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.

Canadian Principal Sees Technology as Opportunity for More Personal Learning

There’s nothing impersonal about George Couros. In fact, everything about his recent Technology Leadership Institute presentation spoke to relationships, both personal and professional, and this philosophy has helped the Canadian division principal of innovative teaching and learning transform the way learning takes place in his own school and in schools across Canada and beyond.

George Couros delivers keynote presentation at TLI event

The affable educator and international speaker was the keynote presenter for the LHRIC’s Annual Pioneer Awards Celebration, which is hosted each year by TLI and are held at the Edith Macy Conference Center in Briarcliff Manor.

In his presentation titled, “Create, Innovate and Voice,” he talked about the need for educators to use technology as a way to make learning more personal and engaging for students.

“Educators are becoming irrelevant to kids,” he said. “And school looks irrelevant to the rest of the world. “ However, Mr. Couros contends that if schools give students the ability to create something meaningful, allow them to be innovative and empower them with a voice, they will succeed long after they graduate.

Mr. Couros said three areas are essential to building a learning organization that fuels such a process. They include:

Creativity – students should have the opportunity to “create” and be active in their learning. Examples include the creation of blogs, various media-related presentations as well as the traditional forms of literacy.

Innovation – the opportunity to share learning openly with each other and the world.

Voice – because we live in a world where everyone has a voice that reaches far and wide, it is imperative that students know how to capitalize on this.

Mr. Couros said the biggest shift that educators must make is not a shift in skill set, but rather a shift in mindset. “Seventy-year-old teachers have done the most innovative things, so it’s got nothing to do with age and how you grew up. It’s your mindset and what you are willing to do to create,” he added.

To promote inspiration within the classroom, Mr. Couros suggested that teachers think about learning as “meaningful creation,” not consumption.”

“The biggest game changer in education is in social media and the use of iphones, Google Apps and the like,” said Mr. Couros, who considers himself an innovative leader who can get teachers and students motivated to change. “We need to get educators to think of themselves as innovators and to grow and take risks.”

LHRIC’s Pioneer Awards Celebrate Region’s Innovative Educators

An innovative community gardening project, a trailblazing group of instructional technology leaders and a hardworking director of technology were among the winners of the 2014 Annual Pioneer Awards handed out May 16.

The ceremony, held at the Edith Macy Conference Center in Briarcliff Manor, is a chance for the Lower Hudson Regional Information Center to recognize the advances that teachers and others are making with technology in the region’s school districts.

The half-day event also included a keynote presentation from George Couras, a division principal for the Parkland School Division located in Alberta, Canada.

Mr. Couras, who is also an innovative teaching, learning and leadership consultant, travels the country and the world inspiring teachers and others to make effective leadership changes and to create more transparent environments within schools.

Before deciding on the winners, a group of judges review each candidate’s application, including information on their innovative use of technology among colleagues as well as in the classroom.

Port Chester's Pioneer Award Winners

This year’s winners included Adam Schoenbart, a high school English teacher in the Ossining School District, who was celebrated for his innovative use of Google Apps for Education, and Craig Mantin, an instructional technology specialist in the North Rockland School District, for his professional development efforts with teachers and as the district’s resident expert in technology matters.

Two new Pioneer Awards were handed out this year for collaborative efforts in technology. The recipients included a team of fourth-grade teachers from JFK Elementary School in the Port Chester School District (Kate Albero, Jenn Curti and Kara Purcell), who helped spearhead a community garden project that involved the use of digital technology.

The “Special Recognition for Collaboration and Innovation Initiatives” was also presented to Jennifer Cronk, an instructional facilitator for the Clarkstown Schools; Jesse Lubinsky, chief information officer and technology coordinator for the Irvington Schools; and Sabrina Rich, director of instructional technology for the Ardsley Schools, all in honor of their trailblazing leadership efforts.

Jennifer Cronk, Sabrina Rich and Jesse Lubinsky

This year’s Director of Technology Pioneer Award was given to George Brady of the South Orangetown Schools for providing leadership and vision in relation to the district’s server and desktop virtualization platforms as well as its mobile learning offerings, among other accomplishments.

The Yorktown School District was chosen for its ability to connect students, staff and community through what Superintendent Dr. Ralph Napolitano referred to as “this one YCSD digital world,” making reference to the 3,600 students in kindergarten through 12^th grade along with the 500 staffers who connect and collaborate through the Google Apps for Education platform.

The district integrates various technology tools into daily learning, including interactive Whiteboards, Smart responses, iPads, Chromebooks, Google Apps for Education, in addition to other smart devices, part of its Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) initiative.

Tech Expo’s Provocative Keynote Speaker Delivers Much-Anticipated Talk

The annual Tech Expo 2014, held April 11, drew close to 400 educators from a myriad of local school districts, many of them eager to hear education historian Diane Ravitch deliver a keynote on the importance of technology in education as well as recent developments in education policy.

Diane Ravitch delivers the keynote at Tech Expo 2014

She was among several other speakers and presenters to participate in the Tech Expo, sponsored by the LHRIC's Technology Leadership Institute and held at the Edith Macy Conference Center in Briarcliff Manor.

Ms. Ravitch, a research professor at New York University, an influential blogger and a contributing writer at the Huffington Post, said she is a fan of what teachers can do with technology in the classroom. “Technology can really inspire what we all want, which is the joy of learning.”

For centuries, educators have dreamed of such a learner-centered environment, which has become a reality for many of today’s students, said Ms. Ravitch, as they learn by using a variety of emerging tools in the classroom.

The emergence of technology shows the true “realities of life,” allowing students to take ownership of what they learn, in addition to fostering a new level of creation, invention and imagination, she added.

“What I envisioned is a world of open source learning led not only by teachers but also by students,” said Ms. Ravitch. “If you think students are dumb these days because of it (technology), please take the eight grade math test.”

A Hijacked Technology Revolution

This revolution has, however, been hijacked by entrepreneurs and policy makers seeking to standardize the curriculum through corporate-influenced school reform and the desire to create a “lucrative marketplace for profitable enterprise.”

The federal government’s control of the states’ educational policy matters has created a situation that Ms. Ravitch said would have been “unthinkable 10 years ago,” a situation that is unprecedented in the nation’s history, with pressure coming from Washington that urges states and, consequently, school districts to do more with less.

While New York State, she contends, is in “pretty good shape,” other states across the country, such as Florida, Indiana and Pennsylvania, to name a few, are experiencing turmoil and the kind of disruption that is not good for children or for learning, she noted.

As a result, the destruction of the public school system and its ultimate privatization is becoming a reality. “I presume your communities here in Westchester are strong enough to handle this, but watch out,” she told the crowd, many of them members of the Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents, who later attended a private meeting with Ms. Ravitch.

Referring to the “wild, unrealistic goal of 100 percent proficiency” that has permeated the public education system since the creation of the No Child Left Behind policy in 2001 and the “more onerous” Race to the Top initiative, Ms. Ravitch added that such an aspiration is unrealistic and one that no nation in the world could ever achieve.

Such proficiency measures have since been turned over to private management, she said, with little research to support them. While testing is good for the testing companies, it does little for children and the quality of education, Ms. Ravitch added. “When it takes the place of instruction and the arts and play, it’s wrong.”

The Danger of the Growing Charter School Industry

Ms. Ravitch, the author of several books, including the newly-released “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools,” took particular aim at the growing charter school movement, in particular the Success Academy charter chain run by CEO Eva Moskowitz.

Such charter schools, she said, have been able to take up free space in several public schools in New York City, pushing out students with disabilities and other disadvantaged public school students.

And if the owners of the charter school industry claim their existence is based on raising the test scores of American students, Ms. Ravitch countered that national test scores, together with graduate rates, have actually risen over the past four years − across all races, and dropout rates are at their lowest. Such statistics, she said, can be found on the federal Department of Education’s website.

Millions of dollars will continue to be spent by school districts on professional development efforts and on iPads and tablets that are a requirement of the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) online tests, an initiative that is closely aligned to the Common Core State Standards. Many of those machines, she added, will come preloaded with content that is copyrighted by companies such as Pearson Education and others.

“We’re at a turning point,” said Ms. Ravitch. “Will there be more charters to drive funding from public schools, will teachers be free to teach with creativity and passion, will they be able to teach without following a scripted curriculum?”

“We are trapped by a love of data. This is the thinking of a world that is far too flat for me. Don’t let them flatten you.”

To follow Ms. Ravitch on her daily blog, visit www.dianeravitch.net.

TLI Experts Tout Way to Prepare Students for 21st Century

Failing to apply the advanced technologies that are being used in everyday life to the school environment and overlooking the connection between such useful, affordable technological tools and good teaching is what education experts Dr. Chris Dede and Rushton Hurley believe is still missing from today's schools.

Dr. Christopher Dede speaks at the Jan. 10 TLI event

Dr. Dede, a Timothy E. Wirth professor in learning technologies at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, and Mr. Hurley, executive director of Next Vista for Learning, served as keynote speakers at the LHRIC's Jan. 10 Technology Leadership Institute event held at the Edith Macyin Conference Center in Briarcliff Manor.

In his talk titled, "Transforming Education for the 21st Century," Dr. Dede explained the challenges educators face and ways they can address them. Learning, he explained, can no longer be confined to the years that students spend in school or the hours they spend in the classroom. "It must be lifelong, life-wide and available in demand."

"What happens outside of the classroom in students' lives looks a lot like 21st century work as opposed to what happens inside the current classroom," added Dr. Dede, who served on the technical working group that helped craft the 2010 National Educational Technology Plan.

Dr. Dede suggested that the concept known as Digital Teaching Platforms (DTP) might provide the kind of technology support that would help teachers engage students.

The initiative is a category of products designed to bring interactive technology to teaching and learning in classrooms. Dr. Dede said it supports real-time, teacher-directed interaction where students and instructors all have laptops and are working together in a networked digital environment.

So, instead of passively watching an educational clip on their devices, students could become actively immersed. A good example is the work he and his colleagues at Harvard are doing with students in the Cambridge Public Schools.

The curriculum research project, known as EcoMUVE, uses multi-user virtual environments that look and feel like video games, but engage students in authentic ecological settings that teach them about ecosystems.

The use of such programs teaches enquiry skills, therefore honing the interpersonal and interpersonal skills that students will need later on in their careers, explained Dr. Dede.

Virtual performance assessments are also possible with this type of learning, he added. In fact, one of the important aspects of DTP is that there are opportunities to exploit the power of technology for formative assessment. That same technology that supports the learning is also gathering data on how students are using it. "Almost second-by-second, learners are being watched as the system identifies where they wander off track, alerting the teacher as a result," Dr. Dede explained.

This type of assessment, as opposed to summative assessment strategies, provides more leverage for improvement, he noted. "The digital curriculum, if it has this kind of diagnostic assessment built into it, can be much more informative for teachers."

Rushton Hurley speaks at the Jan. 10 TLI event.

Much like Dr. Dede, Mr. Hurley also sees the need to embrace technology in new ways. Part of the issue with many school systems, and indeed with teachers, he said, is their inability to deal with the rapid pace of technological change.

"A lot of people experience fear and stress, which seem to be the dominant emotions in relation to technology," said Mr. Hurley in his talk titled, "Evolving Technologies, Expanding Possibilities."

Why? Because many of them have a fear of something going wrong when a technology is implemented. But getting over that fear and allowing technology to be embraced is key, he noted.

Students who say that school is boring are often confusing the word "boring" with predictability, said Mr. Hurley. "Kids don't learn squat when they know what's coming up, but unpredictability can be a fascinating thing and a way to catch their attention, and technology allows that to happen in really, really interesting ways."

Accessing the plethora of free online tools that are currently available to teachers is a way of erasing the predictability that so many students experience on a daily basis, he said.

Mr. Hurley encouraged participants, many of them school district administrators, to give their teachers a reason to love technology. "Use what's freely available, gather feedback, show them that you will follow through, celebrate excellence, share what you're doing and build a shared vision."

To find out more about Dr. Dede's work, visit http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=chris_dede&pageid=icb.page362000. Mr. Hurley provides teachers with great resources at his website, http://www.nextvista.org.