Shift to the Future

As I am out visiting schools, participating in District meetings, or other contexts, I often find myself either presenting or in conversations about my vision for technology and learning.  I recently wrote and presented a set of strategies to focus our efforts in implementing technology at the VSB .  We need to sustainably invest in three areas: Infrastructure (computing, storage, and network), Equity (tools/devices for students and staff, technical support), and Learning & Work Systems. My aim is that infrastructure becomes a utility type service that we don’t really need to talk about in the future.  Rather it is funded like electricity where there’s always enough and it’s always on.  Behind the scenes we replace and upgrade every five years or so taking advantage of Moore’s law where we get more (speed, capacity) for less cost.  Infrastructure is the “oxygen” of a learning ecosystem and is an essential component for technology powered learning and work....

I think that it is getting more complicated for school districts to decide what to buy or build and what to leverage for technology learning spaces.  The past few years have brought so many options, many for free, out on the public Internet.  Tech savvy teachers are taking their students to wiki, blog, google docs, social networking, social bookmarking, video sharing, and other spaces on the public Internet.  There are so many fantastic tools available for free. There are some challenges though with just using what’s out there on the Internet… privacy law issues, especially for Canadians, and more so for British Columbians (obligation to protect student identity) multiple digital identities to create and manage (this seems to be evolving though – often a user can login with their google, twitter, or facebook account) different tools have different setup and navigation details = complexity for less tech savvy teachers (kids care less about this though) c...

“ my43 is a virtual community that transforms the learning and work in our School District to prepare students for the future. ”  In 2004 we began a journey in my School District to define, design, and develop a learning portal.  In 2007 we launched my43!  Now this isn’t really a technology initiative, rather it is an organizational change effort that we expect will take until 2017 to really call complete.  It takes a lot of work to change an organization (people)systemically.  Anyway, my43 (a private and secure technology powered learning environment)  is a number of things: District Intranet to support the business of education for staff only (includes human resources, payroll, financial functions and news, announcements, blogs, documents, presentations, contacts, information bulletins, …) School Intranet for each school to collaborate with staff and students (calendars, announcements, pictures, blogs, documents, forms, …) Virtual Classroo...