Month: December 2011

Well, I made it.  With this entry I have completed blog entries on 24 straight days.  Thanks to all who stuck with me reading the posts or suggesting topics.  Though it was a strain to write every day, I think I’ve rediscovered why I started, and I look forward to continuing (at a less demanding pace) in 2012.

Merry Christmas to all and a very happy new year!  May the blessings of this holy season rain down on you and all whom you love!

…Is a TEDTalk.  

 
I’m sure that most everyone who reads this is familiar with TED.  The TED (Technology Entertainment Design) organization holds two conferences each year, one in Long Beach/Palm Springs and the other in Edinburgh.  At these conferences experts from all areas of science, education, entertainment and the arts present a short (18 minute) presentation on a topic in their specialty area.  Attending the conferenxce itself is limited to a select few, at a cost of $7500 for standard membership; however, through Internet distribution the talks have become available to all and many have been widely distributed and shared.  Many lesser-known thinkers have become Internet celebrities through viral distribution of their talks. A slightly less prestigious TEDX younger sibling has also emerged, bringing a similar experience to a wider number of cummunities and a greater number of speakers.
 

As with any well-intentioned humanistic pursuit, there has been criticism of TED as being elitist, reductionist, and glitzy.  I suspect that all of these criticisms are true.  However, I have been more than once moved by an effective speaker to learn more about a subject or think about an area I had never considered before.  I know that TED talks have been the entry drug for real progress in the lives of many.
 

Obviously with only two talks each year the speaker list is very exclusive with world leaders speaking beside Nobel Prize winners and music and movie stars.  To be invited to speak on such an exclusive (yet worldwide) stage with the cache of a the TED organization represents true acknowledgement that one’s ideas (whether good or bad) are worth consideration and attention.
 

So I confess to you, my online Santa, in a moment of undisguised ambition that my fondest wish as a small-potatoes speaker and blogger would be to have an opportunity to prepare and deliver a talk at the TED conference (I would gladly accept a TEDX, though I admit it would be with some slight disappointment).  Every time I write or speak, I work to put into words this wild and changing world of educational technology and try to say something new about it.  A TED talk would give me the opportunity to find and express that one key idea with which I want to be connected, and the idea of getting that room laughing would be the last item on a bucket list (the next to last item on the bucket list is to stop using words like bucket list).
 

I even have the idea ready.  I would be talking about…no, I’m waiting for a call.
 

As always, I welcome your thoughts. 
 

It happened again last week.  I was talking to a couple of teachers from one of my schools. I said, “I read on Twitter this morning…,” and I saw it: the raised eyebrows, the exchanged glances, the swallowed smiles.  I realized that I could announce the second coming, and nothing would be taken seriously because it came from Twitter.

 
I’ve said before that I like Twitter as a tool and I think it is important.  I have built more useful network connections and found the better resources on Twitter than I have at any conference or professional development day.  I believe that every teacher should have a Twitter account and at least follow some of the better accounts.  However, I often run into a subtle prejudice against being part of the Twitter network, and I think the main reason for this is…the name.
 

Twitter, it just sounds silly, and even sillier is the term tweet for each post on the service.  People in media who criticize the service always use these as part of their criticism.  “I don’t tweet” they comment, implying through emphasis on a word that anyone who does this must have the IQ of a marsupial.  I myself hate using the word tweet, more often I say “I posted on Twitter.” The problem is exacerbated by the variations, retweeting, mistweet, tweeps…ugh!  I wonder what would happen (and I’m sure this has happened) if a doctoral student cited Twitter in his or her thesis.  I’m certain that the candidate would be mockingly dismissed, even though Twitter can be as good a source of information and reference as any of the traditional  ones.
 

It is the same with teachers.  It is hard for people used to talking about taxonomy, pedagogy, and metacognition (whether they understand them or not) to say tweet in the same sentence.  The same goes for wiki, moodle, Glogster, and to a lesser extent, Prezi. The free-form naming of the web is a great marketing tool for the general public, but a definite hurdle for the professional world of education.
 

We need to jump beyond this prejudice, for Twitter is a vital tool.  It is also one of the few social media platforms that is not particularly populated with students (the average age of Twitter users is 39), so despite the name it is a place for adult conversation away from the noise.  By building a “following” list carefully, one can develop a stream of great information and support.
 

I wonder what the reaction would be if Twitter were called Dynamic Blackboard, if posts were called, well, posts, and if those who participated were called scholars. I’ll bet there would be significantly more openness to trying it and considerably less embarrassment in saying one did.
 

Tweet Tweet

Cutting it close again today, but I have a short thought.
 
As I follow the fights of schools to legislate digital resources out of the hands of young people, and as I follow our Congress trying to allow the music and motion picture industries censor access to websites under the pretext of piracy, I sometimes wonder how many of these rules, laws and controls will be summarily repealed by the next generation.

 
I think it’s healthy to remember that these battles over digital issues are going to be reconsidered by the generation that has always been surrounded by technology and lived with social media.  I think that very different decisions will be made regarding access people who have always carried smartphones.  I also think that there will be very different attitudes regarding privacy, by people who have always lived on Facebook. 
 
Just wondering…

In a digital world of simultaneous permanence and transience, I started wondering today about my old email addresses.  In the past 15 years I have had many addresses as I have worked my way through various services.  In most cases I have just moved on to the next, checking the old for a while, but eventually forgetting it.  So I thought today I would drive by these old addresses and see if there is anything still there. Please don’t send anything to these, because I don’t know if I will every get back again.
 
Gdhuyvette@aol.com:  like most people, my first email was AOL.  This address is so dated that I had to shorten my name to 10 characters.  I used AOL through my entire “narrow band” modem phase.  Everyone from that time period remembers the distinctive call of the modem, followed by the chippy “You’ve got mail!” (I always wanted to remind him that it should be “You have mail!”).  Today when I see an AOL address I wonder about the person sending, worrying that I’m dealing with stunted growth.
 
I went on to AOL today and typed in the old address.  After experimenting with a number of passwords, I finally came to a screen where I was invited to reactivate my old account for free.  I did this, but the mailbox was empty.  However, I guess I have an AOL account again. 
 
Gdhuyvetter@sbcglobal.net:  when I moved over to broadband I was able to use my full name in the address.  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize it at the time, but the first address I created was tied to the main holder of the account, which was my wife.  after receiving email addressed to Toni for a few days, I knew that I had to move on.  I kept this account, though, and used it when I had to give an email address to a vendor so my spam could go there.
 
I opened this mailbox to find it very full, with 580 emails going back to 1/6/09. Lots of updates from DirecTV and offers from PetSmart.  Hmm, one email regarding my daughter’s tuition bill from last July, I guess the registrar did send it after all.  Luckily I was able to get a replacement in time.  No personal emails except some forwards of articles and pictures from my wife.

 
GJDhuyvetter@sbcglobal.net:  This was my alternative to the first account and the one I used for “real” email throughout my time with SBC.  Ultimately I moved to Gmail because it was easier to type, and more friendly with the cloud.  I just looked up GDhuyvetter@gmail.com, and I never seemed to have an account with this name.
 
Well this one looks less abandoned.  Only a couple of unread emails.  As I look at settings I remember that I had emails from this forwarded to my gmail account.
 
A little disappointing.  I thought that this trip down email lane might yield greetings from a long-lost friends or a promise of money (maybe a desperate call for help that I missed), but clearly I didn’t leave much behind. However, you might find something more exciting and tell us about it here.
 
 

The case for digital texts is pretty overwhelming.  Ask the parent of any young student carrying a 50 lb. backpack, or one paying $150 for a single text, and the answer is clear.  Ask any teacher who is affected by the tyranny of the text, and one wonders why this transition is not happening more quickly. Ask the directors of a textbook company, and things become a bit more complicated.  Unfortunately, without the cooperation of textbook companies, this evolution will take significantly longer.
 
I want to be careful to be fair here.  Companies who see their current market threatened will work to protect their model.  Sometimes this takes the path of obstruction to progress, buggy whip makers trying to kill progress on the automobile.  However, some of the challenges to digital texts are real, and until a clear path is found, progress will be sluggish at best.  I’m going to look at two challenges in this post, distribution model and compensation to authors.
 
In order to have digital texts that are equal to their paper counterparts, students must have universal access to these texts.  Until a school moves to a 1:1 model, therefore, digital textbooks are not practical.  Though the move to 1:1 seems inevitable, at least at the secondary level, the financial and networking challenges put this goal much farther down the road than it should be.  Even when students have this universal access, there will not be a single model.  Schools now are embracing laptops, laptop tablets, pure tablets, netbooks, and electronic readers, so any electronic text will have to work on multiple platforms.
 
Beyond this is the bigger questions of distribution.  I’m certain up to a few years ago most companies thought that CD or DVD offered the answer.  Students could purchase discs which would have the text and live links to further resources on the Internet. However, the portable optical storage device seems to be dying as quickly as the floppy disc did.  This leaves two options (at least) downloadable texts that stay on the the drive and cloud-based texts accessed online.  Each of these requires Internet access which again is challenged by current realities.  Also, digital content is by its nature infinitely reproducible, so the challenges of piracy are greater.  Probably schools will have to charge or pay a fee per student, to give that student access to the book for a limited time, but control will be difficult.
 
Connected to this is the financial model.  Everyone in education laments the inflated price of textbooks, and there is general agreement that an electronic text should combat this.  However, one thing that is forgotten is that the only costs removed from the digital text is publishing and physical distribution.  Authors, editors, and publishers will still be needed, and need to be fairly compensated.  So while costs should drop, digital texts will not (and should not) be free.  However, just as digital distribution of music or video has cut the income of record or film companies, digital texts will call for a restructuring and shrinking of the textbook publishers. Transitional pains of a major industry (which has major influence in the whole world of education…textbook publishers sponsor most education events) will slow the inevitable.  
 
Digital texts are coming, but it won’t be an overnight transition, and there will be many growing pains. 
 
As always, I welcome your comments. 
 
 

Every school is (or should be) talking about the future of digital textbooks.  When I meet wi textbook company representatives, my second question (after “how are you today?”) is, “What is your company’s digital strategy and roadmap?” So I’d like to talk about this subject for a couple of posts.  Today I’m going to talk about the benefits and possibilities of moving to a digital format for textbooks, and tomorrow I’ll talk about some of the challenges schools will face moving in this direction.  I don’t like writing in this order; I like to finish on the positive, but I tried writing the posts in that order and they didn’t make sense.  So I’ll start by saying that I support the move to digital texts (or whatever they will be called), but I am aware of the difficulties.

 
Let’s start with the most obvious and important point, a textbook is not a course.  I’m not sure whether this is universally agreed.  I still hear joking comments of teachers staying one chapter ahead in the text, and not joking concerns about not “finishing the book” by June.  Textbook companies, understandably, do nothing to disparage this idea.  A textbook is sold not as a book alone but as a “course in a box,” with assignments and tests and PowerPoint lectures and online resources in the package (ironically, many schools are now having trouble with students acquiring teachers’ versions of texts, undermining this structure) .  Effective instruction requires a teacher to map out material to be learned and use resources to effect this learning.
 
One of the strongest arguments for digital texts is the possibility of reducing the tyranny of the textbooks.  Textbooks loom massively in a class.  Physically they are large, the main prop of the classroom.  They are expensive, putting pressure on a teacher to justify student expense.  One of the arguments for a teacher finishing the book is to get the students’ money worth.  They also have the weight of authority, suggesting in every way that this is the subject, not a means to it.  Parents cite not completing the text as evidence of teacher incompetence. The suggestion that a teacher would not use a textbook would be viewed with skepticism.  A combination of traditional thinking and persuasive marketing by textbook companies have convinced the world of academia that the textbook is king. As with many other fields, digital distribution can break the hold of old monopolies, which will also cause many of the challenges I’ll talk about tomorrow.
 
Textbooks weigh a ton!
 
A textbook is an inherently limited medium.  In most subjects, textbooks are out of date as soon as they are published.  A digital textbook has the capability of regular updates.  Textbooks contain the contents that are intended for the broadest audience possible while a digital textbook could be customized by a teacher, a school, or a student.  Many textbooks today offer “digital extras,” but these are broadly underused because they require moving away from the book.  The same digital features could be seamlessly integrated into the digital text.  The paper and printing resources used in creating a textbook are huge, and often used for a short period of time.  A perfect example of this wasteful is the literature anthology.  All students have carried these bricks monetarily and physically back and forth to class only to use less than a third of the contents.  A digital anthology can easily be limited to only the selections that are needed for a course.
 
Efficiency, flexibility, reduced cost and weight all argue for the implementation of digital texts. Just as in the transformation of music and film to digital distribution models, this change is an inevitability. However, just as with music and film, inevitability does not mean that the change will be a smooth one.  There a clear challenges to this move, and clear interests that will fight to maintain old models.
 
And I’ll talk about these tomorrow.
 
As always, I welcome your comments.
 
 

As Superintendent of a system of Catholic schools, I am disheartened by the struggles faced by the schools in my diocese, particularly those in disadvantaged neighborhoods. What is even more frustrating, though, is the attitude I sometimes find in laity and clergy that this an irreversible trend and it is fine that schools close if they can’t sustain themselves through parents’ tuition.

 
I decided some time ago was that I needed to go back to basics and articulate for myself and others why we are doing this. The following link is to the first draft of this case statement for Catholic schools in my diocese, and in a broader sense throughout this country. This article will be used in a variety of publications and a variety of forms

The Case for Catholic Education in the Diocese of Orange

I would welcome your comments.

Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be anything to write about. It’s 7:00 and the blogging streak is in serious risk. Then, suddenly, as if provided by above, I start to print the envelops for Christmas cards.  
 
I’m not a big mail-merger. I do it once a year, for Christmas cards. I have all my lists as saved files, so printing out envelopes saves a lot of time, and I can personalize the envelopes with graphics that coordinate with our cards. Get it, this is supposed to save me time.  
 
I went up tonight and tried to do this for the first time with Office 2012. After I finally found the tab for mail, I selected merge, and suddenly everything worked differently. First, my pre-saved address files wouldn’t open because the updated program doesn’t recognize word tables. So I saved the data and tried to create a new file, but the ability to add a table of data is either taken out or hidden from me. Luckily I could save the data as an Excel file which worked.  
 
After about 1/2 an hour I was able to print envelopes. But my Christmas card spirit was gone, and my hatred of Office 2012 was blazing like a Yule log.  
 
I know I’m not the first to express my irritation with the changes to Office. The problem is that with a fundamental program like Word, you don’t have time to relearn it on the fly with new versions. Over time I’ve figured out where most of the needed commands are, but every so often I try to do something old…like mail merge…and this frustration reemerges.  
 
It’s good to have these experiences, because they remind me of the frustration that must be felt by so many of the people I work with. The world of technology is constantly changing and sometimes I’m so used to it I forget how jarring this can be.  
 
Until I try to mail merge…