The Cost of Free

It is difficult, if not impossible to use the Internet without using one of the Google services.  The very word Google is synonymous with searching for information; if you don’t believe me you can “Google it”.  YouTube is the preeminent video posting service and going viral with a video is part of everyday life appearing in television commercials and sitcoms.  Gmail is the largest web-based mail system and the Google document suite is a serious contender to Microsoft Office as the most used suite of productivity applications.  It is an empire as vast as Alexander the Great’s.  With a single Google account sign in, all these services are available to any Internet connected device absolutely free of charge.

Recently, Google changed their privacy policy and caused quite a stir in the press.  Everything from the hysterical Fox News headline “Google Selling Your Personal Information”, to the sedate “What’s the Big Deal with Google’s Privacy Policy” from Business Insider.  This wide range of reaction was interesting, if not fascinating.  Reactions represented the various political viewpoints, the vast gap in the general public’s understanding of technical issues and the fear that results when you don’t comprehend how to control your digital identity.  This got me thinking about the roles and responsibilities of digital citizenship.  The Internet offers us free services, but are they really free?

What Google did was essentially share your information across the Google suite of services to provide you with better information and to better target the advertisements you see.  They did not sell off information to other companies.  Google divides sharing into two categories: personal information and non-personal information.  Non-personal information, as defined by Google, is your server logs, cookies, and IP address.  Essentially, your YouTube information is now shared with your Google search history with the things that you send in your Gmail.  Personal information: “Sensitive personal information includes information we know to be related to confidential medical information, racial or ethnic origins, political or religious beliefs or sexuality and tied to personal information” is specifically NOT gathered or shared at all.  This is exactly the information that most Internet users thought was being shared!

Although this might make you feel somewhat relieved; it suggests a much larger question.  Is it Google’s responsibility to protect your privacy?  Most people know that Google is a “for profit” company that is in the business of selling advertising.  When we conduct a Google search, we get advertising along with our search results and it is the advertising that pays for the Google services.  By collecting information on the topics you search for, Google learns how to make your searches better and it also learns how to give you advertisements that match your interests.  This benefits you, benefits Google and benefits the advertisers.  That is the deal.  If you choose to use these services, YOU are sharing your search information with Google and you should know that they are going to use it.  The responsibility of managing your digital information is entirely yours and it is part of being a digital citizen. 

With Google, you have three choices: 1) Use the tools that Google provides to manage your electronic profile 2) Avoid using any Google services entirely 3) Trust Google and other Internet service companies with your information.

One way to ensure that your information is safe is to manage what information is kept.  Google provides tools to help manage your personal information.  First, there is the Google dashboard that is specifically designed to answer the question: “What does Google store in my account?”  Each Google service is listed with links that allow you to manage your information within that service.  A brief informational video is available on YouTube at: http://goo.gl/H9RMS.  To get to the Google dashboard, simply go to http://google.com/dashboard and log in to your Google account.   Each of the Google services you use are listed with links to manage each service. 

Another resource is the Google Ads Manager.  It is no secret that Google’s goal is the target advertising to the topics that you might be interested in.  The Google ads preference allows you to see what topics that Google believes you are interested in based upon your search history and the kinds of advertisements that you will receive.  You can change the topics, add ne topics or delete topics to control the advertisements so you see information that might want.  The Ads Preference manager is available at http://google.ads.preferences.

The final Google tool is in the Chrome browser.  If you are using Chrome you can open an anonymous window that disassociates the actions in this window from your Google account.  It allows you to use multiple Google accounts, or to keep information from being associated with a specific Google account.  While it does not prevent the collection of cookies and potentially, your browsing history, it will not connect these to your Google account.

The second option is to simply avoid Google services.  It is possible to search the Internet, view video, send email, and connect with others without ever using a Google service.  One secure Internet search tool is DuckDuckGo available at http://www.duckduckgo.com.  This search engine pledges to not collect any information on you, track your cookies or IP address.  The scope and relevance of Internet searches is not quite what Google provides, but if security is a prime concern for you, it is an option.  You can trade your Gmail account for a secure account at HushMail.  This free mail site will provide you with an anonymous email account and is available at http://www.hushmail.com.  Finally, for video you can use Blinkx at http://www.blinkx.com.  Again the trade off with Blinkx is that is lacks the breadth and scope of Google’s YouTube.  Another limitation is that each of these is a separate service that is not connected to the others like the Google suite, so you have to access and manage each individually.  Using multiple services is not as convenient, but the disassociation is a security strength because services cannot collaborate to create a digital profile of you.

The final choice is to simply trust Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, or Facebook and other giants of the Internet to “not be evil”.  Sharing information allows companies to provide you better services, more targeted searches, anticipate your preferences and make your online experiences better.  To do this, they need your information.  If you are willing to trade your data for better service, then this might be the path for you.  Before you trust blindly, you should do a search of the company’s security and privacy policies to be sure that the cost of these free services is not too high.  A real danger could be sharing data with other companies without telling you, or changing their security policy without notification.  As President Reagan said, ”Trust, but verify”.

As we move into the age of software as a service and increased use of cloud based services to store our data, music, do our shopping and connect with friends and colleagues, managing your digital footprint becomes increasingly important.  With each of the “free” online services you use, you reveal more and more about what you do and when you do it.  Mobile devices allow you to access services anywhere, but the same technology that immediately displays your location on a map, can also tell others where you are at any time.  You must make some serious decisions about the information you are willing to share and what information you do not want to keep private.  Free services are not free, they come at the cost of sharing your data and at some point the cost of a “free” service is just too high.  To blame a company for changing their security policy publicly is unfair.  As Thomas Jefferson said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”  Be very wary of the “free” service, and know the bargain you are making before plunging headlong into using an Internet service without doing due diligence.  The responsibility for your Internet safety is yours and yours alone!

1.2 Reflection

1.2  Reflection: Personal Learning Goal (Pass / No Pass)

Reflection addresses results of an online learning self-assessment and reasons for taking the LEC course. It identifies at least one priority learning goal for the course.

Considering the online learning self-assessment you took this week, and thinking about your reasons for taking this course, what is your highest priority learning goal for this course? What are some specific skills, strategies or tools you are hoping to learn more about?

The online assessment reinforce my belief that I might excel in the online environment.  I can readily provide my own tech support and am an avid web denizen.  I spend hours each day looking at all my favorite spots and have great locational skills.  As a result I have a serious reputation as the person who can find most anything on line.

My favorite story of this is at one of our district pre-service workshops several years ago.  I was sent to support the high level math guys and gals:  the calculus and Statistics teachers.  They had a two hour presentation that I got very little from,but they seemed pleased.  At the very conclusion of the workshop, the presenter did mention something that I do know about, coffee.  I love coffee and am a bit of a coffee snob.  It turned out that the presente was offering a $50 Starbucks gift card for the person who could solve this intricate math problem.  Everyone set to work, and I had no idea where to start solving it, so I turned to my skill set.  I have great locational skills, and I was able to find the problem at a University of Hawaii site with the answer.  I won the card, and to this day all the math folks say that I "cheated",  I reply that they used their skills and I used mine.

As a graduate of the Madeline Hunter School at UCLA, )Michael Simkins too!), I have a background in instruction and best practices.  I have always asked the question how do proven instructional practices work or don't work in a digital environment?  I know what works in a classroom and as we enter a world of on line instruction, what are the best practices for success online?  That is what compelled me to take this class.  I don't think that I will find all the answers here, but it will be the first step in my road to understanding this complex subject  I will then attempt to hone my skills with the teacher groups that I am lucky enough to work with to further my online teaching skills.

Time to End the Tech Plan

I just got one of the notices that I dread.  It is time again to rewrite our district technology plan.  While this is not the most heinous event in life, it got me thinking about where the requirement for a technology use plan come from and how can we improve it?

I did Internet search for school technology plans to see what I could find.  The oldest plan that I could find is a technology plan from September 1982 from a district in Salt Lake City.  Interestingly, it was a 12-year plan for the small school district that totaled 412 words.  Juxtapose that with the nearly 300 pages of our last technology plan and you begin to question if all the effort and energy that goes into this tri-annual rewrite is energy well spent.

Thinking back nearly 30 years to the early 1980’s I distinctly remember the day that I began my path as an educational technologist (unless you count being the 6^th grade nerd that could fix the reel to reel projectors).  Apple computer had a program called, “An Apple for the Teacher” where each California school received a brand spanking new Apple II Computer.  The day that the computer arrived at our school, my principal had no idea what to do with it.  After sitting in the office for nearly three months, he took it to my room one afternoon and directed me to figure out what to do with it. 

There is little doubt that when technology arrived at the schoolhouse doors 30 years ago we desperately needed a plan to “figure out what to do with it”.  This probably gave birth to the Technology Use Plan.  A plan that informed everyone about the use a new and unfamiliar tool.  This was a good idea!

Fast-forward thirty years, and technology is so integrated into everything that we do it is nearly impossible to find an activity that has not had technology make an impact upon.  Instead of asking, “How do we use this?” you are far more likely to hear, “Why can’t I get this online?”  Computers with Internet access have shrunk to the size of cell phones and a recent study found that 68% of 12 year olds have a cell phone.  We are awash in a digital tidal wave.  Just like the music industry, and the printing industry, education is quickly moving to being completely digital.  There are schools that eliminated the synchronous face-to-face school experience totally.  Instead of planning how to use technology, we are more likely to look for an electronic solution as our first alternative. 

In this point, it makes little sense to write a detailed, three-year technology plan that is separate from every other planning document that a school district writes. What is needed is a brief description that easily communicates the district’s direction to the stakeholders.  Leave out the massive details that change as the environment changes.  For example, a budget section that attempts to project what the budget will be five years from now when we can’t even tell what the budget will be this year and that began in July!  A simple plan that is integrated with other district activities and is revisited more often is what is needed.

Every district writes a single plan that directs all the other functions of a district, from the program for English Learners, to the GATE program.  It is called the Local Educational Agency Plan.  Directing technology from this plan as a program integrated with all the other activities of the district would be a needed improvement.  The LEAP is rewritten each year rather that than the three or five year rewrites that the technology use plan requires.  I can’t even predict what technology will be available in three or five years, no less describe in detail how it will be used to support learning in my district.  Incorporating the district’s technology planning into the single plan, making it a much smaller document, and revisiting it more often is an improvement that is long overdue.

The ticket has been punched

I will be the Crocodile.

Doors

They Say that when one door closes,
Another opens....




I will wait

Revving up for a big summer!

With everything being frozen and all funds being swept up to meet the mid-year budget reductions, the movement on getting all of our classrooms up and going has been slowed.  I guess the good news is that it has not been stopped.  Our greatest priority is getting the two classrooms at each school implemented.  At this point we have nearly half of them completed or in construction.  We now have a purchase vehicle in place and all he remaining rooms will be done prior to school beginning in September.  For those teachers who have not seen anything, this has to be extremely frustrating, as they have been given one date after another for completion, only to have the rug pulled out from underneath them.  On the positive side, the rooms are planned much better and the resulting product will be far more usable in the big picture.

 

They are just finishing up Glenknoll and Yorba Linda Middle has just had the last room finalized. We now have two schools that are complete.  The electricity is being installed at Valadez this week and that campus should be finished very shortly.  The good news here is that the initial five-year installation plan has been collapsed to 18 months.  By September of 2010, all classrooms will be smart classroom ready.

 

After looking at a number of factors, a list of schools was compiled for summer completion.  They are: YLHS, Tynes, Woodsboro, Brookhaven, Sierra Vista, Ruby, Bryant Ranch, Glenview, Mable Paine, El Dorado High, Lakeview, and Van Buren.  The bid for Sierra Vista and Brookhaven has already been completed and approved by the board and construction will begin there before the end of school this year.  Three other schools will be board approved at the May 12^th meeting, so we are now moving very quickly.  You might remember that originally we were planning to get all schools done over 5 years and our target now is to get them all done in 18 months. 

 

We had originally set out to get 2 classrooms at each school completed during this school year.  We will not meet this goal, as the process has been extremely challenging.  We did manage to get almost half of these classrooms done during the year (albeit very late for some of them!), and will complete all of them by the beginning of school.  Although these teachers did get two days of training, they will need to be trained on the new software to be effective.  We look to having them join the summer training.

 

While this summer schedule will get each classroom in these schools smart classroom ready, we still need to equip the classrooms and give teachers the tool they need to be successful.  Robert Marzano’s recent research (http://www.logicalchoice.com/eNewsletter/Frames-Marzano_VIDEO.htm) found that teachers who got professional development more than doubled the progress of their counterparts using interactive technology.  We have set up a series of two half-day workshops over the course of the summer that will allow any teacher who wants to, to get the training and support to be successful.  The summer schedule will be released very shortly!

 

During the 2009-2010 school year, we are planning to complete the construction on another 9 schools, and we will have a training schedule to support those teachers as 

The Last Hurdles

This next board meeting on ‘Wednesday will remove one of the final two hurdles that are needed to get our classrooms constructed. We need a vehicle to purchase the parts for the switching systems that are the heartbeat of our classrooms. We have worked to define the different kinds of classrooms and the kinds of parts that are needed for each and getting our vendor to assemble them into kit numbers. After months and months of negotiating we are also at the point that we can purchase them directly form our wholesaler without having to go out to a Value added re-saler. This will save the district money and eliminate the need for us to bid each and every classroom that we build, a process that will cost money and time.

At the April 7th board meeting we should take our last contract to the board. That contract will be for the installation labor. That will give us a bid for installing the kits into various classrooms. Once we have the labor bid, then we will be able to move quickly through the classrooms. We have already set up a very aggressive summer schedule.

Nouns and Verbs

The question that is most often asked about the Smart classroom project is: “ What technologies go into the rooms?” or “ What stuff will I get in my classroom?” I generally smile inwardly, and list off the equipment that we purchase to put into the classrooms and usually tag the list by saying that it is not about the equipment. Most people stopped listening at the end of the list.

Understanding the equipment is probably the easiest way to grasp the project, or the effect that it has in a classroom. These are the nouns of the project, the things that we buy and install into a standard classroom, but they are not the magic of the change in instruction. Those things are verbs: collaboration, learning, and engagement. These are the things that really make a difference and are the very hardest to explain. When you are in the classroom and you see the magic that a trained teacher can do to, it is breathtaking and so difficult to explain. That is why this not a technology project, it is not about putting technology into classrooms, it is about active learning and student engagement. It is centered in instruction

The Budget Meets Staff Development

As most of you know, 2009 has not been the best year for finances on either a national, state, or district level. The daily doom and gloom of the budget meeting running various disaster scenarios is depressing, and has direct and explicit impact on our smart classroom project.

First, the state budget and the potential cuts in the PYLUSD budget do NOT affect the Measure A funds. We still have the money to retrofit our classrooms and get the equipment and the installation to change our classrooms. This has not changed!

What has changed is that all district funds and budgets have been frozen to conserve as much money as possible to weather the coming storm. This is absolutely the right thing to do, to save jobs and programs that are vital to our district, community and students. But, this includes all the funds that would support staff development to support the equipment installs. At this moment we cannot get the substitutes to release teachers, or to pay teachers to learn how to use these wonderful tools.

The original professional development plan was a trainer of trainers model. We initially had 12 pilot teachers who had 4 months to use the technology in their classrooms, with the goal of training the teachers at their grade or subject level. This year, two teachers at each school were selected to learn the technology, focus on active learning and student engagement with the goal for them to be the site resources at their schools. Building the capacity at each school to do their own training and support to move the tools into the classrooms of any teacher that wants it. Installing the bulk of the classrooms this summer.

We began the training or our site leaders, and are about half way complete. The new software has just been released and we have no way to get this information out to our site leaders. As mentioned in an earlier blog entry, the progress in finding purchasing vehicles, getting vendors and actually installing technology in the classrooms has been distressingly slow and the site leaders will not have much time to work with the technology this year. Coupled with the elimination of funding, we will need to rethink the timeline; perhaps delaying the original timeline. What do we do?? All thoughts would be more than welcomed!

Solving the Aspect Ratio Issues

We ran into some challenges in trying to connect the computers, projectors and wide screen interactive white boards. It is not nearly as easy to make these work together in an easy way. The real difficulty comes form the differing aspect ratios of the equipment. The Promethean boards are in a “High Definition” 16:10 aspect ratio. Just like most movie screens, the display here is a rectangle that is wider horizontally than it is high. Most of our computers are not native in the “high definition” 16:10 aspect ratio, instead they have the old school square 4:3 aspect ratios that all older televisions have.

The projector has even more variables to it. You can buy projectors in either format with the 16:10 format called wxga or the 4:3 format called svga. There are even projectors that will take a svga signal (4:3) and then display a 16:9 image. In order to do this conversion, the projector must insert additional pixels into the horizontal image, and this can cause problems when used with a Interactive Whiteboard. The whiteboard needs to track the movement of the pen over the entire surface and if it encounters a band of these inserted pixels, then it can cause frustrating dead spots in the board. The computer and the interactive white board need to talk to each other and match each part of the projected screen to a pixel on the computers actual screen.

While you can use the display control panel on the computer to vary the image on the computer screen, and it is possible to get the computer to output a 16:10 format, it has to be the primary monitor for the computer and reset each time the computer is attached to the classroom system. This is just a pain, and more work than most teachers want to do. They just want to hook up and go.

After hours of research and testing various combinations of projectors, computers and our 95 inch interactive white board, we have decided to use the Epson svga projector and have it do the conversion to the 16:9 image. This will give us the ease of use that we feel is so critical to our program. Teachers will just be able to take their native svga computers and connect it to the system and have it work. They will not have to do any image conversion on the projector or the laptop. Finally, our testing did not reveal any noticeable dead spots in the board.

At the holidays, not as much progress as I would like

 When is begin this blog, I committed to doing an entry every week. You can easily see that I have not done well in keeping this current. I can only say that the past weeks have been extremely busy. Most days have been filled with so much to do that the have stretched to 10 to 14 hours each. The blog has just suffered in the face of so much other work to do. I plan to correct that in the coming year… hopefully! Here is a project by project update on what is going on at this point.

Projectors and Interactive White Board Alignment
N our project we had a decision to make early on. Do we install the 75 inch IWBs that have the 4:3 aspect ratio (like the old television sets) or do we install the 96 inch IWBs that are the wide screen 16:10 aspect ratio (like an HD television set). We made the commitment early on to install the more modern 16:10 aspect ration boards that are like the HD television sets.

There has been a serious challenge to the our plans to use the 95 inch IWB. Initially we had selected the Epson W6 projector in our classrooms. This is a WXGA projector that will match the aspect ratio of the IWBs. Unfortunately, the projector does not have any management connections and only one input. It will not work in our present wiring scheme. That sent us looking for a projector that would work within our system. In trying different schemes we have found that most projectors put in extra pixels to accommodate for keystoning or to match at certain aspect ratio. In effect they add pixels that are not really there on the computer image. The extra pixels create dead spots on an interactive white board. As you try and make a line across the board it turns into a dotted line as it encounters the “dead spots” where the added pixels are. This will never work in a classroom!! A teacher would try and activate an image on the dead spots and the board will not respond.

We are continuing to test for the best combination that will not produce these dead spots. Until we do, we cannot go forward with a system that will not work flawlessly in the classroom. We will be testing next week and I believe that we will come up with a workable solution.

Valadez Middle School
Although the school was bid with the classroom wiring and controls installed, there have been a large number of items that still needed to be completed. One was the audio system called Voice Lift that was donated to the school from Extron. It is the first school to be outfitted with the new system in the first Week in December. There have been some small issues with crackling with the student microphones and Extron is looking into how to correct this. It may be that the many cabinets in the classrooms that have glass fronts are not reflecting the Infrared light to the receiver causing the crackling.

The second question is how to mount the Promethean Boards. The teacher walls were not designed to accommodate the interactive white boards so the question of how to mount them has been a quandary. We had the teacher wall redesigned to house the IWB and that was supposed to cost $400, but the final cost to do this work was $1400 per room and way out of the budget. This would be two computers per room that would not be there for kids. We tried a sliding mount that would attach to the front to the teacher wall and that is just too unstable. Every time you touch the board it moves and keeping the calibration on the IWB would not be easy. Teachers would have to be constantly re-calibrating all day. This is not the solution we were looking for. We are still looking at adapting the mount or by installing the boards like the in the pilot classrooms on the front of the teacher walls.

Yorba Linda Middle School and Glenknoll Elementary Schools
The projector issue has halted work at these schools, but most of the electrical and sound wiring has been completed.

At these schools there are a couple of different classroom configurations. At YLMS there are either portable classrooms that are rectangular and permanent classrooms that are generally square. After much thought and consultation with the pilot teachers we decided NOT to use the teacher walls in these classrooms. The teacher walls are of the “C” variety that have only three very small boards. The 95 inch board would take up all the space of the existing three small white boards and eliminate all the storage in the rooms.

Instead we will mount the IWBs on the other walls and build a waist high cabinet on one site of the IWB to house the equipment and to provide a working space for a computer, document camera or other peripheral equipment on. To do this we will split the existing white boards and mount the IWB in the middle of the existing white boards. On the square rooms the IWB will be mounted on the wall 90 degress to the teacher walls and opposite the classroom doors. In the portable classrooms the IWB will be installed opposite to the existing teacher walls.

The new science classrooms at YLMS are like the rooms at Valadez. We are looking at how to mount the boards on the cabinets.

Glenkoll Elemetary has two kinds of permanent classrooms on that is on the end of the classroom wings and 4 rooms that are at the center of the wings. All of these rooms have the small teaching walls. We will need to mount the boards on another wall similar to YLMS. The end classrooms will have the IWB mounted opposite of the existing teaching walls, splitting the existing white boards and placing the IWB in the middle. The center classrooms will have the IWB mounted opposite the classroom doors and 90 degrees to the existing teaching walls. The Kindergarten classrooms will have the board mounted on the teaching wall and the portables will be identical to YLMS.

The Unit Bid
The majority of the classrooms in PYLUSD will be constructed under a unit bid. This is a bid with will provide a vehicle for us to get the classrooms constructed. The 2 classrooms at every site and all the remaining classrooms in the district over the summer and next year will be installed using this bid. So the timing of this bid is all important. We had been taking small numbers of classrooms and finding other avenues to get them constructed, prior to the unit bid, but that has been met with resistance. We will now wait for all classrooms to be done as part of this bid.

The timeline for this bid is still a bit murky, but we hope to get the bid out in mid-January and get it to the board at the second meeting in February.

The Pilot Music Classrooms
After months of work, we finally got an equipment list and a classroom construction plan agreed upon. On receiving the equipment list from the vendor who was helping us construct our model, I submitted a Purchase Request to get the pilot classrooms underway. It has been held up in purchasing to get all the equipment quoted from different vendors. We will have to wait unit the quotes are finalized to move forward.

End

So much work has been done, most of it no one will ever see.  I wish that we had many more classrooms completed, but I remain optimistic that we will have a great conclusion.  Its Christmas eve and I want to wish you all a great holiday.  

First Classrooms Starting Soon!!

After what seems like an interminable delay, we have our bid complete and we should be starting classrooms at Yorba Linda Middle School and at Glenknoll Elementary Schools: a total of about 40 classrooms in total.  This was only possible through the great work of our purchasing department and Facilities folks who were committed not to let this go to the =next board meeting, which would have bee November 28th!  The bid was finalized three working days prior to the Board Meeting.  Our purchasing people completed all the review of the bid, the licenses and the bonds in that time, putting aside all the other things that they had to do.  Our school board, like all school boards do not like last minute surprises.  They want to be able to carefully review the items coming to the school board so that they can make an informed decision.  Our superintendent and board were agreeable to a walk up item.  That is we could print the approval of the contract without the name of the selected vendor and then provide the name on the night of the meeting.  

Finally facilities, who handled all the accounts for the bond, were able to move money and provide accounts so that we could get the purchase orders for the equipment out.  As always, my assistant, Terry Loyd was superwoman.  She coordinated it all and made all the phone calls to be sure that the details of the paperwork were in line and moving along.  Nothing gets done in my office without the masterful touch of Terry Loyd!

So we will have construction meetings this week and the vendor says they can start as soon as the end of this week.  At  long last we are moving!

The Politics of Education in a Virtual World

This year, the web has radically changed politics more than ever. Citizens from across the nation are using the resources of the Internet to post comments, photos, recordings and challenge facts. It seems obvious to anyone looking on that technology has certainly come to a vast majority of the households and that many many of them are using them in the online virtual democracy. Every flyer or robocall is being scanned and shared, and every fact is being checked via live blogs, text mails and news programs. Here are just a couple of interesting examples:

• The day prior to Sarah Palin's introduction as vice president, there were 464 entries into her Wikipedia page as the spin doctor's tried to create her image. On the day that she was announced as the Republican Vice Presidential Nominee there were nearly a two thousand entries correcting and posting new information.
• Barack Obama's conversation with a plumber in Ohio was recorded on a cell phone and posted on the Internet, leading to the "Joe the Plumber" phenomenon.
• YouTube videos of event goers entering a political event making racist comments went viral and lead to an online debate on race in America.

The challenge for educators is to keep up with this real time world where everyone can post a comment. While most school districts do not solicit comments, or create avenues where parents and students can state their opinions, this does not mean that they will not create their own. If educators close their eyes to the virtual democracy that is the virtual world, then the forum will be created without them. Politicians certainly did not create YouTube or blogs where their deeds are discussed. A parent or students will not be asking for permission to have your assignments and policies vigorously debated online. I hear all the time from teachers and principals that we can't use electronic communications because not every home has a computer. Although that is certainly true, I believe that the majority of homes do have a computer and many of them are active in online communities. The time for us to acknowledge this reality and to learn the lessons of the events around us has come. We need to think carefully about what and how we do things today, before they are done to us.

Slow Progress

Well after pushing and several issue for a couple of weeks, we have made some progress. I am sure that most folks would not be impressed, but these little details make the difference between being able to get the materials that our classroom teachers are asking for.

First, we are on the verge of releasing our first bid to install the infrastructure in the classrooms at Yorba Linda Middle School and at Glenknoll Elementary. That bid should be available for vendors and we are planning to make a choice and get the recomendation to the School Board at the second meeting in October. Work can begin on classrooms immediately after.

The remaining classrooms need to have engineering comleted. We got a first estimate on the cost of completeing that engineering but that cost was too high for us to proceed without reducing the nmuber of classrooms completed. No teacher would want their classroom to be a victim of increased costs. We are working with our vendor to try and reduce the costs. I am confident that we will get this completed and I would love to have work beginning next week. That would put us aon a timetable to have everything done by Christmas.

Next, we have a contract that our purchasing department and the county will agree to use to purchase the equipment for our rooms! This will eliminate our need to bid the equipment as we finish the rooms. We are in the process of putting the order together for our first round of classrooms at Yorba Linda Middle School and Glenknoll Elementary. I am hoping that we can get the equipment at the same time that the classrooms are completed.

Smart Music Classroom

c ClSmart Music Classroom
As we started the Smart Classroom Project, I always had the idea that music classrooms would be very different. The most obvious reason is that the classroom is already very engaging, with each student participating, but the center of the class is audio and not video. The elements of our smart classroom are all visual elements. We needed to design something that would be very different.

I started work with a vendor who had ties to the music recording industry and two teachers who were very tech savey and had already cobbled together a set of microphones, cassette recorders, and speakers into the first smart music classrooms. The first meeting was very exciting. How to get multiple recordings, immediate playback, mixing various levels of audio, music editing software and studio speakers to represent sound at high quality levels. Lying on top of all of these elements would be the trademark of our smart classrooms: ease of use.

We decided on a cart that would contain a mixer, a processor for recording\, a power supply, various microphones for recording sections, two omni directional Microphones, music software, a mounted projector, a cd burner, and 1400 watt studio speakers. This will have the ability to record a band and drop out different sections so that kids can go home and hear the rest of the band as they practice their part. A teacher can record on the fly and play back to class providing immediate feedback or display notes on the projector as the students play the notes.

A Decision Has Been Made

I met with our engineering firm today and they have completed the site work and drawings for Glenknoll Elementary School and Yorba Linda Middle School.  We will need to put these specs and drawings into a bid document.  We met with our purchasing manager and it appears that we can have the bid out next week.

Although we could probably get the bidding done by the end of September, there is only one school board meeting in September and the next board meeting is October 14^th  We fully plan to make this date, so the work could begin thereafter.  

Casework Update

Good meeting this morning with the our casework company that constructs the teaching walls.  Our big issue has been on how to mount the interactive white boards (iwb)  on the teaching walls.  Teachers are concerned about the loss of storage with the 75 inch board we used in the pilot.   We are trying to design a mount for the iwb that would swing or pivot upward like a garage door to allow access.

A secondary, but equally important issue is what size iwb to use.  I would like to use the 95 inch board that has the 16/9 high definition aspect ratio.  Although not much of what we use in the classrooms is in that format, in 5 years it will undoubtable dominate the landscape.  The bigger board is heavier and more diffcult to mount and it would obscure more of the storage.  

Our best thinking is that we would like to have 95 inch board installed in a demo classroom at Valadez Academy nest week.  I provided them with a board to use in the demo.

Last year we set out to define what would be the focus of a smart classroom, a classroom that was focused on Active Learning and Student Engagement. We visited several districts, went to conferences and concentrated on sessions that focused on technology in the classroom and took a trip to the NSBA model school visit at Minnetonka Minnesota. You can see my report on Minnetonka at: http://www.portical.org/stories/minnetonka/

Each of these added information to our concept of what direction we would go with our classrooms. Finally I met with every vendor that I could find, because they do this stuff everyday and usually have the most up to date information.

From this investigation, we compressed the ideas and decided what elements would be part of our version of the “Smart Classroom”. Now I have to say that I really don’t like the “Smart Classroom” name. Obviously it connotes visions of the SMART brand of products and we really have not used them in our project. I didn’t want to call it the classroom of the future because I don’t believe it is the classroom of the future, it is the classroom every teacher should have NOW. Plus, I did not want anyone to say that we do not need some futuristic classroom, but something more pragmatic and grounded. I could not think of anything that resonated with people except for “Smart Classroom” and started to use it. Now everyone in our district uses the name, so now it has “legs” and there is no stopping it now.

We had to decide what different inputs we wanted to bring into our classrooms. Most of the off the shelf systems are designed to accommodate 4 different inputs. We decided that we needed six to provide the flexibility to bring any instructional resource into the classroom. Our inputs are:

• Broadcast video
• Desktop computer (side of room)
• Laptop computer (front of room)
• Document Camera
• Auxiliary video (RCA inputs)
• DVD Player

The only real twist that we added, was that we were intent on making the system easy to switch from one source to another. I guess that this came from my home experience with our home entertainment system switching from the DVR to the Cable box, to the DVD player. Each switch requires powering up a new device and switching the audio and video inputs. It wasn’t until I discovered the Harmony remote, that we had harmony at home. This remote had buttons that read “play the DVD” or Watch TV” and the remote makes all the correct changes in the audio and video equipment to make it happen. What we designed was the Harmony remote for the classroom. When you have a classroom audio system and a number of inputs, you need to switch things seamlessly.

Here is a link to a Slide Show of the Smart Classroom Elements

Simple Things

I recently went to Minnetonka Minnesota to look at a model technology district there. To say the very least the visit was very, very interesting. What they had done was work closely with the community to pass a 20 million dollar levy to fund technology as a accelerator of learning. The purchased white boards, mounted speakers, and projectors, invested in staff development in a culture of professional learning and used BlackBoard as content management system. None of these things is especially special, innovative or unique. They just used the technologies together to form a synergy that had a dynamic effect in the classroom. In every classroom, the kids counted on the basic tools of electronic learning.

The project was not about the technologies they selected, standardization or any other of the customary magic. What they had really done was invest in tried and true educational techniques that have been around for years. The project was not about interactive white boards; it was about student interaction. The students used the boards to share ideas not perpetuate the teacher presenting to the class. It was not about BlackBoard; it was about home to school communication. The mounted projectors were used to engage the students. They had gone to the educational well and found things that we know work: student engagement, interactivity, and home to school communication. The real magic was the simplest of things.