Today’s teacher have much more knowledge and information at their fingertips.   In many cases they have fairly granular information about their students, class and school against provincial data.    Even if their skills, dashboards, or underlying data systems limit what exposure they have to that data…. it exists, and in most cases is provided to them regularly throughout the school year, even if just through the school principal.

From this data, they are able to streamline, adjust, expand, and most importantly adapt their teaching to be better, more individualized and ideally affecting change in their student performance.   Many of the Ministry initiatives in Ontario are designed to assist them further (School Effectiveness Framework, new initiatives around assessment as/for learning, differentiated instruction etc..), and they are provided with a multi-tude of different types of PD to support this,  from Ministry DVDs to in-services targetted to these strategies.

At what point does technology enter this discussion?  Each and every piece of data on a child, and even self, district and Ministry-led training to help arm these teachers with information and strategies to impact student achievement is worthwhile, useable information for a teacher.   But at what point does technology become part of the process to assist them?    Is it in collecting/analyzing/viewing this assessment data?  Is it in researching teaching or intervention strategies to help address any gaps in achievement, specific to a child or group of children’s needs?  Is it collaborating across the district with similar subject matter interests to help brainstorm, discuss, co-authoring a lesson plan?  When that lesson plan/learning activity etc.. is delivered, what role does technology play?  Research based only for the child?  Integrated into whole group instruction? What about cross curricular benefits that the teacher might be able to play off from other units taking place in the school for the child?

Pulling this back to Web 2.0 technologies… my feel is that unless careful planning (clear, easy to understand framework with a few tools), deep training and PD around technology, supported by inclusion of the same (clear, easy to understand toolset) in every PD they experience (be it subject specific, instructional strategy, or other), and supported by PLCs which embrace these technologies, AND school principal participation… this is how Web 2.0 technologies play into this….     Significant project planning, assessment metrics, and overall district buy-in is critical for this to succeed.

To take it to the next level…  Open, collaborative tools are wonderful, but the object is to achieve 80% penetration with your teachers, so careful integration between Web 2.0 technologies and a structured, organized and searchable portal are critical.    By doing this step well, the ability for more entry-skilled teachers to take advantage of the exciting and innovative teaching ideas/practices/Lesson Plans/Activities will be taken to a whole new level, as for some, shifting from a desktop with applications, to a more web-enabled portal “desktop” will be enough of a challenge.

With summer vacations, sunshine (or rain depending on where in the world you live, not a lot of sunshine around Central Canada this summer!), and school coming back into the swing of things, figured it was a long overdue opportunity to write to the readership some further thoughts and discussion points around technology in schools…

I’ve been attending much education within my primary role at IBM around the corporate vision’s for Smarter Planet (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsYw_vB0e8w&feature=player_embedded) which speaks directly to the new world, and having people/devices/communities/classrooms etc. more ”interconnected, instrumented and intellingent”.   I feel strongly (or have been successfully brainwashed by “the man”, that this strategy is so in-tune with world issues, across every industry, that I began thinking about how this is further articulated relative to my industry…   I thought it might be insightful for you the reader.

What are the key elements to delivering instruction in the classroom today?  A few ideas by word association:

• Teacher
• Textbook
• Classrooms in rows
• Differentiated instruction
• Data driven decision making
• Interactive whiteboards
• Internet (when avail/applicable)
• Lesson Plans
• Smaller class sizes
• Different learning styles
• Changing curriculum
• Core subject areas
• Lifetime learning (K-80)
• 20th Century

From this I know first hand that many districts large and small are suffering through the strategic planning (or not so strategic in some cases) in an attempt to figure out what classroom modelling, teacher enablement tools/materials/resources, blended learning strategies, measurement/assessment/evaluation practices, technology, and beyond need to be part of that recipe for affecting student achievement, and appealing to today’s learner.   Furthermore, even baseline understanding of what is possible by the key decision making leaders (not  always IT/CIO leaders, not always board leaders for curriculum/pedagogy) is not a part of developing that plan.   In most cases, there is a single technology “evangelist/visionary” within the board that sets direction, and ensuring that the direction is aligned appropriately is very, very challenging.

Here are the top priorities as I see them from every/any district:

• I have 21st Century kids with 20th Century teaching strategies.. how do I adapt?
• Who is more important to enable… kids or teachers?
• Am I going to be in the business of providing PC access in my schools in 5 years? 10 years?
• I know wireless is the right direction, but what is required for student/teacher enablement?
• Netbook or Notebook?  Neither?
• How do I decrease the use of paper, binders, silo’d lesson planning/collaboration, and at the same time increase my web strategy as a vehicle to accomplish this?
• Now that I have some form of good data flowing in my district, how do I use it to change practice in my schools/classroom?
• Is web training/video/podcasts really a true form of effective PD? how do I measure? how can I channel some of the budget savings from release time to infrastructure?
• Is free software still good software?  how do I ensure 80% of my teachers are using it?
• Why is IT staffing 10X the size of my curriculum supports for technology?

In my humble opinion the following are key attributes to an effective, ALIGNED technology plan:

1. Long term (4-5 years) with stability, leadership, and proven strategies
2. Investment in enterprise infrastructure that is capable of adapting to new technologies (ex. student owned devices, widgets/webparts /openness that is customizeable/modular to useful purpose (non-proprietary)
3. Consultation with IT, Curriculum, and Strategic Leadership (CFO/Director of Ed/SO for Curriculum) with full board commitment
4. Pilot well in first 6 months, deploy in next 6-10 months, keep static/stable for next 3-4 years, REPEAT planning cycle
5. Always leverage and plan for most efficient TCO (total cost of ownership) without stifling effectiveness

My personal focus areas for the next six months is to align the capabilities of what “we do” to the overall IBM corporate “Smarter Planet” structure…   there are subcategories/themes and components to instrumented, interconnected and intelligent classrooms for a better strategy around infrastructure, green, smarter intelligence/instruction that I think when done really well with slingshot any school board well beyond the average…  and to my observation there are VERY few boards that do things exemplary and can confidently say that they are spending their technology/training dollars well.

Prior to reading further I encourage you to read the article found at:   http://www.globecampus.ca/blogs/nerd-girl/?cid=al_gam_nletter_newsUp

 So the whole premise of today’s technologies (several mentioned in this article, intermixed with world challenges such as the swine pandemic-to be…   triggers a very interesting “perfect storm”…     and poses several questions:

Q1 – Do these technologies fuel the panic fire associated with a crisis like the swine flu?

Q2 – Of all of the technologies, which best embody a truly dynamic and useful tool to resolution leaders for the issue, versus the time required to sift through the “B.S.” of blogs/tweets/posts of people such as myself trying to reflect or just be clever?

Q3 – Given the differences between how the SARs and Swine flu outbreak has been handled from a preparedness/reactionary standpoint… and today’s world is getting smarter…  is it re-affirmation on IBM’s positioning of the Smarter Planet strategy?

From this though pattern, i’m stuck into wondering how to best package the “Smarter Classroom”…    I believe a stronger, metaphorical reflection is required in achieving the same positioning with my clients…. be it articulating the different pillars of IT in schools wrapped in a “Smarter” context, or be it looking to future technologies of today and tomorrow and figuring the gaps in the support scaffolding present for teachers, both in base skills, as well as board office/ministry preparedness to support 50,000 teachers in Ontario with teaching strategies around new devices, new electronic stimulus resources, and most importantly, ways to measure engagement and achievement.

Further reflection required for a Canadianized “Smarter Classroom” pitch… however given the gamut of things available to boards (free, open/shared resources, and proprietary offerings from private sector and ministry)…  greater planning and thought will be put into this… perhaps in second life?

What this customer was hoping to do was to leverage the IBM smarter planet strategy, messages, and most importantly “cool factor” and communities, and try and gain some better, more efficient and most importantly, more effective in a mainstream application format of treating designated kids in teh system.   His School  Board actually had a HUGE budget for these kids, from special staffing, to special assistive technologies, as well as the need to put them in a separate ‘stream’ or classroom.   His opinion was that if there were a way to integrate them back into the standard classroom more effectively, by managing how they interacted with other peers in the class, and also the different types of tools that might be used with the kids (virtual manipulatives) etc…     it just reeked of Smarter Planet innovation that IBM could bring to the table.

The challenge of course is trying to align all of the bodies that are required to make that happen.   In brainstorming with him, it included a pediatrician, a speech patholagist, some representatives from local hospital personnel, preferably an institution that specialized in autism..   IBM would need people and strategy to align the project, and of course, once the approach was isolated, it would be necessary to get a strong involvement from the Ministry of Education.

I may continue to chronicle how this falls out, as I think it is an idea in an infant stage, however, I would say that it has the potential, assuming the strategy can be communicated closely and cleanly enough.

VERY interesting article and clip on autism was provided to me (seen below):

Partway through the article, there is a YouTube link.. and i felt that this had some really strong and interesting things going on.   Please make sure you make it past the first 3 minutes, which is the raw version of the autistic mind, before she gets into translating into a language we can all understand:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc

I may continue to write about this, and hopefully continue contributing to my blog, as i’m extremely hopeful to keep it running.   Stay tuned.

In working for IBM…    Not a day goes by without an email from a high level manager, sales leader, president etc…  asking you to visit their blog to read about results, sales focus and actions going forward, education and professional development etc…     But I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t ever participated in this community, albeit as a good little employee, I always visited theirs.   One of my New Year’s resolutions was to truly understand and embrace these technologies… so it starts here with this blog… I’m going to attempt to update new postings every week or so…  but i’m also going to get a little more daring and perhaps do little vignettes via YouTube as well…. but that will be Week 3 or later.

On March 4th to 6th, my business unit will be running an external Executive Forum, hosting 50 attendees from Canadian School Boards, with the intent of driving collaboration, networking and sharing about various successful initiatives in Canadian Education.   In advance of this, i’ve been researching several different things over the past few weeks to broaden my knowledge and skills in both Web 2.0 technologies and Cloud computing.

In the Web 2.0 realm, one of our high growth focus areas for my territory working forward, is establishing a strong base of portal implementations, leveraging what Web2.0 plug-ins are available, and inspire these customers to deploy them well, in order to generate more advanced Web2.0 references.   In my web research, i’ve /found/used/been provided several solid links talking about these technologies.

Beyond this, I can’t tell you how many discussions i’ve had with School Board leaders over the last year…. struggling with the concept of addressing teachings in the board to the 21st Century Learner….   Most will look at me and say:  “We spend $X on technology every year, which is a huge budget allocation per student, in many cases larger than any other dept (excluding Payroll!), yet these devices consume time to manage, constantly need to be refreshed, and they just AREN’T BEING USED!“  or  “We’re currently running focus groups with students to better understand their wants for how our teachers teach” or “We struggle with maintaining existing infrastructure and services delivered by IT, yet we are headed in a direction where the board wants more and more resource intensive initiatives to get going, and we can’t prioritize!”    90% of boards struggle with alignment between IT (Information Technology) and ET (Educational Technology) and striving to achieve greater than 60% participation and change within their teaching population to address the gaps between 21st century teacher and learner.   One of the biggest barriers outside of leadership and strategy at the board office and executive level, is the 21st  Century learner is 100% familiar and comfortable with using Web 2.0 technologies, yet the “system” blocks/bans/does not embrace what these technologies offer, and envelope them in their strategies for instruction.   This is a huge challenge, and not an easy strategy to define, but needs to be addressed.   I’m challenging my customers to let us help them with that, as we have consultants and vehicles to assist their decision making teams in building these strategies.

In the Cloud Computing area….  I was recently asked by a customer what IBM’s Cloud Computing strategy is…. although I understand the broad strategy and even most of the moving parts for this… Cloud computing really is defined as:

2) helping ISV Partners design, build, deliver and market cloud services;

3) helping clients integrate cloud services into their business; and

4) providing cloud computing environments to businesses.

But in the K-12 context…  I felt it important to try and take this customer a little further…. K-12 School Boards traditionally are in tune with market trends and directions, winning strategies in Large Enterprise and Small to Medium Business, but lack the time and technical skills to really formulate a strong approach and strategy on their own…. beyond this…. they also struggling to maintain solid, always available computing environments for their users…    running in some cases up to 120 separate apps, most of which are “free” via negotiated licensing through the Ministry of Education (MoE) from the province of Ontario.      The apps found on this list (Referred to as OESS bundle, or OSAPAC) are in many cases, legacy applications that are not optimized for today’s computing environments… should you want a web-enabled title, or wish to use the current version, in many cases you have to pay for that licensing.   With limited IT budgets, and lots of “noise” at the ministry level (too many titles with no clear direction on which are best of breed, how to integrate, etc..)…  Boards just build a monster image with as many titles as their programs dept/user base deem useful, and build from there.

This single perception of “free” tools out there today, single handedly disarms any movement forward for boards into “real” cloud computing.    But first my definition of the cloud:

Cloud computing includes several different components (in my opinion, words and research):

- virtualization of servers – ie. making server entities ”bubbles” and sharing a common pool of hardware horsepower

- virtualization of applications – ie. making software a “bubble” and having it available only to users that really want it

- making all infrastructure resilient – no longer relying on a single device (server, PC, other) as a point of failure

- anytime, anywhere access

- ensure NO growth boundaries (automatically being able to use server workload whenever needed without having to necessarily buy a new server)

To then bridge this discussion to a K-12 institution, an explanation best offered by one of my managers Peter McKay, Middleware Manager: