Inspired Writing

Last month I wrote a post about my district�s Powered Up Writing project. Dan Maas, my district�s CIO, has now followed up his previous post with a description of Inspired Writing, a new project that we've proposed as part of our Educational Technology and Information Literacy Plan that�s required by our state department of education:

Using the vehicle of the Educational Technology and Information Literacy plan, we proposed to place netbook computers in every 5th grade, every 6th and 9th grade Language Arts classroom in the district. Building on the successful support of the Learning Services' Universal Literacy Framework in five 5th grade classrooms at East, Field, Moody, Whitman and Hopkins Elementary schools, we proposed a project we call Inspired Writing.

The ET-IL Plan (still in draft form) is a highly structured document to meet the requirements of the Colorado Department of Education. Our attempt to write a document that both meets the requirements but also communicates our vision is presented here.

I�m sure Dan would love to hear some feedback, so head on over to his blog and leave a comment. Please keep in mind that this proposal is limited to current, already allocated technology dollars (just re-purposing them), as we � like many districts � are in the midst of some huge budget issues. But this is also laying the groundwork � the pitfalls to avoid, the best practices for instruction, the hoped-for increase in student achievement � for a grade 5 though 12 implementation for our district. If this first step is as successful as we think it will be, then hopefully we�ll find a way to expand it to 5-12 in the near future.

Join Us for Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation This Saturday

This Saturday, February 21st, we'll be holding the 2009 edition of Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation. We're completely full in terms of physical registrants, but if you aren't coming in person you can still attend virtually. We'll have Elluminate rooms going for each of the sessions, with live video and audio from the physical rooms, and of course the chat and other features of Elluminate.

We'll be starting around 9 am MST (although the sessions themselves don't start until 9:30). Here's a link to a list of all the Elluminate rooms, and below is our schedule for the day (couldn't get the Gliffy to embed nicely in Blogger, so it's just an image below - follow this link for active hyperlinks to the sessions.) We're excited to have new faces leading the conversations this year (plus an old face or two), as well as a couple of folks from SLA in Philadelphia joining us. We're looking forward to some great learning conversations.

Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation (2009 Edition)

Well, we did it earlier this year and most folks asked us to put on a 2009 edition, so we're doing it again.

You are invited to attend the Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation Conference (2009 Edition).

What is Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation?
Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation is a one day conference/meetup for teachers, administrators, students, school board members, parents and anyone who is interested in education. It will be held on Saturday, February 21st, 2009, from 9:00 am until 3:00 pm at Heritage High School in Littleon, Colorado, USA (different location than last year - here's a map). We assume most folks will be from Colorado, but everyone is welcome to attend, and we are working on some ideas for virtual participation.

Education is conversation.

Conversation creates change.

The future of education does not exist in the isolated world of theory and abstract conference sessions. Instead, it exists in conversations. It exists in creating a robust learning network that is ever-expanding and just-in-time. Learning 2.0 is not the beginning of this conversation. It is merely a stopping point, a time to talk about the visible difference that we all seek.

We read. We reflect. We write. We share. We learn. Come join us for a day of conversation about learning and technology.

You can learn much more about the conference on the wiki, including information about registering. Here are some highlights:

Tentative Schedule
We're still working on the details so this will be updated before the conference. Also, this may expand if we have more folks register than we are anticipating. (To quote Bud Hunt, "This conference stuff is hard!"). We also need folks to submit proposals to facilitate conversations.

Registration
You must register so that we know how many folks to expect and so that we can have enough lunches available. (Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?)

Cost
Free, baby. And lunch is included, thanks to the generous support of Littleton Public Schools and St. Vrain Valley Public Schools.

Wireless
BYOL (that would be Bring Your Own Laptop) - we'll have wireless access to the Internet (filtered) - we may test our capacity to handle density of machines, but hopefully things will go swimmingly. If not, we have wired machines in various places you can access.

Questions for Students
We're having a student panel discussion during lunch. Here's your chance to submit some questions for them to consider.

Invite Others
We strongly encourage you to invite other folks from your school, district, neighborhood, or learning network to attend as well. It would be great if everyone could bring at least one person with them that is perhaps new to this conversation.

Call for Conversations

Hey, did you miss it above? We need folks to submit proposals to facilitate these conversations. This doesn't happen without you.

Questions?
Feel free to leave a comment on this post or on the FAQ page on the wiki.

Promote Learning 2.0
Did we mention that you should tell others? Blog about this. Link to the wiki or this blog post. Download a flyer (pdf) and print it out.Or use this nifty image.

Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation

You are invited to attend the Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation Conference.

What is Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation?
Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation is a one day conference/meetup for teachers, administrators, students, school board members, parents and anyone who is interested in education. It will be held on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008, from 9:00 am until 3:00 pm at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, USA. We assume most folks will be from Colorado, but everyone is welcome to attend, and we are working on some ideas for virtual participation.

Education is conversation.

Conversation creates change.

The future of education does not exist in the isolated world of theory and abstract conference sessions. Instead, it exists in conversations. It exists in creating a robust learning network that is ever-expanding and just-in-time. Learning 2.0 is not the beginning of this conversation. It is merely a stopping point, a time to talk about the visible difference that we all seek.

We read. We reflect. We write. We share. We learn. Come join us for a day of conversation about learning and technology.

You can learn much more about the conference on the wiki, including information about registering. Here are some highlights:

Tentative Schedule
We're still working on the details so this will be updated before the conference. Also, this may expand if we have more folks register than we are anticipating. (To quote Bud Hunt, "This conference stuff is hard!")

Registration
You must register so that we know how many folks to expect and so that we can have enough lunches available. (Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?)

Cost
Free, baby. And lunch is included, thanks to the generous support of Littleton Public Schools, St. Vrain Valley Public Schools, and Arapahoe High School.

Wireless
BYOL (that would be Bring Your Own Laptop) - we'll have wireless access to the Internet (filtered) - we may test our capacity to handle density of machines, but hopefully things will go swimmingly. If not, we have wired machines in various places you can access.

Questions for Students
We're having a student panel discussion during lunch. Here's your chance to submit some questions for them to consider.

Invite Others
We strongly encourage you to invite other folks from your school, district, neighborhood, or learning network to attend as well. It would be great if everyone could bring at least one person with them that is perhaps new to this conversation.

Questions?
Feel free to leave a comment on this post or on the FAQ page on the wiki.

Oh, also feel free to add this image to your blog, or download and print the flyer.

It Takes a Whole Village (or High School)

Like in most school districts in the U.S., the high schools in my district have a pretty intense rivalry. But I just had to share this great story - and video - from our "rival" Heritage High School.

Via Dan Maas's (my CIO) blog:

During MAD Week, the school hosted a visit from Ishmael Beah who wrote a book (A long way gone) about his personal experiences as a child soldier. When Ishmael came to Heritage, he was greeted with a heroes welcome. Part of the welcome was to present a video about the effort that the students had put forth.

"MAD" stands for Make A Difference, and boy did they. They raised over $14,000 to help children in Sierra Leone, and one of their students delivered the aid in person. Here's the powerful video they made.

Way to go Heritage!

Save the Date

LPS Community Conversations Blog

Shift does happen. Dan Maas, my CIO, started blogging about a year ago. Now my district has launched an LPS Community Conversations Blog:

The LPS Community Conversations Blog, which can be accessed on the home page of the district website, provides yet another way for LPS key decision makers to hear from students, parents, employees, and community members. Periodically, a new topic will be posted, and fellow bloggers are invited to share their thoughts and converse with one another on that topic.

When you go there, they are careful to list some disclaimers, which is probably pretty smart:

This blog is dedicated to community conversations about important issues in education. Please feel free to leave your comments. The postings found on this site will be in the form of questions to the community and do not represent a position statement by the district. Similarly, comments left by members of the community also do not necessarily reflect any positions of the district. Further, LPS reserves the right to remove comments that are inconsistent with Colorado law or district policy. LPS may disable this blog in the future.

The first post is about high school graduation requirements � it will be interesting to see how many comments they get.

I still have lots of questions about how best to build community � I think we are simply too large and too much a part of the greater Denver metro area to do that effectively � but I certainly applaud my district for using technology to solicit additional community input.

Two Steps Forward . . .

It seems like a recurring theme in my school and district, two steps forward and one (or sometimes 1.8) steps back. By the end of this month, my school will be offering access to our wireless network to �personally owned devices.� Anyone who owns a device that uses the standard wireless protocols (802.11 a/b/g right now) will be able to connect to our wireless network and access the Internet (although not our file servers and printers). This access is still filtered by the same filter that school computers use, but is not password protected or restricted in any other way. Users have to accept an agreement each time they launch their browsers, and teachers have full discretion over their use in classrooms (much like we handle cell phones and iPods right now).

For those of you paying very close attention, you may recall that we had this briefly last fall until we realized that the licensing for our Internet filter did not cover these personally owned devices so it was switched back off. Over the summer the district purchased a new filter (8e6) and this was part of that agreement. This means that our students (as well as staff, parents, and other visitors to the building) will be able to bring their laptops, or iPhones, or Palms, or iPod touches, or whatevers and be connected. We have theoretical wireless coverage for about 95% of the footprint of the building, although I suspect that we will find quite a few dead spots as students start bringing more and more devices. We may also have density issues, although we did put extra wireless access points in our media center and cafeteria, figuring those areas would see heavy usage. (Because of our variable schedule, our students have a fair amount of unscheduled time at school to work on assignments, seek out teachers for additional help, meet with counselors, and use our media center � including the computers. While we currently have 35 computers available in our media center, they are still often all being used, so this will begin to help students have access whenever they need it, not just when the computers are available.)

The second step forward has to do with the filter itself. One of the reasons my district chose 8e6 was because of its ability to include overrides. There are actually two levels of override, an Active Directory override and a Building Level override. The Active Directory override allows all staff members to enter their login credentials and override many of the sites that the filter blocks. This allows them to use their discretion about using a site that may be blocked but is still educationally appropriate, and also allows them to get to a site to evaluate if it is appropriate. The Building Level override then gives an even higher level of access. I�ve questioned whether there is a need for two levels of override, using the seemingly incontestable argument of why would they trust me more than my staff. Those discussions are still ongoing, but I�m hopeful that they will eventually give all staff the same override rights as the building level override.

This is a huge improvement over last year, where we did have a building level override but no individual overrides, making it much easier for teachers to do their jobs �just in time.� If you are using 8e6 in your district and don�t have these overrides, you might ask (nicely) why not. This is built-in to 8e6, so I don�t think there�s a huge technical hurdle to implementing it. Keep in mind that it does keep a log of all overrides, and that log is attached to the login override that�s used, so there is still some �tracking� that can be done.

So, what�s the one step back? With the implementation of the new filter over the summer, they had to re-setup the categories of what was blocked and what was allowed. As part of that process, we now have lost access to YouTube, Google Video and other similar video sites. Previously we had had full access to those sites, and many teachers and students had used them effectively. Now, they�re somewhat crippled. Yes, teachers can access them with their override, which is annoying but still workable if they want to show a particular video to their classes. But what they can�t do anymore is have their students watch videos on their own, or find videos, or work on presentations that include videos, or upload their own videos. With our variable schedule, this is something that teachers had asked students to do in the past, but now we can�t.

I�ll spare you the long, drawn out arguments I made, as most of you can probably make them better than I did. But I will say this much. This completely contradicts the philosophy of my high school (and I thought my district). Our philosophy is to have high expectations for our students, to educate them to behave ethically, responsibly and safely and then expect that they will do the right thing. When they don�t, they know we�ll have a conversation and try to learn from the mistake, but we don�t assume they are going to screw up. In other words, our philosophy has been to educate, not ban.

It appears to me that the basic problem is that the filter, as much as I like some of its features, still cannot do what it purports to do � which is block inappropriate content (however that�s defined and whoever is doing the defining, which is a whole different rant). As it is, the filter is only capable of blocking categories and all of YouTube, not just inappropriate content on YouTube. While I understand that that is technically daunting, I don�t really care � that�s not my job, that�s the filter company�s job. Until they can do that, I think we should stop calling it by the euphemism �Internet Filter,� and instead call it what it really is, an �Information Censor.� It still amazes me that schools are so willing to abrogate their responsibilities and turn over control of the resources their students are allowed to access, the information and ideas their students are exposed to, to a third-party, for-profit company that does not hold education as its primary mission. What's next, are we going to start buying textbooks? OK, so maybe I shouldn't be so amazed.

So, as one example, our students won�t be able to learn from and participate in Pangea Day while at school. From the TED blog:

On May 10, 2008, Pangea Day, sites in New York City, Rio, London, Dharamsala, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Kigali will be video-conferenced live to produce a 4-hour program of powerful films, supplemented by visionary speakers, and global musicians.

The purpose: to use the power of film to promote better understanding of our common humanity. A global audience will watch through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones. Yes, of course, movies alone can�t change the world. But the people who watch them can.

To start the process, a short Pangea Day trailer (2:30 min) has just been given front-page exposure on YouTube, inviting anyone to submit their films. Pangea is seeking films "that provoke, entertain and inspire". "Images are powerful to divide, but also to unite", says the trailer.

Here�s the trailer. Note that while the trailer can be viewed on the Pangea Day website, films are submitted to a group at YouTube, meaning our students won�t be able to view them, or submit their own.



Sorry, LPS students, you won�t be able to view this at school. Please go learn � and change the world - at home.