Fre­quently I speak with edu­ca­tors who have recently made the tran­si­tion to one-to-one.  One ques­tion that I always ask those edu­ca­tors is what, if any, changes have you seen in your class­room or school since mov­ing to one-to-one.  Gen­er­ally, they respond with a list of the pos­i­tive things that have hap­pened at their school.  Stu­dent engage­ment is almost always on that list.  Edu­ca­tors talk about how the stu­dents have become much more engaged with their work, which has led to other ben­e­fits such as deeper under­stand­ing of mate­r­ial, reduced dis­ci­pline prob­lems, and increased attendance. 

A post by Sylvia Mar­tinez on the Gen­er­a­tion Yes Blog pushed me to look fur­ther into the stu­dent engage­ment issue.  She wrote about the High School Sur­vey of Stu­dent Engage­ment (HSSSE) of over 42,000 high school stu­dents selected from 103 dif­fer­ent schools in 27 dif­fer­ent states.  These stu­dents reflected a cross sec­tion of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion.  The sur­vey was very infor­ma­tive, and I would strongly rec­om­mend that you take a look at it.  There were a cou­ple of sec­tions that were of great­est inter­est to me. The graph below shares stu­dent views on their degree of excitement/engagement with var­i­ous ped­a­gog­i­cal methods.

(You may need to dou­ble click on the image to see it more clearly or visit their site to get the pdf ver­sion of the report.)

There were also stu­dent writ­ten responses that were very pow­er­ful.  Here are the com­ments that some stu­dents gave about their classes.

One-to-one cer­tainly isn’t a panacea for all of the stu­dent con­cerns from this report, but one-to-one com­bined with a shift in ped­a­gogy can have a tremen­dous impact on schools and stu­dents.  As I read the stu­dent con­cerns from above, I think of many of the great one-to-one edu­ca­tors who have moved far away from those prob­lems stated by stu­dents.  It is impor­tant to reit­er­ate that the com­puter alone isn’t the key, but the com­puter PLUS a change in teach­ing can have make a huge dif­fer­ence!  I’ll leave you with a sum­mary of my con­densed “ele­va­tor speech” I use when asked why schools should con­sider one-to-one.

Tech­nol­ogy cer­tainly isn’t the answer, but tech­nol­ogy enables our stu­dents to do work that is unimag­in­able with­out  tech­nol­ogy.  Stu­dents can cre­ate, col­lab­o­rate, and con­nect with oth­ers from around the world in ways that are not pos­si­ble with­out com­put­ers.  Stu­dents are engaged because they inter­act with real world prob­lems using real world resources, and they aren’t con­fined to the closed views of the text­book.  The things that they can do in their class­room are rel­e­vant to the real world, and at times they may even vir­tu­ally leave their room to be part of the world out­side of the school­house doors.  The pos­si­bil­i­ties of one-to-one are truly unimag­in­able!

Nick Sauers

As we head into the hol­i­day sea­son, I wanted to take time to reflect on some things in my pro­fes­sional life for which I am very thankful.

My per­sonal learn­ing network:

Not too many years ago, I saw pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment as an event that hap­pened on spe­cial occa­sions through­out the year.  I real­ize now that was a sad mis­con­cep­tion, but that was my real­ity.  Becom­ing con­nected to so many oth­ers through twit­ter, blogs, and those afore­men­tioned “spe­cial occa­sions”, have turned pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment into a reg­u­lar ongo­ing process.

My work with other educators:

Through my work at CASTLE along with the Edu­ca­tional Col­lab­o­ra­tors and the One-to-One Insti­tute, I have had the oppor­tu­nity to work with hun­dreds of edu­ca­tors.  I have yet to leave a work­shop or train­ing ses­sion where I wasn’t chal­lenged to expand my think­ing.  I learn some­thing about tech­nol­ogy tools every time I lead one of our tech­nol­ogy boot­camps, and most times it is one of the par­tic­i­pants who shares some­thing new, or ques­tions how we do things.  Our train­ing that focuses on “big pic­ture” think­ing cen­tered around edu­ca­tion always leads to amaz­ing con­ver­sa­tions.  The table talks that we fre­quently have help me con­tinue to process what the future of edu­ca­tion can look like and how we can get there.

My blog readers:

As this blog has grown to nearly 900 read­ers, I am moti­vated to con­tinue to read and write about things impor­tant to one-to-one schools.  With­out an audi­ence read­ing and respond­ing, at times I’m afraid I would be much less moti­vated to keep writing!

My posi­tion with CASTLE at Iowa State University:

Although there are cer­tainly times I miss being in a school every day, I really enjoy work­ing with edu­ca­tors from a wide vari­ety of schools.  Many of the edu­ca­tors whom I work with truly believe that schools need to be reformed, and they are work­ing hard to do just that.

My con­tin­ued work with for­mer colleagues:

I have enjoyed work­ing with and lis­ten­ing to for­mer col­leagues talk about how tech­nol­ogy has trans­formed their class­room.  Their sto­ries help me real­ize what can hap­pen when an edu­ca­tor truly has a com­mit­ment to change and to use tech­nol­ogy as a change tool.

My work with cur­rent colleagues:

My Iowa State CASTLE col­leagues Scott McLeod, John Nash, Jamie Fath, and Laura Bestler have been amaz­ing.  They are always there to push me, but they also are extremely will­ing to pro­vide support.

Nick Sauers

For the past year and a half, I have been post­ing on this blog with the help of some other amaz­ing edu­ca­tors.  My pur­pose for writ­ing today actu­ally isn’t this blog, but rather the orga­ni­za­tion that helped kick-off this blog. 

Since leav­ing my job as a prin­ci­pal, my time has been devoted to work­ing for the Cen­ter for the Advanced Study of Tech­nol­ogy Lead­er­ship in Edu­ca­tion (CASTLE).  CASTLE is a Uni­ver­sity Coun­cil for Edu­ca­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (UCEA) cen­ter (Sorry for all of the acronyms-SFAOFA).  UCEA cen­ters are a group of research engines and clear­ing houses hosted by UCEA mem­ber uni­ver­si­ties, that sup­port knowl­edge pro­duc­tion, pro­fes­sional sem­i­nars, insti­tutes, con­fer­ences and research and devel­op­ment projects.

Enough with the tech­ni­cal jargon.…..CASTLE is the nation’s only cen­ter ded­i­cated to the tech­nol­ogy needs of school admin­is­tra­tors.  This post aims to inform you about some of the other CASTLE blogs for you to view.

• Con­nected Prin­ci­pals (tech­nol­ogy lead­er­ship group blog)
• Dan­ger­ously Irrel­e­vant (tech­nol­ogy, lead­er­ship, and school reform)
• The Edjurist (edu­ca­tion law group blog)
• Edu­ca­tional Games Research (edu­ca­tional gaming)
• Lead­er­ship for Social Jus­tice (social jus­tice group blog) COMING SOON!
• Lead­ertalk (school lead­er­ship group blog)
• Qual­ity Lead­er­ship Mat­ters (lead­er­ship news from UCEA)
• School Finance 101 (school finance and policy)
• Vir­tual School Mean­der­ings (P-12 online learning)

Hope­fully, these blogs help you get your RSS reader full of great resources!

Nick Sauers

The media along with many adults fre­quently make state­ments about all of the neg­a­tive things that are hap­pen­ing because of tech­nol­ogy and in par­tic­u­lar the inter­net.  There cer­tainly may be some truth in their con­cerns, but rarely do they look at an issue from numer­ous angles.  Below, I’ve stated some of those con­cerns along with my responses.

Photo credit from Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/nirak/2247043319/ by Karin Dalziel

Peo­ple are los­ing their abil­i­ties to con­nect with one another in “real life” because they are liv­ing in an online world.

• An Aus­tralian Psy­cho­log­i­cal Soci­ety sur­vey released Novem­ber 15 found that online social net­work­ing increases, rather than reduces, face-to-face socialising.
• From per­sonal expe­ri­ence, I have to stay that with­out social net­work­ing I would be con­nected to fewer peo­ple.  Many of my con­nec­tions on social media are actu­ally pro­fes­sional con­nec­tions, and they act as my per­sonal learn­ing network.

Our lan­guage is being destroyed because of the lan­guage kids use while tex­ting or while in chatrooms.

• Most research on this topic finds that stu­dents who text more fre­quently also have higher scores on writ­ing, read­ing, and vocab­u­lary tests.  Google the topic!
• Is it pos­si­ble that our lan­guage can evolve?  Lin­guist David Crys­tal believes that “mon­u­men­tal devel­op­ments inter­rupt peri­ods of sta­sis, always as a result of cru­cial exter­nal devel­op­ments. The Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion had much greater con­se­quences for the Eng­lish lan­guage than tex­ting has had thus far.”

Stu­dents won’t be safe online!

• There cer­tainly are fears that exist online such as bul­ly­ing, pre­da­tion, and even fraud.  With that said, we know that stu­dents will spend a great deal of time online out­side of school.  Is it bet­ter to edu­cate stu­dents about those safety issues, or bury our heads in the sand?
• 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.”

At times our schools oper­ate under a cul­ture of fear.  Fears cer­tainly need to be addressed, but schools must go beyond sim­ple per­cep­tions to address these fears with actual facts and information.

Nick Sauers

Sug­ata Mitra’s TED talk about child-driven edu­ca­tion is a video worth tak­ing the time to watch.  In his talk he high­lights some of the exper­i­ments that he has con­ducted over the past ten years.  His research ana­lyzes how stu­dents are able to learn tech­nol­ogy on their own with very lit­tle guid­ance from adults.  When I say lit­tle guid­ance, I mean zero guid­ance for the most part.  Some of you may be famil­iar with his “hole in the wall” exper­i­ments which placed com­put­ers in brick walls in pub­lic places in India.  The stu­dents in these Min­i­mally Inva­sive Edu­ca­tion exper­i­ments pro­duced amaz­ing results on their own.  I have para­phrased a cou­ple of quotes from the video that rein­force his message.

• Chil­dren will learn to do what they want to learn to do.
• A teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be.
• If chil­dren have inter­est, then edu­ca­tion happens.

So what can we learn from an exper­i­ment in a coun­try half way around the world that is very dif­fer­ent than our own?

1. Stu­dents learn amaz­ing things if we can peak their curios­ity! (inquiry based learning)
2. Fre­quently we “teach” too much.  We let stu­dents off the hook by lec­tur­ing and giv­ing them too much guid­ance.  (Check out this video of Dan Meyer’s TED talk about math)
3. Teach­ers need to real­ize their role needs to change (No, I’m not call­ing for elim­i­nat­ing teachers!).
4. Stu­dents are great teach­ers for one another.
5. Stu­dents respond well to learn­ing “challenges”.

Edu­ca­tors in tech­nol­ogy rich envi­ron­ments must embrace these changes in our par­a­digm of what schools are.  Mak­ing the shift to these five exam­ples from Mitra’s work would be a change for most schools, and I chal­lenge you to make that transformation!

Nick Sauers

Last month the Dig­i­tal Direc­tions team and EdWeek video­g­ra­phers inter­viewed five speak­ers from their “Unleash­ing Tech­nol­ogy to Per­son­al­ize Learn­ing” event in Wash­ing­ton, DC.  The five indi­vid­u­als included were:

• Florida Vir­tual School CEO Julie Young
• Philadelphia’s Sci­ence Lead­er­ship Acad­emy Prin­ci­pal Chris Lehmann
• North Car­olina Vir­tual School CEO Bryan Setser
• New Mil­ford (N.J.) High School Prin­ci­pal Eric Sheninger
• U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion Direc­tor of Edu­ca­tional Tech­nol­ogy Karen Cator on Pro­fes­sional Devel­op­ment and Cyber­bul­ly­ing (see below)

Chris Lehmann’s chat res­onated strongly with me because of my work with one-to-one schools.  His mes­sage, which tar­gets online learn­ing, is applic­a­ble to every tech­nol­ogy rich school. In his short inter­view Chris stresses that schools really need to change their way of think­ing and doing things.  He focuses on the pedago­cial shifts that need to occur and the poten­tial trans­for­ma­tion than can occur with project and inquiry based lessons.  The fol­low­ing quote from Chris is some­thing all one-to-one edu­ca­tors need to con­stantly consider.

“Those con­ver­sa­tions can hap­pen now but it has to have a ped­a­gog­i­cal back­bone or we’re just going to repli­cate what we’ve always had only with shiny tools”

Eric Sheninger, who recently vis­ited many of our one-to-one schools here in Iowa,  does an excel­lent job talk­ing about the use of social media in schools.  He stresses mod­el­ing and demon­strat­ing how pow­er­ful many of these social net­work­ing tools can be for schools.

Nick Sauers

Last week I received numer­ous com­ments on my post, “Won’t the stu­dents be dis­tracted?”  Many of those responses came from stu­dents who will be at a one-to-one school next year.  I’d like to thank those stu­dents, and their encour­ag­ing teacher I’m sure, for tak­ing the time to com­ment on my post.  Their com­ments moti­vated me to to ham­mer on the topic a lit­tle more, so here I go.…..

(I apol­o­gize to those of you who have read sim­i­lar posts, but I can’t write about this topic enough!  The actions of some schools on this topic is very frustrating.)

Last week’s post focused on stu­dent dis­trac­tion, but another very large con­cern is inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior.  Although the two behav­iors are sim­i­lar, there are some dif­fer­ences.  Three major exam­ples of inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior are:

• Cheat­ing
• Send­ing inap­pro­pri­ate mes­sages using tech­nol­ogy (bullying)
• Vis­it­ing inap­pro­pri­ate sites

These are all cer­tainly con­cerns, and tech­nol­ogy does allow for new and cre­ative ways to do each of these things.  With that said, these also were con­cerns prior to our tech­nol­ogy rich envi­ron­ment.  Cheating…I don’t need to say much here.  Tech­nol­ogy makes it dif­fer­ent, but it doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily make it worse.  Many peo­ple also bash tech­nol­ogy because of how anony­mous the users can be and the things they can say.  This is true, but isn’t the same thing true of notes on desk­tops, bath­room stalls, or notes dropped in lock­ers.  Many admin­is­tra­tors who I work with actu­ally say it is eas­ier to “catch” those anony­mous users when they post things online.  There is also the con­cern of look­ing at inap­pro­pri­ate mate­r­ial.  Again, this isn’t spe­cific to tech­nol­ogy, but tech­nol­ogy does make it fairly easy to access those sites.  Fil­ter­ing cer­tainly helps, but there isn’t a good sub­sti­tu­tion for REAL supervision! 

Schools do need to address each of these issues.  I’m not claim­ing that there should be no guide­lines or fil­ters.  My chal­lenge to schools is that they need to weigh the costs ver­sus the ben­e­fits of mak­ing rules, pro­ce­dures, and poli­cies.  Rules are fre­quently put in place to deal with the one stu­dent who acts inap­pro­pri­ately, with­out con­sid­er­ing how that rule will limit what the rest of the stu­dents can do.  YouTube is a great exam­ple of this.  It is pos­si­ble that stu­dents can find inap­pro­pri­ate things on YouTube, and some stu­dents will strive to do exactly that.  On the other hand, the vast major­ity of stu­dents will use YouTube as an edu­ca­tional, and at times enter­tain­ment, tool.  By block­ing YouTube in fear of the actions of a small num­ber of stu­dents, what edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties are the rest of your school miss­ing out on?

Has your school weighed the costs ver­sus the ben­e­fits of the rules that you have put in place?

Nick Sauers

At the begin­ning of Octo­ber, I wrote a post about the “text­book chal­lenge” pro­posed by Scott McLeod.  My post con­cluded by ask­ing edu­ca­tors to take the chal­lenge and then let me know how it went. Okoboji prin­ci­pal Ryan Cun­ning­ham made that a real­ity by ask­ing two of his teach­ers if they were will­ing to take the chal­lenge and write about it.  Their posts were amaz­ing!  I couldn’t have “staged” more com­pelling responses.  Here are some of the com­ments that struck me from the posts by Justin Bouse and Sue Hilsabeck along with my com­ments in red.

Sue’s com­ments:

“I felt com­fort­able with the qual­ity of the sources as being reli­able after com­par­ing the infor­ma­tion pro­vided with not only the text­book, but also other sources of infor­ma­tion on the same topics.”

This com­ment is very true.  As a for­mer Social Stud­ies teacher, it seems that too often we accept any­thing in a book as true.  We need to eval­u­ate our resources whether they are online or in print.

“…I felt like the time spent was com­pa­ra­ble to any unit I would have cre­ated as a new teacher.”

It doesn’t take much time to find online resources, and eval­u­at­ing those resources doesn’t need to be ter­ri­bly time con­sum­ing.  I know that too often I am my own worst enemy spend­ing too much time search­ing for the “per­fect” resource.

“In short, I love teach­ing this way! I am excited and I feel like the stu­dents are excited. Don’t we all learn bet­ter that way?”

Absolutely!

Justin’s com­ments:

 “Over the last few years I have found myself using it (text­book) less and less while find­ing my social stud­ies lessons to be more and more engag­ing for students.”

I think most stu­dents would agree that the text­book isn’t extremely engaging.

“In order to make the learn­ing more student-centered I had each stu­dent select a topic from our unit they wanted to learn more about and com­plete a Per­sonal Les­son Plan.”

This would be extremely dif­fi­cult to do with­out tech­nol­ogy!  Text­books gen­er­ally don’t pro­vide in depth cov­er­age over the wide range of things stu­dents can study.

” It is always so fun to see how engaged the kids are when they have own­er­ship in what they pro­duce and there is always a great amount of pride when they are shar­ing their learn­ing with the class as they truly become the experts on the topic.”

My best mem­o­ries as a teacher were when stu­dents were cre­at­ing and then shar­ing their work!

Nick Sauers