WHY I went BACK TO "SCHOOL" at Purdue Polytechnic High School

 As of mid-April, I am back into K-12 education at Purdue Polytechnic High School (PPHS)- Englewood. After two and a half weeks, I am glad in spite of the commute being 10 times the distance of my previous commute to Traders Point Christian Schools (TPCS) until last summer when I left TPCS. At that time, not only was I going to "retire" (AGAIN!), but I wasn't necessarily going to volunteer in K-12 education to which I have devoted the last 7 years in my second career as a "refugee from higher education" which was rewarding so I shouldn't be surprised. It was rewarding because not only did I feel APPRECIATED AT TPCS, but I knew I was "needed" as I stated in a previous post,

In the five years since PPHS was founded, PPHS has had the wisdom to adopt Google Workspace for Education and Chromebooks which I championed at TPCS so I am not "needed" at PPHS as I was when I joined TPCS. Nevertheless, I learned so much during my transition to K-12 education so it certainly makes sense to continue to apply my experience to K-12 education as Warren Buffett recently advised. Especially, I learned so much about administering Google Workspace for Education and managing Chromebooks for students at TPCS which is precisely where I will be focusing at PPHS-Englewood. Asset management of Chromebooks and adoption of tools such as Clever which leverage Google Workspace for Education are top priorities. As devices issued to every student, Chromebooks represent a significant investment for PPHS and Google Workspace can make even more impact when leveraged with the adoption of Clever! Neither requires "rocket science" but they need to be done.

I also hope to enlist PPHS coaches (that's how PPHS designates "teachers") to join me among the ranks of Connected Educators. I don't YET know the need but I am willing to COACH them myself!

I "found" the job at PPHS as I was preparing to volunteer at PPHS-North which is closer to my home. I had been "wintering" in my boyhood home in Hawai'i which granted me the opportunity to consider my next step after failing to connect with PPHS when I tried last year after my retirement. PPHS is "near and dear to my heart" because it's an initiative of Purdue Polytechnic Institute where I had the good fortune of building the "undergraduate information technology education I would have wanted for myself" beginning in 1978.

Finally, I missed using Google Workspace. I even subscribed to Google Workspace Individual while I no longer had access to Google Workspace for Education. I have to "catch up" with so many new features, especially the ones that aren't available to Google Workspace Individual subscribers!

Are you smarter than a sixth grader?

If you've been watching my tweets and especially if you're using my Diigo outliner about Google Apps for Education (GAFE), you know that I've been shepherding a GAFE pilot at Traders Point Christian Academy (TPCA). In anticipation of a 1-to-1 Chromebook initiative in grades 7-8 next school year, I asked Lisa Mais, our 6th-grade English and language arts teacher, to use GAFE during the past semester. Needless to say, I have been thrilled with the results so let me explain why!

Personally, sixth grade is very special to me because I attribute much of my subsequent academic success to MY sixth-grade learning experience and the amazing teacher (Mr. Nitta) who I was so fortunate (including the FOUR times he paddled me during the school year :-P) to have. Hence, I wanted our sixth graders to have a transforming learning experience as well!

I shared some of their work samples with my daughter who just finished her freshman year in college and who also attended TPCA until the eighth grade. She saw the Google Slides presentations and claimed that she also learned how to make PowerPoint presentations in school. What she failed to realize is that she did not possess the same degree of information literacy in the sixth grade, but she may not even currently have the same degree of information literacy as a high school graduate who did not have the opportunity to use the bibliographic citation tools like EasyBib which were so easy to provide to the students with the administrative console of Google Apps. Of course, Ms. Mais deserves even more credit for asking me to make EasyBib available to her students and for teaching them how to use it to judge the reliability of their sources and to cite them correctly.

Furthermore, the students learned the valuable lesson of collaboration because it was so easy for them to work on their presentations together. I'm sure there's so much more that Ms. Mais can say about the advantages of using Google Apps so I will encourage her to share that. I'm sure that among what she shares will be her gratitude to no longer have to deal with flash drives due to the unlimited space provided to her students by Google Drive!

Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com is licensed under CC BY 3.0

The Eagle (Tech Corps) Has Launched

Motivated by the enthusiasm of Traders Point Christian Academy sixth graders for our Google Apps for Education pilot project under the mentorship of 6th-grade teacher Lisa Mais, I recruited some of her students to attend the Hoosier Student Digital Leaders inaugural conference (#HSDLead). As a result, they have launched our Eagle Tech Corps (ETC) to support our upcoming 1-to-1 deployment of Chromebooks in grades 7 and 8.


So what can we expect from them? I have some ideas, but I expect them to exceed my expectations! In the meantime, we will be planning how we can help their classmates and even their teachers as we deploy Google Apps for Education and the Chromebooks during the upcoming school year.

Read the #HSDLead story! We are part of it!

We heard you!

During the winter, I shared with you the vision for using technology for learning at TPCA! It's time for another update so I am excited to tell you that our WiFi infrastructure will be substantially upgraded during the summer in time for the new school year. Thanks to the federal e-Rate program, we will receive a substantial subsidy for our Internet-related services which will enable this substantial upgrade. The new system will improve WiFi coverage in the modular for our upcoming Chromebook "1-to-1" program in grades 7-8 to enable our students to learn "21st-century skills" for communication and collaboration via Google Apps for Education. This will be a state-of-the-art system that will also improve coverage in our newly renovated J. K. Stevens Commons as well as the Bostick Athletic Center gymnasium.

Stand by to hear more about other upgrades to our technology infrastructure including our Internet access and our phone system. We want you to know that we heard your feedback about our technology infrastructure and that we are responding by taking action!

TPCA is on its way!

TPCA Instructional Technology Update: Winter 2014-2015

Last fall, I posted about our intention to deploy Google Apps for Education for pilot use. I am pleased to report that we have launched one pilot project in 8th-grade English and language arts enabled by a Windows-based “Chrome browser” laptop cart supplemented by “bring your own device” for students who have voluntarily chosen that option. A subsequent post will explain that project in greater detail.

In the meantime, let me share about what other progress has been made and where we are going to build on that progress. We intend to implement a curriculum in digital literacy with a Biblical worldview:

• Digital citizenship
• Technological literacy
• Information literacy

Standardization on Windows 7 Enterprise has been deployed on various hardware:

• Laptop cart (primarily serving 5th and 6th grade)
• Desktop computers in Media Center
• "Chrome browser" laptop cart primarily serving 8th grade

The following planning efforts are underway for next school year:

• Application for e-Rate federal subsidy to upgrade Internet access and WiFi infrastructure
• Selection of Chromebook model for 1-to-1 rollout in junior high
• Evaluation of Microsoft online products, e.g. Office 365 and OneNote

To insure the effective application of these tools for learning, planning for professional development is underway. The administrative team is currently being oriented to becoming "Connected Educator" role models for the rest of the staff. During the summer, teaching staff (especially junior high) will take advantage of Indiana Department of Education Summer of eLearning professional development opportunities in addition to peer coaching.

Current efforts to prepare for the future are underway:

Elementary

is searching for a media teacher to develop and deliver a digital citizenship curriculum.

Middle school

is blogging at The Reading Eagles with other blogs and another Google Apps for Education pilot project to come.

Junior high

has launched its Google Apps for Education pilot project with the "Chrome browser" laptop cart. A search for "Connected Educators" is currently underway.

High school

students "bring your own device" for online courses. A search for "Connected Educators" is currently underway.

Watch for further progress reports because

iTPCA

 is on the move!

A glimpse into TPCA’s future!

Last week, I had the pleasure of spending the day in two Wayne Township schools, an Indiana public school district which really “gets” the integration of technology into learning. In the last two years, Wayne's “Blueprint for Digital Learning” has led to the adoption of Google Apps for Education and deployment of 7000 Chromebooks into several grades across its district. It has also led to “bring your own device” at Ben Davis High School.
More importantly, I learned:

• How much Wayne has invested in professional development to support its technological initiative
• Wayne’s encouragement of its media center staff to lead development and delivery of its digital citizenship curriculum
• Parent engagement is critical

Accordingly, there is much we can learn from Wayne’s experience which will be invaluable as we launch our own initiative in the foreseeable future! Recently, we purchased several Chromebooks which we are teaching our “vanguard” teachers to use as we intend to deploy Google Apps for Education for pilot use soon. Stay tuned!

A blast from the past…a peek into our future!

As some of you already know, I have gone back to “work” (I’m having too much fun to call it work) as Director of Technology Integration and Support at Traders Point Christian Academy (TPCA) which my daughter attended until we left for Florida four years ago. It’s been a long time since I have felt so needed and appreciated in my long educational career. I also continue to appreciate the staff of TPCA who I had already seen serving in a ministry to my family rather than merely doing a job. For this reason, there is so much I want to do for them to return that favor!
In the time since I left Indiana, TPCA unfortunately has made little progress in the integration of technology to teaching and learning. There were some earlier attempts which apparently failed for reasons I wasn’t around to assess. In order to stabilize the situation, new school leadership had already decided to invest in a laptop cart to replace aging desktop computers which have reached the end of their useful life. Without any technology leadership in place, there really wasn’t any alternative. At the same time, the small high school time adopted a one-to-one “bring your own device” (BYOD) program to (at least) support online learning to complement its own offerings.
This is where MY learning begins because some high school students were unable to BYOD so we “borrowed” a few (our spares) laptops from the cart to lend to them and the story unfolds from there. To support standardized testing, an insufficient quantity of the ailing desktops is available so we have had to use the cart to complement those desktops which is preventing us from deploying the laptop cart. This isn’t entirely a surprise because part of the justification of the laptops is standardized testing.
In the meantime, we are learning that there is a need to “repackage” the laptop cart into smaller lots to serve the needs of either enrichment or remediation of smaller groups of students. Accordingly, we are redeploying the laptops with an (experimental) smaller cart to assess that demand as well as to (occasionally) meet the needs of standardized testing. That experiment will likely result in the deployment of all of our laptops in smaller quantities.
That experiment has also given me further insight into the “state of the art” in the integration of technology into learning. In search of better designed laptop carts than the unwieldy one we already own, I put a query on the #edchat Twitter hashtag and received NO responses. Rather than being dismayed by this apparent failure of the vaunted power of social media in teaching and learning, I realized that it is more likely that the progressive tech community on Twitter just isn’t using laptop carts anymore!
This reinforces my sense of urgency to move us up the educational  technology value chain, but I am acutely aware of the critical need to upgrade our technical and human infrastructure in order to do so. Stay tuned as we continue this quest!

Going to a PUBLIC college in Florida (or any other state)?

If you want to know about more than how your school’s sports teams are doing on (or off ) the field, check out what the Florida Board of Governors (FLBOG) is asking Florida’s public universities! FLBOG governs the State University System of Florida. In that role, the Governors have the statutory right and responsibility to ask tough questions that you ought to ask while (and especially before) you attend one of these schools! As a matter of fact, each state has a comparable governing body such as the Indiana Commission for Higher Education where I spent most of my academic career.

Recently, The Florida Channel broadcast a recent meeting during which university administrators presented their work plans for the coming year to FLBOG’s Strategic Planning Committee:

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

Since my daughter will be applying to several Florida public higher-education institutions during the coming year, I watched with great interest so let me give you some idea of what I learned. First, I learned about a school of which I was not aware (especially since I have only lived in Florida for almost three years), but I was impressed by the uniqueness of the New College of Florida (NCF) which is “small but mighty” as one of the Governors expressed during the “Q and A” after NCF presented its work plan! As a matter of fact, it was fascinating to note the Governors’ attitudes as well as the responses of the university administrators to the Governors’ questions and comments. This is especially revealing to me because I am not very familiar with these schools but I suspect that even long-term Florida residents would find them revealing as well. Second, I confirmed my “worst fears” about another school which I had already learned from a different source. If you want to know the rest of that story, ask me about it in a comment and I will reply. Finally, I learned about new initiatives already underway at schools which my daughter is considering which may either help us to differentiate the schools when it comes time to choose as well as to get more return on our investment in higher education. For example, the University of Florida’s Innovation Academy (IA) has a unique spring-summer semester schedule with additional opportunities during the fall and throughout the year to become actively engaged in strategic innovation, creative problem solving, entrepreneurship, and interdisciplinary collaboration. I wonder how many of UF’s current students are aware of IA?

In any case, I encourage prospective and current students of Florida public universities as well as their parents and other (Florida) taxpayers to take advantage of this opportunity to make college “worth it” (look for future posts about the value of a college education)!

In the meantime, I am sharing my Florida higher education notes publicly via Evernote.

Is “education reform” too high a price to pay?

After being inspired (and reminded) by the Global Education Conference in late November, I spent the month of December immersed in the vibrant Web community from whom I had already learned so much about technological innovations in K-12 education. While I was teaching full-time, I was often frustrated (and distracted) that I couldn’t spend more time in this fascinating community. Since my daughter would be attending public school for the first time and I would be “retired”, I had resolved that I would volunteer more time than I had at the small private school which she previously attended while I taught full-time.

In addition to technological innovations with which I already had much familiarity, educational policy issues also got my attention. I was especially curious when I encountered the Foundation for Excellence in Education which was founded by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. As a new resident of Florida, I was especially interested in what Governor Bush had done (and was STILL doing) in education reform. I was especially interested in the release of The Elements of Digital Learning by its Digital Learning Council at its annual National Summit.

Since Florida has been a leader in teacher accountability, I had been paying a lot of attention to this aspect of education reform. Having witnessed the pre-occupation with standardized testing here in Florida, I was especially interested in Senate Bill 6 which was vetoed by former Governor Crist, but is sure to gain “new life” after the success of its supporters in the mid-term election.

The recent publication by the Orlando Sentinel of a story about the ambitious education reform agenda of newly-elected Governor Rick Scott motivated me to comment about whether education reform is stifling innovation.

In the course of my orientation to Florida public education, I encountered Florida Virtual School which appears to be one of the more comprehensive statewide online educational programs. Since Florida has already demonstrated its commitment to harnessing the Internet, I have wondered why I haven’t encountered much Florida-based innovation in the educational use of social media and other emerging technologies in six months of use of such technology to find Florida examples. Expecting that its practitioners would NOT be “shoemaker’s children”, I have used services such as Twitter and Facebook to find examples similar to my own experiments as well as others with which I am familiar. In addition, there is already ample evidence elsewhere!

The pre-occupation with standardized testing also detracts from more effective ways to assess learning such as electronic portfolios. I know that the University of Central Florida is hoping to incorporate e-portfolios in its next self-study for regional accreditation.

Clearly, there is much work to be done and I am wondering if the current environment is conducive to encouraging innovation. I have made some effort to share these innovations with my own school district and haven’t had any success in even getting any reaction so that is what has prompted me to write this blog post! Frankly, I haven’t seen much difference between my daughter’s education and mine (I’m 62!) except that Blackboard, the course management system which her school uses, doesn’t require chalk!

When it’s OK to be about ME!

A recent comment I made on The Student Branding Blog prompts me to write this post. As the past year has come to an end and the new year begins, I had resolved to put less effort into personal branding because it seems so self-centered! During the past year, I have especially put a lot of time and energy into crafting and polishing the many Web resources which I have created to support my diverse interests from politics to teaching and learning. I feel that these efforts have been appropriate because they have contributed to my students and other constituencies about which I care very much.

On the other hand, I have put considerable effort into “building my personal brand” via Web sites such as my online identity which summarizes my online activity. Among many other sites, it points to my domain DrThomasHo.com which portrays the many facets of my online life. This view clearly reveals what I care about and that’s precisely the point I’m trying to make!

For example, it’s clear I have a range of interests which span Indianapolis, human rights, and Christian missions. In creating each of these resources, I have met many others with similar interests as is evident from mechanisms such as the Twitter lists which I maintain or merely follow to enable me to keep in touch with these people. For that matter, you can tell a lot about me (or any other enthusiastic user of Twitter lists) just from this one narrow aspect of my online identity.

Admittedly, few other people are as active as I am or as willing as I am to reveal so much about myself via my online activity, but my point is that we do know so much about anyone who merely uses social networking (a large group of people) or blogs (a growing number of people) Especially if someone blogs or even regularly comments on blogs, we can learn a lot about his passion as well as his opinions on the subjects about which he is passionate. Using search engines, alerts, or other Web-based data mining mechanisms, it is easy to identify such people for purposes of recruiting them on behalf of a cause such as Christian missions which is the case which prompted my comment which I referenced at the beginning of this post.

As a matter of fact, a missions agency could amplify its message beyond traditional Web content by engaging its prospective recruits, donors, and other constituents via social media. I will develop that notion in a subsequent post.

To close, I encourage YOU to tell us about YOU! Those of us who care about the same things which YOU care about and who “know” how to…are listening!

Happy New Year

The beginning of a new year is a fitting occasion to launch a new blog and the beginning of a new “decade” (although my new microblog post disputes that assertion) is even better!

With a theme inspired by Laura Ho, I will use this platform to share my thoughts in several categories; e.g. education, politics, economics, religion, and technology; which span my wide spectrum of interests. Mostly, I will be “scratching where I itch” BUT I hope that I will be “scratching where YOU itch” or I hope I may even get you to “itch” in some places where you haven’t been!

In any case, I intend to be leaving a legacy in some measure again inspired by Laura’s example. Beginning this year, our family will be using her Bible studies and I hope these posts will also serve so noble a purpose!

I welcome your comments and I’ve even incorporated Skribit to solicit YOUR suggestions for topics on which I might post.