Welcome to the blog- I wanted to make sure I got the first impressions of what happened this week down before they slipped away from my swiss cheese brain.
The single biggest takeaway from the two days is that this portion of the Students Come First legislation has the potential to be the biggest game changer in Idaho's education system. More than the other two bills, the use of technology and online education has the potential to bring about a transformational change, not just an incremental shift. It is clear from the response to the SCF legislation that not everyone in the state thinks the reform package is a good idea. I think it depends on your world view to some degree- if the world you see ahead for our students looks like the one we have now than the education they are getting is probably OK. If the world you see ahead looks considerably different than maybe we should be looking at more radical changes to the way we deliver education.
I find myself in the latter camp and I want to add that while a lot of folks have attributed political motivations and other hidden agendas to Students Come First, my impression from this session is that this is a genuine attempt at educational reform from the SDE staffers down to content delivery in the classroom. One example I will use the talk that we had from Governors Bush and Wise from the Alliance for Excellent Education.
A prominent Democrat and Republican coming together to talk about needed educational reform in the USA- not something you hear about on the front pages.
Some specifics from the meeting:
School Net- thanks to a late breaking grant from Albertson, it appears that the state will invest in a Learning Management System. This school net system sits on top of the data from ISEE and looks to be able to provide content, formative and summative assessments for teachers and data on thier students. If it works it will be really cool- cool enough that I am going to try and get in on the pilot program. The portal that they showed us seemed to answer a lot of needs as well as the basic record keeping functions of schoolmaster.
Meta Game technology as learning architecture for digital learners- another cool idea from Boise State and Chris Haskell.
Our subcommittee meeting was on Classroom Technology Integration- thankfully I am not the board chair. We quickly moved into some big ideas, talking about what are the obstacles to reform and how do we work around them. Some committee members have been part of previous efforts to reform education in Idaho and they wanted to make sure that this effort is different and more successful. We had a great dialogue around whether the way we fund education in our state gets in the way of providing digital learning. If students learn at their own pace and time, how does that transfer to ADA and the amount of hours that the state will fund for staff development? How do we sell teachers on using technology unless we create time and space in the funding formula for it to make their lives easier rather than harder? How do we build a system that provides incentives for change? How do we value teachers more with this reform we are trying to do, rather than having them just feel like this is yet another change that they can ignore and keep doing what they have been doing?
I have more questions than answers. I am looking forward to studying up and coming up with some ideas before the next session in July. Feel free to ask me questions or add comments.
For my fellow committee members- here is a video from our school that demonstrates one way to use 1-1 technology in a high school.
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