1. USOE requires Utah districts to conduct standardized testing using a Measured Progress-developed software client that can only be installed on Macintosh or Windows devices. There are no immediate plans for progressing (measuredly) away from this client-based testing solution and no solutions for the iPad or Android tablet devices in sight.


2. Very few districts in Utah are ready for 1:1 technology access: neither pedagogically, financially, nor culturally. Really.


3. Any initiative announced just before the Legislative session is subject to immediate suspicion.

• Have you ever snuggled up with a netbook to read a good (e-)book?


• Is this really more of a political move – designed to convince proponents of private and home schooling that public school districts will now gladly hand over students (vouchers) AND develop a viable curriculum for them (open textbooks)?

• What will it take to provide our students daily with the kind of meaningfully rich learning experiences that typically result from informal learning?
• Can a formally constructed informal learning environment be recreated with more than sporadic frequency?
• How might we structure the learning environment in our schools to allow for more informal learning while teaching concepts assessed by federally imposed standardized tests?

• Why can’t we make informal learning an integral part of the formal learning process?

Sometimes we spend more time than we should defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing.

Executive Summary:

I’m moving forward with my dissertation and would love your input/feedback. I hope to study professional development and how it impacts teacher practice. In working further with Dr. Bentley (my Chair), I have narrowed my focus to the following research questions:

• What are the characteristics of teacher professional development programs that encourage teacher use of technology within communities of practice?
• What are the characteristics of teachers that utilize social software in the classroom?
• What impact do open professional development environments have on teacher utilization of social software in the classroom?

Thanks for your help,

Darren


---


Additional Detail:


Therefore, a major component of this study will be several professional development classes that are offered this Fall in the Canyons School District:


Furthermore, because the treatment for this study will be to conduct professional development in an open environment, a brief understanding of that concept might be helpful. Similar in concept to open education efforts and even open source software, open professional development has the following characteristics (see my original description here – as this is a concept that is just emerging):

• Free of charge to participants.
• Open Enrollment - All that desire are welcome to participate.
• Combines the established tradition of sharing good ideas with fellow educators and the collaborative, interactive culture of the Internet.
• Built on the belief that everyone should have the freedom to use, customize, improve and redistribute educational resources without constraint.
• Not limited to the course we've named OpenPD. Thus more of a movement - like Open Education - than a particular class.

In further researching the characteristics of open PD environments, I would also compare and contrast a number of PD efforts that fall within the realm of being open. For example:

• OpenPD – This is a series of PD classes that I taught wherein teachers were invited to participate, regardless of their geographic location.
  http://openpd.wikispaces.com/
• K12 Online – This is a free conference wherein teachers can participate with others, receiving a level of professional development and tailored to individual teacher needs.
  http://k12onlineconference.org/
• Connectivism amp; Connective Knowledge – This online course has also been termed a “Massive Open Online Course,” has been used as a form of professional development by many teachers.
  http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/

What are your thoughts, how well do you think these methods will answer my questions, and what suggestions do you have regarding these efforts?

Facebook and Twitter are recording enormous increases in amount of time spent on their sites by visitors. Twitter records an increase of over 3700% (year over year). Understanding which sites are increasing is use is only part of the discussion. I’d like to know what we are doing less. My email use is still the same as last year. I still read the same number of RSS feeds. I can’t think of anything I’ve dropped from my online habits. I’m still at a “net add” stage. Guess that will have to change soon…

Glenn Moses:

• How might I now better tell the story?
  

• Quotation: Carolyn Foote, punctuation altered.
• Original Image: Flickr user sylvar.

Click here for a printable flyer.

• Who: YOU!
• When: August 10-11, 2009
• Where: Jordan High School (95 E Beetdigger Dr., Sandy, UT)
• Cost: Free

• Formed because of the division of the Jordan School District, near Salt Lake City, Utah
  
• Consists of 29 elementary, 8 middle, 4 high, and number of special schools
• Approximately 33,000 students, 1,700 teachers
  

• Serve as level 1 technical support in the schools. Will be the first point of contact for break-fix technical support issues.
• One Technical Support Specialist per high school, housed in the schools.
• One roaming Secondary Technical Support Team Lead to serve as a coach and a mentor to other support personnel, provide consistency throughout the secondary schools, and to help individual schools where necessary.
  
• One Technical Support Specialist shared among every two middle schools, housed in the schools.
• A team of Technical Support Specialists to service the elementary schools (geek squad approach), at a ratio of just over one Specialist to four schools (including the Elementary Technical Support Team Lead). We anticipate using smart devices to push out job requests to the Support Specialist physically closest to the issues at hand.
  

• Serve in the critical bridging role between the Service and Deployment teams.
• Will provide some level 1 technical support to district office personnel.
  
• Will continue to support the same systems that are currently maintained by the Jordan School District Information Systems Department (and then some). At this point, the number of systems currently sits at 55, with new systems seemingly being added weekly.

• Will inherently provide some level 1 technical support but will focus primarily on assisting teachers and students to utilize technology to teach and to learn. Each member of this team will also provide teacher professional development as it relates to their specific realm.
  
• One Educational Technology Consultant per every secondary school to teach half time, and help teachers with technology the other half.
• Six Educational Technology Specialists to provide ed tech support to elementary teachers at a current ratio of roughly one Specialist per every five schools (with another six Specialists being deferred as future hires = final ratio of roughly 1:2).
• One Extended Technology Specialist (with one deferred) to assist teachers and students with technology in special learning environments (i.e. special education).
• Four Media Technology Specialists to work with on-site Media Assistants in maintaining the Media Centers (collection development, Big 6, etc.) in our elementary schools at a ratio of roughly one Specialist per every 7 schools (with another two Specialist positions being deferred as future hires = final ratio of roughly 1:5).
  
• In the end, the coveted "Social Media Specialist" position has been merged with the "Distance Learning Specialist" position to form the Media Technology and Distance Learning Team Lead. After all, shouldn't every librarian/media coordinator/specialist be a "Social Media Specialist" in today's landscape? I certainly think so. Our students are using social media to learn without us. Why shouldn't we, as educators, be expected to understand what they're experiencing in order to best help them use such technologies effectively? This person will also work to coordinate many facets within of our district's Ed Net/Concurrent Enrollment programs.
  

Dear David and Stephen,

Perhaps I've missed some of the multi-year conversation you've been having (do you even bother to link to each any more?), but I can’t help wondering why you both seem to ignore k12 and the potential power they have in helping you both gain the leverage you’re clamoring for with regard to the adoption of open textbooks. Can you please help me understand why – as you see it – the key to this venture is that things must first take hold in higher ed?

Surely there must exist some progressive district(s) out there willing (financially forced?) to take a gamble on what many of us see as a very possible future for textbook creation and distribution. Or is it really a gamble? Frankly, to me it appears to be one of the best options out there. For I see the creation of open textbooks – by the very teachers that will be using them – as a way for teachers to finally get the textbook they’ve been hoping for. Not the text that teachers must endure, but the one that they collaboratively fashion. Furthermore, with the kinds of budget cuts that have been forced upon k12 schools world-wide, their leaders would be foolish to not want to support an initiative that will dramatically decease costs in the long run.

With this in mind, I now beg you to tell me:

Aren’t teachers hired because of their abilities to create an effective learning environment (and aren’t districts tightening the belt)?

Then why shouldn’t schools take a year off of textbook buying and put that money into the creation of open texts? With that money, districts could pay the best of their teachers to begin the process – not really with money, though, but with time. Time to create, time to share, time to collaborate.

In time, I have every confidence that the quality of open textbooks will greatly surpass that of their commercial competitors – and as k12 students come to expect the flexibility that only open textbooks can provide, surely they’ll come to demand them in higher ed, as well.

Or is student demand simply not enough to get some of the more stubborn professors to budge?

Our continued emphasis on tools in pd misses that larger point, obviously, because the power of the Read/Write web is not the ability to publish; it’s the ability to connect. Broken record, I know, but tools are easy; connections are hard. And so the question becomes how to best help educators realize these potentials in the learning sense first. Because at the end of the day, community building has to become an integral part of what we do in our classrooms with our students, as well. We have to be able to model those connections for them and understand them in ways that are meaningful to our own learning practice.

The challenge is, of course, that “continual, collaborative, on the job” learning isn’t very convenient for professional developers or for teachers in classrooms. It means re-thinking what learning looks like, and that’s a scary place still for most in education.

If all we do is invest in the status quo, then we've missed this once-in-a-lifetime historic opportunity to give our children the education they desperately need and deserve.

Now I'm not saying that Twitter is any worse than Facebook.

In fact, what I *am* saying is that ALL of these social media tools can be an incredible time suck, and if we don't keep them in check, there's a good chance we'll miss out on many things in life that are simply better than whatever we might get from Twitter (and Facebook, and even bacon).

Canyons [School District] also may be able to use such communication tools to foster learning, civil public discourse and more active participation in classrooms and communities. Our staff is investigating several technologies as opportunities for engagement, including blogging, Twitter, mass text messages and e-mails. That’s also part of the reason (curiosity, I’ll admit, is another) that I’m checking out Twitter. If we are going to understand how these tools might be used in positive ways to improve student achievement or public dialogue, we must be willing to try them out and learn about them ourselves. As for my experience, so far so good.

• Why don't more school administrators use Twitter (what costs/risks are involved)?
• Does your district administration currently utilize Twitter or other social networking technologies?
• If not, what would it take to change their minds?

• Twitter Set Theory
• Edublogger Etiquette amp; Twitter Self Promotion
• My Twitterversary and the Future of Writing
  

But one question still nags; if the evidence suggests that instructor-led instruction still has a long, healthy life (whether in the classroom or online), why do bloggers continue to insist that its death is imminent?

The implication you're making here is huge, Andrew.

You seem to be saying that our current systems of traditional learning are broken - that not only are our assessments flawed, but that the very foundations upon which we have built our schools (societies?) are no longer supportive of the kinds of learning that we (society) now need our students to do.

In other words, not only do we need to change the way we test, but the way we teach - and all this because of the ways that our students can now learn. Is it so wrong now to want our students to prove what they know and can do all by themselves? Apparently so - after all, we now live in a networked world.

No wonder it's taking so long for shift to happen in our schools.

• Checking my email.
• The iPod, Blackberry, that buzz that says "New messages waiting."
• Wiis, Webkinz, and "When's it gonna be my turn?"
• Solitaire, duh, and maybe even Morocco.
• Blogging, Twitter, Facebook.
• Skype, chat, and "Wouldn't it be waaaaay easier if we could just type the paper?"
• Free. iPhone. Apps. Why? Because I can.
• Photos and videos and wow, that Jib Jab's funny.
  

• I think it's the input,
• The information,
• The new ideas and c h a i n s of information

• The power of computing,
• The power of expression,
• And the power of the network.

• My computer does exactly. what. I. tell. it.

• Are you addicted?
• Am I?
• I mean really. And if so, to what?
• I mean it's not like I get the Joneses if I don't get my Twitter fix. Or do you?
  

• Advanced Network Engineer - Team Lead
• Advanced Systems Engineer - Team Lead (Microsoft)
  
• Advanced Systems Engineer - Team Lead (non-Microsoft)
• Educational Technology Team Leader
• Technical Support - Elementary Team Leader
  
• Technical Support - Secondary Team Leader
  
• Technology Services Help Desk - Team Leader

But where's Firefox, dad?

• The enthusiasm and energy and excitement for the positive and potential changes that can and have taken place is absolutely electric. Palpable. Contagious. Amazing.
• Dr. Doty, the Canyons District Superintendent, is very sharp. I don't say that to suck up, but absolutely believe that he is the perfect person for the job. I continue to be impressed by his vision and attitude toward education and the people that make it all happen.
• I couldn't be happier with my current position and the team with whom I am privileged to work. I am truly humbled by the trust that I've been given and absolutely amazed at the knowledge possessed by those with whom I'm able to rub shoulders every day.
  
• Hiring people is an extremely daunting task. As I've sat in on several job interviews now, I'm touched by the enormity of the task. As people apply for these positions, they enter the interview uncertain of their future, nervous, and vulnerable. Trust me, I know, because I was just in their shoes. And while my heart goes out to every applicant, I'm often saddened by the fact that we must sometimes limit our selection to only one. Incredibly difficult, to say the least.
• Scooters are fun to ride, even when wearing a tie. (They've become the preferred mode of transportation throughout our old-school-converted-into-a-district-office-that-definitely-doesn't-feel-like-a-district-office-and-that's-definitely-a-very-good-thing.)
• I'm excited to continue the welcoming process. In our department last week, we have had the privilege of welcoming aboard two excellent part-time techs and the very capable Director of Technology Deployment. In the very near future, we will continue to advertise additional positions. To give you an idea of what we're in for, the skeleton of our technology department is pictured below. My team is on the right, with Technical Support personnel under me largely being housed in the schools, and the Help Desk and Educational Technology teams working district-wide. Many, if not all of the Team Lead positions pictured here will most likely be opening next week (check here often if you're interested in applying, as positions are typically open for only five days).

Click to enlarge.

• Eventually coming down the pike will be a number of other positions, whose fate will largely be determined by the hit we will be forced to take due to impending state-wide budget cuts. Among the positions that I hope to eventually hire are Educational Technology Specialists (Teaching amp; Learning Resource Specialists?), Media Technology Specialists, Help Desk personnel, Technical Support personnel, and maybe even a Social Media Specialist.