We are social beings, so let's start learning that way!

This afternoon after checking into an early showing of Skyfall at the local theater on Facebook, I wanted to know how my drive up to Austin would be, so I opened my favorite driving app, Waze. Most readers are undoubtedly familiar with using Google Maps or other tools for navigation. Waze takes driving social, and leverages the power of connected drivers to predict traffic and travel times, but what is really powerful are the reports that appear on your map from others; there is an accident ahead, an object in the road, a traffic jam, or a hidden police car. Waze let me know that there was no major traffic, but to be careful about all of the police en route to Austin.

This is a fantastic use of social media. The reports of others are making my drives more pleasant, safe, and more on time. I never would have thought social media would be used to make driving better - but it has. Social media (which by most definitions involves a broad range of web sites, technologies, and apps) is a powerful set of communications technologies. Like any communications technology, it can be incredibly powerful, and of course like all others, it can be used for destructive purposes.

The ways which social media had helped are too numerous for a short blog post, but needless to say my travel, eating, professional networking, and learning will never be the same.

To some extent education seems very late to the social media game. Many schools are still just discussing if it should be used and if any social media tools are instructionally relevant. I am not advocating that all schools open up and start using every social media tool. There are many culture, policy, and instructional decisions that must be made at the local level before implementing many social media tools. But I am advocating that we should be leveraging some power of social networks, even if they are just walled garden social networks that we can use with our students to leverage peer learning. If I took one great piece of knowledge away from a great lecture last week by Dr. Abigail Baird, a Psychologist at Vassar College, it is that teens are social beings and that their peers are hugely important to them.

Dr. Baird did not advocate for using social learning with teens, but it really seems to be a great fit with what she talked about. She also pointed out that teens are most definitely not adults, which I think may be where much of our caution with social media in learning starts.

But ultimately social media has transformed many things we do and how we interact with our world and environment, but it has yet to make major inroads into most classrooms, when maybe it should, since social media technologies have improved our lives in many ways. Now it's back to improving my travel with social media; I am going to see what people on Yelp and Urbanspoon have to say about Austin's eateries.

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Presenting on Social Media at the 23rd Learning Disabilities Symposium: HOW TEENS THINK

I have the pleasure of being able to present  on Social Media at the 23rd Learning Disabilities Symposium: HOW TEENS THINK, on Friday, January 25th 2013 at the Winston School San Antonio.  The event promises to have some great speakers (excluding me).  My presentation appears below:

Social Media: Risks and Benefits from Steve Young

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Would you buy a new car with a blindfold on? Then why do so many schools ignore important factors when choosing devices for students?

Photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/squeakymarmot/2049742432/

You obviously wouldn't buy a car with a blindfold because there are so many factors in buying the car that are important, including design, features, layout, condition, and the cabin interior.  Many very well intention-ed educators are eager to put devices in the hands of students and jump on the bandwagon saying “we need to buy (insert device name here) for all students.”  This is often done without ever taking off the blindfold and getting down to looking at a schools’ and students’ needs, with a heavy dose of total cost of ownership evaluation to see what makes the most sense in a particular learning environment.

There are a host of great reasons why many different devices might assist students in their learning; Different curriculum (not just the book, but all that is done in a class to help students learn), grade levels, special needs, state requirements, testing mandates, student use cases and more should all be considered in an evaluation of devices for student. 

I suggest starting off with a needs inventory.  Get started by listing out all the things that are non-negotiable that you need the device and students to be able to do.  A short example list such as this would be a start: 

1.       Need to be able to print to classroom printers.

2.       Need 1024x1200 resolution to support testing mandates.

3.       Need ability to save documents to Google docs.

4.       Needs to save to local storage when not connected to the internet.

5.       Minimum 8 hours battery life.

6.       Science class requires USB based probe support.

7.       Social studies curriculum requires student to be able to display screen to entire class.

You also may want to list some things that would be nice, but are not true requirements such as: three year warranty, comes with a case, and has a CD drive.

At this point put this all into a big matrix or spreadsheet to start the evaluation.  It would map put like this but would have many more elements:

Device	Total Cost of Ownership	Fully Supports Learning Ecosystem	Support Centralized Application Distribution
Android Tablet
iPad
Windows Laptop
Chromebook

The first column in one that is often ignored and beyond the scope of this blog post, but it is very important.  Looking at all the costs related to student devices is imperative in an evaluation.  The upfront purchase cost is just one part, but support costs, repair costs, and maintenance costs, etc. must all be included to get an accurate picture.  A great in depth resource on total cost of ownership, or TCO, is available from the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) at http://goo.gl/BtC7L

In the end when the matrix is filled out, you should have a very good idea of what device will end up best meeting the needs of students and the district.  While sometimes it seems easier to keep the blindfold on, in the end you may end up with something that is unworkable and not sustainable for the long term. Why end up with an unreliable Pinto, when you can have a much better device at a lower TCO?

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Enhancing Safety - Creating a "Need Assistance" Button in Outlook

Yesterday a campus asked about a panic button for their receptionist, so I wanted to find a low cost way for a campus to create a message summoning assistance without having to install physical hardware.  This is a low cost affordable way for users of Outlook to create "panic" button that can be surreptitiously activated via a couple of mouse clicks.

• Open Outlook.

• Make sure you are on the "Home" tab:   

• Look for the "Quick Steps" box 

• Click "Create New"

• The Edit Quick Step window will appear:
• Name your quick step with a logical name - such as "Need Assistance Now"
• Click "Choose An Action" and scroll to "New Message"
• Click "Show Options" and fill in the data for the email you want to quickly send when help is needed - you can send to as many recipients as you would like.  If you want to send email to Cell Phones as SMS messages, you can do so by following this guide at http://sms411.net/how-to-send-email-to-a-phone/.
• Here is an EXAMPLE setup:

• Click the "Finish" button when done.
• Now test this out by clicking the name of the Quick Step in your "Quick Step" window.  
• To send the message click the "Send" button

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The human side of IT management - Go ahead and hug your IT team today

There are so many times in technology where our teams are under immense pressure; there is the start of school with what seems to be an insurmountable mountain of work orders, the stress of a system failure, or the worries for a smooth system implementation. All of this takes its toll on our employees, and sometimes I wonder if as IT leaders we do not spend enough time doing simple things to make our staff’s work lives a little bit better.  

 

This is my cutest blog post ever.....

IT staff often have incredibly difficult jobs, but sometimes we need to be IT coaches and let our team members know that they did a good job and give them a pat on the back. It’s the little statements that we make that can show our human side and help make our employees feel valued. Maybe school's IT departments can’t offer free employer-provided meals, ping pong tables, and break rooms with TVs and sofas, but we can show our human side now and then.

 

Employees need encouragement and praise when things are done well. Don’t forget the value of a simple good morning, a thoughtful hello, or a chance to laugh with our coworkers. Sure, I wish I had some of the flexibility for rewarding my staff that my colleagues in the private sector have, but we do have things we can offer too. As school leaders we can often offer better work hours, a generous set of vacation and days off, and what can arguably amount to a better work/life balance than the private sector. 

 

In the end I know that I always need to work on letting my employees and coworkers know that we are on a team, that I value them, and that I am here to work with them and for them. This is not an easy task, nor is it one that ever ends. So this coming year, hopefully all of us can strive to show our fantastic IT staff how much they mean to us by being just a bit more human and taking a moment to show we care.

This blog is cross posted at SchoolCIO - at http://www.schoolcio.com/Default.aspx?tabid=136&entryid=5164 

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Documenting work to ensure consistency & sustainability

Technology personnel tend to love new projects, challenges, and the fun of learning and implementing new technologies, but much like any profession, there are necessary duties that tend to get put off for a less busy day or because there is other work that is more interesting. Documenting tasks, processes, and systems tends to fall into the less interesting work category, but it is vital that it be done well, as the number and complexity of IT systems is growing.

 

There are few employees that can remember every step taken and every configuration option selected when setting up a new system, so documenting as the work is being done has to become a part of a culture of a technology department. The other part of this equation is that IT staff tend to be highly mobile, and school IT staff are no different. Most can work equally well in or out of education, which means that school IT departments will have periodic staff changes. But what happens when the new staff member needs to upgrade a system or fix one that has failed? If the staff member that setup the system is no longer around and there is no documentation as to what was initially done, this can lead to extended down time, funds spent on consultants, and so on.

 

As technology leaders, we need to look closely at our internal processes and documentation and decide if we are doing the best job at documenting what is being done by our IT personnel. If it is not being done, or not being done well, then it is time for us to start planning a new year’s resolution and make documentation a year long push for our staff. It will take this long and, truthfully, longer. Once basic documentation is done it will still need updates, changes, etc. And new systems will be added. So once started, the impetus to keep documenting must be sustained.

 

Find a standardized place to house the documentation for your staff. At our district, we chose a private wiki that is housed on our corporate intranet. It is quick and easy to search for and to add information, which makes our staff more likely to use it. Do not ignore this factor, since if it is a pain to use the documentation system put in place, people will most likely not use it.

This blog posting is cross-posted at SchoolCIO at http://www.schoolcio.com/Default.aspx?tabid=136&EntryId=5112

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Non Tech Alert: My Thanksgiving Texas Twice-Baked Potatoes in Pictures

I know this is supposed to be a techie blog, but I have to eat too.  So what is becoming a Thanksgiving tradition for me is the preparation of Texas Twice-Baked potatoes.  They are delicious, with lots of flavor and spice, which I think adds a little flair to what I think can be a bit bland holiday meal.

The ingredients I use are as follows.  I will not give amounts, but you can see how much I used and make yours based on your taste preferences.

Ingredients:

• Russet potatoes
• Grated sharp cheddar cheese
• Chopped pickled jalapenos
• Cooked and chopped Bacon
• Minced fresh garlic cloves
• Cream or milk
• Butter
• Salt & Pepper

Add what you want - green onions are good in these, but I did not have any.

So - bake potatoes as normally done.  Cut in half.  Scoop out potato, place in bowl and mash a bit and add butter, cream/milk and mix.  Then add ingredients (use 1/2 the cheese), stuff potatoes, and top with the remaining cheese.  Bake until golden brown.

Here is the process in pictures:

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