Bowling Again; Rebuilding Our Civic Infrastructure
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 12/18/2008 - 09:54In 2001, Robert Putnam published a seminal book on the decline of civic engagement. Entitled Bowling Alone, it traced the decline in participation in a wide range of community organizations, from voting and church attendance to bowling leagues. The election of Barack Obama with massive citizen involvement and the hope for more involvement during his administration may end up being viewed as a key turning point returning our country to greater civic engagement. However, it is useful to look at issues that may affect such involvement.
My own re-energized community involvement started with Gov. Dean’s 2004 Presidential bid. We held parties in our homes, met in local restaurants and traveled the state and beyond. Afterwards, Kim ran for State Representative and we started getting involved with the local political machinery. We were not always welcome.
Perhaps some of this is understandable. People who have been toiling away in various organizations when no one else seemed interested may be distrustful of new people with new ideas and new enthusiasm. They may be dubious that this new energy goes beyond one or two new people. After years of trying to bring in new people, they may be reluctant to reach out, yet again, for new activists.
Yet many that became involved in Gov. Dean’s 2004 Presidential bid have remained involved. They have played important roles in President-Elect Obama’s campaign. They have worked on other campaigns and run for office themselves.
Much of this can be attributed to the use of the social media tools on the Internet to help connect people. However, people have asked, can this ePolitics energy be transformed into good eGovernance? Will people that have been involved via the Internet in national campaigns become involved face to face on local issues? The Obama transition team is working hard to help facilitate this by naming the day before the inauguration, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2009, a National Day of Service.
Local organizations would be wise to actively reach out to Obama inspired volunteers. Yet I fear that the same reluctance that local political organizations showed to newly energized political activists after the 2004 election may happen with civic organizations this time.
I have run into a little bit of this myself as I have attempted to become involved in the technology planning committee in our school district and to encourage others to participate.
The State of Connecticut requires each school district to prepare three-year technology plans and every school district in the state should be embarked on that effort right now. It would seem as if all of the energy and knowledge about technology that people gathered from the 2008 elections could be used to move this process forward. Yet it is hard to find out how to get involved.
In the current process, last summer each superintendent was contacted by the Commissioner of Education about the new technology plans. There have been meetings in each of the Regional Education Service Centers to talk about the plan, and they were well attended. However, as best as I can tell, this has done little to increase community involvement or sharing of ideas between committees.
A key objective that is often talked about in education is whether or not standardized test scores are increasing. While this is a laudable goal, it is also a bit short sighted. Yes, higher scores on standardized tests are a good thing, but they are but one result of other factors. Independent of standardized test scores, we need to look at students’ abilities to innovate creatively and cooperatively. Technology could help in this area, but there are other important factors. One of the most important factors is the level of parental involvement. Discussions with parents about how technology can be used to facilitate education might even be more important than the technology itself.
So, what is your involvement in your school district? If you live in Connecticut, are you aware of the technology planning process going on right now? Are you aware of the school budgets being considered right now? Are you going to be involved in the National Day of Service? If so, what projects are you going to work on?
I do hope that we are at a turning point in civic engagement. I do hope that those who have been so involved for so long will welcome the newly engaged. I do hope that they will see this as a great time to reach out, yet again, to the broader community and help rebuild our civic infrastructure.
(Cross posted at Greater Democracy.)
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 12/17/2008 - 09:27
Quick Notes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 12/16/2008 - 21:06I spent much of the day in New York, and not much time thinking about my blog. I want to write some additional thoughts about education and technology. It was an interesting education day with a friend tweeting from a PTA book fair and Arne Duncan named President Elect Obama’s Education Secretary.
I also want to write some about different advertising and traffic networks. I just joined Adgitize which I’ve been fairly happy with. I thought I might write about how this relates to EntreCard and related sites, but I just don’t have the energy. I also started to write about Google Adsense, Amazon Associates, BlogAds and Chitika, but I that didn’t really come together either.
Meanwhile, there is plenty of politics and local stuff to write about. I also want to respond to some recent comments here. Perhaps tomorrow.
Woodbridge Board of Education Meeting Dec 15, 2008
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/15/2008 - 20:47This evening will have the regularly scheduled Woodbridge Board of Education meeting. I’ve attended several of the meetings this year and watched as they’ve attempted to start using a program called eMeeting to manage the documents of the meetings.
An advantage of this is that documents which had to be printed before can be viewed from board members laptops. The downside of this is that unless you have a laptop with you that supports broadband wireless like EDVO, 3G or EDGE networks, or until the school works out issues of allowing citizens access to the schools WiFi network during meeting, unless they print out documents, which sort of defeats a key goal of eMeeting, then you probably can’t view the documents.
That is, with one additional caveat. Another advantage of eMeeting is that the documents are generally available online prior to the meeting. For example, most of the Woodbridge Board of Education Meetings are available online. You can read the agenda for this evening’s meeting and see key documents.
For example, this evening, Dr. Stella is scheduled to talk about a visit of thirty educators from the Shandong Province in China. A message to parents presenting the opportunity to help serve as hosts is included in the documents available online for this evenings meeting.
Another key issue to be discussed will be the 2009/2010 budget proposal. I’ve already had the opportunity to look at the budget. As it currently stands, the proposal is for the budget grow by 1.84% from about $11.7 million to $11.9 million. Some of that is because of the 7% increase in medical insurance, which adds $126,224 to the budget.
Other topics include the curriculum committee’s discussion about the Tri-State Consortium and upcoming curriculum and professional development initiatives. Policy updates, facility reports and financial reports are also available at the eMeeting site.
So, even though I don’t expect to be able to go online during the meeting, I will have access to many of the reports on my laptop. It would be great if more people would check reports like this and then attend meetings in their school districts.
Update 1:
They have managed to provide WiFi here, so I am managing to live blog, at least a little bit. The meeting started off with a call to order and Pledge of Allegiance.
For correspondence, there was a letter from Sen. Crisco recognizing Bunny Yesner. There was a discussion about the great role she played in the school and thoughts about how to honor her.
Dr. Stella spoke about the visiting educators from China as well as a business association that visited the school to encourage a winter vacation readers challenge.
The discussion moved on to the budget.
Update 2:
Dr. Stella started off by talking about the goal of attaining high performance and reaching 21st century skills, while at the same time not unnecessarily burdening taxpayers. There was a lot of discussion about funding of health insurance issues, both for current employees and for retirees.
The focus on professional development was emphasized, which makes a lot of sense. Approximately 80% of the budget is personnel related, so it makes sense that the school seeks to continue its most valuable asset.
Update 3:
During the discussion about the budget, the topic of the schools accounting software came up. Currently, the software is being hosted by the town and shared with the school. However, the town is moving to hosting the accounting software on an ASP. In doing so, the town will start sharing the costs with the school district. This has led to a lengthy discussion about the pros and cons of the software, service agreements, the possibility of sharing the service with Amity school district.
Update 4:
The discussion moves on from budget to additional related issues. Dr. Stella speaks about the Tri-State consortium. Back in 2005, the Tri-State Consortium did an analysis of the school district. Dr. Stella has participated in doing analysis in other schools and he wants to encourage members of the staff to visit other schools. This would include training in the staff in program evaluation.
This opened up a discussion about what should go on with respect to the evaluation by Tri-State. Dr. Stella is seeking to get people more involved in Tri-State. This raises issues of timing with staff focusing program evaluation versus preparing for a visit by Tri-State to evaluate the school.
Update 5:
Carl notes that the five year budget had been projecting an increase of 5% for this year, and the 1.8% is, in part, due to good management by the administration. “Those costs that can be managed are being well managed.” At the same time, there was a recognition that some of the success in keeping the budget under control can be attributed to fortunate development in some mandated costs.
The budget was passed by the board and greeted with applause.
Update 6:
The PTO provided an update on their activities, including fundraising for the Kucinskas Memorial Loop. This was followed by a facilities committee report. A key focus is a three kilowatt solar array that has been granted to the town through the clean energy program. This array would be about ten feet by forty feet. The town would have the option to buy an additional kilowatt worth of panels, which would be matched. Issues about how the design and building of the solar array was discussed including where it should go, how it should be supported, and what additional costs there might be for the school.
Other benefits of the solar panels includes how they can be integrated into the curriculum. There was also a discussion about the pool drain. It is a different type of pool drain than those that have been problematic in other areas. There has been a discussion about whether or not an exemption could be granted or what kind of modifications were needed.
It was noted that the Recreation Department has just sent out an update that the pool will be closed from December to March to address this issue.
This was followed by a discussion of the curriculum committee. My batteries are about to die, so I will end the liveblogging here.
Connecticut Schools’ Three-Year Technology Plan
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/15/2008 - 13:15After the 2008 Presidential Election, an election that saw great citizen involvement and use of technology, people are watching the Obama transition team and sites like Change.gov to see what sort of citizen engagement will emerge. However, there are important opportunities for citizen engagement available locally that too often get too little focus. An example here in Connecticut is the efforts by school boards across the state to form their new Three-Year technology plans.
My understanding of the process is that technology committees are supposed to meet in each school district with representatives from the school and from the community. I’ve had the opportunity to serve as a community member of the technology committee for the Woodbridge School District. It has been very challenging for me since some people seem to feel very uncomfortable with the openness that I believe is imperative for such a committee, especially given my approach to involvement as a blogger. It has also been very challenging because I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on technology and have viewpoints about technology and education that seems to be considerably different from that of some members of the committee.
Yet for all my disillusionment with the committee and how technology is and isn’t used at the school, it appears as if they are doing a laudable job compared to what I’ve seen searching the web for what other school districts are doing. I did find the agenda for the Canterbury Public Schools November 20th technology committee meeting.
A. Review of current Technology Plan
B. Brainstorm of possible additional committee members
C. Next steps
Hamden is the other school that stood out. They have version 1 of their 2009-2012 technology plan online.
Some schools had their 2006-2009 technology plans online, like Greenwich, Cheshire, and North Haven. Madison’s 2003-2006 technology plan is also online as well as other resources.
One of the best resources I found was the CT Educational Technology blog. It had links to some very interesting articles, such as a blog post about S.1492: Broadband Data Improvement Act, which includes Title II, “Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act.”. This section, which the blogger notes has implications for e-rate applicants.
Specifically, Section 215 imposes an additional CIPA requirement for E-rate applicants' Internet Safety Policies. Such policies must include "... educating minors about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking websites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying awareness and response."
The blog also includes a link to an acceptable use policy that addresses Web 2.0 issues. The Franklin Parish, Louisiana acceptable use policy which includes
Teachers may allow individual students to use email, electronic chat rooms, instant messaging, social networking sites (I. E. facebook and myspace) and other forms of direct electronic communications for educational purposes only and with proper supervision.
I’m very interested to hear how school districts will educate students about appropriate online behavior on social networking sites, especially in districts that don’t allow students to access these sites.
It seems as if the blog and the online technology plans would be a great way for school districts to gather and share information to create better technology plans. Yet since the plans are mostly older plans, they may be of limited value.
More significantly, it seems to me as if there are a number of significant problems with many of the plans. Often the person representing the community is yet another teacher or aide at the school. I’ve been frustrated that the Woodbridge technology committee seems dominated by employees of the school district, yet the committee has more PTO members, Board of Educations members and simple parents like myself than any other committee that I’ve seen. If you want citizen engagement, these committees would be a great place to get involved.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been concerned that the Woodbridge plan seems much more focused on buying new hardware and software than on professional development and changes to the curriculum. Yet again, it seems like the Woodbridge plan is doing a much better job of this than many of the plans that have almost no money set aside for professional development. Some of this may be because I’ve mostly found older plans and perhaps this will change.
Yet trying to find resources on technology related professional development for educators also is a challenge. CT Kids Link has a policy brief on Technology Professional Development for CT Educators, but it is from 2000.
With this lack of focus on professional development, it seems as if many plans end up being shopping lists for hardware and software being pushed by educational technology corporations, and often the technology plans focus of specific brands of educational technology instead of getting to the underlying issues.
What are these issues? The template for technology plans has a great phrase, “The locus of control for learning must shift from teacher directed to student directed learning”. It seems as if this shift is very slow in coming. Woodbridge would seem to be well positioned maximize this shift.
According to the PTO site, The Woodbridge school policy focuses on resource based learning.
"Resource-based learning places students at the center of the learning environment which uses as many resources as possible, including teachers and textbooks." - Carol-Ann Haycock
The following statement, RBL - A Workable Comprehensive Definition, was developed by Beecher Road staff on November 30, 1996.
Students learn best through a wide variety of primary sources, personal relationships, cooperative explorations and print/non-print media. The Resource-Based Learning program at Beecher Road School is a system of study that encourages inquiry and enables learners, both students and teachers, to acquire and use information from multiple sources.
In this area, the Woodbridge Board of Education was forward thinking. Resource based learning seems like the logical basis for twenty first century learning and helps focus on the phrase about the shifting of the locus of control for learning that the State’s template provides.
I have much more to say about my thoughts about school technology plans. I hope many of you do too. Technology was a key factor in driving citizen involvement in the 2008 Presidential Campaigns. Let’s hope that it can be a key factor in driving citizen and parent involvement in the schools of our state and our country.
