Interesting Times - How NOT to Address Tragedy and #muslimrage in Schools

"May you live in Interesting times" 

- A saying from the counterweight continent, Discworld (among others)

War. What is it good for?
I was flipping through Facebook one morning this week and came across a few disturbing posts to the effect of: 

“Why isn’t the [US Government] administration doing anything?  Do they want another 9-11?”

Comments like this tend to activate the snarkiest part of my debate mind. I immediately start crafting cross-examination questions:

• “You would like to go on record that it is your belief that our politicians (or any Americans) want another tragedy like 9-11?”
• “What specific action would you like to see taken?”
• “Can this action be accomplished while maintaining or respect for sovereignty, innocent life, etc?”

Ultimately, though, while these mental exercises are fun, they don’t really help to solve any problems. Understanding the full expanse of the tragedy in Libya last week would require an understanding of a number of complex issues: international politics, recent history, religious differences, the interplay of government and religion in extremism to name a few.

News organizations, politicians, and the vast political and media machines that they control (or are controlled by) do not have the profit or vote motive to explain these issues. Decades of sound-byte culture have stripped away most of the mechanisms that could even deliver complex explanations anyway. Thus, in the light of smirks and anti-smirks, vague pleading for action on social media, and the real feelings of anger, fear, and sadness that surround any loss of life, the questions becomes “how do we educate the next generation on these issues?”

Everybody get together, Try to love one another right now
School is rarely like what we see in the movies. Few schools actually pull all of the girls into the gymnasium in order to convince them to stop being cruel to each other through trust falls. More often than not, big showy gestures end up feeling more like that scene in HEATHERS where well-meaning teachers, apathetic students, and a dash of media or parent hype create awkward eye-rolling moments.

Interlude (Overheard):
“Can you believe what is going on in the Middle East? It’s tragic”
“And on 9-11!”
“Frightening”
“Have you seen the video on YouTube that started the whole thing?”
“We should do something. For the kids. An assembly or something.”
“For the whole school. Something to really address this whole thing”
End Interlude

There are a lot of logistical issues with putting something like this together. I don’t want to address any of those.  There is also a strong argument to be made about when to "pull the all-school trigger” or, put another way, what makes this particular event worthwhile over so many others? Not going to write about that either.

Instead, I would like to approach this idea of teaching about the middle east tragedy as a worthy subject for our students. I will further assume that the logistics can be easily overcome and that the loss of classroom time in any other subject is relatively minimal. And yet, despite these two (rather significant) assumptions, there should still not be an all-school convocation on this topic. 

Why?-- it’s just bad education.

It’s not that all-school convocations are universally bad. We hold all-school masses and prayer services to worship together as a community. We bring students together to raise the emotional bar before homecoming games or to pay honor to students and alumni who exemplify the school's mission. We remember significant moments in our history (Martin Luther King Jr., Holocaust Remembrance Day), particularly when we have the rare opportunity to hear first person accounts that are increasingly rare and always precious. 

The best of these gatherings have a simple straightforward message that can be easily comprehended. The appeal,  when they work, is not an intellectual one, but one of emotion. Conversely, the worst large gatherings strip away emotional appeal entirely (boring), present a message that is too complicated (confusing), or make assumptions about the audience that interfere with the one-way messaging (offensive).

A large gathering about a currently-unfolding tragic event for any purpose other than grieving or solidarity is difficult to justify. Once we decide that the event is worthy of being taught, it becomes important not to become caught up in the chance for a big-moment if that same moment sacrifices the opportunity for true understanding, for true learning by the students. Instead, we should begin with the end in mind: if our goal is to achieve some sort of understanding about the underlying cause and potential actions possible in the Middle East, we need to construct learning opportunities that will likely lead to this understanding -- fortunately, for these situations we have a the solution:

It's called SCHOOL.

Teach Your Children Well

Context: The best classroom environments take into account student context. This context has a variety of factors, including grade level, maturity level, and the amount of information on the topic to which students have already been exposed. Teachers are trained to understand the context of students individually and as a group and expose them to information and experiences in units that can be processed and understood.

A world civilization teacher at the Freshman level will help students trace the cultural, religious, and historical factions that influenced the diversity of perspectives in the Muslim world.  

A teacher of a senior World Religions course will setup time to research the religious differences within sects of Islam and discuss the impact of specific religious texts within the context of extremism. Students in mass media or film production classes will dissect the editing of the YouTube video to maximize negative reactions.

Experience: One of the advantages of the modern age is the sheer amount of information that is available to our students. One of the disadvantages of the modern age is the sheer amount of information that is available to our students. Teachers have the two-fold task in situations like this to expose students to the relevant information (appropriate to maturity level, subject matter, etc.) while also beginning to help students form their own filtering processes to adapt to and account for all of that information.

Students in the Digital Citizenship analyze  the growth of viral Youtube videos compared with claims about causality. Use of #muslimrage as a pressure release and context shifting use of social media.

 Sophomore Speech and Debate students can break down the claims on the same event as covered by a variety of media types and sources.

Reflection: This information is processed (and the information filters are created) through processes of reflection: merging prior knowledge with new experiences through discussion, journaling, debates, and other thoughts.

Use concentric circle discussions (personal, partners, small groups, large feedback on butcher paper) to identify opinion/fact, overstated claims, insufficient research for conclusion, and fact checking. Compare papers as a class (gallery walk) and do the fact-checking on articles and op-ed broadcasts

Additionally, breaking the learning into cross-curricular units has the advantage of providing repetition in a variety of contexts (this strengthens the subject itself and weakens the intellectual silos that students tend to build in schools). Students also have more opportunity to share feelings, listen to multiple points of view, and confront passionate and, at times, contradictory material. Finally, in smaller settings with a teacher who is a subject-matter expert, they have the safety of the group and a guide as material become complicated or frustrating.

This is learning. Real learning.

There is an oft-used expression that is popular in science-fiction: "May you live in interesting times" 

We do...And they are. 

It is easy to long for a simpler time and easier solutions. 
One big event. 
One simple message. 
One cathartic moment. 

But life is messy. Politics and religion are...interesting. We do ourselves and our students a disservice to pretend that it is otherwise. Embrace the complexity and allow the students to do the same. In that struggle to comprehend and the structured experience and reflection provided by our classes, we can challenge our children to do more than passively absorb -- we can ask them to understand and, based on that understanding, to take action. 

Now that would be interesting. 

Centennial Post - Deciphering The (Lexile ) Numbers - Education as Big Business

Preface: The Score Letter
I think every family with two working adults and multiple school-age children has that table that gathers piles of paper. You know the one that I mean. Our main one (because we have many) is the kitchen island. One stack is generally for comic books and various non-urgent papers, another stack is bills, and my wife has her own stack of "i will go through these as soon as I have a spare moment...say 2020?" papers. My children have followed the example of the parents with stacks of "you may want to look at these" papers (in which every permission slip, late homework notice, etc. invariably ends up). When I got home one night last week, I noticed an official letter on the top stack for my eldest, the ten-year-old Daughter Prime.

The letter described a formal exam taken by all students to determine her LEXILE score. The score, the letter went on to explain, was a measure of reading comprehension that had been validated seven ways from Sunday and had a great many uses for teachers and parents. I could find out more information by going to Lexile.com and reading about the score there.
End Preface

Thoughts on Milestones and Education Reform
As I write this post, my hundredth on the geekreflection site since @40ishoracle and I decided it would be a hoot to share our thoughts with the world, I have been thinking about the changes that have been happening in education in the short time since i set foot in the classroom 15 years ago. Back then, high-stakes testing was not a significant focus of classroom activity nor was it a significant piece of the educational dialogue. In most schools, students were told that it was a measure of what you had learned in class and was not something over which you should stress. Exit exams were in place at the high-school level and classes had been created to prepare or remediate the lowest potential scorers, but it had not affected the students who were likely to pass (note: i spent my first three years of teaching in low-track and test remediation courses -- the youngest teachers often did).

The tide had not yet turned against teachers in the political rhetoric. Our job was still considered professional and difficult and while there was a murmur of anti-union rhetoric starting, it did  not have the venom that is present in today's attacks on teachers. Movies that were made talked about difficult environments and socially ingrained issues (which could include clueless administrators and burned out teachers) but often focused on the need for committed and dedicated adults as a key factor in turning around a troubled school (note: this is still presumed to be true in the sound-bytes of most politicians, just not in any of the legislation that they produce).

Education as a business was beginning to gain some ground with charter schools being touted as the market-based solution to the woes of the most struggling schools. The focus on the profitability of the classroom was limited to textbook publishers and a few very specific educational technology providers, particularly in Math and Science. Today, my mailbox fills up with catalogs promising me improved test scores, pre-packaged curricula that strives to take the wild-card factor of the teacher out of the equation as much as possible, and every kind of metric-based, value-added software on the planet to pre-test, address, student-personalize, and teacher-assess my way to a bright future where we will be competitive with the overseas armies of better standardized testers.

Interlude: A Look into Lexile
My wife, having read the letter, asks me what a lexile of "1377" actually means. I had no idea. So we went to the website. On the website, we learned that:

• The Lexile was not a grade-based equivalent score (you should not use this to see how your student is doing in class or how a school program is doing in preparing your child)
• The Lexile is not a comparative - no data will be released or found on where your child is in comparision to other children of the same age or grade
• The Lexile is an independent measure of comprehension, measured on its patented scale - don't try to use this score to draw any conclusions whatsoever about - well - anything.

In fact, the only thing that we were supposed to use the Lexile score to do was to type it into a database to find Lexile-scored books that would be appropriate for my 10 year old to read.

That's it. Plug the number and get the book list. So that is what we did...
End Interlude.

Choosing Between Two Masters
The disturbing part about the education-as-business model is not that there are people who want to make money off of education. We live in a capitalistic world. If there is a market, someone will make money. The disturbing part is that this system, devoid of any kind of common-sense oversight (dare I say it, "regulation") can easily twist itself into the worst the marketplace has to offer. Think of the millions (low estimate) of dollars being spent by school districts to measure teacher value-add. School districts that are cutting teachers and support staff, raising class sizes, and choosing refurbished netbooks for their students are investing in a resource that has dubious validity in improving actual learning and slightly less dubious validity in improving test scores. Maybe the money should be spend in actually validating a connection between test scores and learning...or test scores and teacher effectiveness...or test scores and -- any connection -- that would at least be some interesting research.

Interlude II: Plugging and Chugging
The Lexile choose-a-book system is relatively simple. Enter the score and press enter. There is even a place to enter some rudimentary information to try to get a book list without the Lexile score (grade level, reading easy/hard, etc.). Once the score is entered, you select categories. My daughter is into post-apocalyptic dystopias (Hunger Games; Among the Hidden), so I chose sci-fi/fantasy. and the results (drumroll please):

The recommendations for a Lexile of 1377. Witchcraft and Eroticism

Well, that was disturbing. After repeated attempts, I could pull nothing but literary criticism. I am not sure if there is age-appropriate lit.crit for a ten year old, but I prefer to think that if it exists, it does not articulate the correlation between sex and science-fiction.

Fotunately, there are some limiters by age as well as Lexile score, so i decided to play around with those as well. I chose to limit the age range between 10-12. As a proud parent, I had to give her a few more years of range.

The good news is that the limiters did erase some of the suggestions. The bad news is that a) my daughter was still stuck firmly in the world of literary criticism (does no one in the 1300 range read fiction?) and many of the titles that I thought a little mature for the pre-teen set were still suggested:

YES MEANS YES: Straight feminism fun with fetishes...

Clearly being a dad has turned me into a prude. I noted the book to download into my wife's Kindle and decided to start over from the beginning. Cleared my cache. Entered 6th Grade, reads above her grade level. The results: lots of lit.crit. I narrowed the categories to fiction only. Those results constituted the type of writing that would drive children of all ages far from reading.

Finally, despondent, I re-entered a lexile range, limited to age 11-12 (i was a little weary), and limited it to straight fiction...no more choice reading for my daughter:

One Book Available

There you have it. One book available. The 208 pages MONSTER MEN by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Happy reading, dear.
End Interlude

A Twisted Business
This summer, I got to listen to Sal Khan describe the humble beginnings of the Khan Academy: a tutorial for a young, bright relative who was struggling with math. This was before his dream of providing "a world class education to any child, anywhere". This was before Microsoft founders and the Gates Foundation labeled this system a great boon to education.  As I listened to him, the image that I could not shake was that he was sincere and inspiring. That his simple idea and aspirations for a future where money and location did not preclude access to an education, had been perverted by politicians and businessmen who saw the potential to sell a system that could replace teachers.

He specifically responds to critics, saying that the videos make excellent supplements to the relationship between the teacher and student necessary in the best of educational environments. And yet, entire charter schools are set up with Khan-Cubicle formats for learning math. Teachers are threatened subtly and not-so-subtly with replacement by video or replacement by younger teachers -- well, both methods are at least cost effective.

Reflection: This Piper Must be Paid
When I asked librarians about the Lexile, they had all heard of it. All knew that it was a measure of reading comprehension, had some vague memories of it being used to mark books. None of the librarians I talked to recalled using it as an essential instrument in helping students choose books. These librarians had list-servs, colleagues, recommendations from other students, and their own training and experience. They did not need these scores. But that was then...

The same school district that provided this most-excellent diagnostic resource is clustering or eliminating librarian positions. In some cases, schools are fortunate to have a librarian assistant a few days a month. No time to create effective book clubs, setup programs for encouraging reading, or learn enough about a class's context, let alone an individual student's to recommend a good book. Now we use Lexiles.

(note: in direct violation of the spirit of the score, the Lexile is also used by the district as a contributing piece of data to determine who needs additional reading resources. Evidently someone is willing to match the number to a reading level).

• The Lexile system is contracted out to standardized tests in order to provide scores to test-taking school districts - money.
• Publishers work to have their catalogs scored and listed on the ever-important find-a-book list - more money.
• School districts test students independently to give students a lexile score - even more money.

Money that could be spent on books
Money that could be spent on librarians
Money that could be spend on teachers

But politicians want numbers and companies want money.
Its just too bad that the students are the ones who end up paying.

BYOT DayByDay: Wrap-up: Understanding Digital Natives and Making Inconvenient Choices

The BYOT Day by Day Series will capture the first few weeks of implementation of the full BYOT program at Brebeuf Jesuit. Brebeuf Jesuit is 1:1 BYOT w/ financial aid support for over 25% of its student population in the form of technology grants. It will try to capture some of the tips, tricks, and pitfalls. It will highlight the successes and a few of the frustrations.

[Continued from yesterday, so some of the intro is the same...the article was originally 2300 words. See, I do recognize when i go REALLY LONG]

This will probably be the last regular posting in the DaybyDay series. It has been a good day to end as I have heard from students and teachers about some wonderful things going on in the classroom. We also had a couple of the "bad decision maker" discussions that were referenced yesterday, but even those serve a purpose in the grand scheme of things.

I mentioned yesterday that @40ishoracle and I were reflecting on the reason behind BYOT. In the same way that a general Pro/Con article tends to give legitimacy to arguments by nature of the article's structure rather than its validity, I think it is difficult to measure the success of an endeavor without recalling why it was attempted in the first place.

So...

• BYOT implementation solves the major issues identified by teachers and students: more access, availability of the tools the student's want to use, faster and more stable connection, off campus access. Hard to believe after talking about this for so long, that it started 3 and a half years ago with teacher and student round-tables about what was working and what wasn't.
• Preparation for the digital world: Technology has been consumerized. IT is no longer the sole decision of the techno-trolls in the caves (and we trolls actually kind of like it that way -- project!). Students have to be able to ASSESS their needs and EVALUATE the options they have in order to effectively USE them and solve the problem of the day.
• As we entered our pilot year and began working with teachers and students in a live environment, we realized that the BYOT world allowed teachers to focus more on their areas of subject expertise while students were empowered, and in some cases challenged, to meet expectations with their own technology.
• Through tech petting zoos, introductions at open houses, and lots and lots of conversations with students we identified a ton of issues to work on as we moved out of the pilot year, including re-writes to the Acceptable Use Policy, upgrades to the network, and new ways of thinking about education in general.
• The Board of Trustees allowed us to shift our budget to provide significant financial aid in order to make sure that all students got the benefit of choice, not just those blessed with the means. Focusing resources where they are most needed to improve the environment for everyone became our watchwords in the budgeting process.

Changing the Culture, Changing the Classrooms

"It really depends on the class, but there are some classes where two or three students are helping another two or three students. And it grows. Then the entire classroom becomes a group effort. It's wonderful. How do we make this happen all the time?" - Science Teacher

In Social Studies students are using Google Maps to create a my places map of significant points in history. Each student uses each device to make the maps. Some of them love the touch screen. Others are using the mouse and keyboard. Great activity, but not necessarily one that would have warranted bringing out a cart or checking out a lab. But when the devices are at their fingertips...

"I have never allowed students to use computer, dictionaries, etc. I have always wanted them to know the vocabulary by heart. This time, I told them they could use all the sources they had (notes, online, translators). I am curious to see how well-written and thoughtful the responses are...They are still required to "use their own words' so no copying from articles. So far, those who haven't studies are spending more time looking up the words than writing. This should be interesting." - World Language Teacher

The assignment was to create visual representations of a historical concept. One of the students created an animation. It was perfect with stamps and taxes flying around and then a fist crushing out the machine. I have to rethink my frame-of-reference. I thought of visual as static, but with these tools and these students, that is no longer a limitation. So creative. - Social Studies Teacher

Students were working in groups while contributing to a class set of notes that was displayed on the board. Small groups were looking up definitions while in the middle of a discussion that was graded by the teacher walking around the room. One group of students was brainstorming the process of putting media from cameras into a report. -- Administrator Walkthrough

Reading check quizzes through the LMS; Vocabulary words identified in news papers and news casts from around the world, Teach and Learn sessions as students make sure each person in the group can effectively complete the task at hand.

"There is more active learning going on today than one year ago. I don't think it is all BYOT, but it is something. Less lecture, more activity." - Administrator (ok, fine, that was @40ishoracle)

Choosing Culture over Convenience

BYOT Brown Bag lunches have helped identify issues
and share successes. We have snacks!

"Kids have too many things to remember. They complain a lot."

"Can we just make every teacher use EdLine? There are too many options."

We have been talking about this one a lot! Students have a password for EdLine, a password for the wireless, a password for gDocs, Biology textbooks, the iPad app for Biology textbooks, the Naviance account for the college application...You get the picture. If a student's teacher uses Edmodo, or a club uses Skydrive or Dropbox, then there are more accounts and more username/password combinations.

Is this a problem? It certainly can be. But it is also a lot like life.

The digital age encourages us to have usernames and password in order to conveniently function. We have accounts for email (home and work), facebook, twitter, dropbox, our bank accounts, taxes, the DMV, our student's lunch account, etc. The digital world is about identity management and that includes password control.  After lots of thought and lots of discussion with students and teachers and administrators, we decided that the advantages of the tools outweighed the potential confusion, with these caveats: 

• Teachers should post all external site links used to classroom EdLine (our primary LMS which includes parent accounts)
• Teachers should have clear instructions on what types of systems will be used in the syllabus
• Teachers should communicate with parents regularly, but especially if classroom assignments will use social media systems (and, in those cases, alternative assignments should be available).

This will be one of the specific questions we ask at the student round-tables (or at least create listen-fors that will capture it). Much like the technical issues discussed yesterday, we are trying to figure out if this is a widespread annoyance that should be addressed, even if it is talking through the expectation in #digcit, or if it is a problem only to a few students that we should work with on a case-by-case basis (or...possibly...if it is an excuse being used to derail some teachers -- oh teenagers. we were your age once).

Civilizing the Natives

What a Digital Native Looks Like

"I had the instructions clearly on the board: Login. Go to this website. Use this account information. Take notes in Google Docs. All of the kids were working, but one kid in the  back was clearly frustrated. I went to ask him if I could help. He had a blank screen. I asked him if his battery had died.

"No, I just don't understand your instructions. How do I log-in when the computer is turned off?" - Guidance Counselor

"Despite the hype that these students are supposed to be brilliant on technology, they really aren't." - Math Teacher

"Technology Generation? Not buying it." - Facebook Friend Teaching Computers to 5th Graders

"When will my student actually use the device? It has been two weeks." - Parent

That last one really stumped us. How could a student not have used his or her device two weeks into school? But, we realized, there is a difference between the command to "pull out your device and complete the following assignment" (which there is actually plenty of) and the opportunity to make it a part of your educational life by taking notes, completing writing prompts, communicating with teachers, or checking assignments -- none of these necessarily requires a computer but kids are using devices to do this every day in and out of classrooms.

The term "Digital Natives" is used to invoke images of toddlers at touchscreens wielding sorcerous-like powers. However, in our experience, it just means that students are not afraid to press buttons -- That's really about it. They will experiment if they have a motivation to do so and are given that freedom. Forming "Digital Citizens", people with knowledge and skills to use information effectively, responsible consumers of data with social media savvy, users of technology to solve problems beyond tilt-jump-slide gestures -- that takes more than a birthdate in the 20-aughts. It takes guides who understand the digital context of our students, exposure to new experiences that utilize information and tools in complex ways, and the time to reflect with others on those experiences.

The problem is two-fold. These experiences, normally problems to be solved or answers to be sought, must take place in real situations. There has to be some level of actual content -- Students can see through a faux assignment in a heartbeat. We used to teach "website analysis" by showing fake websites that had been constructed Onion-style. Too many years went by before we realized that the rolling eyes and disinterested doodling was a message, loud and clear. Additionally, consequences for not accomplishing the tasks have to have some reality as well. If a student does not get the scientific method or cannot control the supporting facts within a tightly structured informative paragraph, we grade accordingly. Students who refuse to make assignments legible i.e., in a readable file format, may have to suffer the bad grade or the call home to discuss with parents. 

Second, and much more a problem of our own making, we have to overcome years of training that has told kids there is only one right answer, one right way of doing a problem, and one right sequence of buttons to push to get the result. Some students have developed a strong aversion to thinking or innovating. "Flowers are red. Green leaves are green." And there is no need to make a PowerPoint any other way than the way they always have been seen (Thanks, Chapin. We miss you).

We have many recent anecdotes of teachers telling kids to put media into a presentation or lab report where the reaction is a blank stare of "How?" We have to train them out of being automatons and into critical consumers and even creators. It is possible, but it takes time, patience, and a little tough love.

But its worth it:

Students, Teachers, Devices, and Education. Oh my, indeed

"They reached into their bags and pulled out all kinds of devices and just started using them. Like they had been doing this for years." - Administrator during Teacher Walk-Through

"I love that they get to do this. This is what the world is like." - Parent

"I love that they can get their books onine when they forget them. I love that they can write papers together. I love that the class is not delayed by 'Oh, I wish I had the lab, today." - World Language teacher

"It's going good. It's just normal now." - Student

{for more start of the year review: We have more or less covered the opening chronologically over the last three weeks (starting way back with "Before the Storm", then continuing in Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4&5); we put the blog in the hands of one of our math teacher for the ironically named "nouns and verbs" post and last week's space was devoted to the largest problem of implementation thus far (the eText Conundrum part I and II).}

BYOT DayByDay 15: Anecdotes & an Analysis of Tech Issues

The BYOT Day by Day Series will capture the first few weeks of implementation of the full BYOT program at Brebeuf Jesuit. Brebeuf Jesuit is 1:1 BYOT w/ financial aid support for over 25% of its student population in the form of technology grants. It will try to capture some of the tips, tricks, and pitfalls. It will highlight the successes and a few of the frustrations.

This is the penultimate post in the DaybyDay series. We will of course keep talking about BYOT, but this seems like a good place to close a "start of the year" series as we end the month of August. Also, I am really kind of excited to share some of the things going on in the Digital Citizenship class as well as some cool #flipclass examples going on throughout the school. Finally, with the election heating up, I am sure that some politician will do something that gets me a-ranting, so i need a clean plate.

I thought about doing a Pro-Con article this time, outlining the good and bad of the BYOT experience after three full weeks. But the problem with a pro-con is that it has a strange distortion effect. Each point appears to have equal weight on either side of the ledger -- a minor implementation detail has the same visual impact as a huge philosophical benefit. Thus, the attempt at balance ends up skewing the perception of the reader (I feel like I blogged about this before, but maybe i was just dreamtweeting. The NEA has a good example of what I mean -- Pro = real life examples; Con = hypotheticals that stir up the fear of the masses).

We have more or less covered chronology over the last three weeks (starting way back with "Before the Storm", then continuing in Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4&5); we put the blog in the hands of one of our math teachers for the ironically named "nouns and verbs" post; and last week's space was devoted to the largest problem of implementation thus far (the eText Conundrum part I and II).

So...

I started a list of things that I was pretty sure I had not mentioned in other places or that had been reinforced in the last few days. As the ever-amazing @40ishoracle and I began discussing it, we reflected back to our original goals and the origins of the program. We'll recap that tomorrow in our last post.

Changing Culture, Changing Classrooms

"Our students will be so much better prepared when they go to college. They see on a daily basis that problem solving is not the same thing as button pushing." - English Teacher

"I used to give a sample interest problem. Then we would solve it together. Then I would put another one on the board. Now we still solve one in class. Then I send them out to find a car website...And a bank site's interest calculator. They get to find the car of their dreams and figure out why mom and dad don't buy it for them." - Math Teacher

My Kingdom for a Printer

The dean of students came to the Teacher Resource Room for a visit. "I had an English teacher ask me if we could set up the printer in our office to be a printing station for students." This has been a growing concern, particularly upstairs. The labs upstairs are generally locked when not in use by teachers. Students who used to do work on paper, now have it digitally, so if a teacher wants to collect it the old-fashioned way, it must be printed. All student printers are centralized in the library and connected "Class Lab".

If we find a space (limited) where we could put a printer, then we open up a different set of issues. Technology that is not "owned" by someone quickly deteriorates. When a department is responsible for a lab, it is usually in pretty good condition. When copiers are put in "general use" areas (even for teachers only), they tend to have higher breakdown rates, run out of supplies more often, and need to be replaced more quickly. Haven't got the solution to this one yet, but it is going to have to be discussed.

Personalizing Education and Technical Issues

"Next year can we just require them to have Microsoft Word?"
"That would mean no tablets, no iPads. It's really restrictive"
"I am ok with that."

Macs have trouble with equation editor.
Macs have trouble with PowerPoint.
Macs have trouble with documents

"My son says he is getting a C in his class because he has an iPad"

Network admin is working on three problems at once (we counted)
While on the phone with his might-be-in-labor wife

In a large homogenous system, when something breaks, it tends to break across the board. I still cringe over days when the entire internet is inaccessible or all phones go down. In the 1:1 BYOT world, problems are more often individual ones. True, some of the individual problems repeat a lot: resetting passwords, typing in the right address to get to wireless authentication, saving a Keynote document as a PPT so that it can be opened and graded by the teacher. Occasionally the problem is unique: a bad model of wireless card that has to be replaced or a specialized program file that cannot be uploaded to a homework hand-in.

Our systems and guidelines work 95% of the time and most problems are single-fix and satisfied customers walking out the door. Occasionally, we have students who become "frequent flyers". These students have the same problems again and again (our record is a single student who created 4 accounts to access his biology textbook, had 2 different Turn-it-In accounts, and needed his gDocs account reset 4 times and counting) or find a problem with each new thing they try (these are the ones who walk in either apologetically sorry-to-bother-you-again or arrogantly your-network-is-responsible-for-my-forgotten-password-and-the-national-debt).

Teachers become frustrated when these issues interrupt their classes or derail their plans but have learned to adapt for the most part (it helps that we have chromebooks ready for grab-and-go productivity). Parents have been listening to us and are very responsive to the school's efforts to make students responsible. Most students are also very good at working around issues. Frequent flyers are rare, but in some ways, they are what we have left.

Interlude: Resetting Perspective
I was helping a student with a document upload issue (outdated java controller). When she authenticated to the server, I commented, "I am so happy when it says 'Authentication Succeeded'". She looked at me and said "hundreds of students do that every period. You only hear about the few who have issues." -- Good point. love insightful students.
End Interlude

Thus, three weeks in, we have entered an interesting phase. Most students have made accommodations necessary for their devices (I use an iPad, therefore there are extra steps when uploading documents to webpages; I use a PC, so I need to borrow or bring a different device to take decent photos; etc.). Then there are a few students:

• The student who leaves the same class four times in a week to "get computer help" but never shows up in the IT department
• The student who doesn't turn in four assignments because he has an iPad and feels it is mean of the teacher to not allow him to just email the document to her
• The student who receives a low B on his first exam after being observed gaming in class, during study periods, in the lunchroom, etc.

Each of these issues could easily be mislabeled as "tech" issues but they are actually behavioral issues. Examples of students making less-than-optimal choices. In a traditional school with a traditional technology program, many of these students would be able to slide by finding teachers willing to give them a break because computers are scary...or hard...or unreliable. Some of these students would have bad habits that would manifest in other ways (obsessive doodling/daydreaming) or not manifest at all until they get to college (insert anecdote about tweeting with students for an hour during their econ lectures).

Students, Teachers, Devices, and Education. Oh my, indeed

Because we operate in an environment where technology is not allowed to be the default bad guy, we are able to make these incidents opportunities for discussion: making better classroom choices, accepting the consequences for decisions (including the choice of tool), working with parents to find ways to encourage responsible time-use behaviors. Teachers feel supported by tech, by administration, and by parents to take a "you are responsible for getting the file to me...on time...in a readable format" stance. Parents take comfort in knowing that others are willing to fight the big scary tech battle along side them and that we are individualized enough that truly extreme circumstances can be accommodated. Tech has the trust and support of faculty and students as we make things work. Next week, we add more layers to this communication process as we begin to schedule BYOT Round Tables with students to find out what they need and how we can continue to provide it.

Thus, education is becoming more personalized and the technical problems are beginning to match. But with each problem we face, we are able to identify it as behavioral or technical or (as is often the case) messy. We work with teachers and students to take responsibility where necessary, be flexible when it promotes a greater good, and occasionally hold someone accountable for a bad decision.

Responsibility, Flexibility, Accountability -- Good for Tech and Great for College Prep.

The eText Conundrum, Part II: iPads, Databases, and Widening Gyres

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction while the worstAre full of passionate intensity. - "The Second Coming" William Butler Yeats

Dramatic Enough?

@40ishoracle Commentary: Release the CODES!

In Part I, we left off with students able to open their electronic textbooks, having finally reached the right tech support person within the Pearson hierarchy who was able to release the correct code. Another notch in our BYOT belt was checked. That was Friday.

Over the weekend, I received an email from a distraught parent. Her son was unable to open the BIology textbook despite the codes given, the user created, etc. The parent needed to find out the refund procedure in order to trade in their electronic license for a paper copy (although later we found out the student might actually have been pushing for the iBooks copy, although that is still a little hazy on this end).

Since I have people at MBS monitoring this blog ("hi, @mbstextbook), I decided to email a few of them to get the ball rolling.  Early Monday, I met with the teacher, got the student access code, and began working on the problem in her classroom. In front of me, a laptop logged into the teacher's account on Pearson Database ALPHA, an iPad from the teacher resource center, a chromebook, and an ASUS Transformer Prime.

Biology book on laptop - Check
Chromebook - Check

These versions were in FLASH, so that was clearly not going to be the solution (and thus far, that was the only instruction they had been given).

To the interwebs!

Need to read a Pearson textbook? There's an app for that...in fact there are like 5 of them. A quick help search showed that the high-school version was "Pearson for Schools". Downloaded the app. Installed. Used the login that I had created with the student code and smiled that knowing-smile that says "no problem"

The login/password that you have typed is incorrect or you do not have any books available for this format.

 So, the Pearson App is unable to tell which of those two VERY different issues is the problem? Seriously?

Confirmed that Pearson login was correct (as far as I knew). So now I am faced with the very real possibility that this book does not have an iPad equivalent. My @mbstextbook reps tell me that they are in conversation with Pearson.

The web gives me one help page that says Pearson is "compiling a list of books that are compatible with their online app". Ouch. A second page gives me a list of books, but our book is not one of the four Biology textbooks listed. Double Ouch.

More emails. I send out a tweet of desperation and get another @mbstextbook rep. working on my problem. I also receive this from the regional sales manager @Pearson:

@jdferries maybe because you didn't buy the access from pearson?
— David Hartman (@dthartman) August 20, 2012

Outstanding. More sales reps appearing bitter and unwilling to help a customer. Way to control the social media image of your organization. My first response was the snark version of my thoughts from the last post: if you don't want to support 3rd party distributors, quit using them. But when I attempted to engage with a legitimate plea: If i could get any rep to tell me there is an iPad/Android version of this book, that would be something... I was ignored.

My day ended with my @mbstextbook rep on a plane, no contact from @pearson support, frustrated teachers and students and parents. I sent out my last slightly-annoyed "where are we?" emails.

The next day, bright and early, I got an email from my in-flight @mbstextbook rep: "We have other schools opening that book on the iPad. There is a technical issue. I talked to a guy who is going to call you. Let me know!"

I had missed a call! and an email! (grr AT&T). A little phonetag later and I was introduced to a tech. A hardcore, knows his stuff, tested the solution before he called me, genuine support tech from @pearson. Without a doubt, Chris Holder is awesome!

The Solution:

• Pearson Database ALPHA gives access to the web versions of the text and the tablet version of SOME texts. But NOT the Biology book. 
• iPad Access is granted through Pearson Database GAMMA.
  ...but first
• He gives me access to Pearson Database BETA (remember? from Chemistry). I have to do a bulk upload of students in biology (who purchased the book).
• To get the bulk upload into the template I take students in biology out of Brebeuf Database Alpha and match them to student emails out of Brebeuf Database Beta (Why, hello, MSExcel, long time no use!).
• After uploading the template, I create a fake teacher account and log into Pearson Database GAMMA
• I have to hand type each student name until the GAMMA database pulls the student name from the BETA database. --> One hundred and eighty three students later.
• Test on the tablet. Successful.
• Grab a Freshman out of #digcit. Test on iPad successful
• Email new usernames and passwords to Biology teachers.
• DONE!

Whew!

From Science Department Chair:

@jdferries Pearson online chem book still not working...
— jbrady (@mrbradybjps) August 22, 2012

Reflection:

We are in the infancy of eTextbooks. We as educators and techs must understand this. While technology may be moving faster, bugs must still be worked out of systems.

But publishers and distributors have a responsibility as well. They cannot sell systems as simple and easy if it requires access to 3 different publisher accounts under two different usernames (in addition to two potential school databases).

In the effort to leverage textbooks into online learning management empires, publishers are forgetting a few essential things:

1. Simplicity. Teachers want students to have a textbook. That process should be simple. Teachers are not accountants, book managers, or your employees.
2. Educational technology, including eTextbooks should be used if it makes a teacher's job easier or has a direct and measurable impact on the learning of the student. This process did neither of those things and kept the text out of the hands of students until the 3rd week of school.
3. Teachers have neither the time nor the desire to learn a complex system laden with features that are of no interest to them. Your leverage only work until it breaks and when it does, you will have a lot of time and effort wasted for want of more power.

Publishers and Distributors need to stop throwing each other under the bus. If they are partners, they need to consistently act like it. They should do what they do best: Get excellent content into the hand of teachers and student quickly and at an affordable rate.

I agree with @explanarob that eTexts are the future and that beyond their benefits of searching, notetaking, and sharing, we must find ways to embrace their analytic and content-update aspects. But at the end of the day, we're creating incredibly complex systems that cannot be used, nor understood, by the users who need the benefits the most.

That is the centre that cannot hold...

Less empire building.
Less blame throwing
Less complexity

Good content. Affordable. Easy.

Students are waiting.

The eText Conundrum - A BYOT Fiasco Resolved Over 6 Days, Part I

Let me preface this rant (and oh, there will be ranting) with the following disclaimer: I don't really believe any of the actors in this situation are evil. Self-interested? Sure. Willing to dodge issues and give problems to others? Absolutely. But there is no need to assign maliciousness when incompetence will suffice. And the more complex a system, the more room incompetence has to stretch its legs. and with that...

BYOT Day 6:

I receive an email with the subject line "may be time for you to get involved". Attached is a string of increasingly frustrating correspondences between my science teachers, the 3rd party book distributor that the school uses, and @Pearson publishers.

The tale of woe features the Freshman Biology textbook. In the spirit of BYOT and after surveying students, the science department decided last spring to require the eText version of the Biology textbook. This was news to the IT department. We thought we had a handle on all of the classes doing this (we have about 4 classes with mandatory eTexts, ranging from PDFs to Kindle books to Publisher/Distributor branded formats). In fact, we had specifically avoided making some classes mandatory since the e-text came from Pearson Publishing.

Interlude: What's So Wrong with Pearson?
Pearson publishing is one of the big names in textbooks and there are not all that many names. For those of you not in education or only in the technical side of education, textbooks are a BIG DEAL. Publishers send local sales reps to show off the newest in textbooks and supplemental materials. For years, these supplemental materials have taken the form of technology and in very recent years, eText access has been huge. Any one of the many issues with this nexus of for-profit business and the generally not-for-profit vocation of education could be the focus of one of my really long blogs.

Pearson, as all good businesses do, wants teachers to use as many of its products as possible. A step in this direction has been the creation of a virtual empire of educational online services that leverage their high-quality textbooks to hook teachers (and subsequently students) into its other offerings. If every student in a school has been entered into the Pearson LMS with its myriad of assignments, notes, reading checks, etc., because of one textbook purchase, then why would any teacher want to choose another publisher's text? Thus the quality of one book, tied to a learning management platform, makes it that much easier for a department/teacher/school to make Pearson the publisher of choice for other books. Got it? When you choose Pearson, you buy into the entire Pearson mega-system.

One problem with this system is that the books in question are not always available cross platform. When we were testing books last year, it became impossible to get a guarantee from the publisher that the books would work on all of the devices we expected to see in our BYOT environment. That is one problem.
End Interlude

Back to the story.

This parrot and I are now besties

Turns out that the Biology textbook, Miller and Levine's BIOLOGY, came with a code. This is not the typical "student gets a code in an envelope with their book" type system. This is a code for the teacher. The teacher logs into what we'll call Pearson Database ALPHA with this code. They create classes and from the classes, a student code is generated. The teacher then (comes directly from the instructions that were emailed with the code) distributes the classroom code to those students who can prove that they have purchased the code. One method to check this consumer eligibility was to match the student with a list of "people who have purchased the book" -- which may or may not be a name similar to the student! If the name cannot be matched, they are not to give the code.

Just to clarify, the way that this is SUPPOSED to work is:

1. teacher receives access code
2. teacher creates account with code and sets up at least one course
3. teachers generates a single student code for all students
4. teachers USES CLASS TIME to play bookstore manager/accountant/distribution clerk rather than focusing on the task at hand, which, we hope, is TEACHING!

This is a waste of teacher time, class time, and student time. It makes the final steps of this profit-making venture part a teacher's classroom responsibility for no discernible student or classroom benefit. In fact, if a student is rejected by the teacher for not making the list (or not realizing Aunt Sally purchased the textbook), it could alter the teacher-student relationship from day one. If a student has to explain that she is on the list as a student who receives books as part of financial aid, the subsequent embarrassment could change the teacher-student relationship.

The way it is SUPPOSED to work is insane.

The code did not work.

After contacting the @mbsbooks, our 3rd party distributor, the teacher received another code. 

The code did not work.

When the @pearson support number was called by our teachers, they were told that the problem was that we purchased through a 3rd party and not directly from @pearson.

Interlude: What So Wrong with Pearson?

This is a default justification that we have heard for 4 years. We first heard it when we were told that the only way to receive "supplemental" language materials was by direct purchase. We were told this despite having e-mails from Pearson stating otherwise (pre-sale). We were told this when local sales reps could not comp. teacher's editions (a common practice in education).

Here is the thing. Local sales reps make commission (or magic-fairy-dust-points or whatever) based on sales. I completely understand the frustration in having to spend time and effort selling to schools that don't improve their balance sheet in the end. We do not expect the same level of go-to support unless we are told that it will be offered (and we have been told that) But...

Pearson makes the choice to sell through 3rd parties. It is in their interest to do so. If my teachers have a clear understanding of will and will not be forthcoming as a result of using MBS, they can decide accordingly. What happens, in writing, is a promise of one thing pre-sale and a lack of follow-through post. We chose the Pearson sold eText through our distributor because it was available and we expected it to work. 

End Interlude

We slowly and calmly explained that the code we received, even the first one, did not come from MBS, but was a code given to us from Pearson (as if the codes could be generated by MBS for use on a Pearson system?), We were moved, just as slowly, up the support chain.

Finally, after frustrated teachers: "I had no idea that it was going to be this complicated", frustrated department chairs, "We have to use this book. They have us over a barrel.", frustrated 3rd party sales reps. "They must have a code that will actually work!", one of our teachers received a code that let her access Pearson Database ALPHA (Turns out the first code was for Pearson Database BETA which is used for the Chemistry book, no clue what was wrong with the second code).

The teacher created her account. The teacher generated the student code.

The student code did not work.

More phone calls. More teeth gnashing. More MBS vs. Pearson rhetoric.

On Day 6 of school, with yet another code, students were able to successfully open their laptops, surf to a website, enter a new teacher-generated code, create a user account, and, if the pop-up blocker was off and they were not using Internet Explorer (script error)...open their Biology Textbook.

whew.

...but it didn't open on Tablets

End Part I

Part II is now posted

On Nouns & Verbs in a BYOT World - A Math Teacher's Reflection

Math Department Chair, Layton Elliot, is a near-constant fixture in the Teacher Resource Center. When he is not mooching off our coffee (our Keurig manna is strong), he is constantly pushing and challenging the IT department to be more open and more flexible. He has grown from the "guy who stuck his laptop into the freezer" (it was overheating) to a power user who is always looking for the next thing to improve math education...or intra-team communication...or faculty collaboration. When I received this reflection, it seemed the perfect time to hand the reigns over for a guest blog.  In keeping with my format, he approaches TL;DR as he addresses "Verbs, Not Nouns", the BYOT culture wars, and the need for critical analysis at CHOICE OF TECH level. I resisted the urge to comment, but you are free to do so below

Technology is so infused in what I do each day, from creating math worksheets to consuming Olympics live streams. And yet, I find myself wanting more. Lots more. Much as our director of faculty development states that we are “never fully developed” as professionals, a theme of the 2012 JSEA Symposium, our technology is just never quite good enough. On one end, we want (or are told we want by Apple press events) higher resolutions, faster bandwidths, and more storage. But on another end, we want a satisfactory marriage of the various computing services out there. I am quite now convinced through personal experiences and dozens of conversations with our CIO that I cannot subscribe wholly to a single ecosystem. I use Apple for some aspects (phone, music, tablet), Microsoft for others (primary computer, home theater, Office documents, Exchange, Skydrive), Google (forms, collaborative documents, class webpages, shared calendars), Amazon (books), and Dropbox (collaborative folders). Though I am hopeful that one day I’ll see Microsoft Office on an iPad or a better iTunes on Windows, I have accepted the limitations of the odd interplay between these services.

But there is also another element at work. Maybe it is marketing. Maybe it is brand loyalty. I’m often asked if I’m a PC or a Mac (didn’t know the kids remembered those commercials). My students ask why I use an iPhone and not an Android device, while other students laud me for being part of their cult. And admittedly, when it came time to get a tablet device, I already had so much invested in the Apple ecosystem of media and apps that the iPad was a more compelling choice for software alone. But, I maintain that if I had started with an Android phone, I’d probably have an Android tablet now with very little change in functionality or satisfaction.

A few months ago, I had a former student arguing that Pages on iPad shouldn’t really be used to write school papers. I challenged that notion as an exercise. I had not really used Pages much, and wanted to see what he was getting at.

• He stated first that it did not have the features of Microsoft Word. I was hanging out with a few friends, and we were arguing the merits of both sides. We opened the program using Airplay to display. Passing the iPad around, we were all able to quickly create a new document and begin using features such as inserting pictures or diagrams. The experience was even superior to MS Word in the manipulation of aspects of the document, such as margins and picture sizing/placement. True, it did not have near the scope of features of its more mature brethren, but it did have most of what a typical student writing a paper would want. We decided that it was missing an equation editor (not used by most students in most situations) and a reference manager (only introduced in Word 2007 and on).
• His second point was that it was not easy to print. One of my friends, an Apple fanboy, pointed out that his printer was Airplay compatible. Another challenged if we even needed a paper intermediary, since all his college teachers graded digitally. And sure enough, Pages can export to a Word doc for E-mailing. At this point, we all agreed that it could not be used for collaborative document-writing, but we were comparing with Word 2010 (not the web app), so that wasn’t fair.
• Third, “who wants to type a paper on a tablet screen?” That’s a limitation of the device, not the software. The same argument can be made of Word 2013 on Windows RT without a keyboard.
• What about MLA? I found that one interesting. I argued against the utility of MLA/APA. They made sense when formatting and text were intrinsically linked. But these days, formatting is a function of the venue on which information is viewed. MLA was a standard for a heading, a title, margins, spacing, and references. It was important when documents were printed (although I am amazed at how long it took those standards to catch up to variable-width fonts). It doesn’t make sense for a purely digital document. Citations can be hyperlinks with much greater reference ability.

One-by-one the arguments crumbled. But these aren’t new. The same thing has happened for Google Docs. But what was at work was this notion of seeing a college paper as a pure Microsoft Word experience. Where does that come from? Sure, I was taught that the only way you could turn in a paper was if it was Times New Roman, 1-inch margins, double-spaced. But even I had the stubborn WordPerfect friends. In grad school, some of my peer were scared when Microsoft Word introduced Calibri as the default font. It ended up being OK. Openoffice.org and Google Docs challenged if a computer even needed an expensive “office suite” of apps.

Is brand loyalty with software keeping us from seeing the strengths of interoperability and choice? What other artificial limitations do we place on ourselves? (Is it preferable to own music/movies or have access to them?)

This past year, I’ve had similar challenges with technology in math education, some of which have challenged my own preconceived notions.

1. The de facto standard of math equations is Design Science’s MathType. Now, I am admittedly not crazy about plugins, especially ones that will require lifetime subscriptions to retain full functionality with future versions of Office. Since Office 2007, the built-in equation editor has been significantly enhanced with smoother fonts, in-line editing, and implementation across the suite of apps. And yet, people still want MathType.
2. The graphing calculator is still seen as a “which buttons do you press to make this happen” device by many who teach with the older models. The TI-Nspire CX that we are using now in freshman and sophomore classes is built with a context-based menu-system. Graphing calculator apps on Chrome, Android, and iOS have limited menus and more intuitive interfaces. Students all have BYOT devices that show graphs at much higher resolution with greater manipulative capacity than even their calculators. And yet making that connection to the learning potential is an uphill battle.
3. Student STILL see math as coming only from their teacher or their book. I received an E-mail from a student today saying she was struggling with Interest and Investment word problems. I asked if she had looked up examples online. Her response: “you’re allowed to do that?”

We tend to want to limit ourselves to comfort zone. “I don’t know how” becomes an excuse for “I don’t want to spend the time to learn.” I see it in students, educators, and myself. But whenever I have forced myself to use something or try something, I have been amazed and pleased with the results. And I want more.

Maybe we’ll always want more from our tech, and that’s how it should be. For every feature that becomes a way of tech-life (saving attachments to cloud storage on a mobile device to, viewing class inking via web apps on any device), my imagination sees even more possibilities with what is on the horizon. What will this year bring? iOS 6, Windows 8, Surface, another dessert from Google, smaller, faster… Those are predictable. But what is going to be the small feature that will change everything? That’s the exciting unknown that keeps me tuned…