Lightspeed Systems

Lightspeed Welcomes Darryl LaGace

For several years we have partnered with San Diego Unified School District as they have strived to transform education for their students with safe online learning. As we all heard from last week’s webinar with Darryl LaGace, Chief Information & Technology Officer, on mobile device management, San Diego USD is doing a remarkable job with its i21 classroom initiative and its iPads one-to-one program; and we are honored that the Lightspeed team and solutions can play a part in all that they have accomplished.

With that being said, I’m even more excited to announce that Darryl LaGace is formally joining the Lightspeed Systems team as the Executive VP Global Business Development.  Darryl is a respected member of the ed-tech community with impressive skills and experience. As a member of our team he will be instrumental in helping us share our vision for safe, collaborative, mobile learning with districts. In early October, Darryl will officially be a Lightspeed employee and soon many of you will see him in action at conferences and events sharing how Lightspeed solutions can facilitate change in education–more specifically how it relates to iPads and mobile devices in the hands of students.

Darryl shares our vision and passion for personalized learning through safe online access and collaboration. And he knows that our common goals cannot be achieved without a unique partnership between our team and schools.

You’re welcome to read our formal press release announcing Darryl’s new position with Lightspeed Systems, which includes his long list of outstanding accomplishments and credentials.

And if you see Darryl at an upcoming conference or event, be sure to say hi! He’d love to hear the amazing things happening in your school with student learning and teaching.

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How fast is your school’s internet access?

We at Lightspeed Systems have partnered with EducationSuperHighway, a non-profit organization, which on Monday launched the National School Speed Test in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education to take an inventory of the state of Internet access in America’s K-12 schools.  Their objective is to collect 1 million responses (10 per school) on the ACTUAL performance of the Internet in our classrooms and school libraries. The information gathered will be used to raise awareness of the need to upgrade the Internet access in our schools as a prerequisite to digital learning. It will also help guide the allocation of $2.5 billion in annual funding for school Internet access upgrades. Help upgrade your school’s Internet access by asking ten of your colleagues or students to take one minute and go to www.SchoolSpeedTest.org from a computer or wireless device connected to your school’s network.

Check out this quick video here and take the test!

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Our Focus Today – Safety, Mobility, and Collaboration

When we first started in the content filtering business, most schools had computer labs and maybe a classroom computer or two. Those computers were primarily used to type up reports on word processing software and do prescribed exercises off a CD-ROM. The terms “blended learning” or “open educational resources” weren’t in common use – and #mlearning wasn’t a hashtag on Twitter, because there was no Twitter. The only tablets we knew of were paper. At Lightspeed, we even used phrases like “control freaks” to describe our product and ourselves – as securing and controlling the network (and Internet access) was the primary concern of our customers.

Wow, the times have changed.

Even as “control freaks” we were dedicated to education, but what that means has changed. Today most educators have altered their view of what an appropriate balance of safety and learning in schools should be – with a much greater emphasis on access to Internet tools and content, teaching digital citizenship, and related skills.

Learning is increasingly online, anytime and anywhere. It happens by watching a video or reading an article, then sharing it, then discussing it with peers; it happens by searching, and sorting through the results to discern truth from fiction and then form your own beliefs; it happens when you pull out your mobile device to read the news while you’re waiting for your lunch. That’s the way it happens for us, and that’s the way it increasingly happens for our students.

So, back to content filtering. Keeping students safe and protecting the network is still a fundamental responsibility (with social networking and cyberbullying and phishing scams and the staggering number of new adult web sites launched each day). But we have to address safety, security, and management in new ways that allow schools to take advantage of mobile devices, dynamic content, and collaboration. How our educational institutions are evolving varies widely between grade levels, locations, etc. – but the trend toward all schools adopting some sort of “blended learning” model is clear, accelerating, and irreversible (in our opinion).

Therefore, Lightspeed Systems’ focus today can be summed up in three words: safety, mobility, and collaboration. Our development, training, marketing, sales, and support teams are all focused on helping school districts easily and effectively support the new educational models. As a result, we’ve recently expanded our mobile solutions line beyond mobile filtering, to include mobile device management–with more to come.

Changes like this are about meeting the needs of today’s schools and today’s students. We did not need to read a Horizon Report (though you could, here http://www.nmc.org/publications/2012-horizon-report-k12) to know that mobile devices and tablet computing are increasingly central to education. Our customers have overwhelmed us with requests for more effective ways to balance safety and learning in a mobile environment.

More changes are coming. We do not know exactly what they will be – but we do know they will be driven by the user community and they will reflect the fundamental shifts that are occurring in educational uses of technology. We at Lightspeed Systems are committed to supporting safe, collaborative, mobile learning – as we believe that is what today’s students need.

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Not a Feature War

Several times a week we are asked how My Big Campus stacks up against other social networking or LMS solutions (Edmodo, Schoology, Blackboard, Moodle). “Do you have a chart that compares features?” they ask.

I get it. I know how those charts can be useful when deciding what to buy, or to help justify a decision to peers or administrators. But (aside from one comparison piece we reluctantly created to compare MBC to Moodle) the answer is no. And it’s not just because we’re too lazy to make them.

The reason we don’t make these comparison charts for My Big Campus is the same reason we don’t for our content filter and other solutions.

Here’s why:

1.  Features change too quickly—both on our end and the other products. It’s impossible to keep them up to date.
2.  No matter how objectively we try to make them, comparison charts would always be designed to make the features MBC has and others don’t seem most important.
3.  But mostly, this isn’t about a feature war.

We don’t want to develop new features just so we can check off boxes on a chart. What sets MBC apart isn’t a set of features; it’s a philosophy and a complete platform. Features come and go, quickly these days. Features are requested daily by users and prioritized regularly by our developers. But MBC is unique because of the platform, not the features.

My Big Campus was designed as an open system.
Unlike LMSes that were designed to sit behind a firewall for internal use, MBC was designed to take advantage of the best educational pieces of the open web—but in a safe way schools can be comfortable with.

My Big Campus was designed for collaboration.
Collaboration isn’t an add-on. It’s at the core of MBC. And while we add new collaboration features regularly (like our Bundle Exchange), the fact that MBC was designed to facilitate collaboration and sharing—among teachers and students, in and out of the district, is unique.

My Big Campus was designed for you.

That starts with the intuitive interface. But what really makes MBC different is all the people behind it to support you: Bob Campus, who is on the site 20 hours a day to answer questions, model digital citizenship, and support you; teacher-coaches who offer real-world help and ideas; and trainers, engagers, developers, support and more—all there, dedicated to the same goals you are, and providing whatever help you need.

And most importantly—My Big Campus was designed for safety.
Other platforms that aren’t integrated with the filter don’t solve the overblocking problem and don’t provide the same CIPA-compliant, monitored, filtered, and safety that MBC can provide through its integration.

Feature comparisons can be very useful when comparing similar things—like which model car to buy. But MBC is different from other LMSes and social networks on a fundamental level that feature comparisons just don’t illustrate.

If you didn’t catch my last post on how My Big Campus was designed to BE different, take a look here: Amazing Things. (And be sure to watch the fun video on some amazing things students can do with MBC.)

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Amazing Things

The ability to grow and evolve is a characteristic of an innovative company.  Here at Lightspeed Systems we continue to adapt our message to clearly and powerfully describe what we do, how we are different, and why our approach provides the best solutions for K-12 education. We are passionate about education and dedicated to developing solutions that change the classroom culture. It is this passion that has inspired our new core focus: Together we do amazing things.

We are focused on accomplishing amazing things through:

• How we work together and collaborate with our customers
• How our customers can safely collaborate among themselves
• How we drive parent engagement
• How our integrated solution can support a wide range of amazing educational advances

We are dedicated to continue to develop innovative, safe classroom technology solutions, made specifically for K12 education. With My Big Campus, Lightspeed is committed to working with schools to create mobile, collaborative, and safe online learning environments.

My Big Campus is a very different digital content and collaboration solution. And that is by design. We built it in response to our filtering customers’ need for safe, blended access to proprietary and “wild” (read: YouTube) internet content. It has been built from the ground up for role-based sharing across the entire community. In addition to simply sharing discrete resources, online discussions, etc., we have just released powerful, standards-based content bundles that allow individuals or teams to find, organize, and share applicable lessons and resources. The combination of social networking tools and the safety of filtered, monitored, and approved activity and content is what makes My Big Campus the perfect solution for K12 education.

In our desire to accomplish amazing things with schools we have evolved. We are no longer satisfied with just providing effective network management tools. We are focused on transforming K12 education—improving the way teachers teach and students learn. And we will always be committed to ensuring the network, mobile device, and, most importantly, student is safe.

Our team has recently put together a fun video showing one of the many amazing things that can happen with the use of My Big Campus in the classroom.

Enjoy!

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Seat Time Makes No Sense

I had not realized how much progress was being made in eliminating seat time requirements until I read this article in Education Week: States Loosening ‘Seat Time’ Requirements.

It is about time!

I do not need to re-state all the reasons for a focus on mastery, self-paced learning, differentiation. Clearly, teaching all 9 year olds alike because they share a single trait (age) is indefensible.

Of course, we have routines, rules, practices all built around this model. So – going to a better system will be messy and imperfect.

But really, who are these “others” the author refers to?

Others, however, wonder whether advocates of moving away from seat time are more interested in trying to boost graduation rates through online and other means than in keeping an eye on the instructional quality of those courses.

It is either we have silly, antiquated models with quality content or new, adaptive, models with poor quality content. High and low quality is possible with in any methodology – but the risk of some poor quality should not bar us from using the power of new ideas, technology, etc.

Truly differentiated instruction may be within our grasp. And the “others” resist?

What am I missing here? Please feel free to comment. I’d love to hear a range of perspectives.

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Trick Question: Do Teachers Have To Learn Technology?

Jonah Salich put it great when he said, “Actually, teachers DON’T have to learn technology.”

Salich provides a thoughtful discussion of the role of technology in teaching and learning in this post, “Actually, teachers DON’T have to learn technology.”

At the heart of the discussion is a particular good exploration of the “why.”

As in, if technology is so great, so inspiring, so engaging, so powerful, so…”why” do many teachers choose not to incorporate it in their teaching?

Here is his key point:

Teachers are learners and just like our students we all have certain learning strengths and different personal interests. I don’t think most teachers choose not to adopt technology because they are indifferent or unwilling to learn, but maybe it simply isn’t intrinsically interesting to them (or they aren’t familiar with the new mode of self-directed learning that technology involves.)

However, just as the student who is bored by math (or literacy, science, etc.) or struggles with its concepts still needs to learn those skills, teachers need to learn the new skills inherent in technology integration.

Or do they?…Are their colleagues telling them they have to? Are their administrators telling them they have to? Are the parents telling them they have to? If not, then they don’t have to learn it. We would like them to because we see the benefits and we enjoy it, but until they have to learn it many of them won’t. If I didn’t demand that my students who struggle with math learn it, they certainly wouldn’t do it on their own. How many of us would carve out time to learn something that isn’t intrinsically interesting to us and isn’t required?

As a relatively old, non-technical digital immigrant – I never voluntarily learn any new technology (for the “fun” of playing with technology). Technology is not fun–for me.

But, when some sort of technology helps me fulfill my passion for information about educational innovation, helps me connect with my college attending daughter, or meets some other intrinsic need – I learn. Hands on, that is.

My take away: We need to make our Lightspeed software easy to use. And useful. And fun, if possible. So, we do not have to require teachers to use it, to take a class on it, or do anything – but learn, enjoy, and perform more effectively.

What is your takeaway?

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Forget “Training” – Let’s Try “Learning”

Dean Shareski asks an interesting set of questions in his post, Should teachers own their learning?

What if school districts and school administrators trusted teachers to let them direct their own PD?

What if the ideas of personalized learning and students owning their learning was applied to teachers?

In other words, what if we forgot “training” and just insisted on “learning?” Would tech be used more effectively? Would blended learning opportunities blossom?

I asked a similar question in a recent post, Blended Learning Training: Start With a Community of Practitioners? Check out the comment responses and how Scott County School District #2 is training their teachers on tech integration!

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To the Cloud for Curriculum!

As Wesley Fryer explains, “The future of digital curriculum is in the cloud, on mobile devices, and in remixable forms.”

Which is why we think platforms like My Big Campus are vital. Content can be mixed and matched, shared, changed, and discussed—anywhere, anytime—as long as students, teachers and parents have an internet connection.

Effective use of this content is yet another discussion. But foundational is access to content in this form—the cloud.

Katie Ash shares a variety of examples in this piece in Education Week: Picking and Choosing Digital Content

If you are not already on My Big Campus, we invite you to join and explore the Education Resource Library where there are hundreds of thousands of resources for you to pick and choose, and mix and match your content. Take a look here: www.mybigcampus.com.

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Blended Learning Training: Start With a Community of Practitioners?

Teacher Melissa Meyers makes a powerful argument for blended learning in Bob Lenz’s blog post, From the Classroom: What Does Blending Learning Look Like?

Yet, her conclusion does not quite work for me. She sums up her argument with this:

Technology is certainly worth the hype, but it will remain only empty, extravagant claims if teachers aren’t trained to use it effectively and aren’t as enthusiastic — and evolved — as their students already are. It’s time to play catch-up.

I don’t think we can simply “train” our way to greatness.

Yes, teachers need help understanding how to effectively teach in a blended learning model. But I have very low expectations for any kind of formal “training” effort. It seems to me early adopters just need to model the behaviors, share the tools and techniques, and if/when teachers are ready to teach in a new way then the “training program” is an authentic, experimental interaction with the community of practitioners. Most of us learn new things as needed—because they are needed—not by going back to a training class.

Thus, I am with Melissa that success will come with enthusiastic evolution of our practices—but I think that happens in a very different way than a traditional “training” model.

What do you think? Does your school or district offer a formal training program for blending learning or is it more organic? What do you think is most effective? If you incorporate blending learning in your classroom where have you received your “training?”

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