Hi everyone,
Former Maine governor Angus King gave a fascinating, entertaining speech
today at the Anytime, Anywhere Learning Foundation (AALF.org) conference
here in Boston. I've posted detailed notes from the speech on my blog:
http://www.andycarvin.com/
permalink:
http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2006/06/angus_king_a_brief_h.html
I also recorded a podcast and have asked the governor for permission to
post it; waiting back to hear from him.
Here's a taste of my notes:
By 2000, our finance people said we'd have a $70 mil surplus in the
state budget that no one anticipated. It hadn't been earmarked for
anything. So I put these insights together and said I want to do
something that helps people compete, isn't incremental, and should
involve edtech. We could have used the money for anything, but I wanted
to do this. My chief of staff said that we could create an endowment to
give laptops to every 7th grader forever. And I said, wow.
We worked on this idea and announced it six weeks later. Other people
plan projects like this for more than a year - that's better. But if we
had waited, the legislature would have spent the money. If we didn't get
our mitts on that money, it would get parceled out and been used
incrementally.
A reporter then asked a question we hadn't thought of - will the kids or
the schools own the laptops? I had no idea. I could have said I don't
know, but I blurted out, "the kids." Wrong answer. Huge political
mistake. People hated the idea that the govt would give these tools to
kids. Seventh graders became the most hated minority in the state. So
that was a big mistake. It was referred to as Governor King's Laptop
Giveaway. Why don't more politicians try projects like this? It's
because I got the shit kicked out of me. Ten to one of all emails were
against it. "Governor, what were you smoking?" "Governor, we are a poor
state, let someone else lead." Yes, and they will still lead. One guy
even suggested it would be better to give kids chainsaws....
...What did we learn? If you're thinking of doing something like this,
go to one vendor. Don't spread it around - you want one throat to choke.
When something goes wrong, you don't want the computer company blaming
the network company. Get one vendor who can deal with the whole issue
and be your partner. For us, Apple was a real partner. They moved people
to Maine, were fantastic with repairs, a real partner.
Things also have to work. If you're gonna do this, the damn things have
to work. If something doesn't work more than once or twice, the teachers
will fold up the laptops and go back to the book. Reliability is a huge
factor in this. A teacher just isn't going to put up with it otherwise.
Third - you can't spend too much time or money on professional
development. The best thing we did was focus on professional development
from the very beginning, starting with a grant from the Gates
Foundation. This is not a hardware project. It's an educational project.
This device is something that assists teachers, not replace them. So you
need to help teachers integrate it into the curriculum. If all you're
doing is buying hardware, it's going to be a failure, and I don't want
that to happen because my name is associated with this kind of project.
Fourth - assessment. This obsession with testing is focused on rote
knowledge. It's not capturing what these tools can really do. It's a
tool that helps you solve problems, which is what life is all about.
It's not for memorizing what year Columbus discover America. But the
tests are testing that kind of knowledge. So do not - do not - promise
your school board that one-to-one laptops will improve test scores, or
you'll be out of a job. You can say they improve writing skills - all
the research is showing this. But it's really about problem solving....
thanks,
andy
--
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Andy Carvin
acarvin (at) edc . org
andycarvin (at) yahoo . com
http://www.andycarvin.com
http://www.digitaldivide.net
http://www.pbs.org/learningnow
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