Education IT leaders continue to be challenged by declining budgets, rapidly changing technology and increasing demands to deliver platforms for 21st century teaching and learning. In this current environment, a growing number of IT professionals in education and government are leveraging next generation technologies like virtualization, collaboration, mobility and video to transform their organizations.
We’ll be sharing these best practices during the National Townhall, Celebrating how the Public Sector Connects, Innovates and Saves on March 1st at 11 AM, U.S. Pacific Time. Education speakers include:
Distance learning for students and teachers is a growing trend as the leaders of today and tomorrow look for new, efficient ways to learn, educate, and inspire.
A recent Education Weekarticle highlights some of the ways universities are improving their online professional development options. For example, Arizona State has partnered with the state’s Department of Education to host the IDEAL program, which offers online teacher education in language arts, math, and science instruction, as well as technology integration and classroom management. Boise State has also launched an online portal through which K-12 instructors can take an assortment of online, facilitator-led workshops. Read More »
Part Two: Flipping the Classroom -- The Role of Video
In Part One, Flipping the Classroom – Is it Really All About Technology?, I promised to return in Part Two to discuss the actual technologies that can be used to flip the classroom. This technology is, in a word: video. The capture of lectures via video, the dynamic management of video assets, and the ability to share, store, and retrieve lectures are all critical components of any strategy to create a flipped learning environment.
As you’ll recall, Part One covered one of the best and most innovative high school teachers I know, Steve Hammack, a science teacher at Los Gatos High School. He fully flipped his classroom this year, and his students continue to perform well above-average both on standardized tests and in semester grades.
There’s a different kind of college freshman on university campuses these days. According to EdWeek’s report on The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2011 survey, today’s freshman bears more of the cost of his or her own education than did past first-year college students, and, as a high school senior, today’s freshman paid more attention to his or her studies than those who came before.
So what does this mean for colleges?
For one, today’s students’ higher academic engagement could translate into demand for more innovative, challenging courses. But with the survey showing more students taking out large student loans as their parents’ unemployment rates remain stagnant, universities cannot raise tuition price tags to hire more faculty to develop new classes. President Obama said as much in his January 24 State of the Union address, mandating that schools use tools like “better technology” to improve their course offerings without raising costs. Read More »
West Texas A&M University was recently named in the U.S. News and World Report Top 20 for both Technology and Student Services, while WTAMU CIO James Webb was recently named to ComputerWorld’s 2012 Premier 100 IT Leaders list. This program will honor the top 100 IT and business leaders that have shown exceptional leadership and innovation in IT strategy and planning at a conference to be held in Phoenix, AZ in March 2012.
WTAMU has deployed multiple Cisco Enterprise Video technologies, including digital signage, physical security and media experience engine.
Cisco recently hosted two customer roundtable discussions on the topic of “interactive video and how is being used in teaching and learning” for K-12 and higher education. There has been much interest in the benefits of using video in teaching and learning, and as schools, colleges and universities are adopting it more broadly to expand curriculum options, we are seeing a positive impact on student outcomes. K12 moderator, Alan November, discusses how the “flipped classroom” model is improving student test scores and the role of video technology as a key enabler.
It’s well worth your time to listen to these very interesting discussions and best practices sharing with our panelists:
K-12 Schools: Dr. Susan Holliday, Education Technology Director, Capistrano Unified School District, and Matt Grose, Deer River Public Schools, hosted by Alan November, November Learning
Higher Education: Link Alexander, Vice Chancellor Technology Services, Lone Star College System, and James Web, CIO, West Texas A& M University, hosted by John Halpin, Center for Digital Education
Cisco Director of Engineering, Chris Barwick, discusses Cisco Lecture Vision and state-of-the-art technologies available from Cisco to capture, transform and share class lectures
Two classes of New Jersey middle school students recently enjoyed a unique opportunity for exchange with their peers. From neighboring towns, the eighth graders live worlds away from each other demographically—one town is largely affluent and white, while the other is mostly low income with a predominately black and Hispanic population. Each class studied John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and they visited each other’s schools to discuss perceptions of the novel.
As reported in The New York Times, the students at both middle schools found the interaction with their counterparts eye-opening and rewarding, both in terms of literary analysis and cultural understanding. The ability to see the text—and life—from a different perspective fostered a rich educational experience.
With telepresence and other collaborative technologies, students are able to mimic the exchange in which the New Jersey youth participated, except they could share ideas with and experience the cultures of peers not only across town boundaries, but also across state lines and country borders. Telepresence enables a real-time, high-definition connection that allows for a quality of conversation comparable to in-person interaction, creating a unified classroom across geographies. The telepresence set-up establishes an environment that feels inclusive and intimate—the students would feel as though they had traveled to each other’s schools. They could see the detail in each other’s settings, in clothes, hairstyles, facial expressions, and other aesthetics that make up parts of a culture. Read More »
Over the past 40 years in the U.S., our student to teacher ratio has dropped from 22:1 to 17:1. Our teachers are better educated than ever – fully 62% today own a Masters degree, compared with only 23% in 1971. And we continue to spend – our nation’s investment in K-12 places us 4th in the world at $11,000 per student, trailing only Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Norway.
So, what’s happened to our reading and math test scores over these past four decades? Virtually flat.
Why is this?
Roland Fryer, the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard, would argue it’s due in part to the fact we really do not know what the problems are. His view: “it’s time to apply some science to the problem of student achievement in our schools.”
A while back, we asked what features you think would make up a good video collaboration app for smartphones and mobile devices.
Do you have your list?
If so, you should submit it to this team of primary school students in Sutton Coldfield, England. The youngsters take part in an after school computer club, during which they design apps for smartphones and tablets. They’ve already come up with sound effects and “painting” programs; could video be next? Read More »
When speaking with our customers and prospects in the K-12 community, we hear time and again that budget restrictions are a daily reality.
At the same time, these educators fully understand that in order to prepare the next generation for success in the 21st century economy, a “mixed” learning environment (where new, innovative technologies are incorporated into more traditional curriculum) helps to better engage students and improve academic performance.
From the boardroom to the barroom, American citizens, including President Obama, instinctively know that our K-12 public education system needs to be invigorated. From the President’s State of the Union address this week:
Give [schools] the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. And in return, grant schools flexibility: to teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test.
Significant technology developments continue to hit the USA K-12 market.
With Apple’s digital textbook announcement last week, we are now likely to see more acceleration of the spread of new student devices. Is this major announcement by the company that rapidly transformed computing, music and mobility the boost schools need to drive toward the promise of digital technology for all students? And what’s the resulting impact on device and computing trends in K-12?
On the topic of devices, we asked two of our leading K-12 Chief Technology Officer (CTO) customers to give us their opinions. BYOD? 1:1? What’s the better course to pursue? The answer would make Nike proud. While both noted device and equity issues one way or another, all said simply” “Just do it!”. What’s even more interesting – it wasn’t actually all about the device.
Los Gatos High School, located in Los Gatos, California, recently switched to block scheduling, effectively decreasing the number of school days by 15 a year. For science teacher, Steve Hammack, what began as a way to provide students with the lecture content they would necessarily need to pass his courses in the face of a decreased number of school days, has ended up as a new model for students to learn massive amounts of information for his AP Biology and Physics classes. For a technology fan who spends her days at Cisco Systems focused on educators who are using technology to improve learning outcomes, I was intrigued.
I quickly became aware of Mr. Hammack’s approach when I walked into my teenage son’s bedraggled bedroom and heard a familiar voice emanating from the direction of his PC. It sounded like someone I’d met at back-to-school night. My son, Joe, a senior at Los Gatos, was reclined in his chair, feet up on his bed, notebook on his lap, busily listening to the voice and taking copious notes. As I entered his room, Joe clicked a pause button and asked, “What’s up?” “What’s up with you? What are you doing?” He pointed to his screen and said, “Listening to my biology lecture for Mr. Hammack’s class. We do this every night, then we have a quiz or test every day when we come into class.” Interested, I said, “Tell me more. Do you like it?”
We’ve seen telepresence take off in higher education programs, as we shared in a post on how the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business uses the technology to connect its students with executives across the world.
As more and more universities, including Duke in North Carolina, Madison College in Wisconsin, and Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania join the ranks of schools with fully equipped telepresence classrooms, it’s exciting to think of how these institutions are forging global scholarly dialogues and worldwide collaboration.
Witnessing the power of video to connect the academic world made me especially appreciative of a recent informative story in University Business. Writer Kristen Domonell details the importance of installing telepresence equipment in fully operational telepresence rooms in order for higher ed students to realize the benefits of the video technology. Read More »
The Education World Forum meeting in London last week felt different from previous years.
In recent times the presiding genius has been the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher. The main plot line has been how the best education countries in the world – Finland, Canada, and Singapore – can go to the next level. The sub plot has been the route they should take, and whether they should shift toward equipping their students with higher order capabilities, to restore their national economies’ innovative edge.
In the morning opening keynote addresses were delivered by representatives of UNESCO, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Brookings Institute, and Intel. This was followed by two plenary sessions; the first addressed research from large-scale pilot projects and initiatives and the second focused on how countries such as Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Nigeria are improving their national education systems.
Over the past 40 years in the U.S., our student to teacher ratio has dropped from 22:1 to 17:1. Our teachers are better educated than ever – fully 62% today own a Masters degree, compared with only 23% in 1971. And we continue to spend – our nation’s investment in K-12 places us 4th in the world at $11,000 per student, trailing only Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Norway.
Roland Fryer, the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard, would argue it’s due in part to the fact we really do not know what the problems are. His view: “it’s time to apply some science to the problem of student achievement in our schools.”
With Apple’s digital textbook 
