Boston school bus drivers went on strike Tuesday morning — with no advance warning to families — leaving thousands of children stranded at home or at bus stops as the city grappled with its first such strike in more than two decades, The Boston Globe reports. Drivers showed up before dawn, but most refused to board their buses to protest myriad grievances, from payroll problems to a new Web page that allows parents to track their children’s buses. Bus yard managers eventually ordered them off the four lots and locked the gates, as union members shouted back and forth, with police cruisers parked nearby…
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Scarcely a month ago, on August 27, the Los Angeles County Unified School District placed the first iPads in students’ hands at the outset of a $1 billion plan to give one to every single student in the nation’s second largest public school district ($500 million for devices, plus an additional $500 million for internet infrastructure upgrades, raised through construction bonds), according to The Hechinger Report. The project is now being resoundingly panned, as reports surfaced quickly of high school students going around the security software on the iPads to surf for non-approved content. The district has called a halt to students bringing iPads home amid disputes over who will be held responsible for loss or damage–parents or taxpayers…
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Every year, schools spend billions of dollars on supplies and instructional materials and staff, Mind/Shift reports. A lot of that money flows to a few textbook publishers that create content, test-prep, even the tests themselves. Now, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley are looking for ways to disrupt this market, revolutionize schools with technological innovation and make some money. “Everybody’s waiting for the Facebook of education to come along,” said Trace Urdan, research analyst with Wells Fargo. He’s been watching the education market for 15 years, working with institutional investors to predict the right bets. “The biggest mistake I see, and have seen for a while in this space, is investors and entrepreneurs thinking things will happen a lot more quickly than they do,” Urdan said…
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Schools buy stuff badly, EdSurge reports. This spells trouble for education technology. Schools will buy the wrong things, at bad prices and for the wrong students. The result: schools will implement ed-tech more slowly, results will improve minimally if at all, the wrong technology will prosper and money will be diverted from more effective goods and services. If we want to avoid this future, we need to fix the procurement process now before it’s too late. Examples of bad personnel management in the public schools are all too common. However poorly designed salary scales and benefit plans may be, they are paragons of efficiency compared to the way school systems spend the rest of their money. American K-12 public schools spend 30% to 40%, approximately $70 billion annually, on curriculum, technology and other support for the classroom. As more of that is spent on education technology, it is imperative that it be spent well…
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State leaders can leverage their positions to support teachers
In an effort to support administrators during Connected Educator Month, two state education leaders shared their tips for creating and sustaining online collaboration tools for classroom teachers.
Sponsored by the State Educational Technology Directors Association, the webinar aimed to demonstrate how strong state leaders can lead to the emergence of robust teaching and learning resources, along with professional learning opportunities.
In Texas, educators use Project Share [5], a collection of Web 2.0 tools and applications that provides high quality professional development in an interactive and engaging learning environment, said Karen Kahan, the director of educational technology at the Texas Education Agency.
(Next page: More from Texas, and what’s happening in Oregon?)One feature of Project Share is its focus on helping educators build professional learning communities, through which they can collaborate with other educators and participate in online learning opportunities.
State leaders at this level can help educators expand their influence and professional impact. For instance, on Project Share, teachers have created ePortfolios to share and highlight their individual accomplishments.
Some features are available to any user, while others are limited to Texas educators. For example, anyone can access Texas Education on iTunes U to explore educational tutorials and download personalized learning resources.
“It’s our gateway to getting resources,” Kahan said. “Project Share is all about providing resources.”
Using Project Share, Texas education leaders and teachers have access to more than 95 state-created professional development courses and certification courses aligned to state standards, all available for free.
Professional development resources include actual examples and videos of teachers in the state. More than 500,000 educators and leaders have Project Share accounts, as do more than 2 million students.
Carla Wade, the digital learning and STEM education specialist for the Oregon Department of Education, introduced attendees to the Oregon EdTech Professional Development Cadre [6], an online community where educators share lesson plans and professional development ideas and seek advice from their colleagues.
The Cadre, run by a team of educators and leaders across the state, aims to disseminate best practices in technology that target innovative technology integration in teaching and learning.
The Cadre site includes resources to effectively integrate technology standards with content standards, highlight exemplary staff development and design staff development structures to improve teaching practice, and to model and practice effective instructional strategies while demonstrating emerging technologies.
Site participants can use tools to create, post, and tag resources, which are then posted on the site for everyone to see, although sharing is limited to registered Cadre members.
Users also can view the state’s mobile learning Q&A site [7], which offers popular topics, questions, and mobile resources.
SETDA details new initiatives, communities for state leaders as part of Connected Educator Month
If state technology leaders know one thing, it’s that community and connection are vital for achievement–both professionally and for student achievement. As part of Connected Educator Month [8] (CEM), the State Educational Technology Directors Association [9] (SETDA) has partnered with CEM to provide state leaders with vital resources to bring states up-to-speed on key technology issues.
“Keeping up with new ways to teach and learn to ensure our students are successful…is a mind-boggling task if a teacher only has his or her own colleagues in the local school to talk to,” said Geoff Fletcher, deputy executive director of SETDA.
According to Fletcher, having access to other educators, and especially state technology leaders, is the most valuable resource teachers can have, providing ideas and support that will “enrich the lives of students in many classrooms.” For that reason, being connected is “essential.”
(Next page: New state technology leader initiatives)
In November, SETDA will debut a new online community for members that will be officially launched at the Leadership Summit [10].
“One of the main reasons SETDA was created was so that our members could connect with each other regularly in a variety of ways,” explained Fletcher, “and we all are the richer for it. Our new community will further enrich collaboration and communication among our members and serve as a model as they continue to strive to connect with leaders in districts across their states.”
Working with CEM, SETDA has continued its work this year, specifically focusing on hot-button subjects currently in states and districts, such as working with digital resources and how to implement online assessments.
SETDA and CEM presented a webinar October 7 that featured two states’ approaches to providing resource for teaching and learning [11], as well as “unique” professional development opportunities. View the archived webinar [12].
Both states served as examples for states and districts looking to create, aggregate, and disseminate digital resources.
“The content of the webinar is a reflection of key points in our groundbreaking paper, Out of Print [13], which catalogs the shift from print to digital with instructional materials,” said Fletcher.
SETDA’s second webinar will be held October 15 at 3 ET and will look at three districts—Mooresville, N.C., Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Indian River, Del.—and their efforts to implement online assessment. Sign up for the webinar [12].
Representatives of these districts will talk about how learning in the classroom has become more personalizes, partially because of online assessments.
According to Fletcher, these districts are part of a series of case studies SETDA has developed to help states and districts get ready for online assessments.
The series, “Implementing Online Assessments: Pathways to Success,” is part of a larger effort by SETDA to help states and districts prepare for the 2014-15 online assessments of the Common Core State Standards.
Under a subcontract with A.I.R. through the U.S. Department of Education, SETDA created assess4ed.net [14], an online community of practice focused on assisting states and districts as they prepare to implement online assessments.
Each best practice [15] describes the state’s history with online assessments, the evolution of their infrastructure, their approach to training and communication with districts, and an in-depth look at what it took a district to implement the assessments.
The downloadable resources supplement the narrative and range from training agendas to checklists for technology readiness to sample letters from the state to school districts.
The assess4ed.net community has over 1600 members with a number of active, smaller affinity groups focusing on more specific issues. For example, the State Readiness Coordinator group consists of the people charged with preparing their state for the 2014-15 online assessments. Information from the Technology Readiness Tool is posted frequently and members hold active discussion threads on topics that arise as they prepare their state and districts for the implementation of online assessments.
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