September Field-based Activities

This month I attended Aware training for administrators at the BISD technology portable building. The speaker, Julie Turner, Instructional Technology Director, taught the administrators how to use the tabs feature on the first screen to analyze and sort student data. She taught how to use the filter feature to set up a specific targeted group of students to find those that need added help in a specific way. The data can also be colorized to differentiate, divided by columns or tabs, and filtered by gender, economic status, ethnicity and demographics. Teachers can create a journal page for each student where they write down notes on specific students. Teachers cannot see other journal entries by other teachers, but the principals can see all the journal entries for their campus.

The program will print out all the answer sheets for a benchmark test with the students names preprinted on the sheets. After the benchmark, the teacher takes the answer sheets to the Eduphoria scanners hooked up into a computer. After scanning, the teacher goes into the response editor and can see any problems associated with student’s failure to bubble in correctly.

One interesting feature is that counselors and teachers can create other lists on tutored students and at-risk students separate from their classroom list. The principal needs to approve the list, but they are able to track more than the students than just those in their classroom.

On September 24th, I attended the TASB/TASA convention in Houston, Texas, at the Brown convention center. I attended four breakout sessions and one general session during that day. The first session was entitled, “Mastering Stake holder Relations in Difficult Times.” The speaker discussed the effect of C.A.V.E. people (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) on a community. Basically, research has shown that CAVE people take advantage of communication vacuums in a community. The presenter, Suhail Farooqui from K12 Insight, showed that through a systematic use of technology communications, districts can keep the majority of parents, who are in fact pleased and positive toward the district, informed. Through a communication structure of using surveys to inform and inquire, districts can prove that they are transparent and show collaboration on a regular basis to all of their stakeholders.

Another session I attended was on “Digital Communications: What’s Public and What’s Not!” led by TASB lawyer, Joy Baskin. During this time, Ms. Baskin explained how to determine if an email, text, and notes taken at board meetings are subject to the Public Information Act (PIA). Basically, anything that goes through the school email or a school cell phone and is discussing a school issue is subject to a public information request. The big question though, is whether or not; a personal cell phone or a personal email account can be scrutinized in a public information request. Personally, I would be shocked if the courts said it was OK to violate a person’s privacy when no criminal activity is suspected. But the key case is in Dallas now, where the newspaper wants to see all the texts on the Dallas mayor’s personal cell phone. They also pointed out that deleting things – like emails – doesn’t really do any good as there are forensic technologists that can find virtually anything from the past on the internet.

The fourth session I attended was led by the Trustees for Texas and the Visioning Institute. They propose that we do not wait to transform education in Texas, we do it now. They do not like that the direction of education in Texas has been made by politicians and their policy advisors and that parents, teachers, principals and superintendents were left out of the planning process. They dislike all the high stakes testing and are a group that wishes to try new and different approaches to education. One superintendent has an elementary school that had discontinued giving grade reports to the students. They do keep grades, but only give them to the parents when requested. To summarize, the shared vision includes: safe schools; encouraged creativity; curriculum that is relevant, challenging and meaningful; appropriate learning standards; standards that motivate students to succeed; technology access; students owning their learning; an atmosphere where all talents are developed; multiple assessments are used and in a positive way; and students are prepared for life, further education or their career.

Finally, I listened to a lecture given by Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind. He spoke about how arts education is essential to the development of creative ideas in our nation and innovation is what will keep our economy stable into the future. He discussed the importance of developing both the right creative side and our logical, linear side as well. And that technology use is a factor in leveling the field for India and China with us. Pink said our students need to have both depth and breadth and learn to communicate and collaborate to be competitive in the world for jobs.