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Technology Success Story

We are so proud!

Jonas Salk High-Tech Academy in the San Juan School District (Sacramento, California) is featured in the Sacramento Bee as a technology success story. Jonas Salk is a double-duty Generation YES school, using both the GenYES and TechYES programs. We’ve watched the amazing work their GenYES students have been doing to support teacher use of technology and how their TechYES students have stepped up to mentoring their peers in tech literacy to receive TechYES certifications.

The story, Technology reboots student interest: Test scores show a 33-point jump for Jonas Salk chronicles the turnaround of Jonas Salk from a campus struggling with high teacher turnover and low student achievement, to one where both students and teachers are eager to show up every day. For them, technology was the key. And guess what, test scores improved as a result.

She doesn’t read aloud in class, and she doesn’t read at home. Yet here she sits, working through her lines in a newscast at Jonas Salk High-Tech Academy.

Replaying footage of the March installment of “JSTV” — once broadcast to 600 students — is bittersweet for technology teacher Jamal Hicks. It’s painful for an educator to watch the girl, in seventh grade then, fumble her way through the cue cards, knowing that her reading ability was somewhere around the third-grade level.

But she has returned to his media class for another year. Something about the camera makes her want to read. No matter how hard it might be.

“It is empowering,” Hicks says of the technology being used in his classroom. “I look at this (newscast), and I tell her, ‘You’re my hero.’ “

But it’s not just about technology. A big part of the philosophy in the renewal of Jonas Salk was to trust students and give them responsibility for their own learning and the improvement of education for all. Incorporating GenYES into that vision means that Salk GenYES students are responsible for working with teachers so that technology benefits every classroom, regardless of the teacher’s level of comfort with technology. Trusting students to solve authentic problems and participate in the learning community means that teachers have more help to integrate technology in meaningful ways, and in turn, all students are empowered and engaged in learning.

“We believed in (the students), and they started to believe in themselves,” says Principal Jamey Schrey.

Jamal Hicks is the TechYES and GenYES coordinator at Jonas Salk. The No Child Left Behind Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) grant funded the GenYES program for Salk. By using GenYES, a structured model of student support for teachers using technology, Salk can report solid data back to the state to show success.

Jamal says, “GenYES has been vital to the success at Jonas Salk. Empowering the students through technology has really worked by giving the students an important reason to learn technology and to stick with it. Many of them are used to avoiding work when they find it difficult. But because they are responsible for teaching teachers about technology, they don’t want to give up. It instills high expectations and gives them satisfaction when they finish. This carries into their approach to other classes and their schoolwork.”

Congratulations to Jamal, the students and staff at Jonas Salk for all your hard work getting some well-deserved attention and respect!

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Nonconformist students – allies in educational technology use

Yesterday I posted about the new NSBA report on teen and tween use of online networks for talking about education and creating content. Today, I’d like to review a really interesting part of the report that has gotten less attention – nonconformist students and their use of technology.

Nonconformists — students who step outside of online safety and behavior rules — are on the cutting edge of social networking, with online behaviors and skills that indicate leadership among their peers. About one in five (22 percent) of all students surveyed, and about one in three teens (31 percent), are nonconformists, students who report breaking one or more online safety or behavior rules, such as using inappropriate language, posting inappropriate pictures, sharing personal information with strangers or pretending to be someone they are not.

No surprise here, it’s probably the non-conformist teachers who are also the heaviest users of technology too!

Nonconformists are significantly heavier users of social networking sites than other students, participating in every single type of social networking activity surveyed (28 in all) significantly more frequently than other students both at home and at school — which likely means that they break school rules to do so. For example, 50 percent of non conformists are producers and 38 percent are editors of online content, compared to just 21 percent and 16 percent, respectively, of other students.

These students are more in touch with other people in every way except in person –their own classmates, other friends, teachers, and even their own parents.

These students seem to have an extraordinary set of traditional and 21st century skills, including communication, creativity, collaboration and leadership skills and technology proficiency. Yet they are significantly more likely than other students to have lower grades, which they report as “a mix of Bs and Cs,”or lower, than other students. However, previous research with both parents and children has shown that enhanced Internet access is associated with improvements in grades and school attitudes, including a 2003 survey by Grunwald Associates LLC.

These findings suggest that schools need to find ways to engage nonconformists in more creative activities for academic learning. These students talents are being ignored, when in fact they are:

  • Traditional influentials (students who recommend products frequently and keep up with the latest brands)
  • Networkers (students with unusually large networks of online friends)
  • Organizers (students who organize a lot of group events using their handhelds)
  • Recruiters (students who get a disproportionately large number of other students to visit their favorite sites)
  • Promoters (students who tell their peers about new sites and features online)

So, are these kids your allies or enemies?
These students could be the key to successful school-wide use of technology, providing both expertise and the networking ability to create wider acceptance among their peers. By providing them with a role, graduated responsibility, and an understanding of what the goals are for educational technology, they could be a primary asset, an advance team, and a force for change.

Download the NSBA report – Creating & Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social and Educational Networking (PDF)

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Teens talking about education online

A new study released by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) exploring the online behaviors of U.S. teens and ‘tweens shows that 96 percent of students with online access use social networking technologies.

You can download the 9 page PDF Creating & Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social and Educational Networking from the NSBA website. If you are engaged in any kind of evangelism for online student activities, this report is a goldmine of data. You might be surprised to find out that many schools ARE working towards figuring out policies and practices that work. It’s not so lonely out on the “bleeding edge” of technology knowing that lots of others are out there too.

Students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education. Nearly 60 percent of online students report discussing education-related topics such as college or college planning, learning outside of school, and careers. And 50 percent of online students say they talk specifically about schoolwork.

While most schools have rules against social networking activities, almost 70 percent of districts report having student Web site programs, and nearly half report their schools participate in online collaborative projects with other schools and in online pen pal or other international programs. Further, more than a third say their schools and/or students have blogs, either officially or in the context of instruction.

It’s not just all talk
Students report they are engaging in highly creative activities on social networking internet sites including writing, art, and contributing to collaborative online projects whether or not these activities are related to schoolwork. Almost half of students (49 percent) say that they have uploaded pictures they have made or photos they have taken, and more than one in five students (22 percent) report that they have uploaded video they have created.

Students are using technology outside of school to make school relevant to their lives – can we find ways to make sure that technology use inside of school is at least as relevant?

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More Virtual News from Google (and others)

Two more developments in the virtual world since the announcement of Metaplace last week (here’s my take on the education potential).

  • Google seems to be testing a virtual world engine at Arizona State University.
  • Scenecaster is promoting itself as a way to “mainstream” virtual worlds, much like YouTube did to video

There is a nice write up of these two developments in Virtual World News.

Really, the hype around these worlds and engines has nothing to do with use, and especially not educational use. The hype is to create “buzz” for these companies that creates value by generating attention. Someone is going to “win” the attention war and make a bunch of money. The more hype and publicity a company generates, the more attention it can get from venture capitalists or bigger companies hoping to score a competitive advantage by buying a hot technology. Part of the reason that all these annoucements are coming now is that there are a couple of big conferences devoted to promoting new companies going on this month.

Of course, what does this mean to educators – today!

Today, the choices for educators exploring virtual worlds mean that you have to commit to one of number of proprietary worlds with some pretty serious limitations, some technical, some social. Second Life has certainly gotten a lot of publicity, but it’s not the only game in town. As with many Web 2.0 tools (and really, any technology) it’s going to shake out and leave a lot of companies on the sidelines. It’s not a question of if, but when. Educators using any tool should seriously think about what would happen if the company shut its doors suddenly, or if something much better comes along. That way, the lessons learned can be transferred to the next tool, technology, or platform.

It seems to me that anyone exploring the use of any technology tool with students should always be thinking about the “big picture” — what does this mean for students, how does this enhance learning, and what the lessons learned are for the future. Getting married to any technology tool doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the best choice for your class, but keeping the big picture in mind means that your time invested will always pay off.

Sylvia

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K12 Online Conference – Challenging Assumptions about Technology Professional Development

Participate in the free K12 Online ConferenceWow, the start of school always seems to accelerate everything. I haven’t even had a chance to mention that I’m going to do two sessions and a panel at the second annual K12 Online Conference. I heard great things about it last year, and decided to submit a few things. And then Kevin Jarret, my Second Life buddy, said, hey, lets do a panel on Second Life, and I wrote up the description for that too. So all three got accepted! One of those woo-hoo/uh-oh moments.

After seeing some of the cool presentations at the Office 2.0 conference, and seeing Kevin Jarrett dazzle with an Animoto video for the Second Life panel, I decided to upgrade from the usual slideshow. K12 Online asks you to prepare teasers for your session, so this was great way to try out some modern multimedia skills on something short.

Here’s my session teaser – it’s on YouTube, so hopefully it’s not getting blocked. Here’s a link to it on TeacherTube as well. (For some reason, the TeacherTube video is fuzzier, even though it was a higher resolution export. Mysteries of life…)

The session will be challenging assumptions about technology professional development. The track for this session is “Obstacles to Opportunities.” I think an obstacle can be widely held assumptions that cause us to wear blinders about innovative solutions. We hear a lot of “conventional wisdom” about how limited classroom technology use is caused by either lack of, or poor professional development. I’ve got some interesting data on that from several sources that refutes this.

The second half of this session looks at the concept of “community of practice” and how teachers’ learning about technology takes place within a community. For most teachers, the primary place they do their work (their practice) is the classroom. Many professional development courses recognize the power of learning withing a community, and seek to create a secondary community of practice with the teachers taking the course. However, very few professional development experiences happen in the teacher’s primary community of practice. Therefore, by exploring this untapped area, we may find hidden opportunities to support learning for the teacher in their primary community of practice.

By looking to the students as participants in that teacher’s primary community of practice, and treating them as co-learners, you can situate the teacher’s learning about technology back into the classroom. These opportunities can be just-in-time, support a model of the teacher as a life-long learner, far less expensive than in-class coaching, and promote students into a role of full participants in the effort to improve learning for themselves, their peers, and teachers.

Essentially, this session is about pushing against the boundaries of what we call community of practice in technology professional development, and seeing what opportunities occur to us. Looking past assumptions and “that’s how we’ve always done it” is the way to turn obstacles into opportunities.

Looking forward to seeing you online at the K12 Online Conference in October.

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Ladder of Youth Participation

A great follow-up to our recently published white paper, Sharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences (More about this resource | Download PDF) is the Ladder of Youth Participation by Roger Hart.

This is nicely described on the Freechild.org website, as a representation of the levels of youth participation in community development activities. In the diagram, the bottom three rungs represent non-participation, while the rest represent increasing levels of participation. This is an important point when planning youth participation in adult events. The hope is that students are not there as mere tokens, but that they are there to give voice to the results of their authentic participation in a real activity, or, to actually participate in an activity with the chance of long-term results.

In the white paper, I describe how how conference participation can be part of the continuous process in which youth action becomes youth voice. It can be a way to climb that ladder. Here’s a sample:

Enabling student voice is more than simply listening to students. While it is tempting to think that the act of students speaking at a conference enables student voice, it is dependent on the students having something authentic to share with the audience. It might be more effective to think of conference presentations as “sharing” student voice, rather than enabling it. (from Sharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences PDF)

Resources like the Ladder of Youth Participation are tools that can help adults who facilitate student activities think through the choices and practices that they are faced with every day.

Sylvia

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A 3D Favorite – Free! Bryce 5.5

Bryce sampleIf you go back a few years (hey, let’s not say how many), you’ll remember one of the best tools for 3D illustration on the Mac was Bryce. You could create amazingly realistic 3D landscapes and animations with a simple drag and drop interface. You could plop in trees, adjust the sun angle, and do all sorts of cool things. Reflections and textures that PhotoShop still can’t do were easy in Bryce. Time passed and the software changed publisher hands a few times and now belongs to Daz Productions, which specializes in 3D modeling software.

Good news – they have made Bryce version 5.5 for Mac OSX completely free to download. Given that many students want to produce art and animation like they see in their favorite games and movies, this could be something that would spark interest in many students. The program comes with a huge library of samples and tutorials and is really perfect for a beginner with an interest in 3D.

TechRepublic has a nice pros/cons summary of the tool and download links.

The Daz Productions website also has many free samples and a community forum. I would guess that most high school students could easily use this program, as well as some motivated middle school students. (By the way, check out the site before sending students. This is not a specifically educational site, and more than a few of the 3D models are either super gun-endowed robots or super-endowed females. I didn’t see anything you wouldn’t see on prime-time TV, but fair warning.)

Sylvia

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The 2006/07 California School Technology Survey – Sources of Technology Support

TechSETS, the California state support service for educational technologists, has just released its annual survey of California School Technology. The survey has some interesting data with implications about how technology support impacts use in schools.

One of the major findings of the survey is that students are a “significant source of support” — something that I’m pretty happy to have confirmation of. Many schools in which students participate in technical support activities think that they are the only ones doing it. So instead of student support being a well-regarded part of the solution to tech support, it is viewed as a one-off patchwork solution. This survey should help to alleviate that mis-impression.

The bad news from the survey is that the numbers of students involved declined last year. It’s tough to say whether this is a single year aberration or not. Unfortunately, this survey doesn’t provide any answers to why this is so. We can only hope that it’s a blip, not a long term trend. All our trends are up, with an increasing number of schools using our Generation TECH online tools and curriculum to structure their student tech support program.

The survey information is behind the login of the TechSETS site, but Ric Barline, the author of this report, has given me permission to post some of it here.

The introduction and some of the major findings follow:

Using Data From The 2006/07 California School Technology Survey To Determine Sources of Technology Support in Schools
By Ric Barline, TechSETS Cadre Member

Introduction
The annual California School Technology Survey (CSTS) is an excellent source of data to help determine the extent to which technology is being supported in schools and what type of human resource is providing that support. This state-administered survey has been collecting data on technology capacity and usage since 2001.

TechSETS carried out an analysis of the responses to this survey in 2005, and again this year in an effort to better understand the sources of technology support in schools and, by extension, the potential audience for TechSETS services. This report describes the methodology and results of the 2007 analysis. The 2005 analysis is available from TechSETS upon request.

The major findings regarding the numbers of individuals involved in tech support are:

 

  • Schools depend heavily on site-based staff for support.
  • The district office provides a significant source of support.
  • Students provide a significant source of support.
  • Outside services and COEs [County Offices of Education] provide very little support.

 

The major findings regarding the trends over the last three years are:

 

  • The numbers of certificated and classified staff involved in providing technical support to schools has increased significantly in the 2006/2007 school year.
  • The numbers of students and others involved in providing technical support to schools have decreased in the 2006/2007 school year.

 

Numbers of individuals involved in tech support – The CSTS data were viewed longitudinally over three years to gain insight into both the current situation and trends. Figure 1 shows the estimated number of people performing technical support in schools over the last three years. These numbers are estimates that depend on assumptions made regarding the number of individuals that make up a typical full-time equivalent (FTE) in each category. 

Technical support is a vital part of  innovative technology use in schools, and knowing who is providing that service means  better understanding of the opportunities to improve in every aspect.  Thanks for sharing, Ric!

 

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Student Panels – Sharing Authentic Student Voice

What most people know about Generation YES is that it has something to do with students, technology and student voice. So we often get asked by conference organizers if we can help them find students to participate in a student panel discussion. We always try to accomodate them with teacher contact names from local Generation YES schools.

It’s good that people are trying. It’s a great reward for the students too. It’s so rare that you see students in any way, shape or form at an educational technology conference that the mere fact of them showing up seems like a statement. But student panels often turn out to be less satisfying than planned. The mere act of speaking is not student voice, and just listening is not enabling student voice.

Yesterday I posted about our latest white paper, Sharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences. In that paper, one section relates to student panels which I’d like to share here. It’s written for anyone thinking of taking their students to an education related conference. I hope that it can help make student panels more relevant for both the students and the audiences involved.

A Special Note About Student Panels
Student panels are often arranged by conferences to show that they are listening to students and supporting student voice. Since your students are likely to be well-known as articulate students who are making a difference, you may get an invitation to bring students to participate in a student panel discussion.

These student panels can be nice rewards for students, but they do not promote student voice by themselves. Unfortunately, these panels often take place in a vacuum. Students are rarely present at meetings or working group sessions where real decisions are made. Too often the panelists are asked abstract questions that are well beyond the student’s capability or experience.

If you can participate in planning the student panel, ask if the students can participate in the full day’s events, by working on plans or proposals alongside adults. You may want to suggest that the students are not asked questions about things that they have little control over, such as national policy or how they could use technology to improve “education” as an abstract idea. Since student voice is always grounded in action, questions that focus on eliciting student perceptions about their actual work will be more powerful and more meaningful for both the audience and the students.

You can prepare your students ahead of time by helping them understand that their experiences, such as by teaching teachers how to use technology as a GenYES student, are valid answers. They do not have to invent futuristic solutions or make up grand plans. What they have already done is worth talking about and is the true expression of student voice. Be clear with them about whether they will have a chance to participate in any decision-making activities beyond a panel appearance.

Student trust is a hard-won gift, and over-promising that a student panel is a chance for them to have a real voice in creating change might backfire. It’s not hard for students to realize that in reality there is no mechanism for any long-term participation on their part.

Finally, consider bringing some non-traditional students to the student panel. Students who are not your academic superstars and don’t speak in 5 paragraph essays often speak the truth with greater ease than students who are more conventional. Be sure to make it safe for them to say the unexpected or unconventional, within the boundaries of appropriate behavior. Your guidance will allow students to move past what they know adults expect of them and share their authentic voice.

You can download the whole white paper here in PDF form.

Sylvia