It is closed proprietary system with limitations that are meant to drive hardware sales and move the publishing industry into a rental model that insures that even in the worst budgetary times (such as the funding cliff we educators are still facing) districts will have to spend money.

How is it cheaper for anybody?

The average textbook is used for 3-5 years. So lets use 3 years (since that is about how long an iPad will be useful).

Textbook $100 x 4 Textbooks a year x 3 years = $1200 for 1st year but can be used for 2 additional years.

(iPad $500 + (eTextbook $15 x 4 per year x 3 years) = $680 but since each year an iPad and eTextbooks will need to be purchased $680 x 3 = $2040

$2040 – $1200 = $840 more for iPad and eTextbooks over 3 years.

(Edit)
An even more fair and accurate accounting for costs:

With a difference of $660 over 3 years.

Just doesn’t add up…
 

As pointed out in this great blog post by Adam Richardson, you need to make sure that your metrics and rewards actually contributing to the desired behavioral change.

I think it is also important to reflect on Albert Einstein’s genius:

“Not everything that counts can be measured. Not everything that can be measured counts.”

To often we pat ourselves on the back because we measure something and the number we get back is what we are looking for, but do we always spend enough time thinking about what we measure in the first place?

Looking at plans to create a national digital library:

With the Internet and e-readers, the question might arise “Why do we even need a digital public library?” David Rothman, founder of TeleRead and long-time proponent of such a project, makes the case ably in a November essay in The Atlantic.

“Knowledge is the common property of mankind.” Thomas Jefferson
“(T)here is one thing I currently cannot do with my Kindle despite all the sizzle in the commercials–read public library books. Local libraries do not use the Kindle format for their electronic collections, relying instead on rival standards used by Sony Readers and certain other devices.”

Love the ending quote. As an educator I can relate, but I think about teachers. To many believe information is expertise, and knowledge is wisdom.

A professor of mine once complained about his latest crop of students. “There has never been a generation more capable of finding data nor less capable of understanding it.” Whether that’s true or not this is: Books provide the context for making sense of data. A digital public library would extend the reading of books to most people in all places in the U.S

Why are public schools in the U.S.–especially in Texas, where we are facing $18-$20 billion dollar deficit with at least 10% cuts to education funding–persisting in buying expensive licensing for tools like MS Office when OpenOffice, Googleapps for Education are available at no recurring license fee or initial entry point? The support costs (e.g. training) are less expensive over the long-haul than the old tools.

The reason is simply that our comfort level as educators, as technology support is for the old, expensive tools that give us the illusion of “the best.” It’s time we re-defined what we consider the best tools for education and learn the tools that are most available to our students.

I totally agree with the second paragraph. There is such an odd imbalance to most districts IT. Some how we’ve got to bring the focus back to what we are doing with the tool, not that we have the coolest fanciest tool.

I think the tools are something that is easy to achieve, you just need money. An institution that is actually creating critically thinking and collaborating students is a rarity.

Sort of lame list….I think mine is better.

I think the biggest item missing from this list is open-source, open-source, and open-source. With raging budget deficits across the country educational institutions across the K-20 spectrum are going to be looking hard at open/free alternatives in their upcoming technology adoptions.

I also think that the recession is a nature time for us turn away from capacity building to spending some time developing efficiencies with the technologies we have. I look at the technologies that are available to most educators and would be willing to bet they only tap 25-35% of the capacity of a given device/service/application. You could make huge gains by increasing that efficiency to 45-55% for less than building more capacity.

And even though it develops capacity, I see virtualization really taking off! Their will be growing needs for technology but no money to purchase new hardware. Using VM, institutions will be able to create capacity by tapping unused potential in existing hardware infrastructure.

Again, economic troubles will bring Google Apps up as a viable option.

Educational content providers will figure out a way to provide a more iTunes like way of distributing digital content. This also has the potential to bring down the costs of distribution of instructional materials.

The first is, “What Lawsuits?” Can anybody actually find a lawsuit related to blogging or the use of wikis? I couldn’t upon a 5 minute Google search. All I could find is a student suing their old principal for discipline related to cyberbullying on Facebook. It seems like every reference to a pending lawsuit had to do with social networking…interesting.

It would seem to me that the bigger problem is two-fold. First, in most cases schools have a ineffective or outdated policies for dealing with students/staff use of the web. Second, there is a major generational gap between how adults and teens/kids view the use of the Internet and what constitutes public.

Now is the time that school districts should update their AUP policies. Most important is that these policies are updated with a group of students, teachers, parents, and administrators. Each group looks at Web 2.0 applications through a different lens and it is a chance to set expectations for their use by all interested parties. Having a defined set of policies related to these technologies makes it much easier to handle the occasional problem that may come up from their use.

Now is also time to do some work to bridge the generational gap. It is important that educators using these tools understand how they are preceived by youth. Of course this is a two way street and using these tools is also a great time for educators to share important information about why privacy is important, the permanacy of the web, and the web is not as anonymous as you may think.

Finally, I think that teachers, administrators, and school IT departments need to look at the “free” Web 2.0 applications and decide why do we actually want this tool? What is the pedagogy driving instruction with these tools?

Part two of this issue is whether or not you need to use public Web 2.0 apps at all. There are some many incredibly easy to setup and use open source Web apps out there today. Any IT director worth a dime can have these systems up and running in no time. Most importantly these tools can almost always be tied to a directory server which makes user management a snap.

Using these tools a district can host it’s own social networking (Elgg or Buddypress), wikis (Deki Wiki), and blogs (WordPress or Moveable Type). Educators get the advantage of these powerful tools, while administrators and IT directors get to have the control they need. Give you students some training wheels before they set off on the information superhighway.

Basically, it comes down to the basic issue of control and accountability. In a K-12 school environment you have to have both and the only way to do this is keep you Web 2.0 services in house.

I cannot shake the suspicion K-12 educators, parents, and legislatures are blind to the fact that information is accessible and cheap to anybody with an Internet connection. It seems to me that many educational leaders and politicians still operate under the assumption that they are the solitary, or at least only worthy, conduit for academic learning. The problem with this assumption is that students today have access to fact checking sources outside the public schools. In fact, because of the Internet, students may actually be more informed than the instructor. This is making schools and teachers more irrelevant to students.

Of course, there are certain basics that need to learned by all students, but learning the basics shouldn’t be the goal of public education. Instead, it should be the first step. As educators we need to change ourselves from brokers of information to conveyors of knowledge. Now, we’ve heard this all before and for the most part this post is just a bit of ranting but I think there are a couple of key ideas that all educators should try to introduce into their classroom.

Here’s my top 3 ideas for developing knowledge, instead of regurgitating facts:

1. Student Portfolios:

The idea of a student portfolio has been around for a very long time. However, with advances in web technologies it is easier than ever for students to have a structured and/or unstructured portfolio that goes along with other forms of assessment. In particular, blogs seem like a natural fit for student eportfolios. Portfolios expect that students will reflect upon their learning and demonstrates changes in a student over time.

2. Project-Based Learning:

With the succession of standards based learning, we have moved to far from building knowledge from actual experiences. Doing project-based learning activities expose students to authentic tasks which require the practical use of information. This is the very essence of gaining knowledge.

3. Extended Learning Platforms:

Students operate in a 24/7 world. The classroom needs to be available in the same way. This can be achieved by providing a place that can be accessed anytime/anywhere. In particular, this is a great use for a Moodle Course, course blog, or course wiki. For those of you who are really brave, a school sponsored chat server would also be great! Extended learning platforms allow students to collaborate and contribute in ways that a teacher may not have thought of during their lesson planning.

Again, this is mostly rant but it is my first step forward in identifying how we can start changing the way we do business in education.

I’m finding myself rolling my eyes each time I hear about another cool gadget or gizmo that makes things easier to do. Put best by Gary Stager when discussing a recently unveiled digital video product:

“Animoto is undoubtedly a cool piece of programming, but my head will explode if someone tells me that it has educational value…”

Call me old fashion, but I like figuring out how to do hard things. Figuring out how to do hard things teaches you a lot of things. It demands that you focus your attention. Maybe it is just the way I’m programmed, but if something is to easy there is no reward. I feel that as we strip away the need for expert knowledge, we are left with a system devoid of accomplishment.

Ultimately, I think kids are missing out on the discovery of how “cool” things are actually created. Instead they drop a few pics they stole from Google images or Flickr into a template and call it good. Students miss out on critical production ideas such as layering, cueing, masking, and sound-tracking. Without all of the prior knowledge how can students hope to be able to create anything original?

An even bigger concern is that these programs change the way we think. Just look at effect of PowerPoint on instruction. In many cases, content has been reduced to a series of 3-5 factoids per slide. We change our instruction to fit the program, instead of changing the program to fit good instructional practices.

I think I’ll try to focus more on developing applications guided by theory, instead of instruction guided by application.

As a culture, Web 2.0:

• is thrives on user created content
• holds freedom/democratization of information in high regard
• is inherently anti-authoritarian
• gives equal voice to anybody with a computer
• holds social networks in  high regard

As technology, Web 2.0:

• allows your Internet browser to become a collaborative tool
• permits the sharing of nearly all types of digital media
• allows for the Internet to become nearly any computer application you can think of

Most educators I have talked with see the inherit value of Web 2.0 technologies, but they do not see the value of Web 2.0 culture. This is interesting to consider. Can you have Web 2.0 technology without having also embracing Web 2.0 culture?

I’m not sure what I think yet.

In many instances, educational IT managers have come from the business world. Business is about efficiency and keeping technology focused on making profits. Education is a messy affair and our product is students with the ability to think (or at least it should be). Business IT is about the box and educational IT is about the learning. Basically, educational IT and business IT do not share the same mindset.

Of course, this idea is not new. I think I first saw something along these lines at an Apple training workshop. The idea was along the lines that business and educational IT share the need for scalability, security, and reliability, but educational IT needs flexibility unheard of in the business world. It needs to be able to take risks.

I think that teachers need to be given the training and education to manage more IT. We need folks that are out on the fringe and in the trenches helping make the IT decisions. A centralized person or department, depending on the size of the school district, should be developing capacity, security, and reliability. However, there should be people at every site who can manage and adjust to meet teacher needs.