#iste11 - ISTE 2011 - Trends I noticed

I've been going to ISTE since about 1998 or so, have presented at maybe 7 or 8. It has been interesting seeing it grow and change and to take note of what seems to be trending every year.

This year I noticed back channels in just about every session (oh except that one where they gave us pieces of paper from a notebook to write down our questions which were then collected), hashtags to follow, QR Codes (which I am particularly intrigued by), iPads everywhere used by attendees and as raffle items, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) discussions rather than just providing laptops, flash mobs, and pretty good to excellent keynotes. The Blogger Cafe was cramped and too small imho but still where great things were discussed, the poster sessions with students was bigger than previously (yay!) and had great presentations such as by Kristin Sigler and her awesome students, the book section was larger (yay!) and comfortable shoes were de rigueur because of how many buildings were involved and how long it took to walk from one place to another (passing time needed perhaps!) I saw some great sessions including a panel of PA coaches from the Classrooms for the Future project and it was wonderful to see Holly Jobe from PA and lead of the aforementioned CFF, who is so talented and experienced yet ever gracious and humble, take the stage as ISTE president.

I am continually inspired by the energy and innovation of my fellow educators. It is why I stay in this space and why I am continually inspired.

Knitting Your Own Bones

I will be leaving soon for the drive to Philadelphia where I teach a grad class entitled "Emerging Technologies for the Classroom and Corporation" (GRIT550 at Chestnut Hill College). In addition to the great pleasure it is for me to get to know the hard-working adult teachers and other professionals who take the class, and to hear their ideas, it keeps me dwelling in K-12, new technologies, and what is happening in areas needing instructional technology. This is in addition to my full-time job now as Product Manager at Tutor.com which also keeps me in the K-12 space along with managing and leading teams in how products are envisioned, designed, programmed, rolled out, implemented, assessed, and scaled up for the market.

But back to GRIT550. One of the themes of this class is to "knit your own bones." This is an old-fashioned phrase my mother used. The idea is that when you break your arm, doctors do not go in and operate (usually) but instead immobilize the arm with a cast so that the bones themselves will heal and eventually "knit" and one day your arm will be okay. An x-ray will show that there was a break but for most intents and purposes, your arm is now healed and usable.

This applies to learning technology because if you knit your own bones, find ways to solve your own problems and issues, don't get the "answer" (e.g. surgery - or having the professor or someone else tell you precisely what to do and how to do it) you have now grown and expanded and you own the new bone you grew yourself. Like with the x-ray evidence, you can relate in detail to others what it took to grow this new "bone"/technology or other knowledge.

So instead of giving a step-by-step tutorial with everyone taking notes while I show how to use Wikispaces, Weebly, Glogster, or Google sites (the four tools they may chose from for the project which has components due during the course) everyone must learn the tool through the online help or another source. If students get stuck, I ask that everyone go to 1. the help for the tool 2. your PLN (and part of the class is choosing and expanding your PLN) 3. another student 4. "the Google" or another search vehicle. Of course I am to be asked as well but often that results in my posing questions about 1., 2., 3., and 4. with some more suggestions about PLN sources of help.

And an x-ray of my "bones" will show evidence of years and years of knitting as well.

1-to-1: The Next Generation

I am hoping to get 1-to-1 schools or districts to respond to my survey 1-to-1: The Next Generation. Results will be used for a blog post here; at 1-to-1schools.net and at the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation. Thanks if you can participate - feel free to forward to others as well.

Sustainability

Just got off a conference call with a school district in Wisconsin. One of the topics was sustainability of 1-to-1 programs and my first thought was "funding" - that if the program isn't funded year after year and if the people, resources, hardware and infrastructure don't have the financial support to move forward, the program will languish and possibly fail.

But this school district brought up the sustainability of Professional Development. The light bulb went off in my head.

Here's a possible sustainability list:

1. Funding (hardware, software, applications, infrastructure, resources, support, people)

2. Professional Development - most schools/districts will have an initial "let's get going" PD plan with all attention on teachers and the classroom - but how is this maintained/refreshed year after year? If after say 4 years the school/district has 25% new teachers and maybe another 10% teaching something different - can the remaining 65% of teachers who benefitted from the initial PD carry it forward? Without a plan - doubtful.

3. Leadership - again after several years leaders will move on or move to other spots - do the administrators and teacher leaders still have the initial goals still clearly in focus?

4. Goals - do the initial goals still work and are they sustainable as it or do they need a refresh, update, clarification

5. Measurement - if the goals need refreshing so will the metrics

6. Tech support staff - skills, goals, etc. Has there been turnover in the people supporting the program and if so how have they been brought onboard?

Many schools/districts get high grades on the rollout because so much attention, time, resources, and money is involved. Sustainability needs to also be considered. Your rollout plan ought to also have a Sustainaibility Plan.

2011 Predictions - Sticking My Neck Out Again

Not sure if this is nuts again but here I go. Here are some general 2011 predictions for the U.S. and educational technology in general.

1. Credit recovery and self-directed learning - which is not just now about learning what you want but about earning credits you want/need that maybe you didn't get the right way or missed or lost somehow - will be even more important. Just like many people take longer than 4 years to get a college degree, there will be more ways to get a high school diploma outside of the traditional/same school for 4 years/route. It won't be as easy for students as it seems, though, because independent learning takes a lot of self-motivation.

2. Chrome PC will take off even more - and others will enter the foray of cloud-based computing devices. Privacy concerns will become factors, though, as people who are now beta testing start to realize that everywhere they are going is being tracked in even greater detail than before. Still, it will make sense to not be tied to hardware operating systems so closely. Apple, Microsoft, Dell, IBM and the big players will take serious note.

3. Tablets, eReaders - tipped! Everywhere! Just look around on any airplane now. This will continue and the devices and offerings will get better.

4. Nearly everyone with a smart phone. Just as you can't hardly find a soul older than about 15 without a cell phone, you won't be able to hardly find anyone without a smart phone.

5. Schools start looking around and worrying about 1-to-1. Yes, people like me have been advocates and many have gotten on the bandwagon. But have they followed what ought to be in place in my book, or with what Project Red recommends? Well ... not exactly ... so time to regroup, rethink and restrategize.

6. The economy grows a bit but not enough.

7. More contract work takes off, more people realize they need to go back to college and learn more skills, and the shrinking of fulltime jobs continues as I blogged previously.

8. Fewer service workers, everywhere. Grocery stores, restaurants, bookstores, retail, etc. will see shrinking needs for humans as online offerings plus in-store automation appeal to everyone wanting quick results without waiting on line.

9. Employers will start getting more interested in where applicants went to high school, not just college, and will start asking questions about how technology was used throughout applicants' educational journey. Graduates of schools known for integrating technology will start promoting themselves as such.

10. The move towards utility-based technology without centralized technology departments will grow with co-lo, offsite support increasing. Schools preventing Web 2.0 activities will find educators have a better approach in their student-centered classrooms empowered by open-ended emerging technologies.

Of course I could be all wrong!

The Computer I'd LIke - Too Bad It Doesn't Exist (with everything I want) yet

I am picking up my new PC laptop this morning, already have a Mac laptop, and need to be fully cross-platform. But here are the specs of the device I wish I were picking up:

• A slate - to write on and use - that also has a keyboard if I need it - keyboard is full size
• This part's new: a fully native "reading" mode that softens the glare and the light so that when I download eBooks and other things I can read without eyestrain
  
• This is new as well - extremely lightweight - maybe 2 lbs or less - but with native USB ports - 3 of them - for my printer, external backup, camera, etc.
• Built in standard VGA port - no adapter
• Takes phone calls natively without 3rd party product in that when my phone rings it goes to my phone AND to this device and I can press a button and go into automatic speaker mode (if I want to) or ignore the call
• Operating system fully integrates with built-in native antivirus antispyware antimaleware tight firewall and automatically updates - for no additional cost
  
• 8 gigs RAM native that the operating system fully accesses all the time
• 500 gig hard drive
• Runs all the apps I have right now plus lots of things built just for the slate
• Mac/PC immaterial - it all runs, even including Office - AND MS Office keeps up with updates and doesn't do the Mac on one version PC on another thing
  

Along with it I want all projectors to be fully wireless and connect to my slate with enough bandwidth to run streaming video as needed. Basically one-stop shopping, and I'll just be carrying my slate and my smartphone and so will everyone else.

Oh and it costs $500 fully loaded.

Maybe it's ... on the way?

Inspired by 21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in 20 years

I've been inspired by this posting 21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Schools in 2020 and here's my list:

1. Fixed spaces for learning - eventually there will be much more movement than we see now, think of Google or similar environments. There are "offices" but there are also spaces to meet, there are big spaces and a few smaller spaces and areas for collaboration and areas for gathering. Or think School of One with one big space segmented into functional areas.

2. I second the idea that IT departments as we know them will be different - instead I think (and said in my book as well) that we'll be outsourced for connectivity with 3rd party co-location areas which house applications that aren't in the cloud (and likely most will be) with the high end network manager no longer needed. Schools will pay per computing device which will include applications and Internet access.

3. Specialized teachers with just one role. We're already seeing this for budgetary reasons but I think eventually the teacher who only teaches 4 sections of Latin will find himself/herself needed to have more content/subject expertise. Teachers will lead the way in retooling and reeducating themselves according to what needs to be taught and how - and colleges/universities will help.

4. Libraries as we know them. These are already changing and I think will continue to change into spaces with varied functions - perhaps very large spaces where lots of things are happening and where books, Kindles, iPods or whatever digital assistants are called in 2020 are available - they may even be where online learning takes place. Think of the Online School for Girls where physical brick-and-mortar classes are supplemented by online classes. When the online learning happens during the school day - where does it happen? How about in the Library which has morphed into a School of One/large Google space with collaboration and other possibilities going on.

5. Being uninformed. Everyone will get the feeds they need to be informed as learners and as community members. However, somehow the filtering and the digesting and the organizing has got to be better than it is right now.

6. Teachers not being available to students. This is controversial I know. But somehow if education is moving away from a traditional school day there has to be a way for teachers to be more available. Whatever the equivalent of texting, Skype, etc. will allow teachers and students to communicate more frequently with teachers able to indicate when they are on the grid and when they are away.

7. Lack of choice by students. Students will have more choice about what they learn, how they learn, and how they will demonstrate what they've learned. I talked to a student in Iowa who said one of her favorite history classes allowed her to take a project and just learn about it the way she wanted and then demonstrate it using the tools and vehicles she wanted.

8. Big old heavy textbooks. Yes, they will be a thing of the past and my daughter (age 18) and her generation will say, "in my day we carried these huge backpacks that weighed nearly half what we did and our spines just about got permanently curved."

9. The Digital Divide. This cannot continue, education must be universal, so therefore must be access to everything including technology.

10. Traditional college applications. They'll be video based, face-to-face, portfolio-informed, with teachers giving their "recommendations" as videos - or - in video response to video questions posed by colleges.

11. Bandwidth Issues. Obviously, this must go away, and high speed access must be the norm in every community whether wealthy or poor, urban or rural.

I can hardly wait!