DIT Bits

And so the long-awaited Apple tablet is here. I’m not sure any device could have lived up to the mania leading up to the launch. Reactions were all over the place from deep disappointment to incandescent elation. I’ve complained to Apple for years that they needed to build a tablet computer; I’ve seen them put to great use in schools and the interactivity they offer (along with One Note, a program Microsoft actually got right) can’t be replicated any other way.

Me, I’ve been doing this long enough that I don’t get all dewy about new stuff any more. Stuff is stuff. Some stuff is really remarkable, some is mediocre, some is really awful (remember Zip drives?). And eventually, it all breaks. It only all matters if you are actually going to use it. So…would I use an iPad?

You bet. I really do think it is more than an expanded iPod touch. Running iPhone apps in a larger format makes them so much more useful, and support for Pages meets a lot of word processing needs. There is also the very real possibility that as textbook publishers and other print media content providers sign on, the iPad will lead the way in doing to the publishing industry what the iPod did to the music industry. Some of the drawbacks others have mentioned — not running a version of OS X, no USB, no Flash support– are not big issues for me (Flash is too big, bloated, and crash-y and HTML 5 is waiting in the wings).

The only real concerns I have so far are its durability and its scalability for the enterprise. We buy a lot of devices, and when you do that, you have to have tools available to manage them efficiently. And anything that thin with a glass face on it makes me afraid…I see a lot of much more robust devices take a beating here, so I’m not just imagining that. It’s too early yet to say how large numbers of these devices might be managed and supported, or how well positioned Apple is to support these at the enterprise level, but it’s not too early to see some remarkable possibilities for education.

For a first version of a new kind of device, I think it’s a heck of a start. What do you think?

Posted on February 2nd, 2010 by Curt Lieneck
Filed under: General Interest, Uncategorized | No Comments »

In recent months, I’ve become much more vocal in calling for more urgency in making a thoughtful school response to technology’s reshaping of kids’ lives and the way they learn. IT leaders in any school encounter substantial indifference to technology and have to compete with other institutional priorities for people’s time and attention; that’s just a part of the job. But as we get closer to making firm decisions in our planning for the largest building project in the Schools’ history, indifference is simply not an option. Choices must be made, and they must be made soon. Things either will or will not happen, and there must be a good reason for doing one thing and not doing another. We cannot opt out of making choices in this venture.

Two items crossed my desk yesterday that should help convey a sense of urgency to any educator.

The first is a new study of media in the lives of 8-18 year olds released by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The key findings are truly worth a read, because the numbers are staggering. Here are a few highlights:

“Over the past five years, young people have increased the amount of time they spend consuming media by an hour and seventeen minutes daily, from 6:21 to 7:38…” (p.1)

“Today, 20% of all media consumption (2:07) occurs on mobile devices…” (p.3)

“Over the past five years, the proportion of 8-18 year olds who own their own cell phone has grown from about four in ten (39%) to about two-thirds (66%). The proportion with iPods or other MP3 players increased even more dramatically, jumping from 18% to 76% among all 8-18 year olds.” (p. 3)

And surprisingly, and reassuringly, while overall time spent reading print media dropped slightly, “time spent reading books actually increased slightly over the past ten years, from 21 to 25 minutes a day.” (p. 2)

These numbers get even more stratospheric when they include text messaging, which, along with talking on a cell phone, was not considered “media use” for the study’s purposes. It’s reported that 7th-12th graders spend an hour and a half a day (italics mine) text messaging. Yikes.

The second item was a blog post from noted edublogger Will Richardson, who cites Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s observation that that this is the first generation of kids in our schools that do not have a choice about technology. As Will says:

“Most of us grew up in a time when technology was an add on, and for many of us, we still see it as a choice, especially in education. (Just the other day I was at a meeting of about 25 school leaders and teachers to discuss how social learning tools can be infused into an inquiry based curriculum and only one person was using technology to take notes…me.) I look at my own kids and I know that technology will be a huge part of their learning lives because a) they want it to be and b) they’ll be expected to be savvy users of the devices of their day to communicate, create and collaborate (among other things.) They’re not going to be able to “opt out.” “

If we are truly the student-centered school we believe we are, the immersion documented in the Kaiser Family Foundation study has to have an impact on what we do in our classrooms. Taking no action, just as with the building going up, is not an option. There should no longer be any doubt in anyone’s mind that children’s lives are different in ways they did not necessarily choose. As Will eloquently concludes,

“We may not feel comfortable in a world filled with technology. We may not like the way it’s changing things and, even more, how fast it’s changing things. We may not like the way it pushes against much of what we’ve been doing in schools for eons. But our kids don’t have a choice. And if we’re  going to fulfill our roles as teachers in our kids lives, neither do we.”

Posted on January 22nd, 2010 by Curt Lieneck
Filed under: General Interest, Uncategorized | No Comments »

I ran across this fascinating job posting yesterday. For those who are still looking for them, and even for those who are not,  it’s another sign that profound changes are sweeping the landscape of K-12 education.

Other jobs that didn’t ever exist before are popping up all over the place. I find Duke University’s  Director of Digital Information Strategy especially intriguing.

Who’s got some other examples to share of ed tech jobs that didn’t exist until, ummm, NOW?

Posted on December 22nd, 2009 by Curt Lieneck
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Whew. What a quarter. I can’t say I am sorry to see it go. I feel like I do at the end of a century ride on a hot summer day.

My work group and I launched a web portal solution, including full intranet capability, a new content management system, and a whole web site redesign after working with the portal vendor and most school offices for nearly a year and a half.

We also experienced prolonged trouble with the mail server. The vendor eventually threw their most elite troubleshooters at it, but even they took a few weeks to pin the problems down and resolve them. We lost many hours of staff time and lots of users’ good will in the process.

Support staff also worked hard to begin taking advantage of Casper, the enterprise level suite of IT management tools for the Mac. Its rich, powerful feature set will soon begin to return value on the significant investment of time and dollars we’ve put into it.

With the convergence of print and copy services, it also made sense to re-envision our document management strategies and eliminate the now-obsolete distinction between printing and photocopying. Working with the business office and a prominent document management vendor, we helped negotiate a managed print services contract for the next couple of years that will fundamentally reshape how printing and copying is supported here. Learning to speak a whole new tech dialect (like every kind of technology, document management has its own) and navigating the  intricate workings of a global document management corporation has been a bit like picking your way through a Class V rock garden on a fast moving river with nowhere to eddy out.

Thankfully, our two new IS employees were effective from day one and did not need a lot of hand holding while getting up to speed on their duties.

Sitting on top of everything else we had going on was the Lab + project, the largest proposed renovation and expansion project in the Schools’ history. Trying to envision how technology should fit with a brand new buildings for N-2 and Fine Arts/performance spaces was challenging enough, but 300,000 square feet of additional renovations is also part of the project. The real work on the IT side of all this is just beginning, but I have been fortunate that my superiors have made sure I’m included in important conversations during the planning phases.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, I saw my son off for his first tour of duty in Iraq. He is well and getting used to Army life in a war zone, but it is still odd to think he is halfway across the world with a weapon at his side. It’s not like we didn’t know this was coming, but the reality of it is something else again. Many thanks for the prayers and support sent his way and mine.

What a quarter.

Looking forward to jeans, sweatshirt and sneakers at work next week. Lots of writing to do…IT service catalog, revised library tech position description, quarterly activity report, calendar for recurring summer tasks–but I also get to spend some Title II money.

Best wishes for a safe, joyful, and restorative holiday season!

Posted on December 18th, 2009 by Curt Lieneck
Filed under: General Interest | No Comments »

EtherPad is a slick, easy to use tool for web-based group writing in real time…really one of the coolest and easiest web tools out there (the time slider for seeing the evolution of a document was extra cool). Lab had talked with the developers last year about hosting an instance of this remarkable tool but could not reach a viable price. The service will go away at the end of March 2010 following Google’s purchase of AppJet, the company who developed EtherPad. I’ll look forward to seeing how Google incorporates it into their service package.

Posted on December 5th, 2009 by Curt Lieneck
Filed under: Online Resources | No Comments »