Although I missed the ini­tial twit­ter con­ver­sa­tion, I came across a retweet about indi­vid­u­als writ­ing  “what’s work­ing” posts in response to the NBC town hall meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 25.  This is a fan­tas­tic idea, and I agree that edu­ca­tors need to share the pos­i­tive things that are hap­pen­ing in their schools! I’ve made a list of the top 10 things I see hap­pen­ing in suc­cess­ful one-to-one programs.

1. Stu­dents are cre­at­ing amaz­ing things!  
2. Teach­ers are con­nect­ing with other edu­ca­tors from around the world using twit­ter, nings, blogs, face­book, and a wide range of other tools.
3. The play­ing field has been lev­eled for stu­dents who come from less afflu­ent fam­i­lies.  This is truly a huge equity issue in our country!
4. Learn­ing is not con­tained within one build­ing from 8:00–3:00.  Stu­dents are con­tin­u­ally using their com­puter to learn and explore.
5. Tech­nol­ogy is not longer a “spe­cial event” that hap­pens spo­rad­i­cally in the lab down the hall.  Tech­nol­ogy is used as a way to enhance learn­ing in all con­tent areas on a reg­u­lar basis.
6. Stu­dents are becom­ing pro­fi­cient with a tool they will be expected to use in order to be pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens for the rest of their lives.  Stu­dents are being TAUGHT these skills, and edu­ca­tors aren’t sim­ply assum­ing stu­dents will fig­ure them out.
7. Schools are using tech­nol­ogy to dra­mat­i­cally enhance their com­mu­ni­ca­tion with all edu­ca­tional stake­hold­ers.  Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is no longer lim­ited to a black and white newsletter!
8. Stu­dents are being taught how to become dig­i­tal cit­i­zens.  Edu­ca­tors aren’t tak­ing the approach of let­ting the stu­dents fig­ure things out on their own (see num­ber 6).
9. Schools are remov­ing most fil­ters because they real­ize that many of their fil­ters hurt learn­ing and teaching.
10. Stu­dents are com­mu­ni­cat­ing and col­lab­o­rat­ing with other stu­dents, pro­fes­sion­als, and schol­ars from around the world.

Thanks @johnccarver for ini­tially pos­ing the ques­tion on twit­ter about what’s work­ing.  Many of the indi­vid­u­als who responded to this ques­tion with a post tweeted links to their posts at #edu­ca­tion­na­tion.  Unfor­tu­nately, it is dif­fi­cult to find the posts with all of the tweets under that tag. Here are a list of some posts that I did find.

Reflec­tions of the TZSTeacher

Third Grade Gazette

read­ing, ‘rit­ing, and reality

tborash’s pos­ter­ous

Not All Who Won­der Are Lost

Nick Sauers

A cur­rent post on the Change Agency Blog asks read­ers to con­tribute ideas solu­tions and ideas for ed reform (Hope­fully, some of you will visit the site and add your ideas!).  When I hear about any reform move­ment or ini­tia­tive in edu­ca­tion, I fre­quently won­der how the change will actu­ally effect schools.  As a for­mer teacher and prin­ci­pal, there were times that I thought “this too shall pass” when  given the next major change from the dis­trict or state.  I real­ize that is a poor atti­tude, but it was easy to become cyn­i­cal after deal­ing with count­less ini­tia­tives that really didn’t do any­thing more than pro­vide me with a new binder to stick on my shelf.  After read­ing the list of rec­om­men­da­tions from the Change Agency post, I won­dered how many of those sug­ges­tions are really “game chang­ers”.  They seem like ideas that have been around for a very long time and issues that we have tried to address.  I ques­tion how we are going to imple­ment them dif­fer­ently today.  The items below include some of the prob­lems posted by read­ers from that blog post. My belief is that one-to-one schools can address these issues in ways that truly are game chang­ing or trans­for­ma­tive, and I’ve added my thoughts behind each point.

• Sup­port for stu­dents who have none-The more I’ve had the oppor­tu­nity to visit schools and talk with edu­ca­tors, I real­ize how large of equity issue we are fac­ing with tech­nol­ogy today.  Pro­vid­ing stu­dents with com­put­ers who can­not afford them lev­els the play­ing field for those stu­dents.  Do we really expect them to be pre­pared to com­pete with stu­dents from tech­nol­ogy rich back­grounds if they only have very lim­ited access to technology?
• Build inno­vat­ing minds-Effective one-to-one edu­ca­tors have moved stu­dent think­ing much higher on Bloom’s Tax­on­omy.  Rather than hav­ing stu­dents spend most of their time mem­o­riz­ing facts, they have their stu­dents cre­at­ing and eval­u­at­ing.  The tech­nol­ogy makes this much easier!
• Par­ent involvement-Communication with par­ents is much eas­ier when you use mul­ti­ple forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.  Par­ents will also be excited to see stu­dent work done with tech­nol­ogy as opposed to sim­ply receiv­ing pile after pile of worksheets.
• Lack of innovation-One-to-one can be very inno­v­a­tive and trans­for­ma­tive, or it can be adap­tive.  Your approach to how you imple­ment one-to-one will really impact how inno­v­a­tive you and your school are.
• Collaboration-A tech­nol­ogy rich envi­ron­ment makes col­lab­o­ra­tion much eas­ier for both stu­dents and teach­ers.  Stu­dents can con­nect with other stu­dents from around the world, or experts in a par­tic­u­lar field.  Teach­ers can use tech­nol­ogy to make con­nec­tions with other edu­ca­tors from any­where, rather than being lim­ited to the teacher next door or hall­way conversations.

As you read this list you may have dis­agreed with some of my points.  You could argue that some of the things that I com­mented on could be done well with­out tech­nol­ogy.  I don’t dis­agree.  My point is that when used appro­pri­ately, tech­nol­ogy can dras­ti­cally rev­o­lu­tion­ize how effec­tively and thor­oughly you can do those things.  I don’t like to use the word easy, because edu­ca­tion is not easy, but tech­nol­ogy can make it much eas­ier to col­lab­o­rate, cre­ate, inno­vate, and com­mu­ni­cate along with address­ing a real equity issue.  The major con­cern I do have with schools who move to one-to-one is that they embrace it with the “this too shall pass” men­tal­ity and don’t change learn­ing for stu­dents.  If that hap­pens, one-to-one becomes the next failed edu­ca­tion reform attempt.

Nick Sauers

It may be worth your time to check out the free K-12 Online Con­fer­ence that will begin the week of Octo­ber 11.  Their site states that it pro­vides free, col­lab­o­ra­tive, acces­si­ble, pro­fes­sional learn­ing for edu­ca­tors around the globe.  The con­fer­ence will encom­pass the fol­low­ing things:

• Lead­ing the Change
• Stu­dent Voices
• Week in the Classroom
• Kick­ing It Up a Notch

For more infor­ma­tion on the con­fer­ence, check out Andy Crozier’s blog or their con­fer­ence site.  Andy makes a great point about the con­fer­ence and how the con­fer­ence is more than a one-time event.

“Lastly, the beau­ti­ful thing about this con­fer­ence is that it is always alive. Pre­sen­ta­tions don’t die after the timer goes off. Dis­cus­sion starts online and some­times car­ries over into face to face dis­cus­sions in PLCs. Regard­less of when the pre­sen­ta­tion was deliv­ered (2006–2010) it will be archived for all edu­ca­tors to view at any time.”

Photo credit: lang­witches http://bit.ly/9Im6w4

I fre­quently encour­age teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors to blog on a reg­u­lar basis, and to also have their stu­dents’ blog­ging.  Many don’t see the rel­e­vance of a blog, and ques­tion the need since they already have a build­ing, dis­trict, or class­room web­site.  While read­ing a post from Lang­witches blog, The Magic of Learn­ing, I found the image at the top of this post.  That image does an excel­lent job of high­light­ing some of the ben­e­fits that a blog can offer.  Of course, many of those ben­e­fits can’t be attained unless some time and effort is put into your blog.  With that in mind, I would encour­age admin­is­tra­tors to use teach­ers, stu­dents, par­ents, board mem­bers, and other guest blog­gers to keep your blog filled with mean­ing­ful con­tent on a reg­u­lar basis.  Class­room teach­ers can do the same with a heavy reliance on stu­dent blog­gers.  With­out mean­ing­ful con­tent on a reg­u­lar basis, your blog will not exhibit the fea­tures in the right hand col­umn from above, and instead it will resem­ble a sta­tic web page.  The com­ment below from Lang­witches post really empha­sizes this point!

“It is the reflec­tive nature and the time­line of a blog, as well as the grow­ing con­nec­tions with read­ers that will reveal growth as a writer, the ben­e­fits of being a mem­ber of a net­work and a con­trib­u­tor to a global com­mu­nity. I fear that teach­ers might give up too early on class­room or stu­dent blogs before the ini­tial learn­ing curve for teach­ers AND stu­dents has been over­come.  I worry that teach­ers might get stuck at the stage when the blog plat­form is merely a sta­tic website.”

Nick Sauers

Why one-to-one in 6 min­utes and 40 seconds

Wes­ley Fryer recently cre­ated a 20x20 Pecha Kucha pre­sen­ta­tion model cen­tered on why all stu­dents need lap­tops now.  The Pecha Kucha model requires the pre­sen­ter to have 20 slides, each shown for 20 sec­onds, and the pre­sen­ter has just 6 min­utes 40 sec­onds to explain their ideas.  In other words, it is very short and sweet!  After post­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, Wes cre­ated a shared Google Doc­u­ment and invited oth­ers to add to his list of rea­sons why all stu­dents need lap­tops.  The com­bined list, which is under his video, includes 31 points.

Photo credit Wes­ley Fryer from Flikr http://bit.ly/ckU8N4

Photo credit Mao_lini http://bit.ly/9MnRZl

One year ago today I wrote the first post for 1to1Schools.net.  That post, which was most likely only read by friends or fam­ily mem­bers who I forced to sub­scribe, focused on the excit­ing things hap­pen­ing in Maine with one-to-one.  Today, I’d like to reflect back on the first year of the blog, and the first year my career has not been spent full time in a K-12 set­ting.   Although all of these expe­ri­ences do not relate directly to the blog, I believe the blog has played some role in each of these items.

• My home state of Iowa has grown from approx­i­mately 15 to 43 one-to-one schools with the antic­i­pa­tion of that num­ber poten­tially dou­bling next year.
• 1to1schools.net has grown from zero to over 750 subscribers.
• I have had the oppor­tu­nity to tour numer­ous one-to-one schools in Iowa, along with oth­ers around the nation and even one in India.  These tours have allowed me to observe schools and edu­ca­tors that are cer­tainly chang­ing the edu­ca­tional landscape.
• Co-authors of the blog Pamela Livin­stion, Blair Peter­son, Sylvia Mar­tinez, Michael Giel­niak, and Keith Gillette have con­tributed greatly to the blog and to my knowl­edge of one-to-one schools through their posts and conversations.
• CASTLE was able to hold the first Iowa One-to-One Insti­tute which was free and attended by over 500 participants.
• Scott McLeod from Dan­ger­ously Irrelevent has served as an amaz­ing men­tor in my first ven­ture as an author in the blo­gos­phere and for my learn­ing in general.
• By attend­ing numer­ous con­fer­ences, I have been for­tu­nate to have the oppor­tu­nity to work with many amaz­ing one-to-one edu­ca­tors from around the world.
• My Per­sonal Learn­ing Net­work has grown tremen­dously, and I have been able to learn from some amaz­ing educators.

My most mem­o­rable reflec­tion from the year doesn’t relate to any one of these expe­ri­ences, but rather to all of them as a whole.  These expe­ri­ences have given me the oppor­tu­nity to make numer­ous face-to-face and online con­nec­tions with edu­ca­tors from around the state, nation, and world.  When I’m con­tacted today with ques­tions about one-to-one, I usu­ally pref­ace my response by say­ing that I cer­tainly don’t have all the answers, but I may know some­one who does.  Thanks to all of you who have been that per­son with the answer!  I look for­ward to the oppor­tu­nity to grow and learn with each of you in the future.  Hope­fully, this blog can con­tinue to serve as a tool to help pro­mote one-to-one and as a resource for cur­rent and poten­tial one-to-one educators.

Nick Sauers

One of the ses­sions that I lead with school admin­is­tra­tors focuses on accept­able use poli­cies and many of the things that go along with those poli­cies such as inter­net fil­ters.  My belief is that most schools have poli­cies in place that are way too strict, and those poli­cies limit how teach­ers and stu­dents can use the inter­net.  There are times that this belief is cer­tainly ques­tioned.  I’m fre­quently asked, “What harm does it do to have stricter poli­cies in place?”  I would argue that those poli­cies dras­ti­cally limit all of the pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences stu­dents can have online sim­ply because we are afraid of the bad things that could hap­pen.  There are lots of sim­i­lar exam­ples you can think of in edu­ca­tion, but as a for­mer coach and ath­lete I like to use the exam­ple of high school foot­ball to make my point about this issue.

Each year thou­sands and thou­sands of student-athletes par­tic­i­pate in high school foot­ball.  There are lots of dif­fer­ent ben­e­fits many peo­ple attribute to high school ath­let­ics includ­ing build­ing char­ac­ter, work­ing together, increas­ing phys­i­cal fit­ness, and even improv­ing aca­d­e­mic suc­cess.  Unfor­tu­nately, each year there are also some awful things that hap­pen because stu­dents are par­tic­i­pat­ing in foot­ball.  Student-athletes suf­fer injuries, includ­ing some that result in paral­y­sis or even death.  Other student-athletes are hazed or bul­lied and still oth­ers neglect their grades while par­tic­i­pat­ing in athletics.

The ques­tion is whether these neg­a­tive things that hap­pen to a few student-athletes out­weigh all of the pos­i­tive things that hap­pen to thou­sands and thou­sands of other student-athletes.  In the case of foot­ball a large per­cent­age of schools and par­ents have decided that the pos­i­tives out­weigh the neg­a­tives.  Schools really need to look at their poli­cies through the same lens.  They shouldn’t look solely at the neg­a­tive things that can hap­pen online, but they also must weigh the pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences stu­dents and teach­ers will lose if sites are blocked or access is restricted.  Rou­tinely, I see schools that block YouTube, Twit­ter, Face­book, and many other sites.  Have schools fully con­sid­ered the things stu­dents are miss­ing when these sites are blocked?

By now, some of you may be think­ing I’m out of touch, and since I no longer work full-time in a K-12 set­ting I’ve for­got­ten what it is really like in schools. With that in mind, I’d like to ref­er­ence some com­ments from rep­utable orga­ni­za­tions about this topic.

The Crimes Against Chil­dren Research Cen­ter (CCRC) kicks-off its page about inter­net safety with the fol­low­ing sentence.

“The pub­lic­ity about online “preda­tors” who prey on naive chil­dren using trick­ery and vio­lence is largely inaccurate.”

There were also some impor­tant find­ings in a recent fed­eral online safety task force that were high­lighted in eSchool­News.  This post and study are what really got me moti­vated to write this post.  They included the following:

“the sta­tis­ti­cal prob­a­bil­ity of a young per­son being phys­i­cally assaulted by an adult who they first met online is extremely low”

“young people’s use of social net­work­ing sites does not increase their risk of victimization” 

“Restrict­ing or for­bid­ding access to social net­work­ing sites will likely do more harm than good, because social net­work­ing sites and the way young peo­ple use those sites have cre­ated not only places for social inter­ac­tion, but also “infor­mal learn­ing environments”

“stu­dents would greatly ben­e­fit if edu­ca­tors are able to incor­po­rate social net­work­ing sites into class­room instruction”

“Unless new media are used in schools and within fam­i­lies, youth are on their own in fig­ur­ing out the ethics, social norms, and civil behav­iors that enable good cit­i­zen­ship in the online part of their media use and lives”

“Avoid scare tac­tics and pro­mote the social-norms approach to risk prevention.”

The pur­pose of this post isn’t to push schools to remove fil­ters and throw out accept­able use poli­cies.  It also isn’t to argue that there are no threats to stu­dents online.  They exist, and the media cer­tainly sheds a spot­light on those issues. Instead, the pur­pose is to push schools to have seri­ous con­ver­sa­tions about these poli­cies and for schools to weigh the neg­a­tives and pos­i­tives of their poli­cies.  Once schools have done that, then and only then, can they truly make an informed deci­sion in the best inter­est of their school. 

Nick Sauers