Articles in the Education technology category

Social networking webinar gives tips to board members

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Collectively, these and other sites are part of Web 2.0, a new generation of e-tools that allow for more interactivity and information sharing.

“Web 2.0 isn’t so much a shift in technology as a shift in mindset and how we connect with others,” said Gene Broderson, NSBA’s director of National Affiliate Services and Technology Programs, which hosted a webinar recently on the emerging cyber world of social networking and how school systems and educators can become part of it.

“Sites like Twitter and Facebook are a great way for you to learn about your community and for your community learn about you,” Broderson said. “It improves community relations and gives people you represent an understanding of what’s going on … but there are also some dangers.”

Helping Broderson lay out the landscape of this dynamic field were communication and marketing staff members from the Georgia, California, and New York state school boards associations, which are trailblazers in the social networking arena, launching Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and Wiki pages in order to stay connected with their members.

One thing public relations and communications professionals strive for is increasing public engagement and for school boards, so it’s especially important to find more and more ways to communicate and engage the public, said Laura Reilly, director of communications for the Georgia School Boards Association (GSBA).

At GSBA, one way they do that is by using Wikis, a mini website that allows users to collect, manage, and share information with various people.

It’s a lot simpler than an e-mail listserv, said Reilly, which allow questions to be posed and answered in a virtual group setting, but doesn’t make it easy to gather, sort, and disseminate that data.

“Wikis solve that by having a place to store those ideas and documents, than you can build a library for people to find that information,” Reilly said.

In addition, Wiki pages can be customized with your own artwork or logo, and various security settings allow administrators to monitor and invite select people to contribute or edit this virtual workspace.

“Wikis are a shared responsibility, no one person owns the wiki,” Reilly said. “And that’s sort of pervasive throughout all Web 2.0; you have to give up a little bit of control to have that collaboration.”

Reilly said a great resource on how to set up a Wiki can be found at www.pbworks.com.

California’s reputation as a bellwether state continues through its state board association, which not only has a Facebook page and Twitter account, but is on the verge of joining the blogosphere.

Blogging is easy to browse and search, enables you to build a more personal relationship because it allows two-way communication, and most importantly, it is affordable and easy to maintain, said Marci McFadden, CSBA’s marketing director.

“Another key benefit is it serves as a media and public relations tool, with the media more likely to follow and come to you for information and rely on you as the expert,” McFadden said. “But there are some cautions about blogging. It can take a lot of time, so you need to calculate that upfront.”

Identify content and individuals who would be responsible for providing the material and managing the blog, which McFadden suggested needed to be updated at least three times a week.

While blog postings should be informal and conversational in tone, districts need to always be cognizant that it is a public forum and that you don’t want to post content that is questionable, potentially offensive, or private.

Indeed, school boards and educators are advised to work with their district attorneys in drafting policies on privacy, internal and external use, and applicable state laws regarding open meetings and FOIA.

“We had a task force before we jumped into this,” said Barbara Bradley, the deputy director of communications and research at the New York State School Boards Association, which maintains a Facebook page. “I know this is a scary arena to get into for some, but take action, just be careful.”

In case you missed it, the entire webinar, complete with slideshows and links to helpful resources, is available here.

Naomi Dillon|March 17th, 2010|Categories: Education technology, School boards, Technology|

TLN Site Visits Show Education Technology in Action

The first of four site visits sponsored by NSBA’s Technology Leadership Network — a coalition of more than 350 school districts, education agencies, and colleges of education focused on developing and sharing technology best practices — kicks off in Arkansas’ Fayetteville Public Schools on March 14.

Like all TLN site visits, the jam-packed three-day tour highlights innovation in action — in this case, a district that has embraced 21st century teaching and learning modalities through things like technology enabled reading interventions, digital science notebooks, and pre-engineering programs.

“Hearing about a district’s initiatives through a conference workshop or webinar presentation is simply not the same as seeing first-hand how they have been implemented,” says Ann Flynn, director of NSBA’s Education Technology Programs, the department that oversees TLN, organizes the site visits, and runs the annual T+L conference.

“Participants get a 360 degree look that encompasses the district’s vision around adopting particular strategies, their implementation decisions, and the retrospective view of what has and has not worked, as well as originally anticipated.”

By talking with teachers, students, administrators, board members and business partners, Flynn says, attendees gain a depth of knowledge to help them evaluate their own technology planning efforts, building on the success of the host district.

The 2010 line up, which includes trips to Colorado’s Jefferson County Public Schools, suburban Chicago’s Avoca School District 37, and a first-ever trip across the northern border to Quebec’s Eastern Townships School Board, promises to inspire and show other districts how technology can drive their entire system, not just teaching, into the 21st century.

To register or get more information on the education technology site visits go here.

Naomi Dillon|March 5th, 2010|Categories: Education technology|

Federal Money for Infrastructure Is Available

Congress through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provided new funding mechanisms for capital improvement programs in school districts across the country. Nearly $25 billion has been allocated through bonds that schools can use to acquire land, build new schools, repair and renovate existing schools, and even pay for software and staff training.

But it’s not easy money, as some school districts have discovered, which is why an afternoon breakout session at the FRN Conference was devoted to helping educators understand, and more importantly, get their hands on these federal monies.

Approximately $22 million has been siphoned into the Qualified School Construction Bonds (QSCB) for 2009 and 2010, with 40 percent of the bond authority designated to the 100 largest districts in the country and the 25 districts deemed by the U.S. Department of Education to be the neediest. The remaining 60 percent of bonds are authorized to states, which each have their own method of divvying up the bonds.

Tennessee, for example, uses a lottery system, while each district in Ohio receives a specific allocation, said Deborah Rigsby, director of NSBA’s federal legislation division. The exciting thing about QSCB is that it is a zero-interest bond program, hence only the principal needs to be paid back in a predetermined amount of time to the bond holder — at least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

“This is a wonderful subsidy, unfortunately this subsidy hasn’t materialized for every district because this subsidy is a little more difficult to sell to the traditional investor,” said Brett Mandel, CEO of EddieTech, the National Educational Technology Funding Corporation, a new startup designed to be a clearinghouse and resource for districts wanting to tap into the federal infrastructure bonds.

Mandel said the IRS has yet to come up with regulations around these bonds, which has led some lending institutions to sit on the sidelines or institute fees or supplemental coupons to hedge their bets. Complicating matters are the stipulations built into use of these bonds. For instance, an underwriter, bond counsel, and financial advisor are required.

“That’s where we come in, perhaps we can make this easier,” says Mandel, who has partnered with organizations like NSBA, AASA, and NEA to connect with school districts and help them through the process. “We essentially want to make this a plug-and-play, where you sign here, give us the information, of course you get the local approval, and we get you the money as soon as possible.”

EddieTech’s website http://eddietech.org was expected to go live soon.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

Naomi Dillon|February 1st, 2010|Categories: Advocacy & legislation, Education technology, FRN Conference 10, Governance, School boards, School finance|Tags: |

Helping School Boards Understand and Use Data

Despite the numerous federal and state policies that have established data-based decision making as the norm for K-12 education in recent years, many school board members aren’t sure exactly what the concept means and how they should be using it to do their work.

Working with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, NSBA’s Center for Public Education partnered with three state associations (Michigan, Illinois, and California) to not only help school boards understand data but specifically show them how to use it to evaluate and guide their policies.

One of the first steps in the training, consultant Katheryn Gemberling explained at the Leadership Conference breakout session, Good Measures for Good Governance, is helping school boards understand the types of data available and ways that data could be used to make their work more effective. Her training uses real-life scenarios and hands-on examples of models that show the different ways data can be compiled and then used.

“We try to get boards really comfortable and confident in using data,” she said. “We use all kinds of data, too, not just student data.”

One of the most important facets, Gemberling added, is helping board members figure out the critical questions to ask — questions are often more important than answers.

One common mistake that she demonstrated was the danger of using averages, which can mask the extremities and trends within a particular study. The project shows school boards how distribution models such as stacked columns, which show disaggregated data by percentage, and scatter plots, which show the range of the subjects examined, give a much more comprehensive view.

For instance, one district used a stacked column to show how teacher assignments to high-need, mixed, and low-need schools correlated to the years of experience of the teacher. While the average years of teaching experience in high-need schools was relatively high, the column showed that about 40 percent of the teachers were actually in their first year of the job.

Nuances exists between using data for accountability and using it to drive continuous improvement.

The CPE, Gemberling, and other consultants have built three modules to demonstrate effective use of data: Creating a Data Culture, Teacher Quality, and High School and Beyond. The CPE is surveying the school officials within the three pilot states for guidance on new modules.

Ultimately, the CPE and NSBA will work with other state associations to provide materials and a training process for their local members. The CPE also will offer online self-guided tutorials and tools.

Joetta Sack-Min, Online Editor

Joetta Sack|January 30th, 2010|Categories: Education technology, Leadership Conference 10, School boards|Tags: , |

Building a 21st Century Education

Though it was one of the final breakout sessions of the afternoon and snow showers continued to blanket the DC Metro area, Saturday’s program on building a 21st century education drew a packed room and ended with a lively discussion.

Led by Patte Barth, director of NSBA’s Center for Public Education, the 45-minute session offered a brisk overview of the forces that have changed the workforce in the last few decades and how schools must adapt to equip students with the necessary skills they need to be successful.

In 1980, for instance, Americans collectively consumed 4,500 trillion words a day; in 2008 that figure is 10,845 trillion words.

“Can anyone even comprehend what a trillion is,” Barth asks the audience.

“That’s like our national debt,” shot back an audience member.

After the laughter subsided, Barth explained that while the Internet — which feeds some 3.6 zettabytes of data to U.S. consumers a day — has made information more accessible, it hasn’t made it more attainable.

“The information is just bombarding us now, we have to process it, digest it, make sense of it,” Barth says.

Hence the need for higher-order thinking skills and a broader view of competencies. The traditional curriculum is not enough, Barth says, students need to develop the ability to apply what they learn in various contexts.

In the 21st century, students need to have the 3C’s: critical thinking or problem solving, communication/collaboration, and creativity. Barth referenced a scene from the movie, Apollo 13, to illustrate what the 3C’s look like in action.

“This engineer comes in and throws all these random parts on a table and says this is what they have to work with, figure out a way to fix this ship and get them back to earth,” Barth says. “Of course, the engineers knew their stuff, but they had never encountered this situation before and they had to collaborate, and communicate with one another be really creative to find a solution.”

Before ending the session, Barth turned it over to the audience, to find out what solutions their school boards had discovered or what educators as a whole should work on to bring schools into the 21st century.

“Having an analysis of the outcome, not being afraid to fail, it’s a way of thinking that has to start in kindergarten, one audience member posited. “Why do kids like math in kindergarten, but they hate it in fourth grade? Teaching critical thinking skills starts early and needs to continue through education.”

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor, Publications

Naomi Dillon|January 30th, 2010|Categories: Education technology, Leadership Conference 10|Tags: , |
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