Each year eSchool News selects ten “tech savvy” super­in­ten­dents. Jayson Richard­son, Scott McLeod, and I have decided to dig deeper into the suc­cess of each of these lead­ers. We’d like to know what makes them dif­fer­ent from other lead­ers, and also how they got to that level. For the next cou­ple of months, we will be inter­view­ing those lead­ers on blog talk radio and post­ing those inter­views on this blog. The first inter­view took place today, and you will be able to lis­ten to the inter­view from the new blogtalkra­dio fea­ture on the side of this blog. You can also load the pod­cast to your iPod by sim­ply click­ing on the iTunes symbol.

(The pic­ture below is only an image, and not the actual link.  The “real” link is on the right side of the blog.)

Nick Sauers

As a con­tin­u­a­tion of yesterday’s post, I’m going to write briefly about a device that I have had the oppor­tu­nity to use for the past month.  I don’t typ­i­cally do prod­uct reviews, but I gave in this time after receiv­ing an email to try out the HP Mini.  (My dri­ving force for doing the review was that I was able to “play” on their device over the holidays.)

The HP Mini 100e Edu­ca­tion Edi­tion is actu­ally designed for ele­men­tary stu­dents.  In my post yes­ter­day, I wrote about iden­ti­fy­ing learn­ing goals before select­ing the device.  Keep­ing that in mind, the HP Mini may be a very appro­pri­ate machine for ele­men­tary schools.  Stu­dents can con­nect to the inter­net with appro­pri­ate speed, make movies, and edit pho­tos along with a host of other things.  Here are a cou­ple of prac­ti­cal fea­tures that I like.

• Bat­tery life of up to 8.5 hours
• 92% full size keyboard
• Car­ry­ing handle
• COST-At under $300, this is a fairly inex­pen­sive device.  I shake my head when I hear that schools install an inter­ac­tive white board for around $2500.  For the same price they could have eight more com­put­ers in the hands of their students!

For those of you that want to know more about the Mini, you can find addi­tional details at this link.

Nick Sauers

I need to start this post off with a dis­claimer.  I am not, and never have  been, a tech­nol­ogy direc­tor, nor do I have any sort of tech­nol­ogy degree.  My for­mal edu­ca­tion  has been in edu­ca­tional method­ol­ogy, cur­ricu­lum, and lead­er­ship.  My career in K-12 edu­ca­tion was spent as a teacher and then prin­ci­pal.  Many of you who read this blog know lots more about the “nuts and bolts” of tech­nol­ogy than I do.

My learn­ing around tech­nol­ogy has occurred through hands on tin­ker­ing, work­shops, and learn­ing through peers.  In my cur­rent posi­tion, I often speak and write about tech­nol­ogy inte­gra­tion, and how lead­ers need to use tech­nol­ogy to move schools for­ward.  Because much of my work now deals with tech­nol­ogy, I do get the “nuts and bolts” types of ques­tions.  Fre­quently, I can’t answer those ques­tions, but I can refer the ques­tion to one of the amaz­ing tech­nol­ogy con­tacts I have.

One ques­tion that I do get asked very reg­u­larly by schools con­sid­er­ing one-to-one is, “What type of device should we pur­chase?”.  The answer to this ques­tion can turn into a heated debate between many in the one-to-one world.  Many edu­ca­tors swear by Macs while oth­ers believe lap­top PCs are the answer.  Net­books and tablets have also entered into the debate about the best one-to-one device.

My answer to this ques­tion isn’t what many deci­sion mak­ers want to hear.  I really believe that “it depends”.  I have worked with enough one-to-one schools and talked with enough one-to-one edu­ca­tors to say that dif­fer­ent schools have had suc­cess using var­i­ous devices.  It is extremely unlikely for the device to make or break a pro­gram (unless of course the device was a total lemon!).

When I’m talk­ing or writ­ing about tech­nol­ogy tools, I often say that ask­ing what tools we should teach edu­ca­tors is the wrong ques­tion.  We need to start by ask­ing what skills we want them to be able to teach, and then align tools with those skills.  I feel the same way about one-to-one devices.  The con­ver­sa­tion should not start with decid­ing what device to pur­chase.  The con­ver­sa­tion instead needs to start by ask­ing what YOUR school intends to accom­plish with one-to-one.  After you can clearly artic­u­late that, you can find a device that best meets those needs.  Obvi­ously, there may be sys­tems and infra­struc­ture com­po­nents that come into your deci­sion.  With that in mind, I would still much rather choose a device based on learn­ing needs and goals than infra­struc­ture and com­pat­i­bil­ity.   That may cer­tainly lead to addi­tional costs upfront, but it will also ensure that tech­nol­ogy serves your stu­dents needs rather than just the eas­i­est or cheap­est route to take.

Please feel free to leave your com­ments.  I know that many of you are very pas­sion­ate about a cer­tain device, and I’m fine with that.  You are pas­sion­ate because the device has worked very well for you!  Other schools in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances may cer­tainly want to hear your views.

Nick Sauers

To all crit­ics of one-to-one…

When I speak to edu­ca­tors who are not part of the one-to-one world, I often sense their appre­hen­sion.  Some share their thoughts, but oth­ers just look at me with a skep­ti­cal glance.  If I start talk­ing about my work, they stop lis­ten­ing as soon as they assume I am another one of those “tech guys”.  They assume my focus is tech­nol­ogy and not students.…technology and not teach­ing and learn­ing.  Many see one-to-one as a gim­mick and a giant waste of money.  Many of these edu­ca­tors have good rea­son to be a lit­tle leery.  Many tech­nol­ogy ini­tia­tives haven’t focused on chang­ing the way that we teach and stu­dents learn.  They have been imple­mented in order to make a teacher’s job “eas­ier”, but often have cre­ated more work and con­fu­sion.  Those are some very legit­i­mate con­cerns, and some of those things are unfor­tu­nately hap­pen­ing in one-to-one schools.  But.….…this also raises a lot of ques­tions in my mind.

I won­der if those crit­ics have EVER.…..

vis­ited a one-to-one school.

vis­ited with a one-to-one teacher.

vis­ited with a stu­dent from a one-to-one school.

I won­der if they have seen.….

how stu­dents have CREATED amaz­ing work using their technology.

how stu­dents have COLLABORATED with oth­ers from around the world.

how stu­dents are much more ENGAGED  in a one-to-one classroom.

I won­der if they have.…

talked with com­mu­nity mem­bers and par­ents who believe their stu­dents are bet­ter pre­pared for today’s soci­ety because they are part of a one-to-one school.

talked with busi­ness own­ers who love the idea of mov­ing our schools forward.

talked with a stu­dent or par­ent who for the first time in their life have a com­puter in their home.

The recent bom­bard­ment of news about the polit­i­cal dia­logue in this coun­try sure has me think­ing.  It seems that in pol­i­tics the absolute lack of knowl­edge about a topic doesn’t limit indi­vid­u­als from talk­ing pas­sion­ately about that topic.  Per­son­ally, I hold edu­ca­tion to a much higher stan­dard.  I hope that those crit­ics of one-to-one and edu­ca­tional tech­nol­ogy in gen­eral are truly inform­ing them­selves about the topic.  My fear is that too often I, like many of you, am preach­ing to the choir.  With that said.…I sure “ain’t gonna” stop my scream­ing, and I’m happy to have many of you next to me help­ing to move edu­ca­tion forward.

Nick Sauers

Jason Glass was recently selected as the new direc­tor of the Iowa Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion.  This change is occur­ring at a crit­i­cal time in a very hos­tile polit­i­cal cli­mate.  His lead­er­ship and that of the “new” gov­er­nor (he pre­vi­ously served for 16 years), and leg­is­la­ture will cer­tainly have a big impact on the future direc­tion of edu­ca­tion in the state of Iowa.  I real­ize that many read­ers of this blog aren’t from Iowa, but I hope my thoughts below may still be of inter­est to you.

On Mon­day Jason posted three ques­tions on his blog.  My responses are below, but you may be inter­ested to read the responses from oth­ers around the state.  I must say that I am excited to know that our new direc­tor uses his blog and Twit­ter as com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools!

1. What should we stop doing?

We need to stop rely­ing so heav­ily on the stan­dard­ized tests cur­rently used in Iowa today.  Those assess­ments do not eval­u­ate higher level think­ing skills.  The tests, which have become the strongest indi­ca­tor of a district’s suc­cess, have been a dri­ving force behind instruc­tion tak­ing place in our schools.  The empha­sis of “teach­ing to the test” has greatly crip­pled edu­ca­tion in Iowa.  Assess­ment cer­tainly has the abil­ity to trans­form edu­ca­tion.  With your lead­er­ship and the help of other Iowa edu­ca­tors, it could be pos­si­ble to embrace an assess­ment tool that pos­i­tively trans­forms both teach­ing and learn­ing in Iowa.

2. What should we keep doing?
We need to keep mov­ing for­ward and not accept the sta­tus quo.  Although Iowa has per­formed fairly well nation­ally, there cur­rently seems to be a fairly promi­nent move­ment in Iowa to truly trans­form learn­ing in our schools.  Many schools have imple­mented ini­tia­tives such as Authen­tic Intel­lec­tual Work (AIW) and/or the one-to-one ini­tia­tive in an attempt to reform their schools.  These ini­tia­tives have seen mixed results.  It is no secret that I am a huge pro­po­nent of one-to-one, yet I agree with some of the points Jer­rid made in an ear­lier response.  If we sim­ply imple­ment any ini­tia­tive with­out focus­ing on how teach­ing and learn­ing need to look dif­fer­ently, the ini­tia­tive will not pro­duce any results dif­fer­ent than what we cur­rently have.  The state has also focused on reform with the Iowa Core.  I first heard about the Core while serv­ing as a prin­ci­pal, and I was very excited about its poten­tial.  It seemed like some­thing that could truly trans­form our schools.  I do worry that that focus has changed.  I’ve heard edu­ca­tors talk about how they are going to align what they are cur­rently doing with the Iowa Core.  That will not pro­duce the changes that we need!  We cer­tainly should not drop the Iowa Core, but a renewed and ener­gized vision may be appropriate.

3. What should we start doing?

I have pro­vided 3 points encom­pass­ing tech­nol­ogy as areas we need to improve.  Iowa’s best one-to-one schools may serve as mod­els for the rest of the state if the state embraces tech­nol­ogy as a way to enhance education.

1. We need to stop act­ing like tech­nol­ogy is some­thing “extra”.  Teach­ing tech­nol­ogy as a class and not inte­grat­ing it through­out the cur­ricu­lum is a big mis­take.   As schools, our job is to pre­pare respon­si­ble skilled cit­i­zens for our soci­ety.  Can stu­dents truly be con­tribut­ing mem­bers of the future in which they will live (not the world we live in) with­out a firm grasp on tech­nol­ogy use?  Almost all of the jobs our stu­dents have will involve some sort of new tech­nol­ogy.  Most will also be heav­ily involved with tech­nol­ogy in their per­sonal lives.  We can’t expect them to gain these skills with­out the help of our schools.
2. We need to embrace tech­nol­ogy as a way to teach 21st Cen­tury Skills.  Tony Wagner’s lists the fol­low­ing seven things as 21st Cen­tury Skills:

1. Crit­i­cal Think­ing and Prob­lem Solving
2. Col­lab­o­ra­tion across Net­works and Lead­ing by Influence
3. Agility and Adaptability
4. Ini­tia­tive and Entrepreneurialism
5. Effec­tive Oral and Writ­ten Communication
6. Access­ing and Ana­lyz­ing Information
7. Curios­ity and Imagination

I will argue until I am blue in the face that the work stu­dents are pro­duc­ing in our tech­nol­ogy rich schools in these seven areas is almost unimag­in­able with­out the tech­nol­ogy.  The Iowa Core also has a focus on the 21st Cen­tury skills.  By embrac­ing tech­nol­ogy, our stu­dents will be much more equipped with these skills.

3.  EQUITY!  This is an issue that I am very pas­sion­ate about, but very rarely get a chance to speak about.  Our poor­est stu­dents are at a huge dis­ad­van­tage because of their lack of access to tech­nol­ogy.  Unlike their wealth­ier class­mates, they are unable to get online and con­tinue their learn­ing at home.  A long time ago, schools fig­ured this out in the area of read­ing.  Ele­men­tary teach­ers would make sure that their young lit­tle read­ers always went home with plenty of books.  Schools and com­mu­ni­ties also arranged book give­aways to help pro­vide a bet­ter home envi­ron­ment for stu­dents.   Most schools have done noth­ing to close the tech­nol­ogy gap between our stu­dents.  I have strong feel­ings about all three of my points, but the equity issue is the one that really makes my blood boil.  As a teacher and then prin­ci­pal, I worked with many stu­dents from very poor fam­i­lies.  Those stu­dents were at a dis­ad­van­tage from their peers for many rea­sons, but lack of access to tech­nol­ogy does not have to be one of them.  Give them the oppor­tu­nity to learn, play, and con­nect with their peers by pro­vid­ing them with access to tech­nol­ogy.  Obvi­ously, some will not take advan­tage, but many will.  ALL of our stu­dents deserve that opportunity!

Thanks for reading!

Nick Sauers