Random Records From FETC

Back from the Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) with a fistful of memories and lots of things to think about. This is one of the biggest educational tech conferences in the U.S., and a place where lot of new services, software, and hardware are rolled out to attract the megadollars that are spent in this field every year. I've always found the greatest value in these conferences to be found not on the vendor floor or even in the sessions, but in the conversations that take place with coworkers, colleagues, and the other people that are passionate about technology in education. Not to mention having some good old-fashioned fun. So, with all that intro lets press on to my no-particular-order listing of the things I took away from this year's FETC.

This Year's Hot Buzzword: The buzzword I heard most often at FETC was portal. Perhaps I was more tuned into that one because we're investigating portals for our district and I'm highly invested in the notion that the future will bring us a single log-in service where we can push data and resources right to the desktop. As the number of resources on-line becomes more overwhelming each day, and publishing becomes easier for content area experts, we face real challenges in not simply managing the information, but making sure it gets to the people who need it. A portal that customizes the content you see on log-in is one method for delivering that information to the desktop and putting it in the face of the people who need to see it.

My mantra these days is this: The people who know how to access information and resources these days are the one's who mostly don't need it. The ones who do need it--and by that I mean the new teachers just entering the system, the teachers who are still presenting the same tired lessons and still getting the same unsatisfactory results, the teachers who are stuck in a rut--those folks don't know how to get to the professional development resources, on-line lesson plans, and the wealth of resources that are already out there, much less deal with the coming avalanche of on-line courses and other stuff that we'll be throwing at them. Not to mention the need we have for tying test results and evaluations of student performance to methods for changing their performance.



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Off to FETC '05

I'm off to one of the biggest educational technology conferences in the US today--the Florida Educational Technology Conference. Looking forward to Carl Hiaasen's keynote speech tonight and to seeing which way the winds are blowing this year in the world of ed tech. It's possible that I'll post a bit here while I'm there, but that depends on having time and getting web access. We'll see. :-)

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The Real Educational Malfeasance

Here in Florida we heard a state official toss the educational malfeasance phrase out last week when discussing upcoming changes to policies that would end "social promotion". (More on this later.)

But there's a little-discussed educational tragedy apparently happening all over our state and I suspect it is nationwide. We are graduating people who cannot count to ten. I witnessed this sad state of affairs just last night, standing in the express lane at the grocery store, where one woman ahead of me had seventeen items and the other had twenty-one.

It's a sad commentary on our education system that these poor women had no clue that the items in their baskets totaled more than those allowed by the clearly-posted signs limiting the number of items to ten. Maybe they couldn't read the signs. Whatever the case, I'm blaming the schools they attended and the teachers who must have let them down at every level for their inability to read and count.

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Those Scary Smart Students

We've probably all had a student in our classes like David Ross--the kid who went to work at Netscape and helped develop the Firefox browser. At 17!

This is the kind of student that you just have to sit back and watch take off in class, with little hope that you'll catch up to him once he or she gets going. It can be a little intimidating, but its lots of fun too. A few years ago I had a student named Kevin in my animation class who wanted to do one thing. Program games. So while the rest of the class was working on simple animation effects in Flash, Kevin was working in Notepad deconstructing examples of Flash games, picking the ActionScript apart, and putting it all back together again in his own games. At the end of class he'd ask me a few questions, and even when I didn't have the solution--his programming was over my head after the first month--at least I could point him to examples on-line where he could find out more. And then he'd be back in class, pounding out his code while the rest of us went on our merry ways.

There are a lot more Kevins and Davids out there than you'd imagine, and it's up to their teachers to encourage them and present them with ideas and resources. One of the things that I miss most about being in the classroom is finding those brilliant kids every year and nurturing their interests. Last year I had two brilliant artists who could do amazingly beautiful things in Flash. Two years ago it was an 11 year-old girl who was a born programmer--and who tells me via email that she's gotten bored with web programing and is now diving into C++. Scary, but what could be better for a teacher? A brilliant kid that you've helped steer down a path that might lead them to accomplish phenomenal things.

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One Week's Worth of Technologies

I was thinking this morning about all the different technologies I use in my day job, and how varied they are. Specifically, I wonder if the work I do is so different from what others in my field use, and how my need for an interwoven mesh of applications shows how far we've come from just a few years ago when it was more common to use just a few computer programs to get our work done. Does this have implications for how we should be teaching technology? Should today's students be learning how to quickly ramp up their skills so they can operate in an environment where the types of programs they use will be many and varied? What's more important to their future success? Teaching them to use individual applications, or learning the commonalities found in software so they're prepared for jobs of the future where they may be required to use any number of programs to do their work. I maintain that it is the latter.

As our students enter the workforce what will be most important to them is how to decipher applications, how to put them to use, how to organize their work, how to plan their projects, and how to choose the right program for the right job. The days of single application experts who use only one type of program to get their work done are fading into the past. If we consider how they'll be working, those higher order thinking skills take precedence over merely "learning" PowerPoint or Dreamweaver or Flash or Word. Instead, while they may have skills in one program that are more developed, they'll need to know how to move around and operate in a wide variety of applications in order to be successful.

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Portal Software Solutions—Good, Bad, Indifferent

Portal Software: Passing Fad or Real Value?: This article is geared at the business world, but it has value in the world of education where similar portal solutions are being heavily promoted.

I wrote about this a while back at an article title 15 Minutes at a Connected Teacher's Desktop and have some strong feelings in this area, most of them positive, on the value of a system that provides customized content and a single sign-on method for users. The author raises some valid points though, and this will be good ammunition for discussing portal systems with the vendors who are wooing us with big promises.

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Wanted: Conservative Speech Writer Without a Past

Our esteemed governor--Little Brother Jeb--reluctantly accepted the resignation of a speech writer hired just last month. This after news broke that while working as an editorial page writer for the Jacksonville Times-Union he was accused of viewing pornography online and discussing what he was viewing with an unnamed someone. Oh yeah, and there was some plagiarism going on too. Allegedly. (This article doesn't make it clear if he was plagiarizing the pornography or something else.)

This wasn't exactly fresh news. Apparently there was a small amount of outrage in some circles--notably the pure-as-the-driven-snow newspaper world, where this sort of behavior is considered to be out of bounds. Maybe not the behavior so much, but the fact that an editor obsessed with watching porn instead of working was prone to become "sloppy" (and may I just say here, "Ewwwwww") as reported by the Miami Herald. According to the Guv''s office though, a little porn at work is apparently OK, especially if your boss lets you keep your job.

He said that Brown's alleged pornography trespasses were not severe because The Times-Union allowed him to remain on staff for so long.

Got that?

Good, now that we're clear let's get back to the real business of government here in the state of Florida--expanding those faith-based initiatives and keeping our traditional marriages safe from those Godless homosexuals.

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Stiffed by The Donald

Harumph! I just cannot believe the The Donald and Meh-Lah-Nee-Ah did not invite me to their wedding and shindig afterwards at the Mar-a-Lago Club. You mean P-Diddy gets invited and I don't? And Elton John and Muhammed Ali? Boy Donald, this hurts buddy. Really hurts.

As a boy I remember vividly riding past Mar-a-Lago when it still belonged to Marjorie Merriwether Post (who was married to some guy named E.F. Hutton and the founder of the cereal company with her last name) and marveling at the rows of broken bottles along the walls surrounding the estate, put there to keep out the riff-raff. On my morning jogs I see the tower at what is now Trump's Palm Beach private club across Lake Worth shining like a beacon of opulence and over-indulgence.

You'd think with all my history in the area I would have gotten an invitation to the big party. Probably just as well. Somehow I don't see us getting a gown for my wife that matches the price the other ladies are paying since most of them cost more than we paid for our cars. (Although we have been to a wedding at the same church where the happy couple will tie the knot and formalize their prenuptial agreement.) I suppose we can head over to the bridge this coming weekend and gawk at the limos taking the rich and famous over to the big show. That would be fun.

"Look, there goes...no, can't see through the tinted windows."

"Hey, is that....? No, can't see through those tinted windows either. Darn."

On second thought, maybe I'll just go fishing in his backyard again. I get a strange perverse pleasure in the knowledge that I can motor right up to the seawall, annoy the dogs, and alert the security guards. All while safely ensconced in a boat that cost less than the Donald will be spending on his cufflinks.

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My Astounding Powers of Observation

Every morning around 10 a.m. I head down to the company cafeteria to get a cup of joe to help me through the day. Hey, I'm a damned early riser--4 a.m. is my usual no-alarm-clock-needed-thank-you wake up time, and around about 10 I'm ready for a little caffeine boost. I've been doing that since I started working at the school district office in August without fail.

Today a nice lady was standing in front of the caffeine-dispensing machine with me, and she asked a simple question. "Do you know which one of these is decaf?"

"Why sure", I said, "It's clearly marked right here under the spigot."

And that's when I saw it for the first time. The sign under the spot where I've been drawing my morning coffee, the one I've been using for 'lo these 4 plus months is clearly marked DECAF! Great gobs of apple butter! No wonder I've been nodding off after lunch. All this time when I thought I'd been drinking some nicely caffeinated energy boosting beverage, I've actually been drinking nothing more than mildly coffee flavored warm brown water.

Sheesh. I have to start paying better attention to this kind of thing.

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Does High-Stakes Testing Lead to High-Level Cheating?

When Tests' Cheaters Are the Teachers: Interesting story from the Christian-Science Monitor today on the effects that high-stakes testing is having in some schools. The pressure on teachers to show improved test scores is so all-encompassing that some are resorting to a device as old as the human race itself--cheating. This one is especially interesting because some of the cheating has been reported in a school district touted by President Bush and even Oprah Winfrey as examples of how No Child Left Behind has significantly impacted learning. Not to mention that our current Secretary of Education was once the superintendent of the Houston Texas school district where cheating has been found.

Me, I agree that testing is needed, but that it can not be the only method used for determining if children are receiving a sound education or their school and its teachers are performing adequately.

...cheating won't stop until the high-stakes testing system is thrown out, says Linda McSpadden McNeil, an education professor at Rice University who has studied the issue extensively. She believes No Child Left Behind is treating education like a business, with strangers managing schools remotely.

"You could have a great arts program, an unsafe playground, your ceiling falling in, or national merit scholars," says Dr. McNeil. "But all they look at is the passing rate of the children in your building."

The new regulations have had the worst impact on minority schools, she says, many of which are considered "low performing;" under pressure to get their scores up, these schools were the first to dump traditional curriculum and do test prep almost exclusively.

"That is not adding up to any cumulative knowledge," she says. "The No Child Left Behind legislation is really a very expensive ruse to keep from having to make the serious investment to make our schools really good schools. That's the biggest way the system cheats."

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A Great Wrong Righted

Believe it or don't, running for public office is something that I've thought about from time to time. Probably why I got that political science degree way back when. Why would someone subject themselves to the torture of seeking an elected position? Simple. It gives you the opportunity to right terrible wrongs, such as ending tax breaks for greedy corporate ostrich farmers.

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Baldness Explained

So, I'm having lunch with my daughter yesterday, and she looks at me with one of those exasperated looks--something that girls apparently learn early on so they can graduate to withering looks when they become a wife--and she informs me that my hair is "messed up". Now, I don't think too much about my hair, and it's only in these kinds of moments that I think about the fact that I'm pretty darned bald. Not in a Ron Howard full chrome-dome type of way. More of an Andy Sipowicz from NYPD Blue. There are lots of poor little hairs clinging to life on the top of my head, and it was these unruly remainders of my hairline that were mortifying my daughter.

But, as I explained to her, we bald men have nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, baldness is probably a sign of a higher evolutionary path that we're on. Look at it this way. With all of the physical changes that separate us from our hairy ancestors, the lack of hair is one of those things that has changed significantly. Sure, sure. Opposable thumbs and standing upright are pretty important, but the outward physical sign that we're further removed from the apes is the amount of hair that we have. So we bald men have just progressed a little further down the evolutionary trail than many of you. I'm not saying that to make those of you with lots of hair feel bad, but it seems pretty evident to me that bald men are just a little more evolved.

Of course, to continue those highly evolved genes and improve mankind, this lack of hair has to be attractive to the opposite sex. Given the large number of men who are in that more evolved category, that seems to be working out rather well, thank you. And have you noticed how many guys are shaving their heads these days and how women seem to like that look? We bald guys come by our good looks naturally.

So, if you're like me and things are a little thinner on top of your head than they used to be (a LOT thinner my daughter yells from the other room), please try not to look down on those who have not evolved as far as we have, and who have to take great measures to appear attractive to women. We should humbly accept the blessing that has been bestowed upon us and try not to gloat too much.

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Back in the Saddle

I've been on a bit of a self-imposed exile the last week or so, sort of like one of the Duvalier family members. Was it Poppa Doc or Baby Doc? At any rate, the holidays and traveling and reminiscing and eating (!) are all over with now and it's back to the real world of work and all that other stuff for me.

It's been a great holiday. You can say one thing for being in the education field, even if the pay isn't comparable to private industry, at least we do get some good time off. I've spent a good deal of mine reading and just hanging out with the family. Forcing myself away from the computer has ben a good thing, but it's time to get back to work now.

Lots of great projects for me ahead, including work stuff, but also the addition that my wife and I are planning for our little bursting-at-the-seams house to deal with the impending arrival of a teenager to live with us. (Actually, I think she may already have taken up residence.) At any rate, our house is seeming mighty small, and getting smaller every day. So after seriously considering selling our little place and trying to find something in our area that's already the size we need, we came to the conclusion that we can no longer afford anything in our neighborhood, so a remodel of this house is our best solution. Hey, this ought to provide lots of blog material, which will please my buddy Beth no end.

So a new year with big plans ahead. Personally I'm ready to put 2004 and its hurricanes and election and all that behind me. Yeah, that's it. We'll just pretend that stuff never happened.

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