Karen-Cator

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What’s Worth Investing In? How to Decide What Technology You Need

October 11, 2012 | 11:19 AM | By

Lenny Gonzalez

The promise of technology in the pursuit of learning is vast — and so are the profits. The SIIA valued the ed-tech market at $7.5 billion. With daily launches of new products promising to solve all manner of problems — from managing classrooms to engaging bored students with interactive content to capturing and organizing data, to serving as a one-stop-shop for every necessary service, choosing from the dizzying number of products on the market can be confusing.

But when it comes to the  specific task of helping students, what’s the best app in education? “A web browser,” said Chris Lehmann, Principal of Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, a school that’s embraced technology for years. “Or a Google Doc, or anything that gives you the ability to make a film, or to research, to create, to connect or collaborate,” he said.

“If all we’re doing is valuing test scores, then we’re just using technology to deliver the same traditional curriculum.”

Lehmann is famous in progressive education circles for his quote: “Technology must be like oxygen: ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.” His point: The best technology allows students to explore and create “artifacts of their own learning.”

“The question is, how will technology allow students and teachers to network their learning, to collaborate with each other, to extend the reach of what kids can learn beyond the walls of the Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, Chris Lehmann, Department of Education, Karen-Cator, Technology in Schools

What To Do If Your School Bans Useful Websites

October 3, 2012 | 6:00 AM | By

Today is Banned Website Awareness Day, and all across the country, educators are doing their part to raise awareness of how overly restrictive blocking of educational websites affects student learning.

The dialogue around filtering must also include bring-your-own-device policies, appropriate use of social media in schools, and overall responsible use of technology in school. Each of these issues plays an important part in the equation that influences school policy around filtering websites. For example, do students and teachers use social media sites like Edmodo or even Facebook for class purposes? Are educational videos on YouTube part of teachers’ curriculum? In large school districts, does it make sense to have individual school policies? Are students allowed to use their cell phones?

Part of the investigation into what filtering policies to put in place revolves around understanding current rules and regulations — and that’s the problem, according to Michelle Luhtala, a librarian at New Cannan High School and one of the primary organizers of Banned Websites Awareness Day.

“People believe the rules are far more restrictive than they really are.”

“People believe the rules are far more restrictive than they really are,” she said. “Most people are working off of policies that predate 2003, and so much has happened since then, and continues to happen.”

In a recent survey of nearly 700 teachers, principals, and school librarians, conducted by MMS Education and co-sponsored by edWeb.net and MCH Strategic Data, 55% of respondents said they had somewhat restrictive policies of access to Web 2.0 tools (social media sites) for teachers, and 23% said they had very restrictive policies. And when it came to students, 44% said they had somewhat restrictive policies of access, and 47% said they had very restrictive policies.

Most of the blocked sites are either social media sites, or have some element of public sharing of information, and that’s where school administrators need to be more flexible, Luhtala said. “Administration more than teachers need to open their minds to the value and potential of social networking for Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Research, Teaching With Tech, banned website awareness week, BYOD, cipa, Department of Education, Internet filtering, Karen-Cator

Three Goals to Spark Innovation and Collaboration

November 9, 2011 | 10:46 AM | By

Flickr: Spacepleb

It’s been roughly two months since the launch of the Department of Education’s Digital Promise, and though it’s still very early in the process, a few pointed goals are emerging.

The main premise behind Digital Promise is to serve as a national center for research to spur innovation that will improve learning through technology, said Karen Cator, Department of Education’s Director of Technology.

At this point, the center has three goals:

1.  To bring smart ideas based on sound research to those who can bring it to life. More specifically giving entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators who create new learning products a central place to access the vast amount of research that’s already been conducted about how we learn and ways to improve learning.

2.   To offer challenges and prizes as an incentive to those who can find ways to vastly improve opportunities to learn.

3.   To create an organization where schools and leaders can work together on problems with using technology to improve learning. This group is called the League of Innovative Schools, and at this very early stage, it’s a loosely knit collaboration of people who’ve expressed interest in becoming involved.

Within this group, there are three specific goals.

  • Making sure that schools and districts are informed and supportive of innovation when investing in new technologies — it’s what Cator refers to as “smart demand.”
  • Gathering evidence and learning more about what’s already happening in schools and districts with respect to using technology. Harvard professor and Macarthur Fellow Roland Continue reading →
FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Research, Teaching With Tech, Department of Education, Digital Promise, Karen-Cator, League of Innovative Schools, Microsoft

School Will Change, With or Without Following Rules

September 21, 2011 | 2:07 PM | By

Flickr:CrunchyFootsteps

Public education is, by its very nature, tangled with policy, dependent on rules and regulations set by federal, state, and district mandates. What most students do in school at any given moment has been prescribed by legislation passed years before they — or their parents — entered kindergarten.

But things are changing — and quickly. With access to the Internet and learning devices in the hands of kids and teachers, and with technology ever-evolving and becoming ever more affordable and ubiquitous, the school experience will have to change.

“We can create much more dynamic results that will change with time if we’re flexible than if we take the top-down approach from the smartest people in the world.”

This was the big message echoed yesterday by folks like the Department of Education’s Director of Technology Karen Cator, Innosight Institute’s Michael Horn, former Governor Bob Wise who’s now president of the Alliance of Excellent Education, and former Governor Jeb Bush, of the Foundation for Excellent Education. They were gathered to talk to journalists from around the country about how and where these changes are happening.

What’s unusual about this moment in time is the collision between a number of forces at work: a strong-voiced, growing grassroots movement of teachers who object to having their hands tied by Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Bob Wise, Department of Education, Innosight, Jeb Bush, Karen-Cator, Michael Horn

Dispelling Myths About Blocked Websites in Schools

September 20, 2011 | 1:29 PM | By

Larry Gonzalez

I’m at a small gathering of education journalists, policymakers and school leaders today, and in attendance is the Department of Education’s Director of Education Technology, Karen Cator.

Cator told me that teachers continue to thank her for outlining these important clarifications about schools blocking access to Web sites. For those who haven’t seen the original article, which followed an article about surprising blocked Web sites, here it is again.

Cator parsed the rules of the Childrens Internet Protection Act, and provided guidance for teachers on how to proceed when it comes to interpreting the rules. To that end, here are six surprising rules that educators, administrators, parents and students might not know about website filtering in schools.

  1. Accessing YouTube is not violating CIPA rules. “Absolutely it’s not circumventing the rules,” Cator says. “The rule is to block inappropriate sites. All sorts of YouTube videos are helpful in explaining complex concepts or telling a story, or for hearing an expert or an authentic voice — they present learning opportunities that are really helpful.”
  2. Websites don’t have to be blocked for teachers. “Some of the comments I saw online had to do with teachers wondering why they can’t access these sites,” she says. “They absolutely can. There’s nothing that says that sites have to be blocked for Continue reading →
FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, Internet filtering, Internet safety, Karen-Cator, Policy

Four New Initiatives from the Department of Education

June 28, 2011 | 2:48 PM | By

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 Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, CoSN, Department of Education, ISTE, ISTE11, Karen-Cator