ZDNet Education

February 9th, 2010

Rethinking mobile labs

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 7:33 am

Categories: Education Technology

Tags: Lab, Mobile, Computer, Mobile Lab, Productivity, Christopher Dawson

We’ve rolled out several mobile labs. Some people like to call them COWs (computers on wheels); I prefer to call them opportunities.

The labs, as a result of failing, aging, and otherwise decrepit machinery have replaced stationary labs across the board. We went for the mobile labs to save space and electricity and provide the opportunity to use the computers in regular classroom settings rather than needing to truck down to the computer lab for “computer time.” We’ve focused on the elementary level for mobile labs because space constraints are the most significant in these buildings and transitions from room to room can be a bit more challenging for the average 3rd grader than the average 10th grader.

Unfortunately, although we replaced the stationary labs with mobile labs, we didn’t replace the usage models. The labs still roll from classroom to classroom for 30-minute blocks which facilitates our use of RTI software, but makes for a couple big problems:

• A schedule that can accommodate daily sessions for all classes makes for quick transitions and lots of shoving laptops in and out of carts. It leaves little time to check the computers for damage or proper shutdown and usually results in a messy cart by the end of the day that isn’t ready for a complete overnight charge.
• Where is the transformative classroom integration? Half an hour is hardly time for a writers’ workshop, a video project, creation of presentations, or recording and analyzing data from science experiments.

This last piece is especially important. Laptops should be about 1:1 experiences, even if those experiences can’t happen all day, every day, in true 1:1 fashion. Hour or 90 minute blocks are far more appropriate for the sorts of activities to which computers are really well-suited in the classroom. 30 minutes of time spent on a particular piece of learning software makes a lot of sense, but the transition and setup of a rolling lab make such short bursts really impractical.

More and more, we’re moving to a dual model in our schools. Leave the carts for project work, writing, research, etc. Check it out for an hour or even a day. Most districts have plenty of aging computers that can be deployed into a small stationary lab; thin clients provide plenty of inexpensive options as well. The stationary lab (or even mini labs in classrooms) can be devoted to learning software which rarely requires state-of-the-art machinery.

The ideal, of course, is for every student to have a laptop and be able to access it anytime it’s needed or appropriate. The reality is that most schools need to share resources. Given that, we’ve certainly had to examine the best way to share those resources and how we can make student experiences with laptops enriching, rather than just stressful.

February 8th, 2010

The price of free: Google's calendar mess

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 9:49 am

Categories: Education Technology

Tags: Google Inc., Google Apps, Cloud Computing, Christopher Dawson

I’ve been accused of being a Google fanboi once or twice. I might even deserve the term, although I like to think that my Google fan status is the result of some great experiences with their Apps products, especially in my professional life. Their products are free to consumers, small business willing to accept some limitations, and to schools, where the features are rich and highly usable.

And yet (there’s always an “and yet”, isn’t there?), even for free, major glitches occasionally remind us that we get what we pay for. I’ll still advocate for Google and their Apps products till the cows come home. I’ve delivered a lot of functionality to my users for free that I couldn’t have touched without Google. But the lack of transparency when things go wrong is a problem.

I’m specifically referring to a calendar feature allowing calendar aggregation and advanced embedding features that worked up until early last week and now mysteriously doesn’t work for Apps customers. As described on the Google Apps support forum,

When I try to create a custom online calendar (via settings->sharing->share this calendar->Calendar details->Customize the color, size, and other options) I get the following error

You must be logged into Google Calendar to use this tool. Please visit http://www.google.com/calendar to log in, then refresh this page.

This still works for consumers who don’t use Domain Apps, but for the rest of us who rely on this to share calendars among groups and the rest of the world, it’s a significant pain. Following the link provided by Google’s error page takes us directly to the standard consumer Gmail login and we can’t login to our Apps accounts. In addition to embedding multiple calendars, options for sizing, appearance, and scrolling are all controlled via the Google “embedded calendar helper.”

There is a workaround: you can share all of the calendars you want to embed (in aggregate or individually) with your personal Gmail account and generate the embed code that way where the helper application actually works. However, this is hokey at best, particularly since Google Apps is designed to keep people using centrally managed accounts and groupware for a given domain rather than relying on their personal accounts. It also requires that you allow all calendars for your domain to potentially be shared with people outside your domain which may be a floodgate that your organization doesn’t want to open.

At this point, I’d be happy with a flag on the Google Apps Status Page or a “Hey, sorry, working on it” post on the support forums. However, all we get is an unexplained redirect.

I’d hate to see Apps lose traction through this sort of lack of transparency and feedback. We’ve leveraged Apps in great ways this year and have made significant changes in the way we do business because of it. But even the best of projects usually have a list of known or ongoing bugs and issues that users can consult.

Open up, Google. We’re an understanding bunch. Just keep us informed.

February 5th, 2010

If Google Books deal is anticompetitive then DOJ is anti-knowledge

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 9:59 am

Categories: Education Technology

Tags: Google Inc., U.S. Department Of Justice, Operational Accounting, Data Centers, Finance, Storage, Hardware, Data Management, Christopher Dawson

Anyone care to tell me when the Department of Justice will butt out of the Google Books deal? Their latest claim that a revised settlement is anticompetitive further distances us from a rich, open knowledge store and the preservation of works that would otherwise sit, molding and collecting dust in library stacks somewhere. It also cuts off a potential revenue stream for authors and their estates who certainly aren’t collecting any more royalties on out-of-print books or who might have limited distribution options.

According to the New York Times,

[The ruling] said the changes were not enough to placate concerns that the deal would grant Google a monopoly over millions of orphan works, meaning books whose right holders are unknown or cannot be found.

Right. So it’s better to make sure that no one can read the books. It’s better to wait for someone other than Google who has the technology, capital, and wherewithal to make this happen and compete with Google. How long will we be waiting to find someone with as much money as Google who wants to invest millions in scanning technology and who is sitting on petabytes of storage and massive datacenters? The answer? A long bloody time.

Authors are waiting on this deal to potentially find new revenue streams. Academics and bibliophiles are waiting to have rich stores of literature opened up online. Grandmothers are waiting to search for an obscure knitting book. Or something like that. Regardless, the time has come, the e-reader technology is here, and Google’s doing a bang-up job on the scanning. Enough already, DOJ. Show me one competitor who just might be able to do what Google is doing (and who actually wants to do it) and maybe this conversation should continue. Until then, bring on the scanners!

February 4th, 2010

Improving customer service

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 10:03 pm

Categories: Education Technology

Tags: Customer Service, Product Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Marketing, Enterprise Software, Software, Christopher Dawson

No matter what budget constraints we hit (and we will hit them; this is ed tech we’re talking about), the one thing we can give our users for free is good customer service. You want a SMART Board in your room? Mmmm…too bad, the governor just cut local aid. You need interactive response systems? Yeah, so do 40 of your colleagues. You want me to work hard and provide the best IT support I can? Oh, well sure, I can do that. How can I help you?

I was in executive development classes (I know, it sounds bloody awful, but the NISL program really is about transforming education in meaningful ways; these are classes to which I actually look forward) Tuesday and Wednesday of this week talking about coaching. Not SuperBowl coaching, but coaching those with whom we work and who work for us to improve their skills and make them more effective. While the curriculum was really directed towards coaching teachers, both in pedagogy and specific content areas (you tech integration specialists out there know what I’m talking about), it made me think about the three techs in my district who report directly or indirectly to me. It also made me think about the interns and students who work with us, providing front line support to teachers.

Our customers are students, teachers, and administrators and, while our job is to ensure that they have the access they need to technology, we need to be able to do our jobs well, efficiently, and with a smile on our face. How many young techs inherently know how to deal with frustrated, technophobic teachers in ways that won’t turn them off from the tech and will keep them happy, even in the face of serious hardware or software issues?

For that matter, how many grumpy, overworked IT guys do you know who simply can’t balance customer service with their workloads? And yet, it’s our job to fix the printer one more time for Mrs. Smith, no matter how many times we’ve shown her how to unjam it. It’s our job to reset a password for Mr. Jones, even though we reset it yesterday.

These sorts of interpersonal “soft skills” are just as important as technical skill, given that the average school tech doesn’t sit behind a console all day or hide in a server room, disconnected from end users like so many of our private industry counterparts. Techs in the average school are dealing with customers every day. This is where coaching comes in. Soft skills are not part of an MCSE course or even most educational technology graduate programs. Rather, they are developed by working closely with technical staff who already have them.

They come from so-called coaching conversations, where the best IT staff (both in technical expertise and people skills) work with, and have frank discussions with, the most junior (or the most grumpy). They come from modeling and teamwork, tackling projects together, and ensuring that we remain focused on supporting our customers and improving education through technology.

Oftentimes, people skills and IT don’t go hand in hand. How does that old joke go? How can you spot the extroverted IT guy? He’s the one who looks up from his BlackBerry at you as you pass him. However, the role of customer service, particularly as we look to really disrupt old educational models by infusing technology into the classroom, is absolutely undeniable. Teachers need to like, trust, and respect us. Although our technical skills build credibility, our people skills build trust.

February 3rd, 2010

SMS, social media in for kids; blogging, Twitter out

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 10:02 pm

Categories: Education Technology

Tags: Phone, Twitter Inc., Social Media, Cell Phone, Blogging, SMS, Writing Skill, Internet, Games, Cellular Phones

Thanks to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, we now have lots of statistics that confirm what we already knew. Kids communicate in short bursts, via either text, instant messaging, or social media status updates. Lengthy communications and, oddly, Twitter, just don’t enter the picture. The question this raises, though, is not why kids don’t use Twitter, but how can we tap this easy, often asynchronous communication in education?

Don’t worry, this won’t be a post advocating the end of the essay. Real writing skill is sorely lacking in many high school (and college) graduates and whether you force them to blog for you or run writers workshops is irrelevant. Clear, detailed, articulate writing has to be a core part of our curriculum.

That being said, if interpersonal communication is increasingly brief, parallel, mobile, and asynchronous, it seems that we’re doing ourselves and our students a disservice if we don’t step into their information stream. One noteworthy point that the Pew Center made was that kids’ access to the Internet is becoming centered around their phones and, to a lesser extent, laptops. So what’s going to be more effective for reminding students about an assignment? A paper handout at the end of class? An updated blog entry on a teacher website? Or a text message linking to a mobile-optimized site with assignment details? Probably the latter. Read the rest of this entry »

February 2nd, 2010

Why is cyberbullying different?

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 9:59 pm

Categories: Education Technology

Tags:

Last month, a young student named Phoebe Prince who lived just miles from our sleepy town apparently killed herself as a result of bullying, both in school and via text messages and Facebook. While the exact circumstances and details of the investigation aren’t being released, it’s clear that cyberbullying played a role in her death. In our own schools, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of students reporting bullying (even before this tragic death) via either social media or text messages. Whether this is because of an increase in awareness, an actual increase in online bullying, or the near ubiquity of Facebook is unclear.

Bullying, unfortunately, is nothing new. Neither, for that matter, is cyberbullying. It’s simply a term that parents and politicians bandy about as they talk about “the dangers of the Internet,” right? Or maybe not. The case of Phoebe Prince certainly brings the topic into stark relief and begs the question, “why is cyberbullying different?”

Parents in Prince’s community are calling for the Superintendent to be sacked over what they perceive as an unwillingness to address the issue proactively and head-on. Many districts are now scrambling to implement programs and policies in the face of her death. And yet, unfortunately, too many other kids have struggled with depression, alienation, and even suicide as a result of bullying long before the World Wide Web and Facebook. What has changed? Read the rest of this entry »

February 2nd, 2010

An App Store for Google Edu Apps, too?

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 10:59 am

Categories: Education Technology

Tags: Google Inc., App, Integration, Christopher Dawson

Google announced yesterday that it would be adding a marketplace for third-party developers who wanted to leverage the Apps API and create applications to extend the functionality of Google Apps. While Google is hard at work on improving the fidelity of Docs and the richness of its internal features, the idea that we could purchase additional applications Apple/Android App Store-style is attractive.

Clarification from Google, February 2nd, 2010:
A Google spokesperson contacted me this afternoon and pointed out

“Just saw your article ‘An App Store for Google Edu Apps, too?’ and wanted to clarify that we did not announce anything yesterday….The Google Solutions Marketplace makes it easy for our customers to connect with an ecosystem of products and professional services. We’re constantly working with our partners to deliver more solutions to businesses, but we have nothing to announce at this time.”

Fair enough and sorry to readers for any confusion. My points about compelling potential educational applications based on Wall Street Journal reports of a possible upcoming expanded Apps store remain applicable. Read on for my thoughts.

While the Apps are targeting businesses and Google Apps Premiere customers, most Premiere features trickle down to (or are built in immediately) to Google’s Apps for Education. As Sam Diaz reports,

Like Apple’s App store and Salesforce’s App Exchange, the Google store would feature apps built by outside developers to integrate with Google’s services. Eventually, the company would allow customers to but these apps through the online store. The WSJ report said the company is expected to announce its new store as soon as March.

Imagine your SIS driving logins to your Apps domain or gradebook features integrating with the layout capabilities of Google sites? While I utterly value the “free-factor” of Edu Apps, these are features I’d be happy to pay for in the form of a third-party app.

What if students could complete assignments in Docs and then submit them directly to a school’s Moodle server? Or easily publish content created in Docs as articles in the CMS of your school’s choice?

There are a lot of possibilities here in a Google Apps marketplace, some of which relate directly to education. What would you be willing to pay for to extend the functionality of Google Apps for Education?

January 31st, 2010

Constellation program cut: space race no more

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 11:05 am

Categories: Education Technology

Tags: NASA, Race, Christopher Dawson

Several months ago, as the Obama administration started examining NASA’s budget critically, I suggested that what American education could really use was a space race. Who would we be racing against? China and India, for starters, but in a way, it doesn’t matter. As I pointed out in that last post,

Obviously, our competitors now are a number of Asian and Eastern European nations (among others), but we are competing for much more than access to space or even to win the Cold War. This doesn’t need to be about getting to the moon before China; rather, it needs to be about inspiring students and creating the utter sense of urgency we need in education to push our students and improve what we do. It should be about inspiring students and teachers to embrace math, science, and engineering education. If it takes many billions more devoted to both NASA and education, then that’s a small price to pay to bring a new generation of brilliant scientists and mathematicians to the forefront of education, research, and industry.

Now we see that Obama has cut the Constellation program entirely in his proposed budget, and with it, the possibility of much in the way of space exploration. Not that Constellation isn’t wildly over budget and too far behind to serve its purpose as a shuttle replacement craft, but there is something about space exploration that could be tied to a national STEM curriculum that just seems so inspiring.

According to the Orlando Sentinel

When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon.

I absolutely understand why budgets have been re-prioritized and I applaud efforts to address climate issues and explore public-private partnerships for “capsules and rockets that can be used as space taxis to take astronauts on fixed-price contracts to and from the International Space Station.” However, this seems like a lost opportunity to engage the next generation of scientists in ways that the first space race did quite admirably.

Talk back below…what should be this generation’s space race?

January 28th, 2010

Solving my LMS debacle (for now)

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 10:34 pm

Categories: Education Technology

Tags: Debacle, Training And Certification, Training And Development, Human Resources, Christopher Dawson

Earlier this week, I wrote about my need for a speedy solution to my Learning Management System debacle. I received plenty of encouragement to jump on the Moodle train (and with good reason - I’ve seen a lot of really successful implementations embraced by teachers and students), but in the end, some talking with school principals and teachers led me in a different direction.

Don’t get me wrong…Moodle is very much on my radar. A slick demo easily installed on my MacBook (actually a fully functional Moodle server environment) convinced administrators and teachers alike that a rich online learning environment was something we should pursue.

However, Moodle isn’t without its learning curve and administrative setup time. If we looked carefully at our goals, my “LMS debacle” arose from a need to increase communication and transparency with parents in terms of student work and grades, as well as to make sure that kids had ready access to assignments and homework. While Moodle can certainly offer that, we already had two elements in our district that could address most of our needs faster and with less training. Read the rest of this entry »

January 27th, 2010

Apple iPad: Is iBooks enough to get Apple back into education?

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 10:51 pm

Categories: Education Technology

Tags: Education, Apple iBook, Apple Inc., Apple iPad, EPUB, E-books & E-Readers, Keyboards, Notebooks, Games, Personal Technology

Not yet. And maybe it never will be, but I’m not quite as willing to write off the iPad announced Wednesday as I was last week. I’m also not as convinced that my midnight snack tonight should consist of too much crow, either. Like most pundits, I was completely underwhelmed by the device, surprised by its price, and dubious about what it brings to the table. I think the more interesting question in education, though, is what it will force to the table in the next year.

iBooks is what really has me wondering. Wednesday, Apple announced partnerships with Penguin, Harper-Collins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and the Hachette Book Group. Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, of course, is one heck of a big textbook publisher and the iPad just happens to be the first multitouch color e-reader(-like) device that can go with interactive textbooks where the Kindle, Sony Reader, and Nook never could.

The iPad, however, has less than a 10″ screen, no keyboard, and no stylus (I know, there are accessories and who wants a stylus, right?). What this means is that it’s a nice, if small, platform for viewing textbooks, but taking notes via keyboard or handwriting is out. Apple, however, did a couple big favors for education, whether or not any of us embrace the iPad. First, they standardized to EPUB for their iBooks application. EPUB documents can be read on an awful lot of devices, can be implemented with or without DRM, and EPUB is an extensible standard that will grow as ebooks mature.

The second and arguably more important gift that Apple gave us was to partner with a textbook publisher, push them towards interactive book development, and drag them to the EPUB party. Read the rest of this entry »