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Laptops Lighten the Load
Providing Better Feedback
Why We Use
Bits & Bytes
Four Ways to Motivate Difficult People
Q & A with Richard Brown

 

Laptops Lighten the Load
A Texas school district will soon replace students' weighty tomes with digital textbooks.

The average K–12 student carries almost one-fourth of his weight in books, says the American Occupational Therapy Association, which will sponsor National Backpack Awareness Day on September 22. But even more practical reasons are behind the Forney (TX) Independent School District's decision to equip 200 elementary-school students with their own 6.2-pound IBM ThinkPads loaded with digital textbooks and classic literature.

By giving fifth and sixth graders at Johnson Elementary School these units, the district embarks upon what may well be the most far-reaching digital textbook initiative at the K–12 level. Roger Geiger, Forney ISD's director of technology, cites a profound textbook shortage, rapidly aging titles, and weighty tomes as reasons for the move.

"In Texas, textbook allocations are based on a district's year-end population. With 25- to 30-percent annual growth, we've been caught short," he says.

For its part, IBM's content partner, Vital Source Technologies, has secured digital rights to a majority of Johnson's core texts. Each laptop will also hold 2,000 classic books, including Shakespeare's complete works.

Michael Schmedlen, an IBM regional manager, explains publishers' motivation to go digital. "If they can save overhead costs such as storage and distribution, that's encouraging. The potential for revenues drawn from updated editions is also very attractive to them."

Benefits aside, cost is a potential stumbling block for the future. Forney will spend $1,350 per student for hardware and texts. "We plan on keeping the units for three or four years, so that amount is spread out over the years," explains Geiger. "However, print textbooks cost $350 per student—and we don't buy those annually, either."

Forney's per-pupil expense, according to Schmedlen, is "mid-range to high-end." Geiger sees a lower per-student price point as essential to Forney's digital future: "It would be great to cut the price to $600 or so."

If successful, the program will expand first to middle schools, then to the high school, and finally to other elementary schools, says Geiger.

Providing Better Feedback
By Douglas Stone

Delivering feedback in the workplace is easy—when the news is good. But it's always tougher to express unfavorable observations. In tricky situations, you can try these helpful guidelines.

Feedback is a two-way conversation. Work to understand the other person's view of your feedback. Also make sure to learn his own perception of his strengths and weaknesses. Remember, it's OK to disagree. The goal is mutual understanding.

Frame your comments in a broader context. If the recipient believes that your motivation is to help him improve professionally, he will more likely accept the feedback. The better your relationship, the easier it is to give effective input. Also, feedback shouldn't take place solely in annual meetings. Optimally, it is a constant process.

Be specific about positives. People learn as much from their successes as from their failures, so analyze the anatomy of successful initiatives. You may say, "The way you've been handling Matthew seems to be really helping him. Let's examine your technique—we can both learn from what you've been doing there."

Distinguish between evaluation and coaching. If a feedback session includes an evaluation—any assessment that impacts a person's compensation, status, or advancement—those comments will reverberate. It's almost impossible to take in any other information simultaneously. So separate coaching from evaluation. Assess the person first. Then, in a separate meeting, offer advice and encouragement on areas that need improvement.

Find out what type of coaching helps most. Some people want and/or need a kick in the pants. Others require nurturing. While you can't be all things to all people, you can inquire as to what the other person prefers in terms of coaching style. It shouldn't impact the content of what you say, but it might affect how you say it.

Douglas Stone (dstone@post.harvard.edu) is a Harvard Law School lecturer, a partner at Triad Consulting, and coauthor of Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (Penguin, 1999). He is also coauthor of Real College: The Essential Guide to Student Life, due from Penguin this month.

Why We Use

WEATHERBUG ACHIEVE
AWS Convergence Technologies, Inc.
(800) 544-4429, ext. 2
www.weatherbugachieve.com

WHAT IT IS: WeatherBug Achieve lets a school establish its own weather station. Instructors can collect, organize, and analyze real-time climatic statistics while using the system's suggested lesson plans to teach students about the atmosphere. A new Internet-based version provides comparative data from more than 7,000 school-based WeatherBug stations nationwide.

WHO RECOMMENDS IT: Jack Greene, science coordinator for the Fairfax County (VA) Public School District

GREENE: "We're now field-testing the Internet-based version of WeatherBug Achieve. We've used the previous CD-based version for more than 10 years.

"WeatherBug holds students' interest because students experience the numbers. Younger children grasp visually depicted data much better.

"Its mapping feature for social studies teaching lends itself well to math and liberal arts classes. You can blow up a map of Virginia, for example, and chart the difference in temperature between the tidal basin and the mountains. That's also a good segue into conversations about local industries and the overall economy.

"When Hurricane Isabel hit the Outer Banks in September 2003, we compared the weather data from Kitty Hawk (North Carolina) to our own. Kids respond to real-time data that affects them; there's a better potential for retention and impact. Not many programs can use real data in this way."

Bits & Bytes
No-cost distance learning software and technology advice? Sometimes there really is such a thing as a free lunch.
By Pamela Wheaton Shorr

I can't help being excited about some terrific, free computer resources I've found—especially in the wake of school-budget crises. For starters, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is GOING THE DISTANCE for districts seeking a low-risk approach to supplementing their science instruction. Schools can now freely tap the resources of MIT's OpenCourseWare project (ocw.mit.edu/index.html), where they'll find materials from more than 700 MIT classes. The site's lecture videos and top-of-the-line research are awesome resources for science teachers and gifted students.

Capitalizing on its distance-learning acumen, MIT has also just released Caddie.Net. This free software, written by Professor John Williams, lets you set up and manage a distance-learning program. Williams says Caddie.Net is "easier to manage" than such traditional portal-builders as WebCT and BlackBoard. If you want to spend some time in Cambridge, he'll be teaching a summer course on extending the system. For more information, visit http://portals.mit.edu/portalfactory.

SOMETIMES YOU NEED A LITTLE HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS, RIGHT?
Administrators recognize the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) as a smart source for ed-tech advice. Now, with the release of its second-annual National Leadership Institute (NLI) Toolkit, I see the organization's "stock" on the upturn. States Helping States Implement No Child Left Behind includes hands-on tools for such trouble areas as data collection and professional development—and offers real-world solutions. I liked the recounting of how Louisiana paid for streaming video of educational public-television materials to schools by leasing office space to a football league. Get some wisdom on those pesky "Nickleby" (NCLB) mandates at www.setda.org.

TOM SNYDER IS GETTING BRAINY. Last month's reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) tightened reading-education standards for students with disabilities. Thankfully, the folks at the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) have created Thinking Reader, a program developed in conjuction with Tom Snyder Software. It's "way ahead of the standards," says David Rose, Ph.D, CAST's co-executive director.

To compensate for various deficiencies in cognitive processes, this system's multiple interfaces help fifth- to eighth-grade students improve their learning techniques. For example, they can read online or audio versions of such popular books as The Giver, by Lois Lowry. When it's time to summarize the plot or analyze characters, students get help from interactive avatars. There's even a Spanish translation of vocabulary words for ESL/ELL students.

Pam Jack, instructional tech coordinator for Union County Schools in Monroe, North Carolina, recently purchased the product for her district's special education curriculum, and thinks it will become part of mainstream reading instruction because of its "incredible flexibility."

Pamela Wheaton Shorr is a contributing writer to Scholastic Administr@tor. She wrote last month's story on Harford County (MD) Schools.

Four Ways to Motivate Difficult People

Motivational speaker, author, and former corporate officer Anne Barab (anne@annebarab.com) is a three-term trustee in the Richardson (TX) Independent School District. She has been recognized as a Master Trustee by the Texas Association of School Boards Leadership program. Barab offers these tips in dealing with hard-to-manage staffers:

1. Stay focused. Concentrate on your mission's short- and long-term goals—and request that others do so, too. This mind-set keeps you from going off on negative tangents with
troublesome people.

2. Remain flexible. Your way is hardly the only way. Accepting that fact really can make life easier. Most disagreements are about unimportant details. Pick your core issues carefully and let the rest of the minutiae slide.

3. Organize to your own comfort level. When you feel disorganized, you also tend to feel overwhelmed, crabby, and more judgmental about your difficult people. Lighten-up on yourself. Good organization is about functioning at your best and feeling in control of your personal space.

4. Be proactive. Are you part of the problem instead of the solution? Ask "How can we make this better?" and "What can we do about this?" Such questions lead to more meaningful exchanges with resistant personalities.

Q & A with Richard Brown

Richard Brown, Ph.D., is the director of psychometrics and research at Scantron, a
manufacturer of assessment hardware and applications. (Psychometrics is the theory and technique of mental measurement.) Brown's statisticians assure the validity and reliability of the company's testing and assessment products. Scholastic Administr@tor spoke with him recently regarding electronic testing methods.

How can we engage test-taking students?
Scantron is trying to make the testing process more engaging by incorporating paper-based strategies on a computer. For example, we can let a student cross out a wrong answer or mark a question for later review.

How do paper-and-pencil tests fall short?
They pose logistical and scheduling issues—and you may not get results for five months. During that time, you're dead in the water.

[Electronic testing] yields standards-based reporting. Getting such information is more useful to teachers and administrators because it lets them see which skills and standards students find difficult.

What are electronic-testing advantages?
Administrators want to maximize the impact [of their tests]. Using technology in this area yields more information more quickly. With an adaptive exam, you get immediate, meaningful results. Administrators can then explore ways to maximize results, such as developing teaching materials aligned to students' needs.

Tech-Support Success Stories
Find out how eight school technology experts have maintained stellar tech support to keep computers and software running and secure without slashing programs.

Buyer's Guide: Untethered Technology
Looking for the right wireless notebooks or handhelds for your schools? We've got you covered.

10 tips for School Technology Planning
Just a few years ago, the toughest thing about educational technology planning was not knowing what new wonder was going to pop out of the box next. Instant data warehousing! Wireless for everyone! Your entire multimedia curriculum on a handheld! Now the threat of economic hard times makes it even harder to see what may be emerging up ahead.