Over and over again, I had discussions which related to the issue of CONTROL in our schools. Whether it was a discussion about social media policies for schools, issues surrounding content filtering, or the need for visionary school leadership, control is the issue we kept getting back to.

It was wonderful to finally meet and chat with Howard Levin at NECC this year, who is the director of technology for the Urban School in San Francisco. His students have created over 100 hours of interview content in the wonderful website “Telling Their Stories,” and have been in the midst of a 1:1 laptop initiative for several years.

Howard’s school takes a radically different approach to the issue of control when it comes to student laptops. Where the vast majority of U.S. schools today attempt to LOCK DOWN desktops for students to prevent them from installing any new applications, at the Urban School students have administrative rights on their own Macbook laptops. As Howard explained in his session, “1:1 Laptops and Seamless Integration: Peek into the Frontier,” teachers at the Urban school have found some of the most creative, constructive and worthwhile programs students are using on their laptops have been DISCOVERED by students and then shared with the wider school community. If laptops had been locked down, these students would not have been able to utilize these programs or would have been “driven underground” as hackers.

I am often amazed how common it is to find schools embracing 1:1 initiatives whose leaders are opposed to student gaming. In many cases, a primary reason given for locking down student laptops (not granting admin access rights for new software installations) is to prevent students from installing and playing games during class. If students are choosing to play games in class instead of focusing on learning, that is an issue of classroom management, the instructional tasks provided to students, and/or student discipline. That is not an IT issue. Schools should not implement IT lock down processes simply because it is an easier way to deal with instructional or disciplinary issues.

We live in a day of vastly greater digital choices. Some of those choices can be constructive, some can be destructive. Some can be educational, some may be mindless. The point is we need to equip teachers as well as students to function effectively in this new world of digital choice.

Please do not misunderstand me: I am 100% supportive of basic content filtering in both schools and homes. In part, I started the project “Unmasking the Digital Truth” not to advocate for digital chaos in our classrooms and homes, but rather to reveal the desire to CONTROL rather than comply with the letter of U.S. law which frequently drives computer-related policies in our schools.

In the end, perhaps issues of laptop lockdown come down to these questions. How much do you trust students? How focused are you as a school organization in striving to equip students to make good digital as well as face-to-face choices in our new landscape of learning? Every school implementing a 1:1 initiative needs to provide a fast, quick way to re-image student and teacher laptops when a software glitch has fouled up the system. Increasingly, we need to do our computing in the cloud. I am fully aware that students push boundaries and limits, and we need to still provide as well as enforce those for our students. Completely locking students out of the opportunity to install new software on their computers, however, communicates a lack of trust and a lack of partnership with students. It is essential that we partner with students in a digitally collaborative learning culture in schools, and that partnership begins with trust as well as responsibility. There should be individual consequences when a student violates trust or their responsibility. These consequences DO take more time to administer and navigate than a policy which simply blocks all new software installations. The long term benefits of a policy which trusts students, however, and recognizes the benefits they can bring to the learning community when they function as collaborative partners rather than learning drones to be controlled and managed, far outweigh any perceived short term benefits to a “lock down” laptop policy.

These prospects for shared, online learning surrounding a face-to-face conference reminded me this week of a situation in the fall of 2005, when I attempted (unsuccessfully) to catalyze live blogging and sharing from the upcoming TCEA 2006 conference. Citizen journalism is a disruptive prospect for many organizational leaders. Empowering anyone with access to a computer and the Internet to share their voice on the “global stage” can seem risky as well as dangerous to leaders most comfortable with tightly controlled, top-down styles of management as well as information dissemination.* As I noted in 2005, we’re living in an era where traditional publishing has been disintermediated. This landscape is fraught with risks and dangers, but it is also filled with opportunities. For more on the pros and cons of blogging for teachers, see the point/counterpoint article in the May 2009 issue of ISTE’s Learning and Leading with Technology, “Is Blogging Worth the Risk?” by James Maxlow and Lisa Nielson. It’s available as a free PDF download for both ISTE members and non-members.

It is impossible for me to think about social media and its potentially transformative potential to permit transparency and more open communication without reflecting on recent events in Iran following their election last week as well as many EduBlogger responses to the election.

On Monday in his post “An Amazing Day”, Jim Gates wrote:

Today was an historic day in the world. The elections in Iran sparked demonstrations by the people there insisting on their freedom. They objected to what they call a fixed election and have, in spite of everything, taken their anger to the streets in incredible numbers. And, they used the social medium of the web to help spread their message…This was a GREAT day to be working with teachers and trying to show them the power of social media, Twitter, specifically. In Tweetdeck I created a Search column for the word Tehran and that’s how I followed the events. There was a hashtag of #iranelections too that I could have chosen to follow. But, the bottom line is that I was following up to the minute reports from the people who were living the event.

Yesterday as well, Shelly Blake-Plock wrote in his post, “This is the Moment: Legitimize Social Media in Education:”

This weekend will go down in history in two ways. First, it will mark — for better or worse depending on the outcome — a fundamental shift in the way the people of Iran are able to express dissent with their government. Second, at least here in the United States, this weekend will mark the moment at which the mainstream media — particularly cable news — was overwhelmed by social media.

It can not be denied. We are all now living in a world of social media. You can’t claim ignorance. You can’t call it a ‘trend’. Whether or not Twitter exists in five years is beside the point. What happened this weekend is that social media became — in the most legitimate way — the voice of the people.

Shelly goes on in his post to exhort educators to take action, along the lines of her guest post here on ISTEconnects, “What Does Internet Blocking Suggest to Students?” He wrote yesterday:

The blocking debate ended this weekend.

Goodbye to the last vestiges of 20th century top-down media. Goodbye to the fear of what humans might produce given the opportunity to work collectively in thought and goodwill. Good morning, humankind.

So teachers, don’t try to teach kids to live in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. Rather, reach out and take hold of the possibilities social media offers. Anyone countering you doesn’t deserve the authority their office holds.

This is the moment. Legitimize social media in education.

When it comes to content filtering and other administrative policies relating to technology and social media, in many contexts we definitely have a strong need to “unmask the digital truth.” What ARE the reasons all blogs and wikis are blocked in many school districts? Why do some organizational leaders resist attempts to embrace social media and blog coverage of conference events as well as organizational meetings?

At NECC 2009 this year, it’s going to be exciting to not only EXPERIENCE the conference, but also SHARE the conference. We are probably only beginning to glimpse the power of social media tools to communicate and amplify ideas as well as conversations. Social media’s potential to provide transparency for a national election or a local school board meeting is largely untouched in many communities, but that reality is changing. Quickly.

We’re living in a “publish at will” digital landscape. What will you share today?!

* I first heard Marco Torres use the phrase “the global stage” at an educational technology conference, when referencing students publishing work online for a worldwide audience.

As you can see on the above images, the websites which were blocked included delicious social bookmarks, Flickr photo sharing, the Storycorps oral history project, Friendfeed, Google Mail, and Feedburner. Why were these sites blocked? According to the filter, these sites are:

1. forums
2. computers.filehosting
3. forums.blogs
4. forums.mail
5. forums.blogs

How does the photo sharing website Flickr qualify as “filehosting?” The website is used to share photos and video clips that can be up to 90 seconds long, not ripped, commercial mp3 audio files and copyrighted DVD video files.

It is ridiculous and unacceptable that educational leaders as well as the communities they/we serve tolerate this level of censorship in the United States of America. We would almost certainly raise loud objections if the same draconian level of censorship was applied in the library to printed books. Why do we tolerate and accept this level of censorship on our educational networks? Censorship of sites like those above is not justified by the legal requirement for schools receiving E-Rate funds to block pornography. Of course schools should block porn as CIPA requires, but the above websites are not being blocked because they contain porn. The project “Unmasking the Digital Truth” seeks to uncover many of those reasons. CIPA, eDiscovery, FERPA, COPPA, bandwidth concerns, liability fears, and ignorance are all reasons for overcontrol and draconian censorship like I experienced at this school.

When are we going to see a well articulated and coordinated grassroots campaign to combat and stop this censorship madness?

…have served as a roadmap since 1998 for improved teaching and learning by educators. ISTE standards for students, teachers, and administrators help to measure proficiency and set aspirational goals for the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to succeed in today’s Digital Age.

It is very important that national and state legislators, local school board members, district and campus administrators, parents, teachers, and students know about educational technology standards and their importance in 21st century classrooms. The NETS can serve to not only focus attention on the importance of 21st century skills, but to also help educational constituents understand the specific skills as well as dispositions which learners today should possess in our digitally networked information society.

What do you think the most effect ways are to raise awareness at local and state levels for 21st century skills in general and the ISTE NETS specifically? When I was a teacher in the Lubbock schools in the late 1990s, the district hired a new technology director that helped organize a big “technology summit.” Alan November was our keynote speaker, and lots of good discussion took place that day about the need to focus on technology integration, digital literacy, and information fluency. It’s not true that all the conversations about 21st century skills ended after the summit was over, but I was personally disappointed we didn’t see more follow through and ACTION on the part of participants to both continue raising awareness about educational technology standards and CHANGE CLASSROOM PRACTICES to better meet these standards following the summit.

At a state level, Texas has the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Technology Applications. Other states have also adopted technology-skill specific standards. As far as I know, in Oklahoma we don’t have a separate set of technology standards for students or teachers, or have educational standards within content area standards which focus on digital literacy to the extent required by the ISTE NETs.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is working to raise awareness this month about the importance of digital literacy skills as well as educational technology standards through its National Cyber Summit on 21st Century Skills.

Yesterday thanks to a Tweet from Jane Keyes, I learned about The iSchool Initiative. This project was created as a nonprofit by 18 year old Georgia student Travis Allen, passionate about raising awareness for the need to address and integrate 21st century literacy skills in our schools and promote CHANGED CLASSROOM PRACTICES which reflect this awareness. The initiative specifically seeks to catalyze support for 1:1 learning initiatives using small, mobile computing devices like the iPod Touch. According to the project’s about page:

Travis Allen formed the iSchool Initiative after coming to the sober realization that we can’t wait for government and school board bureaucrats to bring technology into our classrooms. This non-profit organization began with the simple idea that Apple’s popular iPod Touch just might be a solution for cost effective technology in schools. After sharing his iSchool concept with Teachers, students and eventually the principal of his high school, he realized this idea had tremendous potential to save schools money and at the same time dramatically reduce their carbon footprint on the environment.
Travis quickly realized there would be only one way to make this vision into a reality. He knew it would take a small army of people demanding cost saving, environmentally conscious solutions in our school systems before School Boards and companies like Apple, Microsoft and their developing teams would take on such an ambitious project. He began working on a PowerPoint presentation to make his case. This was soon after turned into a Youtube video that quickly began to build global public support for his idea. Next, he created a Facebook Group along with the iSchoolAdvocate, twitter page and finally this website.

On May 11th of 2009, the day after Travis turned 18 years old, he registered the iSchool Initiative with the Secretary of State of Georgia as a non-profit corporation dedicated to bringing technology solutions to classrooms across America.

Travis is right, we CANNOT “wait for government and school board bureaucrats to bring technology into our classrooms.” We need local and state-level initiatives to both raise awareness about the importance of 21st century literacy skills and national educational technology standards, and also CHANGE CLASSROOM PRACTICES through collaborative projects. Personally, I think the focus of these projects should be on Creation, Communication, and Collaboration. These can be considered the “3 C’s” of digital literacy in the 21st century. We need more of all three in most of our classrooms, to effectively meet the expectations of the ISTE NETs as well as other frameworks for 21st century skills.

If you want to follow Travis Allen and the iSchool Initiative, you can follow @iSchoolAdvocate on Twitter. This is Travis’ YouTube video about the iSchool initiative and the iPod Touch. Travis provides an excellent overview of many compelling educational applications available TODAY for the iPod Touch and iPhone.

Digital literacy initiatives do not have to focus on Apple products or the iPod Touch specifically. There are a wide variety of technology solutions, including netbooks and other portable devices, which can be used effectively to operationalize the NETs. Travis correctly highlights the fact that the iPod Touch IS capturing the imagination of many educators and students, however, particularly given the proliferation of creative and powerful applications like those he highlights in this video.

What are leaders doing in your local community and state to promote awareness of and action on the ISTE NETs? Are there ways you can empower students to speak out and become local catalysts for change for digital literacy? Perhaps sharing Travis’ story and video is one way to begin.

Of the different components of a successful 1:1 program which were discussed, two stood out more than all the rest as being absolutely pivotal. These are leadership and professional development.

Without committed leadership, 1:1 laptop initiatives are doomed to failure. Jerry Vaughn, superintendent of Floydada Schools in West Texas, explains this with a bacon and egg breakfast analogy. The chicken was involved, but the pig was committed. As sure as the sun will come up tomorrow, we can be assured that schools will continue to face a variety of crises including funding shortfalls, disgruntled parents, challenging interactions with the media, and other situations. Leadership to support and sustain 1:1 learning initiatives for the long term is pivotal. A Google map of the 22 school districts who started four years ago in the Texas Immersion Pilot Project (TxTIP) would be quite visually illuminating in this regard. How many of these schools are still going strong, and how many have faltered? Strong leadership is one of the most important factors for 1:1 success which is sometimes overlooked as RFPs focus on hardware, software, infrastructure, and professional development.

Professional development was the second most frequently discussed element of 1:1 initiatives which is critical to emphasize. Just as learning needs to be differentiated for students, professional learning for educators also needs to meet individual needs and unique schedules. Several district leaders in our meeting today discussed how they regularly set aside time each week for in-house professional development. While some funds are available to bring in outside speakers and professional development “experts,” the vast majority of professional development sessions in these districts is conducted in-house.

To empower, energize, and equip educators within the school district to lead ongoing professional development training, several superintendents mentioned how valuable it has been to attend state as well as national educational technology conferences, and send teacher teams to those conferences. Some districts send all campus administrators as well as a team of teachers each year to the state educational technology conference. One district (Crescent Public Schools) sends ALL teachers to the state technology conference. After the conference, teachers are brought together to compare notes and share points of learning with each other. As one superintendent pointed out, however, this can be an expensive undertaking! Teachers come back from these conferences with “wish lists,” and it can be costly to fill all those orders which teachers want to place following a conference!

These types of experiences lead to important dialog between administrators and teachers, however, about what are “needs” and what are “wants” when it comes to learning inside and outside the classroom. Several administrators spoke to the critical need to LISTEN carefully and on an ongoing basis to teachers as their needs change and situations evolve with students and technology. It is impossible to predict with absolutely certainly which software programs, online website subscriptions, and hardware peripherals are going to be most valuable for students and teachers in five years. It is challenging to make those predictions even one year in advance. This brings the conversation back to LEADERSHIP, and how critical it is that school districts journeying down the 1:1 learning road be led by individuals who are responsive, good listeners.

It was a privilege to be able to listen to the conversations of many Oklahoma school leaders today who are leading their communities down the road of 1 to 1 learning. While I picked up on some new ideas, my prior understanding of how important leadership and professional development are to 1:1 learning success was certainly reinforced by today’s discussions.

How is your library and libraries in your area changing the ways library patrons are served? Is your library making strong efforts to reach out with digital resources? Is your library utilizing the input of young people in the way participants in the MindSpot project are, to insure new initiatives are well received by younger generations?

In this video, one of the young people talks about the importance of “the library coming to us” rather than assuming all patrons can or will come to the library. In the not too distant past, educational researchers HAD to physically come to a library to conduct research. There was not another option. Today, however, access to Internet resources is changing the dynamics of research dramatically. Librarians are, in many cases, serving a key role in communities as catalysts for change in our attention economy. Dr. Joyce Valenza’s blog for School Library Journal, “Never Ending Search,” is one of my favorite places to read new ideas about innovative libraries and librarians. (Joyce is @joycevalenza on Twitter.) Doug Johnson is another of my favorite librarian bloggers to read regularly. (Doug is @doug0077 on Twitter.) Both of these librarian-educator leaders exemplify the importance of embracing and utilizing new digital tools for learning and helping others learn, both inside and outside the “traditional” library.

Despite the wealth of available digital resources, many people still have a strong need and desire to connect with others in face-to-face contexts. This is one of the reasons brick-and-mortar libraries and schools are not going to go away entirely in the decades to come.

Hat tip to Jenny Luca, Leeanne Windsor and Kim Cofino for this video and project link.

     Several years ago, a team from our high school attended High Schools New Face Conference in Western New York.  Will Richardson lit a spark in several of us teaching us a plethora of tools- blogs, wikis, podcasting, RSS feeds, etc…  The notion of ‘connecting with students’ was at the forefront.  Students today are ‘connected’ electronically more often than not, have access to information quicker than many of us could ever have imagined and share an enormous amount of information via social networks.  We knew we wanted to harness the power of the internet and do so in hopes that students will begin to gather, learn and share information in a way different than the traditional ’sit-n-get’ format found in many high school classes. 

     Our district had already begun to use some on-line learning and remedial programs for pre and post teaching which provided teachers (and the students) immediate feedback and monitoring of progress.  Adults were well aware of the frequency of which students were on cell phones, iPods and connecting daily on MySpace and Facebook.  C0uldthey not be taught to use these same concepts for learning?  Would they enjoy learning more and as a result, wouldthey improve their achievement?  Lets take one step further.  Would teachers not become reignited about teaching and learning?  Could teachers begin to collaborate on an etirelydifferent level?  Would students become more engaged?  Obviously, a team of us believed the answer to all these questions and more to be ‘Yes’!  And so, we began our journey.

     We started with a few extremely motivated teachers.  Blogging was the start.  Posting assignments, homework (being absent was not longer an excuse to not having  work done!) and even lecture notes.  A student would volunteer to be ’scribe’ for the day and post the day’s lecture/class notes.  Students will use a blog to have discussions and collaborate on projects.  Students (and teachers) would embed videos, presentations, and resources in their blogs.  This is about the time that some students began to experiment with podcasting. 

      The next step was for students and teachers to begin to collaborate: sharing information, building off of each other’s contributions and creating a place to store resources.  The Wiki became the platform.  Use of the wiki expanded blogging to include a site for many courses in the high school.  Syllabi, homework, project assignments and handouts can all be found on a virtual platform for students.  Students would also post completed assignments and create team projects with the help of classmates. 

     Teachers learn relatively fast, but students were learning faster.  Knowing that if teachers were going to use these tools, they would quickly need support.  With the support of our Board of Education, I appointed a teacher on special assignment to actually train and work with teachers directly in the classroom, assisting them with lesson development.  An Action Planning Committee in our high school consisted of a group of teachers vounteering to meet early morning, before school to share their craft and changes in their teaching.  The spark had been lit, the flame began to grow.

     Throughout this process, I believed as a leader that I needed to be a role model.  I began to use web 2.0 tools in my everyday work.  I blogged about the changes in our high school,  and blogged for our community highlighting various achievements in our school districts.  I even attempted a blog for students to have yet one more vehicle to communicate with their Superintendent.  I would embed resources, presentations and podcasts.  The intent of my message was these tools are effective, can be time savers and a way to quickly and easily spread and share your work and ideas.

     Resources, the ’storage’ of resources, along with accessibility ( ’anywhere’ and ‘anytime’ ) was needed and introduced.  Tools such as googledocs, social bookmarking (del.icio.us) and various virtual platforms were taught and used by both students and teachers.  This became a quick lesson:  not everyone had to ‘reinvent the wheel’.  Friends could help each other.  Find a resource that not only you need, but know of a friend that may be interested, store it and share it!  As more teachers expressed interest in integrating technology within the classroom, accessibility to computers needed to be addressed.  Instead of replacing stand alone computers, we began to purchase laptops on mobile carts.  Teacher carts were also set up with a laptop, projector and audio amplification.  Entire classes of students can be on-line at the same time and made dependence upon scheduling classes in computer labs a frustration of the past. 

     At the same time, our district had embarked upon a long-term relationship with Silver and Strong Associates providing professional development in “Thoughtful Education” pedagogy.  As teachers developed units and lessons with more depth and differentiating for the different learning styles of students in a class, it became logical for us to have a platform for teachers to share their ideas, lessons and units.  We introduced the social network Ning to our teachers.  There, they could combine all the learning of the past and integrate the various tools in one place: blogging, interactive collaboration, storing  of resources, posting of presentations, etc…  It is our hope that as time goes on, our entire faculty will engage in collaboration on a virtual platform in addition to face-to-face learning teams.  At the same time, we know that good leaders need to be involved in side-by-side learning with teachers and to model the traits and behaviors expected of teachers.  Our administrative team has also begaun to use Ning for administrative collaboration as well as to interact with our teachers as they post to the social network. 

     As a school superintendent, the development of a true learning community across a K-12 district with 6 buildings has been exciting to observe.  While at first, the integration of technology seemed to be “extra” work, teachers and students now see that it becomes ‘part’ of the work.   We are far from full implementation.  Empirical evidence related to improved student achievement is difficult to isolate.  What we do have is anecdotal information from both students and teachers that they are more engaged and interested.  The assumption is made that if students are interested and engaged, they are more likely to achieve at high levels.

      Before ending I would like to share a few examples of what I have seen both as a parent in the district and as the superintendent-

Podcast projects: 

One elementary class had students write their parents a Valentine’s Day Poem.  Instead of just sending the poem home in written form, each student read their poem in podcast.  The link for the podcast was sent to each parent in an e-mail.  What a wonderful surprise parents had to ‘hear’ their Valentine’s Day poem in their own child’s voice!

For a European History project, a student created a radio show to have taken place during World War II demonstrating their understanding of the events of the decade.  The radio show episodes were recorded in a podcast and submitted as a final project for grading.

Social Bookmarking:

Students and teachers are sharing articles, videos, and news articles along with a variety of other resources using their del.icio.us account.  Along with many teachers, I have a network of people I follow that I can view and find resources for projects we have in common.

Read/Write Web:

A plethora of information is available by reading blogs.  I read blogs by students as young as third grade posting information about what they have learned studying the Titanic.  I have followed a student blogging about his favorite sport (hockey) and another student blogging about family vacations.  I have probably learned more from reading blogs over the past three years, than any other source.

I can monitor many high school courses detailing what the content is, what assignments are due and view projects posted related to the course by students. 

Social Networking:

As stated above, teachers are posting a variety of lessons and units in every subject across all grade levels.  Our administrators are beginning to use Ning to post resources for each other, ask questions and get feedback from their colleagues as well as posting activities and questions for our book studies.  This continues to be a work in progress.

     The most important thing we have realized is that one thing we can be sure of is how fast technology changes.  We planned early on that we needed to teach skills vs. the products available.  While Blogger, PBwiki, Ning and Skype may all be popular, everyday there are new vendors improving sophistication and ease of use.  Both our students and teachers are trained in skills (posting/commenting to the Read/Write web, collaboration, social bookmarking and networking).  The platforms available will surely change.  It is our belief that in order for students to be successful in the 21st Century, they will need to be proficient in many of these skills.