December+2013

December 2013
The month of December got off to a very different start for me. I had an opportunity to fly to Atlanta, Georgia, for the [|International 1:1 Computing conference], which was sponsored in part by the [|Canadian Education Association]Several members of our School Division attended the conference, including our information technology director, [|Clarke Hagan].

The conference was quick- two days long, and since our hotel was also the conference site I didn't see much of Atlanta. On the flip side, I did get to meet Alicia Banuelos, Ron Canuel, and a delegation from Joplin, talking about their rebuilding efforts after a [|tornado destroyed their school] in 2011.

[|Alicia Banuelos] is an Educator, Physicist, and University Rector from San Luis, Argentina. The San Luis region has created an impressive 1 to 1 public education infrastructure including [|accessible wi fi]and computers for all students. I was impressed by the connections between citizenship and the rights of citizens to have access to the internet. Here in Canada (and in the US as well) the internet is still very much a fee for service, private sector buisness. In San Luis Argentina they have democratized, and to an extent nationalized the internet infrastructure to put it into the hands of schoolchildren.

Thinking about an internet for all brought to mind Google's "[|Project Loon]", which is a scheme to combine weather balloons with high powered wifi and a satellite uplinks to take advantage of trade winds and thereby spread internet access more widely around the world. It sounds far fetched, but then again, so did most of the technology we use today when we thought about it just a few years back. The internet seems pretty global, but there are many places (and therefore, schools) that have no access whatsoever.

However, I don't have to look very far to find places with no internet. I live in [|Manitoba], a Province that is twice the size of the United Kingdom, but our population is only about 1.3 million people, and most of that (789,000) is concentrated in one city. There are HUGE sections of Manitoba without wifi or cell phone service. Finding ways to make it possible for more people to have access to info-tech infrastructure will continue to challenge all countries, including Argentina and Canada.

The Canadian connection at the Atlanta conference was curious, but it was good to meet many educators from Ontario and Quebec. It was also inspiring to hear a rather forceful and blunt keynote from [|Ron Canuel] about the need for change in education, and the reasons for the slow uptake of 1 to 1 education in North America. Ron was very well spoken and had a clear message. It would be good to have him travel to Manitoba to wrestle through the uptake of ed tech with a variety of local and Provincial decision makers. Ron, if you're reading this, drop by Manitoba some time soon.

Sometimes Twitter is really good for networking, but conferences provide another way to get to know people as well. For example, I started following [|Gord Dahlby] on Twitter years ago, and so it was nice to be able to sit down with him over lunch and talk about the problems of "the last mile" in connection to internet access and public education. I also met [|Pierre Poulin] who heads up the [|iClasse] initiative in Montreal and [|Mark Carbone], the Chief Information Officer for the [|Waterloo Region school board] in Ontario. Finding people on Twitter is one thing, but hearing them present at a conference and getting to swap ideas is a much richer experience. It is good to know that people in every region of Canada are thinking about how to best leverage information technology for learning. The projects going on in Montreal and Waterloo are impressive, and help me to remain inspired to continue working towards a broader acceptance and uptake of 1 to 1 here in Manitoba as well.

The session that struck me the most was presented by members of the Joplin Schools District, in Joplin, Missouri. In 2011 a category 5 tornado ripped through Joplin, destroying everything in its path. Over the past three two and a half years since the tornado the community has been in the recovery process, and [|the schools in Joplin have come back in a new and different way], embracing a forward stance on information technology, 1 to 1 implementation, and using open source and free internet tools wherever possible. It made me wonder about how tragedy and loss can lead to opportunity as well. Sad stories can have better endings, happy ones even. It will be curious to see how Joplin Schools move forward now that the bricks and mortar are rebuilt, and they move forward with new pedagogy as well.

So the trip to Atlanta was a whirlwind. The rest of December flew by as well since I am teaching four English courses and also working on coursework with the University of Calgary. Closer to home, it has been good to go through [|Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School] by Hargreaves and Fullan. Six of us here at Dakota Collegiate have formed a PLC to read the book and see how we might apply it in our professional practice. Nice to work for a school where teacher directed PD is supported with funding. It was a busy month, to be sure!

2013 was a very full year full of twists and turns and new adventures. I certainly could not have known that I'd end up in Atlanta. Already (as I write this in January) 2014 is shaping up to be another year with many potential adventures already on the horizon. I find myself thinking about the [|50th Anniversary of our school this Spring], and the fact that in September of this year all of the students at Dakota Collegiate will be bringing thier own computers to classes every day. Carrying your own computer to class is completely normal for our current grade 11 class; it is the only form of high school that they have ever known. How long will it be until more students have the opportunities provided by a 1 to 1 bring your own device school? I doubt that many would have imagined this future for Dakota Collegiate when the school graduated its first class in 1964.

Schooling is changing, learning is changing, and certainly the teaching profession is changing as well. Learning how to live within the flow of the age of continual change is a challenge, but there really is no way to stop the ride and sit on the sidelines. Besides, what fun whould there be in that anyways? //Onward with 2014. [|Seek the Truth, Strive for Excellence.]//