Bandwidth: the Bottom Line

Dear friends,

I have often said that every conversation about technology in schools boils down to one about bandwidth. It doesn't matter how many netbooks, iPads, or other hardware a school can manage to purchase, if a child has to wait 15 seconds, or longer, for the results of every click on a website or online resource for its results, the gains won't happen. Now that I'm striving to improve the quality of education in the Public Schools sector I understand the need to level the playing ground; and not only level it, but to raise it higher for all of our children, not just those in pricey private schools.

http://blog.edtechteam.com/2012/02/updated-ipad-for-educators-workshop.html

You don't need to know what a SIG is, or what ISTE is, or what any of the other plethora of acronyms we educators can come up with at the drop of a flying feather, this is important and deserves your attention and action. I received this email yesterday. Please take the 30 seconds it will take to jump through the very simple hoops needed to verify your digital signature on this petition. Help assure all children have the access they need to avail themselves of the opportunities that are afforded by developing online technologies:

Here's the letter:

Dear SIG Leadership Council,

Last week, ISTE submitted a petition to the White House regarding broadband access for students. We were able to get the 150 signatures needed for the petition to go up on the White House website, but there is still a long way to go to reach the 100,000 signatures needed by the end of April so that it goes in front of committees. It's an audacious goal, but one we're eyeing. Please share the link with your SIG listserves, professional networks, friends, families and colleagues and invite them to sign. Together, our voices will carry.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to support this critical advocacy initiative. April is Advocacy Month, and we're determined to make the most of it!

Here's the link: http://wh.gov/LVL7. 

Warmest regards,

Lauren Suveges

Volunteer Leadership Manager

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)

180 W. 8th Avenue, Suite 300

Eugene, OR 97401

Now use your clicks!

MNPS Virtual School Dedication--Check!!!

I'm very proud of the teamwork and dedication to excellence that helped make this day possible, as Dr. Jesse Register said "a very special day...because I am so proud of the work that is going on at the MNPS Virtual School." You at least owe it to yourself to hear his opening remarks, but what follows is also very very informative. Enjoy...

"Colin Merrick" is worth your listen...

...and purchase! I'm so proud of this studio project and I listen to it at least daily. Several themes have arisen in listeners' comments to me, chief amongst which is that most young songwriter/singers' efforts seem to be trying to copy some star or other and that Colin's work is fresh and original in a way no one seems to be able really to quantify. See if you don't agree, then...

or

You'll enjoy it, I can promise!

The Wait is OVER! Get "Colin Merrick" Today!

Hey all,

Colin Merrick

Just to share with you, the fantastic music that I've heard grow from acoustic guitar and vocal, to added rich harmonies, to additional electronic and percussive instrumentation, over the course of the last year and become something I listen to at least five times a week, well, it's HERE, the eponymous debut CD from my boy, my son, my Colin.You can listen to it now too! Finally, he's YOUR Colin, too!

If  you give it a listen you'll love it, and all 5 songs just get better with repeated playings. Fantastic production by David Spencer Music (with Colin's help) and beautiful lyrical writing by Colin (with David's help) throughout. The ballad "This Town" features Colin's beautiful sister, Miranda, with spot-on sensitive harmony and a hauntingly lovely cello line by Cara Fox. There are musical treats in every song, certainly enhanced by the final masters by famed Brad Blackwood for Euphonic Masters. Blackwood won a Grammy in 2012 for his engineering work on a chart-blaster Alison Kraus and Union Station single.

I have no favorite song: Each one is my favorite! Give it a listen and a download. We thank you in advance and we say "you're welcome" as well! If you're local and want your own copy, it'll be at Grimey's tomorrow or the next day and I have some on me at the more than fair price of $6 or $10 for 2. If you're not and want a CD, CDBaby has them for $7 and their download is $5. Fb me and we'll work out a time to pick up...

Happy Presidents' Day and a bit of news re MNPS Virtual School

Things move apace here at MNPS Virtual School. Though it's a holiday for students and a Professional Day for teachers, our whole team (5 dynamic individuals) are each and every one of us in to work today, working working working. We are providing a valuable service to district students over this upcoming Spring "Intersession" the first week of the district's first two-week long Spring Break and Spring Break itself), providing "Bridge Math Intensive," our first real foray into the world of Blended Learning. Students, for a nominal registration fee, will complete in two weeks a course normally running a full 18 week semester. It will be online, but every morning of the 9 days the students attend our physical School, they will work mornings with two stellar online (and classroom) math teachers, then after lunch they will attend intense Math Lab and continue working in small groups with yet another wonderful teacher.

Bridge Math Intensive--and the intensive effort it will require on the part of teachers, administration, and students--will be of particular help to Seniors who may only lack that 5th math in order to graduate on time.

This is what continually amazes me about the teachers with whom we work. Sure, it's an opportunity for them to pick up a little extra money over their Break, but believe me, they are not doing it for the money. They care. They care deeply. In addition to customized registration procedures for BMI (no, not the songwriter's licensing agency--Bridge Math Intensive), we're working this week to open registration for our Summer Success Program, an 8 week fee-based (and no, funding does not happen for summer school locally or, to my knowledge, anywhere in the state) during which students will complete a half-credit course (often one semester of a year long class) for credit. This will require its own set of procedures and mechanisms for registration and delivery. Finally, we're working on new mechanisms and procedures for registration for school year 2013-14. I posted on Facebook last week a status that may have sounded a bit smug or facetious, but I meant every word of it. To quote:

Scott Merrick -- February 13 in Nashville

I'm so glad to be in a workplace where all team members are recognized for their contributions and talents and where continuous improvement is more than a buzz phrase--it's an ever-present challenge and imperative. Thanks MNPS Virtual School and Metro Nashville Public Schools.

Be sure to tune in to Newschannel5+ (Comcast channel 250 locally) Wednesday night at 7PM until 8 to watch our esteemed Principal, Dr. James Witty, and our similarly esteemed District Superintendent of Schools Dr. Jesse Register answer community questions about Virtual School and the way we're doing it here in Nashville Public Schools: We believe we're constantly improving the right way to do it.

 Back to work, y'all. No rest for the innovative. Happy Presidents' Day!

The Equity Gap Infographic

From Tess Pajaron in Aussieland, this fascinating look at how economic status relates to academic performance (as measured by testing) across the globe. I was particularly surprised to see the math performance in the U.S. See what you think:

An Infographic by Open Colleges

Teaser!

This is a visual taste of an audio treat. Coming soon to an iTunes and a CDBaby and a music store near you! Watch colinmerrickdotcom for announcements and one draft track! (#prouddad)

Bathwater, No Baby

I've spent portions of this week working to update our school's website at http://vlearn.mnps.org to reflect the realities surrounding the start up of Spring 2013's semester. I'm most proud of the faculty page at http://www.vlearn.mnps.org/Page83425.aspx, which displays the smiling faces of the 25 adjunct teachers who will facilitate the progress of our (nearly 100 now) full-time online students and our part-timers in the 23 MNPS high schools we serve, along with the handful of beta program middle schools where we have Middle Schoolers taking high school courses for advanced high school credit. These dedicated human beings are mostly full-time MNPS teachers, with a few retired ones and a few out of county teachers. Without exception, they believe in the future of online learning enough to take on more work in their work day in order to pioneer it.

This past week, it came to my attention that there is a small group of legislators who are mounting an initiative to (once again) ban virtual schools in our fair State. This seems to be a backlash from the documented failures of commercial providers' efforts in Tennessee, as noted in the following Google search results for "Tennessee Virtual School:"

1. For-profit virtual school drawing ire of TN lawmakers - WSMV ...

   www.wsmv.com/.../for-profit-virtual-school-drawing-ire-of-tn...Share

   Sep 3, 2012 – Virtual schools are a relatively new, but a growing option, for education across Tennessee. Metro Schools started a public virtual school in 2010 ...
2. PolitiFact Tennessee | Chattanooga senator slaps virtual school ...

   www.politifact.com/tennessee/.../chattanooga-senator-slaps-virt...

   Oct 7, 2012 – More recently, Berke has led the charge against the state law allowing for "virtual schools" to set up shop in Tennessee counties. As the ...
3. TN virtual school draws criticism | wbir.com

   www.wbir.com/news/article/.../TN-virtual-school-draws-criticis...

   TN virtual school draws criticism. 10:26 AM, Sep 10, 2012 | comments. Tennessee Virtual Academy student Jalea Slater, 8, left, takes a spelling test from her ...
4. 
   

   
   

   Tennessee senator calls for inquiry of virtual school citing low test ...

   www.commercialappeal.com/.../tennessee-senator-calls-for-inq...

   Aug 31, 2012 – A Chattanooga senator is pressing for an inquiry into the for-profit Tennessee Virtual Academy after seeing test scores he describes as 'dismal..."

   While these news and blog posts seem to point to a failure of online learning in our state, I want to go on record to suggest that Senator Berke and others would be doing a total disservice to the future of education in Tennessee to revert to the past prior to 2010, when it was against the law to educate students online. At MNPS Virtual School, the first official virtual Public School in our State, we have been tirelessly working since 2009 to craft sets of policies, processes, and courses that not only work for students, but that provide in many cases more rigorous, more challenging, and more academically engaging educational experiences for students than those available in bricks and mortar classrooms, be they public or private or in homeschool situations. 
   

   Our Principal, Dr. James Witty, comes to us from an accomplished career dedicated to Alternative Education.  As stated on our school's "Administration and Staff" page, Dr. Witty ",,,brings a wealth of experience and expertise in nontraditional educational methods. He most recently managed more than 60 educational reform initiatives for Metro Schools as the Race to the Top Grant Manager for MNPS. Previously, he served as the Director of the Center for Dropout Prevention, creating and launching a resource center for the Tennessee Department of Education. Dr. Witty also has expertise in out-of-school learning, previously serving as a Director for Extended Learning for the Murfreesboro City School District."

   At ISTE 2009 in Denver, Colorado, Dr. Kecia Ray, MNPS Executive Director for Instructional Technology and now incoming ISTE President, approached my dear wife Lee Ann on the veranda of her sister's historic Denver home during a party, looked her in the eye and told her "I'm going to steal your husband." She clarified that she intended to "steal" me away from my 14 year career at University School of Nashville to help her make her vision for online learning work for our school district's 80,000+ students. Along with Coordinator Barbara Thoeming, I began this labor of love within the month. We nurtured options along as a program with a small dedicated team until laws changed, we became a School, and Barbara moved along elsewhere in her career, making room for Dr. Witty to come on board, similarly walking away from his own successful and contributive career to help turn vision into reality.

   
   

   As of yesterday, we are serving right at 700 individual class "seats" to our students with a staff of 5 full-time professionals and 25 Adjunct Teachers. We offer a new paradigm of accountability with our "Performance = Attendance" policies. We have in place a communication system of "Performance Concern" which supports students in a timely and effective manner through communication with parents, school counselors, and students. We underscore every module in every online course with a "Discussion Based Assessment" graded in accordance with a rubric made available to students even before they sign in to their course for the first time. This DBA is simply a structured (telephone or Skype call) conversation between instructor and student about the learning they have just mastered. We offer 24/7 online tutoring to many of our students via Grade Results. Our teachers deliver regular tutoring opportunities in our Thomas W. Hatfield Student Success Center up until 5 pm after school on a regular basis. We provide in-person orientations for teachers, students, and parents, supported by separate 50+ page handbooks for Full-Time and Part-Time students. We are continually evolving in the spirit of student support and accountability. We rock.
   

   

   Thomas W. Hatfield Student Success Center at MNPS Virtu@l School

   Come see us, Senator Berke: We are open for the business of learning and teaching. Please don't throw out our baby with your bathwater.

ISTE CONNECTED EDUCATOR--ONGOING!

Crossposted from Oh! Virtual Learning! 

 I'm so proud of this. ISTE SIGVE has continued producing "nearly monthly" "Connected Educator" Google Hangouts to share resources and new developments in virtual worlds ever since the US Department of Education's Connected Educator Month back in August 2012. I am proud to say that I have, really, nothing to do with this.

Why in the world(s) do I say that?

Because back in 2009, when we founded ISTE's "Special Interest Group (SIG) for Virtual Environments," I worked pretty hard on it. I gathered consensus, formed a plan for proposal, wrote a proposal, and jumped through necessary hoops to get the largest and most diverse international organization for technology in education to recognize our tribe as an official SIG. Once we were official, the real work began: We built on an annual "Playground" at the international conference into an event of importance. We took on monthly Second Life "speaker sessions" in the tradition developed by our esteemed pioneeer Kevin Jarret (KJ Hax in Second Life), monthly sessions that continue to this day and show no signs of cessation. We salvaged ISTE's bailout (not in the Obama General Motors sense, but in the "jump ship" sense) from investment in virtual environments by an orderly (though sometimes painful) process of committee, a process which resulted in the founding of ISTE SIGVE in Second Life, a robust and actually growing community that continues to evidence new talent and innovation.

That's why. The community is thriving in ways I have nothing to do with. It's oh so much bigger than I, bigger than any individual. Sure, there are primary movers, most notably like Karen Novak, aka Kae, aks Qae, aka so many other aka's. Like Andy, aka Spiff. Like Blubarker, aka Blubarker. Like Knowclue, and Maggie, and Gridjumper, and Lucas, and Rosie, and Bob, and Gordon, and on and on and on. My apologies if I left your name off this post, you know who you are, and so do I, and so does our tribe.

My gift to all of you is this: One day you'll see some really great stuff develop out of ISTE SIGVE that you have, really, nothing to do with. That will make you proud. We are so much bigger than any individual, yet so dependent on individual initiatives and innovations. Now, if you haven't, watch the latest ISTE SIGVE Connected Educator installment, this one featuring our best asset, our children and their parents. Listen and learn...

Help Re-envision the Virtual Environments Playground!

Help yourself to this, and help ISTE SIGVE radically rethink its Virtual Environments Playground for ISTE 2013 in San Antonio, Texas. Pretty please?

Created with Wallwisher

Help! Now! Voting Ends Sunday!

I was in a meeting today with my dear friend (and ISTE President) Dr. Kecia Ray, and she introduced me as an internationally recognized expert in the field of 3D virtual learning. That felt good, even though I tend to run from the room anytime anyone invokes the "e" word. Help us kinda sorta prove that. Daily, from each device you have with a unique IP addie, visit http://edublogawards.com/vote-here/, and vote (at least) in the Social Network category for ISTE-SIGVE. Help make this happen. It'll be huge, at least in a small way. 11:59 Sunday night, from I think Eastern time zone, it's over. You know what you need (and want) to do. Sincerely, with hugs from Nashville, Tennesee, Scott