Being a certified technology (the subject) teacher, I replied to both Tom and the person who re-tweeted his statement.  I couldn’t find a screenshot of my exact statement, but I know it was something like “Ed tech isn’t a subject, but technology (former industrial arts) is.  Let’s not confuse them.”

Certainly I could’ve been more eloquent in 140 characters… perhaps sending a follow-up tweet explaining why the different uses of the term were personal to me.  It didn’t hit me until afterwards that some people might live in states/countries/provinces where there isn’t a mandatory “technology” class in their school.  This post was meant to educate people about the different uses of the term so that you understand where I’m coming from.

Confusion: Technology Education

No longer called “shop” or “industrial arts”, New York State (and many others) revised their standards and renamed the program to “Technology” in the mid-1980s. Wood shop, metal shop, plastics, transportation, electronics, drafting, principles of engineering, problem solving, and even some farming courses in the rural districts fell beneath this umbrella.  One year of technology is required in New York State by the time a student finishes the 8th grade.  Most schools offer the course .5 year in 7th and .5 year in 8th grade, most often splitting the year with either Art or Family & Consumer Science (formerly known as home economics).

In a technology education course there aren’t any rules forcing the use of instructional technologies at all.  I could teach (and did, years ago) a complete semester of technology never as much as touching a computer.  Technology (in New York) is based on seven key ideas:

• Engineering Design
• Management of Technology
• Impacts of Technology
• History of Technology
• Tools, Resources, and Processes of Technology
• Computer Technology
• Technological Systems

The term “technology” in this sense is defined as “anything human-made that extends our ability to do something.”  Hammers are technology, as are computers, ipods, doorbells, cow bells, underwear, and dynamite.  Technology is very much a course here in NY, and it has little to do with what we think of as technology in everyday vernacular.

To make things a bit fuzzier, NY doesn’t currently have any standards for Ed Tech.  Unlike most other states who have adopted the ISTE NETS standards, the only time many of us in NY hear the word “technology” is when referring to the course.  My district has adopted the NETS standards, but I’m going to guess fewer than five percent of the staff are even aware of this.  It isn’t state-tested, our teaching certificates don’t depend on it, it isn’t part of the observation process… and the implementation of educational technologies in the classroom doesn’t seem to be a priority for most administrators.   I’d love to discuss the ed tech support system in place but it’s pretty complex.  Suffice it to say many districts don’t have a single instructional technologist on staff and they contract all of their PD out to regional BOCES systems – which is good in some ways, but really limits teachers to the amount of support they have when they’re in the middle of class and something technical “just isn’t working”.

Local source of confusion: International Baccalaureate (IB) Technology

Our district is an IB district.  Not just one building or two, but all of our middle school students are part of the program and any high school student who wishes to pursue their diploma is free to do so regardless of the building they are in. I’m not going to talk much about IB itself here – there are plenty of resources online – but I did want to point out how they refer to technology.  IB Technology includes any subject or lesson based around their 5-step design cycle (Investigate, Plan, Design, Create, Evaluate).  In my district this includes business courses, technology courses, f/c sciences, and middle school health.  Even though the state of NY tenures us in our individual areas, IB puts us all under the same umbrella.  This just adds one more level of confusion to the word – especially since all of these classes are referred to as “technology” when we’re discussing schedules with our students.

Global source of confusion: Instructional / Educational Technology

This, of course, needs no explanation.  Generally referring to modern computer/media-based educational tools, this is what most of the people who read this post will think of when they think of technology.  In some districts and states there are people referred to as “technology integrators” – they aren’t going to show you how to use a bandsaw as part of your unit on 18th century capitalism, but they are going to help with setting up a blog or showing how Twitter can be an amazing source of information.

Another source of confusion: Information Technology (IT)

I can’t tell you how many times a friend or colleague has called me excitedly about a job opening they found.  ”Corning Incorporated is looking for a few IT people!  You should apply!”  Since I loved computer programming and networking, I’d actually be able to pull off one of these jobs if I had to.  However, IT is much more of a technical subject than Ed Tech, IB Tech, or Tech Ed.  <–and yes, I just differentiated between strands of technology by using the term “technical”.

IT is based more in the innerworkings of communication devices and systems.  An IT person can probably program a router, diagnose dropped packets on a VoIP network, or set up a DMZ area to keep hackers out of your important data.  They are the ones who deal with security, connectivity, and usability for the end-users.

Conclusion

I’m an IB technology teacher of technology education who  has a degree in (and an affinity for) educational technology and who has a bit of experience in the information technology world.  Does that win me an iPad?

I began my morning with a very large and inspired group of educators for EduBloggerCon.  For those who don’t know, this is an unconference that takes place annually the day prior to the ISTE conference.  By definition, the unconference model asks the participants to share their knowledge by offering ideas for sessions and then voting on what topic(s) they want to attend.  The sessions are organized into blocks (1-hour long, in this case) and people scurry off to find a group with a topic that’s personally interesting or relevant to themselves.  The goal of any unconference is for meaningful conversations to take place. Led and moderated by the attendees themselves, there are no “rock stars” in one of these settings as everyone has an equal opportunity to participate.

I was able to attend one session, which I plan to write a blog post about later.  In that session there were maybe thirty people – perhaps twenty of whom spoke up and added their thoughts to the conversation.  Everyone was engaged, people were forming personal relationships with others, and it didn’t feel as if someone was telling a story.  We were creating one.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay for the remainder of the EduBloggerCon sessions.  TEDxPhiladelphiaED was taking place at 1:00PM and we were asked to be fed and at the event by noon.  I went on an excursion with @MonicaAnnaBatac and @Brooker1015 to the Philly subway system for the ride across town.  While down in the hottest, smelliest subway station I’d ever been in we ran across two other TEDxPhilly-goers in @khokanson and @MichaelBaker.  We got to the building, through security and registration, and eventually to our seats.

To say I was surprised to find a LiveScribe pen in my attendee “gift bag” would be completely downplaying the excitement that I felt.  A pen!  A pen with a microphone!  A pen with a microphone and a camera sensor that I can upload to my computer!  Yes!  #TEDxPhillyED was getting off to an amazing start.

…and then the presentations began.  To say there was audio trouble is an understatement.  From the beginning the headsets would cut out, some didn’t work at all, some mics were turned on while being hooked up, and audio from the computer/video equipment wasn’t configured to work with the rest of the system.  The worst part of the audio problems was knowing that when I applied I specifically indicated that I would be willing to help with A/V if needed.  Throughout the event I kept thinking there must’ve been some catastrophic malfunctions in the control room; near the end of the evening, though, someone mentioned in passing that they had nobody with soundboard experience working.

Sessions began to get extended due to the A/V issues.  People got hungry.  During the timed breaks there was some discussion happening in the atrium, but most of the conversation around the snack table was concerning the technical issues.  I walked out into the foyer and was shown how to use my new LiveScribe pen – a little too commercial for TED in general, but at the same time it was a welcome 3-minute training for me.  And all at once someone said “time to get back in there”, forcing the group of us to rush back to our seats in time for the next speaker.

Overall, I found the speakers to be absolutely incredible and engaging.

But something was missing: Participation.

One of the tenets of constructivism, which is the most basic building block of a solid 21st-century education system, is that the learners must construct their own knowledge.  They need to be engaged, encouraged to offer ideas and to try things, and they should strive to obtain multiple perspectives on a topic.  Very little of which happened at the TEDx event.  EduBloggerCon, however, offered an environment that didn’t only allow for this to happen, but forced it to.

I felt like a student in a progressive, relaxed, knowledge-rich environment at EduBloggerCon.  I saw the value not only in the content, but also in the stories of the people who were offering the content.  There was debate, there were moments when emotions ran high, there were times when nobody knew what to say…  but EduBloggerCon was about building relationships and opening our minds up for change.

I felt like a student in my grandmother’s one-room schoolhouse as I sat through the presentations at TEDxPhiladelphiaED.  There were topics that didn’t really interest me – but there was no other alternative.  I wanted to stand up and stretch every so often but I felt it would’ve been looked down upon.  The organizers were in an auditorium full of educational technologists but never did ask if anyone knew how to run a sound board. The feeling was very formal… which I guess I should’ve expected.

I haven’t felt like a student in quite a while.  Having both of those experiences in one day really turned me off to the lecture-style of teaching and has inspired me to put the extra time and effort in so that my students are never feeling like I did on Saturday afternoon.  The sad thing is, I really would’ve liked to chat with all of the TEDx presenters.  They were all such incredible speakers.  But the format of this event put me in the “student” caste, while the presenters stood above us as the “rock stars”. I was able to speak briefly with a couple of them, but I found it to be more of the exception than the rule.

What do you think?  Content notwithstanding which style of teaching & learning do you prefer?  Which event do you think was more meaningful and left a longer-lasting impression?  Did anyone feel the same way I did?

One thing I love even more: getting something to the point of “near perfection.”

Because once I get something as close to perfect as possible I allow myself to move on to the next project. And as someone who loves projects, there’s nothing more satisfying than tackling something fresh and new without worrying about splitting time between multiple jobs.

As a project hoarder (I truly am…) I have enough stuff lined up in my head to keep me busy well past my death. But I’d be unhappy if I didn’t.
—-

So here’s the problem: I’m looking for a job as a Director of Technology (preferably in a school district). I’ve interviewed multiple times in the last few years and have actually made it to the final round three different times. Out of those three times, more than once I’ve called the potential employer up and requested that my name be removed from consideration after being given a tour of the facilities. See, here in upstate NY almost every school district has had extensive infrastructure and technology upgrades in the last few years. You walk into pristine server rooms, every piece of cable is labeled, there’s a wireless infrastructure able to handle 1:1 programs, etc.

It’s all too perfect.

I want to make a difference. That’s what drove me into education in the first place, and that’s why I think I went into technology. I went to a fairly prestigious technical & engineering university as a freshman and was literally the first guy anyone called when they had computer problems. I never advertised or asked for money… just loved being the guy who would walk across campus with poledit.exe (one of my many tricks) on a floppy disk and would walk out of the person’s room with a handshake and sometimes a cold beverage (preferably a Coke Classic). I probably could’ve made some serious cash that year, but never felt compelled to charge. I decided that I enjoyed showing people how to fix things just as much as I liked fixing them myself, so I went into Technology Education (and later Educational Technology).

Now I’m not sure what to do about this. I continue to volunteer at local businesses, doing all sorts of cabling and server work and setting up off-site backups amongst other things; some the small bits and pieces that I love tinkering with. But I really want to be able to lead a school district somewhere. I don’t want to walk in and have my largest issue be changing the bulbs in a projector or deploying the newest version of Paint.net to the school. I want a job that doubles as a long-term project… not one that’s simply maintaining the status quo. In the meantime I tell people I’m waiting for the “perfect job” to come along – which hopefully includes a lot of imperfection.

Anybody else out there have this “problem”? Is this normal? Do schools that look perfect have hidden flaws buried within?

I’m a systems thinker. I detail in my Bio the fact that I am passionate about the entire educational system, from the taxpayers to the students to the cafeteria workers to the plumbers. Many people are quick to place the blame of so-called “failing schools” on poor teachers, unfunded mandates, overpaid administrators, inadequate facilities, greedy teachers’ unions, community strife, MTV, and so on. From my point of view, however, anyone who blames the shortfalls of public education on just one or two factors is oversimplifying a very complex systemic breakdown.

The opposite is also true. Anybody who thinks real, meaningful change can occur system-wide by changing one piece of the puzzle is probably in for a rude awakening. For real, meaningful, lasting reform to take place in our educational system the stars have to align and multiple changes need to occur simultaneously. Any of these things by themselves will support a certain level of reform; the more that occur, the more effective the reform will be.

What I’m going to suggest today – my “recipe 4 reform” – will detail a few of the changes that I believe need to be made for effective pedagogical reform to occur.

We’ll begin by emptying the entire bag of traditional learning into a large mixing bowl. There’s nothing quite like the smell of century-old traditions and systems flowing out of its container and into the 21st century. Its probably a good idea to mix it up a little bit now, as there’s a significant chance it’ll be coming out lumped into strands once thought to make sense. Once its all in the bowl you’re ready for the next step.

Unfortunately our recipe doesn’t call for some of the stuff that has already been emptied into the bowl. Any small pieces of bananas sages on the stages that you may find, please throw in the trash. Likewise, if you’re able to find any traces of boring professional development, flash-in-the-pan initiatives, or unmeaningful grading schemes please be sure to remove them and discard them. What we should be left with is a fine, powdery mix of everything that was good a century ago.

Next, add to the bowl a container of web tools (in some markets this is sold as “web 2.0″). These come in many flavors – finding the right mixture is always the chef’s preference. Along those same lines we’re going to add a good amount of online social professional development (the type that’s flexible and comes in a variety of shapes and sizes). Grab your blender and mix that soupy mess all together, being sure to leave nothing untouched.

Let everything sit for a while; perhaps long enough for the teachers to embrace what has changed but not so long that the test scores drop. That would require a re-write of the recipe, which, like everything else, is nearly impossible to do with the current lame-duck congress.

Once this mixture starts to gel, it’ll want a box to constrain itself to. The most fun part of the solidification process, however, is what we don’t do. We aren’t going to actually put this slop into a mold. We’re going to put it in a plastic bag and allow all of the users to squeeze it into their own mold. It’s always more fun to see what others can do with something than it is to force them to do something in a specific manner.

Since the outcome is unique for everyone – students, teachers, administrators, etc – make sure to document the process and the product. Since the final test in this recipe lies in that documentation, make sure to share it digitally so that others can review it and make comments. This portfolio should follow the user from A-Z, K-12, or from newbie through competent so that at the end of the day everyone can prove what they’ve done and where they’ve been.

I know it’s contrived… and I had to eliminate a handful of ingredients in order to make it fit in the “blog” category and not in the “longer-than-the-dictionary” one. My point? Mix it up! Let’s make the changes that *everyone* agrees have to be made but everyone is too scared to implement.

Think much?

For some towns or cities, one potential answer to this problem is to put a lot of money into their educational system. The thinking is that if the schools are as good as they can be people will want to live in the area, businesses will come, and alumni will have better memories – possibly attracting them (or their money) back.

But the first step is always acknowledging problem, right?

My school district has failed to pass a major building project ever since I can remember – we’re the only school district in the county (or region, actually) in that situation. The administration spent many years and tens of thousands of dollars working with a non-partisan committee to come up with a “master plan” for the district – an idea that wouldn’t have added any money to the current tax rate and would’ve given the students completely renovated schools throughout the district. As it was put up for a vote in the community the things that we heard all the time were “the schools were fine when I was there” or “teachers need to stop whining and deal with what they’ve got”. The result of the vote was good – for the naysayers. And the Board of Education had to go back to the drawing board and try to figure out what to do with our aging and crumbling buildings.

And then it hit me: the problem is that we’re doing too good of a job for the community.

If we had a dropout rate of 20%, we were on the Schools in Need of Improvement (SINI) list, or we had trouble attracting good teachers to our district I think the community would’ve voted almost unanimously for the project. But we’re resourceful. We’ve managed to take some of the worst facilities in the state and still cultivate students who are ready for college and/or the workforce as good as (or better than) neighboring districts.

It seems that we the school district is at fault. Many people haven’t seen the needs for change here; they haven’t yet acknowledged the problem. The overall community is too proud for that.

But a few miles down the road is another school district – my alma mater, in fact. They’ve had more building projects in the last decade than my current district has had in the last forty years. Their community doesn’t argue about their facilities – when they are asked to vote for education, they do. And for good reason: they want their kids to be successful enough to get out of town. That’s right – they value their schools so much not because they want their kids to come back home after college but because they want them to be able to leave.

I'm outta here!

So are good facilities mandatory for a quality education? Is it wrong for a community to support their schools just to encourage the kids to pack up and go? If we offer a quality education to all students – regardless of the economy of the community – does anything else really matter? Do the goals of retaining or retreating make a difference when it comes to supporting the schools?

Getting sick and tired of seeing a sea of blue every day, I decided to do some research and figure out how to change the initial background on these not-yet-logged-in computers. I wanted red backgrounds for the holiday season, orange ones for Halloween, pictures of a tropical island for the cold winter months, backgrounds of nature for earth day, etc.

Looking online, I found a few shareware programs that claimed to do almost what I wanted… but I couldn’t be sure that they were all spyware-free. None seemed to be exactly what I wanted, either. That’s why I created the program linked to below.

Using the program is extremely easy. Choose either a background color or a background image for your login screen. It’s best that you use an image editor to make sure any graphics are proportional to your screen size (1024×768 for me, some widescreens here are 1440×900). After you click “Save” you’ll need to log out in order to see any changes.

Please use this software at your own risk. I wrote it in Visual Basic .NET – I’m sure it works great on every machine I’ve tested it on and I assume it’ll work on any WindowsXP computer with the similar type of login screen. I have not tested it on a machine with the icon-based login screen (don’t have one available).

To download the application, please click here. Please let me know what you think!

The Technology Education department at the SUNY at Oswego never let us mistake the fact that we weren’t “education majors”, but instead were “technology majors”. I happened to be the president of the Oswego Technology Education Association (OTEA) during my senior year and one of the ideas that I pushed was to associate ourselves with the Education Club at the college. I couldn’t understand why we were all students in the school of education, yet our organizations barely knew each other existed. I officially joined the Ed Club and went to a few of their meetings myself, but during my tenure was never able to bring the organizations any closer together. While most of my technology classmates were working on their trucks, their houses, and their wood projects the Ed Club was inviting speakers to the school to discuss everything from learning styles to special education terminologies.

There were a lot of things that I never learned about education while in that program. Thankfully New York requires all teachers to obtain a masters degree before becoming permanently certified. Without that necessity there is no doubt I’d be an old-school shop teacher with little to no understanding of the education system (or the students) that surrounded me.

[note: from what I was told the Oswego Technology Education program has changed substantially in the last decade. I am speaking about the program before most of the current staff was hired.]

Although I was offered an assistantship to stay in Oswego for my masters, I elected instead to get something different. With a heavy background in computers and networking I decided that an Instructional Technology degree would fit me perfectly. So I enrolled in the program at SUNY Potsdam.

I was to be known as an “instructional technologist” once admitted into that program. We had thrown around the term of “Educational Technologist”, but the latest AECT definition for the field suggested that it was incorrect – so we made darn sure we used the “correct” terms when talking about our major.

The terms may seem interchangeable from most people’s points of view. Teachers deliver instruction/lead education, so the terms must mean the same thing. BUT – as I’ve been re-thinking my philosophy on education I’m realizing that teachers don’t need to be the “sage on the stage”. They can facilitate. They can lead the students to learning, but they can’t make them think. I like to think that my background and knowledge encompass more than just “instructional” uses of technology; I use technology to instruct but also to learn, guide, suggest, develop, and evaluate (amongst other things). Because of the breadth of the field I now consider myself an educational technologist… although since NY doesn’t have a certification for that I am (and always will be) officially an instructional technologist.

image courtesy of http://www.vecteezy.com

After spending all of my savings on these degrees you’re probably wondering why I’m still teaching technology (shop) to middle school kids. And you know what – sometimes I wonder the same thing.

My work background is that of a technology teacher. I’ve applied for administrative jobs and have been told that my background doesn’t lend itself to education in general – that it’s too specific. I’ve been told that I’ll never get an administrative job in my current district because “administrators are a dime a dozen; technology teachers are a needle in a haystack“. And now… with budgets the way they are… many districts in the upstate NY area are re-naming their technology coordinators as “technology specialists” and hiring civil service people for them. I spent 7 years in school, a boatload of money, and have worked my butt off for the past decade when all I needed to do was take a civil service test??? Really???

Do you have any labels that either hinder you, help you, or impact you in any real way? Do your labels reflect who you are, or do you reflect what your labels want you to be?

So I decided to run with it. I tried to explain the situation to every one of my classes. We watched “Did You Know”, we discussed how other countries have caught us and passed us, and we had amazing dialog about what could happen if we continue on our current path. Of course all of the students had ideas about changing the school so that we didn’t need to add time, but I wanted to put them in the box and see what they could do. As a class we came up with three possible frameworks for adding time to the schedule (although I realize there are many other options):

1. Simply adding 20 days into the school year. I proposed that maybe we could still have a long summer vacation by having classes every-other Saturday, but that wasn’t considered very practical. Of the four ideas, this one was my personal least favorite – but this wasn’t about me, it was about my students.
2. Adding a few hours to the school day, restructuring time, and still having the same summer vacation. The older students who are able to play sports didn’t like this idea very much. Most couldn’t imagine having sports practice until 7 or 8PM (our modified teams are usually done by 5:30.) Many students, however, really liked this idea due to the fact that their summers wouldn’t be impacted.

   Restructuring time was an important part of this idea, too. We figured that 2 hours a day Monday-Thursday would be an entire fifth day of school per week – so we could cut classes back to a 4-day schedule. The fifth day would be used for clubs, organizations, academic support, field trips, educational field experiences, etc.

3. Integrating more non-traditional learning opportunity into the schedule. We thought about online courses mostly, but a few of the boys in the class wanted nothing to do with it. They wanted to rebuild trucks and engines – you know, manly stuff (their words). So voila! Use authentic experiences as science labs / technology projects / etc. Allow the students to write these things up for school credit. It sounds like a crazy idea to some, but this one was my absolute favorite.

After having this discussion amongst my students – all of whom are in sixth, seventh, or eighth grade – we took a survey. I asked everyone to vote as if one of them was really going to happen in our building. The results actually surprised me greatly.

Out of the 75 students polled, only 9 wanted to simply add 20 days to the calendar. Whew! Glad I wasn’t alone!

48 students – almost 65% – chose to go to a 4-day academic week and use the fifth day as a support day. Surprisingly most of the athletes who had originally scoffed at the idea came aboard after talking to their friends about the options.

That leaves 18 who would’ve voted with me on the non-traditional opportunities. To be honest I think my passion for that option may have lured a few of the voters in, as it seemed the students who sit closest to me were primarily the ones voting with me. (But I didn’t vote and tried to remain impartial.)

Granted, I was having these discussions with younger students who really weren’t grounded in the harsh realities of high school schedules, boyfriends/girlfriends, SATs, etc. None as much as mentioned teachers or parents throughout the entire process – obviously major stakeholders in this equation. And there were a good number of students who didn’t want to discuss this topic at all, as they “weren’t going to do nothin’ during their time off”. But I think it showed a lot of creativity to come up with these ideas, a lot of good discourse to talk about the pros and cons of each one, and a lot of deep thinking by the students to vote on something that nobody really wants.

Has a discussion like this happened recently in your school? Any ideas to add?

Right here, right now, there is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now, watching the world wake up from history

I sat in my eighth grade History class listening to Jesus Jones’ “Right Here, Right Now” blasting out of the teacher’s boombox. It was 1991 and the topic de jour was centered around how much the world had changed in the past 50 years. Pretty much everything has been invented already, I remember thinking as I sat there and listened to him drone on and on about “when he was a kid…” We were at the end of the age of newness, and I’d live the rest of my life with everything that we had right then.

I wonder if kids still think that? Sometimes I wonder if adults do?

So as I was teaching my eighth-grade class a little History of Technology last week, I cranked up the speakers and played them the same song. Other than enduring some harassment for choosing an “old” song, I think I was able to successfully facilitate the same discussion that I’d been a part of two decades earlier. Surprisingly, however, the students were probably more interested in the topic than I was – which completely caught me off guard. Most of the conversation that followed, however, was based around something that happened by coincidence while we were talking…

My TweetDeck popped up an #EdChat notification on my projection screen.

“What’s that”, one student asked. “It’s his Twitter account and he shouldn’t be using it in school”, replied another. The the barrage of comments started flowing; “I don’t use Twitter – it’s stupid. I use Yahoo! Messenger and send text messages”; “I use AIM”; “I use Facebook” “Facebook is stupid”; “All of my friends use MSN”; “MySpace is so much better than everything else”… I live for teachable moments, so this was almost too good to be true.

I could discuss every detail of the rest of that class, but it’s the epiphany I had afterward that I want to discuss here. Why, with all of the highly-developed communication programs that are (and have been) available, has Twitter taken off? Why does it seem like it’s the impetus for an educational revolution that’s gaining momentum every day? Why didn’t educators flock to an AOL Chatroom when it first came out? What was wrong with Yahoo! Chatrooms? MS NetMeeting? ICQ Chat? Orkut? Yuku? Freetel? (and the list goes on and on…) So why Twitter? Why here, why now?

In all honesty I haven’t got an answer to that question. I’m hoping some of you will be able to comment and help me out! Is this educational revolution relatively new? Has it been going on in certain private circles for decades? Am I part of something big, or is this all going to be a passing “fad” by mainstream educators? Will the education books look back at 2008-2009 and say “this is where the tide turned” – or will we simply be a blip on one of the waves? (no pun intended – although it was pretty good, eh?)

Why here, why now? Why Twitter, why #edchat? Why me and you?

Of course the location isn’t what I was supposed to be enlightened with this weekend – it was the content of the presenters and the myriad speakers. So in chronological order, here are some thoughts:

Thursday evening I missed the Wine Tasting Cruise on “Captain Bill’s” chartered boat, but when the boat returned I met up with everyone for a reception at the Harbor Hotel. What a beautiful place! During the hors d’ oeuvres hour I was standing in the lobby with a co-worker talking with my hands (I tend to wave them around an awful lot) and almost knocked a man over – come to find out that he is the new education commissioner in NYS. That would’ve been probably one of the biggest faux pas of my short tenure as a member of the NYSMSA (I’ve been a member for all of a week). So yes, I did “meet” David Steiner – although can’t say I actually spoke with him or shook his hand.

As we ate dinner, David spoke to the group about his nomination to be the NYS Education Commissioner and what some of his visions are. Of course he mentioned NCLB and standardized testing negatively (he knew what we wanted to hear!) while talking about making education meaningful and engaging. He also spoke about a state-wide (or larger scale?) curriculum being developed, since we in NYS have nothing to go by. Sure we have “standards” – but we haven’t got a curriculum guide. He also mentioned the need for a “computer class” curriculum – I almost jumped for joy as I envisioned schools all over the state needing instructional technologists for their local programs. He was a very good speaker, in my opinion, and said quite a few things that I hardly believe to be “the truth”. Even if he does have great ideas, perhaps I’m just too jaded to believe that he can carry some of them out.

By the way, before I move on… he did say that standardized tests and, more specifically, teaching to the test, were not good. But he also said at one point that our state is pushing the USA’s education standards to increase, as our assessment program is one of the best in the country. So… I’m not sure what to believe there…

It’s 7:15AM Friday morning and I’m sitting in a classroom in a foreign school waiting to hear the 6th grade team from my own school talk about their team configuration. It was interesting to see my principal and co-workers describing how amazing their schedule configuration is now so that they can collaborate easily and talk daily. I’m still longing for a chance to work collaboratively with someone in this school who is considered “core”. With that in mind I went on to my next session…

Building and Implementing a Flexible Schedule with Elliot Merenbloom was the next presentation that I attended. I knew his name due to our current school schedule being developed by Elliot a few years ago. This session was probably intended for guidance and administrative people and the attendees didn’t surprise me – I’d say over half of us in attendance had out administrative degrees. Anyhow, he had some good ideas on how to create flexibility in a school schedule to allow for better teaming and intra-team collaboration. Unfortunately all of the ideas that he presented kept the “encore classes” out of the teams – so technology, Family and Consumer Science, Art, Music, and Health are never really included in his flexibility formula. I have a few ideas about how to fix that and hope to float them by my principal before next school year’s schedule is started.

Since the NYSCATE conference happened to overlap this one, the most high-tech presentation that I was able to find was a session named “Virtual Worlds in Education”, facilitated by Catherine Norton-Barker of GST BOCES. I’ve got a bit of familiarity with Second Life, but had never had the chance to see the Virtual Worlds in action. The program itself was developed at Cornell University and was sold to BOCES a year ago to allow for continuing development. It’s somewhat of a Second Life-like program that’s closed (for security) and all about education. It was a good presentation, although I don’t see it as something that I’d invest a lot of classroom time working with. Sure it’s easy to use – but so is HyperStudio. And there’s a reason nobody uses HyperStudio anymore… Add some photo-realistic graphics capabilities, make it easier to integrate with back-end grading databases, and decrease the bandwidth needs and this would be one heck of a program. I might play with it a little bit and see if I change my mind – but right now that’s how I feel.

ePortfolios & Authentic Assessment was by far the most intriguing presentation that I made it to. Cheryl Muller and Nikki Cole from the Bath-Haverling district presented this topic to a room full of music educators (and me). A self-proclaimed “music lover”, I was able to follow the talk quite easily as they spoke about how they assess each student in their band and chorus individually and authentically – skipping the “A for effort” sort of grade that many music teachers give on the report cards. The actual assessment piece was extremely interesting, but even more interesting was their use of the district ePortfolio system. I’ve been a huge supporter of ePortfolios for a long time now, and this was the first time I’ve been able to see Bath’s custom-built solution being used authentically. I’d seen presentations and previews before, but this was the real deal. I have to say, I was not impressed with their system the way I was a few years ago. My belief is that it was coded by a developer for Bath-Haverling specifically and hasn’t been updated since. In the age of Web 2.0 and Ruby on Rails programming, I find it hard to believe that their system hasn’t been significantly upgraded. I’m still a huge supporter of one of these systems, but it’s got to be an open format that’s easily upgradeable and always backwards compatible. Kudos to these ladies for taking a once-arduous task and making it easier and more collaborative using new-ish technologies… They are certainly using the tools that are at their disposal as well as they can be used.

The last presentation that I was able to make it to was put on by the same group of CFA 6th grade teachers who I began the day with – Integrating Arts into the Core Curriculum. Once again I felt a bit disconnected from my co-workers as they work together on this initiative and have never included technology (or music, f/c science, art, or health). But overall it was a good presentation, and I learned a few things abut what’s happening in my building. Essentially the 6th grade team got a grant to work collaboratively with a local artist and a local museum to teach through art. All of our sixth grade students participate by taking pictures, editing them, and having them displayed at the museum for all to see. The process is long and extremely planned – the kids learn “Why they do what they do” through this project.

A few random thoughts:

• A ton of middle school teachers that are my age are getting their administrative degrees. I met at least 10 people who were either working on them or had just finished them up… and there are three, soon to be four teachers in my building with administrative certificates from the state.
• Panera boxed lunches are extremely good.