I’m a big fan of BYOL – Bring Your Own Laptop to school.

The laptop is the new pencil… a tool necessary for an effective education today.  I also think that a district-provided laptop, in public education, is not financially feasible. However, supporting families that can not afford to send their child to school with a laptop is supportable, effective and essential to a BYOL program. When I wrote the (intentionally oversimplified) ‘5 Year Technology Plan‘, my emphasis was on infrastructure: Keeping a year ahead (not 5 years ahead) with your network, providing opportunities for teachers to get learning/technical support, and making sure that students have access to the infrastructure. The best way to provide students with opportunities to take advantage of a well-planned infrastructure is to put laptops in their hands… or more specifically, to have them bring those laptops to school.

Why BYOL and not BYOD – Bring Your Own Device?

I have an admitted bias here: I think a keyboard is still an essential tool in school. If you want to build inequity then have students try writing, for any extended period of time, on a phone -vs- on an iPad -vs- on a laptop. Essentially laptops, compared to phones or iPads, are a superior product for construction and creation of content rather than just consumption of content. This may change, but not soon enough. Looking ahead, I see student/family owned laptops as the best route to go. Here are some key points to consider:

- Providing laptops to students is not a cost effective use of resources in public education.

- Any laptop purchased in the last 3 years would meet all ‘minimum requirements’ needed with respect to speed and storage needs.

- Open source products like Open Office allow all students to share common software for group work and projects.

- Cloud computing allows personal and shared learning spaces that both store and back-up student work.

- A wireless projector could allow any student to contribute to the class without the need for an expensive interactive whiteboard solution.

- An optional, district run, lease-to-own program could help support many families that want an affordable option, while full support of those who are truly in need would have to happen no matter what program you use to provide technology to students.

- A student owned program means that students have the necessary technology both at school and at home.

- A laptop program does not mean that laptops are always open. Just as there are times and places for other tools (even pencils) there are times and places for laptops to be put away and other tools and learning strategies to be implemented.

The iPad is a great tool, and yes you can add a keyboard, but I don’t think iPads are as personalized for education as they should be. Either students own their own accounts and every pay-for app that comes along is an added expense each family must incur, or all the iPads are on a single account and that account is operated by someone other than the intended user (likely the teacher). Although the really good apps are getting better, they still tend to cost money and they still don’t do things as well as laptop versions.

A perfect example to exemplify my point is Blogsy, the blogging app. This app has gotten more and more user-friendly and is really making it easier to blog from your iPad. But I’d still rather write this post on my laptop, with upcoming links in open tabs. I also like how easy it is for me to bookmark those tabs on diigo, and add copied text to my description of the link, which is a royal pain to do on my iPad. I tend to consume things on my iPad and iPhone, and when I want to do more, I email the link to myself to engage further on my laptop.

Don’t get me wrong, the iPad is a great tool. I think it has already transformed education when it comes to providing an all-in-one tool for many special needs students and programs. I also think it has a ways to go before I can say that it is a better overall student owned device than a simple laptop. An iPad is a great addition to a laptop program… Actually, in a way I’m advocating for BYOL and BYOD, with BYOD standing for Bring Your OTHER Device, (as well as your laptop). I’ve also seen this referred to as BYOT – Bring Your Own Technology.

Students want to film a 3 minute video clip? Great! Let them pull out their phone or iPad and start filming. Want to take a photo? Or record a voice? Go ahead and use another device, (not mandatory but available to anyone who wants to bring them). I see the laptop as the required device, and students are welcome to supplement that. Once we have laptops in every student’s hands, the next step is to make sure that teacher practice is such that the laptops are used to their fullest potential… but that’s a whole other post!

Please share your thoughts (and links) with me. Below are some links and resources that you may find helpful.

_____

• I brought a BYOL program to a school in China: Bring Your Own Laptop to School & more information about the program.
• The new Inquiry Hub will be BYOL.
• Chris Kennedy – ‘Bring Your Own Technology – And Thinking About Equity‘.
• Jeff Utecht - WHY THERE IS NO ONE WAY TO GO 1:1.

There are a lot of great educational videos out there. One of the best lists, that I go back to time and again, was built by Alec Couros and it evolved from a blog post to a wiki page: 90+ Videos for Tech. & Media Literacy.

There… is… a… lot… out… there!

As a result, I think some real gems are being missed. Here are 5 Educational TEDx Videos that I think deserve to be paid attention to:

Kim Cofino: Mobile, Connected, Collaborative

Watch it with a group and then either tackle one of the ideas together or break into smaller groups and tackle them all. Kim took the best part of her K12 Online Conference Keynote and delivered it as its’ own presentation. If you don’t think education is changing, you haven’t seen Kim’s insights yet! [Watch on YouTube]

- – -

Diana Laufenberg: How to learn? From mistakes

Diana works at SLA and she brings her curriculum to life! “It was theirs, it was experiential, it meant something to them.” ~ That’s one of many great quotes from this talk that looks at both students and teachers learning from their mistakes in meaningful ways. [Watch on YouTube]

- – -

Kiran Bir Sethi teaches kids to take charge

Kiran, Director of School Riverside, eloquently delivers this message: “If learning is embedded in a real-world context.. then children go through a journey of ‘aware’, where they can see the change; ‘enable’, be changed; and then ‘empower’, lead the change.” ~Wonderful! [Watch on YouTube]

- – -

Chris Kennedy – Students Live! Real-world Learning at the 2010 Olympic/Paralympic Games

These student reporters had full access to the games and they delivered real-time news and special interest stories. Chris‘ story is about, “…real world learning, supported by technology, but it was not about the technology at all.” [Watch on YouTube]

- – -

Dan Meyer – Math Curriculum Makeover

Although Dan‘s talk has been viewed far more than the other talks above, I think it has probably made it around Math circles when actually it has wonderful implications for all educators. His 5 suggestions transcend all subject areas! [Watch on YouTube]

- – -

Watch them on your own or as staff… the conversations you have will be rich and rewarding.

Bonus

Sometimes there just isn’t enough time in a meeting for a 10 to 18 minute video. I put together this 3-Minute Conversation Starter: Let’s Transform Education that I think can do just that… start a conversation about education today. The video is comprised of clips of other videos and both the above YouTube version and my blog post have links to the videos I used clips from, (including 2 of the Tedx videos I share above).

Know of another great must-see video? Please share a link!

[Cross-Posted on Connected Principals]

I write for me, I share with you, and the world seems a little smaller.

Just like last year, here is my blog’s year in review: The posts I’ve written and a quote from each. I hope that you will find something that appeals to you. (Mouse-over the links to find out a bit more about each post.)

If you have subscribed to, commented on, linked to, or simply taken the time to read my blog… I say a heartfelt

Thank you!

- – – – -

Open Educator Manifesto

” ‘We’ educate future citizens of the world

Teaching is my professional practice

I Share by default

I am Open, Transparent, Collaborative, and Social

My students own their own:   (Learning)

• learning process

• learning environment

• learning products

• learning assessment…”

- – – – -

Slowly By Slowly

“I read a great article that I found in the December 2007- January 2008 edition of Focus on Dalian, “Slowly By Slowly” by Rob Giebitz. This was the first piece Rob wrote for his monthly column, ‘The eXpat Manager’. The article starts:

“I first heard this phrase from our Chinese production manager. I have to admit that at first it sounded like just another Chinglish phrase.”

Chinglish is a portmanteau of the words Chinese and English and refers to spoken or written English which is influenced by Chinese…”

- – – – -

3 keys to a flipped classroom

1. Homework

2. Lesson Quality

a) Depth vs Breadth

b) How vs Why

3. Production Quality

- – – – -

Homework

“How much class time is dedicated to explaining homework? How much class time is committed to checking homework answers? How valuable is the ‘homework checking’ time? Are the students who struggle most with homework the ones who get the most attention during ‘homework checking’ time?  How much of your time is spent policing homework completion? How many positive conversations do you have regarding homework? How many students truly get value from homework? How many don’t? How valuable is homework?”

- – – – -

Who are your friends? Digitally vs face-to-face.

“I’m blown away by the meaningfulness of my online connections to different people. Students are people too. Let’s make sure we are providing them with opportunities to network and to meet friends from around the world. It’s a huge double-standard to see the value in it for ourselves and then not allow students to do the same. Some of my best learning happens because of my social network connections… let students do the same… create opportunities for this to happen!”

- – – – -

Perspective

“The reality is that I unashamedly want more attention… but not for the reasons people think. I’m not looking for fame or a new job. I’m looking to be the greatest influence I can be and a bigger audience to my blog means I have more influence, richer conversations, and more opportunities to learn. If I didn’t want that, I’d journal privately and not blog.”

- – – – -

Broken or Transforming?

Education is NOT broken.

“Let’s start using language that is constructive rather than counterproductive. Let’s use models based on questioning, innovation, and learning rather than complaining, alarming, and whistle-blowing. Our language shapes us and what we do. Try as we may, we do not find peace through a war on terror; We do not mend relationships with litigation; We do not ‘fix’ schools when we use a ‘broken’ model.”

- – – – -

Please help our flat classroom students

“This is an amazing project, and our students have learned a lot… but this has come with some rather large challenges, most of which arise from one big issue: We are in China, behind the Great Filter Wall. This is challenging enough, but with certain global ‘social uprisings’ recently, the wall has been fortified…”

- – – – -

Investing in job redesign

“I see the shift in education towards Transparency (open teaching), Responsibility (before accountability), Individualization (customized tools and learning), and Permanence (of teaching and learning products) and I think that our roles as educators are necessarily changing in a good way.”

- – – – -

The ‘flipped classroom’ WEBINAR

“Scott McLeod has invited me to participate in a webinar on the ‘flipped classroom’. My time zone is working against me as it will be 3am here in Dalian. With a few year-end commitments going on next week, coupled with an apartment too small to escape waking my family up, I may not actually get a chance to participate.”

- – – – -

I wasn’t there, but I was CONNECTED

“I wasn’t there. In fact, I was almost literally half-way around the world. It happened at the ISTE conference in Philadelphia, and I’m in Dalian, China. The session was called: What Does it Mean to Be a Tech-Savvy Principal?”

- – – – -

Be Creative – Grad Speech 2011

“I wanted to highlight student work and really show students and parents how our laptop program makes the educational experience different…  I think students have an incredible opportunity to be creative in how they learn today! Also, the fact that they can share that learning with the rest of the world is pretty amazing.”

- – – – -

International No Office Day

PICK A ‘NO OFFICE DAY’ – SEPTEMBER 12-16th, 2011

“At about the same time back in December 2010, Lyn Hilt & I both decided to spend a little more time in our classrooms rather than in our offices. Although I was in Dalian, China and she was in Denver, Pennsylvania, USA, we are both on Twitter and also on Connected Principals and we shared our experiences about our ‘No Office Days’.”

- – – – -

Drinking from a fire hose

The Metaphor
“I used to see information like a large pool or lake… a resevoir of information to be collected, and held on to. Now I see information like a river… a constant stream of too much information to hold on to. The stream runs whether I’m near it or not.”

- – – – -

The future of education will be open and distributed

Within 5 years, every student from Grade 6 or 7 right up to
Grade 12 will be involved in some level of distributed learning.

“I’m also not just talking about Distributed Learning but, more specifically…

Blended learning – Blended learning is any time a student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace;” 

- – – – -

The Pro-D Flip

“Since writing my 3 Keys to a Flipped Classroom blog post, I have been reading many great contributions to the discussion around flipping classrooms. Last week I was commenting on Lisa Nielsen’s thoughtful post Five Reasons I’m Not Flipping Over The Flipped Classroom and something occurred to me…

I have flipped my Professional Development!

I’ve done this with my blog and with Twitter.”

- – – – -

Accessibility failure

” …Now on to the idea of Accessibility:

The. Most. Important. Thing.

How accessible are our schools for every student?

What do we do to make learning opportunities more accessible?

Are tools, resources and expertise to support struggling students easily accessible?”

- – – – -

a meaningful shift

Before:

In non-digital/non-tech-using classes, ‘the teacher’ tended to differentiate the learning ‘for students’.

And now:

With digital, social and collaborative tools, ‘the students’ tend to differentiate the learning ‘for themselves’.

- – – – -

Be part of my K12Online Conference Presentation

“Yesterday I sent out some invitations to help me with my K12Online Conference presentation. Today I’ve decided to demonstrate some of the key points around making connections, having a valuable network, and being an active learner. So, I am asking YOU…”

- – – – -

Klout and Education: Never the two shall meet!

Klout: Influence = Social Status

Education: Influence = Social Good

- – – – -

Transforming Education – K12Online Conference 2011 Presentation

I’d rather let the video speak for itself, than to go on about it here. I’ll just share that I really appreciate the time and effort people put into sharing their video interviews with me.

- – – – -

The COW is dead… Long live the POW?

“…C.O.W. = ‘Computers On Wheels’, essentially a mobile cart which has a combination of a projector with a computer.

Long live the P.O.W. ~ Projectors on Wheels! Take the computer off the cart and put it in teachers’ hands. Take the projector off of the ceiling mount and put it on wheels. Why?…”

- – – – -

A Conversation Starter

My goal: Create a three minute video that tells it’s own story, using other videos. My hope is that this will invite further exploration, conversation and learning.

Here is what I came up with:

- – – – -

The 5 Year Technology Plan

“The 5 year technology plan? Do this 5 years in a row: Purchase/spend for this year; make sure your infrastructure can support your needs for next year; and, re-evaluate frequently.

My advice beyond this…”

- – – – -

Introducing the Inquiry Hub

This school will fit well with the new BCedplan and the future of education in our Province. It fits well with our School District’s collaborative work on “Learning Without Boundaries”. And, it fits well with our team, who believe that we have reached a great point in our organization whereby we can fully develop and support this innovative program that embodies our educational and pedagogical philosophies.

- – – – -

The Stickiness Factor

“Adria Steinberg’s ‘six As’ of project-based learning…

• Authenticity
• Academic Rigour
• Applied Learning
• Active Exploration
• Adult Relationships
• Assessment

———-

That’s a year of posts! I hope that you have or that you will find something valuable to your own learning, and as always, I welcome your feedback.

Think good thoughts, say good words, do good deeds.

Yesterday I read a great post by Ira Socol: Question Everything. I love the Boeing 787 story, and the Guardian newspaper video commercial is one of those self-explanatory examples that I just know I’ll use in the future.

Ira reminded me of my post: Question Everything that I wrote, while still in China, to start off 2011.

Little did I know that within a year of writing this I would be part of the design and development team for a new school, the Inquiry Hub opening in September of 2012. Reading my post again, I am just thrilled to see that we truly are questioning everything! Here are my questions from the post, and a look at what we are working on with the Inquiry Hub:

Why fill a new classroom with individual student desks?
Why have a unidirectional ‘front’ of the room? Why not have everything on wheels?

We will have two primary learning commons rooms, one being the previous school’s library and the other a double-classroom with the false wall between them open. We also have some smaller conference rooms, and a kitchen/lounge that students can use. The entry to this school is also a unique space and we’ll be using it as a learning hub as well. I’m currently reading The Third Teacher and we know that the use of our learning spaces will be far from traditional.

Why have the whole day set up with classes in blocks?

We aren’t going to have structured blocks or classes. We will have seminars, some of which will include all students, some of which will only be for students doing a specific course, or studying a specific area of focus. It would be unlikely for a student to do more than 2 seminars in a day, and if they do participate in 2 seminars, that would account for 1.5 to 2.5 hours of their day.

Why design a teacher’s schedule based on instructional time?

Our teachers will be spending a lot of time conferencing with students, rather than ‘in the front of the room’.

Why have the whole day divided by age-grouped classes?

Students will often work in groups around themes of interest and not their grade level. Also, some students will work through online/blended sections of different subjects faster than others and it is highly likely that even in the first year we will have students across grades working on the same subjects at the same levels.

Why a fixed curriculum in every subject? Why fixed subjects? Why textbooks?

We will be comprehensively examining the curriculum in the coming months. We will be figuring out what learning outcomes students can achieve through personal or team developed inquiries and what parts of the curriculum we should support through online/blended course instruction. Sometimes a course will occur over more than one school year, sometimes a course will be finished in less than a semester. Depending on the inquiry questions being asked, two students with the same course load could have a completely different curriculum, and yet meet most if not all of the same outcomes. We probably aren’t going to be textbook free, but textbooks will be digital, and hopefully less and less like a traditional textbook. I’m excited about the possibility that digital textbooks can be tailor made, interactive, and most importantly, responsive to learning needs… See #3 in my post: The future of education will be open and distributed.

Why grade all subjects? Why grade at all?
Why a focus on testing? How best do we ‘test’ a student’s understanding?

We are currently developing two ‘requisite’ courses that all students will take: Principles of Inquiry and Applications of Digital Learning. It is likely that these will be Pass/Fail courses and all feedback will be anecdotal. It is necessary to have final grades for most courses, since we do not want to put our students at a disadvantage when applying to universities. That said, assessment practices will not be primarily test-based and a lot of what we do will be portfolio driven.

How do we un-school schools?
How do we give students appropriate credit for things done outside of school and classes?
How do we shift to be focused primarily on learning?

I think the best way to un-school school is to: a) Have students develop their own questions around their own interests and passions; and, b) “Blur the lines between living and learning”, (a great quote from my Principal, Stephen Whiffin). We are going to be working with parents and community groups to see how we can make the work students do meaningful within the community. With no block schedules, there is a lot of potential for a student to be ‘out there’ in the community doing ‘stuff that matters’ and getting credit for it too. Also, the best way to keep a focus on learning is to have our staff focus on learning too. We are working with local universities to see what kind of research grants we can get. We aren’t pretending that we have all the answers, we are digging in and learning as we go too.

How do we integrate technology meaningfully? What’s coming up next? How do we prepare for this?

This is an excellent example of where we are continuing to explore and learn. What is the best learning platform for us? What will student portfolios and teacher dashboards that monitor student progress look like? We are still exploring possibilities and invite you to share your thoughts with us! One decision we have made is that students will bring laptops. They are invited to bring in other devices, but we think a laptop is still a necessary tool. (More on this in a future post.)

Where is school being done ‘right’? What models are working? Who should we be paying attention to?

We have been examining Neil Stephenson‘s research and work at the Calgary Science School; Reading about and watching interesting videos on models like SCIL in Australia; And, embracing the ideas in great resources out of High Tech High. We have been looking into Reggio and even have a Reggio school opening in our district. Also, I’ve been looking at innovative, blended learning models and curating links on my ‘Shifting Learning’ Scoop.It. There are many great programs to explore and learn from! So we aren’t starting from scratch, but rather we are looking to the future and adding our own flavour to existing models that we think exemplify 21st Century, student-inquiry centred learning.

What will you question about your practice or the practice of schools in 2011?

Not in a million years would I have guessed when I wrote “Question Everything” that within a year I would be doing so to such an extreme… not just on my blog, but in developing a new, innovative school. And we are also having discussions with teachers in our district who are excited about brining inquiry-based learning into their schools. We are just beginning to learn of where this is already happening in classrooms within our district, and our province.

The learning curve has been huge. I’ve had to question a lot of my own assumptions and have even found barriers in my own beliefs about what school ‘should’ or ‘needs to’ look like. It has been humbling, challenging, fascinating and engaging. The interesting thing is that much of what I’ve been learning can happen in most every school, and I find that very exciting.

Do not go quietly into your classrooms and into your schools! Let’s start the conversation. Let’s Transform Education… TOGETHER!

PS. If you happen to have a course program with specific Learning Outcomes around Applications of Digital Learning or Digital Literacy, please share them with me… I too promise to share what we come up with!

Please share your thoughts on any of these questions and let us know what insights you have come up with. Thank you!

[Cross-Posted on Connected Principals]

Stickiness Part I – The Lesson

“Do you remember me?”

“Yes, you taught me Math.” (Actually I was his Vice Principal that taught him ONE grade 8 Math integers lesson.)

“What grade are you in now?”

“I’m in my final semester of Grade 12″

“That’s great! What are your plans for next year?”

“UBC for Sciences, then Med school. You know what, I still remember: ‘Change the mi-nus to a-plus, and change the sign that-follows-it.’ You told us we would remember that for the rest of our lives… and I never forgot.”

That’s part of an exchange I had with a young man serving me at the grocery counter a couple weeks ago. I love the fact that although I live in a relatively larger school district, I tend to bump into former students quite frequently.

[Here is where I talk a bit about the Math... I'll get to the 'Stickiness' in a moment.]

In reference to this former student’s lesson, I had to go through what would normally be five to six lessons in a double block (80 minutes) of Math. You see, to get to that lesson where I teach the concept that  ⁺4 – ^-3  is equal to ⁺4 + ⁺3  I first teach the concept of zero, then addition of integers, then subtraction, before moving on to multiplication and division… in this case, multiplication of integers was where the class was, but I would have had a hard time teaching the conceptual understanding of the operations (with manipulatives) if I started the lesson with multiplication. So, my pop-in lesson ended up being a whirlwind of concepts that I’d be more comfortable sharing over a longer period of time so students could digest the concepts a bit before moving on to the next one. But despite the rush, it seems that my lesson ‘stuck’.

Considering that I’ve had exchanges, like the one above, 6 or 7 times around the same lesson, taught with minor tweaks and alterations along the way, I’d say the lesson was pretty sticky. (It actually happened again at the Inquiry Hub information session and the student waited to speak to me at the end of the presentation to tell me that he both remembered the lesson and that he has continued to find it useful!)

Malcolm Gladwell introduced me to the idea of the ‘Stickiness Factor’ in his book, “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference“.

“Gladwell defines the Stickiness Factor as the quality that compels people to pay close, sustained attention to a product, concept, or idea. Stickiness is hard to define, and its presence or absence often depends heavily on context. Often, the way that the Stickiness Factor is generated is unconventional, unexpected, and contrary to received wisdom.”¹

So why does this lesson stick? Because I tell them it will. I believe it. I make them believe it!

“Today I’m going to teach you something, and you are going to remember it… for the rest of your life!“

That’s how I start the lesson. Then I tell a story about ‘stupid warriors’ that fight for the emperors of Positive Land and Negative Land. The stupid warriors can only fight one other warrior essentially cancelling each other out, and so the emperor with the most warriors always wins. “Zero” is a land were these paired warriors are exiled to until they are separated by an equation that pulls them apart. With counters and dice I continue to demonstrate why integers behave the way they do in different operations. Then we get to subtraction and we do the chant. They chant until someone comes to see what we are up to.

‘Change the mi-nus to a-plus, and change the sign that-follows-it.’ 

What I find interesting about this is that the lesson is predominantly a lecture. Yes, I get students up and moving, yes they contribute examples and come up and share examples using counters at the front, and yes they also challenge each other to dice games based on what we’ve learned, but it’s still me at the front of the room for most of the lesson. Even a lecture can be good… it can still be sticky! I think the belief that it can be sticky is a good place to start!

Stickiness Part II – Real Life Problems

Last night I read most of Work that matters: The teacher’s guide to project-based learning. It’s a fantastic resource, I’m going to finish reading it. One of the tips offered in this resource is to: “Check your project against Adria Steinberg’s ‘six As’ of project-based learning.  Educationalist Adria Steinberg has developed a set of design principles for project-based learning that she calls the six as. It is useful to check your project against these at all stages of design”: (Pages 40-41)

• Authenticity
• Academic Rigour
• Applied Learning
• Active Exploration
• Adult Relationships
• Assessment

I think these can all help a project become ‘sticky’ but in making this point, two of the design principles for project-based learning focus on making the experience ‘real’… and that is sticky!

Authenticity
Projects should:

• use a real world context
• emanate from a problem that has meaning to students
• result in a product or performance that has personal and/or social value

Active Exploration
Projects should:

• extend beyond the classroom
• connect to field-based investigations, community explorations, and work internships
• require real investigations using a variety of methods, media, and sources

 Projects that address the real world, and extend beyond the classroom, have significance that an assignment done just for a teacher doesn’t. When these projects stem from student interests and passions, well that’s when the stickiness really sets in! There are some good examples shared in Work that matters.

Stickiness Part III – The Movement

KONY 2012 – I’s a film, it’s a campaign, it’s a movement! I think it is wonderful that we live in an era where one man can stir up so much support to bring some justice into this world. I think this will work. I think this is sticky enough that pressure will build, and Kony will likely be killed or brought to justice. I DON’T LIKE IT!

KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.

I don’t like the idea of vilifying someone to make a point. Kony doesn’t deserve this much attention, the ‘Invisible Children’ do. Jacob and other victims do.

Think about these Google search results as a case-in-point:

Holocaust:  65,600,000 results

Hitler:       149,000,000 results

We have incredible power to influence change today. Ideas can be very sticky. But I’d rather see things like We Day get more sticky, not the name of a tyrant. The idea behind Kony 2012 is wonderful. The choice of the message isn’t. I’m not sure what makes villainizing and iconicizing an evil man so appealing? I’m not sure why something like the We Day movement isn’t sticky enough to gain equal traction? But is should!

Let’s pay attention to what we make sticky. The stickiness factor can help change education… and the world. Let’s make sure it’s a world filled with worthy and meaningful messages.

Last night Stephen Whiffin, Sarah Husband and I formally presented the ‘Inquiry Hub‘ to Superintendent Tom Grant, the District Leadership Team, and our School Board Trustees. It is hard for me to contain my excitement at being able to share this project ‘out loud’! What was wonderful was how well received this was by our board members and everyone present. I think Trustee Judy Shirra summed it up well when she said, “I <heart> Hub”.

This school will fit well with the new BCedplan and the future of education in our Province. It fits well with our School District’s collaborative work on “Learning Without Boundaries”. And, it fits well with our team, who believe that we have reached a great point in our organization whereby we can fully develop and support this innovative program that embodies our educational and pedagogical philosophies.

The time is right for the Inquiry Hub! The updates will be coming fast, so be sure to follow us on Facebook and on Twitter to get up-to-date news and information on this Grade 8-12 Program opening in September, 2012.

Here is the Inquiry Hub website, shared as a slide presentation:

Comments are welcome here, or via email.

The 5 year technology plan: Focus on your INFRASTRUCTURE!

If you think you know what tools you will need in 5 years, you are probably wrong.

If you are budgeting so that you buy sets of an item over several years, you’ll have a dichotomous challenge: the item will become both cheaper AND less desirable.

If your infrastructure can’t support the technology you have, your technology is ineffective.

If you don’t invest in a learning culture for adults, your ‘knowledge infrastructure’ will hold you back.

The 5 year technology plan? Do this 5 years in a row: Purchase/spend for this year; make sure your infrastructure can support your needs for next year; and, re-evaluate frequently.

My advice beyond this:

• Budget for time, money and energy to go into transforming practice, (here is a conversation starter). 
• Mobile connectivity for teachers, (device may vary according to ‘vision’), 
• Wireless projectors, (for every classroom rather than shared), and 
• Enough, predominately unfiltered, bandwidth for students to use their own devices… (Or to put it another way: Infrastructure for students!) 

My goal: Create a three minute video that tells it’s own story, using other videos. My hope is that this will invite further exploration, conversation and learning.

Here is what I came up with:

(Watch on YouTube)

For ease of use here are the links. I hope that some rich conversations will emerge from watching them.

http://2di.me/Trans4mEd1 – Alan November: Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom

http://2di.me/Trans4mEd2 – Diana Laufenberg: How to learn? From mistakes

http://2di.me/Trans4mEd3 – Adora Svitak: What adults can learn from kids

http://2di.me/Trans4mEd4 – Chris Lehmann: School 2.0 – Creating the Schools We Need

http://2di.me/Trans4mEd5 – Chris Kennedy: Students Live! Real-world Learning at the 2010 Olympic/Paralympic Games

http://2di.me/Trans4mEd6 – Tom Grant – (Disclosure: This actually goes to a video created by me for the K12Online Conference, Tom Grant is my Superintendent and this is his interview excerpt from the video): Transforming Education

http://2di.me/Trans4mEd7 – Stephen Heppell: Learning Conversations

http://2di.me/Trans4mEd8 – Mitchel Resnick: 2011 Prize Winner

 http://2di.me/Trans4mEdu – This post, for easy access to the links above.

This year has been quite transformational for me. I started the year Questioning Everything… especially the idea that we need to teach less and learn more. I’ve challenged late penalties, homework, and even AUP’s. I’ve talked about things becoming more open and distributed and I’ve even written an Open Manifesto. I’ve cautioned about flipping classes, I’ve seen a flip in my desired pro-d model… and now I’m flipping my perspective on C.O.W.’s:

C.O.W. = ‘Computers On Wheels’, essentially a mobile cart which has a combination of a projector with a computer.

Two years ago in August I moved to a school in China and quickly began advocating for every teacher to get a laptop and LCD (actually the cheaper DLP’s – Digital Light Processing) Projectors. Before requesting this we had 3 C.O.W.’s, in a building with 4 floors, that 19 teachers shared. I presented a case to the school’s owner and convinced him to purchase DLP projectors and netbooks for our teachers. He provided 11 more projectors for our 14 ‘homerooms’ and also provided every teacher with a school netbook. We also had to improve the wireless and upgrade our server. All but one of the projectors were mounted in classrooms, with one being left as a COW so that it could be moved to and from the gym or activity room when needed.

The reality is that there is no place in education anymore for the mobile C.O.W. to be shared between teachers!

It just isn’t a useful model.

For a projector to be a truly tranformative tool that’s worthwhile, it needs to be available at any given moment AND the teacher needs to have full access to the computer that links to it… that’s why I also provided my teachers with netbooks. There are great tools like diigo to bookmark your links and dropbox to transfer files and even usb drives to share things, but we are still at a point where teachers tend to find these slow them down or add work to their planning. So, providing teachers with a laptop/netbook that they can pre-load with everything they need (before a lesson) invites greater interaction and use by them and hopefully also by students. As I suspected, the ability to take the netbook home created opportunities for teachers to experiment with technology far more than I’d seen prior to the netbooks and projectors arriving.

Having a shared C.O.W. is a flawed model… it doesn’t work because, as a teacher, when I had to share a projector I was far less likely to develop lessons that required projector use, and I think a projector is a key teaching tool in today’s classrooms. As a principal, I preferred to see the computers be fully mobile and in the hands of teachers at all times, rather than just when they used the projector and/or sat at their desks.

The C.O.W. is dead… But so is my model of mounting projectors in a room…

Long live the P.O.W. ~ Projectors on Wheels! Take the computer off the cart and put it in teachers’ hands. Take the projector off of the ceiling mount and put it on wheels. Why?

- The projector, without the computer invites both teachers and students to use their computers with the projector.

- Move the projector into different learning spaces.

- Remove the white screen as the ‘Front’ of the room… allow the projector to be used in smaller groups, smaller spaces and different spaces.

- a mobile projector (especially coupled with BYO Laptops) allows as much student engagement as an IWB – Interactive White Board… but is more mobile. (And it’s a heck of a lot cheaper!)

However, effective use of a P.O.W. takes a transformation of practice because the blackboard… that became the green board… that became the whiteboard… that became the projector… still put the teacher as the central disseminator of knowledge. Putting a projector on wheels will only be transformational if students get to use the tool and to move it into useful spaces to work in small groups as well as with the entire class.

In reality, it isn’t just the projectors that should go on wheels! I’m excited to see wheels on desks and chairs and wall-dividers and anything that helps to create interesting learning spaces for students… but that’s a whole other post!

A few minutes into this presentation I demonstrate that I’ve been a fan of the K12Online Conference for 5 years now. So, it was wonderful to be able to participate this year and share a video of my own.

[Link to K12Online video page]  |  [Link to YouTube version]

I’d rather let the video speak for itself, than to go on about it here. I’ll just share that I really appreciate the time and effort people put into sharing their video interviews with me. I asked them 4 questions:

Explore:

1. Share your thoughts on the future of education .  (Pie-in-the-sky look at exciting things that are positive & possible.)

Engage:

2. What advice would you give an educator wanting to engage in new ways to teach and to learn?

Connect:

3. What does it meant to be a connected/Networked teacher?

Lead: (At all levels)

4. How do you lead the transformation? Or, what advice would you give an educator at any level about leading the change?

The answers I got were very insightful!

Since I really wanted to inspire people to take action, I created a website for this presentation: Trans4mEd.org and I hope people will share some thoughts on twitter with the hashtag #Trans4mEd. The Engage page has two VoiceThreads to interact with. One has Contributor Quotes and the other has Image Quotes from the video. I’m hoping that people will comment there and share their thoughts as a symbol of their commitment to engage as a connected educator. I plan on sharing participant videos there over the coming weeks. I had planned to have them up already, but this video took a lot longer than I’d thought it would.

Please take a moment to comment on the VoiceThreads, and as always, your feedback is appreciated.

Pick a VoiceThread and comment!

(See a larger version on VoiceThread)

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(See a larger version on VoiceThread)

It is easy to add your comment… start sharing! Thank you.

Ps. Forgot to mention it in the video, but a special thanks to Bryan Jackson for interviewing his students… they were an important contribution to the video ‘story’.