How Dangerous Is the Internet for Children?

Great article from David Pogue today!

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/assessing-the-dangers-of-the-internet-for-children/

Nice to have evidence concerning what many of us have assumed all along (Internet dangers have been and continue to be over-hyped).  That being said, my other take away is that we really should continue to be having more discussions around cyber-bullying and empowering students with strategies to deal with this phenomenon.

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Educational Technology “Certifications”

It would appear to me that it is only a matter of time before my current job (Director of Technology for a public school district in Connecticut) becomes a certified position.  Not necessarily in the traditional sense of certification such as teaching and administrative certifications, but as in school districts wanting directors of technology that are certified in education and in technology.

We have been waiting for the state department of education in Connecticut to create a certified Director of Technology position/program.  My hunch is that we will continue to wait for sometime.  However, public school districts in Connecticut (and I am sure in other states as well) are not waiting.  Many of them are posting job openings that require certifications in technology and education.  Often it is not specific as to what the exact certifications must be but they must be an educational certification and a separate technology certification.

Gone are the days of a teacher with a proclivity to use technology in his/her classroom sufficient preparation to take on the growing demands and importance of educational technology leadership in a school district.  Who will guide the ship towards 21st century skills and knowledge?  We must have formal training programs (and eventually a state sponsored certification) that help produce the educational technology leaders our students need and must have to be productive citizens of a “flat” world. 

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Textbooks…throw them out (I mean recycle them)

I just finished reading an article by Alex Johnson on MSNBC.com called "A Textbook case of failure: Politically driven adoption system yields shallow, misleading materials" from May 16th, 2006. The article discusses the "scandalously bad textbooks" Americans students are using in our K12 classrooms. Some quotes from the article:

"But glaring in [NCLB's] omission from the program is any siginifcant examination of the most basic of classroom tools, the textbook."

"few if any textbooks are ever subjected ti independent field testing of whether they actually help students learn."

"As younger, inexperienced teachers are thrown into classrooms to meet new federal standards, as much as 90 percent (my emphasis added) of the burden of instruction rests on textbooks"

"AMerican textbooks are both grotesquely bloated and light as a feather intellectually, flitting briefly over too many topics without examining anf of them in detail."

Diane Ravitch – "[Textbooks] are sanitized to avoid offending anyone who might complain at textbook adoption hearings in big states"

"the politics of the boards adopting the books in Texas and California shape what is, to all intent and purposes, a defacto national curriculum"

WHAT IF: 

We got rid of all or almost all textbooks in the K12 environment and provided professional teachers with a budget to purchase materials they wanted for their curriculum and we provided time to collaborate with colleagues and access to Internet/Web resources to "roll your own"???

NOTES/TODO:

Throw out the textbooks (or even better, send them back to be purchased in the pre-owned textbook market and use the funds for…)

Have teachers develop their own materials during PD and collaboratively

Provide funds for some books (that students keep), web resources, pdf's, student personal libraries, etc

Use current textbook funds to support new materials (research how much last year, avg. 10 years???)

Work with current text book companies as they move online to personalize content

Teach teachers and administrators during college how to make their own materials

———

"School officials, however, cannot or will not devote sufficient amounts of money to copyrighted materials. Public schools were spending around $275 billion dollars total in the 1993-1994 school year, and approximately $209 billion if one excluded pupil transportation, capital outlays, debt service, and expenditures for adult education or community service. According to Market Data Retrieval of Shelton, Connecticut, a service used by textbook publishers and other K-12-related vendors, just $1.727 billion went for textbooks. Spending on other copyrighted works amounted to $3.677 billion, bringing the total to about $5.404 billion, or about 2.6 percent of the $209 billion. With a total of 43,637,734 students in public schools, the $5.404 billion would be just $124 per student in the 1993-1994 school year. Another market research service, Quality Education Data of Denver, Colorado, reported that schools were spending some $22.50 per student on educational software in 1993-1994."
http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/rothman.html#lessthanthree

Leadership is…

Tonight is my last class of a Leadership Theory course I am taking thru Sacred Heart University. The course is part of an Educational Administrator certification program (092 if you are in CT). The professor asked us to summarize for him what leadership is as defined by this course. This is my take below:

Leadership is all about relationships

Leadership is not black and white but very grey

Educational Administration is about leading and managing and balancing the two

Leadership is about walking around

Leadership is about talking to people

Leadership is about finding the facts and acting on them

Leadership is critical to school success

Leadership is getting the right people "on the bus"

Leadership is about asking the right questions

and listening to the answers

Leaders must know the rules better than anyone

Leaders must have a vision (or be actively looking to create one)

and help others create one togther

Leaders must not be afraid to act on new information and change the vision

Leaders must be constructivist because

those being led often have more information

Leaders must develop new leaders

Leadership is not easy

Leadership does not have to be hard

Leadership changes (as do all things) and leaders must change with it!