The Big Switch

In Trouble
We are nearing the end of our second year with Google Apps in my district and this summer we will be moving our adult users from Outlook to Gmail. I have been teaching classes for the past few weeks now, preparing users for the "big e-mail switch" and doing my best to make the transition as easy as possible for everyone. We are no different than any other school district, most users are open to the change, some a little nervous and a small percentage thinking that a natural disaster is sure to follow. What was interesting in a class of about 25 teachers last week, I asked how many of you already use Gmail for personal e-mail at home. About 15 people raised their hands and at that point, I figured I was in trouble as collectively, this group knows way more about this program than I do.

The Power
The class went on to be a great experience and I learned from them as much as I was able to share with them. The power in the room that day was the contributions and support from each individual. If there was a question asked, someone in the room already had an answer from previous Gmail experience or together, they quickly found the answer. Think how powerful groups of administrators, teachers, and departments could be if they shared their knowledge and strengths with one another. Collaboration is something that seems difficult for adults to do, stepping outside the walls of offices and classrooms to truly share expertise can be a challenge.

Support Change
Back to switching e-mail clients, which may seem tough for some, is nothing when compared to adding disruptive technology into an environment and changing the cultural of a school. Great leadership, supportive atmosphere, think professional learning communities with collaboration coaches, and the willingness to open the classroom doors, is part of the recipe for systematic change.

I am curious to what others have done to support change at their schools/district. If you have a story, please share with a comment. Thanks for reading!

Why Technology

Relevant, disruptive, engaging, efficient, changing....the list could go on. I very much stumbled into technology as a career path after creating a web page for Gold Canyon Elementary during my third year of teaching. It has been fascinating watching how quickly the world has changed and become a smaller place and how every day life is influenced by technology since then. The rate at which things change is what makes coming to work each and every day so exciting. It also makes for a challenging environment that traditionally is slower to accept change. I recently read a post on Tracy Watanabe's blog about the power of vision and she pointed out that cultural change starts with vision. I agree with her statement and would take that one step further and emphasize the need for strong leaders that can communicate the vision to their staff. A strong vision is just words on paper if not transformed into reality.

I want to thank Tracy Watanabe for her blog post "Power of Vision", and support of integrating technology in AJUSD.

Academic Calendar

Arizona State University announced sometime in January 2011, that they will be offering six learning blocks next Fall. Their academic calendars will allow students to take two sessions that are 7.5 weeks in length, as an alternative to the traditional 15-week semester. The summer schedule will offer students two 6-week sessions as an alternative to the full 8-week session. For a traditional college campus to offer this choice is a big shift, and places ASU among a small percentage of schools offering this type of academic calendar. I am certain there will be continued studies that speak to class length and the regularity in which they meet, but I am not sure that it will matter either way, as students want choice.

So how long will it take a non-traditional academic calendar to reach our K-12 schools? I think that is a difficult question to answer, but again, student choice will eventually demand the option. When we talk about choice, it seems like that has already arrived to an extent, public, charter, online, and now the "blended learning" environment. Of all the above choices, the blended learning environment will alter the traditional bell schedule the most. Blended learning can be defined in a number of ways, but simply put, it combines the mashing of different learning environments, with an online component being a key element. What the online piece will do is allow that portion of learning to be done at home, school, library, or any place with internet access. Kind of makes a traditional bell schedule and academic calendar feel a bit restrictive to the individual. As I mentioned before, there are different blended learning environments starting to show up, Carpe Diem in Yuma AZ, San Francisco Flex Academy, each have their own idea of a blended learning environment, and that is a positive piece that promotes innovation and change. I am not sure just yet what the ultimate blended learning environment would look like, but the days of a one size fits all system is drawing to a close in my opinion and personalizing an educational plan is going to be the norm.

Wall of Change

How many times have you read the quote from Ronald Reagan's famous speech at the Berlin Wall in 1987, "tear down this wall," used as the lead in to a talk, article, or a number of blog posts? Probably a bunch, but it is affective for engaging audiences as it was a moment in history that brought change and freedom many thought was impossible. It also brought David Hasselhoff, in a flashing leather jacket, singing about freedom a couple years later while standing on top of the wall, but that is a separate issue. There are a number of historical events that led up to the fall of the wall and the end of the Soviet Union, but many will credit those famous words as the point of change. The question I have today is when are we going to hear another speech that will go down in history as the one that changed the face of education in the United States. The speech that defines the turning point to a system that has remained relatively unchanged for over 100 years.

I recently attended the Education Innovation Summit at ASU Sky Song. Twice in one day the question was asked when would we see real reform in public education and twice the answer was something to the affect of when schools financially hit rock bottom, then K-12 will be forced to change the current structure. There are many more opinions on education reform and what or when it will happen, but it causes me concern to think it will take a financial crisis to make meaningful change. One thing I do believe we can count on is that technology will play a key role in the transformation of schools, it will not be a silver bullet, but it will allow the environment to look different and cause disruption that will lead to change.

That table sure is Smart!

Touchscreen technology has been around for quite some time, with IBM creating some of the first touchscreen devices in the late 60's. Restaurant employees have been using touchscreens for years to communicate with the back of the house and create that bill we all enjoy paying after a great meal. If you ask a student today about touchscreens, they will pull out their iPod or iPad and show us what a multi-touch device is capable of, kind of makes those card games that were placed in bars years ago look a little silly. A few years ago I came across a video on Microsoft's multi-touch table, this video is a little newer than the one I watched, but you will get the idea. About a year after seeing the multi-touch video I ran across the Smart Table at a conference. I quickly thought of the Microsoft table, however Smart (think Smart board) had primary age content loaded on the table. Fast forward a couple years and our district has purchased (with grant funds) 4 Smart Tables, that will be delivered tomorrow to Kindergarten classrooms at each elementary school. The Kindergarten teachers have received professional development on the basics of the tables and have future training scheduled on using the software provided with the tables to create their own content that is transferred to the tables using a usb flash drive. The tables are going to be a great addition to the classroom, and they are a very student centered device, which is where the technology should be, in the hands of the students.

Over the break

What an exciting Spring Break it was. Construction on AJUSD's new culinary program at Apache Junction High School was scheduled to begin the week of March 14th, and the location just so happened to be in the same building as our data center!

Moving a data center is probably not at the top of the list of fun things to do, however the timing of the move worked out well for us. We have been able to power down a number of servers and with plans to continue the virtualization process, we will shut down more in the future. Virtualization is a general term for running multiple virtual servers on one machine. So what took multiple physical servers before, can now be done on one. Doing this will save the district funds in server support, maintenance, and energy costs. So we took this opportunity to consolidate from three racks of equipment to two, and with less servers running, less heat, and less AC needed to cool things.

Many hours went into the preparation and in the end it made for a very quick and safe move. There are to many people to list, but I want to thank everyone in the Technology and Maintenance departments for their efforts with making this project a success.

Just thinking...

that the role technology plays in the everyday life of kids today is amazing. I know, nothing new about that, but I see this more often with a 7 and 10 year old at home. It made me reflect a bit on growing up and the advancement of technology seems to have crawled at a snails pace then when compared to today. I was excited to pull a Pocketeer out of my pocket when traveling, you remember those...

Now there are literally dozens of choices for pocket sized devices that can hold not only games, but books, music, TV shows, videos, and you can even phone a friend if that becomes boring. As time went by my Pocketeers turned into the handheld video games that were blinking lines on the screen, great for playing football, basketball, and other games. Better, but not sure that my kids would be very engaged with that today. I often wonder what would happen if today's generation did a little time travel, kind of like that movie where the modern day aircraft carrier ends up back in the the Pacific during WWII, and ended up back in the late 70's and 80's. Of course they would adapt and survive, but I think they might feel a little cheated that information and the ability to not just entertain themselves, but teach themselves wasn't at their fingertips.

Last week my 7 year old pulled out her dry erase easel and I quietly watched from the table. She started drawing symbols and after a few minutes, she told me that she was writing Chinese. I asked her where she learned how to draw the symbols and she said the Internet. Somewhere the day before there was a discussion of Chinese symbols and she wanted to write sentences using the symbols so she looked them up on Google Images, and off she went. My kid isn't special or smarter than any other 7 year old in today's world, they just know where to go for information. My daughter still had some questions, and I was there to guide her, but I wasn't feeding her the information, she was obtaining that on her own.

I guess the point that I would like to make with sharing this story is that our students today are probably looking for the same type of learning experience when they are at school. There will never be a replacement for good teaching, but teaching differently is something that will never stop evolving. The Pocketeer of the 70's was pretty cool, but an iTouch would have been much better:).