Darin King's Blog

The video below explains how to use your daily SPAM summary email from Lightspeed Systems to mark blocked mail for delivery to your FirstClass inbox.

(download)

Click here to download:

spam_summary_email_final.mp4 (21.55 MB)

After consulting with the Grand Forks Fire Department, it was determined that the Red River HS campus is safe for students to return to a normal school schedule tomorrow at 8:00 am, Thursday, January 19^th. 

The Institute for the Future has released a report titled Future Work Skills 2020 Report that identifies six drivers of change and ten skills for the future workforce. It is a quick read and below is an excellent infographic summary of their findings.

(click for larger image)

As I reflect on the report, I am trying to align my thinking regarding the 4 C's (communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking) to the information as presented. There are certainly many connections and this representation removes some of the educational jargon found in other models. Is that a good thing?

I like this model because it speaks to me about the larger picture. I think about these skills and drivers/disrupters from my own personal and professional life and can completely relate. Everyone, student or otherwise, must develop strategies to mitigate/mediate/embrace the effect the drivers have on our day to day existence.

What do you think?

I have been getting quite a few questions regarding our Personal Student Learning Device initiative using Linux netbooks.  In an effort to only answer these questions once, I decided to move this topic to my blog. Most of the questions have been about hardware, software, procedures and implementation strategy. I added a section at the end that I think is the most important...Instructional Support.

Hardware/Software

We have settled on ASUS hardware at this time, but the hardware is just a commodity to be consumed for three years and replaced. The models and processors change but the price point of about $250-$270 stays the same. Our Ubermix build works very consistently with different ASUS hardware, which is why we are staying with it for now.  We have had more tweaking to do with some of the other hardware we are using.  For example, we have a significant (300 ish) number of Intel Classmates and have found that we have issues getting the sound, headphone jacks and sometimes webcam to work without some additional effort. We have about 4 Asus models running our current Ubermix build without major issues. Ubermix is designed to allow rebuilding the software distro without erasing local user files in (literally) seconds.  Doing a "from scratch" deployment using a 2gig USB flash drive takes less than 5 minutes.  http://ubermix.org has more of the techie details. Hard drive space is irrelevant (will evenually be SSD once price drops) and 1 Gig of RAM is currently sufficient. My one "wish list" would be higher screen resolution on the 10.1" display, but it is not a deal breaker and it is actually a big screen to most students who are comfortable with a cellphone display. 

Hardware Maintenance Issues

We really haven't had any issues with the hardware, regardless of the make/model and the issues we did have were handled through the warranty in the first year. Asus has been great to work with for warranty issues. We have lost zero to pure hardware failure in the 3 year lifecycle...yet.  I have no evidence to suggest that extended warranties are necessary or remotely cost effective on a sub $300 device...which is exactly what we predicted. Time will tell.  Damage is another topic I will address below.

Accidental Damage, otherwise known as "Are you crazy? The kids will break them!"

Yes, there will be accidents and to go down this road you just have to get over it. Our goal is to keep the loss due to damage to around 10% and we currently are on track to meet or exceed the goal. Dropping a $250 device versus a $500 device is easier to stomach (and WAY easier to stomach than a $1000 device) which is one of the many reasons we settled on netbooks for our pilot. To mitigate the ongoing costs, we always "self insure" by purchasing 10% more netbooks than we are actually implementing.  I am looking for steady, predictable budgeting and this appears to be more cost effective than purchasing accidental damage coverage. Based on the cost of accidental damage coverage policies presented to me, the damage percentage would have to exceed 35% to be cost effective.

We are using a "3 strikes" approach with students and damage. The first time the student is usually pretty shook up and we use this as a teachable moment. The second time (when it happens, it hasn't yet) will also include a meeting with the principal to talk about personal responsibility and how to make sure it doesn't happen again. The third time (hope we never need this one) we also include the parents into the intervention and will only allow the student to use a netbook in the classroom and bill them according to our existing policy for damaged/lost textbooks.  

The most common way the netbooks are damaged is when a student is carrying 30 pounds of textbooks and a netbook down the hall and...you get it. We are having conversations with our principals about how we can mitigate this situation by modifying existing practices in our middle schools. Purchasing protective sleeves is still on the table, but I am hoping to avoid the additional cost.

We have lost a couple due to theft at the secondary level. This was due to our ineffective check out/ check in process during the early pilots. (Not a school/teacher/principal issue, my bad) This will be solved as we implement our new Library/Media management solution that will include checking out the netbooks just like we checkout textbooks. We have also started to brand the netbooks as the picture shows...I am not sure if this will really help but at least we are doing something. 

There is a developing theme here....my answer to many many operational questions regarding the netbooks is to apply the same policies and procedures that currently exist for textbooks. The DEVICES in PSLD are just textbooks in our thinking.

Instructional Usage

We are focused on Google Apps, Edmodo, Voicethread, etc...basically anything delivered through a browser for free/almost free. It is unlikely that any purchased and installed software will ever (dis)grace the Ubermix build in our district. (I would say never but...you never know) They do use many of the locally loaded open source software packages that come in the build for a variety of purposes, but I think this is just a transitionary artifact of past practice. Even with that said, our thoughts are to standardize on the use of free storage solutions like Google, Dropbox, etc. so we don't get too hung up on what is saved to the local drive.  On a related note, we don't authenticate these netbooks in any way, shape or fashion against our Active Directory system. We can do authentication to AD, but choose not to. My vision is for kids to always have access to everything and I don't really feel the need to internally support this external access when the free/almost free solutions to support this already exist via web delivered systems.

A part of this initiative also involves the increasing use of digital curriculum on these devices, and I am not talking about PDF files of the paper textbooks. We are in the very early stages of this (r)evolution and will continue to work closely with our curriculum department on this topic. It is my hope that educational publishing companies embrace content developed using emerging, open standards like HTMLv5 and not resort to proprietary solutions developed for specific devices or operating systems. The Apple event next week should be interesting.

Anytime, Anywhere Usage

We have kept the netbooks in the classroom and also allowed them to go home during the initial pilot projects. We are just preparing to allow all of our 6th grade students to take them home this month. The Lightspeed Mobile Client for Linux was just release from beta last week, which we have been waiting for patiently.  One of our key covenants was to ensure the devices were filtered to at least the required levels of CIPA regardless of where they were connected. 

Our vision is that these devices will travel with the student and be charged every night at home. Just like some students will forget a pencil, some will forget to charge and we will have a few charged netbooks (like textbooks) available at every site for this reality. We are working into this slowly, but by spring this will be our practice.

Technical Support

Our vision for supporting the netbooks is to empower the students to manage/support their own device...thus the PERSONAL in our PSLD. We also want to our teachers to be released from the real and/or perceived responsibility of knowing everything about the device. The above mentioned benefits of the Ubermix build helps with this by the quick restore and USB flash drive deployment options. We leave a flash drive with each teacher and if the students build goes wacky the teacher gives the student the flash drive and 5 minutes later (or sooner) they have a fresh load. When we need to update everyones build, which we are just getting ready to do, we will have a bag of 25 flash drives that a teacher can use to quickly do the whole class at one time. It is beautiful to watch a bunch of 4th graders rebuild their own computers!

This process will be refined and adjusted as we gain more experience with Ubermix, but for now it seems to work. We have not had to add any full time technical staff due to the PSLD project.

Instructional Support

The technology is the easy part. None of this would matter without a solid focus on providing effective instructional support. The Grand Forks Public Schools has a long history of understanding the need to provide ongoing instructional coaching through the continued support of the Curriculum Technology Partner program and they (the CTP's) are primarily responsible for organizing and providing the instructional support necessary for the PSLD project.

The instructional side of the PSLD project, called 4CtheFuture, is our departments effort to focus the conversation on instructional practice instead of technology. It hasn't been without challenges, but our CTP's have been doing an amazing job! They are working directly with our teachers to leverage the devices as a catalyst for developing new instructional methodologies that directly supports 21st century instruction and 21st century learners. We are just bringing a Quality Assurance Team online this month to help us better serve the needs of our implementing schools.

I think that about covers the questions that have been asked recently through email and listservs. If you have other questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I will try to respond in a timely manner!

Older versions of "Shift Happens" can be found at:

http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/versions