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Help Me Understand This

Feb 18

I’m frustrated.

For many years the MacBook has been a workhorse for students and staff in many school districts. In January of 2011, the MacBook was still Apple’s second-best selling laptop. Then, over the summer, they discontinued the model for consumers. That was very concerning.

However, they still offered the model for education. I met with our Apple reps in December to begin discussing the refresh of our teacher laptops, all of which are MacBooks. I expressed my concern about the MacBook going away, and they assured me that there was no indication that was going to take place. If it did, they promised, there would still be plenty of stock remaining once an announcement was made to purchase the units we needed for our refresh.

This past week, I received the email I knew was coming. The MacBook was dead. As our reps promised, there was an end of life inventory left, but those units were going to go quickly, so anybody who wanted/needed any had to act immediately. Which, for anyone trying to work outside of a budget purchase cycle, is impossible. I asked if they could reserve the necessary units for our purchase, and they said they could not do that. They needed a PO immediately, which we simply weren’t in a position to do. As I was frantically trying to work out the means for us to make the purchase, I got a second email. All of the end of life stock was gone.

So too might be their focus on education.

Here’s where things get infuriating. The new solution for schools is an “education-priced” MacBook Air. For $999 when purchased in bulk.

The MacBook Air comes with a 64 GB hard drive (welcome to 2001), 2 GB of RAM (non-upgradeable), 1.6 GHz processor, no ethernet port (to connect to ethernet costs an additional $29 for a USB dongle), and no optical drive. All of these are significant steps down from the MacBook specs. And, we could get the MacBooks in bulk for $849.

So, we get to pay $150 more per unit for a whole lot less. Awesome.

The MacBook Air is an excellent computer for road warriors. Which, our teachers are not. We are now expected to pay a premium for the portability of a device that we don’t need to be ultraportable. Our reality is that we need much more than 64 GB given all of the multimedia work our staff has now started engaging in. We also need an optical drive as our staff use theirs literally every day. We need the ethernet port as that helps us balance the load on our wireless given that we are 1:1 in grades 5-8 and are looking to add grades 3+4 next year.

When I expressed this to our Apple rep, he explained that while he understood, the position of Apple has recently been to encourage schools who don’t favor the Air to look at the MacBook Pro. Awesome, again. So, we now have to spend $250 more per unit. Yes, those units would have the functionality we need, but we’re not in a position to spend $1,100 per device for all our staff members. That would be $62,500 more for the purchase. That’s significant.

What are you doing, Apple? Because by all rights, it looks like you’ve worked very hard to force us away from using you in our institution.

Twitter in D123

Feb 13

We’re starting a focused effort in my district to get our teachers connected on Twitter. The effort is more than just getting people to superficially use social media, but rather, it’s to help our staff see how powerful the experience of connected learning can be. This isn’t new, I know. Learning happens largely through connections.

The difference is in the way it scales.

I’ve been on Twitter for almost three years now. Looking back over that time, I simply can’t believe how much I’ve gained from the connections that Twitter helped facilitate. I look over the list of people whom I now connect with regularly on Twitter and easily 98% of those individuals I never knew prior to utilizing the medium. Many of the ideas we are implementing in my district have come from the ideas of those whom I’ve had excellent discussions with on Twitter. Even some of those I’ve had not so excellent discussions with.

I believe our staff can find the great value in the connections found within the medium. Because it’s the people that comprise the tool. That’s the value. The people. The ideas. The connections. The conversations.

So, if you see any of our people stumbling their way through that disorienting first stage of adoption on Twitter, please offer them a hello. A condolence for having to associate with me. And, a thought or two to keep them coming back.

And, hopefully, you can bring along a few of your people as well. Because it’s the testing and interrogating and discussing and negotiating of our ideas that help us all become better at the craft we ply. And for that, the more, the merrier.

Share. Connect. Learn. I wish that on you all.

*If you have any resources, links, ideas, etc. that might help us along our way, please feel free to leave them the comments below. Also feel free to add your Twitter name and what you do as that will help us compile a list of people on Twitter outside of our district.

**Special thanks to @pegkeiner and @LFedtech for all the great ideas, input and patience with the project.

An Important Message

Jan 18

Parental involvement is one of the most important influencing factors for the educational success of students (source).

Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in the creation of the video above. The video was shared during a parental involvement evening at one of our elementary schools.

All of the students in the school were given a half-sheet of paper with the question, “How can your parent/guardian help you with your learning?” The answers in the video were the unguided responses from the students and represent a sampling of the 264 total responses collected.

I believe the essential message from the students was both clear and powerful. Students want the attention, investment, and care of their parents. They want to sit down and simply spend time with the most important people in their lives. You can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices. It’s powerfully evident.

The content of responses themselves are also very interesting. The vast majority of students asked for help with reading, math, or homework.

This year, we significantly increased our students’ access to technology. We are now 1:1 in grades 5-8, and we have grade level carts of computers at each elementary building in grades preK-4. We are also having excellent conversations about how we should be changing the way we are engaging teaching and learning to create well educated students for the 21st century. I know many people don’t care much for the 21st century nomenclature, but I think it sets important context for our district and community as clearly, the world in which we live now is dramatically different than it was 20 years ago. As it will be when our students complete their formal education in the years to come. We are working to let that impact the way we create learning experiences for our students. We are only three months into the full implementation of this change, so I think this video provides us an excellent opportunity to set a baseline with this type of feedback from our students. I believe if we ask the same question one year from now, we will get a variety of different responses.

The video also presents us, as a district, with an excellent opportunity to consider and discuss the student responses. Are their responses what we hope they would be?

What is it that we hope they would ask their parents/guardians? What does what they say tell us about what we’re saying? Or doing?

If you were to ask your students the same question, what would they say? How could that inform your practice? Your district’s direction? Your focus?

Jumping In

Dec 06

Thank you to those of you who read and/or responded to my last post.

We’ve set the groundwork to start the discussion, but now it’s time to actually jump in. Which, I fear, is often the challenge with social media, ed tech, conferences, and the greater majority of exercises in education. It just sits down at discussion. The legs stop moving and only the mouths seem to work.

Let’s get beyond that.

Starting now.

I think this is a good place to begin. It’s only a brainstorming document, but I’m hoping it will lead to good discussion, which will guide where to go from here. I wish we could all find a way to just get together for a week and dig into some meaningful discussion about it all that would yield some output that could help guide the way technology is, and isn’t, being used in learning. Since we don’t have that luxury, I do believe we can make great progress using the means and minds we have available to us.

So, please add to this document. Invite others to add to it. Check back and react to what’s being built.

We can work collectively to decide where to go from here once the discussion starts taking place. We can negotiate the output. We can start to organize it all. Hopefully, we can find common venues to hold face to face discussions about it. Parts and all of it.

But we first have to begin. I’m hoping you’ll help.

There’s no doubt this will be challenging. It will be frustrating. It will take time. But, I believe it will be worth it.

I’m hoping you believe the same.