Image: A Wordle of the Legislative Panel Discussion had at TCEA 2009 State Conference today.

Listen to version 1 of the Legislative Panel Discussion (or listen online at the Internet Archive)

NOTE: An unedited version (version 2) will be added for remixing purposes later tonight.

More on the panel organization here via eSchoolNews.

Thanks to Ann McMullen (Klein ISD) and the Deer Park ISD Superintendent Arnold Adair for facilitating the panel discussion!!

Panelists:

• Rep Dan Branch, Dallas, Tx
• Rep Harold Dutton, Houston, Tx
• Rep Rob Eissler, Houston, Tx
• Rep Scott Hochberg, Houston, Tx
• Rep Dora Olivo, Houston, Tx
• Rep Diane Patrick, Arlington, Tx

A legislator panel discussed education and technology this afternoon at the TCEA 2009 State Conference. The panel, organized by TCEA’s Political Advocate Jennifer Bergland with the support of Kari Rhame and other TCEA notables, discussed a variety of topics.

While I hope to have a podcast of this conversation later this evening, for now, please find my key excerpts from my notes below. The complete notes–transcribed as they spoke–appears online at the ShareMore! Wiki.
Key Excerpts:

1. …if we could find a way to give districts a little more flexibility, not have a 1 size fits all approach to content…maybe digital content will be more relevant to students in appropriate age-groups. Districts need a little more flexibility.
2. Schools today are like Kiwanis airlines. We have to turn off all our technology, strap in and trust you that you’ll take us where we want to go. We don’t want kids to go backward in technology.
3. By 2014, 50% of courses will be available online…tele-commuting, especially those in rural areas. Educational Opportunity equity is a big item.
4. And, if we could start by putting all the best lesson plans online…a great portal to every educator in the State who thought this was the greatest place to start—because they could find the things they need to teach tomorrow and save them time, improve quality of instruction and rate them…almost like a wiki that they could improve over time, that seems to me the really smart and efficient way for the state to advance the ball.
5. I want to see best pedagogical, great instruction on the Internet for kids. When schools have the hardware/infrastructure for kids to sit at a computer and go at their own pace, they will be able to do that….
6. We asked a lot of teachers how they could do their jobs. They didn’t say put a laptop on every desk. They said, “I’m a math teacher, I have 5 sections of kids, and get TAKS scores. Wouldn’t it be neat to find out which students didn’t get trig?” Where are some open source pedagogy that would be good for kids? That award winning teacher wants an analysis of student information. We have all this information but we don’t have a crowbar to open it up.
7. It’s great for us to talk about organic wikis—”I’d like a pound of organic wikis to go please!”–but if we’re going to make all this stuff available, leverage what’s out there, and it’s important that everyone has access, not just at work but at home. . .projects worth mentioning, it’s important to get them access through a loan program.
8. This is not the best year to be talking about money. Training is critical for teachers, more than that, it’s important to look at what they need…I, like my colleagues, are much in favor of technology and doing more with it.
9. Where do you get the money to buy the Kindle or the gadget that allows you to use the digital content?
10. The publishing industry is going through…they haven’t really figured out how to take their business model forward. Folks at Rice and UT that have decided McGraw-Hill doesn’t have a reason to exist, and they can generate and publish materials on an open source platform…for $20-$25 you can print it all out. Will we be able to do a significant amount of the curriculum? Vetting? Will the materials be any good?
11. We need to find a better way to deliver content, not just shipping it via freight.
12. When things are changing and our current students…ways to deliver content quicker, review it quicker and provide it to school districts in a more economic fashion. Schools in rural and urban and schools can do this in a more cost-effective manner.
13. EOC…we passed a bill but the money is not there. TEA is already working on this on how to clarify this. We better clarify expectations…the $30 is nothing of what we need.
14. The reason you’re doing online…a computer in for every child in a school building to do online testing, that’s not a very good reason to do it. If you’re doing online course exams to get end of year assessments, that’s an even poorer reason to do it…it’s not something you’re doing daily to meet your mission. 1 of the things we missed the boat on—about computer in the classroom—we’re not leveraging the huge investment at home for kids who have access to tech. We need to focus, be more concerned about opening the vast world of the Internet and their only option is to do what is self-paced….that can be done at far less expense than just testing kids online.
15. Need more money. We ask kids to power down when they come to school and that doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen the intelligent classrooms and they say they are behind…relative to what? relative to where they want to be. So, right now, this is not a great session for new initiatives that are going to be expensive. Incremental goals…what we can hope for.

As I re-read the main parts of this conversation, it’s clear to me what the legislators think they want to see:

• A Texas-sized curriculum and assessment management system–with quality reviewers of content–that takes the brainwork out of designing lesson plans…and perhaps, it also takes out the creativity of being a teacher. While such uniformity is often lauded, where has this gotten us in Texas school districts which push this top-down? And, such a monolith would be difficult to update…this is an illusion and we must warn our legislators against it. De-regulation is a word or approach that should appeal to our Texas representatives.
• Access, delivery of online content anytime/anywhere for educators and their students.
• Sufficient technology access, both at home and school.
• More money to fund initiatives.

What I wish we HAD discussed (although this stuff was great):

1. Making Pearson’s TestNAV program compatible with GNU/Linux operating systems and browsers like Firefox, as well as able to run on smaller screens (like netbooks–check this comparison chart by Rusty Meyners (Eustace ISD, Texas)).
2. Concern that the State Tech Allotment will be re-purposed to fund online testing (although this was definitely touched on).

UPDATE: In listening to the second recording I made of this session, I heard one of the legislators sharing with an unknown person that they couldn’t push Linux yet for online testing since online testing wasn’t a mandate yet…this is worth investigating further!

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure