Month: September 2012

I've made enough public statements about this now so that it is no longer a surprise initiative, so I thought I'd outline my next project for the schools in my diocese.

In essence the slogan says it all. By the opening of the 2015 school year, we will have a functional 1×1 technology program in all of the schools of the Diocese. This plan will have different forms and support different age levels at campuses, but students at every school will experience a growing percentage of their class work in conjunction with individualized digital devices (we won't be using the trick of counting devices campus-wide and saying we have 1×1 because the number equals the total students).

Though this idea has been percolating in my brain for some time, the form took shape last summer when I was presenting my workshop in Chicago “10 Technology Trends that Will Change Education (and the World)” (end of the buzz marketing segment of this post). I talked about the inevitability of 1×1 programs in schools as an essential step in the transition of digital devices from toys to tools. Afterward someone asked me whether I had 1×1 programs in my schools. “The high schools have them now,” I replied, “and some of the elementaries in more wealthy south county are looking to start in the next year.” Even as I said this, I felt how inadequate my response was. If I believed this to be an inevitability evolution in classroom education, then how could it be limited to schools in more affluent areas. Likewise, how could this fundamental change be addressed on a site-by-site basis with no central direction.

I took out a piece of paper and wrote for the first time 1x1x15.

In the months since that first writing I've been busy sharing this idea with principals and tech directors from my schools and talking with people running similar programs across the country. With the kick-off of another school year, I announced the initiative to principals and teachers, and now I'm starting the public announcements. I want 1x1x15 to be a rallying cry for teachers, a common direction for our planning, and a way to market ourselves to parents.

I've also just begun to grasp the enormity and complexity of this task. Every time I talk to someone running 1×1 I hear about a new wrinkle of complexity. To combat this I'm proposing that we limit the implementation schemes. I don't want to mandate that all schools get laptops or iPads or whatever, but we will have 2-3 acceptable configurations that will give schools some choice while limiting the support schemes. I also don't intend that all schools will have 1×1 for all grade levels. I'm sure that this will evolve over time.

I also know that I can't do this, it has to be a project of the tech directors, principals, and teachers of the diocese. My job has to coordinate the efforts of different parts of the project and act as cheerleader. Right now I'm looking to create 6 teams:

• Networking infrastructure
• Hardware specifications
• Curriculum, apps, and textbooks
• Teacher formation
• Tech support
• Finances (this is always the first question from everyone, “How will you pay for this?”. While recognizing the problem my response is, “That's a problem, you can solve problems; it's directions that are hard”. Talk about whistling Ina graveyard!”)

All of these people working together we will spend the next three years transforming our schools, our teachers, and out students. I hope you follow along to see the highs and lows (can one write tears in a blog?) and contribute your own ideas.

Because the clock is ticking.

As always, I welcome your comments.

OK, I know I wrote a bit about this earlier, but as seasons change it seems appropriate to write a note. As summer (seasonal as well as academic…though not climactic) finally ends, I suppose some attention must be paid to the fact that my blogometer is a bit short of the original contract. I suppose if we look at this from a simple assessment stance I completed roughly 67% of my goal, ranking my performance at a D+ (though a few of the posts were longer, maybe giving me grounds to argue for a gentleman's C).

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I'm going to continue writing under this “30 Blogposts of Summer” banner until I complete my contract, whether this is concurrent with the falling leaves, deep into winter, or even if I lap myself and finish in summer of 2013. There are so many things to learn about, think about, talk about in the world of education and technology, and I have found no better venue to explore this playground than the pages of this blog (I know that a blog doesn't have pages, but…)

Thanks to those of you who have continued to read through the gaps and lulls. I hope that I have given you a thing or two to think over. Now let's move into the uncharted territory of summer writing in the not-summer (or as Buzz Lightyear said, “to infinity and beyond!”

As always, I welcome your comments.

Image: 'Game Over' http://www.flickr.com/photos/29652825@N08/3653333298 Found on flickrcc.net

Last week Apple announced the iPhone 5. This latest iteration of their universe-crushing brand promises improvements in virtually all areas. The screen is slightly bigger, the phone is lighter, the camera is better, the processor is faster, etc., etc. Several people have asked me this week whether I was planning on lining up to purchase one when it becomes available this week (I hope these people realize that I have never lined up to purchase and Apple product). I read the new specs with some interest and…to paraphrase A Chorus Line:

I dug right down to the bottom of myself, to see what I had inside:

…and I felt nothing

I'm not growing bored with smartphones. I depend on my iPhone to manage my day, and I love the conveniences it brings. I know that Smartphones, going back to my Blackberry Pearl have been instrumental in my evolution in thinking about technology, to a great extent responsible for most of what I'm doing today…including writing this blogpost. When my phone runs out, I'll buy another iPhone, probably the newest model. But there is nothing happening in the Smartphone universe (Apple, Android or…snicker…Windows Phone) that interests me at all.

Whether the phones are larger, smaller, faster, whatever, everything that is happening in the Smartphone space seems to be an iteration of something that already was before. I don't care that the iPhone 5 is slightly larger…nothing I do requires a micrometer more screen space. If I need more space, I use my iPad. If faster really meant something, it might raise an eyebrow, but experience has shown that Smartphone speed is primarily tied to bandwidth, rather than the machine. The changes in all smartphones seem very quantitative, and not qualitative.

So I wondered whether Smartphones are capped out, whether there is no new amazing development that would stir my jaded heart. In thinking this through, I've come up with a list of features that might make me sit up and take notice:

1. A dependable multi-day battery. I can usually get a full day with the battery on my iPhone, less if I'm using it a lot. I would love to be able to depend on my phone over several days. Battery capacity continues to grow at a snail's pace with no major breakthroughs on the horizon. Tell me a battery will last a week, and I'll take notice.
2. An NFC Chip. NFC is a new protocol which will allow me to pay for more and more things the same way that I pay for my Starbucks Coffee. Some android phones are integrating this new technology, so this is more of a case that my iPhone lags behind.
3. Real voice recognition. The iPhone 4S had several upgrades, but the one which caught the public eye more than others was Siri. Unfortunately this capability quickly became a joke because of its lack of dependability. If voice recognition really worked, particularly if I could granularly open and control apps, I would become a real fan.
4. Actual speed. As noted above, the speed of my phone seems hampered more by my wireless connection. If the smartphone companies would collaborate with the telcos to actually make my web pages come up faster, I would wait in line for this product.

What would you add to the list?

 

Image Credit: 'Swimming In The iPool' http://www.flickr.com/photos/83346641@N00/3420540107

Found on flickrcc.net

 

I had a thought this morning which has probably been clear to most of you for years, but was new for me. I've been working on some upcoming presentations dealing with the importance of digital media and social media in the future of education and the Church. Part of what I hope to do is respond to the attitude of fear and disparagement turned toward digital communications. I often see announcements for presentations at schools on “Internet Safety”; however, my experience of these talks is that they really should be called “The Scary, Scary Internet, and How to Keep Your Child Away From It.”

I was working through some of the claims of this position in my mind, preparing my own response statements that I'll use in upcoming talks. As I tiredly rehearsed the same polemics, suddenly a new thought emerged from the intellectual ping-pong.

It's all true.

The digital universe, much like our world in general, is so large, so diverse, that virtually anything can be said about it, even contrary statements, and it will all be true. So if you tell me that there are dangerous people using social media to harm children, that's a fact, but if I say that millions of young people's lives are made richer by interaction with digital resources, that's also true. If you say that classroom technology initiatives can be unsuccessful wastes of time and money, that's a fact, but if I say that digital resources can be used to improve student learning, that's also true. If you say that many children are too tied to digital devices and lack skills of personal communication, that's a fact, but if I say that many children need more access to digital resources and to develop skills of digital communication, that's also true.

The problem is not with the facts as much as what we choose to do with them. The facts that there are dangers and negative outcomes to digital citizenship is real, but it cannot stop us from aggressively pursuing this digital future for our children. Similarly, our conviction of the many values of the online life, can't keep us from awareness of challenges and dangers.

In our polarized society, we have come to equate a fact with an agenda, not acknowledging or recognizing that that fact exists in a sea of various and contradictory realities. The digital world (much like our world) is not one thing or another…it just is.

As always, I invite your comments.

Image Credit: 'tell truth'