For the past year I have had the oppor­tu­nity to work with many fan­tas­tic one-to-one edu­ca­tors.  Those edu­ca­tors have dras­ti­cally increased my knowl­edge of one-to-one.  It isn’t any secret that speak­ing with suc­cess­ful peo­ple or orga­ni­za­tions is a great way to learn in any field.  With that in mind, I’d like to apply that con­cept to one-to-one schools.  This post is an invi­ta­tion for suc­cess­ful one-to-one schools to tell us about their expe­ri­ences.  I’ve listed ques­tions below about some of the things I would like our spot­light school to reflect on.  Please feel free to leave com­ments to this post with other ques­tions you would like to add. 

If you feel your school, or one you are famil­iar with, would be a good spot­light school, please email me at nck0208@gmail.com.  I don’t have a panel of judges or a rubric for how I will select the spot­light school, so beware that my biases will be part of the deci­sion.  It is more likely though that most of the schools who would like to be a spot­light school will have that oppor­tu­nity at some point.

Sam­ple questions:

What are the goals of your one-to-one program?

What suc­cesses have you seen with your one-to-one program?

What chal­lenges have you seen with your one-to-one program?

How have you obtained com­mu­nity sup­port with your one-to-one program?

How has learn­ing and teach­ing changed?

How do you assess your program?

What things would you like to tell other one-to-one schools?

While at the Lau­sanne Lap­top Insti­tute, I met with var­i­ous providers of one-to-one resources.  Although these resources and ser­vices may not be what every school needs, they do pro­vide options that many schools may be look­ing for with their program.

DyKnow

DyKnow pro­vides two major prod­ucts that are applic­a­ble to one-to-one schools.  DyKnow Vision is the soft­ware that I was most excited about.  It allows for easy com­mu­ni­ca­tion between teacher and stu­dent and between stu­dents within a class­room.  It can poten­tially increase engage­ment by pro­vid­ing bet­ter feed­back and bet­ter instruc­tion.  DyKnow Mon­i­tor is a mon­i­tor­ing tool that is also rel­e­vant to many schools.  It allows the teacher to mon­i­tor all of the screens in the class­room.  I real­ize that some of you may object to this type of super­vi­sion.  That is fine.  I also speak with enough board mem­bers, com­mu­nity mem­bers, and edu­ca­tors to know that this may be the one tool that can put them a bit at ease.  If this is the tool that allows pub­lic opin­ion to sup­port one-to-one, it is well worth it in my mind.

Edu­ca­tional Collaborators

The Edu­ca­tional Col­lab­o­ra­tors are a group of over 60 edu­ca­tors who jointly pro­vide a wide vari­ety of ser­vices.  Their team is made up of mainly full time edu­ca­tors.  They are a very pow­er­ful resource for schools con­sid­er­ing the move to one-to-one or cur­rent one-to-one schools.  For each project they work with a school, they develop a team with mem­bers who are experts in the areas each par­tic­u­lar school needs most.  My dis­claimer is that I am now a mem­ber of the Edu­ca­tional Col­lab­o­ra­tors.  Although I have yet to work with them, I am eager to do so and learn with some great one-to-one experts.  Their model of assign­ing a group of experts in the field to work col­lab­o­ra­tively to help a school really excites me.  Their model reminds me of var­i­ous exerts from the book Wiki­nomics which stresses how a group of peo­ple can work to pro­duce much more pow­er­ful results than any one per­son or even one com­pany work­ing in isolation.

Watch­Know

I should sing the praises of Watch­Know whether I like them or not sim­ply because they gave me a free Kodak Pocket Video Cam­era for attend­ing their ses­sion!  Actu­ally, I’m very inter­ested to see what hap­pens with their site.  They are attempt­ing to develop a place where edu­ca­tors can post videos and find any edu­ca­tional video.  My first thought was how their site would be bet­ter than YouTube, but I did find some ben­e­fits.  Videos are screened more closely before being placed on their site, and they are also much more orga­nized.  Edu­ca­tors can search by topic and also by age level.  My con­cern with the site is that they may not be able to col­lect enough videos to be a reli­able resource for edu­ca­tors.  Only time will tell!

Nick Sauers

This post topic comes to mind for me because I feel awful about how poorly I have done post­ing in the past cou­ple of weeks.  I’ve been trav­el­ing and attended ISTE in Den­ver and the Lau­sanne Lap­top Insti­tute in Mem­phis along with some leisure travel as well  (I have to brag that I caught a home-run ball in Milwaukee!). 

My lapse in post­ing high­light what I con­sider to be the biggest weak­ness in blogs and school web­sites. 
When I work with admin­is­tra­tors, they often ques­tion whether or not peo­ple will actu­ally read their blog or look at their school web­site. They fre­quently doubt that it will be worth their time to post mate­r­ial online.  My response is sim­ply that they are cor­rect if they don’t post cur­rent, rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion on their site.  Read­ers are not going to con­tinue to visit a site that has the same infor­ma­tion posted for one month, or in many cases years.

So what can edu­ca­tors do to improve their web presence?

1)  Make your sites meaningful!

• Post fre­quently
• Post short videos that read­ers want to see.  A flip cam­era can serve as a great tool to cap­ture stu­dents in action.

2)  Don’t think you have to do every­thing!  Believe me, I real­ize how busy edu­ca­tors are.  Invite oth­ers to con­tribute to the site.  A teacher who just com­pleted an amaz­ing project or an extracur­ric­u­lar activ­ity spon­sor would add value to the site.  Deron Dur­flinger had a stu­dent write a post about one-to-one schools on his blog, and she did an excel­lent job.

3)  Pub­li­cize your blog or site.  Refer to it at PTA meet­ings, board meet­ings, and any­where you get the oppor­tu­nity to speak to the pub­lic.  List it on dis­trict pub­li­ca­tions that are sent out.

4)  Don’t entirely recre­ate the wheel.  Take many of the things that you already do and post them on your site.  Newslet­ter arti­cles, mass emails to par­ents, and news­pa­per arti­cles are some exam­ples of items that you can also post on your site.  The ben­e­fit of post­ing them on your site is that you can do more than you can with just print.  You can add video or audio to the arti­cle you have posted.  That will cer­tainly add value for readers!

I real­ize that many edu­ca­tors don’t view their web pres­ence as a real pri­or­ity.  It takes back seat to many of the other issues that they face on a day to day basis.  That should change!  Keep­ing a site updated doesn’t have to be dif­fi­cult.  The pos­i­tive pub­lic rela­tions that can come from your site will be worth the effort.  Often schools don’t do a very good job high­light­ing all of the great things they are doing.  Com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the pub­lic will also increase if you use your site effec­tively.  Both of these ben­e­fits will be extremely ben­e­fi­cial any time your dis­trict faces a chal­leng­ing issue.

.….….I’ll also try to get back on track and take some of my own advice! 

Nick Sauers

I snapped these pho­tos of inter­ac­tive white boards while I was at ISTE.  Obvi­ously, these pre­sen­ters were demon­strat­ing how the smart boards can oper­ate.  With that in mind, they really didn’t or don’t seem very inter­ac­tive to me.  I am sure that there are teach­ers who do a great job with inter­ac­tive white boards, but I won­der if that is the norm or the unique sit­u­a­tion.  Are these the tools that will trans­form education?

Last
week I posted my notes from an ISTE ses­sion that I attended while in
Denver.  The notes included the fol­low­ing com­ment that was made in
ref­er­ence to how bet­ter sup­port teachers.  

“Get rid of net­work
Nazi’s who don’t have any busi­ness mak­ing cur­ricu­lum deci­sions for
teachers.”

That state­ment received the fol­low­ing
com­ment from a reader.

“I am sorry, but I am
so offended by the 1st item on the list above “Get rid of net­work Nazi’s
who don’t have any busi­ness mak­ing cur­ricu­lum deci­sions for
teachers.”  I am a tech direc­tor, and to have a ‘blan­ket’ label of
ref­er­ence for the posi­tion that I hold that is com­pared to one of the
most hated events of the his­tory of the world.  Maybe the net­work won’t
allow for cer­tain strains on bandwidth?  No.. we all just get lumped
into this rep­re­hen­si­ble label. I can’t believe that pro­fes­sional of this
cal­iber, who teach not to label kids, assign this ter­ri­ble moniker to
some­one who is try­ing to do their job and keep the net­work healthy so it
can be utilized.”

There are  valid points
made with this com­ment, and I also think both of these com­ments bring
up an impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion.  The use of the term “net­work Nazi” is
under­stand­ably ques­tion­able.  Unfor­tu­nately, that term is thrown around
quite rou­tinely in our soci­ety even on shows shuch as Sein­feld with the “Soup Nazi” char­ac­ter. Obvi­ously, wide­spread use of the word doesn’t
make it accept­able. With that said, that debate isn’t one I want to focus on
with this post.

I’d like to focus on why that per­cep­tion exists for many, and pos­si­bly more impor­tantly why hun­dreds of edu­ca­tors gave a loud round of applause after that com­ment was made. This
belief that admin­is­tra­tors and tech­nol­ogy teach­ers are block­ing,
fil­ter­ing, and unnec­es­sar­ily lim­it­ing what teach­ers can do is fairly
wide­spread.  I have the oppor­tu­nity to work with lots of edu­ca­tors and I
see both sides of this issue.  There are those who are very pro­gres­sive
when it comes to school net­works and oth­ers who cer­tainly limit what can
hap­pen in classrooms.

Some of you may
feel I’m preach­ing to the choir with this post, but this  is a big issue in many schools and
one that shouldn’t be ignored. These rifts between
teach­ers and those over­see­ing the net­work may be due to mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion
or the actual poli­cies that are in place.  In order to truly use
tech­nol­ogy to trans­form edu­ca­tion, schools need to have tech­nol­ogy
direc­tors work­ing hand in hand with teach­ers and administrators

Nick Sauers

While I was in Den­ver for ISTE, I was for­tu­nate to be invited to attend
Project Red’s ses­sion where results from their research were pre­sented. 
Their research included feed­back from nearly 1,000 school prin­ci­pals and tech­nol­ogy coor­di­na­tors. 
Tom Greaves and Jeanne Hayes shared the 7 major find­ings at the ses­sion, which are listed below.  Each of their find­ings have sub­stan­tial impli­ca­tions for cur­rent and future one to one schools.

7 find­ings

1)  1:1 works when prop­erly imple­mented (There were gains in all one to one schools, but it was much more sub­stan­tial for schools that prop­erly imple­mented one to one.)

•     1:1 stu­dent com­puter ratio
•     For­ma­tive assessments
•     Col­lab­o­ra­tion for teach­ers in PD

2)  A tech­nol­ogy imple­men­ta­tion cri­sis is fac­ing schools.

3)  Tech­nol­ogy is an invest­ment, not an expense.

•     Eco­nomic cost of dropouts is well known.  1:1 is reduc­ing the dropout rate.
•     Copy bud­gets are being cut in half.  On a national level, that would equate to $400 mil­lion a year.

4)  Lead­er­ship and vision are essen­tial components

5)  Technology-assisted inter­ven­tion classes rank num­ber 1-They are the top model pre­dic­tor for many of the suc­cess mea­sures.  (Check out the report for more details about this finding.)

6)  Col­lab­o­ra­tion and social media are impor­tant to success.

•      Dis­ci­pli­nary action reductions
•      Drop-out rate reductions
•      Teacher atten­dance improved

7)  Fre­quency of tech­nol­ogy use is impor­tant.
    Daily use of tech­nol­ogy in core classes cor­re­lates highly to desire­able edu­ca­tion suc­cess measures.

For more infor­ma­tion  view my notes, the online notes from the pre­sen­ters, or the Project Red site.

The three short videos below were recorded in Den­ver at an ISTE ses­sion enti­tled “1-to-1 Lap­top Pro­gram
Suc­cess Sto­ries: Com­mon Themes from
Diverse Imple­men­ta­tions.”  It was a panel dis­cus­sion with three pre­sen­ters with exten­sive 1:1 expe­ri­ence. Mike Muir, Cyndi Danner-Kuhn, and Sam Far­saii. 

Mike Muir talks about some of his expe­ri­ences with 1:1 programs.

We wish we could call it a “learn­ing ini­tia­tive” instead of a tech­nol­ogy initiative.

What expec­ta­tions do
teach­ers need to come with?  How do you sup­port teach­ers going into 1:1? 

• Get rid of net­work Nazi’s who don’t have any busi­ness mak­ing cur­ricu­lum deci­sions for teach­ers.  (This com­ment received lots of applause!)
  
• Invest in staff devel­op­ment.  That includes instruc­tional and tech­ni­cal support.
• “Just in time train­ing” avail­able for teachers.
• Do not cen­ter pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment around soft­ware or hard­ware.  The research is clear that teach­ers who are taught tech­nol­ogy inte­grated with some­thing else are more likely to use it that way with their students.
• Teacher prep pro­grams need to for­get doing a sep­a­rate course and embed the train­ing in all courses.  
• Edu­ca­tors should have an open­ness to try some­thing new and a willing­ness to fail.
  

What lead­er­ship
strate­gies are nec­es­sary for 1 :1?

• Admin­is­tra­tors need to under­stand what the pos­si­bil­i­ties of 1:1 are. 
  
• They also need to model 1:1 for their teachers.
• Every­thing should not be
  top down.
• Lead­er­ship is everything!
• Four things we saw effec­tive lead­ers do.  

1.     Build com­mon vision together with the staff.
2.     Apply pos­i­tive pres­sure and support.….set expectations.
3.     Pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for pro­fes­sional development.
4.     Cel­e­brate successes!

I have included a link to my notes from some of the ISTE ses­sions that I was able to attend.  The titles and main pre­sen­ters from each ses­sion are listed below. 

• 1-to-1 Lap­top Pro­gram
  Suc­cess Sto­ries: Com­mon Themes from Diverse Imple­men­ta­tions– Mike Muir, Cyndi Danner-Kuhn, and ?(Didn’t catch the name of the third presenter.)
  
• Lead­er­ship Plan­ning with the School 2.0 e-Toolkit-Chris O’Neal
• 20 Lessons form 20 Years of 1 to 1 Teaching-Gary Stager
• Change from the Rad­i­cal Cen­ter of Education-Doug Johnson
  

I will also be adding some videos from the ses­sion about 1-to-1 suc­cess sto­ries in the very near future.