Category: Innovation

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K12 Technology Plan: CIPA

K12 Teachers and Administrators have questions about some of the finer points regarding CIPA and their school district.  It appears there is a misunderstanding: not all CIPA products are created equal and more importantly your District may actually have the wrong CIPA product installed.

From a technical point-of-view CIPA solutions range in flexibility like Tylenol:  Extra Strength Tylenol, Regular Strength Tylenol, Tylenol 8 hour and Tylenol PM.
For a real-world overview of YouTube, K12 web filtering & CIPA: Click Here

Many CIPA related questions from teachers and administrators can be addressed by a single resource:  District Technology Policy.  If you do not have one — get one — following these easy steps:

1. Google “K12 district technology policy”
2. Read policies posted online by Districts around the country
2a. Find one that looks appealing for the needs of your District
2b. Don’t forget to acknowledge their efforts…send an email acknowledging their work
3. Copy/paste
4. Modify as needed WITH District-wide consensus
5. Publish your Policy under Creative Commons

In many respects the CIPA vendor you choose may limit your flexibility in unblocking webpages.  Most robust CIPA products DO permit teachers/district coordinators to permit custom URLs to be available on the fly.

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Design Education Globalization Innovation Milwaukee Network OpenSource Reading Technology

Latest read: Hot, Flat and Crowded

Over the long holiday I finally finished Tom Friedman’s book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America. The book is a mixed blessing.  Friedman has written one of the best books to understand the emergency need for a global environmental revolution.

hot, flat and crowded

Friedman provides detailed examples of how the world has been wasting energy resources since the industrial revolution. Sadly I am convinced we are (environmentally speaking) screwed.

Friedman provides well written pages that will awaken those still asleep on the environment’s impact on the human race.  If you think “green” is a movement to replace your light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs your WAY off base.  Its about re-educating how we waste energy and in today’s global economy risk losing more industries to countries around the globe.

The major challenge?  This issue is no long America’s alone to fix. Thanks to globalization its now a problem for the entire world.  Mother Earth needs assistance from China and India. Both must engage in green technologies to ensure planet earth’s health for the long term.

For China and India that includes all 3.5 Billion of their citizens who are just coming out of poverty.  Their governments cannot permit new coal plants to dominate their air pollution.  China alone brings coal-fired (dirty) power plants online every two weeks and will continue to do so for the short term future.

The Beijing Olympics was a perfect example of population and industrial pollution impacting the Chinese environment … and their economy.

Why China and India are causing the price of gasoline to rise.
When I was born in 1966 the earth’s population stood at 3.4 billion.  When my son was born in 2007 the population doubled to 6.7 billion.  What does our future hold when the earth’s population reaches 9 billion in 2050?  Forget fuel costs for a moment.  How much will it cost to feed your family?

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Jumping into the cloud

internet cloudThe huge success of web apps have made me think about jumping into the cloud with Microsoft’s Office suite.

Back in the day, Office was really the only game in town. Today Google’s App services had taken the lead in the Web2.0 surge.

Apps provide great functionality and workgroup solutions for free.  Many users will never push Excel to its limits. Google Apps which includes a powerful spreadsheet app is definitely good enough for many of us on a day to day basis.

Robert Scoble announced:

I’ve been watching my usage. In two months I’ve only used Outlook out of the entire Office Suite. Everything else? Moved onto online services.”
– 09:06 AM April 30, 2008 from web

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Education Globalization Innovation Reading Technology

Latest read: Made to Stick

What book would be a perfect follow up to The Tipping Point and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell? To prove timing is everything I read Dan and Chip Heath’s new release: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The book’s authors acknowledge that their book complements Gladwell’s The Tipping Point by identifying “traits” necessary to make your ideas ‘sticky’ with your intended audience.
Made to StickWritten by brothers Chip and Dan Heath they share experiences and research in finding ideas that stick. Chip is professor of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Dan is a consultant to Duke University’s Corporate Education program.

Made to Stick provides wonderful insight to learn how powerful ideas succeed in the face of big obstacles (and people) especially in a stale environment. Take Subway’s series of commercials featuring Jared for example.

Originally passed by PR firms, Jared’s story was brought to life by the Subway store manager where Jared ate while attending Indiana University. The ad campaign was eventually created pro-bono by a firm thinking they would fail. Even Subway’s PR firm did not support this idea. Chip and Dan prove not only how wrong they were, but how powerful the idea has turned out to be for Subway.

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Cyberinfrastructure Design Education Innovation Milwaukee Rich media Technology

Smartboards are just plain dumb

While leading a college IT team at a private college in Wisconsin I painfully learned Smartboards are just plain dumb.  Our Provost was interested to explore funding Smartboards in eight classrooms.  In securing a full “kick-the-tires” evaluation over two weeks from Smart Technologies’ regional reseller — our college took a full, no-holes barred test drive.  The reseller delivered the smartboards right to our doorstep.

Smartboard

Smart Technologies a Canadian company manufactures a series of interactive whiteboards targeted for the education and healthcare markets.  They have a large marketshare in K12 school districts yet a very small share in Higher Education.
SMART Technologies has a simple marketing message: SMART Boards represent the latest advanced in high-tech classrooms.  And by the looks of sales in K12 they believe they get access to state-of-the-art technology to teach more effectively. Students “feel” more engaged with high-tech gadgets.  Parents believe their children are recieving a better, quality education because their school has expensive smart boards installed.

Their products like other manufacturers permit anyone (holding a custom pen with touch recognition) to control/interact with an application’s software menus and windows. This will enable some level of handwriting recognition. Depending upon the type of camera configured, projection can be front or rear facing.  The important feature is the ability to capture digital ink — or handwriting recognition. It’s the “smart” part of their product — as their trademark would imply.  But for the prices that range from ($3,000 to $12,000) you should be getting 110% of your school’s investment. Right?

I have witnessed shifts towards “smartclassrooms” in K12 and Higher Education around the Midwest for almost 20 years.  If you have not personally configured and kicked the tires of a SMART Board PLEASE make sure someone on your IT Staff has this experience. The results should fundamentally change your view of smartboards and ’emerging’ technologies in the classroom.

Just one very important observation before jumping into my experience: In today’s branded world of smartphones, smartcars and even smart appliances, SMART Technologies holds the trademark to the word “Smart” and believe me …. there is marketing power when holding this trademark when selling technology products.

Okay….call them whatever you want: smartboard, digital whiteboards or even toss in the term “interactive” into the mix.  What should shock you is the degree of software compatibility for the price schools pay for these boards.

My goal was simple: obtain a solid understanding of this technology to justify our Provost’s initiative.  I kept a close eye on the purchase, installation, design and (most importantly) delivering empowering training to faculty and staff.   In order for me to meet these objectives the following three tasks were outlined for the Provost:

1. Tour a successful university installation with a team from our college
2. Confirm reseller demo on campus in-front of key decision makers
3. Successfully test drive all campus site licensed software

I was fortunate to secure a tour of Marquette University’s SmartClassrooms with their Associate Vice President for Educational Technology.  Joining me was our Director of Instructional Technology, Dean of Continuing Education and two members of my IT support team.

Several installations around Marquette’s campus successfully demonstrate a range interactive smart boards.  Marquette’s total costs for installing a “smartclassroom” cost about $40,000 per classroom.  The highlight of our visit was a behind the scenes tour of their smartclassroom in the new Raynor Library.

However SMART Technologies was not well liked by staff responsible for maintaing classroom technology.  As a result our group walked away realizing Smart’s products were not the right solution. Their reputation was poor, the total cost of ownership and training were much higher than anticipated and most importantly their product did not work as advertised.

In order to fully utilize a SMART board’s touch pen you must install or program custom code for ALL applications to be used on their SMART boards.  Yes, your school needs special code-modified versions of EVERY software application installed on every machine that will be connect to their SMART board.  Our college provides faculty with laptops and have laptops on mobile carts.  Our existing fresh out-of-the-box site licensed software from Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and every other vendor on the planet DOES NOT recognize SMART’s pen!  That’s a big problem.

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