T.H.E. Journal Jan 2010

thejournal.com THE 21ST CENTURY CTO CLOUD COMPUTING PHYS ED GOES VIRTUAL

TRANSFORMING EDUCATION THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

work?

Can this

Tight budgets have forced districts to try a long-scorned option: allowing student-owned mobile devices for classroom use. Will this mean the restoration of school technology programs—or chaos?

Geoff Fletcher on surviving a downed network

January 2010 | Volume 37, No. 1

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January 2010 | Volume 37, No. 1

thejournal.com

22

32 22 CLOUD COMPUTING Up, Up, and Away

It’s a hard concept for educators to get their heads around, but overburdened administrators know just what the cloud is: a time-saving, stress-reducing solution for managing hardware and software deployments. by John K. Waters

28 E-LEARNING

Virtual P.E.? No Sweat!

For students facing a variety of special circumstances, taking gym class online is a way to complete their physical education requirement while gaining access to all the benefits of staying fit. by Jennifer Grayson

32 COVER STORY: MOBILITY Left to Their Own Devices

As cash-strapped school districts wrestle with ways to get web-enabled computing tools into instruction, some are starting to experiment with having students bring their own. by Jeff Weinstock

28 DEPARTMENTS 4 Our Space 6 Here & Now 14 Networking All Systems Go

17 Policy and Advocacy Building a Better CTO

20 Distance Learning Winning Back Homeschoolers

38 Product Focus 41 Index 42 Drill Down

JANUARY 2010 |

3

OurSpace

Geoffrey H. Fletcher, Editorial Director

January 2010 : Volume 37 : Number 1

thejournal.com Editorial Director Executive Editor Managing Editor

Be Prepared for ‘What If?’

N

NO WATER IN MY house today.

A combination of an unseasonal cold snap and a bad circuit breaker in our pump house has frozen the pipes.

While standing in the pump house cursing the guilty circuit breaker, I had an epiphany: So this is what it is like to be teaching when the internet goes down. A crucial system, one often taken for granted, suddenly stops working.

What do you do? The first inclination is to define the problem. In my case, that took little effort: No water was coming out of any faucets. The next step is to find the culprit. I went to the pump house and quickly noticed that the heater was not on. I toggled the circuit breaker from on to off and saw that it was not functioning.

However, I didn’t have 30 seated students looking at me or at blank computer screens, getting antsy, waiting for a return to normalcy. A teacher might reboot the computer, check the network connection in the classroom, send a student to see if the connection next door was down, or ask a student to take a look and try to diagnose the problem and its source.

Fixing the problem is a whole other challenge. I don’t do electricity, so it was easy enough for me to just call a friend who does, one who doesn’t share my fear of being jolted into the next county and having his heart amped to 843 beats per minute. The friend fixed the faulty wiring at minimal cost: the promise of an adult beverage. A teacher’s fix of a downed internet connection is not so easy, and immune to a bribe. The solutions are typically far out of reach and might even reside in the telecommunications carrier’s system.

So if the fix is not apparent, what’s a teacher to do? Just as I’ve been taught to do living in earthquake territory, be pre-

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pared. Whereas I now have my stockpile of bottled water on hand in the event of a disaster, as an English teacher I always had writing prompts and activities squirreled away, as well as some problem-solving activities. Granted, the arrival of the Digital Age has complicated things. While teachers cannot be expected every day to develop one lesson with the internet and

A CRUCIAL SYSTEM, ONE OFTEN TAKEN FOR GRANTED, SUDDENLY STOPS WORKING. WHAT DO YOU DO? one without, they do know some content or skills that their students always need help with. Knowing that a solid backup plan is in place if a device malfunctions provides a teacher with a lot more confidence in using the technology; the fear of it failing isn’t so daunting.

As technology leaders, we have a responsibility to make the use of technology in the classroom as easy as possible. We also need to remember to address technology as it affects classroom management. Often, we focus so much on how to use the technology effectively that we don’t take the next step and work through potential “what if” circumstances—as in, what if the network goes down, or what if the computer cart didn’t get recharged? We need to build possible responses to these scenarios into our professional development and training. Being prepared is more than a Boy Scout principle; it is the core of teaching with technology.

Geoffrey H. Fletcher Jeff Weinstock Olivia LaBarre

Contributors Jennifer Demski, Jennifer Grayson, Charlene O’Hanlon, John K. Waters Art & Production Staff Creative Director Scott Rovin Graphic Designer Erin Horlacher Director, Print Production Jenny Hernandez-Asandas Senior Production Coordinator Jennifer Shepard Online/Digital Media Executive Editor, Web Dave Nagel eContent producer Kanoe Namahoe eMedia Coordinator Judith Rajala eMedia Coordinator Angel Tyree Web Designer Brion Mills Web applications specialist Elliot McDonell

President & Group Publisher Director, Online Product Development Sales Assistant Marketing Manager Attendee Marketing Manager Attendee Marketing Manager

President & Chief Executive Officer Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer Executive Vice President Senior Vice President, Audience Development & Digital Media

Wendy LaDuke Jim Hicks Karyn O’Dell Karen Barak Athene Kovacic Annette Levee

Neal Vitale Richard Vitale Michael J. Valenti

Abraham M. Langer

Vice President, Finance & Administration Christopher M. Coates Vice President, Information Technology & Web Operations Erik A. Lindgren Vice President, Attendee Marketing Carmel McDonagh Chairman of the Board

Jeffrey S. Klein

Editorial Advisory Board Catherine Burden Union Public Schools Robert A. Carlson Council of the Great City Schools Christopher J. Dede Harvard University D. Michael Eason Florida Educational Technology Corp.

Allen Glenn University of Washington Chip Kimball Lake Washington School District Donald G. Knezek International Society for Technology in Education Ann McMullan Klein Independent School District Steven A. Sanchez Analyst, Senate Education Committee, New Mexico State Legislature Gilbert Valdez Learning Point Associates/NCREL

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Here&Now Tech + Online + Industry + Partnership

Begley Jr. to Deliver FETC Keynote The actor and environmental activist is slated to kick off the annual ed tech conference with an emphasis on eco concerns.

ATTENDEES OF THE 2010 FLORIDA EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE (FETC; fetc.org), being staged this month at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL, can expect to leave with new inspiration to improve the environment through the use of technology. Delivering the keynote speech at the conference’s opening session, to be held Jan. 12 from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., is actor and noted green advocate Ed Begley Jr. Known for showing up at lavish Hollywood events on his bicycle, Begley is currently co-starring in the Planet Green (planetgreen.discovery.com) reality series Living With Ed, a glimpse at Begley’s daily efforts to live a sustainable, eco-friendly life with his wife, Rachelle Carson.

Begley serves on the boards of several environmental organizations, including the Thoreau Institute Ed Begley Jr. (ti.org), the Earth Communications Office (oneearth. org), and Friends of the Earth (foe.org). His work on behalf of the environment has earned recognition from organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council (nrdc.org), the Coalition for Clean Air (coalitionforcleanair.org), and Heal the Bay (healthebay.org).

His books, Living Like Ed and Ed Begley Jr.’s Guide to Sustainable Living (Clarkson Potter/ Random House, 2008 and 2009, respectively), are available online and in bookstores around the country. At FETC 2010, Begley will share his experiences and his knowledge of how science and technology can be used to support sustainable living practices.

In addition to Begley’s keynote, FETC 2010 will feature speeches, workshops, and sessions from many education technology leaders, and will expose K-12 educators and administrators to the latest products and techniques for helping enhance education with technology. Check thejournal.com for coverage of the event, which takes place Jan. 12-15. [industry update]

Ed Tech Leaders Respond to President’s Call to Action PRESIDENT OBAMA RECENTLY LAUNCHED the Educate to Innovate Campaign (whitehouse.gov/issues/education/ educate-innovate), which calls on US companies, foundations, nonprofits, and science and engineering societies to join the federal government in increasing student interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Top players in the field of education technology have already responded to Obama’s call to action, forming partnerships and launching initiatives to reach millions of students through STEM education, contests, and other opportunities over the next four years. Read T.H.E. Journal’s detailed coverage of these initiatives at thejournal.com/articles/list/stem.aspx.

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[tech rollout]

Texas School Boosts Broadcast Program With New Technology TEXAS HIGH SCHOOL’S state-of-theart video production and broadcast program, named TigerVision in honor of the school mascot, has had tremendous growth since its inception in 1989, thanks to the school’s regular technology upgrades. The Texarkana, TX, school’s recent purchase of AG-HPX300 P2 HD camcorders, an AV-HS400A HD/SD switcher, and PT-DW10,000U 10,000-lumen 1080p DLP projectors, all from Panasonic (panasonic.com), is helping the program continue to grow.

“When our students leave us, they are absolutely prepared to further their broadcast education, and we want them to be working on ‘real-world’ gear here,” says Charles Aldridge, the program’s faculty director.

The school also purchased Panasonic AG-HMC 150 professional handheld AVCCAM camcorders for shooting student broadcast projects, replacing its outdated recording equipment.

“The HDV camcorders weren’t measuring up in terms of professional controls, especially audio, and we wanted to go tapeless,” Aldridge says.

Footage shot with the HMC 150 camcorders never has to see tape; it can be edited, compressed, and transferred as a digital file. “Once the kids got their hands on them,” says Aldridge, “they never touched the tape cameras again.”

TigerVision’s student-produced content airs on three local cable channels and one on-campus closed-circuit channel. For more information, visit tigervision.org.

Here&Now

Support for K-12 Online Learning Grows

[facts and findings]

STATES AND DISTRICTS have increased their support for K-12 online education programs. Twenty-five states now run statewide online initiatives, according to new research from the Center for Digital Education (CDE; centerdigitaled.com), an arm of policy and research firm e.Republic (erepublic.com). That’s up from 15 states operating such initiatives a year ago.

“Online Learning Policy Survey: A Survey of the States,” underwritten by Blackboard (blackboard.com), was conducted through interviews with state education department representatives. The report found that, in addition to the 25 states with governmentrun programs, two states also have statewide online initiatives in place that are not run by the states themselves, and four additional states have plans to implement online learning programs.

CDE also ranked individual state efforts (see “Top 10 Wired States,” below) based on “the vision, policies, programs, and strategies they have deployed around online learning to transform their academic environments.” Florida ranked first, with about 125,000 students learning virtually and a 25 percent increase in online K-12 attendance in the last year.

Further information about the report is available on CDE’s website.

PUBLISHED RESULTS of a nationwide survey indicate that more than six in 10 educators are at least interested enough in social networking to register on one or more social networking websites. What this will mean in the long run for social networking’s impact on education, however, is unclear because educator usage of these sites is low.

“A Survey of K-12 Educators on Social Networking and Content-Sharing Tools,” sponsored by educator networking site EdWeb.net, mailing list and database firm MCH (mailings.com), and education marketing research firm MMS Education (mmseducation.com), was sent in August and September to 83,000 educators throughout the US, including teachers, school librarians, and administrators.

Preliminary results released in September showed a majority of those surveyed who joined a social networking site had, in fact, only joined Facebook (facebook.com). But a substantial number of those who reported an interest in social networking as a tool for education and educational community building said they would eagerly embrace the idea

Survey: Educator Participation in Social Networking Lags Well Behind Interest of a social networking site primarily geared toward educators.

The path from expressed interest to active interest, though, appears to be not so aggressively taken. One telling figure from the final tally is that, of those surveyed who have joined either Facebook or a similar site, only about a quarter of them use the service on even a semi-regular basis. The implication seems to be that although many educators are curious about social networking as a communication medium, and some express an intention to use such sites to meet other teachers, discuss and share ideas, and communicate with students and parents, a relatively small number actually follow through.

One important conclusion of the report is that educators who have joined a social network, which the researchers found to be 61 percent of respondents, are more positive about the value of the technology in education than those who haven’t.

The report and the accompanying research results can be downloaded at edweb.net/ fimages/op/k12survey.pdf.

While Facebook has very high membership among educators, 76% report they seldom or never use it.

Top 10 Wired States

1 Florida 2 South Carolina 3 New Mexico 4 Hawaii 5 Michigan 6 Louisiana 7 Idaho 8 Minnesota 9 Oregon 10 Arkansas

80%

76%

70%

Educator Usage of Social Networking Sites

60%

Weekly or More

Monthly

Periodically

Seldom/Never

50% 39%

40% 31%

30%

29%

31%

31%

29%

18%

20% 10%

27%

24%

23%

10%

10% 9%

10% 4%

Source: “A Survey of K-12 Educators on Social Networking and Content-Sharing Tools” © 2009 EdWeb.net, MCH, and MMS Education

In its 2009 report, “Online Learning Policy Survey: A Survey of the States,” the Center for Digital Education ranked state efforts in online learning.

0%

Ning

LinkedIn

MySpace

Facebook JANUARY 2010 |

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Here&Now

{win big!} Charp Award Nominations Begin

[green spot]

NOMINATIONS ARE NOW BEING TAKEN for the 2010 Sylvia Charp Award.

Given jointly by T.H.E. Journal and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE; iste.org), the annual honor recognizes a district’s consistent, effective, and innovative use of technology. The winning district will receive prize money to go toward sending two representatives to the ISTE 2010 conference (center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/2010), being held June 27-30 in Denver, where the award will be presented. In addition, the winner’s achievements will be acknowledged in both T.H.E. Journal and ISTE’s membership magazine, Learning and Leading With Technology.

The Charp Award is given in honor of its namesake, the founding editor of T.H.E. Journal, and her groundbreaking contributions to the education technology community. By rewarding exemplary school districts, T.H.E. Journal and ISTE aim to inspire all districts across the nation to creatively integrate technology into their curricula.

Nominations are being accepted through March 15. To submit a nomination and find out more about the award, visit thejournal.com/charpaward.

AL District Invests in Energy Efficiency

iNACOL Online Innovator Award Winners Announced THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL; inacol.org) has announced the winners of its first Online Innovator Awards. The organization, which promotes online K-12 learning through advocacy, research, and professional development, presents awards in three categories: best and most innovative learning practice; important new research furthering the advancement of K-12 e-learning; and most innovative individual achievement.

Fire and Ice, an initiative launched by e-learning solutions provider Elluminate (elluminate.com), was named the winner for best and most innovative learning practice. The program is a global effort to connect schools in developing regions in the Southern Hemisphere (“fire”) with schools in the Northern Hemisphere (“ice”) for the purpose of international collaboration on projects with universal themes, such as climate Cathy Cavanaugh change and poverty reduction.

For important new research, iNACOL recognized Cathy Cavanaugh of the University of Florida. Cavanaugh edited what is generally considered the first scholarly book on virtual schooling, Development and Management of Virtual Schools (Information Science Publishing, 2003), and has published numerous other articles and reports on the subject.

Keith Oelrich Finally, the award for most innovative individual achievement in online learning went to Keith Oelrich, CEO of Insight Schools (insightschools.net), a national network of online public high schools serving at-risk students. INACOL recognized Oelrich’s longstanding dedication to online education, as distinguished by his organizational efforts and the use of his expertise to influence legislation on behalf of the cause.

The awards were presented during the iNACOL 2009 Virtual School Symposium, held Nov. 15-17 in Austin, TX.

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FLORENCE CITY SCHOOLS in northwestern Alabama has entered into a $2.9 million facilities-enhancement contract with energy management company Schneider Electric (schneider-electric.com) to improve operations, comfort, and energy efficiency throughout nine district buildings. The ambitious project will entail several building optimization measures, including upgrading all district buildings to run on the same building management system that features direct digital control; completing a comprehensive lighting retrofit and installing lighting occupancy sensors and controls; upgrading plumbing fixtures; and putting energy-efficient temperature controls in place.

According to Schneider Electric, the project will cut the Florence City’s carbon dioxide emissions by about 57 million pounds, the equivalent of planting more than 3.5 million trees or taking 6,300 cars off the road. In addition, the company has guaranteed that the completion of the project, set for next October, will save the district $207,000 annually on its utility costs.

With a K-12 student population of more than 4,300, Florence City Schools prides itself on being a progressive and technologically advanced district, and a sustainable facilities upgrade falls in line with its mission. “The district implemented a behavioral modification program focused on energy conservation five years ago,” said Superintendent Kendy Behrends in a statement. “Then Schneider Electric came and showed us how to further reduce our energy usage. We are excited about strategically reinvesting the money we have been paying on utilities, and the facilities staff is pleased we are taking advantage of this opportunity to fund the controls and lighting upgrades that they had been wanting for years.”

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Active Learning Has a New Partner Many educators agree that students who actively engage with the material and with other students are far more likely to recall the information shared. Active learning that involves role playing, debate and group participation all result in greater student engagement.

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Here&Now

[happening at thejournal.com] ON-DEMAND WEBCASTS Obstacles or Protection? Internet Safety, School Filters, and Firewalls WHEN IT COMES TO INTERNET SAFETY, parents and teachers advocate for more restrictions at home and in school, while students complain that the filters and firewalls are limiting their technology use and negatively impacting their ability to learn. This webinar explores findings from Project Tomorrow’s (tomorrow.org) latest Speak Up survey, which asked K-12 students, teachers, parents, and administrators about their views on internet safety and the obstacles that students face while using technology in learning.

Learn How Better Reporting Improves Student Achievement IT LEADERS FROM CYPRESS FAIRBANKS ISD, the third-largest school district in Texas, describe their journey from paper-based data gathering to robust, districtwide reporting that enables smart, timely decisions in support of many initiatives, especially the district’s Achievement Management System.

Top 10 Trends in Student Learning With Technology

READMORE

thejournal.com/pages/webinars.aspx

TODAY’S STUDENTS APPROACH LEARNING in varying ways as a result of their ubiquitous technology use. Speak Up survey results identify the top 10 trends that every school and district administrator should consider when addressing the unique individual instructional needs of today’s students.

Web 2.0 and Education DISCOVER WHAT STUDENTS, teachers, parents, and administrators are saying about their use of Web 2.0 tools outside school, the likelihood of these tools being used professionally, and the attitudes about using such tools in the classroom. This webinar provides a fresh perspective on Web 2.0 behavior, revealing a linkage between personal use of Web 2.0 tools and the incorporation of this technology into instruction.

Follow us on TM

twitter.com/THE_Journal We’re tweeting! Find out even more about the latest in ed tech trends, products, news, and events.

For a list of upcoming ed tech conferences, please visit our conference calendar online at: theconferencecalendar.com

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[you told us]

WoW-ed Over This article [“The WoW Factor,” November/ December; thejournal.com/articles/2009/11/09/ virtual-communities.aspx] is nice to see. My graduate program at Full Sail University has an entire class focused on gaming motivation, and World of Warcraft is the final challenge.

As a guild leader and gamer, I am constantly amazed at the learning and teaching opportunities. Some of the trade chat can get heavy at times, even on academic and contemporary issues! I also don’t miss the chance to surprise a young “guildy” complaining about school that his guild leader is a teacher. Bravo, and keep up the good work!

—Sean, Tikkun Kalimdor I just joined the Cognitive Dissonance guild after reading “The WoW Factor,” and my first evening chatting with them was fantastic. It was better than any staff meeting I have ever been to. I look forward to the future. Currently, I am enrolled in a gaming and simulation class, and WoW is a central topic. I’m ecstatic to see a group of educators take the initiative to put themselves forward and show what gaming can do for education.

—Camdenai, Azuremyst Isle Please note that the whole point of the guild is to “learn to game to game to learn.” We are not just playing and socializing, but pulling out examples of “scaffolded” learning, critical thinking, collaborative team building, and actual content-driven skills. Connected to the play in WoW is the WoW in School Project (wowinschool.pbworks.com), a collaborative curriculum-development wiki. We also have a lot of fun.

—Maratsade and Sheehredd, Cognitive Dissonance members, Sisters Of Elune To read more comments or to post your own, visit our website at thejournal.com. T.H.E. Journal editors reserve the right to edit reader responses for length and clarity.

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JANUARY 12–15, 2010 ORANGE COUNTY CONVENTION CENTER • ORLANDO, FLORIDA

TOP 5 REASONS TO ATTEND

1 Programming Outstanding

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THERE IS STILL TIME TO REGISTER AND ATTEND FETC 2010, the premier K-12 education technology conference taking place January 12–15, 2010, at the West Concourse of the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. FETC 2010 is the content-rich education technology conference tailored to the needs of K-12 education professionals. You’ll walk away with dozens of ideas for teaching and learning success that you can implement immediately, many at very little cost—a vital concern for today’s educators!

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The more than 200 Concurrent Sessions at FETC 2010 provide you with the most up-todate information on new tools, technologies and services—and how they are working right now, at real schools throughout the country.

Nationally recognized leaders address current and emerging technologies.

Speakers 3 Inspiring and Bonus Events

FETC speakers are drawn from the ranks of education technology leaders—these pioneers and innovators help you explore the latest technologies and discover how you can apply them in your daily work, whether inside or outside the classroom.

NEW THIS YEAR: The “Brown Bag” Pre-Keynote Sandbox Shootout, Technology Solution Seminars, plus VerAttend, FETC’s official attendance certification system.

4 Exhibit Hall

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Complete details at www.fetc.org/travel.aspx

Here&Now

{ quote unquote} This month’s talking points

“I don’t know if it’s better, but the alternative would be nothing.

We wouldn’t have a device at all.”

Introducing the

PTN2

—Matt Federoff, district CIO, on allowing students to bring their own laptop to class as a substitute for having the school provide them with one

p. 34

“‘Cloud’ turns out not to be the best metaphor if you want to reassure people that their data is in a safe place.”

—Ned Zimmerman-Bence, executive director of Minnesota Online High School, on persuading educators to entrust critical information to third-party servers

p. 27

“We can continue to advocate for our spot in that six-hour school day, or we can provide a flexible, alternative way to deliver our curriculum.”

—Frank Goodrich, P.E. instructor, on teaching gym class online

p. 30 [coming next issue...]

Tech for Health and Safety The current H1N1 flu scare has brought fresh attention to the need for schools to prepare for a crisis such as an illness epidemic or a natural disaster. Learn how technology solutions can help administrators be ready for any health and safety emergency.

Optimizing Infrastructure on a Budget In the face of limited resources, can a school district increase the efficiency of its IT infrastructure? CIOs and IT leaders tell how.

ARRA Money Well Spent Federal stimulus funding arrived in districts last summer with little guidance on how best to spend it. Prominent K-12 ed tech experts offer their advice on where you should use the money to aid your most pressing technology needs. [we stand corrected] In our November/December issue, we mistakenly attributed the creation of the“Google Apps E-Portfolios Mashup” website to Google. The site was developed and is maintained by educator Helen Barrett. We regret the error.

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JANUARY 2010 |

13

NETWORKING

All Systems Go The adoption of two cutting-edge technologies transforms a fickle wireless network into a fast, efficient engine of learning.

R 14

| JANUARY 2010

working with solution provider CDW-G (cdwg.com) to determine the best technology for eliminating, or at least reducing, the interference. CDW-G introduced the district to Aruba Networks (arubanetworks. com), a wireless infrastructure provider that features in its products Adaptive Radio Management (ARM), a technology that works around sources of interference to provide a strong signal.

“Radio environments are by nature dynamic,” says Mike Tennefoss, head of strategic marketing at Aruba Networks. “All around there are WiFi, cellular, and other networks that are generating all sorts of noise in all frequencies. To work effectively, a wireless network needs to adapt, to compensate, or to avoid sources of interference. ARM automatically adjusts an access point’s channel and power level to move the network to a band or frequency that is clear of interference.”

That same fall, Raytown decided to testdrive an Aruba network in the Education and Conference Center, replacing its old hardware with products featuring the ARM technology.

It worked; the new equipment solved the interference problem almost instantly. “It was like a light switch,” recalls Watermann. “We decided right then and there that we would install the Aruba equipment throughout the district.”

Raytown moved quickly to replace the wireless networks in all 18 of its buildings, which include early childhood, elementary, middle, and high schools; a vocational education building; and a school for students with disabilities. Within two months the entire network had been replaced.

The district’s next natural step was to upgrade its 802.11b/g networking technology to the newer 802.11n standard, which is up to five times faster than its b/g counterparts and more powerful, with up to twice the range.

The n standard was designed specifically with the needs of bandwidth-intensive applications in mind, such as high-definition streaming media. Downloading media files with 802.11n technology, for example, usually takes just seconds, regardless of the number of users.

Downloading media files using 802.11b or even g technology can, in contrast, take minutes, depending on the load and the amount of bandwidth present.

Otto Steininger

AYTOWN C-2 SCHOOL DISTRICT, located southeast of Kansas City, MO, had never experienced a reliable wireless internet connection.

Although the district had 802.11b and g wireless networks in place, the signals were not powerful enough to cut through interference generated by nearby antennas. Receiving the brunt of the interfering signals was Raytown’s Education and Conference Center, which houses an alternative school as well as a meeting space.

“The center is next door to Kansas Power and Light, which has parabolic dish antennas on its roof that were just wreaking havoc on our wireless network,” according to Justin Watermann, the district’s technology coordinator. “On the third floor, where there are no trees to shield the antennas, it was instantly identifiable that we had a huge interference problem.”

The signal interference was constantly causing wireless connections to drop throughout the building, and at times would even cause a total outage. “No matter how many access points we installed, we couldn’t get around the problem,” Watermann says. “We thought it was an unavoidable issue. It would connect and drop, connect and drop.”

By the fall of 2008, the connectivity issues had become so bad that Raytown decided to find out if alternative technologies could help solve the problem. Going without a wireless network was not a feasible option for the district, since every one of its schools used laptops but did not have enough wired drops to accommodate them all. So Watermann began

Charlene O’Hanlon

Since numerous students use highbandwidth applications over Raytown’s wireless network, having the speed—and a network that could handle the load—would be an asset to the district’s learning environment. “It has really become more critical to have, because you have so much bandwidth you’re pushing through,” Watermann says.

connection or compatibility issues.

“We had no qualms about upgrading to 802.11n before it had been ratified,” Watermann says. “[IEEE] said in 2007 that anything built going forward was going to be compatible [with 802.11n], so we didn’t have any issues. We knew that some of the older laptops would need new drivers, but

“There was a time when there was a noticeable delay in the response time of the network depending on the intensity of the applications. We don’t see that with the new technology.”

The district was also eager to head off any connection problems that might occur at its newest school, which was completely wireless enabled. “Our new elementary school was built without a computer lab, so all laptops had to be wireless,” Watermann explains.

“That drove us to deploy 802.11n to ensure the students would have a good experience working with wireless.”

Further influencing the decision to upgrade the network soon after the Aruba hardware installation was Raytown’s webbased management system, which would help make the upgrade process quick and easy. The system manages the entire network centrally at the district’s data center, and can automatically send out upgrades or fixes to specific or all access points. So making the switch to 802.11n was just a matter of a software upgrade in the central management system, and the rest was literally done with the touch of a button.

And because the new Aruba hardware was compatible with the n standard, no new hardware was needed.

When Raytown was considering the upgrade to 802.11n, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE; ieee. org), a professional association that approves technology standards for myriad industries, had not yet ratified the n technology standard. However, more than 500 draft-n products had already been on the market for upwards of two years, so it was a given within technology circles that whatever hardware was available would not have any

once they were installed they worked great.”

The district has been using ARM-enabled hardware coupled with an 802.11n network since last June, and Watermann says the difference is dramatic. “We just have greater speed and concentration of use,” he says. “Classes of up to 30 students can connect and are auto-balanced between available access points, and the teachers are now confident that the wireless signal and speed will support the applications they’re using. Many of them utilize rich content including audio, video, and animations to inform instruction.

on the network,” he adds. “There was a time when there was a noticeable delay in the response time of the network depending on the intensity of the applications. Social media was a drag on the network with the bandwidthintensive applications that run, such as video.

We don’t see that with the new technology.”

The sheer speed of 802.11n also has made a difference in the time IT staff spends maintaining the networks. “N has allowed us to push more updates across the wireless network,” Watermann says. “Our Mac laptops now routinely connect at 130 Mbps versus 54 Mbps on 802.11g. This saves our technicians time because they don’t have to find a hardwired drop or wait longer for updates to complete.”

For a school district whose wireless network was ineffective on a good day, Raytown has made major strides in having total connectivity all the time through a combination of ARM and 802.11n technologies. “With all the applications we have running through our network now, I’d really be concerned if we didn’t have a good tool,” Watermann says. “But we’re able to confidently run those apps now without worry.”

Charlene O’Hanlon is a freelance writer based in New York City.

ALL CLEAR While on the roof of one of Raytown’s buildings, Watermann found the cause of “We have many more students working at much of the district’s wireless network interference: the neighboring business’s dish antennas. once on multimedia applications with no drag

JANUARY 2010 |

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POLICY AND ADVOCACY

Building a Better CTO CoSN creates a new framework of skills that draws a greater range of responsibility for the 21st century technology leader.

Geoffrey H. Fletcher

already seen its hopes for the framework put into action, even though it has been out only since Dec. 1. “We had a meeting of the Georgia CTOs,” Mitchell says, “and we started talking about the framework. One CTO said he was going to use it for his own self-evaluation and base future professional development on it. The entire group is going to use it by focusing on a section each meeting and trading stories about how they accomplish each skill in their districts.”

While the framework does detail important individual skills, even if a CTO possesses these skills and earns certification demonstrating as much, a crucial factor in a CTO’s success is the standing and perception of the position within the overall district organization. “The CTO has to be a part of the superintendent’s cabinet in order to be truly effective,” Mitchell says.

Krueger suggests the same in his statement: “For CTOs to be successful in leveraging technology to improve innovation in education and student learning, it is essential to continually advance the profession.”

s a CTO, you need to be passionate and have a pioneering spirit about the use of technology in the district. Your enthusiasm and leadership set the tone that the superintendent can either support or tolerate. Make your passion something I can’t resist being connected with.”

That’s L.C. (Buster) Evans, superintendent of Forsyth County Schools (GA), on what he wants in a chief technology officer. All of those attributes are not specifically accounted for in the Consortium for School Networking’s (CoSN; cosn.org) new Framework of Essential Skills of the K-12 CTO, but leadership certainly is a prominent element.

This latest, version 2.0 iteration of the skills framework builds upon work the organization did earlier this decade. This time CoSN, a professional association for district technology leaders, reached out to a variety of CTOs from across the country, from school districts large and small, CTOs who had migrated from business and industry to education, as well as those who had come up through teaching and learning. CoSN’s CTO Certification Committee reviewed competencies necessary for a CTO to be effective today and over the next five years. In addition, it looked at other performance standards inside and outside education, including the Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence (baldrige.nist.gov/Education_Criteria.

Leadership & Vision htm), Microsoft’s (microsoft.com) Professional Leadership Strategic Planning Competency Wheel, and the International Society for Understanding Ethics & Policies Technology in Education’s (iste.org) National Educational Educational Environment Technology Standards.

Instructional Focus The result is a rather daunting matrix of aptitudes and Professional Development abilities, all directed toward a principal end result: improved Team Building & Staffing learning. The framework combines three tangible skill sets—Leadership Stakeholder Focus and Vision, Understanding Educational Environment, and Managing Technology and Support Resources—with a group of Core Values and IMPROVED Skills, which include communicator, exhibits courage, flexible and adaptLEARNING able, results-oriented, and innovative. Each of the main skill areas has Managing Technology subskill areas. For example, you’ll find strategic planning under Leader& Support Resources ship and Vision; instructional focus and professional development under Information Technology Understanding Educational Environment; and communication systems and Communication Systems data under Managing Technology and Support Resources.

Business The hope for the new framework is multifold. Keith Krueger, CEO of CoSN, said Data in a press release: “Though many education leadership positions are defined by Core Values & Skills a set of competencies and necessary skills, the concept of education technolCommunicator CoSN’s Framework ogy leadership is relatively new in many school districts. We undertook this of Essential Skills of Exhibits Courage effort to empower CTOs and other educators with the information they the K-12 CTO Flexible & Adaptable need to provide visionary 21st [century] district technology leadership.”

Source: cosn.org Results-oriented According to Bailey Mitchell, Forsyth County’s chief technology and Innovative information officer and co-chair of the Certification Committee, CoSN has JANUARY 2010 |

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POLICY AND ADVOCACY

The CoSN website is more explicit: “CoSN believes that the district technology leader can play a decisive role…as a member of the district-level leadership team. In all too many districts, that is not the case.”

In Forsyth County, it is the case. Mitchell is part of what Superintendent Evans calls his “leadership team of high-performing prima donnas.”

“You must have the ability to connect to the people networks and department silos,” Evans says. “The CTO has got to cultivate a continued network with key system leaders.”

Mary Ann Wolf, former executive director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SEDTA; setda.org) agrees. Wolf sees a similar situation at the

“Reaching out to other departments and understanding what they want to accomplish, and helping them understand how technology can help, should be a part of every technology leader’s job no matter what the level.” state level, where technology leaders are often buried in the Teaching and Learning division of the state education department or are a part of Technology Services.

“It’s tough because everyone is so busy and staff is spread so thin,” she says, “but reaching out to other departments and understanding what they want to accomplish, and helping them understand how

GOAL SETTING

The Framework’s Five Purposes ED ZAIONTZ, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of information services for Texas’ Round Rock Independent School District and chair of the Consortium for School Networking’s (cosn.org) board of directors, believes that CoSN’s new Framework of Essential Skills of the K-12 CTO accomplishes five goals: Creates a clearly identifiable role for the CTO within a district’s leadership structure. Zaiontz reports to a deputy superintendent, but he is a part of his superintendent’s cabinet, where all district projects are discussed—which is exactly where he believes the CTO needs to be. As technology has come to permeate everything that’s done in his district, all of his fellow cabinet members also recognize that. “If Curriculum wants a math program, I can offer recommendations or make sure that what they select will work on our network and with other technologies,” Zaointz says. “If Assessment wants a new formative assessment package, I can be sure it interfaces with our student information system.”

Addresses the gap between the dual aspects of a CTO’s job: the instructional and the technical. As such, the framework can serve as a form of self-assessment. “I came up through the instructional side,” Zaointz says. “I wasn’t a techie.” Had the framework existed as the job changed to become more technical, Zaointz believes he could have used it to be sure he had the requisite skills covered.

Supports professional development opportunities. In tandem with promoting selfassessment, the framework can help CTOs and aspiring CTOs find professional training opportunities. In addition, CoSN will use the skill sets laid out in the framework to identify sessions at the organization’s annual conference.

Focuses on a broad body of knowledge. A CTO can’t hope to know everything there is to know. “As the technology has become more complex and is used in more and more places, my depth of technical knowledge is less that it was 10 years ago,” Zaointz admits. But he has hired people who can make up up for that. “My job has become more about leadership, vision, and working with others at the administrative level to help them understand ways that technology can be used to be more efficient and effective. As a CTO, I need to ensure that all areas of the framework are covered, whether I do it alone or delegate.”

Acts as an organizer for CoSN. According to Zaiontz, CoSN has conducted a number of great initiatives but isn’t always clear on how they relate to each other. The framework will help provide direction for future initiatives while providing a link to existing initiatives.

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technology can help, should be a part of every technology leader’s job no matter what the level.”

SETDA recently joined with the National Association of State Title I Directors (nationaltitleiassociation.org) on the writing and publishing of two documents, “Leveraging Title I and Title IID: Maximizing the Impact of Technology in Education” and “A Resource Guide Identifying Technology Tools for Schools” (setda.org/web/guest/ titleI). The collaboration between the two organizations has fostered greater communication between state technology leaders and state Title I directors. In a recent meeting between SETDA members and Title I directors, 19 states reported sitting down with their Title I or technology director within the past two months, while only eight states said they had not. The general feeling among the directors is that the joint documents and other collaborative efforts will result in greater coordination of state grants for technology and Title I. In Forsyth County, Mitchell’s work to change the perception of the CTO from “just the tech guy to an education leader” has required reaching out in all directions.

“You have to invite yourself to Teaching and Learning meetings to see what they are doing,” he says. “Get the trust of the school bus-fleet manager so you can help him pick the right GPS system. You have to learn how the financial system works so when the business office is looking for new technology, you can really help them.”

Mitchell says today’s CTO must be involved in every point of the new framework.

“If all you talk about is putting technology fires out, break/fix issues, and how you need more bandwidth, that’s all you will do.”

Geoffrey H. Fletcher is editorial director of T.H.E. Journal.

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DISTANCE LEARNING

Winning Back Homeschoolers With the defection of local families causing a steep dip in its enrollment, a rural Ohio district goes virtual to stem the tide.

I

N THE LATE 1990S, Graham Local Schools sprung a leak. Enrollment was being drained in a way that the Ohio school district was at a loss to stop: A surge in families opting out of public education in favor of homeschooling their children resulted in the exodus of about 200 students.

“That was roughly 10 percent of our student population,” recalls Graham’s then superintendent, James Zerkle.

In response, the district, the fifth largest in area in the state—its buses run dual routes of about 190 miles a day across rural Champaign County to transport students to its three campuses—conducted a survey of the exiting families to find out why they had decided to educate their children at home rather than send them to public school.

“The surveys came back showing all the right reasons,” Zerkle says. “They wanted to be involved in their kids’ education. They wanted to instill the right values. They didn’t want their children exposed to bullying and didn’t like some of the positions that public schools had taken. And they all said, ‘Thanks for asking us. At least somebody is asking us.’”

Zerkle moved to try to keep the families in the fold. He tapped Marcia Ward, a science

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Jennifer Demski

teacher at Graham High School at the time, to head up a new online school. As a result of her stint as the principal of a Christian school in a neighboring county, Ward had experience working with homeschooling families, who would often seek her help on curriculum questions. She hoped to address the concerns of Graham’s homeschooling parents while getting them to return their children to the district.

“We had more than 80 families homeschooling,” Ward says, “not feeling any connection to the district whatsoever, not voting for levies, and basically not interested in being a part of Graham Local Schools.

They didn’t appreciate what they perceived, that the public schools were unfriendly to them, were possibly allowing dress, language, courses of instruction—especially in sexual education—that were not conducive to their beliefs.”

Zerkle and Ward sent out letters to every homeschooling family in the district to gauge their interest in an online school option. The initial few years were spent designing the school’s curriculum and operation and drumming up enrollment. Ward taught part-time in the high school in the morning and guided the virtual students in the afternoon. By March 2003, the new K-12 Graham Digital Academy (GDA) had reached an enrollment of 25 students, formally qualifying as a virtual school in the state of Ohio and thereby making itself eligible to receive state funding.

In Ohio, a virtual school is similar to a charter school, given unique latitude to try different strategies. “We still have to comply with the Ohio Department of Education in many areas,” Ward says, “but we also have the opportunity to do some unusual things and offer some unusual classes because we’re online.”

And that’s just what Ward did to attract parents who were wary of what public schools had to offer. She designed the school’s philosophy around the late educational reformist Ted Sizer’s 10 Common Principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools (essentialschools.org), which include “Personalize everything,” “Democracy

and equity for every single student,” and “Student as worker, teacher as coach,” and offered an array of online courses from a consortium of about 40 Ohio schools.

“If you wanted something different and you didn’t want to be in the traditional school, for whatever reason,” Ward says, “you now had an option.” Still, engaging students in those early years was not easy.

“In the beginning, we’d get a lot of lowachieving students who didn’t really want to work,” Ward says. “This was a concern, but we’d made up our minds that we were going to stay focused and continue to offer what we felt was a choice, an option, for a different type of learning.”

Ward’s persistence paid off; positive word of mouth about GDA spread quickly. As the school’s student body expanded, so did its curricular offerings. The academy began

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Graham Digital Academy’s (OH) Marcia Ward says that at the outset of the online school’s formation, she invited parents to meet with her to discuss their hopes and concerns. One book they read together was Roland Barth’s Learning by Heart (Jossey-Bass, 2001). “Every parent and educator should read it,” Ward says. “Barth says, unequivocally, the day of sit-and-get is gone. The talking head is over.

Children learn differently and we must engage them. We must engage them with the new three w’s: wherever, whenever, whatever.”

She adds that the district has successfully brought the mass exit of homeschoolers to heel. “We don’t hear a lot about that anymore, because we have made it so easy and so accommodating for folks to homeschool.”

GDA’s 270 students consist of about 70 Graham High School students taking single online courses to supplement their regular curriculum and 50 full-timers working strictly from home. The remaining 150 students are enrolled in the district’s new A.B. Graham Academy, which was created at the request

“We can offer digital photography. We can offer Java programming and Flash animation.

That’s state-of-the-art stuff—and we’re out in the middle of a cornfield!” offering courses from curricular delivery sites such as Apex Learning (apexlearning.com), Lincoln Interactive (lincolninteractive.com), and Aventa Learning (aventalearning.com).

“In Aventa alone we can offer 20 AP classes. Twenty!” says Ward, who is now the director over all of Graham Local Schools’ digital programming. “We can offer Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Latin. We can offer psychology and sociology.

We can offer digital photography. We can offer Java programming and Flash animation.

That’s state-of-the-art stuff—and we’re out in the middle of a cornfield!”

As of the start of this school year, GDA had an enrollment of 270 students, a population that has come to reach far beyond homeschoolers, providing an alternative for kids of many different stripes and circumstances. “We take students from the high school who are failing and would’ve quit,” Ward says, “girls who are pregnant, boys who are in prison, kids who are struggling.

We have gifted kids who say they are tired of all the social drama, students who have been bullied, who have been made fun of.”

of parents who wanted their students to have access to on-site computer labs. Zerkle retired from his position as district superintendent in June to take over as ABGA’s CEO. The school, which unlike Graham Digital Academy is open to students statewide, is a hybrid of sorts: Students choose whether to work online from home or complete their online curriculum in one of the academy’s six computer labs, housed in the Graham Board of Education offices.

bytesize A.B. Graham Academy was named for Albert Belmont Graham, a school superintendent in rural Ohio who founded the Boys’ and Girls’ Agricultural Experimental Club in Clark County, OH, in 1902. The group would later become the 4-H Clubs of America.

The majority of ABGA students are in middle and high school, although Ward, who serves as the school’s principal, is seeing an increase in the number of homeschooling families with elementary-age students who’ve chosen to enroll their children. “They’re overwhelmed by what we’re offering,” she says.

Leigh Anne Roberts can attest to that.

When she and her husband chose to homeschool their six children, they did so to ensure their kids would have a challenging and intensive educational experience that they didn’t feel was obtainable in a traditional public school. Now they’ve had one son graduate from the Graham Digital Academy, and three of their children are now students at A.B. Graham Academy.

Roberts says the decision to abandon homeschooling and try virtual schooling was easy for a number of reasons.

“One, I can still pick my curriculum,” she says. “Two, they have teachers. It’s not put on my shoulders to do all the work.

And three, they get a diploma, whereas before they’d have to take the GED. It fulfilled a lot of what I needed in a school.”

Roberts describes the digital academies as mixing the best of all worlds. “My kids aren’t slowed down by the brick-andmortar system. They can go as fast as they want or as slow as they want. We can veer off into additional research on topics that they’re interested in. My youngest son is in the third grade. By [attending] A.B. Graham Academy, he can go on field trips, he can go in for art class. They offer so many things. We would never be able to get our schoolwork done here at home if we went to everything, so we pick and choose.”

As a parent, Roberts believes that what sets the schools apart is not the digital delivery of the curriculum. “There’s a huge awareness of respect toward people, and attitudes toward one another that are instilled in these kids that you don’t get at the public schools anymore.

The environment is loving and nurturing; these teachers care about our kids. I think it’s the best-kept secret in Ohio.”

Jennifer Demski is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.

JANUARY 2010 |

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FEATURE | cloud computing

Up, Up, and

Away Administrators are finding that freedom from the laborious work of maintaining so much technology rests in the cloud. by John K. Waters

AS FAR AS NED ZIMMERMAN-BENCE IS CONCERNED, cloud computing saved his school.

“We were collapsing under the weight of the need to support so many different computers,” says the executive director of the Minnesota Online High School (MNOHS). “You can just imagine the nightmare of a small school supporting a virtually infinite number of computer platforms and configurations for students spread to the four winds of Minnesota.”

MNOHS’ 300-plus students connect with their teachers through a learning management system and are required to use their own PCs with high-speed internet connections to access their courses online.

Until recently, the school provisioned those computers by sending out CDs of its licensed software and guiding students through downloads of the open source and custom applications it uses.

“You can imagine the amount of time and money it took to press and mail CDs to students,” Zimmerman-Bence says. “We had to maintain an inventory of CDs, making sure that we kept an exact number of copies so that we wouldn’t violate our licensing agreements. We would often have to walk the students through the open source downloads and installations, which was also very time-consuming. And then we had to provide some level of remote technical support for them with a small staff. It was a logistical nightmare.”

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Dan Page

FEATURE | cloud computing

“[Cloud computing] has been a huge relief to us. Student work doesn’t reside on computers anymore.

All the applications and data are stored in the cloud. No more CDs. No more downloads. And if a laptop dies or gets stolen, student work isn’t lost.”

About a year ago, MNOHS began looking for a better way. In the spring, the school launched a pilot program to test a system designed to move its entire operation to the cloud. It was then, ironically, that the skies began to clear.

“It has been a huge relief to us,” Zimmerman-Bence says. “Student work doesn’t reside on computers anymore. All the applications and data are stored in the cloud. No more CDs. No more downloads.

And if a laptop dies or gets stolen, student work isn’t lost.

“I’m exaggerating, of course, when I say that cloud computing saved our school, but I’m positive it saved the sanity of our systems administrator.”

If you’re not exactly sure what ZimmermanBence is talking about, don’t feel bad. Cloud computing generated such early buzz that the term took off before anyone had bothered to clearly define it (see “Demystifying the ‘Cloud,’” page 26). If you’ve ever found yourself sitting through a dry-erase-board presentation during which the speaker draws a literal cloud to represent the internet, with lines radiating out visit thejournal.com to rows of boxes representing servers, PCs, cell phones, or other end-point devices, you’ve seen the origin of “the cloud.”

The basic idea behind cloud computing is this: All or part of your IT infrastructure, data storage, and software-application deployments live on off-site servers maintained by outside providers, and which users access through a web browser.

The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is a well-known example. The EC2 virtual computing environment uses web services to provide what Amazon calls “resizeable

[keyword: cloud ]

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| JANUARY 2010

compute capacity in the cloud.” Essentially, customers rent server space; if they need more capacity, they can scale up—or down—more or less at will (hence, the descriptive elastic).

The EC2 might be thought of as an example of infrastructure in the cloud, or infrastructure as a service (IaaS). The in-the-cloud model also works for software development platforms (platform as a service, or PaaS), examples of which include the Google App Engine and Salesforce.com’s Force.com. Both provide cloud-based platforms on which software developers write their applications. Then there are applications in the cloud, which refers to things like Google Apps and Wikipedia, which are apps accessed via a web browser. Software as a service (SaaS) is a similar model, but the provider licenses a particular web-accessed application to a customer.

This apps-in-the-cloud model in particular seems to be generating a new level of interest in cloud computing in educational circles.

In their sixth annual Horizon Report, researchers at the New Media Consortium, an international association of organizations that explores the potential educational uses of new technologies, found that the growing menu of cloud-based applications is causing “a shift in the way we think about how we use software.”

“The idea of data storage as something that can be separated from an individual computer is not unusual,” they write, “but now it is becoming common to consider applications in the same light. Instead of locking files and software inside a single computer, we are gradually moving both the products of our work and the tools we use to accomplish it into the cloud.”

And therein lies the value of this comput-

ing model to K-12 schools. In his blog, Thomas Bittman, vice president and distinguished analyst at technology research firm Gartner, explains that cloud computing, with its deemphasizing of fancy hardware, has the ability to do away with the digital divide: “All that is needed,” he wrote, “is a cheap access device and a web browser, broadband in the schools, perhaps wireless hotspots. While equitable access to technology is clearly important, more and more students already have some kind of access device—a laptop, an iPod. The district needs to fill the gaps, not replace existing access devices.”

SITESEEING nmc.org/publications/ 2009-horizon-k12-report: The New Media Consortium’s 2009 Horizon Report, which examines the emerging technologies that are likely to make a big impact on teaching and learning in the next few years.

Lightening the Load Getting a school’s applications and data into the cloud means that its access devices—desktop computers, laptops, handhelds, etc.—can be much less sophisticated and much easier to maintain, says Lisa Clark, vice president at Durham, NC-based Simtone, a provider of cloud computing services.

“With a cloud-based system, you don’t have to worry as much about your students’ lost, stolen, crunched, or fried computers,” Clark says. “No hard-drive malfunctions to deal with. No lost computing files or data.

No CD-drive breakage or bad track reads.

No OS reboots. The blue screen of death never appears. No black screens with strange and scary code. No endless uploads, downloads, upgrades, or storage. No stacks of app boxes taking up space in a closet.”

All of which sounded pretty good to Zimmerman-Bence when he started talking with Simtone back in December.

“We were looking at a few other options,” he says. “Managing backups and provisioning laptops were the two biggest problems plaguing us. We looked at a number of solutions, including a flash drive-based system that wasn’t much better in the final

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analysis than the CDs. But this cloud technology seemed to solve our problems. And the technology looked very solid; they’re essentially streaming an entire PC desktop over a wireless router without much latency.”

In May, MNOHS became one of the first schools to take Simtone’s new Education Thunder Program for a test drive. The company’s first major K-12 initiative aims to provide students and teachers with access to full “PCs in the cloud,” which will contain their coursework, homework,

school services, personal files, and other education materials. Virtualized desktops are stored on remote servers instead of on the end-user devices, and all programs, applications, processes, and data are run centrally, which allows users to access their desktops from any web-enabled device.

MNOHS began testing the service with a pilot program involving 20 student computers, including laptop and desktop machines running Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Mac OS, Zimmerman-Bence says. At the same time, the school’s systems engineer

TECHSPEAK

Demystifying the ‘Cloud’

The object of much exuberant discussion, the term is not quite as confounding as you might think.

IT’S HARD TO FIND a technology company of any size that hasn’t jumped into the cloud with some kind of initiative. Unfortunately, the cloud is one of those high-tech concepts that vendor marketing groups jumped on with such voraciousness, the hyperbole left no room for a plain understanding of what the term actually means.

Fortunately, researchers at the New Media Consortium (nmc.org) offer some clarity here. They classify cloud computing services into three types: 1) single-function cloudbased applications accessed via a web browser (Gmail, Quicken Online), which use the cloud for processing power and data storage; 2) cloud infrastructures on which software developers build and host cloud apps (Google App Engine, Joyent); and 3) cloud services that offer “sheer computing resources without a development platform layer” (Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, GoGrid).

Thorsten von Eicken, CTO and founder of Santa Barbara, CA-based RightScale (rightscale.com), a company that specializes in the management of cloud deployments, argues that the meaning of the cloud isn’t as misty as it once was.

“People act like cloud computing is this big, mysterious thing, ill-defined, amorphous, and, well, cloudy,” von Eicken says. “But computer-savvy folks have a pretty good idea of what the term means. Cloud computing is the provisioning of dynamically scalable resources as a service over a network. It’s outsourced computing—pay-as-you-go, ondemand, rented usage from a third-party provider.”

Von Eicken says that he’s seen a significant change this year in the overall perception of cloud computing in almost every industry. “In 2007, we saw the early adopters and garage startups and just a few large users. In 2008, we saw more established smaller companies come to the cloud. And 2009 has really seen top-down interest in a cloud strategy in just about every industry vertical.”

One thing that cloud computing isn’t, says Lisa Clark, vice president at cloud services provider Simtone (simtone.net), is another form of client-server computing.

“The biggest difference is probably scalability,” she says. “The cloud is incredibly flexible. But also, it’s the nature of the devices through which end users of cloud services are accessing their information. We’re not just talking about desktops anymore, but every mobile device, every wall screen, every kiosk—everywhere a user has a screen, a keyboard, and a network connection.”

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began using the cloud platform as her full-time work environment. Each of the virtualized desktops was preloaded with what Zimmerman-Bence calls “course-crucial software,” including Microsoft Office, The Geometer’s Sketchpad, Fathom Dynamic Data, and Adobe Premiere Elements.

“The students still need access to a computer,” Zimmerman-Bence says, “but this cloud model mitigates that by requiring much simpler and cheaper computers. Our students don’t need the latest ThinkPad to participate; they can get by with a netbook, or even a clunky old machine stashed in their parents’ garage. In fact, they don’t absolutely have to own a computer if they have reliable access to the internet from machines in public libraries or digital cafes.

Because it’s all online, all they really need is a fast connection and a machine that will run a web browser.”

Online schools such as MNOHS often find themselves at the bleeding edge of information technology innovations, which Zimmerman-Bence maintains can be a good place to be if you want to influence the evolution of the technology.

“One of the great things about being on the bleeding edge is that we’ve been able to inform Simtone about what we need,” he says, “and they’ve been very responsive to that. Being an online school, our enrollments can be quite fluid between semesters.

We have to be able to turn on and turn off licenses for certain software titles fairly quickly. So we’ve been working with Simtone to develop an administrative interface that will help us provision laptops so that if a student starts off in, say, a media arts class but then drops out, we can turn off the software the moment he drops that class.

But he’ll still have his environment so that if he decides to switch to music we can turn on that software just as quickly.”

Zimmerman-Bence says that his school will be rolling out the cloud-computing service to more students later this year, hopefully with that administrative interface.

A Trust Issue Cloud computing didn’t exactly save her district, but Kim Cronin Bunchuck, technol-

FEATURE | cloud computing

ogy director for the Greenport Union Free School District in Long Island, NY, says that it rescued it from losing “a bucket of money.”

Her definition of the cloud is to the point: “If you don’t have to install it, maintain it, or upgrade it, it’s in the cloud,” she says. So is her summary of cloud computing’s main benefit to K-12: “As soon as you install software on your machines, whether they’re desktops

director, so I could do more than just theorize about cloud computing in K-12,” she says. “And my district gave me the support to give it a try.”

Greenport signed up for the free Education Edition of Google Apps, which allows school districts to mix and match a suite of web-based applications. That suite includes Gmail, Google Talk for instant messaging,

“As soon as you install software on your machines, whether they’re desktops or servers, you’re responsible for maintaining it; once you put that software in the cloud, that’s no longer your problem.” or servers, you’re responsible for maintaining it; once you put that software in the cloud, that’s no longer your problem.”

Greenport is a small district, serving about 625 K-12 students, all in one building.

But even a small district needs e-mail, and Greenport had for years been providing that service with Microsoft’s popular Exchange Server messaging system, which includes a mail server, an e-mail program, and groupware applications.

But Exchange proved to be a “needy” system, Cronin Bunchuck says, requiring a lot of maintenance time, and the licensing costs were a burden for the district, 50 percent of whose students qualify for the free- or reduced-lunch program. The straw that broke the budget landed in 2007, when the United States, Canada, and a few other countries decided to extend daylight saving time. Exchange had been programmed with the old start and end dates, and Microsoft wanted $8,000 to adjust them.

“For a small district it was just a ridiculous expense,” Cronin Bunchuck says. “That’s when I realized that maintaining our own equipment didn’t make sense anymore, especially with what I knew was available in the cloud.”

She convinced the district to allow her to test a cloud application, Google’s Gmail, as a potential replacement for Exchange. “Luckily, I was a technology

Google Calendar, Google Docs, and the Google Sites website builder. For its trial run, the district settled on a combination of Gmail and Google Docs.

For the first two school years of the pilot program, Cronin Bunchuck ran Gmail and Exchange in parallel, setting up a new district domain name with the Google service while leaving the state-supplied domain name pointing at the Exchange server. Over this past Labor Day weekend, she pointed the state domain name at the Google service and shut down Exchange.

“I took advantage of the fact that Gmail allows you to point both domains to one mailbox,” Cronin Bunchuck says. “Our Google e-mail now answers to two names, but by running the two services in parallel I was able to see if there were any problems.

There were none. It’s been more than a year now and we’re still in the cloud.”

Gmail was immediately accepted by the district’s faculty and staff, Cronin Bunchuck says (“Some of my teachers and administrators haven’t even noticed”), but Google Docs has been a bit harder to deploy.

“I’d like to have our documents completely in the cloud, but it’s taking some work to make that change. The program is there, but the teachers aren’t really using it. I think it’s safe to say that the cloud looks to many educators like a loss of control. The change will come from the

students, especially the ones who don’t have computers at home. They know that if it’s in the cloud, they can go to the public library and pull up their work. If it’s here on the network, they can only get to it when they’re at school.”

Cloud computing does demand trust in the service provider, says ZimmermanBence, and that’s going to be a big adjustment for some educators. “The first thing that scares people about cloud computing is the idea of putting all their data ‘out there,’” he says. “‘Cloud’ turns out not to be the best metaphor if you want to reassure people that their data is in a safe place.”

Simtone’s Clark agrees, but sees that concern as a kind of cognitive disconnect.

“This anxiety about the cloud is interesting,” she says. “Our research shows that students in existing and pilot 1-to-1 programs report spending 40 percent of their school week online, using their computer.

My daughter says that she goes online to use Compass Learning’s Odyssey program every day. There’s Holt Online Learning, BrainPop, Mind Meister, Accelerated Math and Reader, Beyond Books—these are all web-based apps that students are already using. And the rest of us shop online and do our banking online.

“The truth is, we’re all already in the cloud.”

John K. Waters is a freelance writer based in Palo Alto, CA.

LINKS Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud http://aws.amazon.com/ec2 Gartner www.gartner.com Google www.google.com Microsoft www.microsoft.com Minnesota Online High School www.mnohs.org New Media Consortium www.nmc.org Simtone www.simtone.net

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Claudia Newell

FEATURE | e-learning

VIRTUAL P.E.?

NO SWEAT! Well, not exactly. Students still have to put in the laps, but for those with body-image issues or hefty course loads, taking gym class online is a welcome alternative that educators hope can spur a permanent interest in fitness.

by Jennifer Grayson

AMMY COWAN STILL CHOKES UP every time she tells the story of how one student’s life was forever changed by enrolling in her online gym class.

“I had a young lady in my class who was a heavyset girl, and she was frightened to death of doing the fitness test, of having to run the mile—she didn’t want anybody to see her running,” recalls Cowan, a physical education teacher for Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). So she arranged for the girl to take the fitness test separately, when no other students would be around. “No one in her family had ever exercised. She was afraid of gym. It was sad, actually.”

It was this fear that prompted the student to enroll in the district’s online physical education class, offered through its online learning program, Minneapolis Public Schools Online. This would allow her to complete physical activity and written assignments on her own time. Little did she know the dramatic transformation she was about to undergo. As the course progressed, through the student’s journal entries, Cowan says she could detect her rising confidence.

JANUARY 2010 |

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FE ATURE | e-learning

“She would get more and more specific with the workouts that she was doing,” Cowan says, “and you could ‘read’ that she was proud as she increased her distances or was able to work longer with an elevated heart rate. Her journals would go from a phrase like ‘Activity: walked 1 mile.

Did not enjoy, too hot’ to ‘Activity: walked 2.5 miles with my friend. Worked hard and enjoyed getting my heart pumping.’ You could see her developing this sense that she could actually do this.”

When the time came for the student to take her final fitness test in person at the end of the course—the teachers test at the beginning and end of the semester to see if students’ fitness levels have increased— Cowan e-mailed the girl to see if she again wanted a separate testing time, but, much to Cowan’s surprise, she said she’d be okay running in front of her classmates.

When the student came in for her test, “I’m not joking—I didn’t recognize her,” Cowan says. “She probably had lost 40 pounds in the semester. And the level of confidence that you could just see in her physical presence...she was athletic and she was active.” When Cowan asked her if she would take the next-level P.E. course online, the girl said no: She wanted to come in and take it at school.

“Best story I have,” Cowan says. “It still brings tears to my eyes.”

She and her colleagues have plenty more inspiring stories just like it, which would seem reason enough for any district

opt out of their P.E. course if they met a minimum activity requirement.

And it wasn’t only students who participated in varsity sports like football and basketball who were opting out; members of the marching band and cheerleading squads were also given permission to forgo the class.

[keyword: e-learning] visit thejournal.com

This meant that students were also missing out on the more cognitive aspects of the course—specifically, nutrition and health.

“Education is clearly changing,” says Frank Goodrich, another of MPS’ online P.E. teachers, who developed the course with Cowan over the past five years. “There continues to be more demand from students in terms of getting more out of the same length of the school day.”

For Goodrich, a can’t-beat-’em-join-’em approach makes sense: “We can continue to do what’s been done for a long time, which is to just advocate for our curriculum and our spot in that six-hour school day, or we can provide a flexible, alternative way to deliver our curriculum.”

Evolving With the Technology MPS’ virtual gym class is offered for credit recovery during summer school or in lieu of in-person gym class during the school year.

The only difference between the two offerings is that students who take the course during the school year work online only and

“The first year of the program, we had a young woman who was pregnant. She started the course pregnant, and she finished the course walking with her baby in the stroller.” to try a similar program, but enabling access to physical education for all students is just one benefit of MPS’ online gym class.

The reason for its implementation was larger in scope: The district was trying to find a way to deal with the effect of increasing course loads, which resulted in as many as 1,200 students a year being allowed to 30

| JANUARY 2010

complete workouts on their own time, while the summer school version is a blended model, coordinating web-based instruction with in-person sports activities with other students and visits with teachers.

Students who sign up for the online class— about 10 percent of the district’s enrollment, says Goodrich—do so for a variety of reasons

that make participating in traditional brickand-mortar gym class difficult, from demanding course loads and body-image issues to physical or emotional impairments.

“The first year of the program, we had a young woman who was pregnant,” says Jan Braaten, who teaches P.E. and health and also is a summer school coordinator for the district. “She started the course pregnant, and she finished the course walking with her baby in the stroller.”

MPS offers two online gym options, Fitness for Life I and Fitness for Life II, that allow high school students to complete the two semester credits each of P.E. and health required by the state of Minnesota. The classes, which are based on both national and Minneapolis physical education standards, were initially developed via Blackboard, but about 2½ years ago, the opportunity to save money prompted the district to switch over to the open source learning management system Moodle.

“Blackboard cost $20,000 annually; Moodle costs $0,” says Renee Jesness, the district’s online learning coordinator.

“When I saw the stability, versatility, and course management tools with Moodle, it became clear that open source was the choice to make.”

Each course is broken into two components: written, cognitive assignments that the students submit to the teacher (40 percent of the grade), and physical activity of the students’ choosing (60 percent).

This can include participation in a varsity sport, swimming at the local YMCA, dance class—any activity for “a minimum of 30 minutes where a student’s heart rate is elevated in the target heart zone,” says Goodrich. Students learn to assess their target heart zone during the course.

A total of 15 hours of exercise are required over the course of nine weeks, which breaks down into roughly two to four workouts a week. Attending class is as simple as booting up the computer. Students log in to the Moodle platform, and the entire course is right there: all assignments, assessments, and an activity journal, which must be signed by a coach or parent.

The use of the technology has evolved

“When students have the ability to pick activities that they like to do, we are more likely to meet the ultimate goal: to have active people not only when they’re young, but throughout their entire lives.” over time. Goodrich describes the class in the beginning as “flat”—essentially a bunch of words on a page that students were asked to read and study. Now, however, the course is much more interactive: Students watch podcasts filmed by the teachers on such topics as how to properly check your pulse, and check out educational videos through sites like Discovery Education on the correct way to perform biceps curls and other exercises. The teachers have even created lessons for English language learners by recording podcasts in Spanish, Hmong, and Somali.

And to stay on top of the latest technology and address any issues that arise, the teachers revise the curriculum every year.

Intent on taking the advances in technology even further is Mark Burchell, a P.E. and health teacher for the Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Intermediate Unit (AIU) e-Cademy program, which provides 42 suburban districts in Allegheny County with online courses. Interest in virtual education has exploded in the region. In the last three years, e-Cademy’s enrollment has grown a whopping 721 percent; P.E. and health are the second and third most popular courses, after math.

Burchell, who used to teach for the cyber charter school PA Learners Online, cites the popularity of his online P.E. class at Pittsburgh Allderdice High School, one of the e-Cademy participants, where students enrolled in the school’s academically rigorous engineering program need to free up their day for course requirements and study time.

While his students currently manually monitor and record their pulse rates during cardio activity, he’s looking to procure monitors they can use that will automate that process.

“We’re still looking for better technology to help our students learn and better understand the concepts,” Burchell says, “because learning at home on the com-

puter is difficult. I know that; I’m taking a grad class online right now.”

Cheating Concerns But can gym class really be effectively taught via computer? It’s easy to post reading material for students taking an online American history class, for example, but doesn’t a student need the social interaction of those classic gym favorites like dodgeball and Ultimate Frisbee?

Sarah McCluan, AIU’s supervisor of communication services, doesn’t think so. “In a traditional gym class, let’s say you’re playing basketball that quarter,” she says. “So you line up against the wall and you choose teams, and there are always a couple people who are the last picked. So what do they do? They sit on the bench for most of the class while the kids who are on the regular school basketball team play.

How is that helping students learn about nutrition, health, physical activity, their bodies, burning calories, etc.?”

MPS’ Goodrich concurs. “When students have the ability to pick, just like adults would, activities that they like to do,” he says, “we as physical education educators are more likely to meet the ultimate goal: to have active people not only when they’re young, but throughout their entire lives—which has, of course, massive impact on our medical system and health care.

Still, without the watchful eye of a gym teacher, how can anyone be sure that students aren’t just writing in their journals that they went for a five-mile run while they were really sitting on the couch scarfing Cheetos? Burchell minimizes the likelihood of cheating by having his students describe the psychomotor aspects of the physical activities they perform. He’ll ask his students: When you did a squat, what muscles were you working?

“I know they have to physically do the

squat to feel the muscles and know the cognitive material by telling which one,” he says.

Goodrich has become accustomed to fending off such concerns. He points out that even if you see kids jogging in front of you in class, there’s no way to ensure they’re all in their target heart zone and not slacking off. “Cheating has been in practice for as long as people have been on the earth,” he says. “If a paper was assigned in an English class in a face-toface high school, what steps are in place to know that a student hasn’t taken it home and copied it or had someone else do it?”

He notes the importance of the pre– and post–fitness tests in his district, which allow him to judge if students have improved their physical fitness relative to the workouts they’ve been recording in their journals all semester. But the most important tool to minimize cheating, Goodrich stresses, is good old-fashioned teacher intuition. “If it doesn’t look right, you simply pick up the phone and you make a phone call,” he says.

His colleague Cowan understands that conducting physical education virtually is a practical, if not ideal, solution: “I think all P.E. teachers would much rather see kids face-to-face. There’s a component of teaching P.E., that social aspect of it; it’s a class where you get to have fun and you’re encouraged to play games. This is a good alternative for a district that’s trying to meet the needs of everybody.”

Jennifer Grayson is a Los Angelesbased freelance writer who specializes in health and environmental issues.

LINKS Blackboard blackboard.com Discovery Education discoveryeducation.com Minneapolis Public Schools Online online.mpls.k12.mn.us Moodle moodle.org PA Learners Online palearnersonline.com

| JANUARY 2010

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FEATURE | mobility

LEFT TO THEIR OWN DEVICES

By Jeff Weinstock

With cost concerns squeezing districts out of 1-to-1 computing programs, a once unthinkable solution is now in play: allowing students to bring their own laptops, PDAs, and—heaven help us—cell phones.

AT EMPIRE HIGH SCHOOL IN VAIL, AZ, every student has a laptop, a fully loaded MacBook supplied free of charge—to the student, at least—courtesy of the Vail School District. “We provide the entire experience,” says Vail CIO Matt Federoff.

The 1-to-1 program is a cornerstone of Vail’s Beyond Textbooks initiative, whose goal is an all-digital curriculum. So facing the decision on whether to expand the program to another of its high schools, Cienega, the district made the obvious choice: No way.

“At 900 bucks a pop, we can’t provide a laptop to every kid at every one of our high schools,” Federoff says. “Economically, that’s not sustainable for us. We can do it for 850 kids at Empire. We can’t do it for 2,000 kids at Cienega.”

But the district was in no mood to dial back on its push toward digital content, or widen the hallowed ratio of one computer per student. So Federoff and his group gathered to brainstorm alternatives. “We were thinking, ‘What are some other models?’” Federoff says. “We have a high school that is 1-to-1 where we give you the widget. Well, what if you bring the widget? A lot of our kids have their own laptops. What if we leveraged these devices to see if they can be used for instruction?

Is that better or worse, or somewhere in the middle? We chose a handful of classes and a few teachers just to see how it would pan out, if it was a practical solution.”

In July, Vail launched a bring-your-own-laptop program at Cienega High in about a dozen classes. The program, Federoff stresses, is still in its trialts phase. “It’s purely an experiment,” he says. “Right now we’re i feeling our way through it.”

JANUARY 2010 |

33

So far, feedback has been mixed, according to Federoff. Such niggling interferences as scheduling difficulties and getting the students to actually bring the devices to class have muddled the effort.

“I don’t know if it’s better, but the alternative would be nothing,” Federoff says. “We wouldn’t have a device at all. If nothing else, bring-your-own-laptop has enabled dozens and dozens of students access to technology in the classroom they otherwise wouldn’t have.”

It may be an imperfect approach—marked by labor-intensive infrastructural and logistical tasks—but allowing students to bring their own computing devices to class may be the inevitable solution for districts that are under ever-constricting budgets but want to preserve a technology-enhanced education. It’s not just student-owned laptops that schools are opening up to, but any web-enabled device, including PDAs, iPod Touches, and cell phones. Not too long ago this would have struck many educators as a deal with the devil, to invite such potential chaos into the classroom. But now it only seems sensible, or as Don Manderson, technology coordinator of Florida’s Escambia County Schools, says simply, “just the right thing to do.”

“We’d like to have the best student-tocomputer ratio that we possibly can,” says

Manderson as his district aims for the launch of a student-owned-devices program later this school year. “We certainly can’t afford 1-to-1.

Our districtwide ratio is 3-to-1, 4-to-1, but we’d like to do better than that. When there are many devices out there owned by students that could help to fill that void of computers, and they’re perfectly functional and they could be helping the instructional process, I don’t know how much longer it’ll be viable to say no.”

Ready for Rollout Escambia is now near completing what is the central technical challenge of permitting the use of student-owned computing tools. It has taken the district two years to establish a guest “path” on the district network for studentowned devices that routes them through a web filter and on to the internet for study resources, but keeps them away from sensitive areas on the network meant only for staff and faculty.

“They can’t get to our network operating system or mapped drives, or any other repositories of information that exist inside our firewall,” Manderson says. “They go straight out the firewall, through the content filter, and out to the internet. That’s all they can do.”

The last component of the work has been the installation of FreeRADIUS, an open source RADIUS (remote authentication

callout POLICY COMPLIANCE

TAKING OWNERSHIP

At Arizona’s Cienega High School, students who bring their own tech appliances must first agree to rigorous district oversight.

TO ENROLL IN ONE of Cienega High School’s (AZ) digital classes, students must own a laptop with a prescribed set of capabilities, such as working USB ports, a wireless card, and at least a 1-GB flash drive. Further mandates are spelled out in a policy document excerpted here. Note that the policy states that any mischief will get the student user kicked off the district network.

In order to enroll in the digital version of a class, a student must provide a working laptop that meets certain minimum specifications. Your laptop must have current antivirus and anti-spyware software installed.

In addition, the student must register the device (laptop) with the CHS technology department. As part of registration the student must provide the master administrative password, and allow the creation of an administration account on the machine by the CHS technology department, and allow the installation of print management and other software necessary to the class(es) under that account. The student must also allow the technology department to install screen-sharing/management software on the laptop.

Disabling any of the CHS tech department accounts or software will result in removal of rights to access the network.

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dial-in user service) server that will act as a gatekeeper to Escambia’s secured network.

“We don’t want a device that a student brings in with who-knows-what kind of hack-

[keyword: mobile ] visit thejournal.com

ing materials on it to be able to get to that network,” he says. “Right now it would have access to the network because we don’t have a login requirement. Until that is in place, we’re postponing the rollout of the student appliances in the schools.”

Manderson says that installing the server has been done in tandem with another painstaking procedural step. It took the district two years to craft an addendum to its acceptable use policy (AUP) that lays out the parameters for the use of student-owned devices. “We’ve been very careful to define precisely what the limitations are and what the terms of use are,” he says, “and what the terms of termination of the ability to use them are.”

Manderson says this emphasis on identifying restrictions runs counter to the way acceptable use policies are now generally written. Two years ago he attended a conference session on drafting AUPs and learned that the trend was toward “defining expectations rather than defining what’s not allowed.” He says an orthodox approach suits the conservative community in which the district resides. “The policy may not be progressive, but the initiative is,” he says.

The Escambia policy actually could be seen as a transgression of Florida state law, which Manderson says forbids cell phones from use in school except for emergency purposes. When is a cell phone not a cell phone? According to the Escambia AUP, when it’s being used to get on the internet.

“The acceptable use policy treats the cell phone, if it’s internet enabled, as an internet appliance,” Manderson says. “If you’re using it as an internet appliance and you’re not using Skype or something like that to make a phone call, then I guess that would be acceptable use. But if you begin to use any cellular capabilities, including texting and instant messaging, then you would be in the area of inappropriate conduct.”

FEATURE | mobility

Equal Access, Unequal Tools Crafting a policy to govern student-owned devices shows how troublesome it can be to bring so many disparate appliances under one standard. Things could get even thornier in the classroom, where a teacher may face a class of 30 students in which five have iPod Touches, five have laptops, five have PDAs, and five have old-school clamshell phones.

“If a teacher sends out a PDF study sheet, there may be kids with [appliances] that don’t support PDFs as attachments,” says Richard Doherty, co-founder and director of Envisioneering, a technology consulting group based in Seaford, NY. “Until issues like that are resolved, teachers and IT directors will be learning as they go, sending out two different formats of a file if necessary.”

That scenario is also imagined by Karen Greenwood Henke, a Pasadena, CA-based ed tech consultant. “It would be frustrating for a teacher to find an amazing video on the internet that kids could see on their

smartphones, but only half the students have phones that can play video,” she says. “And of those, five need instruction on how to make their media player work.”

So how can a consistent lesson be devised that allows every make and model of machine to participate? It’s a top-of-mind concern for Vail’s Federoff, who worries that the need to accommodate the capabilities of every device will force the teacher to simplify a lesson.

“The primary problem is, What does the teacher aim for?” he says, noting that this is one area where district-supplied machines have an advantage. “At Empire, if you provide the laptops, you know what applications [are installed], you know what the kids are capable of doing—you can ask everyone to make a movie. If the students bring the laptops, it gets trickier because you don’t have a consistent tool set to aim for. My fear is you begin to go for the lowest common denominator: What do I know all the kids can do consistently?

That actually isn’t terribly exciting.”

Vail’s technology coordinator, Kevin Steeves, who also teaches ecology at Cienega High School, says Microsoft Excel, for example, isn’t feasible because teachers have no assurance that every student will bring a laptop loaded with Excel. One application they can count on and therefore use liberally is the content management tool Moodle.

“That’s a resource that no matter what laptop you have, you can access it,” Steeves says. “The other thing we use a lot of is Google Apps. If teachers have a writing assignment, they’ll focus on using Google Apps because they know all students have access to it.”

One universal solution may have just entered North America six months ago.

Norway-based ed tech provider It’s Learning has just introduced to the US market a learning platform by the same name that can deliver educational materials for use on any web-enabled computing device, according to company president Jon Bower.

JANUARY 2010 |

35

FEATURE | mobility

“It runs on the browser—it’s not an app,” he explains. “It runs beautifully on a Palm. It runs fine on a BlackBerry. It runs on an iPod. It runs on a PC, it runs on a Mac. It runs happily on an Xbox 360—in the browser. It is broadly device-independent, and it allows you to deliver content from just about any publisher.”

The “real magic” of the platform, Bower believes, is its integration into a learning management system, which allows teachers to create their own learning materials that can then be delivered “seamlessly” with published third-party content to the students via their mobile devices. “That’s how you get to really individualize the instruction process,” he says.

Technology Georgianna Skinner, the district is hoping to have the same kind of store of reserve machines on hand when it implements a bring-your-own-devices initiative in the 2010-2011 school year.

The program comes on the heels of the termination of the district’s 1-to-1 laptop plan, which Skinner says had to be scrapped because maintenance on the machines had become too pricey. “We had come to the point where we either had to refresh the laptops or we had to stop it,” she says. “We had good results, but it was so expensive that we had to back off it. It was very disappointing.”

Providing spares, though, for even just a portion of a 22,000-student enrollment won’t

“WHEN THERE ARE MANY DEVICES OUT THERE OWNED BY STUDENTS, AND THEY’RE PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL AND THEY COULD BE HELPING THE INSTRUCTIONAL PROCESS, I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH LONGER IT’LL BE VIABLE TO SAY NO.” Bower adds that It’s Learning is well established abroad, used by more than 20 publishers to deliver their materials to European primary and higher education students.

He says that in its short time in the US, the product is finding its target audience: “It’s concentrated in schools that are highly focused on improving outcomes.”

Are Netbooks the Answer?

Even if a cross-device platform makes its way into the classroom, that still doesn’t resolve the question of what to do with those left out: the five kids in the class who have neither a Palm, an iPod Touch, a laptop, nor any web-enabled device whatsoever.

One answer is to keep spares on hand.

Virginia’s Hampton City Schools is currently conducting an experimental program at some of its middle schools in which students are creating videos with the use of their own video cameras. Any student who doesn’t own a camera can check out one of the new video-enabled iPod Nanos the district has purchased. According to Director of 36

| JANUARY 2010

come all that cheap. “Surveys have told us that about 80 percent of our homes have internet access, so we’re looking to fill in the 20 percent that don’t,” Skinner says. “What we’re looking for is the least expensive device that will do what we need it to do.”

Netbooks would seem to best fit that description; at around $400, they’re cheaper than issuing textbooks to a student, which runs more toward $600 to $1,000 for four years of high school. Vail’s Federoff, however, thinks the device that will erase the digital divide is still out there. “Netbooks are close,” he says. “There’s some middle ground between an iPod Touch and a laptop. Somebody’s going to create that device and that’s going to be a transformative moment.”

Federoff ultimately sees a solution he compares to “a school-bus model,” where the school offers a baseline machine but allows students to bring their own if they wish. “At some point we’re going to provide a device that lets kids get to digital content, and it will have a consistent tool set and a consistent experience. We don’t know what

that device is; it hasn’t been invented yet.

What we’ll say to the kids is, ‘Okay, that’s what you get.’ If a kid’s got a box that can do better, the kid can bring it. Kind of like, if you can drive yourself to school, you can—or you can ride the bus.”

Until that day arrives, Manderson says that the availability of student-owned devices actually helps equalize the classroom experience for all by freeing up whatever amount of school-owned devices there are. “For every child who is able to bring a device to school, it makes another device available that the district provides,” he says, noting that his district has a large number of economically disadvantaged students who don’t own computing devices.

“They’re going to benefit by more technology being available, or perhaps benefit by being in a group of four or five students where somebody brought their own device,” he says. “Perhaps that device could potentially act as the conduit out to the web at large to get information for a group. So it could benefit more than just the owner of the piece of equipment.

“I just don’t see how we can, for a whole lot longer, simply deny the presence of a device that could enhance and expand the instructional process for no real good reason, other than we’re just not sure about what would happen. And I think we owe it to ourselves to at least try it.”

Jeff Weinstock is executive editor of T.H.E. Journal.

LINKS Apple apple.com Envisioneering envisioneeringgroup.com FreeRADIUS freeradius.org Google Apps google.com/apps It’s Learning itslearning.net Moodle moodle.org

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ProductFocus The latest releases, services, and new product versions

CALYPSO SYSTEMS recently debuted its WCMRF voice-amplification system, the newest version of its sound-field reinforcement technology for K-12 classrooms. The system seamlessly integrates with other audio sources in the classroom, including features such as automatic volume lowering for teacher commentary during videos, and the ability to switch between multimedia sources with the touch of a button. The package includes a teacher microphone, a base station, a classroom amplifier, two ceiling speakers, and all necessary cables and mounts. In addition, the system includes a 20-band digital equalizer with five adjustable bands for customized sound quality in a variety of environments. Price: $999 per unit; K-12 pricing available. calypsosystems.com.

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS presents

THE EXAMINER CORPORATION has released Examiner Express, a turnkey, computer-managed assessment system for schools. The system combines powerful education assessment software with optical mark reader hardware in one package, allowing educators to design, grade, and analyze paper-and-pencil tests quickly and easily. Setup is simple: Just plug the reader into the USB port of a Windows PC, run the quick-install setup software, and the system is ready to use. Right away, educators can create and load answer keys in less than one minute, and scan and grade test forms as fast as 30 tests per minute. Price: $675. xmn.com.

38

| JANUARY 2010

TI-SmartView emulator software, created to enhance middle school science and math instruction. The software allows educators to project interactive representations of either the TI-30XS or TI-34 MultiView scientific calculator onto a whiteboard to help illustrate how to solve math problems. Features include multiple screen-capture abilities, a highlight function that shows which key is being pressed, a large-screen view for big classes or visually impaired students, and preloaded demos. The TI-SmartView also includes a key press history feature that projects a series of key presses, allowing students to more easily follow a lesson. Price: $87. education.ti.com.

MIMIO Ink Capture allows you to digitally capture, preserve, and share your work from any dry-erase whiteboard. The kit uses Expo dry-erase markers inserted into Mimio stylus pens that automatically record notes and drawings in color and save them in your choice of digital formats, including PDF or GIF files, and HTML pages. The ergonomically designed, battery-powered Mimio Eraser allows you to delete and edit notes at the board as you teach. The digital notes can be shared with students, parents, and colleagues by printing them, e-mailing them, or exporting them to applications or online meetings. Price: $210. mimio.com.

ERGOTRON designed its TeachWell Mobile Digital Platform to allow educators easy access to the essential tools they need to facilitate 21st century learning. The platform holds a laptop or tablet, document camera/visualizer, DVD player, and wireless extenders, all in one compact technology hub.

The TeachWell uses Ergotron’s patented Constant Force lift technology for fluid adjustment of the keyboard and display, and also features independent screen positioning and a negative-tilt keyboard for ergonomic comfort. The space-saving platform is extremely mobile; it can be easily transported between classrooms and is able to fit through small doorways and aisles. Price: $899. ergotron.com.

TURNING TECHNOLOGIES introduces the ResponseCard RF LCD, the latest version of its ResponseCard keypad. The device allows students to submit poll responses to questions delivered through any of Turning Technologies’ student response solutions. An LED indicator on the keypad acknowledges successful transmissions by flashing a green light for three seconds, and its LCD screen displays selected responses, channel setting, and battery life. Plus, the ResponseCard RF LCD’s credit-card size and durable casing allow for effortless portability. Price: $49 per unit; volume pricing available. turningtechnologies.com.

JANUARY 2010 |

39

And the 2010 Sylvia Charp

AWARD WINNER IS...

N NOMINATIO E DEADLIN

03.15.10

?

CALLING ALL TECH-SAVVY DISTRICTS!

PAST CHARP WINNERS

Nominations are now open for the 2010 Sylvia Charp Award for District Innovation in Technology.

Calcasieu Parish Public Schools (LA)

T.H.E. Journal and ISTE are seeking nominations from school districts that have implemented effective and innovative district-wide technology programs. The top program could be honored as the 2010 Sylvia Charp Award for District Innovation in Technology. The winning district will: Be honored at ISTE 2010 (formerly NECC), June 27 - 30, 2010 in Denver, CO Receive $2,000 for travel and registration expenses to attend ISTE 2010 Be recognized in T.H.E. Journal and Learning and Leading with Technology

Submission information available online:

www.THEJournal.com/charpaward

2004 Irving Independent School District (TX)

2005 Kiel Area School District (WI)

2006 Niles Township High School District (IL)

2007 2008 Greeneville City Schools (TN)

2009 Glen Cove School District (NY)

2010 Imagine Your District’s Name Here

index

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ADVERTISER/URLs

PAGE

2010 Sylvia Charp Award ................................. 40 thejournal.com/charpaward Canon U.S.A. ..................................................... 37 usa.canon.com/educationalsales CDW-G...............................................................C2 cdwg.com Dell. .................................................................... 11 dell.com/classroomtools eInstruction ....................................................... 16 einstruction.com FETC 2010 ......................................................... 12 fetc.org Future Media Concepts ................................... 35 fmctraining.com G2 Partners c/o Tequipment.........................6a-b tequipment.com Gov Connection. ...............................................C3 govconnection.com Lumens ................................................................ 5 mylumens.com Qwizdom ...........................................................C4 qwizdom.com Samsung Techwin America ............................... 9 samsungpresenterusa.com Sanyo Fisher ..................................................... 25 sanyoprojectors.com Shinano Kenshi ................................................. 13 plextalk.com Sprint ................................................................. 19 sprint.com/business SCHOOL INDEX A.B. Graham Academy (OH)............................... 21 Allegheny Intermediate Unit e-Cademy (PA) ...... 31 Cienega High School (AZ) ...................... 33, 34, 36 Cypress Fairbanks ISD (TX) ................................ 10 Empire High School (AZ) .............................. 33, 36 Escambia County Schools (FL) .......................... 34 Florence City Schools (AL) ................................... 8 Forsyth County Schools (GA) ........................17-18 Full Sail University (FL) ....................................... 10 Graham Digital Academy (OH) ......................20-21 Graham High School (OH) .............................20-21 Graham Local Schools (OH) ..........................20-21 Greenport Union Free School District (NY) ........ 27 Hampton City Schools (VA) ................................ 36 Insight Schools ..................................................... 8 Minneapolis Public Schools (MN)..................29-31 Minneapolis Public Schools Online (MN) ......29-31 Minnesota Online High School ...13, 22, 24, 26-27 PA Learners Online ............................................. 31 Pittsburgh Allerdice High School (PA) ................ 31 Raytown C-2 School District (MO) ................14-15 Round Rock Independent School District (TX) ... 18 Texas High School ................................................ 6 Vail School District (AZ) ................................ 33, 36

COMPANY INDEX Adobe ..................................................... 21, 26, 34 Amazon ..................................................24, 26-27 Apex Learning .................................................... 21 Apple .....................................15, 24, 26, 33-34, 36 Aruba Networks.............................................14-15 Aventa Learning.................................................. 21 Beyond Books .................................................... 27 Blackboard ................................................7, 30-31 Blizzard ............................................................... 10 BrainPop............................................................. 27 Calypso Systems................................................ 38 CDW-G ............................................................... 14 Center for Digital Education ................................. 7 Compass Learning ............................................. 27 Discovery Education........................................... 31 EdWeb.net ............................................................ 7 Elluminate ............................................................. 8 Envisioneering .............................................. 34, 36 e.Republic ............................................................ 7 Ergotron .............................................................. 39 Expo ................................................................... 39 Facebook.............................................................. 7 Gartner ......................................................... 24, 27 GoGrid ................................................................ 26 Google ...............................................24, 26-27, 36 Holt, Rinehart and Winston ................................ 27 Information Science Publishing ............................ 8 Jossey-Bass ....................................................... 21 Joyent ................................................................. 26 Lenovo ................................................................ 26 Lincoln Interactive .............................................. 21 LinkedIn ................................................................ 7 MCH ..................................................................... 7 MeisterLabs ........................................................ 27 Microsoft .....................................17, 26-27, 36, 38 Mimio .................................................................. 39 MMS Education .................................................... 7 Moodle ....................................................30-31, 36 MySpace .............................................................. 7 New Media Consortium...........................24, 26-27 Ning ...................................................................... 7 Palm ................................................................... 36 Panasonic ............................................................. 6 Planet Green ......................................................... 6 Quicken .............................................................. 26 Random House .................................................... 6 Renaissance Learning ........................................ 27 RightScale .......................................................... 26 Salesforce.com................................................... 24 Schneider Electric ................................................ 8 Simtone ..................................................24, 26-27 Skype ................................................................. 34 Sun Microsystems .............................................. 21 Texas Instruments .............................................. 38 The Examiner Corporation ................................. 38 Turning Technologies.......................................... 39 Twitter ................................................................. 10 Wikipedia ............................................................ 24 This index is provided as a service. The publisher assumes no liability for errors or omissions.

T.H.E Journal (ISSN 0192-592x) is published 10 times a year, monthly except for Jul and Dec by 1105 Media, Inc., 9201 Oakdale Avenue, Ste. 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311-9998. Periodicals postage paid at Chatsworth, CA 91311-9998, and at additional mailing offices. Complimentary subscriptions are sent to qualifying subscribers. Annual subscription rates for non-qualified subscribers are: U.S. $29.00, Canada $44.00 (U.S. funds); International $95.00 (U.S. funds). Subscription inquiries, back issue requests, and address changes: Mail to: T.H.E Journal, P.O. Box 2166, Skokie, IL 60076-7866, email T.H.E Journal@1105service.com or call (866) 293-3194 for U.S. & Canada; (847) 763-9560 for International, fax (847) 763-9564. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to T.H.E Journal, P.O. Box 2166, Skokie, IL 60076-7866. Canada Publications Mail Agreement No: 40612608. Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to Circulation Dept. or Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. © Copyright 2010 by 1105 Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Reproductions in whole or part prohibited except by written permission. Mail requests to “Permissions Editor,” c/o T.H.E Journal, 9201 Oakdale Ave., Ste. 101, Chatsworth, CA 91311 The information in this magazine has not undergone any formal testing by 1105 Media, Inc. and is distributed without any warranty expressed or implied. Implementation or use of any information contained herein is the reader’s sole responsibility.

While the information has been reviewed for accuracy, there is no guarantee that the same or similar results may be achieved in all environments. Technical inaccuracies may result from printing errors and/or new developments in the industry.

JANUARY 2010 |

41

drilldown

GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF VITAL INDUSTRY DATA

AS MANY SCHOOLS CONSIDER WAYS to incorporate mobile technologies into the instructional process (see “Left to Their Own Devices,” page 32), educators name what they believe the impact would be of using these tools to encourage learning. (Multiple responses were allowed.)

HIGHLIGHTS Across the board, administrators feel more positively about the use of mobile technologies for instruction than teachers do.

Two-thirds of administrators believe using mobile devices would boost student engagement.

Only 8 percent of teachers and 4 percent of administrators foresee no impact on learning.

Benefits on Instruction 46%

Increases student engagement

65% 31%

Extends learning beyond school day

46%

Personalizes instruction for students

43%

Allows students to informally review classroom material

19% 29%

Provides opportunities for informal remediation Teachers

Administrators

17% 27%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Benefits for Students 32% 46%

Develops critical-thinking and problem-solving skills

18% 31%

Develops stronger communication skills

19% 30%

17% 30%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Benefits for Teachers Improves teacher-parentstudent communications

25% 36% 19%

Improves technology skills

35% 15%

Increases productivity

23%

I don’t think these devices positively impact learning

11% 6% 8%

No significant benefit

4% 3% 2%

Other Teachers

Administrators

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

Data courtesy of Speak Up 2008. Speak Up is an annual national research project that surveys K-12 students, teachers, parents, and administrators. Speak Up is produced by Project Tomorrow (tomorrow.org), a national nonprofit organization providing leadership, research, and programming to support science, math, and technology education in America’s schools.

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| JANUARY 2010

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