Lightning in a Bottle

Just before Christmas I finished a book study with some of my colleagues at other ESDs here in Washington state.  We read Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen, Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson.  Christensen wrote a very influential book entitled The Innovator’s Dilemma, and in it he discussed the impact of “disruptive innovations.”  These are new technologies or processes that creates changes so deep that they completely overturn existing companies and entire industries.  Examples would include the micro computer and digital photography; they completely obliterated the minicomputer and film camera businesses.

He brings this wider experience and narrows his focus to just education.  What does he see?  The emergence of a powerful disruptive innovation in increasingly sophisticated computer-based learning (both online learning and computerized instruction) programs, coupled with increasing financial pressures and the increasing desire of students, teachers, and parents to personalize education to make it more effective for the individual child.  In studying previous disruptive innovations, Christensen found that they follow a relatively predictable path of development and adoption.  Using these models, he predicts that 10% of all high school classes will be computer based (or online) by 2014, 50% by 2019, and 80% by 2024.

That seems like a pretty bold prediction, but he makes a strong case for it.  The sobering aspect of his work is that in almost every case, the existing businesses in an industry experiencing a disruptive innovation are unable to make the transition, even when an existing company invents the innovation.  The cultures of the incumbent institutions are so difficult to change that they are unable to take advantage of the new technology or process.  Rather than be fatalistic, however, Christensen spends the last three chapters on what he thinks needs to happen for the current public school system to be able to implement these innovations and reap the benefits of greater individualization and personalization of our students’ learning experience.  I find that much more motivating than being told that we’re doomed to irrelevancy!

There’s an interesting article at Wired.com today about how much reading we do in the digital age. Turns out that, contrary to what many have thought, we actually read far more words on a daily basis than we used to - almost triple the amount read in 1980.

Yes, some will argue that the quality of what they read isn’t as good and that quantity doesn’t equal quality. Still, it does underscore that reading itself is still a fundamentally critical skill - and writing as well. Written communication is still the primary means of transmitting information, even in this day of Skype, videoconferencing, and YouTube.

Engadget has a nice buyers guide for video cameras today. It’s not complete (it’s missing models from Kodak, among others, which has a microphone jack), but it does provide some good guidance for a range of models. It’s amazing how inexpensive and powerful these have become!

In the last few years, technology for memory storage has allowed for an explosion of high-capacity devices that are very small in size. From cell phones to USB drives, we can now easily carry many gigabytes of files in tiny little packages. This is definitely a good news/bad news situation, however. The good news is that you can fit all those files in a small, convenient device; the bad news is you can easily lose that small, convenient device. If you are using your device for storing any kind of information you don’t want shared all across the world (whether it’s your student’s grades or that angry letter you wrote just to get it out of your system but never plan to send), you need to consider your security options.

This is particularly true for cell phones. These devices can hold your instant messages, pictures, and email. If you use a smart phone, it likely holds access to your email, web accounts, and whatever else you have stored on it. If someone finds your lost phone, what kind of information about you will they find in it?

There’s a simple solution to this, of course, if you’re willing to use it. Virtually all cell phones and smart phones are set up so you can require a short password to operate them. Is it a hassle to use it this way? Yes, a bit. But how important is it to you to keep your records private?

Think about this when you dispose of your cell phone, too. Unless you do a full erase of the contents of the phone, it is often possible to recover many files from the phone later – even if you’ve removed the SIM card. (New Scientist had a great article about this issue.)

As for USB drives, that’s another issue entirely. If you’re like me, you probably use them primarily for moving files from one computer to another or taking to presentations. I’m not terribly worried about the privacy of most of those files. (If the files are important to you, though, keep at least one file on the drive with your contact info, so if someone finds it they can actually return it to you!) But sometimes you do need to put private files on one of these drives. How do you keep them protected?

If the files you’re trying to protect are Microsoft Office files, you can protect them with a password. In Office 2003, when you choose Save As, in the upper right corner of the save window will be a button labeled Tools. Click that button and scroll down to Security Options. The top option of the dialog window that opens will give you a place to enter a password for allowing access to the document. Put in the password you want and click OK, and then complete the saving process. In Office 2007, the Tools button is in the lower left-hand corner of the Save window, and you’ll need to select General Options to enter your desired password.

Now every time the document is opened, it will require entering the password. You need to write down this password – you cannot recover it if you forget it! (I speak from personal experience on this.)

If you plan ahead, you can purchase USB drives that have password security built in (or even fingerpint scanners!). If you search online vendors with the term “secure usb drive,” you will find quite a few options that cost only a few dollars more than a standard drive. (Most seem to be for Windows only, so this may not be a solution for Mac users.) For regular drives, you can download software that will encrypt the entire contents of the drive. I’ve used TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org) because it’s free and cross-platform. It’s a little complicated to figure out the first time you use it, but it’s pretty easy after that. Again, though, don’t forget the password you set, because if you forget it, you can’t retrieve your data.

It’s certainly not my point to scare anyone about using these small devices, because they’re incredibly handy. Just be aware of what you’re carrying around in your pocket or bag, and what will happen if (or when) you lose it!

I just have to get this out of my system.  I know being a techie is actually really fun (the joy of nerdness is a little-known secret), but if we want other people to take our work seriously, we have to stop being so darn cute with how we name things.

Example number one is Moodle. Here is a great, powerful learning management system that is free and offers incredible opportunities for educators, but every time I introduce it the first part of the conversation always revolves around the name.There are the obligatory jokes about noodles, of course, and then the need to explain that it’s an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment before finally getting into why it’s important and how it can be used. Unfortunately, I always end up feeling that the silly first impression sticks, and it undermines the credibility of the whole endeavor.

This is just one example, of course. There’s Drupal for content management, and the programs Yugma and Dim Dim for webconferencing, just to name a few. Ning. Twitter. Is it any wonder that non-techies think we’re just a bit weird? (Ok, so we are, but why make it so darned obvious?)

I’m not saying we need to become the modern equivalent of the 1960s stereotypical white-shirted computer operators. After all, if technology stops being fun, I’ll lose interest myself, and I love an inside joke just as much as the next nerd. But the next time we create something that’s supposed to reach out to the non-techies, let’s try to give it a name that has a touch more gravitas. Or at least something that doesn’t sound like a cartoon noise.

My big Christmas gift this year was getting to go out and purchase myself a flat-panel television.  I was able to get a pretty good deal in the post-holiday, depressed-economy sale, and by getting a last-year model to boot.  (I may be a techie and love gadgets, but I’m also pretty cheap when it comes to buying doodads.)  I chose a 42-inch model, and paid about what I was considering for a 37-inch model a few months ago. I am ridiculously pleased with it.

Last night we had planned on going out to the movies, but yet another round of snow hit us and we had to stay home.  Not a problem, my daughter says - she’d purchased WALL-E from the iTunes store, and had a new cable for her iPhone to hook it to the TV.  In two minutes’ time, she has her iPhone hooked into the TV, and we’re watching the opening credits to the movie in full-screen resolution.  It wasn’t HD sharp, but it was DVD quality, and very, very good.  From her iPhone!

This is not intended to be an advertisement for Apple products.  You can also access films from other online vendors, and there are other devices that can be hooked to your television.  But it’s just another illustration of the shift of media away from any sort of traditional storage or viewing.  There were no tapes or discs involved in watching the film; if I’d had the right device hooked up to the television, there wouldn’t even have been a cable involved - it could have been wireless.

We’re so close to being there in schools.  We need to get there as quickly as possible, because the rich visual media available now can be such a powerful aid to student learning, particularly for our visually-attuned students.  Many classrooms have the projectors now, which is a huge leap forward.   Some schools actually have the full setup for digital video completely in place, but many more are missing just one or two elements, such as good sound system, sufficient network capacity or access to a streaming video service.  But even when a classroom has the entire setup,  there’s still the need for time to preview media, figure out how to integrate it into instruction, and a place in the daily schedule to actually show it.  Back in the dark ages when I was in school, there were very few choices of 16 mm films that my teachers had to ponder (Hemo the Magnificent for human biology and The Restless Sea for oceanography seemed to be the ONLY choices in those content areas, based on how many times I saw them). Now teachers are faced with thousands of options, all correlated to state standards in one way or another.

Somebody told me recently that making changes is often just substituting a new set of problems for an old one.  I suppose having an embarrassment of  media riches is a good problem to have, but it wouldn’t even be a problem if we didn’t have the underlying problem of teachers simply not having enough time to plan and learn.  I think many of our issues of technology integration and improving instruction would largely vanish if we simply provided enough time for teachers to continuously develop their skills.  When people such as me can’t keep up with the change, and I work with technology full time, is it any wonder that our teachers struggle to be able to take full advantage of it.

OSPI has recently finished developing our new Washington state Educational Technology Standards, completing great year-long effort by their staff.  (Congratulations, Georgia!)  They now bookend the Tiers of Technology for providing guidance to districts and schools as they plan for and implement educational technology.

I know from my work with technology leaders from around our region that the Tiers have had an impact in at least some of our districts, and that the standards are being greeted with great interest.  However, in a roundtable discussion earlier this month, one person said pretty plainly that he didn’t forsee any significant impact in his district.  Why?  There aren’t any high-stakes accountability tests attached to them.  He didn’t advocate that there should be; he was simply stating what seemed to be obvious - that his board, superintendent, and principals were spending their energies on subjects that have high-profile measures, such as reading, math, and soon science.  Ed tech standards were all well and good, but wayyyy down the priority list.

It’s kind of pessimistic view, but I’m not sure it’s that far off right now.  Our schools are struggling to meet their accountability demands, and in an era of limited financial resources are going to focus ever more tightly on those goals.  In the absence of a clear bright line tying technology use to improved student achievement in basic content areas, support for integrating additional standards is probably going to be pretty thin.  The developers at OSPI have tried to address this in the state standards by developing an extensive set of examples of how technology can be integrated into content GLEs.  It’s really great work, but it still requires that decision makers actually care if technology is integrated.

I know from our time working with districts that technology has become a hugely important part of every school.  However, where it’s important is what’s telling - in administration, data collecting and processing, communication, grading, teacher presentations and testing.  Student use of computers in their own learning is often one of the lowest priorities in the system.  Tech standards are a very useful tool in building awareness of where we want things to be, but in the current environment there tends to be a line between should do and have to, and often only the have to things get done (and not even all of them).  Is it possible for us to somehow move ed tech over that line?

We’ve been really clobbered with snow the last week, and our offices have either been closed or run late several days.  However, two meetings that were scheduled during this period went on as usual, despite the fact that the attendees couldn’t make it.  We were using GotoMeeting, an online meeting and screen-sharing system from Citrix. (This is definitely a good news/bad news thing - after all, a snow day used to mean you didn’t have to work!)  I’ve used GotoMeeting for three years, primarily for broadcasting a shared screen in parallel to a video conference to get around the poor resolution of sharing a computer display via video conference technology.

The big change in the product is that earlier this year they added voice.  Before you needed to use a phone conference, Skype, or some other way to get audio to the participants.  Now it’s part of the product, and it’s a real game-changer.  What I particularly like is the very simple, direct interface - it’s very intuitive and does a really good job of staying out of your way and just letting you concentrate on your meeting or presentation.

There are other options out there.  Elluminate is a more full-featured product for distance learning (and for Washington state public and private schools has special pricing through the Washington Learning Source.)  Yugma has free and paid versions, as does Dimdim.  Comotiv is a related product focused on creating online collaboration.  Adobe has Acrobat Connect and the grandaddy of them all is WebEx.  Some of these products have videoconferencing, some let you send out files to the other participants, some have shared whiteboards, and all let you record a meeting for future playback.

While tools like this have been around for awhile, the big change in the last couple of years has been a huge drop in cost.  You can now access these online collaboration tools for 10% or less than what the same capabilities would have cost three years ago.  All you need is a good microphone, headphones (to prevent echoing), and a quick download to give it a try.  Oh, yeah, and someone to try it with!

The website Engadget had an interesting observation last week - nine of the top ten best-selling laptops on Amazon.com are ultra-mobile PCs.  (This is true as of 9:12 a.m. on September 30, 2008.  Who knows what this link will show in the future?)  As a matter of fact, at the time of this posting, most of the top 25 computers are UMPCs of one form or another.

This further underscores why technology planning and the standards that grow out of them have to remain flexible.  This market niche didn’t exist twelve months ago, and even when the initial devices came to market and sold well, many technology observers openly derided them as under-powered and over-priced.   And yet, here we are eleven months after the Asus EEEPC came to market, and that brand has six of the top twelve best-selling laptops at Amazon.

Standards are important to making things work smoothly, but the concept of standards assumes a level of stability and predictablility.  That works for awhile in technology, but eventually there is a disruption and your standards need to be reconsidered.  I think the rise of the UMPCs is going to be one of those disruptions.

We had a small crisis on our hands one evening at our digital photography camp this summer. Two individuals both had their camera storage cards wiped out, with a significant number of unsaved images on each card.  (Strangely enough, they were sitting next to each other, even though the two events were completely unrelated - different cameras, different computers, different kinds of cards, different causes.)  When it became clear how completely gone the images were, I told the two I would spend some time researching the process of recovering files from cards during our dinner break, but not to get too hopeful.  The two participants were stoic and brave, but you could tell they were pretty upset about the loss of so many pictures they had taken on our trip to Mt. Rainier earlier that day.

In searching online, I pretty quickly came across several references to a Windows program called PC Inspector, which not only had good reviews but had the added benefit of being free.  It can recover some damaged files, but it’s main focus is files that were accidentally deleted.  As long as you haven’t taken a lot of new pictures with the card, they can be recovered.  (It will work for other forms of storage, too, such as hard drives and USB memory sticks.)

I downloaded it, fired it up and tried to access the missing files on one of the cards.  After what seemed like forever, a file appeared in the recovery window.  A few moments later, a second one.  It wasn’t fast, but over the course of a few hours it recovered all of the images on both of the cards - and there were hundreds.   The participants were thrilled, and I have a great new tool in my box o’ solutions.  It’s always fun to be able to fix someone’s disaster!