Left Lane Ends

I made a quick trip to the Academy of Irving ISD this morning to drop off some software and stepped into one of their freshmen orientation classes while I was there. For these wide-eyed (and pretty quiet!) students, this was their first piece of the Academy’s laptop training program (you can find out more about the concept of this one of four of our 1:1 high school campuses on their website).

Any 1:1 implementation has a myriad of layered components that make it successful (or not) and I thought it would be appropriate to highlight this particular aspect of how the Academy of IISD goes about introducing their freshmen to using a laptop.

Today being the first time that the teachers are seeing the new crew of freshmen, the topics are very foundational and not limited to laptop/technology use. One piece that I love is a flash movie created by Darren Wilson that reviews the IISD Acceptable Use Policy in student language.

After covering the general “don’t do this” pieces, the self paced presentation address the question of what CAN you do with the laptop. I love the language that is used in this piece, language that is supported by administrators on that particular campus:

Learn something new.
Make something new.
SHARE what you know.
EXPAND what you know.
Communicate.
Create.
Publish.
Network.
Talk.
Understand.
Remix.
Rethink.
Reconsider. 
Investigate.
Question.
Research.
Learn.

With the added (and cited!) background music, I actually found myself voluntarily watching anything related to AUP for the first time… The Academy knows that they have to communicate with students in a way that connects with them (I hesitate to say ‘at their level’). Additionally, students will see videos of laptops being abused, Academy teachers involved in some fun clips and more. There is no drab, droning voice dictating what is printed on the screen…

 Other pieces of the Academy’s ‘New Student Laptop Training’ are as follows (and pieces that I see being important to making it successful as well as have an impact):

• The first three days of World Geography class are dedicated toward laptop training (all freshmen are covered across the different sections this way). Multiple topics are planned out and covered these three days from foundational skills to more complex computer use. The simple fact that this campus is willing to dedicate the first three periods of a class means that they are serious in giving these students a good introduction to the laptops they will be using. This is NOT a cursary, get-r-done and move on type of approach.
• Students have their hands on the laptops throughout. All of the content is structured in our district’s Blackboard Content System so that students can get the materials that they need for any activity at a central location. The learning is interactive and fairly self-paced to give them an idea as to what they will be confronted with in some of the classrooms at the Academy.
• All students must take AND pass a test on Blackboard before being handed a laptop to take home. Granted, we’re not talking about rocket science here (we’re talking about basic, foundational knowledge), but this communicates a strong message of accountability and willingness to follow-up on the part of the Academy’s administration.

Congrats to Darren and Angela (Instructional Technology Specialists at the Academy) as well as the administration for developing a program that gives freshmen a strong footing into the world of 1:1 teaching and learning.

Don’t you think we have ENOUGH problems in education as it is? Our textbook companies don’t, and I doubt they care. This isn’t news to me - I’ve never had a positive view on these political and financial powerhouses. BUT. I’m reviewing different options tonight for our upcoming Math adoption and just had to share my experiences. I’ll share it in three stories:

Story number one (1):

I started my merri-go-round sampling with a presentation by McDougal Littell. This was what you might consider a standard sales pitch, one that wasn’t super flashy but was fairly well put together. The pace of the presentation didn’t make we dizzy and I had time to reflect on what the company was offering. As the session progressed (I walked in a little late), my eyes began to open. I began realizing that textbook companies have started to ‘get it’. They are now at a point where they ‘get’ what technology can do for them! (beware - the next sentence is long and meant to be said in one breath) It can SELL more books and grab a little bit more out of that state pot of money that is just sitting there waiting for the next sucker of a district to sign the papers which allow the big corporations (that have very little real interest in the state of our education system!!!!!!) to snatch a little more money because they convinced a teacher that THEY, lowly little teacher that they may be, will get a PEN DRIVE if they vote for this adoption. And not ONLY do they get a pen drive, but EVERY campus will receive software that will PRINT A TEST ON PAPER and a scanner that will scan those paper tests and GRADE THEM FOR THE TEACHERS! THIS, my friends, is the point where I began biting a hole in my right cheek, and not just one of those little nibble, nibble holes… a FULL OUT hole in my right cheek! While I understand that this might be really beneficial to some districts out there, I truly believe that benefiting education is not the purpose of putting these gimmicks into the textbook packages. The content is the same ‘ole stuff - except it now has TAKS questions on each page so that we can further bore our students even faster than we do now.

Story number two (2):

I swear, if I had any used cars to sell or needed a salesman for my crappy used car lot down the street - I would have IMMEDIATELY hired this guy to do the job. I popped into a packed room of math teachers who were anxiously waiting for the next words to come out of this Prentice Hall’s presenters mouth. In fact, I didn’t really know if I was in a Prentice Hall presentation as I saw eInstruction clickers distributed around the room. I seriously thought I stepped into a third party sales pitch on using these units in a math classroom. No worries, though, folks - it was definitely full out Prentice Hall. Keeping in mind that I had already had my eyes opened to the fact that these companies are simply using technology to sell their product, I thought I was ready for mentally handling the next presentation without delving down into my inner sanctum of sarcasm. Then my shoulders slumped and my face shrunk into a dis-connected, furrowed brow mask. You see, not only was this presenter pushing the gimmicks, but his ENTIRE presentation was about the gimmicks! He didn’t delve into the textbook (aside from the quick excerpts flashed across the screen) and said NOTHING (I think I broke a few keys typing that word) about the actual content of the material. WHAT?!?! Teachers that I KNOW do not use technology on anywhere CLOSE to a regular basis were CHEERING for the clickers that did the assessments for them! We have MORE THAN ONE SYSTEM IN OUR DISTRICT THAT AUTOMATICALLY GRADES ASSESSMENTS (have had for more than 5 years now) AND THESE PEOPLE WERE CHEERING! Oh, and it was all aligned to TAKS … how on earth could I leave that part out? I couldn’t resist jotting down a quote: ‘You don’t ever have to worry about going a day without the students practicing for TAKS.’ Oh thank the supreme diety for THAT one. It was in this session that I realized the next point I would learn tonight: We’re in trouble. We’re in trouble because the textbook companies are demonstrating to the political powers in Austin that they are using technology to do worksheets and TAKS practice on line - and Austin WILL fall for it. We are further in trouble because our teachers will adopt this company’s book (I can almost guarantee it… I’ll post when they do) and think that this kind of gimmick technology integration is the end-all/be-all. Ouch. I may just go grab one of those crappy used cars off my lot down the street and drive it off a cliff - that is if Mr. Prentice Hall hasn’t sold it first.

Story number three (3): 

By this time I’m beat down. I have a hole bitten in both my right and left cheeks, have pondered driving a car off of a cliff and look … well, just plain haggard. Surely, this last publisher will have SOMEthing reasonable to offer - right? The last spin on my merri-go-round adventure is with Thomson Learning. I should probably preface this by saying how much I do NOT like sales people. Too often, they do not know their product, are boring to listen to, don’t even have a product worth listening to, aren’t engaging and care only about the sale. Unfortunately, this guy did NOT know his product, was boring as heck to listen to (READ THE DANG SLIDE SHOW!), couldn’t show that his product was worthy, had a non-engaging PowerPoint with mainly a white background and a bunch of black text in Arial font, and … well, I didn’t stick around long enough to hear if he only cared about the sale. My job, as I am in Instructional Technology, was to find out the positives and negatives about the technology offered components from each company. You know, does the company offer an electronic copy of their book? Nope. Ok then, I’ll check THAT off my list. Does the company offer an assessment bank? Well, I can print Word .doc’s with Thompson to hand out to my kids. Yeah, right. Check. Does the company offer engaging content? Their included PowerPoint’s used a standard Microsoft Template. *sigh*. And, check. The third lesson of the night? Once you get your questions answered, don’t give your time to someone who isn’t on a path to help kids in your district learn in a more effective and engaging way. I was really a bit baffled - how does this big company not ‘get it’ (you know, get the fact that technology gimmicks can sell their product)?? Thompson may not have turned me off in the same way that the other two did, but they came nowhere close to impressing me with what they offered.

So, my venting comes to a close. To recap, I learned three very important things tonight:

1. Big textbook companies are finally ‘getting it’ in regards to technology. They ‘get’ gimmicky technology add-ons will woo teachers and sell more of their product
2. Big textbook companies are fooling the political powers that they are leading the path in technology integration … with gimmicky technology add-ons.
3. The ones that don’t ‘get it’ yet are nowhere close to where we need them to be and will sooner or later get on board with the rest of the technology gimmick train.

I’ve never seen a textbook presentation that focused solely around the technology components that it offered and not around the content of the book. These companies have too much control in the content that our kids are fed to be scamming teachers into thinking they are doing the right thing with technology integration into their classrooms.

And folks, that gimmicky integration ain’t nowhere close to where the Left Lane Ends.