Putting Ed Tech in Perspective (cont.)

Last winter, I had the opportunity to speak at the annual NJAIS conference for trustees. My presentation gave those in attendance an overview of how technology has shaped our schools. The presentation centered around several distinct themes.

During the course of this year, I'm using this space to re-visit some of those themes. The October 10th post reviewed how complicated the decision making process in schools is when confronted with technology questions.  In this post, I'll briefly examine another theme. It involves the fact that technological change in schools is intimidating to many, and for good reason.

There's this handy way of looking at technology users that has gained traction over the years. Users are either digital natives or digital immigrants. Marc Prensky coined the terms in his 2001 article, "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants." This division refers to the fact that people born after 1980 entered a digital world. Others, alive and beyond childhood before 1980, are immigrants to this new digital world. Now one can argue about precise dates and relative definitions of a "digital world," but Prensky's basic point has many adherents.  There's a difference between those raised in a digital world, surrounded by hardware and software and those raised earlier in an analog world. The difference finds a neat parallel in language; it's the difference between one brought up speaking English and one who has learned English as a second language.
          This division between digital natives and immigrants is certainly not a school-specific issue, but Prensky himself, in that 2001 article, identified “Education” as the single biggest challenge facing the digital world.  Prensky understood the central place education holds in our society and he also saw a full generation of schooling defined by students who were digital natives and adults who were digital immigrants.  We're still in this challenging time, and may yet be in it for another 10-20 years.

I wrote an article in 2013 that was published online in T.H.E. Journal. The article was called "The Digital Resistors." It talked about why faculty in schools are resistant to technology changes.  The article relates some quotes I've heard from faculty: "I'm really not interested in learning much about my computer. Really, I just need it for e-mail and maybe to write something."  "I can't keep a grade book online. I'm more of a tactile person." "These passwords are driving me crazy. I'm just not doing anything that requires another password." "I'm not using my class Web page. I think writing the homework on the board and having students write it in their planners is still the best way to learn organization skills." 
           These quotes represent a faculty segment that exists in every school.  And please don't assume these teachers are not effective members of your faculty.  It's not necessarily the case. But they do create some serious disruptions because they often create more work for other people.  What's behind their lack of enthusiasm for technology-driven solutions? Generally, they're nervous about what they don't know. Just consider the language of technology. Gigabyte. External Hard Drive. RAM memory. Internet browser. 802.11 ac wireless protocol. CAT 5 fiber. Virtual desktop. Cloud-based integration across multiple OS platforms. For “non-techies,” it can seem like gibberish. 
        Teachers generally like being in control. It's a basic part of the skill set any teacher brings to the job. Over the last 20 years or so, many teachers have felt less in control. And to add to the anxiety, the rate of change seems to be accelerating. The theme we've arrived at: It's Intimidating.  For a great many faculty members, every technology change becomes one more thing to learn on top of the job they've always had to do.

Hour of Code

   For the past several years, Gill St. Bernard's School has been an active participant in the Hour of Code program. (It's a key part of Computer Science Education Week, December 9-15 this year.) The program is huge, and growing. Tens of millions of students in dozens of countries participate. And each year, participation grows by leaps and bounds. What's the attraction? Why are so many schools promoting the program?
   Computer Science as a fundamental academic course of study is late to the curricular canon. About a century ago, the Carnegie Foundation funded a prominent study that articulated the structure of the modern curriculum. English, History, Math, Science and Language were to be the key components. Computer Science, of course, was yet to be developed as an area of study. That would wait until computers were developed.
   Over the last decade or two, Computer Science has increasingly become part of students' studies though it often is not part of a graduation requirement for high school students. So conceivably, for a great many students, they might go through their schooling with no exposure to the computer programming that drives software. Given an awareness that computers are inextricably linked to virtually all areas of modern life, and given the fact that a great many jobs depend on computer literacy, the Hour of Code program was developed to insure that increasing numbers of students have at least minimal exposure to computer coding and the ways in which it powers computer behaviors.  The assumption is that through exposure, some will be inspired to learn more.

A certificate can be earned by completing an activity.

    To access the Hour of Code tutorials that teach students about coding, one begins at code.org. At the site, there are coding tutorials for students as young as kindergarteners.  Many of the tutorials are in object-oriented code programs like blockly which simply involve moving blocks that represent commands into a certain order to control movement.  A blockly editor would look like this:

The rectangular blocks on the right that say "move right," "move left," etc. will control the movement of BB-8 droid.

   Older students might use Hour of Code to get introduced to JavaScript, a coding language that looks more familiar to many observers. With JavaScript, coders write lines of code to command the actions of computer software. The Hour of Code site partnered with Khan Academy to offer the JavaScript tutorials.  Khan Academy also produced a short video to introduce learners to the exercise. It provides an excellent explanation as to why coding matters.

    During our Hour of Code week at GSB, students from all three divisions participated.  Jill Fedon ran the program for all lower school students K - 4 in the Cox computer lab.  Carrie Petkiewich did the same for middle school students in the Conover computer lab. In the upper school, a variety of approaches help insure widespread participation. Ninth grade students participated through their seminar classes. The library held an open Hour of Code session during meeting time. Computer Science, Statistics and other classes offered Hour of Code sessions during class times.  In short, GSB student participation in Hour of Code activities was widespread and well received.

    This year, for the first time, upper class Tech Team students volunteered to be peer assistants in the lower school Hour of Code sessions. During available times, upper school students would help Jill in answering questions and offering pointers to students K - 4.  Because of the Tech Team connection and because young children are always entertaining, I visited the Hour of Code classes for the lower school. Below, a gallery of photos from the week.

 

 

The GSB Robotics Team visits Landice

   On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break, the GSB robotics team had an opportunity to tour the Landice assembly plant in Randolph, NJ. Landice makes fitness equipment  (treadmills, ellipticals, step machines), and their products can rightly be described as "high-end." Each machine is thoroughly tested to meet exacting durability and performance standards.
    The plant tour was conducted by Greg Savettiere, Landice's President.  Greg is an electrical engineer by training and years back, after a stint in the aeronautics industry, he founded Landice because he had a dream of owning his own business. The business has flourished and that has allowed Greg to explore some other interests outside of business ownership. One of his interests in teaching and mentoring. And one of the ways he has developed this interest is to share his expertise with our robotics team. After meeting and working with our team at GSB, he wanted to host the students so they could see what a scaled up manufacturing concern looks like. I was lucky enough to be a part of the group.

Greg Savettiere, President of Landice

    The plant tour reminded me of many school field trips I took as a student. Visiting local and regional businesses was not uncommon. Whether the visit was as local as the town's newspaper printing office or as notable as a Ford assembly plant, it was hard not to be more aware of how adults made a living and how economic forces shaped our lives.  As we all know, these types of trips are all too uncommon now. Among other reasons, liability concerns have had a chilling effect on site visits to workplaces. But the trip to Landice reminded me that workplace visits have real educational value for students.
    As we toured the plant floor, we saw treadmills in various stages of assembly.  In this way, we were able to follow the construction of a treadmill from start to shipping dock.

A Landice employee begins the work of assembling a treadmill as GSB students look on.

 

Treadmills take shape.

   

Finished treadmills need to be carefully packaged.

  

Boxed Landice treadmills ready for shipment.

   Electronics play a key role in the type of equipment being produced as Landice. Greg, with his electrical engineering background, was able to show students connections between the equipment dashboard and the electronic circuitry that underlies the machine's performance.  What students learn theoretically in physics class becomes very real in an assembly plant. One example: how does the treadmill actually go faster or slower as the runner pushes the "speed up" or "speed down" buttons? Greg, with a combination of deep knowledge and a teacher's innate ability to communicate clearly, helped students through the underlying electrical and mathematical principles.

Circuit boards and motors are key electrical components in Landice fitness equipment.

   Because Landice's products are appealing to a niche, high-end market, it is critical that equipment is well made and reliable. Testing is thorough. One example of the testing that we saw involved the tread on treadmills.  It's tested with a machine designed to "run" thousands of simulated miles.  This brief video clip shows the machine at work:

   Though the engineering challenges inherent in his business were of particular interest to our robotics team, Greg also spent time talking about the difficulties of running a small business. To manage people or money or inventory would challenge most people; small business owners have to do all three. Students got a clear sense that entrepreneurship can be deeply satisfying but also can exact costs in terms of time and financial risk. 

From engineering to final product...our tour was all-inclusive.

   I'll end this post with some thanks. First, to Greg Savettiere for sharing his expertise and enthusiasm with our students. Next to Len Grabowski, Eileen Proccacino and Stuart Brown for their good work with our robotics team. And finally, a thanks to those GSB students who participate in robotics. Their interest was on full display during our visit to Landice.

TEDx

    On November 11, GSB and Blair students spent the day together at Blair Academy participating in a TEDx event. TEDx events mirror TED events. They are built around speeches, or talks, that typically explore big ideas and personal stories.  At TEDx events, TED videos are shown to further expose participants to wide range of ideas.
    The Blair-GSB collaboration was very much a student affair. Four student hosts - two from each school - made introductions and kept the program moving along. 

GSB hosting responsibilities were ably handled by 
Elisabeth Middleton and Kennedy Whitehead

   Seven speakers - four from GSB and three from Blair - spoke on a wide variety of topics all connected to the conference theme: Innovation and Social Change. An eighth speaker, a doctoral candidate from the Rutgers University School of Public Health, provided the day's keynote talk. Students recorded the day's proceedings as photographers and videographers. And student moderators helped to keep conversations lively in the break-out sessions.

Students from GSB and Blair get ready to listen to a student speaker.

    I've been involved in many student activities over the years. I don't remember any that were more intellectually grounded.  A simple recital of the TEDx Talks we listened to gives you a good idea of the depth and breadth of the day. (Click on the speech title for a YouTube link to the speech.)
    Martine DiDomenico, GSB '17 - Isis and Twitter: An Uncomfortable Alliance

Martine discusses how ISIS uses social media to recruit new members, 
a topic that has taken on particular significance 
as we follow the news of the Paris attacks on the weekend of November 14.

    Pia Bhatia, GSB '17 - Social Media and Cultural Appropriation: Let's Be Kind

Pia's talk on cultural appropriation spurred significant conversation in the breakout sessions.

    Kaitlyn Sleyster, GSB '17 - The Two Faces of Being Charitable in the Age of Social Media

Kaityn encourages participants to think about the relationship between social media and charitable giving. 

    Evan Druskin, GSB '17 - The Humanity of Machines  (Please note: Due to technical difficulties, this link goes to a posted video of a practice speech Evan recorded a couple of weeks before the TEDx conference.)

Evan's talk explored how evolving technologies in machines will alter the economic landscape in the decades ahead.

    Yueqi Du, Blair '16 - Math, Music and Me
    Max Bonzulak, Blair '17 - Social Authenticity, Anxiety and Beme
    Sanjay Paul, Blair '16 - It's complicated: Zero Sums and Relativity (recording unavailable at this time.)
    Daniel Giovenco, Rutgers University School of Public Health - Vaping: A Disruptive Technology

TEDx speakers
Back, L to R: Pia Bhatia, Yueqi Du, Dan Giovenco, Kaitlyn Sleyster, Martin DiDomenico
Front, L to R: Evan Druskin, Max Bonzulak, Sanjay Paul

    I'm certain the best way to learn about the day is to hear from the student presenters. Click on speech topics above for posted videos. Additionally, the two TED videos we saw are also posted below. They were selected by students from the two schools, and both are thought provoking.

Chris Milk: How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine

Joshua Foer: Feats of memory anyone can do 

Facing History and Ourselves

   I may be involved in technology work now, and I did spend considerable time in the college guidance world, but my professional roots are firmly grounded in the teaching of history. It's how I started as a teacher out of college, and over the years, I have continued to find ways to learn about and teach history.
   Back in the 1980's, if I remember correctly, I first became aware of the Facing History and Ourselves organization as a classroom resource.  There was a book (also called Facing History and Ourselves) designed to help students learn about the Holocaust, but its approach was different from other textbooks.  As the organization's web site states: 

   What ignited Facing History and Ourselves in the beginning is still what guides us today. The educator’s most important responsibility—our gift to society—is to shape a humane, well-educated citizenry that practices civility and preserves human rights.
    At its inception, Facing History was one innovative course taught in two classrooms. In practical terms, it was a history class about the ideas and events that led to the Holocaust, but its beyond-the-textbook approach and methods made it about far more. Through discussion, character exploration, primary source material, and group exercises, students saw the tragic events from every perspective. In the process, they came to understand that history is the collective result of every individual’s thoughts and actions. They learned not only history, but also the critical thinking skills required to make good choices.

   Early on, then, the Facing History organization was committed to using a variety of approaches to reach students and get them thinking more deeply about content that matters. Fast forward about 30 years and the Facing History organization is still using a variety of approaches as it presents curricula of importance. But this is 2015, so naturally it is their web site - Facing History and Ourselves - that provides the platform for innovation.
   A fine example of the way they are using technology to present content that encourages reflective thinking about significant issues is their lesson set on the connection between music and the American civil rights era of the 1050's and 1960's.  The lessons are divided into four parts. The first lesson, Music and Identity, utilizes the Sam and Dave song Soul Man to stimulate conversation. The song affirms the importance of strong self-identity. 

  The second lesson, Breaking the Racial Barriers, takes a look at Booker T. and the MGs, a racially integrated band. In spite of significant pressure at the time to operate as a segregated group, the MGs retained their multi-racial composition. 

Booker T. and the MGs

    The third lesson, Respecting Self and Others,  examines the need for both self-respect and respect from others through a couple of Stax songs. And the fourth lesson, Music and Social Change, uses a Staple Singers song to help students consider the ultimate goals of the civil rights movement.    

Otis Redding

The Staple Singers

Why highlight this lesson set on this web site? I think it provides an excellent illustration of how technology can serve curricular interests. The videos, the songs and the downloadable documents all provide highly relevant materials to any student seeking to understand the connection between music and the civil rights movement. In fact, it's hard to think about teaching this material effectively in the absence of technological tools.     I hope you might find some time to explore the lessons of this site just for personal interest. But I also hope you'll use this site as a reminder of the ways in which technology can serve curricular goals. 

A few video links from the lessons:
   The origin and meaning of "Soul Man" - an interview with songwriter David Porter
   Booker T. and the MGs talk about their band and their music
   Stax recording artist William Bell discusses Otis Redding's "Respect"
   excerpt from Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story -  featuring The Staple Singers
 

Putting Ed Tech in Perspective

   Last winter, I had the opportunity to speak at the annual NJAIS conference for trustees. My presentation gave those in attendance an overview of how technology has shaped our schools. The presentation centered around several distinct themes.  
   During the course of this year, I'd like to use this space to re-visit some of those themes.  The first theme is that examining the technological systems, uses and decision-making in a school setting is complicated.  I used schools' preferences for equipment and operating systems as a case in point. To illustrate, I imagined three schools; call them A, B & C. Each has a different approach to it's technology environment.    

   School A first got serious about purchasing computers with the introduction of the Apple IIE in 1983. The early to mid-1980's was the time-frame when many NAIS schools first saw computers on campus.  They tended to debut in offices, and in the following years, also became a fixture in the then-new computer labs.  School A had some Apple enthusiasts on campus and they promoted Apple products as "better designed, more intuitive to use and oriented towards an education setting." 
  

  
  Over time, a more complete infrastructure began to emerge on campus that included printers, network servers and other important hardware and software components.  It was all built on an Apple-friendly platform.  As often as not, particular products were purchased from Apple because their operating systems demanded compliant peripherals.

   Visit School A today and a school rep will proudly declare "We're an Apple school. Our hardware is state-of-the-art. Computer viruses have never been a problem.  Our students get MacBook Airs (or iPads) and we're building classroom learning environments around Apple TV.  We have the best technology environment a school can have."  

   School B also made some initial computer purchases in the early years of the 1980's. A business manager with eye towards the future realized that computers had great applicability in the business office.  She also saw promise for the machines in the offices of admission and development.  Not surprisingly, given her business background, the school purchased a few IBM PCs. This model, first introduced in 1981, quickly became a company workhorse and a steadily growing presence in schools like our School B. Not unlike School A, subsequent purchases of hardware and software were driven in large part by the presence of these IBM machines.  In 1987, when Microsoft first began its rapid ascent on the back of its Works productivity suite, users of IBM PCs and other DOS-driven machines had a neat fit between software and hardware.  That further created an environment built on a PC foundation.

   As the '80s gave way to the 90's, numerous other manufacturers got into the PC market because a new operating system, Windows, licensed by Microsoft, was made available to anyone for a fee. This was in direct contrast to the Apple operating system who had a more proprietary approach.  So a campus that began its computing environment with IBM PCs could easily grow its hardware and software offerings. That more complete choice of computing tools was very attractive to key decision makers.

   Visit School B and a school rep will discuss the virtues of their computing environment.  "We're educating our students to take their place in a world where PCs outsell Macs by a ratio of about 20 to 1. Students need to be conversant with the Windows operating system as an essential workplace skill.  And we're able to stretch our technology dollars further because we're not held captive by Apple's hold on its operating system. And one more thing; we can now do anything on a PC that an Apple user can do on an Apple. The days of Apple's edge in design and creativity are long gone.  In fact now, it's the opposite. Being tied to Apple is more like being tethered to a monopoly."

   What about School C? It's likely that in the early '80's, School C's initial foray into computer purchases were built around the IBM PC. Over time, the PC presence evolved and grew in much the same way as it did in School B.  But somewhere along the way, some Apple products were purchased and created a beachhead for an Apple presence on campus.  The products might have been iMacs, the purchases driven by an Art Department.  A publications person might have pushed for a MacBook Pro laptop to take advantage of the Apple publications software and enjoy the flexibility of a laptop.

   Over time, PCs continued to be the major computing presence on campus, but labs of Apples appeared. In time, these Apple machines could be "bootcamped," or imaged to open in either a Mac OS or Windows operating system.  School C was a dual-platform school; it supported two operating systems.  Over the last several years, as students began to show up to school with a mix of Apple and PC devices, there was an infrastructure already in place that seemed to naturally sync with this variety of hardware and software products.

   Visit School C today and a school rep will describe the school as a "dual-platform, BYOD" environment.  Dual platform refers to an infrastructure supporting Mac and PC machines. BYOD stands for Bring Your Own Device. The rep will proudly say that "after graduation, our students are certain to find themselves in technology environments that are varied, and inevitably new. The best prepared students have broad exposure to different systems and are ready to learn whatever comes next."

   A bit confused? That brings us to one of our themes: It's Complicated. Technology offers choices. People have opinions.  In most cases, there is not one clear answer. The result is that technology decision-making is complicated.