Audrey Watters

Another ISTE attendee.

The International Society for Technology in Education held its annual conference and exhibition this week in Philadelphia. While the official headcount has yet to be released, early estimates pegged the number of attendees at over 20,000.

In lieu of our typical weekly review of ed-tech news, we’ve opted to focus instead on some of the announcements that came out of ISTE 2011.

• Educational animation site BrainPOP launched GameUp, a free resource that integrates educational games into the BrainPOP platform. The game titles include “Battleship Numberline” and “Microbes” and come from organizations like iCivics, Filament Games, and Nobelprize.org. The games focus on topics like science, math, and social studies, and like the rest of the BrainPOP materials include supplemental information for teachers such as how to use the game in a lesson, which curriculum standards the game is aligned to, as well as a link to one related BrainPOP topic.
• PBS launched PBS Learning Media, an online resource with over 14,000 pieces of digital content, including video, audio, photos, and more. The content comes from various local public broadcasting stations, as well as other public agencies, such as the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and NASA. The site is available to teachers and parents, and the material is all tagged and searchable, so that information can be found by content type, age type or topic. See our full story here.
• ISTE itself released a white paper this week that offers a first look at ISTE’s new standards for technology coaching. The proposed NETS*C won’t be finalized until this fall, but the white paper discusses ISTE’s latest set of standards and the organization’s recommendations for helping integrate technology more fully into professional development.
• Project Tomorrow and Blackboard released a new report examining the rapid acceleration in online learning at the middle and high school level in the U.S. The survey found that the number of high school students who have been involved with online learning has tripled and the number of middle school students who’ve done so has doubled over the last three years. Furthermore, 36% of classroom teachers say that they too have taken some sort of online class. More than 40% of the students surveyed said they see online classes as an essential part of their learning experience, and more parents and administrators are starting to agree. The demand for online learning opportunities is growing, with a third of 3rd through 5th graders saying they’d like to have the opportunity.
• StudySync announced that it was expanding its supplemental curriculum from the high school to the middle school level. The company provides a library of more than 300 videos that help teach literature and writing. The video lessons serve to help students learn how to analyze and appreciate literature, and the StudySync system also includes peer-to-peer interaction, so that students learn to engage in written discussions around literature. In expanding to the middle school level, StudySync has added new level-appropriate titles, including Alice in Wonderland and Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl.
• Sokikom announced the launch of what it’s calling the first massively multiplayer online math game. Geared to students grades 1 through 6, Sokikom’s game lets up to 30 students in a classroom play a game together. Currently Sokikom has 3 games: Frachine, which focuses on fractions, decimals and percentages; Opirate, which focuses on algebra; and Treeching, which deals with measurement, time, and money.
• McGraw-Hill introduced CINCH, an all-digital, cloud-based curriculum for K-12 math and grade 7 through 12 science. The content is available through the browser, meaning that students will be able to access it on any Internet-enabled device. CINCH includes not just digital text but also education games, an assessment component, and social networking elements (such as commenting within the curriculum). McGraw-Hill says that the content in CINCH is customizable by districts and teachers and is aligned to Common Core State Standards.
• Interactive whiteboard maker Promethean announced a partnership with the Channel One Network. Promethean Activboards will get access to the daily Channel One news, supplemented with various interactive tools.

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What’s stopping you or your peers from making a meaningful change in your teaching practice? What are the “yeah, but” arguments you hear when you propose a new idea, a way to do something differently?

Rob Mancabelli and Will Richardson, authors of Personal Learning Networks: Using the Power of Connections to Transform Education, asked a few hundred teachers to list the “yeah-buts” they hear from other teachers, administrators, and parents.

The audience attending the packed ISTE Conference yesterday had a long list of complaints and objections they’ve heard along the way.

Here are just a few:

Yeah, but:

• It’s not safe to let kids experiment on the Internet.
• We need to block and filter sites.
• It’s always been this way.
• Is it standards-based?
• We don’t have this technology in our school.
• We don’t know how to use this technology
• It’s disruptive to the classroom.
• Will it help our assessment scores?
• It’s not rigorous enough.
• We don’t have enough bandwidth or infrastructure.
• We don’t have enough money.
• There’s no room for this in our curriculum.
• Teachers can’t be trusted.
• It has a negative effect on the brain.
• Does everyone have to do it? Why isn’t something that you do, if you’re so interested.
• Students are cheating when they look stuff up.
• It’s too fun.

Richardson and Mancabelli have some advice for frustrated educators who run into the proverbial wall when they propose new ideas: appeal to the nay-sayers’ emotions, rather than their intellect.

“Often our response to a ‘yeah-but’ is one of defensiveness and this can sometimes derail the conversation,” wrote Trevor Shaw in a simultaneous chat during the session.

In addition to listing all the rational reasons why the idea might work (introducing critical thinking, introducing autonomy, showing trust, engaging thought), ask them: “What’s at the root of this for you? Why don’t you think you can’t make this change?”

Chances are you’ll hear some interesting answer, which can then be rationally addressed.

For example, if you’re proposing a new way of using cell phones in the classroom, and you hear objections about how it’ll take too much time to figure out how that might work, your rational tactic, Mancabelli says, could be:

• Explaining that investing time up front will pay dividends later. The learning curve always gets easier after the first try.
• Offering ways of reallocating time, such as using a faculty meeting or departmental meeting for professional development.
• Suggesting a couple of half days for students so that teachers can work together on professional development.
• Teaching people to use social networks so they can learn on their own time.

But that will only go so far, Mancabelli says. You have to also dig into the emotional objections. Ask them, “What’s your feeling behind it”? You might here one or more of the following:

• I’m already overwhelmed with all the work I have to do.
• If I don’t succeed at this, I’m afraid I’ll make a fool of myself in front of not just other teachers but also the students.
• It isn’t fair that I have to learn about one more thing.

Now that you’ve gotten to the bottom of the issue, you can address the emotional concerns. These are some of Mancabelli’s suggestions:

• How long do you think it’ll take to learn this? What’s an appropriate amount of time to set aside?
• Invite them into a conversation about how long this change is going to take.

• Ask them what they need to succeed.
• Tell them that there is no bar to get over.
• Give them permission to fail.
• Provide support if they run into roadblocks by reallocating funds, if you need to.

When it comes to allowing access to blocked sites at schools (read the Department of Education’s list of rational reasons, those in favor can appeal to the emotional side of the argument. Ask students to share about their online lives, and how they keep safe. Tell educators that it’s part of their job to prepare kids from pitfalls of social media sites. Ask them: “Wouldn’t you be more scared about kids accessing sites without proper training and guidance?” And of course, lead by example: share your own work online on open,collaborative sites and bring in others who do, too.

See the entire presentation here. And how appropriate: as with most everything Richardson does, it’s on a collaborative site: a Google Doc.

data.ed.gov

Interactive map on data.ed.gov

“Now is the time,” said Karen Cator, director of education technology at the Department of Education. “We’re at this incredible inflection point as we go from print to digital.”

Cator enumerated the ways in which the D.O.E. is helping to make the shift between the print and digital world at the ISTE conference yesterday.

1. TRANSPARENCY. Data.Ed.Gov is an interactive map that pintpoints which schools in the U.S. have broadband. It’s a collaboration with the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Inofrmation Administration. “If we can build those kinds of maps that we can layer on what’s happening in all these schools around country, that provides transparency and something that people can aspire to, follow,” Cator told me late last year.

2. DIGITAL LITERACY. DigitalLiteracy.gov was recently launched by a group of federal government agencies to help build computer and Internet skills, a free resource for anyone. A description from the site: “To provide librarians, teachers, workforce trainers, and others a central location to share digital literacy content and best practices. These trusted groups can, in turn, better reach out to their communities in providing them the skills today’s employers need.” Educators have their own dedicated link.

3. BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE ADVICE. For educators who want to find the best way to leverage their students’ devices, whether it’s their mobile phones or home laptops, CoSN’s newly launched Access4ed provides a host of resources about working experiments. From the site: “It will include conversations around key issues, case studies from districts addressing them, discussion of policy issues and how to address them, and opportunities to connect with education leaders in districts similar to and different from yours.”

4. CLEARING HOUSE FOR PROFESSIONAL NETWORKS. Cator described it to me this way: “If I’m a teacher, I maintain a profile, I let others into my professional learning network to see the conversations and the communities I’m a part of. I can follow fellow educators that might be involved in interesting projects and trying new projects in the classroom. So it goes beyond just following people on Twitter, but creating a profile for professional educators.” The idea of this “persistent online profile” is the premise behind  Connected Online Communities of Practice, a directory of professional teachers networks created by the D.O.E. and the American Institutes for Research. The organization aims to launch new online communities of practice, conduct design experiments, undertake case studies, and develop ideas about new designs and infrastructure. After reviewing all the nominated online professional networks, the organization’s technical working group, a who’s who of innovative education thinkers, will produce a report about best practices.

Other goals on the horizon for the D.O.E.:

• Equity of access to all Americans. If schools are able to provide access to technology, Cator said the goal is provide the same access at home, as well as teach them how to use the technology so they can “fully participate.”
• Connect basic research to the marketplace. With all the research and development that’s being done in government agencies, the goal is to connect that knowledge to those who create products.
• Connect entrepreneurs to investors. Through organizations like Startup America, a way for smart ideas to find their way to those who can bring it to life.