Replacing Printed Planers/Calendars with Google Calendars and Tasks

One of the side effects of going 1:1 in our district this coming year is that we are no longer providing our students with printed planners/calendars.  The function of that tool, however, does not need to be lost.  In fact, my opinion is that it can be easily improved by teachers maintaining course calendars and teaching the students how to effectively use Google Tasks.  The following video provides more information and a tutorial.

1:1 with Chromebooks Becomes a Reality at Leyden

In a little more than 24 hours (from the writing of this post), the next step in the digital evolution of Leyden Community High School District 212 will be achieved.  On August 14, Leyden officially becomes a 1:1 district when students report for the first day of classes... with their Google Chromebooks.  It has certainly been a long journey to get here, but that light at the end of the tunnel is now a blinding supernova.  For the past two years, we have been researching and planning for this day.  We're ready!  At least, I really think/hope we are.  Here are some of the key highlights to how we got here:

• A dedication from our Board of Education, administration, teachers, and everyone to providing our students with the tools and environment that will allow them to be creative, collaborative, better critical thinkers, improve communication, foster the 21st century fluencies, and become better digital citizens.
• Research, research, and more research!
• Committees used for planning.
• The addition of one hour to the weekly administrative council meetings to talk about going 1:1.
• Coming up with a new plan for measuring student success.
• A two year pilot program.
• Upgrading the district's wireless infrastructure and bandwidth.
• The implementation of Google Apps for Education for faculty, staff, and students.
• Deciding to move teaching and learning to the web and that the Chromebook was the right tool to accomplish this goal.
• Ongoing support from Google and the Chromebook team, which started with a site visit from a couple Googlers and a trip out to the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA.
• Adopting OpenClass as our learning management system.
• Professional development opportunities, including our 2-day digital evolution summit which offered dozens of sessions taught by leading educational technology enthusiasts from across the country.
• The hiring of two full-time instructional technology coaches.
• The creation of our Tech Support Internship (TSI) elective class.
• Publishing an informational website for parents/guardians and students.
• Hosting an internal planning website for faculty and staff.
• Working with a vendor on a solution that would allow students to access websites that do not work on the Chromebook but that would still remain behind our firewall and content filter.
• Working with a vendor on a solution that would allow faculty and staff to monitor the screens of their students and even restrict their Internet access (still a work in progress).
• Working with vendors to create and improve available Chrome web apps.
• Working with some vendors on optional third party insurance plans.
• Deciding to get our Chromebooks laser engraved and asset tagged.

It reads...
Property of Leyden High School District 212

If found or presented for sale,

please call 847-451-3017.

The ID# matches the barcoded asset tag.

• Deciding to supply the students with protective Flak Jacket cases.

• Putting together a Chromebook Procedures and Information guide.
• Ordering, receiving, and taking inventory of the devices.
• Hosting mandatory parent/guardian meetings over the summer.
• Creating "first day" videos to be shown at the beginning of every period on the first day of school.

• Creating a Chromebook Intro website that loads every time the students log onto their device.
• Deciding on which Chrome web apps and extensions to push out to every student's account (ongoing work in progress).
• Developing a web-based Chromebook checkout system.
• Handing out the Chromebooks the week before school during registration and book pick-up.

• Having a tremendously talented and dedicated technology staff.
• Having lots and lots of patience.
• Knowing that what we are doing will make a difference.

I'm sure that I've forgotten at least a few things in my list, but I think you get the idea (if you've read this far). We are very excited about the upcoming historic year!  I suppose I should probably go to bed now to rest up for all the fun.

One last note, we are planning a few days during our first semester for anyone that might like to stop by and see and learn more about what we're doing.  Let me know if you're interested.  I can be reached at bweinert@leyden212.org.

Don't Get Stuck Digging Ditches

My father repeatedly told me when I was a young boy that if I wanted to dig ditches for a living then I should dig ditches, but he didn't want me to get stuck digging ditches because I didn't have any other options.  That always seemed to make sense to me every time he said it.  Now that the tables have turned and I am a father of three wonderful kids, it is one of my hopes and dreams for them to be able to make their own choices and do the things they enjoy.  Moreover, being an educator and a district administrator, this is something I hope for all children and students.  A big factor to obtaining this goal will be their education.  So, what kind of education will they need?  In a recent lecture event delivered by Tony Wagner to the THINK Global School, he shared some of his findings related to what business leaders are looking for in employees today.  Since, as Mr. Wagner suggests, "knowledge has become a free commodity" and "now, suddenly, everyone has access to all of the information in the world at their fingertips" it only makes sense that education should be different.   Mr. Wagner's research has resulted in the development of what he calls the Seven Survival Skills for Careers, College, and Citizenship.  Those skills are the following:

1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
2. Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence
3. Agility and Adaptability
4. Initiative and Entrepreneurialism
5. Effective Oral and Written Communication
6. Accessing and Analyzing Information
7. Curiosity and Imagination

If these are the skills that employers are looking for, shouldn't it be the responsibility of educators to foster their development?  Often times I find myself getting too wrapped up in what I'm doing that I lose sight of the big picture.  I always try my best to remember to take a step back and ask the simple questions.  Why am I doing this?  What am I trying to achieve?  What really matters?  Tony Wagner's seven survival skills will certainly become answers to some of my questions and help me stay focused on that big picture.

I highly recommend all educators watch Tony Wagner's Creating Innovators lecture event to learn more about his seven survival skills and their impact on education.

Computational Thinking Resources from ISTE

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has just released some great new resources related to computational thinking (CT).  You can find the following along with other resources on their website at http://www.iste.org/learn/computational-thinking.aspx.

• CT Teacher Resources
• CT Leadership Toolkit
• CT Student

Global and Digital Citizenship

An important task I've been working on lately is the updating of our district's technology policies.  As we prepare to move to a 1:1 environment next year with every student receiving a Chromebook, there are surely a number of policies and procedures that will need to change.  During my efforts, I was re-examining a variety of the digital citizenship resources that I've been collecting and stumbled across a recent post on the Committed  Sardine blog from Andrew Churches about Global and Digital Citizenship.  I have long appreciated Andrew's "six tenets of citizenship":

1. Respect yourself
2. Protect yourself
3. Respect others
4. Protect others
5. Respect intellectual property
6. Protect intellectual property

You can read more of Andrew's work on digital citizenship on his Educational Origami wiki.  One of his latest projects is the side-by-side comparison of global and digital citizenship.  Click on the image below for the full pdf version.  Please note that this is only a draft and Andrew is seeking comments and feedback.

Our Students' Digital Footprints

As we prepare to go fully 1:1 next school year in our district, there is a lot of work to be done and logistics to hammer out.  The possibilities for change in our classrooms, our buildings, our students' homes, and our community are exciting.  While this won't happen overnight, the end results seem limitless.  One of the many things I've been thinking about is the concept of student digital footprints.  For many of our faculty and staff, myself included, we've only recently begun to leave our footprints on the World Wide Web.  Some of the items are professional while others are personal, but together they can tell a story about each of us.  Our students and our own children are growing up in a time when their entire lives may be, in one form or another, documented online.  The ramifications of this could be extremely positive for them but also potentially very negative.  The simple example of an employer "Googling" a potential new hire's name is just one of many scenarios where a digital footprint could come into play.  I'll be thinking about this topic a lot more in the upcoming semester and how it relates to what we do in education and how we do it.  If you're interested in this topic, I encourage you to watch the following TEDx talk by author Steve Johnson.  Please also consider leaving a comment with your thoughts or links to resources that I and others reading this post may benefit from.

Digital vs. Print

Are we getting close to digital content replacing print textbooks? The infographic below from Schools.com suggests that we look to be on that path.

A Day Made of Glass - Will you be ready?

Will you be ready to function in this potential future?

Great Interview With Will Richardson

I just read a great interview with Will Richardson at http://bit.ly/97IWBU. He is a former teacher, a technology enthusiast, a consultant, a respected presenter, and the author of the popular book "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms." During the interview, he provides some great perspectives and opinions on why technology skills are an essential component to our students' education and their futures. He comments on why he thinks it's important for teachers to be Googleable, what school administrators can do to help teachers, what network literacy means, why educators need to begin emphasizing the learning process over knowledge, and much more. I strongly encourage all educators to check out this interview.

Web Video Leads to Crowd-Accelerated Innovation

I came across this video from one of my favorite blogs, The Committed Sardine, and was very intrigued by the newly coined concept of crowd-accelerated innovation. Actually, the concept itself is not new, but the explosion of web video and social networking takes it onto a global stage and changes the faces in the crowd, both in number and in perspective. This becomes really powerful and fosters new crowd-accelerated innovations . I started to wonder about how we, as educators, are preparing our students for this type of world and how web video and social networking will end up changing teaching and learning. Already, YouTube has vaulted up the charts as one of the top web resources to use to search for information and social networking sites allow for the sharing of these discoveries at a fevered pitch. How will this reshape education as we know it? Are we embracing these technologies or are we not spending enough time to learn how best to integrate them and utilize the good they can do? We constantly hear about the negatives of these types of media, but looking beneath the surface, we may discover tremendous opportunities that can lead to our end goal... student learning and achievement. I will certainly continue thinking about the power of web video, crowd-accelerated innovation, and their relationship to education and would love to hear your thoughts. The original clip and other TED talks can be found here.