As far as "unplanned" implementations of iPads and iPods in MCPS, I don’t know of any.
However there are several planned but loosely or unrelated integrations.
Of the ones I mentioned, you are correct in that one is in the Hellgate district, and there is an integration effort on the move at Target Range as well.
Of the MCPS ones I know about that would qualify as integrations, they include:
Paxon 2nd and 5th grade 1:1 (at the bottom of this MCPS webpage)
http://www.mcps.k12.mt.us/portal/paxson/ActivitiesandEvents/tabid/3238/Default.aspx
Franklin, Hawthorne and Lowell (MCPS iPad training on the in-service day):
http://www.kpax.com/news/missoula-teachers-train-on-ipads/
Lewis and Clark is using iPads in their library with great success in particular with kindergarten writing.
I also understand that the Rattlesnake school PTA is moving forward on a teacher-centered use of iPads, hopefully in the fall.
And I’ve heard that there is interest in iPad use at Sentinel for movie production and/or photography, but I don’t know the status on that one.
And there are several science teachers in the district who are using them for various tasks.
As far as unplanned, or without IT staff, I assume you are not counting the ones at Paxon (since it is a large scale integration with updated wireless in the building) and not the Franklin, Hawthorne and Lowell project since CSPD is on-board and it was scheduled during the teacher day), and not the Rattlesnake one since my contact there said that MCPS IT folks have been consulted regarding bandwidth and other issues.
It looks like some of the changes are being implemented that were foreshadowed a while ago. This quote from an MCPS teacher in a Missoulian story about Matt Clausen might have something to do with the integrations springing up:
“For too long, teachers have had to deal with a “technological bureaucracy,” making the implementation of new tech tools difficult at best.”
http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_2b045a0e-df2a-11df-af57-001cc4c03286.html
I’d guess it’s those “Pockets of Excellence” that MCPS is now calling upon.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Forced Introduction
Hello, My name is Martin and I am a concerned parent whose children attend public school in Missoula.
While I do have an above-average interest in instructional technology, I am really just looking for leadership from those who are or should be on the cutting edge of educational tech. I travel quite a bit and see many wonderful integrations of tech beyond the traditional desktop PC. I see educational transformations taking place with digital devices from speicalized video cameras to iPads, and share that with other parents and teachers. Often the excitement brews as the potential of the tech materializes into practice.
But then something happens. It is as if the different technology is competing with the old to the extent that a wall of excuses is put up preventing implementations from moving forward, or any benefits from being realized. I have trouble viewing new tech as a threat, but as some of you have pointed out, I don’t run the school network. But I do pay for it. And I do have the same high expectations for those running it as I do for those whose job it is to teach with it.
Lately I have noticed an increased pressure from the network-side to direct aspects of curriculum. Intended or not, that is essentially taking the decision-making and control out of the hands of the teachers, curriculum directors, and School Boards, which I view as very dangerous. As a parent, I have deep concerns when limits are placed upon the tools teachers can use to teach. And it makes me mad to hear directors of technology and network administrators make fun of the very teachers and administrators that are literally counting on them for support. And if the teachers cannot turn to you, then they will turn somewhere else. I believe that is what is happening.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Learn. Implement. Rock the World!
Some good iPad resources can be gleaned from the integration efforts in the Chicago Public Schools.
Some of the schools have websites that share their apps, best practices, and user videos. Here are a couple:
I doubt there has ever been a more helpless target for those who have trouble understanding technology’s role in education than the iPad. The personal nature of the iPad allows almost anyone to quickly form an opinion about the device, informed or not. And since many tech users seem to expect perfection from Apple products, there is little tolerance for shortcomings or obviously missing features.
At the moment, Missoula has at least five distinct and mostly unrelated iPad integration efforts underway of various flavors and degree of operation. There is a dual-grade 1:1 under construction, a PTA funded teacher-centered 1:1, a dozen iPads in place in a school’s library, and a deep integration in a middle school--here’s their iPad Handbook-Procedures etc.
There are also many pockets of iPad use tucked away in classrooms all across the Missoula districts. And there are plenty of iPads floating around in the rarified air of administration.
In answer to the question about high school use, there are some powerful advantages to using the iPads with Vernier probeware (the LabQuest2’s Connected Science System is pretty amazing!); and Pasco’s AirLink provides a physical data stream via BT up to 10m from the sensor. And don’t forget Vernier’s Video Physics where you can capture video, plot motion in the movie, and then view graphs of the physical parameters from the video. It’s like a combination physics lab/TV station. In fact, with iMovie, you can easily shoot, edit, render, and upload a movie completely on an iPad. Works slick, but no green screen yet. This latter use really drives home the potential of the camera upgrade in the iPad3.
Xplane9 is a fairly substantial flight simulator for aeronautics, and the foreign language apps are surprisingly useful for teaching and learning.
For projection and screen mirroring, Doceri can create some tremendous options with its whiteboard-to-movie-to-YouTube pathway, especially when timestamps are included for navigation Splashtop and Splashtop Whiteboard make any computer/projector system run from an iPad detethering the presenter from the podium. LogMeIn works great, and Google Docs, although limited compared to PC operation, still has great potential.
Google Earth is fabulous, and you can run kmz and kml files easily with 90% -100% (my opinion) functionality. Here are some great starter kmz sites:
(one if his best , I think: http://earth.tryse.net/
http://www.googlelittrips.org/ (great for literature/Comm arts/Humanities across the curriculum)
And you can supplement GEarth content with:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/
The mention about special needs/assistive tech is an important one. While some of the killer apps for AT like Proloquo2Go are a little pricy ( http://itunes.apple.com/us/
And for those of us who have been working in instructional tech for decades, there is the perennial Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything (iPad):
I could go on, but you get the point. iPads are not a conventional computing device. While many people stereotype them, and vocalize their disappointments with the iPad when it does not play by the same old rules of IT, I consider that just normal and unfortunate growing pains for education. But given that many businesses (including almost every Fortune 500 Companies (>94% at last count) are using or actively testing iPads), medicine, commercial aviation, research laboratories, the military, higher education, industries around the world, and clinical placements and data collection across almost all fields, avoiding iPad use in education, whether by design or defect, in my opinion, is nothing shy of proudly planting a flag in mediocrity.
Teachers can be just as lost as anyone else about the use of an iPad. The usual steps educators and tech folks take as they approach, climb, and overcome the implementation hump of any new or disruptive technology are 1) use it to do what we can already do (think comfort food), 2) supplement what we can already do, but begin to push the boundaries (think mobile presentations, utility app use), and 3) to go boldly where it was impossible to go before. I believe it is the job of enlightened IT folks to speed the process and encourage the leaders empowering them to focus on the good in education and not to punish them or make fun of them for taking risks.
Teachers need visionary tech leaders. The iPad is a transformational technology and defies many conventional measures used to address the efficacy of technology in schools. While a poorly supported integration effort can die a painful and embarrassing death, the likely cause is not the device, but rather one of imagination, wisdom, and judgment. Cheap netbooks sucked (in my opinion) and thusly were not going to get better in educational settings. iPads don’t suck, so they should not begin to suck when placed in schools. Simple enough.
My take is if IT cannot imagine what it would do differently with unlimited funds, a thousand new iPads, or bottomless bandwidth, then its time for a upgrade.
Cases and other distractions
Regarding iPad cases, here are some observations made during conference presentations I attended last month where iPad cases came up. The presenters were from a large school district back east that went 1 to 1.
They did not suggest any particular case as long as the corners had a heavy level of protection. Edgewise hits were rare and of their failures due to impacts, it was all corners. While the magnetic covers are sexy, they also cannot be depended upon as a handle and students would move or try to carry the iPad with the case cover only to have the iPad separate and head out on its own.
Some of the super cases like Otter Box can present syncing/charging/connectivity issues and may not dock well with others. Plus they add significant weight which can increase the drop rate and lessen the one-handed use of the iPad.
I don't use a screen protector either. All of them reduced the screen responsiveness and clarity. My iPad 1 has traveled the world and got a daily dose of salsa and grapefruit squirt for over a year. It was played with by kids, shared in classes, passed around in conferences, and never suffered in the least. It had the original iPad case (felt-like cloth). My macbook air, on the other hand is pretty beat up and I had to unbend one of the usb ports after it was dropped in security at the Amsterdam airport. There is still a pretty good ding in the side of the screen but the buffer space around the display did its job.
On battery life, I not met an original iPad that did not perform well, even after two years of hard use.
Bluetooth is an excellent method of connecting stuff (I use keyboards, speakers, and Pasco probeware, etc.) but it is somewhat temperamental and I've had to turn off my bluetooth in order to use the onscreen keyboard since the iPad wanted to talk with the BT keyboard if within range regardless of my wishes.
I've heard that low-power use USB keyboards can function with the iPad using the USB camera connection kit even if the iPad complains when you connect it.
Finally, I'd suggest trying out a half-dozen different cases in the wild and see what happens. Some designs are great on paper, but fail in practicality. And others might serve certain grades or uses better than others. My suggestion is to focus on the case over what the case can do besides protect the iPad. And some of the good protection ones are inexpensive if that's all they do.
Risk vs. Reward
I’ve worked with admins who were confident in their skills, but failed to acknowledge the internal vulnerabilities of their own network. For example, at one meeting an admin was bragging about all the security measures, yet “forgot” to disclose all the network rights and hardware access that student techs had, along with the long chain of shared passwords across both time and machines, as well as legacy access from years gone by. And it just got worse when the admin’s security measures and talent overtly paled in the face of what Google employs. Plus, there is only one point of blame when things go south locally, and it usually lands on the overworked shoulders of the head admin, whereas Google’s security layers are extensive, deep, and redundant.
In fact, its rather hard to argue against Google when considering actual numbers. How many districts do you know that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on security and virus protection? Not to mention counting nines on uptime and server redundancy. Google’s lifeblood resides within security and reliability, so its hard to believe that any individual school district has a greater emphasis on email security and uptime compared to Google.
As far as Google mining email, well, so what? (“reading” is a little presumptuous, and I like to joke that I wish they would read my email, and please reply to it!) All commercial services do it, and now with the new NSA facility in Utah, pretty much everything on the net will be mined and archived regardless of where it’s so-called home is located. Personally I would much rather have Google’s bots “reading” my email than a network admin searching for buried bodies, gossip, or AUP infractions.
Along with what Bill mentioned in the recovery of work time when Google services are used, it also follows that the spiraling vicious circle of network control begins to unwind when the immense responsibilities of maintaining the email service are relinquished. To mix my metaphors further, the sysadmins can only stretch so far before snapping at the very users for whom the infrastructure was designed to serve in the first place (and whose very purpose within the system pays for the service).
Depending on your clout with Google, special arrangements can be made. I believe the U of Wash was successful with limiting the undesired access through their agreements. Google is interested in safely and productively moving into the public school k-12 arena especially as evidenced with their “YouTube for schools” venture. The Google strategy for systematic deployment of their products is based on the model (similar to the tobacco companies) of “brand imprinting for later actuation.” If students use the free or school-based Google Tools, then they will be more likely to adopt them (the pay versions) when they’re working in the professional world.
I agree completely that there is a diversity of viable options for email services, and there is some safety in having various platforms to compare against one another. Unfortunately, sometimes other factors enter the equation that are not necessarily exclusively focused on the wellbeing of the enterprise.
It can be very good to outsource to a less expensive, more secure, more reliable, more stable system, especially when even a brief glance at the horizon should enlighten most savvy folk that self-hosting major server operations is nearing the end of its shelf-life. Now that we are over 12 percent into the 21st century, we should start acting like it. If I had to bet on the long term viability of a company, I would not hesitate to place Google well ahead of MS where cloud services are concerned. I use MS at work or when I have to, but Google and others when I need to. There must to be an open discussion about these topics because others are counting us to provide an honest assessment of the best options weighed across many individual parameters. If the discussion is ever shut down prematurely, then likely something else is going on. And its probably just a stubborn opinion wedged somewhere in the gears of progress.
Macs play well with Windows
The "play" depends on how well the IT dept. knows their own system and the Macs. Some things are confusing, while others are the same, some are better. If you have serious concerns, contact Apple. They have been extremely helpful at analyzing the situation and finding the paths of least resistance in cross-platform integration.
Of course there are some differences. Macs are in use all over the world high in end server platforms, but their direct and native support is in question right now based on the elimination of their Xservers.
We've had some trouble with IT people who did not know their way around a Mac and really messed things up. Once it was realized that the problems were self-inflicted, things have been working beautifully since.
About half our students and a large segment of our faculty are using Macs right now, and it really opened some eyes when it was discovered that approximately half of the computer users were not receiving appropriate (or any) support from IT. It caused a serious rethinking of the role of IT and whether or not users should venture beyond IT's limited skill set, or if IT should be adapting to the changing computing landscape as part of their job description.
We really want the opinions of all our IT people to matter, and the way that happens is if the opinions are at best informed, or in the least couched within admitted limits or missing knowledge. A healthy sprinkling of adventurous thinking will go a long way to temper futuristic talk.
But ultimately, I believe the difference between Macs and Windows is one of workflow and lifestyle. And both workflow and lifestyle must be respected, especially when the ultimate reason for the tech in the first place is education.
1 to 1 Disruption
Many times, the traditional IT questions being asked are not the ones that capitalize on the power and opportunity of a modern 1:1 program. And in many cases, the measurement of gains--or lack of-- is based on inappropriate evaluations.
We are seeing much the same with the iPads today in that traditional computing models, IT considerations and assessment measures pretty quickly doom many efforts at immersive integration. The iPads are a completely different "space" and fail miserably when the well-rounded application of iPads are stuffed into square computing boxes of office utilities, if you catch my drift.
Curriculum should not be a response to technology, but rather the exact opposite. The tech is used to support and amplify the curriculum allowing the teacher and student to be more efficient and effective. The diversity of today's tech in both its scope and its depth vastly changes the teaching/learning dynamic. Unfortunately, however, many of the integration models have not been updated in a long time and are thus vulnerable to archaic, even dysfunctional application of the tech essentially ensuring that the project will be sabotaged from the inside-out.
I'd suggest that until the initial scope and dreams (for lack of a better word) of your 1:1 can be conceptualized, considering the IT aspects and opinions is counter productive and even detrimental. The reason is that the conventional IT questions and perspectives will alter the trajectory of a 1:1 converting it into a traditional and dated integration design complete with obsolete measures of success. And as we read here on the list, will certainly begin the downward trend of any chance of demonstrable successes even before the project is launched.
Oddly, it should be the tech folks who are on the sharp end of the spear with 21st century 1:1 models, but instead there seems to be a thread of obstructionism woven into the IT fabric of many school districts. Which is why many of the forward-thinking or progressive tech programs come from outside the system. But, of course, that is exactly what is to be expected when one subscribes to the implications of "disruptive technology."
Literally stated, it cannot come from those within the system because often they are the very ones who are trying to avoid the so-called "disruptions." Obviously we learn from the past, but we also need the wisdom to know when the environmental conditions have changed enough that our existing understandings are no longer generalizable to the current landscape. And I'll be first in line to admit that instructional technology, educational computing, and digital learning are not what they were even three years ago, let alone ten when many of our 1:1 attitudes began to crystalize.
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