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The Trifecta for
Transforming Education:
Making big dreams
possible with small budgets using virtualization technologies
Introduction
Technology is at
its best when it facilitates communica-tion, engagement, interaction and
understanding. This was brought to life by Karen Cator, director of the
Federal Office of Education Technology, when she toured the Mooresville
Graded School District in Mooresville, N.C.,
in 2011. Cator explains that she
was blown away by how the district has achieved a balance between
technological advancement and academic goals:
“In
several classrooms, I couldn’t tell where the front of the classroom was. On
one side of the room was an inter- active whiteboard; on another side, a
regular whiteboard; and the teacher’s desk was on a third side. The whole
space was a learning environment, and the technology was just part of the
infrastructure. In a high school class, students had chosen books and were
presenting to class- mates their digital visual representation of the theme
of the book. As they watched one another’s presentations, they were
entertained, yet the meaning of ‘theme’ was com- pletely clear, and they were
being exposed to a variety of literature. Although the subject wasn’t related
to technol- ogy, technology facilitated communication, engagement,
interaction and understanding.”1
Across the
nation, districts strive to achieve this type of balance. However, finding
the path to this balance is difficult. Increasing complexity and external
demands in the world of academia also interfere.
Most districts
must balance technology needs with academic goals — two demands that are
all-too-frequently at odds with each other: budget limitations on the one
hand and meeting performance standards and state and federal mandates on the
other.
In many
districts, administrators, officials and parents often see technology as a
panacea: “Invest in the latest and greatest solutions and all of the
challenges will disappear.” Most of the time, however, technology alone
doesn’t save the day.
That’s because
technology isn’t a magic elixir. Instead, most districts must balance
technology needs with academic goals — two demands that are
all-too-frequently at odds with each other: budget limitations on the one
hand, and meeting performance standards and state and fed- eral mandates on
the other. This constant push-and-pull can be exhausting even for districts
with the resources (and wherewithal) to get creative with solutions.
But there is at
least one path toward a coherent approach — an approach that addresses the
complexities in the world of academic technology and, at the same time,
highlights some of the best trends in computing today. The strategy takes
into account curricular and technology limits, yet strives to achieve more
with less. It’s flexible, scalable and eminently replicable in districts and
schools of every size. The solution has three parts. We call it the trifecta.
Explaining the
Trifecta
Good things come
in threes. The Holy Trinity. The Three Stooges. The three Great Pyramids at
Giza. Academic technology is no different. In order to transform education
with technology, in order to deliver a more compelling and cost-effective
approach to academic IT, schools and school
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districts must
embrace a tripartite strategy — a trifecta, if you will. These three calls to
action empower technolo- gists to overcome some of the challenges facing aca-
demic computing today. They are:
• Blending forms
of learning
• Looking for small wins that can blaze a path forward
•
Facilitating interactions and collaboration
In today’s world,
the trifecta is about putting technology to its best use. This paper will
describe the trifecta
in more detail and provide a few examples where this is
already happening. It will also explain how districts can take advantage of
advances in virtualization technology to achieve this three-part strategy and
make big dreams hap- pen on small budgets.
The Role of
Technology in Blended Learning
For the better
part of the last decade, instruction at the K-12 level (and, in many cases,
beyond) has come in two major flavors: face-to-face and online. Over the last
few years, however, a new model has emerged — a model
that combines both
traditional flavors into a new format that comprises both. This model,
appropriately dubbed “blended learning,” incorporates in-person lessons,
online lessons, chat and Web-enhanced lectures — extending the boundaries of
the classroom into the Internet environ- ment and beyond. Administrators are
able to offer more and varied resources, teachers are able to reach students
with different experiences and engagement levels, and students are given more
ways to learn and explore.
Achieving true
blended learning is more challenging than it seems and requires thoughtful
and careful application of technology in order to work. One of the
challenges is finding the right balance. Often, district administrators
mistake “blended” for simply moving learning online.
It’s more nuanced than
that. District leaders should ask themselves how much they want technology to
facilitate learning, in what subjects, and what percentage of the curriculum
online learning should represent.
Furthermore, an
ideal blended learning environment stems from a 1:1 computing environment
where each student has access to a personal device for self-paced,
personalized instruction to supplement classroom learning. Unfortunately,
many students still lack access to computing at home and according to
Broadband.gov, approximately 100 million Americans (teachers and students
included) still do not have broadband at home, making access to digital
content difficult.
MYTH Tablets Are the
Ultimate PC Today
Perception: Tablet computers,
with their sleek form-factors and lightning-fast computing power, are the
ultimate PC for the K-12 environment.
Reality: The reality of tablet
computing is more measured and balanced. Tablets are new and exciting, they
capture the imagination of both students and teachers, and enable new use
cases and collaboration than were previously possible. The flip side is that
there are limitations. The emphasis on the touch screen and the lack of
peripherals make them better for consuming information rather than creating
content. Other issues are the limited curriculum and applications built
specifically for tablet computing, application compatibility for existing
needs, and two that are often overlooked: a lack of sufficient network
infrastructure and a limited ability to centrally manage. At best, these
issues create hidden (or not so hidden) costs that can severely undermine
deployments. At worst, these limitations can completely derail technology
initiatives. The bottom line: Tablets aren’t the sole solution to learning
challenges. For some districts and schools, the high acquisition cost and the
inability to leverage existing PCs and equipment may limit tablet computing
for quite some time.
A successful
blended learning approach is facilitated by technology, but technology does
not define blended learning. An appropriate balance must be found to
seamlessly blend technology into daily curriculum. Professional development
for teachers must also be included to encourage adoption and build commitment
and confidence. When districts properly balance these initiatives, however,
the learning benefits follow as stud- ies have shown this type of blended
approach achieves the best academic results.2
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In a perfect
world, every school district across the country would have limitless
financial resources to procure all of the latest and greatest technology and
achieve access equity overnight. In reality, however, IT departments struggle
to operate within budgetary constraints and restrictions, making it difficult
to leverage technology to re-engineer the infrastructure with any degree of
consistency or urgency. Limited IT staffing also makes large deployments
and upgrade cycles extremely challenging. The fact is that budgets are and
likely always will be tight. Put simply, the current climate generally
prohibits the notion of transforming everything all at once.
Instead,
encourage small wins that can align with broader rollouts later. Since
attempting wholesale adoption runs headfirst into budget constraints — as
well as the usual problems associated with any large-scale and long
transformation — small wins can be the basis of accelerat- ing
honest-to-goodness change. Small wins provide the opportunity to “prove the
point” and help focus efforts and identify the strongest long-term
directions. They can also help districts and schools develop more entrepre-
neurial approaches and spirit; publicizing the results of these efforts can
encourage faster progress overall.
The key to
technology adoption in the current environment is cost-effective
decision-making and looking for short-term successes. Identify and support
small wins that advance sustained benefits for users and IT staff. Most
importantly, look for the wins that can scale to ben- efit more of your
constituents now and in the future. If choices don’t deliver more computing
seats per budget dollar, they’re not choices a district should be making in
the first place.
MYTH: Consumerization Transforms Everything Easily
Perception: The quicker your IT department overhauls the infrastructure with the latest and greatest tool from Vendor X, the better off your district’s IT department will be.
Reality: Don’t believe the hype; just because Vendor X says its new tool is great, it doesn’t mean it is or
that it will have the promised impact within your environment — in the timeframe and with the budget available. Especially in a tight budgetary climate, the best strategy for technology adoption is looking for technologies where you can demonstrate the value quickly and where there is short-term value and immediate cost-effectiveness. At the end of the day, it’s important to invest in technology that advances the curriculum and student performance, not technology that might satisfy a long-term vision or for technology’s sake itself. In short, districts shouldn’t succumb to political pressure for a complete fix-all — the best choices will demonstrate innovative uses of the technology, not just showcase innovative technologies.
Facilitating
Interactions and Collaboration
For the first
time in the history of computing, young people are interacting predominantly
through technology. They Facebook. They Tweet. They text. And they expect to
use these tools not just with classmates, but with teachers and even their
parents. In order for academic technologies to stay relevant among the most
critical user
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base,
technologies should be social in nature and facili- tate interactions and
collaboration. Student-facing technologies need to establish an environment
that students themselves are going to use and an environment in which
teachers, aides, tutors and even administrators can participate as well.
This can be a
double-edged sword. At its best, technol- ogy that facilitates interactions
and collaboration leads to more teamwork, group learning and interactive
understanding of big-picture concepts and themes. At its worst, such
technology can make it easier for students to cheat and exacerbate the
differences between the haves and have- nots and between those with expertise
and those without.
Ubiquity is
paramount when it comes to collaborative technologies; students will not
embrace them as routine unless the technologies are everywhere. This, of
course, comes back to the issue of access; the more prevalent and accessible
the technologies are, the more likely it is that students will use them and
actually interact with each other. Teachers can’t facilitate collaboration in
the class- room and beyond when their students don’t have conve- nient and
consistent access to computing.
Because of this,
delivering access should have priority over having the latest and greatest
technology when it comes to learning. When access is widespread, it facilitates collaborations such as students in New York and California teaming up
with students in India and China. It is also common for several schools in a
district to collabo- rate on a project together, or for a student who is
excelling in a particular subject to assist students at neighborhood schools
that may be struggling with the material. Unlike in the past, the appropriate
technology makes this possible regardless of the distance.
How Districts Can
Achieve the Trifecta
On paper, the
trifecta might seem like a tall order. Blended learning! Small wins in the
face of challenging constraints! Embracing technologies that facilitate collaboration! Many academic technologists would be satisfied accomplishing
even a part of one of these goals in a fiscal year, much less all three.
That’s why virtualization is such a revolutionary concept.
Virtualization, a
shared computing strategy that maximizes efficiency by centralizing
computing on higher performance servers that are easier to manage, is one
way to fulfill all three requirements of the trifecta. It achieves more with
less. It simplifies management. It provides
an environment for blended
learning and collaborative technology. It
also facilitates small wins with a technology that can evolve and scale.
Most important, virtualization enables big dreams with much lower budgets
than otherwise possible. Put simply, it is a critical strategy for
transforming education with technology.
The effort to
transform a district’s technology infrastructure through virtualization can
come from an individual school or a district — with the critical mass, other requisite
elements such as next-generation blended learning and teacher and
administrator training will follow quickly.
Following are
examples of a district and school that have utilized desktop virtualization
to transform education for the better for their students.
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St. Johns
County School District Goes Virtual
Three years ago,
technologists at St. Johns County School District in Florida were stumped.
New state mandates required computer-based assessments, and the district
needed to invest in new equipment quickly and effortlessly to make sure they
could comply.
This time around,
however, Chris Petrello, assistant director of technology support, didn’t
want to purchase traditional PCs. He wanted something different. The
solution: virtual machines.
Overnight, this
technology transformed St. Johns’ comput- ing infrastructure, re-creating
computer labs and practically tripling the number of machines available for
end user use.
This lecture
style undoubtedly played a role in St. Johns’ distinction as the
top-performing school district (by assess- ment scores, of course) in Florida
for 2011.
Still, the
technologist warns that virtualization, much like technology itself, isn’t a
cure-all. While the new technology has made management easier, it also has
required St. Johns to retrain IT staff to support a host of new programs on
the virtualized machines.
Although
virtualized machines lack the same computing power that traditional PCs do,
they are cheaper, require less energy to operate, and provide more than
enough power for student learning and experimentation.3
Staying
Flexible at the Oakland School for the Arts
In 2009, Director
of Technology David Smith — the sole overseer
of the IT operation for the
Oakland School for the Arts — decided
the school needed a different approach
to its 1:1 laptop program that it had embraced for years.
He completed an
extensive academic computing needs assessment and compiled a
set of
technology requirements. Once he had determined the requirements, he examined
the technology landscape and evalu- ated the options which were in line with
expected budgetary constraints. “Very quickly I determined that the
technology underlining virtual desktop infra- structure (VDI) had matured to
the point that I believed it was suf-
The purchase also
saved quite a bit of money; instead of paying between $600 and $1,000 per
unit, the district nabbed the virtual units for about $375 a piece.
“Our goal was to
get the most out of the technology,” he says. “I think we managed that well.”
Petrello notes
that the technology has facilitated a unique form of blended learning called
“flipped” lectures. Instead of lecturing and then giving students homework to
complete at home, educators are requesting (through the CMS) that students
complete assignments before class and are then teaching to those assignments
during the face-to-face classes.
ficient to handle
our short and longer-term academic student technology requirements,” Smith
says.
Smith selected
the virtual solution for four basic reasons:
• It was fiscally viable and
responsible.
• It could be supported with a staff of one.
• It would enhance
what the school already did educationally.
•
It was operationally effective.
Now that the
technology has been implemented and faculty members have been trained on how
to use it, Smith says for the most part, he just sits back and lets educators
do their thing.
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“I just make sure that the technology
is flexible enough to support whatever it is the teachers want to do,” he says,
noting that some educators alternate between in-class and online sessions,
while others stick mostly to one format for the duration of the year.
One challenge Smith recently
discovered was the con- tinual demand: “I can rarely get maintenance done
during school hours because I can’t get them out of student hands.”
Smith hails the technology for its
ease of use and
ease of deployment, as well as its flexibility. Management — of
the devices and of the content on them — has also been easy.
He adds that introducing new software
in response to student demand is another area in which the system has exceeded
expectations, over and over again.
“Deploying new features is another
area in which the technology has served me well,” he explains. “At the end of
[2011], a student requested software for photo-editing, by that afternoon we
had installed an open source solution.”
Currently, as part of an ongoing
pilot program, Smith says the school has 50 thin clients in a series of rooms
that the faculty can reserve for the students. Ultimately, he says, he hopes to
have 10 to 15 machines in every academic classroom, which is now much more
within reach with the new economics afforded by the virtual desktop solution.4
Conclusion
As the world of academic computing
gets more complex, academic technologists and district administra- tors need a
coherent and comprehensive approach to rec- onciling dwindling budgets and
skyrocketing needs. The answer is a three-part strategy of blended learning,
incre- mental technology adoption and collaborative solutions.
Acknowledgements
Together, this approach helps
districts achieve more with less, prioritizing curricular requirements and
access equity over hype and a quick fix. It’s about achieving big dreams with
small budgets. And it works.
Resources
NComputing Education
www.ncomputing.com/education
“Transforming Education with
Technology”
www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb11/
vol68/num05/Transforming-Education-with-Technology.aspx
“The Educator’s Technology Dilemma:
Providing more students with greater access to leading-edge technology under
declining budgets” http://marketing.ncomputing.com/EducationWhitepaper.html
“Technology Counts 2012,” Education
Week special section
www.edweek.org/ew/toc/2012/03/15/index.html
Keeping Pace with K-12 Online
Learning
http://kpk12.com
Endnotes:
1.
Scherer, Marge. “Transforming Education with Technology: A
Conversation with Karen Cator.” Educational Leadership Feb. 2011:16-21.
2.
www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-
practices/finalreport.pdf
3.
Center for Digital Education interview with Chris Petrello
conducted on April 10, 2012.
4.
Center for Digital Education interview with David Smith
conducted on March 29, 2012
Matt Villano is a writer and editor
based in Healdsburg, Calif. He has served as senior contribut- ing editor for Campus
Technology magazine since 2005. He also covers a variety of other subjects
– including travel, parenting and business — for publications such as The
New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Parenting and Entrepreneur.
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