Opening Remarks from Dirk Dykstra

Funding is get spread thinner and thinner, mostly used for training teachers. Looking for hands-on sessions with people who were actually doing it. I tried to find people who are doing things on a day to day basis.

Looking for keynotes that have to do about 1:1, open source, and so that’s why we came up with the keynotes that we did. We wanted to do this at a school—even though it’s not always the best for conference—that was doing things with the technology.

6–7 months ago were talking and continuing the conversation from a year ago and said, “Dirk, why don’t you do this?” People are good at ideas but the list is always short on who’s going to do it. My wife works here, and the administration would be very interested in talking about the good-hype as well as how to solve the problems. Big Spring has over 1200 laptops that they put in. I thought that was about the closest to what a school was doing.

Big Spring brought in Macs. If we go out for bid, and Macs are the low bid, then do we do that? Big Springs had available facilities.

Introduction of the Speaker - Mr.Michael Downes

• Superintendent of Big Spring ISD
• 21 years in education
• TASA’s Executive Committee member

Talk

• It’s amazing to get people to show up on a Saturday for a workshop/conference. I am on a committe for P-16, and it’s hard to get folks on a Saturday to show up. That committee put our meeting on a Friday. It’s great to have a conference on Saturday since we can relax a bit.
• cowood@bsisd.esc18.net

Inhibitors to School Improvement

Build capacity for that funding. You gotta know where your problems and derailers are. There are 3 major inhibitors that get in the

• Lack of knowledge among teaching, administrative staff and the school board. You have to get them caught up on the learning curve. Have you tried to pull off a major initiative without administrative support? If yes, it won’t happen. I’ve worked with great/poor superintendents and great/poor boards…without
• Lack of administrative support
• Influence from special interest groups (Citizens Against Virtually Everything(CAVE)) - every group has their own special agendas. Those groups can tackle a great project and shut it down. Our 1:1 project is a 4 year lease ($400K a year). The major setback was the board members who thought it was too much money.

Change Agents

• Pathfinders - You are pathfinders in this audience. 16% of your organization would find under the pathfinders, looking to get better instruction to kids. You’re not the problem.
• Early Adapters - When you bring an idea back from a conference, they say they’ll adapt.
• Late Adapters - They’ll say things won’t work, I don’t need anything new, I don’t…they’ll reluctantly come along.
• U-Boat Captains - It don’t matter what boat is out there, they’ll try to sink it. The only way to solve that problem is to fire them. They’re not going to change. Don’t let the U-Boat captains keep you from moving forward. Be persistent.

Building Capacity for Change

• Develop a list of potential goals - I thought this was taking too much time, I’m too busy to do this. Set goals. Every two years, we do a major comprehensive needs assessment. In that list, we include something about technology.
• Survey all staff and parents - 1400 responses back. That’s critical because the majority of those changes were parents. Their feedback drives the changes among school boards. That is powerful.
• Approve District goals at the Board level - we take survey data and goals to the Board, and spend time going over them. What really impacts what you do is what the community says. It’s their school, their kids, and their money. The board looked at that information. The top 5 goals identified by the community are the top 5 for the district staff. Technology was the 6th goal of the community’s survey. We had a major technology component in every one of our plans. Goals are ever-present
• Build all improvement plans on District goals - the money will be there, is there.

Building Administrative Support

• All principals must receive training. Sent every principl to the TASA Technology Leadership Academy. I want them to participate.
• Principals should attend and lead in technology training.
• Include the Board in technology applications. One technology is BoardBook (from TASA). When we come to a board meeting, every board member has a laptop with BoardBook pulled up in front of them. You’re building capacity.

Continuous Funding

• Budgets are built on priorities. Pay raises are at the mercy of the Board. In a lot of districts, Boards fund their priorities then everything else. One of our goals is to retain highly qualified teachers…be sure your technology is in on the priority.
• Goal driven budgeting - board members always have personal agenda. Be sure that technology is in the top set of goals that are on their agenda.
• Never lose focus on goals
• Think big and save - instead of doing the whole campus at once, let’s do it piecemeal…Corey and I were consistent on that—the piecemeal approach isn’t the way to go. 2/3rds of our kids don’t have it…a laptop levels the playing field. If we can’t do it for the whole group, then we don’t do it at all.

Common Traps and Derailers

• “We can wait until the next upgrade is available.”
• “We do not have 100% buy-in.” Don’t wait for 100% buy-in since you will always have 16% that don’t want it.
• “Maybe a grant will be available to help with the expense.” Funding your laptops with grants, well, that’s a bad way to do it. Districts that do this are 1-shot wonders because there is no sustainability. If get a grant, that’s gravy…do something wonderful with it.
• “Only the rich districts can afford that project.” Big Springs ISD is poor. We don’t have the bonding capacity to do what need to do, but we’re still providing a quality instruction.

Show Me the Money

• If a 1:1 project is a priority, funding will be there.
• E-Rate funding for increased bandwidth. We added 1200 laptops and if we hadn’t increased the bandwidth
• Title II funding for professional development. Don’t do a laptop project without PD…we spent $100K for training.
• Laptops replace existing budget expenditures for computer labs.
• Laptops reduce teacher recruitment costs. It’s hard to get people to come to West Texas. We’re not producing enough teachers. When we go to job fairs, and teachers find out that they’re getting a laptop—and their kids get a laptop—recruitment is easy. It’s hard to be 100% highly qualified and we made it…the laptops made a difference.

Project Timelines

• Gather supporting information now
• Board discussion - Nov.
• E-Rate applications-Dec/January
• Survey staff and students - January
• Obtain cost estimates - February
• Board approval for bids - March
• Approval of bids - April
• Distribute laptops to teachers and begin PD - May
• Student rollout-September

Putt’s Law

• Even when a message is clear at the outset, the final communication may become skewed. It’s nice to have a superintendent who’s engaged. Be sure your message is clear.

Contact Info

• Michael Downes
  • 432–264–3600
  • mdownes@bsisd.esc18.net
• Corey Wood
  • 432–264–4155
  • cowood@bsisd.esc18.net

Questions

• When kids take laptops home, are they still property of the school? Legal liability for what they do when they’re at home?
  • In your AUP—a contract you have student sign—we share..
• If kids don’t have internet access at home, how do they get access?
  • Walked out of a board meeting, and two girls were doing their homework on their laptop. When it gets colder, we’ll open a library. We’ll have kids here at 7:00 AM.

Dirk Introduces Next Speaker

Mike Frieseneger

• It’s great that Michael presented first. You’re in the trenches trying to take advantage of technology solutions.
• What I wanted to do is take this hour and a half and reintroduce you to Novell.