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!

I think it's time to start blogging again!

Google+ is the reason because it is now so integrated with Blogger! Will this post display on my Google+ profile?

Which grade would you give to your local government (2.0)?

I’m taking a break from Education (2.0) to spend some time trying to understand how we might transform local government with information technology, especially via social media. Gartner defines “Government 2.0” as the use of information technology to socialize and commoditize government services, processes and data.

A few months ago, I blogged about “Getting all A’s in school” to motivate the use of social media in education. For this post, I’ll “play” with a similar theme to motivate the use of social media in local government to facilitate:

• Accountability and Advocacy
• Business (public)
• Communication
• Democracy
• Emergency preparedness and Engagement

We don’t want to give any F’s and in any case, this is just a gimmick to get some ideas flowing!

Accountability and Advocacy

As in my education post, government can do a much better job of advocacy by being more accountable as a result of transparency in its interaction with the citizens it serves. In a manner similar to what I described for education, social media between government and citizens could document government’s value to its citizens.

Business (public)

In conducting the people’s “business” government can deliver services more effectively and efficiently via information technology.

Communication

As a result, communication between government and its citizens would be vastly improved!

Democracy

Citizens would have greater opportunity to be heard!

Emergency preparedness/public safety and Engagement

It’s time to get practical…especially since I now live in Florida where severe hurricanes can disrupt the lives of millions of people! Due to our ability to forecast their potential severity, many lives can be saved by emergency preparedness. Especially since my county’s early social media efforts are being led by Seminole County Emergency Management, this is the best place to do more. Furthermore, my faith-based friends back in central Indiana where I lived previously are experimenting with Twitter to promote readiness. Even more is possible as efforts such as CrisisCommons suggest. I am especially intrigued by the application of the Ushahidi product Crowdmap to handle information coming out of a crisis. What is most encouraging is the pending FEMA certification of a course titled “Social Media for Natural Disaster Response and Recovery” offered by the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center (NDPTC).

Perhaps, public safety is another likely area to try with service providers such as Nixle which publishes alerts via text messaging as well as experiments with Twitter by neighboring Orlando Police.

No matter which grade you give your local government, it could get a better grade by using information technology and social media to engage its citizens!

Where do we go from here?

Perhaps, it’s time to convene a CityCamp, an international unconference series and online community focused on innovation for municipal governments and community organizations.

I’m going to share this with my County Manager…what will you do for your community?

Has it been six months already?

It's been six months since Atlantis blasted off as STS-135, the last Space Shuttle launch! In the meantime, I've seen several other launches, but they just don't seem the same especially since they've all been unmanned! I wonder how long it's going to be until I see another manned launch? I hope I live long enough to see the US with the capability for manned spaceflight!

Connecting your Blogger blog to Google+

If you have linked your Blogger blog to your Google+ account, you'll be able to easily share your post to your Google+ circles when you publish a post to your blog. This post should be shared on my Google+ account after I publish it.

#NASAtweetup: NASAtweetup.info on Day L-2

courtesy of http://www.facebook.com/netvibes

It was a good day. I picked up my credentials at Kennedy Space Center Press Accreditation and got a commemorative t-shirt at Space Shirts to wear on day L-0 because we’re wearing our NASAtweetup shirts on day L-1. Being an Orlando Newbie, I also learned my way around the Space Coast much better!

The highlight of the day was a tweet by Robert Scoble which shared the social media aggregation NASAtweetup.info which I built as a Netvibes public page. As I explained in my previous post, I am now turning my attention to its original purpose to aggregate the content generated by the NASA Tweetup tweeps. I have seeded the first few tabs, e.g. Twitter, with widgets where I already expect to find relevant content and I’ll be adding more later today as I learn more from my fellow tweeps about where else they intend to share their unique experience. Whether you’re a Tweetup participant or a viewer, check out the “General” tab to maximize your NASA TweetUp experience!

Watch with us as history is made at the final launch of NASA’s space shuttle program!

Let me know IF the NCAA goes after NASA’s Final Four.

#NASAtweetup: #STS135, day L-3

Courtesy of http://twitter.com/lartist

As day L-3 closed and L-2 beckoned, I was exhausted trying to “drink from the firehose” of the closed Facebook group for STS-135 NASAtweetup. To help my fellow tweeps, I’ve been highlighting some of that content at my social media aggregation NASAtweetup.info as we prepared for this historic event. I’ve prepared a 30-second video to explain my intention.

My original motivation for the aggregation is chronicling the event itself so I have to turn my attention to that task. Stay tuned for a post about that.

How to really use the Internet

Hugh MacLeod’s recent post with the same title (forgive me Hugh) motivated me to write this post to explain why I bought the BlogPress app for my iPad to facilitate my use of the Adonit keyboard which I just bought. This post started as a review of BlogPress, but I really haven’t used it yet. Anyway, I found a BlogPress review for WordPress blogs, but I’m still looking for one relevant to Blogger users which was my motivation for buying it.

Instead, I’ll be reacting to Hugh’s recent post in which he makes the case for blogging which has always been a challenge for me personally. As you can see from this blog, I can do it well enough, but I don’t do it “often enough” or regularly!

I’m hoping that the combination of the iPad, Adonit, and BlogPress will remedy that! Although I’ve been primarily using Twitter to interact with people who I care about as well as to express serious opinions via tweets about news and opinion shows which I'm viewing, I do admit to longing for a “totally different league of Internet use” as Hugh implores us to aspire. I recognize that the “Internet has given us a HUGE, life-changing opportunity that simply didn’t exist a generation ago” and I admit that I’ve been wasting it!

How about YOU?

I’ll be meeting Hugh at next month’s NASA TweetUp for the last space shuttle launch (see? I haven’t even posted about that!) so I’ll be talking to him about this and I hope to thank him someday as well.

TWO life-changing opportunities!

Happy Father’s Day to ME!

As a Father’s Day gift to myself, I ordered a refurbished iPad 1 a few weeks ago and was thrilled when it arrived on the day before we left for our recent visit to Indianapolis so I was able to test if I would be able to “survive” with it as my primary Internet device for an entire week. It passed that test!

For some time, I had been torn between buying a new iPad 2 or a refurbished iPad 1. That issue was settled by two factors. First, a review convinced me that the faster processor and two cameras on the iPad 2 were not features that particularly appealed to my use cases for the iPad. Second, I discovered that an iPad 2 model of the highly-rated Adonit keyboard did not yet exist. Since I really wanted a keyboard, I realized that the $150 price differential between a new iPad 2 and a refurbished iPad 1 would more than pay for the Adonit so that sealed the deal!

The keyboard arrived the day before Father’s Day so I was going to write this post with the Adonit, but decided to do that when I post about the BlogPress app since that was motivated by the acquisition of the Adonit.

Mobilizing

I finally got a new phone which I'll tell you more about in a subsequent post but I really wanted to try posting from my phone to see how easy it would be in hopes of posting more often!

At the same time. I was motivated to work on a mobile-friendly version of my online identity so try the QR code and tell me in the comments what you think of it. It also serves as the start page of my mobile browser. I used Delivr to create the QR code which also provides analytics. I used Winksite to create it and have been using it for some time but my QR code may also make it more accessible to others until they build their own. It's very easy!

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!

I'm back!

I have ended my self-imposed blogging exile which began in late July shortly after my move to central Florida when I abruptly stopped blogging while I was in a training class for new members at Wycliffe Bible Translators. I'll have to say eventually about that, but I decided to resume blogging on a more light-hearted note prompted by an experience today which made me recall an incident which coincidentally occurred almost three years ago (to the day!)

Those of you who were part of the Indy Christian Geeks group which I organized might recall my excitement when I shared news at one of our monthly lunches about the imminent deployment of AT&T U-verse in my old neighborhood Crooked Creek Villages back in Indianapolis. By the way, I STILL have a house for sale back there!

Here in central Florida, I noticed an AT&T technician working in the yard next to my house in a new neighborhood where houses are STILL being built. Because U-verse has not yet been deployed in my neighborhood, I have been a Bright House subscriber since we moved in and I haven't been "wowed" by Bright House's DVR which has only two tuners although I have been generally satisfied by their broadband Internet service and VoIP phone service. It hasn't been much of a hardship to no longer have AT&T WiFi service since McDonald's, Starbucks, and many others now offer free WiFi on their premises. Nevertheless, I'd like the option of switching to U-verse so I asked the tech if he was doing anything that meant U-verse was coming to my neighborhood. Imagine my surprise when he told me the older neighborhoods around me would have it before me because the fiber-optic telecommunications infrastructure of our new neighborhood was actually an impediment to the deployment of U-verse! I guess that U-verse is currently engineered for a copper local cable plant so they can't deploy U-verse in our neighborhood without some significant engineering! On the other hand, I guess that also means that whenever AT&T decides to deploy a more advanced service similar to Verizon's FiOS that we'd be one of the first neighborhoods to get it! I hope that doesn't take too long...anybody heard anything about AT&T's successor to copper-based U-verse?

Amplifying the message via aggregation

In my previous post, I indicated I would explain how “a missions agency could amplify its message beyond traditional Web content by engaging its prospective recruits, donors, and other constituents via social media” and in my subsequent reply to a comment, I promised to do it this weekend. Since the Colts won the football game, I have no more “excuses” stopping me.

Let me preface my remarks by making clear that I am merely outlining a CONCEPT which I have NOT tried to implement YET. To bear much fruit, this approach depends on a number of prospects and donors being active in social media, whether by blogging, tweeting, or otherwise creating user-generated content. I haven’t tried to measure how many people are blogging about a people group or otherwise expressing what God has put “on their heart” via social media. I DO know that this number is growing as more people engage in social media and as it becomes even easier to generate content via a dazzling array of Web 2.0 services. To me (and many others), this is the phenomenon of Web 2.0 which offers so much opportunity!

Let me illustrate the concept with the example of blogging as the means for users to generate content. Only today, I started creating another social media aggregation since the Haiti earthquake happened several days ago while I was busy setting up my course which uses social media for learning. Having gotten my students started, I can now devote some time to assemble user-generated content about the Haiti earthquake. As I do so, I have no doubt I will find many people who have been blogging about Haiti even before this tragedy. Some of these bloggers are NOT (YET) missionaries in Haiti. Those of you who serve with missions agencies which work in Haiti ought to try to do at least the following: comment on their blog posts in order to get to know them and to let them know HOW they can help. When you comment on their posts, be sure to AGGREGATE your comments using BackType. You can see an example of this aggregation in my BackType profile. This aggregation is an example of what I meant when I claimed “a missions agency could amplify its message beyond traditional Web content” especially if many commented on behalf of the same missions agency which can be easily accomplished using BackType with some coordination. Not only would the prospective missions candidates and donors be touched (just ask any blogger how they feel about comments), but the missions agency could also publish these comments as evidence of its heart for Haiti!

As I said earlier, I haven’t (yet) tried this myself because I am not (yet) affiliated with any missions agency. This is a hint that I would welcome the opportunity to help a missions agency with its social media strategy!

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.