Jan 21 2009
Top Secret! Is DET Too Tender?
credit Ben Hasic & Happy Devil Cartoons
Ok, I’ll admit it, I have more than a passing interest in what the 200,000 compact learning devices (CLDs)our schools will receive in April may look like. Most DET teachers reading this will too.
Australian IT reported yesterday that “the department’s proposed learning device, which can be likened to a ruggedised netbook, is the first of its kind in Australia and one of the more unusual hardware specifications globally“.
Observations from DETs Chief Information Officer Stephen Wilson also caught my eye.
We intend to make the devices available to other schools for other purposes, so watch that space. Any vendor looking at this is going to be looking at a very large market because other states are very interested in what’s going on in NSW“.
More questions than answers are raised and It will be interesting to see;
- what a “ruggedised $500 CLD” actually looks like, considering it may be a hybrid design blending netbook, laptop and notebook features. We trust the tech boffins, doing the top secret cull this week from 21 tender submissions to 5, will have their hands on it.
- if the tight tender to implementation timeline can be met efficiently, for all stakeholders, not just political expediency of being seen to ’rush the shiny baubles out’. and
- will other markets & DETs, global and local, really want them too? We trust our leaders that the CLD’s will be that good, so other’s should flock to order.
Educational innovation is measured by effectiveness of the changes in learning. Measures are in place to rigourously assess the transformative 21st century learning these devices will bring, aren’t they? Well we trust they are.
This simple nuts and bolts phase, despite political chest beating to the contrary, is the easy phase, its only a box of wires, the “21st century toolbox” as Deputy PM Gillard and PM Rudd muttered on DER launch.
What really matters for learners are the 571 state wide school plans to ensure teachers of year 9 to 12 students use the CLD’s as transformative learning devices, far better than the last 20 years of school PC use, that is. We trust these plans are in place and deeply understood before April.
The jury is still out on this last point but we do trust ourselves to deliver the expected learning changes, this time, don’t we?
The governments have provided the tools, again, now it’s up to us, again, or else, again! Dripping with it, yes, again. I’m worried, again. Simplistic motherhood statements and boxes of wires do not a revolution make.
Those who have taught in schools on a full time basis for an extended period of time have seen much of this hype before, in fact since the first PC lobbed into our schools in the mid 1980’s. It’s still NOT new learning, CLD’s are just the latest embodiment. Wireless flexible connectivity and 4 year CLD student ‘ownership’ have more potential, for those facets reflect 21st century more than the device themselves.
I hope CLD’s don’t become more expensive portable pencils, more technology sprinkled on top.
We all want better outcomes for learners, how we best achieve that is far from decided. But I certainly trust this latest DET NSW roll out of CLD’s will help deliver them, whatever it is we end up deciding on and believing to be the 21st century direction we need to have. You can’t choose the best mode of transport when you don’t yet know the destination.
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“if the tight tender to implementation timeline can be met efficiently, for all stakeholders, not just political expediency of being seen to ’rush the shiny baubles out’.”
A mate of mine used to do IT for a large rural public school in QLD. To paraphrase him:
‘As long as the bloody things work and aren’t just portable Facebook machines, I’m happy’.
The trick will be to make the system both student and teacher friendly. Teachers need to be able to control what is accessed in their own classroom and classtime. Students need reliable access and need to have access to the important stuff. The government will need to make sure these things aren’t easily stolen or sold or broken.
All three of these things need to be put into place if the system to be useful in any way, shape or form. Otherwise, it will just go down as being another monumental screw-up by the NSW government.
Thanks for contributing Ben
The CLDs (hey another new buzz word. yuk) will mirror school access via the same restrictive DET NSW pipes and filters. They’ll be locked down, tightly.
Meaning? users will not be able to access the www freely, only what DET deems appropriate, even at home. This may relax somewhat in ‘09 as newer filters are applied, lets hope.
All CLD users will log on via the DET portal,regardless of location. Your digital footprint is followed as usual.
DET assures us clever kid geeks can’t possible proxy serve or bypass, they’ll be so secure, no parts are removable or interchangable. Throws the challenge out there though.
Wonder if they’ll be garish day glow orange to ID them down at the second hand pub market as DET units? just like our short throw CCP projectors.
The full tender specs made interesting reading. Ambitious yes, but with 21 tenders to now cull, they should come up with something worthy.
There are two main things that bother me with this process.
1. The DET seems to be putting the tool before it’s application. My concern is the suitability and usefulness in Mathematics. Reading the Statement of Requirements, the DET Learning Device should be a stunning little machine – superior even to Netbooks currently on the market (from my quick research, no Netbook on the market meets the SoR).
The Stage 4 and 5 Mathematics Syllabus requires students to use dynamic geometry software. Teachers and textbook vendors have spent a lot of time writing activities for specific applications. But if these machines are not running Windows, then those applications may not run. I’m not saying it should run Windows, but that the process seems to have not completely encompassed the needs of the classroom.
2. A machine for teachers. The biggest potential problem I foresee for the effective use of these laptops in schools is that teachers do not have their own laptops, let alone their own computers at school.
Will teachers be given one of these laptops? To me this is essential.
Teachers need the ability to ensure that software, websites and activities will run as expected on these laptops. These student laptops will have a different screen resolution and processing capability than an ordinary desktop, therefore it is critical that a teacher can check an activity on a student machine before undertaking in a lesson. Teachers need to be “up-to-speed” with the capabilities and software of these machine, this can only be done if they have access to one for themselves.
I know from email correspondence with an important person in the DET that any plans for equipping teachers are not developed yet.
The deployment of these machines will make 2009 interesting, to say the least, but potentially amazing or downright frustrating.
Simon wrote: ‘Teachers need the ability to ensure that software, websites and activities will run as expected on these laptops. These student laptops will have a different screen resolution and processing capability than an ordinary desktop, therefore it is critical that a teacher can check an activity on a student machine before undertaking in a lesson. Teachers need to be “up-to-speed” with the capabilities and software of these machine, this can only be done if they have access to one for themselves.
I know from email correspondence with an important person in the DET that any plans for equipping teachers are not developed yet.’
This disturbes me quite a bit. How on earth does DET expect these machines to be effective if the teachers do not:
1) Have a machine in the first place
2) Are trained to use them?
3) Are able to access things on it that students cannot
*Palm to face.
Without having the teacher’s framework in place, the machines are pretty much useless.
Simon
Thanks for dropping by and contributing, I hope more do for this debate is essential.
My feeling is CLD’s will be windows, not linux, if for no other reason than market place ubiquity. Staff email was not migrated to gmail becasue of the fissions this would cause for tech shy staff having to learn ‘new’ apps.
Amplify this and imagine if the new CLD’s had an OS not many teachers had ever heard of, let alone used, The staff PD bill would send the dept broke, talk about embedding resistance to ict in one fell swoop.
Our place and ICT plan has stated staff will access CLD’s first.
Now whatever that means or is allowed to mean by DET, is yet to be determined. It’d be pointless if staff can’t do exactly what we ask kids to do first, that means tinker and play to upskill and gain confidence. That time to experiment and fiddle is soooo critical for tech shy converts.
As you say Simon “amazing & frustrating” (&Stu said “exciting and terrifying” on the last post) 2009 will be all of this and more. To me that means we are getting closer to whatever it is we need to do.
I love relenting control, being uncertain and not knowing the answers for that is when the best stuff happens. A right brain renaissance? “the less you use your reigns, the more we use our brains”, bring it on.
I forgot to quote my favourite part out of the SoR where it gives an example of how the machines might be personalised in order to encourage students to take ownership and look after them:
“the ability to insert a printed sheet of paper into the lid or protective case”
Yep, that’ll do it.
Although I’ve got a better suggestion. Each one of the machines comes with a certain fruit logo on it – the students manage to look after their iPods and iPhones.
Another provocative one eh Tony?
Selection of the notebook is only a *small part* of the overall solution that needs to be put in place. For a start, I would hate to see ANY of these devices delivered into schools before we get a saturated, managed wireless solution in place in every high school. These need to be “turn-on and connect” – untethered by power cord or patch lead. A school of a thousand students might expect over 600 of these devices from years 9 to 12 (over the four years). That’s a lot of wireless bandwidth and broadband internet bandwidth that will be required.
Saturated wireless is not a simple thing to install. These are not $60 D-Link devices from Harvey Norman. If each access point will comfortably handle say 15 devices, where are the concentrations of years 9-12 students going to be? How many will we need in B Block as opposed to C Block? Do more need to be upstairs or downstairs? Are they needed more at the front of the building than the back? Are we expecting access in the playground or on the oval?
Then once you work out where the access points need to go, someone needs to come in and physically install all this stuff [into 571 high and central schools]. A large school may end up with 60 or more access points. All will require new cabling installed so they can go up high and out of the way and all will need to be centrally configured by someone.
Without all that, none of this is going to work. Fortunately, that’s the second tender evaluation that’s happening right now, but it leaves us very little time for installation.
Ben’s concern about “what is accessed” can’t be dismissed by expectations that “filters will stop them”. How exactly does a teacher keep all 25 or 30 of her students on task when they have an internet-connected CLD on their table in front of them? The expectation from the students is that they will be able to use their CLD in class. And there are plenty of sites on the Internet that aren’t blocked that may well be more interesting to the student than what the teacher is saying.
We’ve only begun to touch on all the hurdles we’ll need to overcome for this digital education revolution to truly be one.
Again, very very interesting debate starting to evolve…
Adapting the phyiscal classroom will also be a barrier. Great if you have your own room or are confident enough to deal with, um, a more traditional teacher setting. I won’t have students sitting in row after row, facing my desk and the chalk board down the front…I envision my own labtop attached to a smart board or a simple data projector.
I also hope this whole thing will lead more to teacher-students ‘doing’…
It is about a culture, developing one that is ingrained and entrenched within each school, each classroom. I know that we will see great things happening in one classroom and soon enough the students in the room next door (hopefully the parents as well) will want a piece of the pie. We will almost have to start in an area of negative, to allow us to build it back up to something.
Ben nailed it “Without having the teacher’s framework in place, the machines are pretty much useless” This highlights the real digital divide. Give a hammer, 2 options, whack wildy & destroy or construct a thing of lasting beauty?
If no one else will I’ll give an Apple to teacher Simon, tick, ahhh the distant memories, now THAT would be a revolution.
Stu’s deep wisdom re wireless and the practicalities of the oh so tight implementation timetable, all finished by Februray 2010. Oval and playground, absolutely why not? Let them play, there.
The potential disruption of Stu’s great question is one all schools have planned for we trust;
“How exactly does a teacher keep all 25 or 30 of their students on task when they have an internet-connected CLD on their table in front of them?” is exactly where the pedagogical discussion, the real revolution if you like, starts.
As threatening as this reality is most students do comply by “unplugging on entry” powering down and patiently tolerating a largely 1900 style ‘education’. No wonder there is a flurry and reconnection in the breaks.
Our real learning task is to transform and merge the two. Tough? very. Needed? absolutely. Why not credit & formatively assess it as ‘real learning’ whilst we’re at it. Then all stakeholders will take this learning far more seriously and actually embed it as standard practice.
I know I’d be multi tasking during boring chalk and talk PD sessions (thats IF teachers even receive one)
I have been using a laptop of some description since 2003 for various reasons. The main use of my laptop has been to take notes in class.
I have been blessed by having some of the most passionate, and interesting teachers & lecturers throughout my education. I have also had some of the most boring and disinterested as well. Ever since my laptop had wireless though, a lecturer has had to be A-grade to hold my attention, otherwise I find myself wandering. And not just to Facebook, webcomics or anything like that. If a lecturer said that http://www.dfat.gov.au was a good website, and I got a bit bored, you know what? I’d go there, lose the train of the lesson, and they may as well be talking quantum mechanics to me.
I am very skeptical about filters and the like as well. One particular institution I attended apparently had one of the strictest filters in the country. It took myself and two friends three days to crack it. None of us were IT students, and only one of us had any form of programming experience. Even if there is some form of lock-down system in place on these systems that teachers can activate – it needs to be very hard to circumvent. Ever since I did my first ever IT class in high school – back in 1998, if a teacher did a lockdown on the computer systems, the entire room had start-up sounds within 5 minutes as everyone rebooted their systems, and circumvented the lockdown.
Finally, as Stu put it – saturated networks are a mongrel to install. Getting a wireless network going for more than 10 computers is a miracle in the first place. Getting enough coverage for an entire school, getting security systems and firewalls in place for each one, and then making sure no classrooms have blackspots is the real challenge. Then there’s the fingers and toes crossed that nobody trips over a cable, or there’s the storm that knocks the blessed thing out 2 days before the trial HSC’s, etc. Oh, not to mention ensuring there is no IP address conflicts or crossover in the signals between floors or buildings right next to each other. Then the fun would really begin!
Here’s hoping that DET are smart enough to realise all these potential issues, get substantial feedback on what the chalkface issues are, and get people competent enough to do the job. If not, then it’ll just be a truck with no wheels. Useful for holding stuff, but not much else.
Troy
Yes moving rooms is an interesting life for secondary teachers. The physical layout of many “modern rooms” reminds me of a second grade class of my 1960’s, woe!(sic) Others have asked “Do secondary teachers spend enough time in teaching spaces, alone?” Thinking, looking, arranging, decorating, improving, NOT just teaching. Our faculty tried a little PD on this and it brought positive changes even for most who do not have the luxury of a home room. The space we call learning, is better, it has affected the culture significantly.
Your other point re ‘culture’ & engagement is so important. When our year 9’s receive their CLD our first assessment, ‘Hey!, Check this Out’ will be a parent/teacher/community PBL, survey and group report, centred on the emergence and use of our new CLDs. The questions, this time coming from a student perspective will target, reflect and repeat many of our shared & discussed PD goals, the ones already in our campus ICT plan. Might get the pedagogical ball rolling a bit and satisfy many con-current goals.
Ben. your point
“I am very skeptical about filters and the like as well.”
Try doing a year 8 history topic on Medieval weapons, our DET pipes are so tight it’s laughable. It does force better search technique so I’m not overly worried anymore.
DET CIO Wilson had this to say re filters ” “Our internet filtering is unbreakable. We have a huge proxy array that does all the filtering. We’ve just brought that in-house and the reason we have done that is we want much tighter control over it,” said Wilson.
DET has developed 98 categories of websites that are accessible to students. “Every internet site that’s known is actually categorised. If it isn’t known, it’s blocked. If you go to a site and it’s not categorised you can’t get to it,” he said.
“I know that the Commonwealth introduced an internet filtering initiative that a high school student broke, or claimed to have broken, very quickly. I just want you to understand ours is completely different. We’re at the end of the pipe and nothing goes through that pipe that doesn’t get filtered,” he said.
full article ZD Net 24/10/08 http://tinyurl.com/6g8b9r
Great discussion people, given me much to consider, hope some more ideas get thrown in the ring. My truck is sure to get a few punctures Ben, always have, you know that!
Latest News Update: High School Teachers in New South Wales to receive a wireless mini-laptop computer just like their senior students.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/teachers-in-laptop-of-luxury/2009/01/31/1232818794645.html
I’m sure it will help the teachers to have access to the same devices their students have. But is it enough?
I told some English teachers today that they will have entire classes of students bringing CLDs to class, in less than 6 months’ time. The teachers just blinked at me – I don’t think it’s sunk in for them yet!
But I think it’s a great idea for teachers to be supplied CLDs as well – it will give them an opportunity to practise their skills. Although I’m very scared about how far behind some of our teachers are. e.g. Some don’t know how to send an email. They need help but they don’t even realise how behind they are!
Not to worry Eddie, I have heard that in order to ensure teacher productivity does not drop with the introduction of personal CLDs for staff, some teachers can request that the keys on the keyboard of their CLD be arranged in alphabetical order.
Stu
Thanks for the update, logic is seen to prevail and I too wonder if its enough.
TPL is king now for pedagogical shift NOT learning the technology.(although that too will need to be urgently addressed in some places)
Why that decision wasn’t explicitly announced when the idea was first mooted I’ll never know.
Is that another sign of “left hand right hand” disparity within DET NSW?
Eddie
Thanks for stopping by.
The support, planning and uptake by staff is critical, as always, but this time we have the expensive resource first.
The DET have put the cart before the horse, “ready, fire, aim” style and now will wait for alignment/catch up/panic at local levels. This model of change can have enormous benefits at local levels who are ready but a great danger of the opposite in other places. Excited or scared? Opportunity or stymie? I wonder?
Effective change will only come from within each school and that is really the issue many are concerned about, the solutions have been left to leaders/teachers in schools, the ultimate devolution. It reflects the way PD has been heading for at least a decade, I just wish the heavy handed mandated SDD PD was not dumped on us as well. DET NSW wants their cake and eat it too it seems. They must make a decision one way or the other.
Now we have the car first, but do we have the license to operate them safely? I also question if those imposing these changes get it themselves.
Do they use high order,1:1 web2.0, online, engaging lessons when instructing us? I have not seen it yet, especially with the antiquated portal, masquerading as good online practice.