Local Educators Encouraged to Think Big and Embrace the Future

In a world that is being constantly changed by technology, the April 8Tech Expo, sponsored by the Lower Hudson Regional Information Center, offered some sound advice for local educators who are eager to enhance teaching and learning in their schools.

LHRIC Executive Director Dennis Lauro, center,
pictured with Dr. Pam Moran and Ira Socol. 

The annual event, which was held at the Edith Macy Conference Center in Briarcliff Manor, included an array of presentations from students and teachers in various local school districts where the latest cutting-edge technology is being used.

Ardsley, Bronxville, Croton Harmon, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, Katonah Lewisboro, Ossining, Pelham, Scarsdale and Yorktown were among the districts represented at the Expo, which attracted close to 400 people.

Several vendors also participated, including Annese, Aspire Technology Partners, Cisco, Dell, Edgenuity, Doctrina, Haiku, Imagine Learning, Pearson Education, Renaissance Learning, Tynker and more.

Creating Moonshot Thinkers

Molly Schroeder speaks at Tech Expo.

Global Digital Age Learning Specialist Molly Schroeder of the EdTechTeam suggested that students could be “moonshot thinkers” if the education environment allowed them to be more creative. That vision was part of Schroeder’s keynote presentation titled, “Falling in Love with the Future.”

During her 45-minute talk, Ms. Schroeder said it is an “epic time” for creativity in the classroom.

“There is so much potential in the students who are sitting in classrooms right now,” she said.

To participate in the kind of moonshot thinking that Ms. Schroeder espouses, she said teachers need to be risk takers, be creative, have passion for their subject, accept challenges and not be afraid to fail.

This moonshot thinking, which is a regular feature of the Google X initiative, an experimental lab that seeks to solve the world’s next big problems, is not dependent on state assessments but on teachers getting students to answer questions without using Google as an aid.

Students should be expected to figure out the answers by thinking outside of the box and to work “in beta,” explained Ms. Schroeder.

“Learning is no longer multiple choice questions,” she said. “We want students to surprise us.”

Some of the Google products that facilitate creative learning include Google Cardboard, a virtual reality platform built by Google that is increasingly being used by teachers to take students on virtual reality tours of the world’s many interesting places. Google Cardboard is primarily used with the app Google Expeditions.

Transforming Schools

Continuing on the same theme, Superintendent Pam Moran, head of Virginia’s Albemarie County Public Schools, and Ira Socol, that district’s design project manager and director of educational technology and innovation, talked about the successful implementation of contemporary technologies into their schools.

Dr. Pam Moran and Ira Socol, both from the Albemarie
County Public Schools, share the stage at Tech Expo.

Comprised of 26 schools, the district’s students come from a myriad of backgrounds, including middle-class suburbs, agricultural communities and an urban area close to the city of Charlottesville, where approximately 70 different languages are spoken.

Knowing that 65 percent of the district’s current kindergartners will end up in jobs that currently do not exist, Dr. Moran said the district’s job is to change the model of education from one that is not currently set up for kids to succeed to a hub of creativity.

Using specific students as examples, both speakers told the audience how even the most disinterested of them can find success.

The school district’s technology initiatives, which includes a network of CTE/STEM mechatronics labs, are centered around seven pathways that ensure lifelong learning for every child.

They include choice and comfort, which gives students real learning space choices; instructional tolerance, which produces active and engaged learners in a learning community; universal design for learning, which allows for differentiated learning environments; a maker-infused curriculum; project/problem, passion-based learning; interactive technologies and the appropriate connectivity to make it all happen.   

To the audience, Dr. Moran said, “Change something in your school, in your class and in your district that tomorrow represents engaged students and leveraged resources.”

“One of the things you will find that is you will have kids who are engaged and who want to come to school. That’s what we want for our kids and that’s my vision for all of you.”

TLI - Tech Expo Highlights Innovative Technology Practices

Over 350 educators from across the region turned out April 17 to attend the LHRIC’s popular Tech Expo 2015 and to learn from some of the nation’s leading experts on the growing influence of technology in the classroom and in students’ lives.

Now in its ninth year, the event continues to grow as school district representatives savor the opportunity to learn from the best, to network with their peers, to learn something from the more than 35 breakout seminars and work sessions and to meet face-to-face with some of the nation’s leading technology companies and sponsors of the daylong event.   

Dr. Tony Wagner speaks to a packed auditorium.

In his keynote presentation, Dr. Tony Wagner, expert-in-residence at Harvard University’s Innovation Lab, urged his audience in the packed auditorium to put a larger context on the work of improving test scores and Common Core requirements.

“The world no longer cares about how much you know,” he said. “It’s about what you can do with what you know and how you prepare young people for innovation.”

Understanding the role of teachers, mentors and the larger school setting in an innovation world is crucial, he noted. For his book, “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World,” Dr. Wagner interviewed groups of highly motivated twentysomethings from various schools and different backgrounds around the country in an effort to discover the skills of successful innovators and why they are important to the future.

He wanted to find out if their parental, teaching and mentoring influences were any different from other students. Many of them attend top schools like the MIT Media Lab; the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Boston; High Tech High in San Diego, a network of charter schools spanning grades K-12, the Regio Emilia network of schools abroad and others.

What was evident in many of these schools was that students were encouraged to pursue real interests versus merely achieving academically. In the younger years, parents and teachers encouraged more exploratory play, such as using fewer toys without batteries and integrating “whimsy” into every project.

“We have been talking about getting kids college-ready for years,” said Dr. Wagner to the audience, many of them superintendents from across the region. “But guess what, it’s not enough, not even by half.”

Dr. Wagner explained that many of today’s employers are seeking different criteria from their prospective employees. Fifteen percent of the new hires at Google don’t have a college degree, and the word “college” does not appear on the jobs section of its website, he added.

To better prepare students for this new landscape, Dr. Wagner suggested that schools teach the skills that matter most. “No Common Core can begin to do that,” he said. “We’ve got to be clear about the competencies that matter most, including creative thinking, collaboration, communication and creative problem-solving.”

Dr. Wagner contends, however, that no innovation can take place without a certain amount of research and development. “Does anyone have an R&D budget?” he asked. In one Westchester school district, Dr. Wagner said he is working with administrators to develop an “innovation fund,” to which teachers can apply.

The key to successful innovation is ultimately student motivation, he explained. Using Bloom’s Taxonomy as an example, Dr. Wagner suggested that schools create their own pyramid and tap into the top tiers of it, primarily those that include technology for communication, technology for collaboration and at the top, technology for creation.

Some in the audience wondered how school districts could achieve such a thing knowing the constraints and obligations many of them are under to comply with state mandates.

“You’re not going to flip this overnight,” Dr. Wagner replied. “The first challenge is to understand that the time we are spending on test prep is entirely wasted. Kids don’t remember what they don’t connect to in some way. We should reduce test prep, but I don’t think we can’t eliminate it.”

Dr. Wagner encouraged his listeners to see the film Most Likely to Succeed, which he collaborated on. The documentary is a powerful account of the current crisis in the American educational system and is currently showing in select New York movie theaters.

In response to questions from the audience that spoke to parents’ approval of a traditional education system, Dr. Wagner advised them to have conversations with their communities that can ultimately help them understand the merits of an education that is more geared toward the 21^st century workplace.

“Leaders rarely spend enough time helping communities understand why the education system should change,” he said. “You need an understanding and an urgency around change before you start to see it.”

A wide variety of breakout sessions took place throughout the day, including workshops on coding, Microsoft’s free tools for classroom use, interactive ebooks for learning, Google Apps, the Maker movement at the elementary school level, social media in education, instruction with iPads, the benefits of blended learning and more.

Additional keynote presentations included “The Power of Google Apps for Education” by Jaime Casap, senior education evangelist at Google, Inc., and “Using Social Media in Education” from Dr. Alec Couros, a professor of educational technology and media at the University of Regina, Canada.

To see photos from the event, check out the LHRIC/SWBOCES Flickr page at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/swboceslhric/sets/72157652074051896/

TLI - Tech Summit 2014 Highlights Trends in Education

An array of inspirational talks, workshops and networking opportunities provided local school district leaders and instructional technology professionals who attended the LHRIC’s Tech Summit earlier this month with much to discuss.

The annual event, which was held at the Edith Macy Conference Center in Briarcliff Manor, is designed to highlight the outstanding technology vendors who work with the RIC throughout the year as well as focusing on the various products and services that are transforming learning.

Dr. Maria Langworthy delivers the keynote presentation.

Dr. Maria Langworthy, founder and principal of Langworthy Research, kicked off the day with a keynote presentation on the emerging new trends in education that are bringing teachers and students into a partnership that fosters deep learning and leverages the digital technology tools that many schools are currently using.

Dr. Langworthy, who has co-authored a new book with Dr. Michael Fullan called, “A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning,” said young people are becoming increasingly disengaged as standardized testing and other pressures take their toll.

“Outside of the classroom there are tremendous opportunities and tools for students to use, which creates this kind of push and pull on their minds,” said Dr. Langworthy.

But purchasing more tech gadgets is not the answer to this challenge, she noted. “No device will fix the problem; something much deeper, much broader needs to happen.”

Through their research in classrooms across the globe, Doctors Langworthy and Fullan discovered that schools were lacking in certain areas, including a shortfall in adequate professional development for teachers, an insufficient teacher performance strategy and the outdated practice of layering technology on top of traditional teaching practices.  

In an effort to address such issues, Dr. Langworthy said the research team decided to “go beyond the numbers and dig down to see what was happening.” Their efforts were focused on what new pedagogies look like in practice and how a system of deep learning could be implemented in a school system-wide.

“We saw many examples all over the world of how this concept was starting to explode,” Dr. Langworthy noted. One example was an entrepreneurial project that involved a group of middle school students in Michigan. The initiative, explained Dr. Langworthy, not only taught them about fundraising for a good cause but how to develop a sustainable relationship with groups on the other side of the world.

Dr. Langworthy suggested that to create that type of learning in schools, students must have mastery in a topic as well as the ability to handle projects on their own with little guidance from teachers. 

“It really boils down to a somewhat different model of leadership,” she added, with principals and others willing to learn alongside students and teachers and to share a common vision with other members of the school community.

“Our argument, and lots of research supports this, is that technology won’t solve the problems we see in schools today,” stressed Dr. Langworthy. “But what we have found is that when pedagogy shifts, there is a transformation in student engagement.”

The day’s other keynote presentations included “Creating Your Google Apps Classroom” and “Moving Forward in the Face of Change,” both from Catlin Tucker, a Google certified teacher and English Language Arts instructor based in California.

For over an hour, Ms. Tucker described the tools she uses in her classroom, including Google Plus communities, Google Hangouts, Google’s Blogger, Google Maps, Google Docs, Google Search, Google Drive and much more.  

Paige Johnson, an education strategist at Intel, led the day’s other spotlight presentation. In “Leading Edge: Key Traits of Ed-Tech Visionaries,” she talked about the leadership qualities that are needed to successfully provide students with a 21^st century education.

A number of breakout sessions were also held throughout the day on a variety of topics, including data analytics solutions for schools, installing the proper surveillance systems, evaluating technology use and success with the software program Clarity, as well as information on the Smart Schools Bond Act and more.

Vendors who participated in the Tech Summit included A+ Technology & Security, Achieve3000, Aerohive Networks, Annese, Aruba Networks, Atlantic, Castle Learning Online, CDWG, Centris Group, Custom Computer Specialists, Inc., Day Automation, Dell, Edgenuity, Forecast5 Analytics, HP, K12alerts, Infinite Campus, Pearson Education, Renaissance Learning, Stratagem Security, Sungard, TTM (Think Through Math) and Vandis.

TLI - Tech Forum 2014 Recognizes Changing Digital Landscape

A day full of workshops, industry spotlights and breakout sessions provided the region’s technology leaders, including several from the LHRIC, with much to think about Oct. 24 during the annual Tech Forum convention.

Eric Sheninger delivers keynote speech at Tech Forum 2014

It was Eric Sheninger’s keynote presentation “Digital Leadership: Changing Paradigms for Changing Times” that set the tone for the day.

The former award-winning principal of New Milford High School in New Jersey is now a senior fellow and thought leader on digital leadership with the International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE) and Scholastic Achievement Partners (SAP).

While he served as principal, Sheninger said he didn’t embrace the kind of leadership traits he now espouses. Spending countless hours eliminating electronic devices from children was just part of his job.

“I was the one who made sure the environment was sterilized,” he recalled. “I blocked and banned everything, maintaining the status quo. Essentially, I was in control.”

But all of that changed when Sheninger realized the merits of integrating digital tools as a way to engage learners.

Despite the lack of funds and the building’s aging infrastructure, Sheninger said the high school achieved “impressive results” within five years of embracing the new, more modern channels of communication. It helped engage families, inspire staff growth and bring new relevance to the classroom for both teachers and students, he explained.

“We got rid of all the excuses and focused on the solutions,” he said. “We made a conscious effort to create a school that worked well for kids.”

Sheninger, the author of “Digital Leadership: Changing Paradigms for Changing Times,” said his staff was able to empower students, engage them in productive dialogue and guide them as they conducted research on their own devices, part of the school’s BYOT initiative.

Sheninger said he did not “preach Common Core” to his staff, but instead focused on a particular skill set that would set his students apart from their peers.

Today, New Milford High School is a “Makerspace” of sorts where students work in the high school library with Lego pieces, motherboards and a 3D printer.  Sheninger refers to it as a “culture that’s different.”

Under his leadership, the school created learning academies that are open to any student regardless of GPA as well as teacher incentives, part of the school’s digital badge platform for those who embrace the new technologies.

Sheninger, the creator of the Pillars of Leadership, a framework for driving sustainable change in schools, suggested that educators interested in change should form their own personal learning networks.

“Connecting myself to the smart people and the doers has pushed me to become a better leader, educator and a better person,” he said.

Sheninger suggested to his audience that they lead by example. “Make the conscious decision to share your vision, to have conversations with other educators, to be transparent, support change and model the expectations that you have for others,” he said.

The day’s other events included presentations on Google Apps for Education; coding, making and learning; creating a positive digital footprint and telling stories with help from digital media, among others.