Better Use of Technology

By Dan White

I helped secure the donation of over 4,000 computers to Simi Valley public schools. We now need to take advantage of additional opportunities for low cost technology and do a better job of putting it to work. Students need to use technology at school and at home in order to develop the skills required for tomorrow.

While I am very proud of what I have been able to do so far in Simi Valley schools, I believe our greatest accomplishments in this area will come in the next two years. Critical technologies have now become free or very affordable to schools. Once our school board members properly value the role of technology in education, we can use these technologies to provide better educational resources. In addition, technology will allow our schools to operate more efficiently, make better decisions, and be more responsive to the concerns expressed by parents, teachers and students.

4,000 Computers for Simi Valley Schools

When I first joined the Simi Valley Education Foundation, many at the foundation dreamed of putting at least one computer lab on a campus. The next year when I became president, I was instrumental in striking a deal with the school and the citys largest employer where Countrywide ended up donating over 4,000 computers to Simi Valley public schools. In putting this deal together, I worked very closely with Scott Romanowski of the SVUSD, Mark Upson from Countrywide, and the vendors who supplied computers to Countrywide. These computers were worth more than $2 million at that time. Nearly every school and every classroom in Simi Valley received at least one of these computers. While these computers are now getting on in years, I still see them when I am on campus today. The SVUSD used these computers to fully furnish several computer labs that year.

Projectors and Smartboards

Another item that I have been very active in is providing presentation tools to teachers. These tools include projectors, Elmos which are projectors that use an LCD camera, and Ladybugs which are a 2nd generation tool that provides a number of ways to interface with a projector. Through the matching funds program at SVEF, we were able to purchase dozens of Smartboards, projectors, and other presentation tools that are now used by teachers in our secondary schools.

Tracking Software for Better Test Results

When I was president of the Simi Valley Education Foundation, the district administrators asked us to fund one piece of technology that the school board had passed over. The administrators had identified a tool to track how well a classroom was learning a specific topic during the school year.

In regular monthly testing, the system provided a report to show what areas were well understood by students and what areas were not. The tool pinpointed where teachers needed to spend additional time reviewing a topic.

I lobbied the Ed Foundation board to fund this $90,000 program for the first year. The results were very positive. Using the data from the first year, the school board then realized that this was an important tool to keep funding. Today, a variant of the original product is still in use today. This system has been cited by administrators as a major reason why certain test scores in certain schools within the SVUSD have improved.

Innovative interactive classroom technologies

Also that year, my uncle, who was a physics professor at the University of Missouri, told me about how he used clickers in his classroom to gain real-time feedback from students in his classroom. A clicker looks a little like a television remote control, but it only has 4 buttons (A, B, C, and D), and each remote control is assigned to a student number of a student in the classroom. Each student at the University of Missouri is given a clicker at the beginning of the year. He told me how he would give a lecture for the first 15 minutes of class, and then he would put up a question on the projector to see if his students were following the topic. The students were able to answer multiple choice questions using the clicker. The students answers were then collected instantly and sent to his laptop. He could then instantly show a distribution of how students performed. If the students were not following the topic, he could then go back and cover it more thoroughly. He also used this tool to deliver lengthier quizzes.

I encouraged the Simi Ed Foundation to purchase a few of these systems for classrooms in Simi Valley. These clickers are still in use. For example, students in Alice Collins 2nd grade classroom at Wood Ranch use this technology.

The Future: Google Apps for Education, Khan Academy, Online Course Materials

With additional budget cuts, our schools face a myriad of challenges. Many of these challenges can be addressed in part by embracing technologies that allow our school system to operate more efficiently. Within the SVUSD, we have an opportunity to capitalize upon low cost technologies that will improve the efficiency of the overall organization. In recent years, several technologies have emerged that can significantly benefit our schools without significant expenditures. These technologies can can improve our classrooms, our homework, teacher training, class scheduling, and management. Google Apps for Education

One technology that can impact our operations is Google Apps for Education. This is a suite of tools that include email, spreadsheets, calendars, websites, and shared documents. Over 16 million students in the US are using this technology and it is improving each month. This technology can provide a low cost way to introduce the use of technology into our basic classes in high school and junior high. My company, InterDealer, has used the corporate version of this suite for the past four years. It helps our organization to operate more efficiently, and it provides us with a number of tools to enhance our operations and our online university that we use for corporate training. Khan Academy

The Khan Academy is a non-profit effort funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This online service is a set of 3,100 online videos that schools can use for free in their teaching process. You may have heard of the Khan Academy on 60 Minutes or in other news programs. The Khan methodology is simple, yet highly effective. Students are asked to review a video covering tomorrows subject matter as part of their homework. Many subjects also have online practice problems that provide instant feedback to the student. Then in class the next day, students are asked to work through problems that would normally be given as homework. With this technique, teachers have more time to work one-on-one with their students who need the help. In this non-traditional approach, the class is reversed homework is done in class, and the lecture is done at home.

In most math subject areas, the students mastery of each topic can be easily tracked by both the teacher and parents. The process teaches the student to demonstrate mastery of each topic before moving on to the next challenging subject. This approach seems more intuitive than the traditional approach which forces the student to move along to the next challenging topic whether they are ready or not. Many students in Simi Valley are already using the Khan Academy at home. The service is provided for free and does not include any advertising. While the methodology is new and data is still being collected, Simi Valley schools should be evaluating innovative applications of technology like the Khan Academy to see where they can be applied successfully within our schools. This methodology is not suitable for all subjects, however it is probably the most promising in the area of mathematics where Simi Valley schools need the most help. Because these high-quality services are free, it is a mistake to not be taking advantage of them especially in the context of significant budget cuts in Californias education budget.

Online Surveys

One of the fundamental problems our current school board faces in Simi Valley is the lack of flow of information from actual stakeholders to school board members. There is clearly a disconnect between the perceptions of parents and the perceptions of school board members. Because none of our current school board members have any children in the schools today, they have a very difficult time in understanding the current issues faced by parents today. One school board member, Debbie Sandland, recently said she relied upon expulsion hearings to understand what was going on in the schools. Without the benefit of several hundred expulsion hearings, she apparently would not have any other information. Consequently, all of her decisions and initiatives are based upon a small subset of the overall activities of the school.

In addition to the obvious weakness of a school board that doesnt have any parents, this situation shows a lack of understanding in what processes are necessary to keep in touch with the organization that they are supposed to be steering. The information exists within the district, however it is not being delivered to the board. The board does not know how to ask for a solution to this problem. One of the tools that our district needs to introduce are regular online surveys that collect key pieces of information we expect school board members to know. Surveys can be targeted at parents, students, and teachers. They can be used to collect data and help the SVUSD organization be more responsive.

Surveys are a critical tool that school board members must have to better understand the severity of specific issues related to drugs, binge drinking, school safety, and gang activity. With online surveys, the community can have an accurate perception of real-life conditions in our schools. When we have accurate information, we can take real steps to make changes where they are needed.

Technologies that Empower Teachers and the Organization The Simi Valley school system has 2000 skilled teachers. A large percentage of these teachers are able to perform at extraordinary levels that could potentially benefit other classrooms besides their own. Meanwhile, other teachers could benefit tremendously by re-using some of the best ideas of their peers. Our teachers have a variety of skill sets and abilities that can accomplish even greater results if they share information on new techniques and technologies.

However on the other hand, the current Simi Valley school board imposes a rigid, top-down management style that focuses more on controlling information rather than sharing it. This is an outdated management style that discourages our teachers from having as large of an impact as they would have in a more modern and constructive environment. There are many good ideas within the SVUSD. In any given area and grade level, some schools are performing very well, and others are not. The best ideas need to flow easily between schools without the friction of an organization where an administrator must always serve as middleman. Our teachers are smarter than that. They will flourish with a more constructive approach that values their insights and shares their best ideas with peers who crave information that helps them be more effective at teaching children. We need to ensure that our teachers have access to tools and the right information to be better at their jobs. Access to modern communication, presentation, training, and collaboration tools combined with a focus on peer groups spanning multiple schools will enable our teachers to work together in new ways.