access to low, fixed rate student loans. Let's blow open the doors of opportunity for every child by creating a system of public education that embraces every child, empowers every child and equips every child to compete and succeed in the global economy of 21st century.

Ask yourself this--If you could spend 100 billion on developing a cure for colon cancer or 100 billion on developing toxin free, hormone free, pesticide free, easily mass-produced food that is both healthy and inexpensive, food that could be made readily available to everyone irrespective of income, which would you choose? It is a difficult decision. But I would choose the latter. I would choose to invest in something that creates life. I'd rather invest in avoiding a problem than fixing a problem.

So in a strange way, the AIG story and the causalities as a result of the Mexican drug wars formed mental bookends in my mind. Both stories, in the end, are about the battles we choose to fight and the choices we choose to make.

I've made my choice.

Want to bolster our economic future?

Create better schools.

Want to wage a meaningful war against drugs?

Create better schools.

That's where I stand. In plain and simple language.

And I'm not afraid to go before anyone, anywhere, anytime, make my case for schools and for children, and say tear it down if you want to but this is what I believe.

But what about you?

What's your choice?

I'm angry folks; really angry

2009-03-17T08:39:00.005-05:00

I'm upset.

Along with most tax-paying citizens, I find the thought of paying a bonus to anyone in any department at AIG to be simply unfathomable. And don't give me the bit about contract law. I spent 15 years as a corporate attorney, I know the drill. Most of the employees in question are employees at will. Yes, they might be contractually obligated to a bonus, but they are not contractually obligated to a job. For me, the choice would be very, very simple. Take your bonus and walk or forego the bonus and work with us, and the taxpayers who saved your job, and let's turn this thing around.

But more than that, I'm upset that while AIG has received, to date, about 180 Billion in bail out funds (and that's your money folks), apparently without conditions precluding the payment of bonuses, the Senate concurrently saw fit to scale back and whittle down the funding appropriated for schools. So let me get this straight. AIG.....here's a check. A really BIG check. Schools....here's some money, but let's hold off before we do too much more because we're not sure an investment in education is "stimulating" enough.

Fine.

That would be my Exhibit A under the definition of "short sighted thinking."

If AIG fails, we will survive. The country will go on. If our schools continue to fail the millions of children each year who are dropping out, checking out, or doing just enough to get by but are otherwise functionally illiterate and virtually unemployable, then the looming human crisis will make the current capital crisis look tame by comparison. I am not an economist. I have not spent one day on Wall Street. But I think our first priority should be to invest in people. In children. And in the institutions that will dictate our future.

Of course, that's just me.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe I'm just baying into the wind.

But I'm angry, folks.

Really angry.

At Smart, we take the frustration out of technology...

2009-03-13T13:07:00.005-05:00

Ok.....this is just funny.

Thought I'd lighten it up a bit.

Back to saving the world next week.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Education Department to Distribute $44 Billion in Stimulus Funds in 30 to 45 Days

2009-03-12T02:41:00.004-05:00

According to a press release issued by the White House on Sunday, March 7, 2009:

$44 billion in stimulus funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will be available to states in the next 30 to 45 days. The first round of funding will help avert hundreds of thousands of estimated teacher layoffs in schools and school districts while driving crucial education improvements, reforms, and results for students.

According to the release, another $49 Billion will be made available in the next 6 months.

The read the entire press release, go here.

Obama takes on education

2009-03-12T02:08:00.008-05:00

At a speech given before the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce yesterday, President Obama proposed what he termed his "five pillars of reform."

They are:

Investing in early childhood initiatives like Head Start;
Encouraging better standards and assessments by focusing on testing itineraries that better fit our kids and the world they live in;
Recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers by giving incentives for a new generation of teachers and for new levels of excellence from all of our teachers;
Promoting innovation and excellence in America’s schools by supporting charter schools, reforming the school calendar and the structure of the school day;
Providing every American with a quality higher education--whether it's college or technical training.

During his speech, President Obama pointed out that: "By 2016, four out of every ten new jobs will require at least some advanced education or training."

Whether you agree with his proposed reforms or not, I think President Obama should be commended for his commitment to improving the quality of education available to our children. And if you don't agree with his proposed reforms, or think government should be doing more (or less), I would encourage you to speak up and speak out. Democracy is not a spectator sport. Our collective future depends on individual involvement.

To read the full transcript of the speech, go here.

To view a video of the speech, go here.

Web 2.0--What exactly is it?

2009-03-11T09:50:00.012-05:00

(Sung to the music of Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson")

Where did you go
Web 1.0?
A nation turns its longing eyes to you,
What will we do?

What's that you say
Mr. IT guy
Web 1.0 has left and gone away
Well, boo, hoo, hoo...

What will I do?
With Web Version 2?
Oh, what will I do?

One of the primary uses for this blog is to inform. But not just inform, but to make information accessible and easy to understand. Technospeak for many of us is like Latin; it's absolutely unfathomable. And even though I am fairly technically literate (but I am by no means a "tech guy"), I find that the sheer volume of material available on the web to be overwhelming. Millions of blogs, hundreds of educational websites and web-based applications, twitter, plurk, facebook, myspace, and now the ever-growing phenomenon of the "professional learning network." It can be too much. I can remember when I started bookmarking helpful websites and informative web pages. After about two weeks, my bookmarks drop down menu started to look like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Even worse, by the end of Week 2, I couldn't remember why I had bookmarked half of the items I'd bookmarked during Week 1.

Folks, there's a lot of stuff out there.

But if this vast wealth of information and knowledge isn't trickling out of cyberspace and into our classrooms more effectively, what's the point? Despite rapid advances in hardware and software, for many teachers email is still exotic. And blogging, wikis, podcasting, social networks, things like that? Well, you may as well be speaking in Latin because that conversation is going nowhere.

So I will try and do some of the heavy lifting for you. In future posts I will try and explain, in clear, concise and simple terms, what a lot of this "stuff" is, how it works and its value in the classroom. Yes, I will still wax philosophical on policy issues (because policy and yes, politics, ultimately dictate and define the future of our schools) but when talking about technology, I will steadfastly avoid techospeak.

I will break it down.

I will, with a nod to Don Henley, get down to the heart of the matter.

So let's start.

Let's start with the phrase "Web 2.0." You hear it all the time. I hear it all the time. We tell teachers how to teach using "Web 2.0" tools. We talk about learning in the age of "Web 2.0." But what exactly is Web 2.0? Did the internet change? Do you need to run out to Best Buy and buy some new widget or gadget? Did you somehow miss something?

Nope, not really and no.

Web 2.0 does not refer to a new internet. The technology (at least relative to those of us who simply use the internet) hasn't really changed. You still type www. (fill in the blank) and viola, you go somewhere. But the big difference, in plain and simple terms, between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 is this.....

Web 1.0.....you went there to read stuff.

Web 2.0...you go there to do stuff.

A classic "Web 1.0" activity would be going to the online version of your local newspaper to read a news story because you forgot to pick up a newspaper that morning or because you wanted to reread story that was published a few days or a few weeks ago. Going to the internet to read news, sports, weather and entertainment updates posted onto your web browser's home page are other examples. These are all fairly static activities. You read, you get what you want and you click the little red "x" to sign off.

Wikipedia is a classic example of "Web 2.0." You don't just go there to read; you can add, edit or correct information. In fact, the information you read was created and is continually updated by people just like you. Web 2.0 is an interactive web. You use it to buy stuff (eBay), advertise stuff (craigslist), hear stuff (iTunes), share stuff (blogs, podcasts, twitter, plurk ) and learn stuff (online professional networks). In the wonderful world of Web 2.0, we don't just use the web to get content, but we also create content we use. We are producers and consumers at the same time. We are prosumers in a cycle of ever-changing, ever-evolving data and information.

So teachers, when you hear the phrase "Web 2.0," don't fret. Don't feel as though you've missed the boat. You haven't. If you've ever downloaded an mp3, posted a comment on a blog, written a blog, used eBay, posted a picture on Flickr, or God-forbid, done something really high-tech like created a myspace or facebook page, you are already a part of the Web 2.0 revolution. Or as we like to say, "webolution." The only difference is that this webolution will be televised and available to every living soul on the planet with access to a computer and the internet.

That's power. And that power is yours. If you choose to seize it.

Web 2.0.

Simply stated, it's all about using the web to do stuff.

So you see, it's not so complicated. My challenge, our challenge, is to harness the extraordinary power of Web 2.0 to help our teachers better teach, reach and engage our students.

If you have ideas or examples of how you've used Web 2.0 tools to reach your students, please share them. You never know who might be reading, watching and learning.

Arnie Duncan labels NCLB "toxic"

2009-03-09T09:41:00.004-05:00

I read the following article this morning. Arnie Duncan was interviewed about the impact and future of NCLB. I've attached the link for your review and consideration:

http://www.onpointradio.org/notes-and-updates/2009/03/arne-duncan-no-child-is-toxic/

I think Mr. Duncan makes some good points during his interview, but NCLB's problems go far deeper than simply "rebranding." There is nothing inherently offensive about the name or the mission of NCLB (in fact, I rather like the name), but I think we can all agree that the means are fundamentally flawed. Arbitrary performance based standards at the expense of content or comprehension are not the answer. This was especially evident during the last two weeks when hundreds of schools across the country simply stopped teaching in order to focus on their statewide standardized assessments.

In any event, read the article and let me know what you think.

Is Mr. Duncan on the right track?

Why can't we seem to move forward?

2009-03-07T15:36:00.006-06:00

I just wrote the following comment to a surprising and unexpected blog post about my blog written by Kelly Tenkely. Kelly has a wonderful blog called iLearn Technology that offers some truly helpful hints and practical tips for integrating technology into your classrooms. If you haven't read it, you should. Better yet, add it to your blogroll.

In any event, I decided to share my comment because it reflects, in no uncertain terms, my current mood. It reads:

Thank you for the kind words about my blog. I hope, in my own small way, to add something of merit to the conversations that may, over time, lead to meaningful education reform. But I never forget that it's not me, but people like you, the teachers, who are the real difference makers. You're in the trenches everyday fighting the good fight for the hearts and minds of our children.

Yesterday on twitter you posed an interesting question. You wrote: "Reading outstanding edu blogs, how is it that so many can see the change that needs to happen and yet we can't seem to make it happen?"

I initially responded with a "rah-rah" answer about "keep moving forward" and about the power of "faith and conviction." I still believe those things. Very much so. However, after receiving your "tweet," I spent the evening reading edublog after edublog. The more I read, the more frustrated I became. You are so correct; the problems are well documented and the proposed solutions are not novel. And yet still we debate; we talk, and opine and propose but very little actually changes. Why? Because those of us in the edublog universe are so smart and everyone else is so dumb? I hardly think so. So what is the problem? If we know the questions, if we can identify the problems, if we know what we're doing isn't working, why don't we change?

I'm troubled. These are disturbing questions that could easily take you to an angry and cynical place.

Or......

It can steel your resolve. It can make you more determined than ever to be the change you seek. But I'll write more on that later.

In the meantime, I will continue to ponder your outstanding question.

Thanks again for the compliment. I am and remain honored to collaborate, question and learn with you.

Kelly's question was dead on and the more I thought about it, my response seemed silly and superficial. I'm not Tony Robbins; we need more than presentation level slogans to architecture level problems. We need to move forward, but we seem stuck.

Why?

Help me blogosphere. I have my opinions, opinions I will reserve for now, but how would you have answered Kelly's question?

How is it that so many can see the change that needs to happen and yet we can't seem to make it happen?

Education funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

2009-03-06T09:06:00.002-06:00

Highlighted below is a link to documents prepared by the Congressional Research Service which estimate the amount of education funding that each state will receive from certain aspects of the final American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Specifically, these documents estimate what each state would receive under the bill’s following program allocations: State Stabilization Funds, Title I, Title I School Improvement, IDEA, McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Assistance, Education Technology, and Child Care and Development Block Grant Discretionary Funding.

http://edlabor.house.gov/blog/2009/01/school-districts-will-benefit.shtml

Two Steps to Meaningful Technology Integration--Where Do We Start?

2009-03-05T05:50:00.002-06:00

Yesterday morning, Kevin Honeycutt posted the following question on Plurk.

"Greatest tech integration challenges. What do you think?"

That, as they say, is the $20 Million Dollar question.

I don't necessarily think there is a single answer to the question. The issues are far too varied and complex. But I'd like to share a few thoughts.

Let's start with what we know. I think there's more than enough educational software out there to get the job done. Open source software and web based applications have also greatly reduced the cost and complexity of integrating technology into most classrooms. The hardware is certainly there. The present day cell phone is more technologically advanced than the supercomputers we used to send a man to the moon. What we don't have is a systemic, easily replicable design for how to bring all of these resources together in an easily digestible, pedagogically sound manner for teachers who may or may not be tech savvy. In other words, the key, I think, isn't better hardware or software, but better curriculum design. Because better design leads to better pedagogy and better pedagogy leads to better educational outcomes.

So I think we should start with design.

And how should we do that? Where does design start? Well...if you've hired an interior designer, contractor or an architect, where do you start? Do you go out and buy a bunch of bricks, wood, glass and mortar, dump it in a pile and say, "Here you go."

Of course not.

You start by watching HGTV.

Just kidding.

As simple as it sounds, you begin with a conversation.

I am of the opinion that it doesn't matter what we put into our classrooms, meaningful technology integration cannot work and will not work unless and until teachers are a part of the design process at the outset because teachers, not technology, will dictate the success of our efforts. Although one of the goals of 21st century pedagogy is "learner-centered" instruction, this does not mean that the use of technology in our classrooms should be the instructional equivalent of The Lord of the Flies. Yes, the role of the teacher should change from the industrial age model of the "sage on a stage" to a 21st century "guide on the side," but the kids can't teach themselves. Meaningful technology integration is a process. It doesn't begin because you've invested in a room full of really great looking computers, whiteboards and other pretty, shinny stuff. It begins with a great teacher who facilitates and guides the learning process.

So if we are to design a meaningful architecture for technology integration and 21st century learning, what should Step #1 be? Forget about the technology. Make it invisible. Start by focusing first on teachers and understanding what they need to encourage better learning.

Now I know some of you might think, "Whoa...wait a minute. Focus first on understanding and meeting the needs of the teacher? Shouldn't we focus first on meeting the needs of the student or the desired learning outcomes?"

That's the conventional wisdom. But I don't think so.

When attempting to improve outcomes, the really successful private sector business owners that I know, and I've known a few, don't necessarily start the conversation by asking what the customer needs or wants. Based on the occupation or context, that's almost implicit. They start by going to their employees and asking them what they need in order to give the customers what they want. Because the product doesn't sell itself. The product is channeled through and fueled by informed and motivated people who then produce the desired result.

I think the great failure of most efforts at educational reform lie in the fact that they were top down efforts; fueled and formulated by politicians and policy wonks, not educators, who then essentially dumped their "reforms" into the laps of teachers with demands to just do it. And too often these "reforms" were sharply out-of-sync or out of touch with the day-to-day reality faced by most teachers. (Think NCLB). So if we want different results, we have to approach efforts at education reform differently. We have to invite the teachers to the party at the outset.

So be wary of pre-packaged "solutions" wrapped in grandiose promises of renewed and revitalized classrooms. Before buying more stuff, think about how you can teach your teachers how to better use their existing stuff. Start small. Keep it simple. Think about starting by engaging a small group of teachers who are open and receptive to the idea of technology integration. If they're tech savvy; great. If not, that's okay. Because being tech savvy isn't a prerequisite. What is? Teachers who understand that in the information age, the best teachers are also the best learners. Teachers who are willing to go out on a pedagogical limb and try something unfamiliar and new are the teachers who will innovate and lead in the 21st century.

That's why District-wide implementations at the outset tend to be tough. It's generally too much too fast. But you don't need an entire district to make your case. You don't need an entire school. Start with a handful of kids and a few teachers within each school and work your way up and out. Build on success. Use the technology that you have access to share your stories with your stakeholders, particularly your parents. Create a classroom website (it's easy). Make the students and the work they produce using technology your ambassadors for change.

But start by engaging your teachers.

Meaningful Technology Integration--The Heart of the Matter

2009-03-04T10:24:00.014-06:00

"I've been trying to get down to the heart of the matter."
Don Henley, "The Heart of the Matter"

Why haven't we been more successful at integrating technology into our curriculum and classrooms? Why is technology, and all its power and promise, still relegated to the back of the educational bus by many school boards and district administrators? Why hasn't there been a howl of protest from outraged parents demanding that schools integrate 21st century learning tools into our schools right now?

Yesterday, I read a plurk from "Beth," a teacher with 27 years experience who might be losing her job along with 14 other technology integration specialists because their jobs were considered "non-instructional." This would leave, I believe, approximately 1 technology integration specialist for every 1500 students in this particular district.

The reaction was one of shock and outrage while "Beth" lamented over what she could do. As I tried to sleep last night, I was haunted by something Beth wrote: "It will be the students who suffer the most."

So what do we do?

Beth's plight, and the plight shared by so many teachers, principals and administrators across the country trying, with varying degrees of success, to meaningfully integrate technology into our schools and classrooms is rooted, I think, in one core cause.

It's time to get down to the heart of the matter.

It's time to appeal to the heart.

When we are moved, we act. When we feel, we respond. Right now, those of us "in" education technology do a great job....of talking to ourselves. I'm continually inspired and informed by the leaders and visionaries of the ed tech movement. I marvel at their use of technology and ability to identify new and clever widgets, gadgets and applications. NECC is a blast (loved Nashville, wasn't so hot on San Antonio), but after two years of attending, is it just me or does it seem like we're primarily still just talking to each other?

I think what we need to do is tell a better story. We need to get people to care. We need to find a way to engage that fifth grade teacher in Indianapolis who doesn't give a damn about computers but who is sick and tired of looking at bored and blank faces every day. We need to better engage school boards who see us coming, clutch their wallets, and think: "Oh no. YOU just want us to buy a bunch of computers and we have MUCH bigger fish to fry. We don't have money for teachers or textbooks and you want us to invest in laptops?"

The foundational issue isn't the merit of our cause, but how we share and frame our message. How do we reach our audience? How do we effectively share our vision with our school boards, administrators and the thousands of teachers who have never heard of NECC and will never attend? Too often our message gets lost, diluted or muddled. Or it becomes confusing and technocentric.

So do we do that?

How do you do that?

What I have found, for what its worth, that the least compelling way to talk about technology is to talk about technology. It's boring. Cold and boring. And in my humble opinion, presentations that involve pointing and clicking through an application in front of a large roomful of people are painful to watch. (Organizers at NECC, please take note). If the people pointing and clicking would simply turn around and look at the people in the room, they would often see a room full of confused and disengaged faces (and these are teachers we're talking about). Process and applications should be addressed in smaller, more hands-on sessions. Inspire people about why. Make the case why technology is important; why technology is meaningful, why technology engages our students and why technology improves student outcomes. Because if we don't get beyond why, we'll never get to how.

One of the best presentations that I've ever attended was by Dr. Tim Tyson and it was one of the least technical presentations I've ever attended. But it was beautiful; moving. It made we want to act.

My challenge to you is make us feel it. Make people care. Appeal to the heart, not just to the mind.

How you do it is up to you.

But if you have ideas, share them. Because if we're going to win this fight; we're going to win it together.

"Beth" this post is dedicated to you.

*************

The following video is one of several that I have created when presenting to educators. It's a rather serious, somber piece; but it is designed to be. You will also note that it doesn't talk about technology at all. (The word "technology" only appears one time at the very end). The idea isn't to sell the viewer on technology, but to elicit a mood where people will be more receptive to the idea of having a discussion about technology. Again, if people are moved, if you touch the heart, then they are more likely to listen. And if someone is listening, really listening, that's when a meaningful conversation can begin.

Primary sources: 2004 National Technology Report, "Shift Happens," USA Today

I visited an elementary school today...

2009-03-03T20:43:00.008-06:00

I visited an elementary school today.

An elementary school that will go unnamed in a community that I will not identify other than to say it is in one of the most economically challenged communities in the country.

I was at the school to meet with a kindergarten teacher. A beautiful human being this teacher; a living, walking testament to all that is good and noble about public education. Her classroom is overcrowded and yet she starts every day by addressing each student by name, looking them in the eyes and cheerfully saying "good morning." She ties shoes, wipes noses and tucks in shirts. Although many of her students come from families that are poor, some almost destitute, she refuses to compromise her standards; she expects her students to pay attention, to be polite, to remain on task and to complete their homework (yes, homework!) each and every day. She expects her classroom to be a place of learning. She pushes, but with kindness. She encourages, without ever, to my knowledge, being condescending.

But more than that, she treats her children as though they are someone. In a place of so much despair and so few role models, in a place where so much says to these children, both explicitly and implicitly, you're nothing...you'll never amount to anything, she regards each and every child as precious.

And that means something.

Her name is Ms. "G."

Ms. G has, on more than one occasion, gone into her own pocket to buy resources for her classroom. Books on tape, tape recorders, used books, pencils and pens, posters for the wall, decorations for her classroom....basic things, simple things. Things she should not have to buy. But she does. She wants to make her classroom as personal and as appealing as possible. She wants to make school fun and engaging for these children. For her, this isn't just a job; its almost a moral imperative. "If we don't get to these kids now, we'll lose them," she once told me. "Mike, when a lot of these kids start school, they can't write their own names. They don't recognize letters or colors. They're loved but they're just not prepared. They need so much but often get so little."

But when we talk, she's never downbeat. I can sometimes tell she's a bit tired, and I can certainly see the impact of time; of a lifetime spent in the service of children other than her own. Her face is deeply lined and wrinkled, she looks older than her years and her hair almost completely gray. But her eyes shine. Her spirit seems undiminished. She remains hopeful.

She still believes, as much now than ever before, in the value of education.

But she also knows that something must change. She knows that we can't teach children today the same way she was taught. She doesn't claim to understand exactly what I'm doing, or how technology should be used in the classroom, but she supports my efforts.

"It's a new day," she said. "A new time."

Yes it is.

A new time that requires new tools.

But as I feel my way through this new life--my life as an education technology advocate--I find that this journey is taking unexpected twists and turns. It has certainly, if nothing else, been an organic process. When I started down this road just over two years ago, I was so impassioned about the transformative power of technology that I titled my first white paper "1-to-1." I didn't think that technology should simply be present in our classrooms, I thought that every student in every school should have 1-to-1 access to technology.

I so clearly remember attending NECC for the first time. It was stunning. I remember being astounded by the dizzying array of educational applications for laptops and whiteboards, document cameras and interactive educational software. I was inspired by a speech by Bruce Dixon. I was touched by Tim Tyson's stories about the incredible movies produced by his 6th grade students. I got to shake Gary Stager's hand! It was as though I'd stumbled upon a whole new universe, a universe existing within the shadows of my existing reality; a universe of infinite possibility powered by these extraordinary tools.

It was as though a veil had been lifted and I saw Oz in technicolor for the first time.

Two years later, I still believe in that universe of infinite possibility. I still believe in the transformative power of technology. I still believe that every child in every school in every school district, whether large or small, rich or poor, should have ubiquitous access to these extraordinary learning tools. Technology is to the 21st century what books were to the 20th century and the printing press was to the 19th century. But I find, as I move forward, my focus has shifted, perhaps softened, a bit. It is now a journey tempered between embracing the transformative power of technology and recognizing the transformative power of people.

Because that's where it all begins.

With people.

With teachers.

And with the simple act of caring.

School should be the great equalizer. Irrespective of where you live, who you are, your background, religion, race or culture, you should, in America, be able to attend the school of your choice and know that you will receive an education that will equip you to compete and succeed in the world as it exists now.

That, as so eloquently written by Thomas Wolfe, "is the promise of America."

And that, I think, is the ultimate power of technology.

The technology that we have at our disposal right now, technology that anyone can purchase or lease at virtually any electronics store, has the power to render time and space irrelevant. It allows children from every part of the globe to rise above everything they know and to access the sum of all human knowledge anywhere, anyplace, anytime. It makes direct and unobstructed access to facts and information, once the province of the few, the right of the many. That has power. So forget about whether you're tech savvy or not. Forget about whether you like technology or not. Forget about whether you're old school or new school, democrat or republican, mac or pc. No other learning tool in the course of human history, not books, not the printing press, not radio, not television, can make the same claim.

So what should we be debating?

We can certainly debate how technology should be used in our schools. We can certainly debate when technology should be used in our schools. What we should not be debating at this point in our nation's history is if technology should used in our schools. The world has changed, we're not going back, and as fondly as I remember pounding out term papers on my old IBM select typewriter and fax machines that used thermal paper, I wouldn't try and open a business with one.

So to everyone, and I do mean everyone, debating the need for 21st century tools in 21st century schools, I once again extend a challenge. Quit your job. Open a business. And try to pay your mortgage for one full year using only the tools found in most inner city public school classrooms. I'm not trying to sound harsh or unfair, but I think if you're being intellectually honest, many of us, including me, would have to say, "I can't do it. I don't have the tools."

Exactly.

Neither do they.

The difference is that our students can't do anything it.

But we can.

In School That Learn, MIT educator and best-selling author Peter Senge writes:

Schools may be the starkest example in modern society of an entire institution modeled after n assembly line. Like any assembly line, the system was organized into discrete stages. Called grades, they segregated children by age. Everyone was supposed to move from stage to stage together. Each stage had local supervisors–the teachers responsible for it. Classes of twenty to forty students met for specified periods in a scheduled day to drill for tests. The whole school was designed to run at a uniform speed, complete with bells and rigid daily time schedules.

Those who did not learn at the speed of the assembly line either fell off or were forced to struggle continually to keep pace. It established uniformity of product and process as norms, thereby naively assuming that all children learn in the same way. It made educators into controllers and inspectors, thereby transforming the traditional mentor-mentee relationship and establishing teacher-centered rather than learner-centered learning. Motivation became the teacher’s responsibility rather than the learner’s. Discipline became adherence to rules set by the teacher rather than self-discipline. Assessment centered on gaining the teacher’s approval rather than objectively gauging one’s own capabilities.

This industrial age model sounds pretty grim, but it is, with minor modification, the blueprint for most schools today. And it is, without question, a model that is hopelessly out of sync with our present day needs and reality. Nothing else in our society, not our businesses, hospitals, factories or farms operate essentially the same they did almost 150 years ago. Nothing, except for our schools.

So why are we here? Why do we fight this fight? Why do we make the case for technology? For change? For School 2.0?

The point of technology integration isn't about technology any more than investing in textbooks is about books. It's not about the product, it's about the purpose. It's about pushing away from a pedagogy that focuses on "knowing" and the rote repetition and regurgitation of facts to a thinking pedagogy that focuses on understanding, comprehension, communication and the ability to apply information and data in real world contexts. Knowing "what" electricity is, for example, or being able to identify its elements for a standardized test, is one thing. Understanding how it works has led to advances and innovations in science, medicine and technology that have forever reshaped and redefined every facet of our world.

In A Whole New Mind, author Dank Pink writes: “The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind–computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBA's who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind–creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”

Now I know there are some who debunk the importance of Dan Pink's "soft" right brain skills. I am also away of pedagogues who dismiss the idea that critical thinking and analytical skills can be developed independent of specific course content. I say let the pedagogues debate. But it's 2009 and long past time that we got beyond the second level of Bloom Taxomony. Because in the age of information technology, the "Digital Age," it doesn't really matter what you know. Memorizing facts is not a terribly marketable skill. What's needed is the ability to find, make sense of, and use relevant information for specific purposes. What's needed is the capacity for lifelong learning. What's needed is a 21st century pedagogy for 21st century schools and, like it or not, technology is a critical component of that pedagogy.

So, to quote the Morgan Freeman character from the Shawshank Redemption, "We can get busy living or get busy dying." I choose life. I choose hope.

I choose change.

But I promise, I won't forget you Ms. G. Because the educational foundation upon which we all stand was built by people like you.

No computer, no matter how fast, will ever replace you.

But maybe, just maybe, 21st century tools in the hands of 21st century teachers will help the next generation of Ms. G's do their jobs, and reach their students, just a little bit better.

So I dedicate my efforts to you.

To Ms. G and to Ms. G's everywhere who are fighting the good fight for the hearts and minds of our children.

And we continue to wonder what the problem is with our "21st century schools"

2009-03-03T15:23:00.008-06:00

This morning, I sent an educator that I know an email about using Skype. Skype is a wonderful web-based application that allows you to place a call from your computer to another Skype user on their computer for free. All you need is an Internet connection. It’s safe, fun and secure and teachers from Maine to California are using Skype to communicate and collaborate with schools and classrooms from across the country and across the globe.

In any event, this particular educator hadn’t heard of Skype so I recommended that she give it a try.

About an hour later, I received an email in response:

“I will try and download skype. The computer I have at the high school is terrible. You would think a system like [ours], which is very up-to-date with many things, would give me a decent computer! I am on the 'waiting list'.. Lol. I even tried to buy my own computer to use but they wouldn't let me use it, go figure.”

When I recommended that she download Skype on a personal computer if downloading it onto the school-issued computer proved too difficult, she replied:

“It's funny because the students are given the new computers but some of them are not even hooked up yet. In the special education rooms there might be one that is ready to work. I work with some teachers who were given new laptops but refuse to use them, so they are sitting in the closet. But because they were "given" to that teacher, I can't use it. It makes no sense at all!!!

Alrighty now.

And we continue to wonder what the problem is with our "21st century schools."

How do you do it?

2009-03-03T10:04:00.005-06:00

I feel like the kid in the back of the classroom who's spent the entire semester watching, listening, not saying anything and then on the last day of class finally, slowly, raises his hand.

Everyone looks back.

I have a question, directed to our teachers.

How do you do it?

How do you reconcile the back-to-basics mandates of NCLB with the goals of technology integration? How do you juggle a curriculum that, by design, must focus on basic skills while at the same time using technology to promote improved problem-solving and critical thinking skills, higher-order thinking, differentiated instruction, greater communication, collaboration and creativity and other so-called "21st century skills?"

Will you share?

Because it seems to me that this goes to the heart of the ongoing debate about the meaning and merit to continued investments in technology and technology integration.

Looking at technology through a different lens...

2009-03-02T09:09:00.011-06:00

When you know something, or think you know something, it's just implicit to you, it's sometimes difficult to explain it when challenged. Young children are particularly good at producing vexing moments like this. A few days ago, my son asked, "Dad why does the water look blue when you're far away, but it's clear when you're close up?"

Uh..........

"Dad, if the earth is round, how come the people on the bottom don't fall off?"

Well......

"Dad, if God is in bigger than the WHOLE WORLD (arms spread wide), how can He fit into my heart?"

Um..........

The point here is that we sometimes take for granted what we know and don't stop to understand and think that someone else may be looking at the same facts, but through an entirely different lens. This is critically important for those of us "in" education technology. We feel so passionately about the transformative power of technology that we are sometimes vexed by what we perceive to be ongoing, illogical and inexplicable resistance to meaningful technology integration. But it sometimes helps to step back and look at this through a different lens.

My six year old son spent the weekend with cousins. They own x-box, I don't. I received a text message late last night about how much "family fun" he was having. I responded "That's great!" replete with smiley face, but I was inwardly thinking "Oh no." My mind flashed to my son sitting in front of a flickering television, eyes glazed, expression blank, a half consumed pop can sitting ignored by his side, his thumbs flailing away in a rapid staccato succession of click, click, click, click, hour after hour, day after wasted day, playing video games in a nonsensical, make believe virtual world. I thought, I don't want him playing with this awful machine. Will he still want to go outside? Read books? Play with other kids? Play with me? Or will he be consumed?

Will he lose the simple joys and pleasures of being a boy?

I had a strong, vivid and visceral reaction to what I'm sure was an innocuous event. I reacted that way and I'm an advocate for education technology integration.

Wow.

I had a bit of an epiphany. I realized that my reaction to my son playing with an x-box (and the inevitable looming request to buy one) was eerily similar to the concerns voiced by many stakeholders, both internal and external to education, about computers in our classrooms. They fear, I think, at some visceral level, the loss of human connections. They fear a classroom of multimedia zombies living in a virtual world, disconnected from people, each other and authentic experiences.

And you know what? That's totally fair. We need to understand that. Understand it, respect it, acknowledge it and talk openly about it.

We need to look at technology integration through a different lens.

In a comment to my post "My Fear? A feeding frenzy..." Rob writes:

I'm not an educator, but have been a technology worker for more than two decades. And I'm a new parent to a toddler.

I'm really uncomfortable with the way we're shoehorning computers into education and barraging children with technology. We seem to have been lulled into thinking that any exposure to technology is a good, educational thing so we're recklessly immersing kids into a high-tech, media-saturated environment that, I believe, could be undermining every other effort we make to raise & nurture healthy children.

He continued:

I don't pretend for a moment to know how to do it, but I'd much rather we focus on teaching children how to solve problems, think rationally, and express their creativity. The people I've come to respect & admire the most in the I.T. field are those who can reason - people who plan ahead and act with intent and focus. In almost every instance, these people are not the most technologically proficient nor have they had extensive computer education. Some of them were lucky to have had calculators in college. But they are problem-solvers - thinkers - able to consider outcomes and adjust plans accordingly. That's what I want to foster in my child. The technology stuff will fall easily into place after that.

Right on Rob. I couldn't agree with you more.

Kids need rich and varied learning experiences. They need to run. They need to paint. They need music and art and books. They need to crash into each other and the freedom to roll around in the mud. All of these have value; all of these are learning experiences and all of these should be an integral part of how we should educate our children now and in the future. Technology can't be there to replace those things, but to augment those things, and to allow for deeper, richer, more personal and interactive learning experience than would be possible in its absence.

Because in the end, what is a pc? What does it do? For most of us, the primary purpose of a computer is not data processing. For most of us—and for most of our students—the computer is used primarily for email, social networking and to transmit or receive information. In other words, for most of us, the personal computer is a personal communicator. Personal communicators allow us to connect with more people, in different ways, at more times and in more places than all the other forms of communication invented in the course of human history.

That is the ultimate power of technology.

It takes a world of billions of people, separated by language, culture and distance, and brings us closer together. It allows us—and our students—to transcend beyond our immediate physical space and connect to the thoughts, ideas, views and passions of people from across the globe. When we understand how others feel, what they think, and why, issues of “us” and “them” become blurred. We may agree. We may agree to disagree. But suddenly the phrase “the human race” takes on a whole new meaning.

Could the horrors of the holocaust have occurred in the age of information technology? What about the idea that one race is superior to another race? That “manifest destiny” was God’s will? That Native Americans are “savage”? That women are not the equal of men?

Ignorance thrives in a vacuum. Technology connects us to the world.

So we need to be careful when making our case. I think we need to focus less on applications and more on connections. Because that's what counts. Don't just explain how the presence of computers in our classrooms will make our young people better students. Explain how it will make them better, more compassionate, more concerned and more connected people. Show them how technology, when used properly, allows our students a more meaningful chance to interact with content, data and each other.

Help them to understand that we won't lose each other by integrating technology into our classrooms any more than the presence of textbooks in the classroom meant we stopped talking to each other.

And when defining what a pc is, think about using these words.....

Personal communicator.

Personal connector.

Personal creativity.

Whatever the words you use, help our parents and board members, our teachers and administrators, and everyone who cares deeply about the well-being of our children but may or may not support our cause, to look at technology through a different lens.

A comment on comments

2009-02-20T04:50:00.013-06:00

"We're always behind metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just to feel something."

--From the movie, Crash

As a relative novice to the blogosphere, I am always amazed that someone, anyone, would take the time to read something I have written and then take the additional time to comment. After all, there are sooooo many blogs out there. By some estimates, there are between 70 and 112 million blogs currently available online and over 175,000 new blogs being created everyday. This does not include microblogs such as twitter and plurk or individual posts to social networks such as facebook or myspace.

That's a lot of content to wade through.

But as I take my first few tentative steps into what is truly the final frontier, cyberspace, I'm learning something invaluable and truly unexpected. Yes, there is merit to having something to say and then having the courage, foresight (or ego) to write it down and click "publish post" (the first time I did that I was terrified; I thought....what have I done? Can I take it back? What if this really sucks?) but I am also beginning to think the real value to blogging isn't the necessarily the addition of more content to the universe of existing content, but the opportunity to create connections and start discussions. Ultimately, a blog represents your point of view. You have a premise supported by reasoning; it's much like making a case in a court of law. But when someone adds a comment to your blog, it is, metaphorically speaking, much like an unknown hand pulling you back as you're about to walk into oncoming traffic. It's a voice, sometimes a whisper, sometimes a shout, saying "yes," "no" or "have you thought about this?" These voices, these connections, unsolicited and unexpected, are the real value because they are the building blocks of knowledge, growth and change.

In "Turning to One Another," Margaret Wheatley writes: “Human conversation is the most ancient and easiest way to cultivate the conditions for change - personal change, community and organizational change, planetary change. If we can sit together and talk about what’s important to us, we begin to come alive. For as long as we’ve been around as humans, as wandering bands of nomads or cave dwellers, we have sat together and shared experiences. We’ve painted images on rock walls, recounted dreams and visions, told stories of the day, and generally felt comforted to be in the world together. When the world became fearsome, we came together. When the world called us to explore its edges, we journeyed together. Whatever we did, we did it together.”

So thank you.

Thank you to each and every one of you who have taken time out of your undoubtedly busy day to comment on something I have written. I am truly honored. But more than that, I have learned much from you. You've pulled me back, made me think, made me question what I think I know. That's a good thing.

Because, in the end, I don't need to be right.

But those of us in the learning business, whether vendor, educator or administrator, can certainly learn from each other and collectively arrive at the right answers. Or at the very least, ask better questions.

So please keep commenting. Let's keep crashing into each other. Because these are the connections that keep us alive, allow us to change and force us to grow.

Birthday wishes....

2009-02-19T21:54:00.002-06:00

I'd like to send out a hearty happy birthday to my very first teacher, mentor and role model.

Happy 67th birthday Mom.

Everything I am or will ever be is because of you.

Why do you teach?

2009-02-19T13:01:00.005-06:00

It seems to me that this must be a tough time to be a teacher. You're underpaid, largely unappreciated and, as a group, teachers often bear the brunt of criticisms directed at the state of our schools. I can't imagine what it must be like to walk a mile in your shoes.

My mother was a teacher. She taught English for over 20 years at a public high school on the West side of Chicago. For 20 years, she woke up before the crack of dawn, after grading papers and preparing lesson plans into well into the evening, to drive from our home on the South side of Chicago to her school on the West side of Chicago. She never seemed discouraged or sad, yes, there were moments of frustration, but she seemed to believe in what she was doing. I know that she took pleasure in helping "her kids." I know she took genuine pleasure in their success. I know she lamented their failures. I know she cared. She never made much money, but I know her students mattered to her. One of her former students still corresponds with my mother to this day. Mom calls her "the daughter I never had."

But times have changed. Schools seem, I don't know, somehow colder....less personal. It seems to be so much harder to reach students these days. When I visited my mother's former school a few years ago, so many of the kids (if "kids" is indeed the right word) seemed, I don't know, distracted...indifferent...angry. Resources are scarce. Professional development is lacking. The "thank you's;" the pats on the back, seemed few and far between.

When I was growing up we revered our teachers. Now, we seem to revile them. I don't know why.

This morning I read a beautiful post on Terry Shaw's blog reprinting something he found in a newspaper in Galena, Illinois: "Why do you work so hard for your students."

So I'm curious. What about you?

Why do you teach?

I'd really like to know....

Why do you work so hard for your students?

My Fear? A feeding frenzy....

2009-02-18T04:51:00.010-06:00

At what should be a time of enormous hope and optimism for schools and school districts, I find myself quietly troubled.

Why?

We have, in President Obama, a president who certainly seems to understand the varied and complex challenges facing our schools today. While stressing the need for greater accountability, he also seems to understand the importance of "21st century classrooms" and the need to develop assessment tools that measure more than just basic skills (the current thrust of NCLB) but also measure "21st century skills" such as creativity and critical thinking, communication and collaboration, technology, media and information literacy and the ability to apply information and knowledge in real world contexts. And now we have the stimulus package and approximately $100 Billion in added (and unexpected) funding for education. Funding that is earmarked, in part, to encourage reform and the creation of "21st century classrooms."

President Obama should certainly be commended for his vision, his foresight and for, quite literally, putting his money where his ideological mouth is. But I'm worried.

Sometimes scarcity and lack are a good thing. It forces you to make better decisions, to focus on what's really important and to make better use of what you have. In the case of technology, some schools and school districts are woefully underfunded and the technology just isn't there or the technology that is there is out of date and hopelessly obsolete. But in many schools and school districts, the threshold issue isn't really the absence of technology, or the amount of technology, but how the technology that is already there is being used. Is this technology being used as a 21st century learning tool to promote deeper, more meaningful interaction with the subject mater, increased classroom collaboration and communication, more student-driven, project-based learning, innovative instructional practices and more differentiated instruction? Or is the technology being used as an efficacy aid; as an electronic tool to do the same things we've been doing in our classrooms for decades, only faster?

I guess what I fear is a feeding frenzy. President Obama says "innovate," "build," "create 21st century classrooms" and what do we do? We go out and buy a bunch of stuff. We spend millions on laptops and desktops, whiteboards and document cameras. We spend, spend, spend, but we don't stop, pause, think and ask ourselves.....why is this stuff here? How does a document camera actually improve the quality of student learning? How will these tools be used to better engage and motivate our children? How will these tools improve the pedagogy? Because if that doesn't change, then all the technology in the world won't change anything.

I recently had a conversation with someone who works as a teacher in a technology-rich district about how technology was being used in the classroom. His response? "Mike, it's all bs." (His words, not mine). He pointed out that every classroom in the middle school where he works has a whiteboard. How were the whitebords being used? When they were being used at all, they were being used no differently than a teacher would use a blackboard; for back-to-the-classroom, teacher-driven, lecture-based, drill and practice instruction, only with really cool graphics and stylus pens that broke with alarming regularity. Most times, however, the whiteboards weren't really used at all because they were covered with hand written notes, post-its and other visual aids.

The use of computers in the classroom was no better. For the most part, the computers sat in the back of the room and weren't turned on. When they were used, they were often used as a disciplinary aid. "If you behave well, you'll get some time on the computer." Or, "if you misbehave, you'll lose your time on the computer." Using a $1,200.00 computer the same way you would use the promise of an extra bathroom break or a stick of gum is hardly a pedagogically sound use of technology. In fact, I think we would be better off just investing in gum. It's cheaper.

Bottom line?

Learning about technology is fundamentally different than learning about what to do with it instructionally. Teaching teachers how to create a powerpoint presentation or how to operate a whiteboard does very little, if anything, to help teachers develop the knowledge they need to use technology to teach more effectively, understand its relationship to curriculum and content, or help students use technology to meet or exceed performance-based standards, deepen comprehension and improve the depth and quality of learning.

So please...let's be careful. Please remember one critical fact before making an investment in desktops, laptops, whiteboards and document cameras. Please remember that technology is just a tool and a tool is only useful to the extent its use is organized in a productive way. Yes, the promise of technology is real but this promise depends on three important steps.

First, there must be a well-articulated and shared vision for why technology is being used in the classroom.

Second, there must be a comprehensive plan for how technology will be integrated into the learning environment.

Third, the use of technology must be tied to an educational purpose: to 21st century standards and the to educational needs and goals of a school and its students.

In sum, let's remember that better educational results depend first and foremost on better pedagogy--on better teaching and more active and engaged learning--not on better technology. So moving too quickly might not be a good thing. Yes, I believe every child in every school should have ubiquitous access to technology. Yes, I believe in the transformative power of technology and its ability, when integrated in a well-planned, pedagogically sound manner, to reshape and improve the nature of teaching and learning. To that degree, it is about the technology. But I encourage each and every one of us, as we eagerly wait for billions of dollars of stimulus money to come raining down, to do something we should have learned in kindergarten.

Let's think before we act.

If we do that, then I am hopeful we will turn an important corner in the course and history of education and take a meaningful step towards preparing this and future generations of students to compete and succeed in the 21st century.

$100 Bilion to Education Under the Obama Stimulus Plan--A Breakdown

2009-02-17T19:03:00.001-06:00

Approximately $100 billion has been allocated to education funding under the Obama stimulus plan. (Isn't it interesting how this has become the Obama plan?) This funding is designed to stem huge cuts by states, fund programs for special education, low-income students and early-childhood initiatives, and, most notably for those of us in the business of education technology, provides incentives for education stakeholders at every level to think in terms of reform.

Congress approved the $787 billion economic stimulus bill on Friday and President Obama signed the bill into law today. The money for education will help President Obama make good on promises to help the nation's K-12 schools, though it's about $50 billion less than the first draft passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and leaves open a lot of questions about when and how the money will be distributed—and whether it will be enough. The majority of the difference came from losing school-construction money and decreasing the amount states will get.

Here's what we do know:

Under the bill, states will get $53.6 billion in what's called the state stabilization fund. Most of that money (about $39 billion) goes toward helping states restore cut programs, which, depending on the state, have included early-childhood education, after-school programs, professional-development money, and actual school staff. That money will go out more quickly, based on a formula, so schools aren't left wondering if they have to shorten their school year this year or make staff layoffs for the next school year.

Stripped from the bill is money for school construction. The funding, about $17 billion in the version first passed by the House, was a huge obstacle for the U.S. Senate and stayed out when the bill got through compromise committee. Instead, states can draw from $8.8 billion in the state stabilization fund for high-priority needs.

In what the Obama administration considers its reform piece of the stimulus package, the bill contains $5 billion in incentive grants, which U.S. education secretary Arne Duncan calls "race to the top" money. Logically, this money won't be available until 2010, after states are able to put their stabilization funds in place. To get a grant, a state has to show how it's in compliance with a few measures under the No Child Left Behind Act already required under the law. They also have to put in place a statewide data system to measure student progress and make sure their standards lead students to college or other postsecondary training.

The grant does leave open a few questions, including how states will prove they're doing everything right, and what they'll do with their incentive money. Duncan says it's intended to make students and schools more competitive globally. Also included in the $5 billion is $650 million for more innovative programs, to "scale up what works" in schools, Duncan adds. How that money will get doled out is unclear.

"We have to educate our way to a better economy," Duncan says. "This represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something."

Other money in the stimulus package for education:

$2.1 billion for Early Head Start and Head Start, the early-childhood programs for low-income children ages 0-5. It's estimated this funding will affect about 124,000 infants and preschool children.

$13 billion for Title I, the program that aids schools with a high number of low-income students to help fund extra programs.

$12.2 billion for IDEA, a program for special education grants.

$200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund, which supports programs for teacher-performance pay.

Too many notes...

2009-02-14T12:10:00.001-06:00

One of the criticisms (or concerns might be a better word) most often raised about my written work is that it’s just too long. I’m constantly reminded that we are living in a “fast twitch” society, that people have short attention spans, and that no one will actually take actually the time to read something if, well, it has too many words. My response to that is to keep producing works of unacceptable length and to keep using no fewer words than I think necessary to make the point.

When thinking about this, the quagmire of too many words, I am sometimes reminded of one of my favorite scenes from the movie Amadeus. Joseph II, the Emperor of Austria (who, by the way, was not nearly as idiotic in real life) has commissioned a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to write an opera. Mozart eagerly accepts the commission and composes the opera Seraglio.

The scene occurs on the stage of the opera house, just after the first performance is over.

JOSEPH

Well, Herr Mozart! A good effort.
Decidedly that. An excellent effort!
You've shown us something quite new today.

Mozart bows frantically: he is over-excited.

MOZART
It is new, it is, isn't it, Sire?

JOSEPH

Yes, indeed.

MOZART
And German?

JOSEPH
Oh, yes. Absolutely. German.
Unquestionably!

MOZART
So then you like it? You really like it, Your Majesty?

JOSEPH
Of course I do. It's very good. Of course now and then - just now and then - it gets a touch elaborate.
MOZART
What do you mean, Sire?

JOSEPH
Well, I mean occasionally it seems to have, how shall one say (he stops in difficulty; to Orsini- Ronberg) How shall one say, Director?

ORSINI-ROSENBERG
Too many notes, Your Majesty?

JOSEPH
Exactly. Very well put. Too many notes.

MOZART
I don't understand. There are just as many notes, Majesty, as are required. Neither more nor less.

JOSEPH
My dear fellow, there are in fact only so many notes the ear can hear in the course of an evening. I think I'm right in saying that, aren't I, Court Composer?

SALIERI
Yes! yes! er, on the whole, yes, Majesty

MOZART
(to Salieri)
But this is absurd!

JOSEPH
My dear, young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Cut a few and it will be perfect.

MOZART
Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?

I LOVE this scene!

Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly think there is a time and a place to be quick and concise. We have a marketing department, for example, and their job is to try and say a lot as quickly and as viscerally as they can. Not an easy job. To successfully convey any sort of message with a punch line and a few images is pretty tricky. It takes skill. And for what it's worth, I think some of the best and most compelling "art" in media today can be found in television commercials. (Think about it, a good commercial really is a mini 30-second film). And is it just me or are movie trailers often far better the movies themselves?

So I certainly respect the ability to convey a compelling message in sound bite sized chunks.

But—

Maybe I’m just being old school here, maybe I’m just thinking like a crusty, out-of-date pc loving, VCR owning Digital Immigrant, but I still think there is no more compelling and powerful a method of communication than the written word—even in our fast paced, multimedia age. Talk is cheap. When you say something, it can too often be lost, forgotten or misinterpreted. But when you take the time to write it down, it elevates the discourse; it facilitates thought, it has deeper meaning, it shows that you’ve taken the time to actually think about what you have to say and that you have the courage and depth of conviction to throw it out there.

In his blog, “Web 2.0 is the Future of Education” Steve Hargadon wrote: “The answer to information overload is to produce more information.”

Yes Steve, it is.

So go ahead---write it down.

Throw it out there.

Produce more content—just produce better content.

And if you have to, use too many words.

It's not about the products--it's about the plan and the process

2009-02-11T10:58:00.000-06:00

“Learning cannot be designed. Learning happens, design or no design. And yet there are few more urgent tasks than to design social infrastructures that foster learning. Those who can understand the informal, yet structured, experiential yet social, character of learning—and can translate their insight into designs in the service of learning—will be the architects of tomorrow.”

Etienne Wenger
Communities of Practice

I firmly believe that the integration of technology into the processes that support teaching and learning is critical to the future of our schools. Learner-centered classrooms, better engaged and more motivated students, differentiated instruction, increased home/school connections, closed achievement gaps and significantly improved learning outcomes by students at every level in virtually any school are all documented outcomes from technology-rich schools and school districts.

But...

But before we go too far, before we embrace technology as the next new panacea that will cure all of the real or perceived deficiencies with our schools, we must first remember one basic fact: technology is a tool and a tool is only valuable to the extent that a human being organizes its use in a productive way. What this means relative to the use of technology in our schools is this—technology, in and of itself, does not improve test scores, grade point averages or student achievement. Yes, the promise of technology is real—but this promise depends on three things. First, there must be a shared vision for why technology is being used in the classroom. Second, there must be a comprehensive plan for how technology will be integrated into the learning environment. Third, the use of technology must be tied to a clear educational purpose; to performance-based standards and the educational needs, objectives and goals of a school and its students.

So we do something different. We do not focus on the tools. We focus on the teaching. We will not push products. Instead, we are creating a process.

A Smart Solution.

The Smart Solution is not a program. It is a learning architecture. Our goal is to design and support the platforms that support the environments that foster better teaching and learning.

The following is a brief video introduction to what we do, or hope to do, for schools and school districts--design, educate, innovate. But this is an organic process. Like our students, we are continually learning. So your input, observations, comments and thoughts as we share our Smart Solution with you are welcome and truly appreciated.

An Investment in Education--The Ultimate Stimulus Plan (Part II)

2009-02-09T13:18:00.000-06:00

They just don't get it!!

Leave it to our elected officials, elected ostensibly to do the will of the people, to then ignore the needs of the people, of John and Jane Q. Public, in the endless and utterly counterproductive debate about liberal vs. conservative fiscal policy and ideology. Last week, the House of Representatives passed a bold and brave economic recovery bill that allocated billions of much-needed dollars to improve and modernize our schools and foster "21st century learning environments." The bill then goes to the Senate, the political wrangling continues, and what gets cut? Much of the funding for education.

I guess an investment in education isn't "stimulating" enough.

Again, I am not an economist so I leave it to people smarter than me to determine where and how stimulus money should be spent. And I certainly acknowledge and respect our collective and individual right to agree and agree to disagree on political issues. But in one man's humble opinion, and I may be baying into the wind, I firmly believe that if we don't invest in schools and in our children, then no amount of money we spend now will save us from an economic and human catastrophe that will make the current crisis look fairly mild by comparison.

Don't the Senators who cut these education dollars understand that, by some estimates, almost 1 million children each year are dropping out of school? Don't they understand that right now less than 35% of our public school 12th grade students are proficient in reading, science and math? Don't they understand that those students who do graduate assess well behind students from other countries in virtually every statistical category? Don't they understand that in a recent study conducted by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, high school graduates were deemed "deficient" in every one of the 21st century skills deemed necessary for 21st century success?"

If a company like Microsoft is laying off highly skilled employees, what chance does a high school drop out have? In an increasingly global economy where our children are no longer competing with each other but are competing with kids from Korea, China, India and Japan, what chance will they have in learning environments that are antiquated and outdated; where teachers and students are using essentially the same tools that I used when I graduated from high school over 25 years ago? I would challenge any one of the senators who cut the education funding to quit their jobs, forgo their senate salaries, and try and build a business--any business--using only the tools found in most inner city public school classrooms. I suspect most would look at me and think, "Are you insane? We won't have the tools."

Exactly.

Neither do they.

Bottom line, an investment in education is the ultimate stimulus package. It is an investment in our present and our future. It is an investment that can reap dividends for generations. It is an investment in our children that should not, that must not, be compromised.

Lessons from my son

2009-02-06T10:10:00.000-06:00

There is much we can learn from our children. Their world is a world of simple and unadorned truths, uncomplicated by the legion of complexities and competing considerations that too often define and dictate our lives as adults. And so it goes with education. By any objective measure, our schools and our students are underperforming. But how we fix our schools has been an ongoing source of national (and international) debate for decades. Learning theories abound. Instructional designs abound. School turn around plans abound. Google "school reform" and you'll pull up over 20,000,000 hits. The volume of time, energy and work placed into answering the question "How do we fix our schools?" is simply astounding.

But there is one simple truth about education that I have learned from my 6 year old son.

Every weekday morning, the alarm goes off at 6:30am and I gently nudge him to wake him up. He looks at me, groans, and often says....."Dad, do I have to go to school today?" I smile, tell him "yes," and turn on the television so he can get his morning fix of Spongebob Squarepants. Getting him dressed can be an ordeal; sometimes, depending on his mood, my son will stage a Ghandi-like sit down protest, but I manage to get him out the door, in the car and into the school.

His mood is generally glum.

Then I pick him up. He is renewed; changed. He comes bouncing out of the school door, smiling, happy, excited. I ask him, "How was your day?" He always replies "good." Then he tears into his bookbag and papers go flying as he eagerly shows me what he's learned today. This is not manufactured. This is genuine enthusiam. For him.....this isn't work. This is actually, dare I say it, fun.

Wow.

So what is the lesson from my son?

It is simply this--that school should be fun. That learning should magical. That the process of discovery should be exciting. If we understand that, if we start there, then, perhaps, we have locked onto one simple truth that will allow us, at long last, to improve our schools and to create social infrastructures (because if you think of it, that's really what school is) that truly facilitate better teaching and learning.

An Investment in Education--The Ultimate Stimulus Plan

2009-02-06T09:56:00.000-06:00

I note with some interest the ongoing debate about what should or should not be contained in a “stimulus” package. I am not an economist, so I leave it to people far smarter than me to determine what investments will or will not create jobs and stimulate our economy. But this much I know. If we don’t improve our schools, if we don’t prepare our young people to compete and succeed in the 21st century, none of this matters. We can appropriate a trillion dollars, two trillion dollars, three trillion dollars, we can improve our infrastructure, we can create tax incentives, we can spend, spend, spend…….but if we don’t adequately invest in education, the America that we know will be lost.

We will lose our status as the world leading global superpower.

Our universities will no longer be the global centers of research and innovation.

Our companies will no longer produce the goods and services that fuel the global economy.

And we will be in very real danger of creating a permanent underclass.

On what we’re now referring to as “Bloody Monday,” over 71,000 more job cuts were announced. This brings the total number of announced job cuts to over 200,000 this year. This is a stunning number. A tragic number. These are 200,000 lives that have been, or will be, irrevocably changed.

And yet…

Each year, approximately 1 million children drop out of high school. Right now, 1 child drops out of school every 26 seconds. Right now, the graduation rate in our 50 largest urban centers hovers around 50%.

Right now, there are more African-American men going to jail than to college.

What about these children? Who is fighting for them? Where will they go? If Microsoft is laying off 5000 highly skilled people, where will the young men and women who don’t even have a high school diploma work? How will they ever participate fully in the American Dream? What’s to become of them?

This is not just a problem. This is a national crisis. And yet, there doesn’t seem to be the sense of urgency about addressing these horrendous educational outcomes as there seems to be about fixing other areas of our economy. But the strength of our economy depends on the strength of our businesses, large and small, and the strength of our businesses depends, to a large extent, on the state of our schools.

Baby-boomers are retiring, taking their skills and knowledge with them. The result is a widening gap between the skills required by businesses today and the skills of new entrants in the workforce.

A recent report by The American Diploma Project states: “The [high school] diploma has lost its value because what it takes to earn one is disconnected from what it takes for graduates to compete successfully beyond high school—either in the classroom or in the workplace. Re-establishing the value of the diploma will require the creation of an inextricable link between high school exit expectations and the intellectual challenges that graduates invariably will face in credit bearing college courses or in high-performance, high-growth jobs.”

Employers echo this sentiment. The Conference Board, the Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and the Society for Human Resource Management conducted an in-depth study of the corporate perspective on the readiness of new entrants into the U.S. workforce by level of educational attainment. The study includes results from both an in-depth survey conducted during April and May 2006 and interviews with a sampling of a dozen HR and other senior executives. Respondents were asked to identify the skills they considered “very important” to success in the workplace. The skills rated as “very important” were: (1) professionalism/work ethic; (2) oral and written communications; (3) teamwork/collaboration; (4) critical thinking/problem solving; (5) reading comprehension; (6) English language (spoken); (7) ethics and social responsibility and (8) information technology application. The respondents were then asked to rate the skill level of new entrants by grade level. New entrants’ skill level could be rated as “excellent,” “adequate” or “deficient.”

Four year college graduates were deemed “deficient” in written communications, writing in English and leadership. Two year college graduates and technical school graduates were deemed “deficient” in written communications, writing in English, lifelong learning/self direction, creativity/innovation, critical thinking/problem solving, oral communications, ethics and social responsibility. However, high school graduates were deemed “deficient” in every one of the “very important” skills necessary for workforce success.

The implications are obvious. As important as job creation is, improving our schools and ensuring that current and future generations of students are prepared to compete and succeed in the global economy is just as important. So politics aside, President Obama is to be commended for making increased funding to education a part of the stimulus package. An investment in education is not one of those “good ideas” that has a laudable purpose, but should wait. Urgent action is needed now. Because if our schools fail, and many of them are failing, then our country will fail.

The stimulus package passed the house and is now before the Senate. The political debate is heating up about what should be in and what should be cut from the package. But we must fight for our children, for our future and for our schools. Don’t be silent. We must let our politicians and policymakers know that the money earmarked for education must not be cut. In fact, dedicated funding for modernizing our schools and creating 21st century learning environments for all of our students should be made a permanent part of our economic recovery plan.

Because an investment in education is the ultimate stimulus plan.

Arnie Duncan it is--but a few thoughts about education and accountability

2009-02-06T09:45:00.000-06:00

I wrote this just after President Obama announced his choice for education secretary. But I think the questions about accountability remain relevant and timely. Enjoy....

President-elect Obama has made his choice.

I think it is safe to say that after jump-starting our faltering economy, the next domestic crisis looming over the Obama administration is what to do about our public schools. The enormity of this task is fully evidenced by the fact that Obama has already made his selection for virtually every other cabinet position of note, but just announced his choice for education secretary. The stakes were high as this choice quietly, but pointedly, was simmering into what was (fairly or not) being characterized as an ideological “war.”

In one corner, we purportedly had the teachers and teachers unions. As Libby Quaid from the Associated Press reported (“Obama’s education pick sparks conflict”), teachers wanted someone who would be a strong advocate for their concerns; such as Obama advisor Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor, or Inez Tenenbaum, the former state schools chief in South Carolina.

In the other corner we had the so-called “reformers.” As Quaid wrote, “Reform advocates want someone like New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, who wants teachers and schools held accountable for the performance of students.” Arne Duncan, the current CEO of Chicago Public Schools and an Obama confidant, was also a popular choice.

And now we know it is to be Duncan.

Duncan is certainly a thoughtful and pragmatic choice and this selection is receiving generally positive reviews. But there are still concerns, particularly among teachers and teacher unions. At the root of the problem is the proverbial 800-pound elephant in the room when talking about education reform and policy. It can be summed up in one word—

Accountability.

Accountability is, of course, a good thing. In the value-driven private sector, accountability and employability generally go hand-in-hand. You are deemed responsible for the product you create. So when we have an educational system where 1 child drops out of high school every 26 seconds; where the graduation rate in our 50 largest urban centers hovers around 50% and where American students are falling behind students from other industrialized countries in virtually every statistical category, it certainly seems reasonable, at first glance, to hold our teachers and schools accountable for the performance of our students.

But I think we are missing something. Though it seems logical to point to our teachers and schools when confronted with student outcomes like these, if we peel back the layers a bit, something about this seems just a bit unfair. Yes, there are some bad teachers who certainly need to pursue a different line of work. Yes, there are some chronically underperforming schools that probably need to be closed. But the problems go deeper than that. Much deeper.

One analogy keeps coming to mind. Before joining the chorus of voices laying blame squarely at the feet our teachers or our schools, I can’t help but think about this—I find myself mentally juxtaposing our approach towards funding education to our approach towards funding and fighting a war.

When we go to war, we spare no expense because lives are on the line. (The war in Iraq, for example, will cost American taxpayers more than $3 Trillion dollars). We make sure that our fighting men and women have the latest and most advanced equipment, so we spend billions more on research and development. We do this because of the value that we place on human life—each and every human life. To send a solider to war without the tools necessary to save lives and to win the war would be more than an outrage; it would be a crime.

But our teachers are soldiers.

Shouldn’t our teachers be afforded the same right? They are soldiers as well; soldiers on the front line of the most important battle that we as a nation have or will ever fight. No, it is not a battle fought with bullets and guns. This is a battle for the hearts and minds of our children. This is a battle for the future of our nation.

And it is a battle we cannot lose.

But what are the tools that we give them? Worn and recycled textbooks? Overhead projectors? Schools, as noted by David Thornburg, “predominantly driven by the awesome power of a sheet of slate and a stick of chalk?” Classrooms where you might see a few computers scattered in the back of the room, largely unused, while the technology that is so ubiquitous in every other facet of our society is relegated, literally, to the back of the educational bus?

We give our teachers this and then we tell them to leave no child behind or we’ll hold them accountable, hold back their kids or close their schools.

Does that seem fair to you?

I would challenge any of the private sector pundits or talking heads on television to try to open a business, any business, using only the tools you find in most inner-city middle or high school classrooms. I suspect most would walk into the classroom, turn to me with a look of pure panic and say, “I don’t have the tools.”

Exactly.

So it seems to me that it doesn’t really matter who we appoint as education secretary unless we first ask ourselves this—Do our teachers and schools really have the tools they need in order to excite our students, to engage our students and to prepare our students to compete and succeed in the 21st century? If we don’t answer that question correctly, I don’t know if the appointment of Arne Duncan, or anyone else for that matter, will really make a difference.

Charter schools--A choice or a change?

2009-02-06T09:39:00.000-06:00

Change.

A word that is both a lightening rod and a litmus test.

We hear a lot of about “change” in education. But we need to pause, reflect and be careful. All too often, the minute something is trumpeted as the next new CHANGE in education, we jump on that bandwagon, start retrofitting our schools, change their names, slap on some new paint, invest a lot of money, wait, hold our breath, cross our fingers, hope……and nothing really changes. Then the finger pointing begins, the blame game starts and in the meantime another generation of children, children who depend on the quality of our schools for their future, have been left behind or lost.

So when we talk about “change” in education, we need to be very clear about a few things.

First, what are we changing from?

Second, what are we changing to?

Third, though we’ve changed the school name, the school structure or the focus of the curriculum, have we fundamentally changed what’s going on in the classroom?

Right now, charter schools are all the rage. But before we jump on the metaphorical charter school bandwagon, perhaps we should ask ourselves this—are the pedagogical practices in charter schools are really any different? What is the "base" curriculum? How are modern, interactive tools being integrated into the curriculum and are these tools being used to promote 21st century skills? Are the documented student outcomes from charter schools significantly different than student outcomes from well-funded, well-staffed and well-resourced public schools? Is classroom instruction primarily lecture-based or student-driven?

Is it more of the same, just done better?

I want to be clear here. I am not against charter schools. I am, in fact, personally aware of a number of charter schools that are doing some outstanding and commendable work, especially with at risk children. But we need to be careful about embracing charter schools as a panacea. Could it be that much of the success of charter schools can and should be attributed to smaller classroom sizes, increased accountability and a significantly more motivated and energetic teaching staff? Is the "better" produced by charter schools really better? Though test scores and graduation rates are generally higher, which certainly creates the appearance of progress, are we simply providing these kids more of what they should not be getting in the first place; an education that fails to adequately equip students to compete and succeed in the 21st century because it is still based primarily on pedagogical practices from the 19th century?

There is, in the end, a fundamental difference between a choice and a change.

My question to you is this—what do charter schools represent?

A choice?

Or a change?

Bailout frenzy--The REAL capital crisis

2009-02-06T09:27:00.000-06:00

I wrote this several weeks ago, after the Wall Street bailout, but thought I'd post it anyway. Guess we know how this turned out....

***********

Something about this bailout frenzy is beginning to grate.

$700 Billion to bailout Wall Street? I certainly understand the importance of saving jobs and homes. I’m all for that. People are really suffering out there. But when I see articles like this, I wonder, what have we done?

George White writes:

Wall Street banks won't use bailout money for bonuses

After weeks of pressure from politicians about using bailout money to pay out year-end bonuses, Wall Street banks are preparing to tell Congress that they won't use the recent $125 billion government cash infusion for compensation, but only for shoring up their balance sheets and acquisitions. That, however, doesn't mean the estimated $108 billion set aside for bonuses and compensation in 2008 won't be going out though.

According to a Financial Times report the largest nine U.S. banks -- Bank of America Corp., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Citigroup Inc., Goldman, Sachs & Co., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley, State Street Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. -- will pay bonuses from company earnings and their existing cash resources, as in prior years.

Whether legislators will see the distinction remains to be seen.

Banks are slowly being put under siege over the issue of their bonus pools, with the leaders from both the House of Representatives and the Senate critical of the banks' intention to hand out billions in bonus money following the passage of the $700 billion bailout package. The FT said that lawyers from the nine banks that received the initial $125 billion of government funds are holding meeting to gameplan a response to the criticism of the bonus pool. Expect to see the financial services sector start to vigorously present its case in coming weeks as a relatively unpopular bailout package and the end of the hotly contested presidential election threatens to turn political pressure into a full-blown PR nightmare for the banks as Congress and the cable networks find themselves with plenty of free time.

Um……WHY ARE WE EVEN DEBATING THIS? If you lose BILLIONS of dollars, so much so that you require a taxpayer financed BAILOUT, why would you even THINK about a bonus?!

But here’s what really grates. Right now the biggest crisis in our country isn’t the financial capital crisis. It is the HUMAN capital crisis. It’s simmering just below the surface; hidden because we are still the wealthiest nation on the planet, but it is a crisis, if left unchecked, that could make the current crisis look relatively mild by comparison.

We have approximately 50 Million students in our schools today. It is the largest and most diverse student population in the history of our nation. But here are some statistics to consider:

For every 100 ninth grader…
68 graduate on time.

Of those, 40 enroll in college…
27 are still in college the following year.

Of those, 18 earn an Associate’s degree within 3 years…
or a Bachelor’s degree within six years.

What this means is that 8 out of 10 of our nation’s ninth grade students will NOT earn an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree.

There numbers are staggering. And just what exactly are we going to do with the 80% who do not obtain college diplomas in a value-driven, knowledge-based global economy? Who is going to hire them? GM, Chrysler or Ford? Don’t think so. They may not even be around next year, and if they are, the workforce will be very different and far more specialized.

Think Bank of America would take some of that bailout money and hire them?

We’ve got to wake up and realize that we are on the verge of creating a functionally illiterate, virtually unemployable permanent underclass. This is not speculation, this is happening right now while we focus on banks and brokerage firms.

But think about all the good we could do if we funneled $700 Billion into our schools instead? Our schools should be models of innovation and 21st century learning, not poorly funded, ill-equipped, barely functioning institutional and instructional relics. A quality education should be the right of every child in this country. But right now, that “right” is largely determined by a child’s zip code. An investment in education is an investment in our future—our collective future. It is something that could yield benefits, from Wall Street to Main Street, for generations.

So while we’re busy throwing around billions of dollars, maybe we could throw a few to our struggling public schools. I mean, God-forbid our bankers have to forego a bonus this year.

How ever would they survive?

From Corporate Counsel to Education Evangelist--One Man's Journey (Part II)

2009-02-06T07:20:00.000-06:00

Almost three years ago to the day, I was given a charge.

Do not focus on technology.

Research how children learn. Start there. Understand that. Then talk about how technology can be used to support the unique learning preferences of today’s students, if at all.

So I did that. I spent almost a year doing only that. I started with a question and pushed forward to find an answer. (Please note, I didn't say the answer). I had no guides, no limits, no ideological predispositions. I just wanted to understand how we could break through and meaningfully connect to our kids. I thought if we better understood how to reach our children, then we could better understand how to teach our children and to how build instructional practices around that understanding; instructional practices that could, in theory, impact every child in every school, irrespective of background, race, culture or socioeconomic status.

This much I knew. I knew we had to do something. Because we’re losing so many of our kids. Children who, as so poignantly noted by Jonathan Kazol, "have done nothing wrong" and "have committed no crime." These are children after all. We shouldn’t be losing children. We should be preparing them to take the reins, to carry the torch, to lead, and to participate fully in the promise of the American Dream.

So the first and most important fact to understand about our Department of Education Technology is that it really is an education department. Our guiding vision, then and now, is that we can only meaningfully impact the quality of education in our schools, close achievement gaps and improve educational outcomes by focusing on student learning, not on pushing products. IT firms have been notoriously guilty of foisting hardware and software onto schools and school districts for decades, usually accompanied by grandiose promises of “reform” and “change,” but what has really changed? Are our schools any better? Computers have been physically present in our schools for some time. The student-to-computer ratio has dropped from approximately 19-to-1 in 1992 to a nationwide average of less than 5-to-1 now. e-Rate has made it possible for most schools, even in the poorest districts, to enjoy some Internet connectivity. Despite this, the drop out rate in our 50 largest urban centers hovers around 50%.

What does all of this mean?

It means that it’s not about the technology. Technology is just a tool, and if our teachers don’t know why the tool is there (assuming the tool is actually in the classroom at all) or how the tool can be used to impact student learning, then the tool becomes a toy; yet another expensive distraction that does very little to improve student outcomes or the change quality of education available to our students.

So even though I work for an IT firm, I choose to do something a bit unusual. I do not make a case for more computers.

I make the case for constructivist education.

I make a case for change.

Our White Paper

I make the case in our white paper, “1-to-1, The Smart Technology Services Education Initiative” (1-to-1). 1-to-1 provides a detailed outline of how schools can prepare students today to compete and succeed in the global economy of the 21st century. 1-to-1 challenges schools and policymakers to think beyond the same model of education we’ve employed for decades—quiet, teacher-driven, lecture-based classrooms—and consider a more active, constructivist, student-driven approach. Today’s students need to know how to think critically, apply knowledge in real world contexts, analyze information, comprehend new ideas, communicate, collaborate, solve problems and make decisions. 1-to-1 stresses the need to fully integrate technology into our K-12 and to then use this technology to engage our students in deeper, more meaningful and authentic thinking and learning. To support our case, 1-to-1 provides case studies detailing how a school, schools within a district, a district and a state successfully launched and maintained 1-to-1 initiatives and the educational outcomes from those initiatives.

Our case…

There was a time in this country, romanticized in the novels of Horatio Alger, when vision, thrift, hard work, and not necessarily a formal education or cognitive skills, were considered the keys to success. However, in the age of information technology, the “Digital Age,” dedication, desire and even the best of intentions absent education are simply not enough. In the 21st century, children who cannot read, write, reason or communicate effectively will be virtually unemployable. Children without the critical thinking and cognitive skills required in knowledge-based global economy will be lost.

So what’s the problem?

I think a large part of the problem is that we have the problem all wrong.

As a nation, we want to blame someone, anyone, for the failure of our schools. Bad teachers. Lazy students. Uninvolved parents. The one seeming constant is that we tend to view the education problem as a people problem.

But the education problem is not a people problem.

It is, first and foremost, a pedagogy problem.

ped.da.go.gy:

The art or science of teaching; instructional methods; principles of education; the activity of educating; activities that impart knowledge or skill.

Our current method of teaching—our pedagogy—is based on the 3 R's. Not reading, writing and arithmetic, but RAM, REMEMBER and REGURGITATE. This method of instruction is fine for standardized tests which assess students’ ability to repeat discreet bits of information, but does very little to promote actual comprehension, the deep processing of ideas, higher-order thinking, creativity and actual learning.

What does?

Whether a student’s learning preference is visual or auditory, verbal or physical, social or solitary, we now know that the more a student actually gets to experience, the more that student gets to “connect and experiment” with what they’re trying to understand, the more they actually learn.

This is a fundamental tenant of constructivist learning—that we learn by doing, not through the rote repetition of facts. The word “constructivist” derives from the Latin “con struere,” which means “to arrange or give structure.” In a constructivist classroom, knowledge is not taught, but is "created, discovered and experienced." Teacher “push” gives way to learner “pull” as students are encouraged to communicate, collaborate, ask questions, carry out their own experiments, make their own analogies and come to their own conclusions. The teacher, in turn, no longer acts as the “sage on the stage” but as the “guide on the side”—a mediator—who does not control or direct the learning but facilitates the student’s efforts to construct meaning for themselves.

You see elements of constructivist learning at work in many Pre-K through 3rd grade classrooms. These are generally noisy and active classrooms. Children often sit in groups, collaborate and are generally given the freedom to move around and experiment. And there are two things that are truly noteworthy about school during these Pre-K through 3rd grade years. The first is that you simply don’t see the enormous achievement gaps that exist during later years. Yes, there are some exceptional students and there are some students who fall behind. But the overwhelming majority of students, irrespective of race, background or socioeconomic status, fall within a reasonable median range. The other thing that is truly remarkable about school during these years is that most children actually refer to school as “fun.”

But all that changes in the 4th grade. That’s usually when “real” school begins. That’s when we tell these same active and curious minds to sit down. Go slow. Be quiet. Turn the same page at the same time. Speak when spoken to and repeat exactly what you’ve been told in order to succeed on the test.

And what happens? What are the educational outcomes we see as a result of this shift away from active, hands-on classrooms to classrooms dominated by a stick of chalk, a piece of slate and teacher lectures? We get what educators commonly refer to as the “4th grade slump.” We start to see enormous achieve gaps. We start to see frightening numbers of children being left behind.

So what do we do then? How do we respond?

With more of the same.

Walk into almost any middle school in the country and what will you see? You will see classrooms where students are sitting in single file rows while a teacher lectures from the front of the room. No talking in class, no talking in the halls, no talking except at lunch. You will see students that are not allowed to socialize, get together in groups or just talk. You will see young people being ushered from one place to the next, unsmiling, always under constant visual supervision. You will see places that look and feel more like prisons than places of learning. The most notable characteristic about school at this point is the seeming absence of joy.

And the results are truly devastating.

According to the 2004 U.S. Department of Education national technology report:

By the 4th grade…

• Only 36% of our nation’s students are proficient in math;
• Only 31% are proficient in reading; and
• Only 29% are proficient in science.

By the 8th grade…

• Only 31% of our nation’s students are proficient in reading;
• Only 30% are proficient in math; and
• Only 29% are proficient in science.

By the 12th grade…

• Only 10% of our nation’s Native American students;
• Only 4% of our Hispanic students; and
• Only 3% of our African American students are proficient in math.

So why is a shift to student-driven, constructivist learning so important now? Because results like this suggest that our educational system is not getting better, it is getting worse. Because, to quote Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat,” our world has changed and there is no going back. Because we no longer live in a world that rewards the ability to remember, repeat or perform the same function over and over again (e.g., think of the millions of manufacturing jobs that have been eliminated, automated or shipped overseas). Employers’ do not need a workforce whose collective ability is defined by the ability to do what they’re told or rattle off discreet bits of information. Who cares if our students can recite the capital of every state in the union? Employers need something they can’t get on Google. Today’s students need “21st century skills” for a 21st century world and these skills are simply not developed in lecture-based “ram, remember and regurgitate” classrooms.

What we have right now is a generation of students who are simply checking out, dropping out or just going through the motions. Many “play” school. They do enough to get by; they remember what they need for the test, and they move on. Then we wonder why our educational outcomes at almost every level are so dismal.

So what do we do?

Keep doing what we’re doing?

If we do that, then we’ll keep getting what we’ve got.

And what we’ve got, in one man's humble opinion, is not good enough.

From Corporate Counsel to Education Evangelist--One Man's Journey

2009-02-05T19:17:00.000-06:00

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."
—Frederick Buechner

I was a corporate lawyer for almost fifteen years. After graduating from Northwestern University School of Law in 1990, I was recruited by a large insurance defense firm in Los Angeles. I had a lovely corner office with a big mahogany desk in a new high rise building on Figueroa Avenue. My office was right down the hall from the managing partner who liked to tell me with genuine enthusiasm, “Mike, you’re going to be a partner at this firm!” That was gratifying.

But I felt strangely disconnected. Every day I drove by a stunning number of poor, addicted and homeless people (one of the unfortunate realities of life in Los Angeles), people who looked like me, people who but for the vagrancies of fate could have been me, and I thought—What am I doing? Making the world safe for insurance companies? It was a strange, surreal existence.

So I returned to Chicago and began working with small to mid-sized, privately-held corporate clients. While the work was intellectually stimulating, what truly motivated me was the sense (or at least the hope) that I was a part of building and sustaining something meaningful; something good. At our core, I think we all want the same thing—to feel relevant—and I hoped I was at least a small part of maintaining and protecting something that created jobs, opportunity, revenue and, yes, relevance.

I felt good about that.

One of the unexpected benefits of serving as corporate counsel for a small to mid-sized company is that I often worked directly with business owners. This was an extraordinary opportunity. Although working in this capacity is not always easy (business owners are often on the razor’s edge; they have to be), the one constant shared by these business owners, and the trait I most admired about all of them (at least when I wasn’t getting yelled at), was the fact that they were, to a person, visionaries and creators. They were the “big picture thinkers” and “meaning makers” referred to by Dan Pink is his ground-breaking book “A Whole New Mind.” (If you haven’t read this book, you should). What inspired me is that these were people who made something. That takes no small amount of moxie and genius.

As I approached my 40th birthday in December of 2005, this kept gnawing at me. I would lie awake at night, stare at the ceiling and think—what have I created? What have I built? How have I, through my industry and hard work, made an impact on the world? Is this world a better place because of me?

I could only say this—I had tried, as best I could, to be a good son, a good student, a good lawyer and a good father. But the question kept coming around—what have I created? I thought, if called to task for my life, if asked to account for how I spent my time and used the gifts I was given, how would I answer? What would I say?

And the more I thought about this, the more I realized that I didn’t like the answer.

At this point, I knew something had to change. I couldn’t do what I had done anymore. I couldn’t just be a guy who “crafted contracts” (another Dan Pink reference). I had to do more. I had to create something; to build something.

I just didn’t know what.

I didn't know how.

********

Soon after my 40th birthday, I requested a meeting with Steve Baker, the president of my company, Smart Technology Services. Steve and I have known each other and worked closely together for years so I felt fairly comfortable approaching him with what I suspected would sound like a fairly odd proposal.

I remember sitting in Steve’s office, clearing my throat, and saying something like: “Steve, I don’t want to be just the lawyer anymore.” I told Steve about my desire to build something. To create. I told him about my idea.

Smart Technology Services is an IT support firm. One of our biggest clients is Chicago Public Schools. We provide a host of IT support services for CPS, all of which are critically important, but do not necessarily improve the quality of education itself.

My idea, loose and ill-defined, was that we could help bridge some of the educational and digital divides that existed in our city and our schools if we did a better job of integrating more computers into the classroom. I didn’t really know why this would help bridge anything, I just thought—I use a computer everyday, so does everybody else I know, and maybe if our classrooms looked more like the real world that our schools are trying to prepare these kids for, it might make a difference.

I remember getting about halfway through what must have sounded like a disjointed mess of a proposal before Steve held up his hand and said “Stop Mike.” He looked me in the eye…paused….and said…..

“You’re fired.”

Just kidding.

No, Steve said something that really surprised me. He said, “I don’t want you to worry about putting computers in the classroom.“ He continued: “I want you to start with this—start by understanding how children learn. Start there. Understand that.”

He told me to take as much time as I needed and to write a white paper that focused on how children learn and how we could better engage this generation of students in the process of learning. He told me once I understood that—how children learn—we could then talk about how computers supported those educational needs, if at all.

He ended with this. He told me if we were serious about improving education, and not just pushing hardware and software, we had to begin and end by focusing on education. If we focused on anything other than that, we were no more than “empty vessels” and “product pushers.”

The only guide he gave me was this—he told me about some fascinating research on the benefits of “constructivist education.” But that was it. The scope of the white paper would be mine. The conclusions of the white paper would be mine. The product would be mine. My task, my charge, was to create this white paper that focused on how children learn. Then Steve politely kicked me out of his office. He didn’t want me worrying about the technical stuff. He didn’t want me worrying about computers, cables and connectivity. He didn’t want me to worry about how the company made money or would make money with this. He wanted my singular focus on unlocking one door—how do children learn?

I walked out of Steve’s office and clearly remember looking at my hands.

What have you created?

I would create this. This white paper. I would try and understand how children learn. By starting there, by understanding that, I would the better understand how we could help our children, impact our schools and truly make a difference.

And so began my journey. The most important journey of my life.

A journey that continues to this day.

A journey I intend to share with you.

About this blog

2009-02-05T18:13:00.001-06:00

“If you can’t read, it’s going to be hard to realize dreams.”
—Booker T. Washington

Dedicated in 1922, the Booker T. Washington Monument,“Lifting the Veil” (pictured above), is located in the center of the institution of higher learning that he helped to found--Tuskegee University. The inscription at the base of the monument reads: “He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry.”

One of Washington’s guiding beliefs was that economic independence was earned through self-help, hard work and access to a quality education. I believe that this belief is as true now as it was then--perhaps more so. As noted by former Harvard University president and now Obama economic advisor Lawrence H. Summers when giving a commencement speech about the importance of education, “A fair chance and an unfettered start in the race of life is at the heart of the American Dream.”

And so it is.

But what does it mean to “lift the veil” of ignorance today?

What does it mean to “progress through education” today?

These are the essential questions that I intend to explore in this blog.

Along the way, I hope to facilitate thought, ideas and discussion. I do not promise answers (in fact, I will probably ask far more questions), but I do have a point of view, a point of view that I look forward to sharing with all of you, wherever you are and whomever you are, as I explore what we must do, individually and institutionally, to lift the veil of ignorance and to prepare this and future generations of students to compete and succeed in the global economy 21st century.