Taste of Tech

On July 6, 2009, we started the first week of workshops with teachers at Liwa Primary School in Cape Town, South Africa. We had spent the previous couple days learning as much as we could about this community. As a result of apartheid, many of teachers and learners lived in informal housing — shantys that were built with whatever materials they had on hand. Crime was high. Resources were few. Living conditions were tough. We were there to lead technology workshops for teachers, to try to help them effectively use technology resources to improve their teaching.

To say I was a little nervous was an understatement. Here we were, the rich white people, sweeping in to tell the poor black people how it should be done. How were we going to connect with these teachers? How would we build a rapport? How would we get them to understand that we were there to work WITH them, not FOR them? We didn’t have all of the answers, but we wanted to help them come up with their own solutions.

Zac volunteered to lead the first session. It was a tough crowd. They were quiet. They were skeptical. But within two minutes, he had won their hearts. He had them laughing and thinking. He connected with them. He broke the ice. And I knew then that everything was going to be fine.

I also knew that I had to find a way to get him here to talk to our teachers. Zac is not a technology guy who happens to also be a teacher. He’s a dynamic teacher who uses technology when it’s appropriate and effective. Last week he spoke to our teachers at a technology-focused inservice event. One of our teachers, Cindy Hubert, was kind enough to video Zac’s presentation with her flip camera. And while there are some occasional problems with the video, in general she did a great job.

Zac Chase BBHCSD Keynote Presentation 3/5/10 from Debbie Schinker on Vimeo.

The staff’s reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Here’s what they had to say in the evaluation surveys:

• Zac chase was the best in-service speaker that I can remember.
• He was a great speaker and well worth the time!
• He was a great speaker; he was motivating in addition to being an awesome start to the day!
• Zac did a great job holding the audience’s attention and making us think and laugh at the way we do things. My goal is to work harder at getting my kids more in tune with technology after hearing him address school issues and demonstrate its effect on kids through the videos.
• Excellent speaker and a great lead into the morning inservices…
• I wanted more!
• He was very inspiring and entertaining, but he did leave me a bit overwhelmed..
• Zac is extremely knowledgeable and inspirational. We must keep in the forefront his message of being lifelong learners and always striving to better use technology to prepare our students for the future.
• Zac Chase was brilliant! Teachers have to understand the power and advantages of technology. Zac did an outstanding job of conveying a very important message to educators.
• We need more days with presentators like Zac Chase!
• I would like to strongly encourage you to bring Zac Chase back to our district for other speaking events. He was incredibly inspiring and helpful to me as a professional. I look forward to following him on twitter, facebook, and his blog page.
• I thought he was one of the best presenters we have had in years!!!!!
• Zac Chase was excellent! I would have loved to have heard more. His talk contained the kind of forward thinking content necessary to get teachers thinking about how our learners have changed and will continue to change. His presentation inspired me to re-think how I am teaching a number of my units.
• Mr. Chase was the best keynote speaker that we have had. He was engaging, had a sense of humor and was a great start to our day. He made you think in his own way how far we have come with technology and how we can use it with our students to prepare them for their new world, which is much different than the one I grew up with. I was sorry that I had not signed up for his breakout session.
• This was the best waiver day! I enjoyed everything. The speaker was outstanding and inspirational.
• He knew how to suggest without accusing, and did not speak down to his audience.
• Zac was an outstanding keynote presenter.
• Zac’s message was relevant and timely. We ALL need to meet our students’ needs for understanding and negotiating their rapidly changing environment and can make a much stronger impact by doing so. Our educators need PLANNED TIME to develop these competencies.
• Great job. I found the presenter to be very informational, while also entertaining.
• I felt this presenter was by far the best part of the day. He was inspirational and got me excited about teaching and learning. I wish I had been able to spend more of my day listening and learning and interacting with him.
• I could have listened to Zac longer than the hour in the keynote timeframe.
• In all of my years of teaching, I have never heard a group of teachers so quiet and attentative for a speaker. So many times we are as a group not respectful in listening. Great message and he made you think.
• Well Done
• I loved the morning session. It was by far the best inservice day we’ve ever had. I learned so much about how to integrate more technology into the classroom. I wish it could have been a whole day activity. I would have loved to have sat in on more sessions. Please do more days like this. It was nice hearing teachers tell what works, not some outside person lecturing us on what we should do! There are some really great technology ideas out there that our teachers our using!!!!!!
• The speaker was great and the individual presentations were really effective.
• He was an engaging speaker.
• Outstanding! I was so glad to actually see a presentation that will help me and inspire me in my teaching. It was fun, informative, and meaningful. Thank you so much for giving us something to think about and incorporate into our own teaching. Also, your shoes were awesome.
• Loved that my peers taught us subjects and it wasn’t a professor with a powerpoint and graphs. Zac was great! Thank you for the technology resources!
• This was the first large group speaker that I wasn’t ready to leave the room after an hour of time. I enjoyed his presentation and felt that he was very motivating. I think this day could have been better if we would have had time to incorporate some of these technology ideas. Whether it be in the breakout sessions, or in the afternoon, time spent with the ideas would have been valuable.
• I really enjoyed Zac’s speech and perspective on the world. I was surprised at how engaged I was and was disappointed that I did not sign up for his break-out session.
• I think Zac was GREAT! I loved his message and he was incredibly motivating! Can we convince him to come teach in Brecksville?
• This was the best inservice I can remember. The speaker was excellent – good points made – loved the clicking textboo!
• He was great and a well needed change of pace!
• I really enjoyed the early morning presentation. It was entertaining and thought provoking.
• Outstanding presenter! The best we’ve had in my career here at BBHCSD!
• Awesome!
• Wonderful and thought provoking!!
• Excellent! Very thought provoking and ‘fun’.
• I would have loved to hear him speak longer. I did not attend his breakout sessions since I did not who he was prior and had too many other options that I wanted to take.
• Zac is an amazing teacher. After 29 years as a teacher, I found myself feeling totally inadequate at the end of his presentation, because there are so many elements of technology that I don’t even know about.
• Good presenter. Inspiring. Better than a tutorial or presentation about this is what you have to do/should do/ought to accomplish.
• The morning was fantastic
• This was one of the best waiver days we have had in this district. I loved the keynote speaker and feel that what I learned I will use in my classroom. Thank you!!
• Excellent!! He is an incredible speaker. I wish he was my son’s teacher.

Posted on March 10th, 2010 by John Schinker
Filed under: 21:Collaboration, 21:Globalization, 21:Information, 21:Innovation, Teachers | No Comments »

This year, like most, there were lots of sessions at the eTech Ohio Educational Technology Conference about new technologies. There was a definite theme to many of them: overcoming the taboos of technology. In our schools, cell phones have been governed by a variation on “don’t ask, don’t tell.” We know that nearly all of our middle- and high-school students have them. They bring them to school. We know that. They know we know that. They’re not allowed to use them. As long as we don’t see them, and they don’t cause a disruption, we don’t care if they have them.

Photo credit: chernobylBob on flickr

What can these phones do? They can certainly make phone calls and send and receive text messages. They all have digital cameras. Most of them can record audio and video. A few students have smartphones that can access the web, run applications, and do other amazing things. While they’re not a replacement for a computer, they are capable of doing a lot of useful things. Creating a student response system with them to get immediate feedback would be pretty easy to do. Having students using them for digital storytelling would be possible. And the processing power in even the most basic phone is many times more powerful than even the most advanced scientific (and, perhaps, graphing) calculators that we used when I was in school. In a school / political environment / economic situation where we’re not going to be able to provide laptops for every student in the near future, we should be taking every possible advantage of the technology they already have.

But cell phones have problems. When students send inappropriate pictures of themselves to one another, it’s a cause for concern. When they do it at school, it could be a potential liability. Having the ability to text and access the Internet has to change how we do assessment. And, unlike the school Internet connections, cell phones don’t have filtered Internet access. While the school is only legally required to filter Internet access on devices provided by the school, in practice few administrators and teachers would be happy with a solution that makes it trivial for students to access any online content at any time from school.

Likewise, we have the same problems with social networking tools. We know that it can be valuable for students to build relationships, connections, personal learning networks. We also know that social networks are primarily just that — social. In addition to being a useful communication tool, it can be an excellent time waster. And many school officials point out that they open up new avenues for cyberbullying, further distracting teachers and school leaders with discipline and student management issues that can be avoided by blocking access to such services.

It is possible to set up walled-garden versions of social networks. Both Buddypress and Elgg give students the opportunity to participate in a closed system, where only other people affiliated with the school can participate. This can help, because trying such systems to network accounts ensures accountability, and allows the school to make the students accountable for the choices they make when using such tools. But, again, it’s a path few schools are chosing to follow.

Even cloud computing resources, like web-based email and Google Apps accounts, can raise concerns. Giving students email accounts increases the liklihood that they’ll be accidentally exposed to inappropriate content. Once they start getting on spam lists, it’s almost certain that they’ll receive unsolicited messages, even with the best anti-spam software. Plus, both email and Google Docs give students a way to get inappropriate content into the school. A picture, video, or application could be emailed or uploaded to the Google account, and then accessed from school. I don’t know of any foolproof filtering solutions that would solve this problem.

The sessions at eTech that dealt with these technologies were much more optimistic. It was nice to hear about several schools that have successfully implemented these types of technologies. Mostly, success seems to depend on pre-planning, setting expectations, and enforcing the rules. Rather than relying on the technology to tell the students what they can or cannot do, they have to take a certain sense of responsibility. And there have to be consequences for making poor choices.

Overall, I’m optimistic that these technologies can have a place in the classroom. It’s just a matter of identifying how and where they’ll be most beneficial, and designing an implementation strategy to fit those needs.

Posted on February 4th, 2010 by John Schinker
Filed under: Front Page, Opinions, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Last weekend, I was struck by the difference in approach between ISTE and Educon. Last month, ISTE announced their “Top Ten in ’10,” which identifies their ten priorities for boosting student achievement and closing the achievement gap.

They start off the list this way:

Establish technology in education as the backbone of school improvement. To truly improve our schools for the long term and ensure that all students are equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve in the 21st century, education technology must permeate every corner of the learning process.

The list goes on from there, and promotes the use of technology at the center of career readiness, professional development, pre-service teacher education, and assessment. They do, eventually, get to research and digitial citizenship. But the theme of the list is very clear: technology is the center of education. If we focus on the technology, everything else ties in to it and we can solve our education problems.

Granted, it’s ISTE’s mission to promote the use of technology in education. But it’s a mistake to make technology the focus of education. We’ve been talking for a while about getting away from the tools, and speding more time focusing on what we’re actually doing with the technology — how it changes the things students and teachers are doing, and how it affects the way they learn. But even the “technology integration” perspective is frequently misguided. Too often, it’s “hey, here’s this really cool gadget. I’m sure it has a lot of possible uses in education. We have to find some.” I myself have been guilty of that. Just yesterday, I said in my presentation that we have to find some relevant, useful, authentic ways to use these cell phones effectively in education. That, too, misses the point.

Educon Wordle by Christopherl

Compare all of this to Educon. This conference had nearly all of the heavy hitters in educational technology. I briefly talked to David Warlick yesterday about his experience there. He admitted it was a little intimidating. When you look over your audience and see half of your blogroll sitting there, it can be a little unnerving. But despite the overwhelming support of Educon by the edtech leaders, they’re very clear that this isn’t a technology conference.

And it is not a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is, hopefully, an innovation conference where we can come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas — from the very practical to the big dreams.

David reflected that technology didn’t even come up most of the time. In his conversation, when they were plotting activities on his Daggett/Bloom grid, he asked them how they could adapt the activities to put them higher on the Bloom’s scale. They came up with more probing questions, better activities, and modified procedures. But instead of saying, for example, “the kids could blog about it,” they were more apt to say that “the kids could reflect about it in their journals.” It doesn’t matter if the journal is on a blog or on paper. The focus is on the teaching and learning.

At eTech, there seems to be a strong sense that we have all of this technology — we have these great resources. We have these wonderful tools. We have to find an innovative use for them in the classroom. Maybe we’re looking at it from the wrong side. If we spent more time focusing on the “what and how” of learning, we can plug the technology in where it’s most appropriate, and most productive. I wonder what would happen if this conference (and the ISTE conference) were more like Educon.

Posted on February 2nd, 2010 by John Schinker
Filed under: Front Page | 1 Comment »