Lets Support our PCSD Students

My company works with over 1700 school public districts all over the country and working with the leadership of our K-12 administrators nation-wide, I have become a huge supporter of public education. Over the past 10 years, I have had the opportunity to work directly with the leadership of our local Park City School District. In my experience as a parent and expert in education, Park City School District has the strongest team of administrators we have had in Park City for years, and among the best, I have encountered anywhere.

The careful and deliberate work done to evaluate the needs of our community has been focused on what is best for our students. Currently, the plan we are being asked to support is the culmination of months of planning with input from a wide range of stakeholders and experts. Our elected body of Governing Board members has examined the recommendations of the master planning committee and superintendent, which was presented in August.  With meticulous consideration, the board now asks the voters to support the needs of our students.

For those who have not followed the process, it all comes down to addressing two main overall needs: capacity at our schools and increased learning opportunities for our students. Three of our four elementary schools are at capacity and to the point where we already have trailers at one school. Treasure Mountain is a sick school and would be more costly to fix than replace. It has always bothered me that 9th grade is not included in the high school where it belongs.  Ninth grade students need to experience high school and begin the critical preparation for college and careers at a higher level that can be provided at a junior high. As a businessman, I look for team members that skills fostered in a more rigorous and intentional environment

The most economical solution is to move 9th to the high school and place 8th graders at Ecker Hill. The decision to move 5th to Ecker Hill is also sound. It supports the community philosophy that we bring our students together in a unified, cohesive community to foster the community values and beliefs.

I recently visited a K-12 school in the barrios of San Diego. It reinforced the notion that 5th graders should not be with 8th graders is simply ludicrous. The K-12 School I visited was one of the most respectful, clean schools I have ever encountered. Like the PCSD plan, the 5th graders get instruction in a carefully designed village within a school that is intimate and provides the basis for project-based instruction. The PCSD plan also reduces the number of times our students change schools to the national standard of two transitions during the middle years. The plan makes fiscal sense, and it is also what is BEST for our students.

I fully trust our administration to continue the deliberate work they have started to increase literacy, growth, and performance while utilizing the resources this bond will provide to provide the next generation of learners in the type of learning environments that will produce exceptional community members. Join me and support Proposition 1.

Reading, Writing and CODING!

When I look over the landscape of successful leaders in the business world, they are more than just technically literate, they are technologists.

I believe it is our responsibility as a society to provide each student with a firm foundation that includes STEM -- specifically the ability to code. Look around you, the phone you hold, your doorbell, car, thermostat, smart speaker, TV, all the medical devices, traffic lights and all the computers that make up the internet. Without software, they are all just useless shells. These devices only come to life once there is a basic operating system and then the specific applications that make them useful to us.

With code integrated into virtually every aspect of our lives, why are we not introducing our students to the basics of reading and writing code in our K-12 education system? Do we really want the first time a student formally learns how to code to be college? What if we sent students to college without the ability to read and write? The demand for innovative programmers will only continue to grow and we are already having a hard time filling the current need of programmers.

Let's start with some misconceptions.

1. Coding is a creative process like creative writing. While logic is a huge part of the process, you don't have to be a math whiz. 
2. Writing code is creative. The best programmers are problem solvers and usually good at other creative activities like music or art.
3. Computers don't write (all) code. Often people ask me: "Don't computers write code?" Not really, computers can help with some of the basic processes and fill in the blanks, but people write code. 
4. Anyone can do it. All you need is a basic computer.

Like music, art, language, and sports the lessons learned through coding can be applied to life in general. Problem-solving, finishing a task, expanding your mind, collaborating with a team and attention to detail are all learned while coding.

Like other core competencies, coding should be integrated into our education system and our homes at an early age. Like creative writing, not every child will grow up to be the next great American novelist, but without integrating the basics of creative writing in our education system from an early age, few will reach that pinnacle of literary success.

Likewise, without a system that integrates coding into early education and the ability for interested youth to dive deeply into programming, she may never develop the next great technology innovation. We need a new systematic approach to creative coding that enables all students to reach their full potential in this new environment.

If you have young children, introduce them to coding. If you are an educator, look for ways to integrate coding into every aspect of the student's life. Students should code early and code often. 

Beam me up Scotty - More Blended Learning

There is a lot of talk about virtual classrooms and allowing groups of students to log in to a classroom from home moderated by a teacher. The advantages go way beyond servicing students that can't make it to school for medical reasons or have complicated schedules dominated by competitive athletics or the arts. Some traditional schools are using blended learning to expand courseware beyond what is within a traditional school environment. Examples include well-known examples like Khan Academy and MIT's Open Courseware Project. 

How about solutions for students that want to actually attend class but can't make it to school. Consider students that attend a middle school but want to augment their education with a class offered across town at the high school? Is there a solution that will just allow the student to attend a class that already exists? 

Putting that information online can be costly and many teachers don't know the skill set to produce online courseware that will provide the collaborative environment or replicate the classroom experience. If only you could beam the student into that classroom. How much would you pay for that technology?

There is a solution that does not involve scattering a child's particles through space. Suitable Technologies has come up with a solution called beam. Beam allows a student to control a "comprehensive remote presence solution for instant travel and engagement." This device allows the student to roam the halls, speak with anyone they encounter and carry on conversations in real time. While beam was designed for traveling professionals of large corporations, it has excellent applications in education.

Schools could install a bank of these devices at a school and allow students to log in to them and use them to attend a couple of classes. Students from other schools could use these devices to "attend" classes not offered at the school they are enrolled in. Students that had to stay home because of illness could still attend classes as well. 

Another application could include internships and advanced real world experiences. Consider a student wanting to fully immerse herself in the biomedical sciences. A school could develop a partnership with any company or hospital and place a beam unit at the facility and allow the student to interact with the staff at that site without ever having to travel there. 

Devices like the beam allow students to attend classes and have experiences that otherwise would be time and space prohibitive. Beam is just another tool schools can use to provide a comprehensive blended solution. 

For more information check out http://www.suitabletech.com. 

Yahoo! has it WRONG...

Emerald Data Solutions is a fast growing, innovative company with dedicated and effective people -- and everyone works from home. I've seen statistics that say 10% of workers work from home "at least one day a week." I don't know how many workers don't go to the office less than 1 day per week, but my guess is that is it closer to 5%. From my perspective, it should be more like 20%. 

Marissa Mayer, the new CEO at Yahoo!, believes that having ALL staff members come to work every day will enhance innovation and collaboration. I guess she is looking for something like the environment depicted in Samsung's fictional Unicorn Apocalypse ad. I don't think she has considered the cost. Let's take Emerald Data Solutions as a case study. 

Since we closed the office and started a policy of working from home, only one employee has voluntarily quit and I bet $10 he would come back. Turnover is costly to any organization. While we have a good process for recruiting, identifying and onboarding new talent, it is time-consuming and requires a lot of time and resources. With a few exceptions, it usually takes 6 months to onboard a fully effective staff member. High turnover also contributes to brain drain. I feel that if there is a revolving door here, we would be constantly losing valuable knowledge. We also know that staff members who are happy with their work environment are more effective at delivering services. Like many managers, I look at low turnover as a key performance indicator of job satisfaction and the health of our workforce. While working from home is not the only reason folks stay with the company, I believe it is a key component. 

Let's look at efficacy.  Emerald Data Solutions generates over $4,000,000 in sales with 20 staff members. That means that each staff member generates $200,000 in revenue. That is LOW, even Yahoo! nets $460,000 per employee. So on the surface, our virtual office strategy does not look so good and yes that number should be closer to $500,000 per staff member, however, our profit per employee is over $25,000 and that is HIGH. With the average profit per employee for 2011 in the US being $15,278.72 according to Sageworks. Have you ever talked to an entrepreneur that says they are "working for the rent"? In most cases, maintaining office space is a huge expense. You can see that our bottom line benefits from some pretty low expenses in these areas: rent, office supplies, heat, electric, water, cleaning, building insurance, office furniture even the break room coffee. Most analysts will tell management to budget about $2000 per year for physical office space expenses for each employee. That would deplete a vast majority of our profit for 2012.

So why is Yahoo! changing the policy to force folks to come to the office every day? Collaboration. Many studies show that a great deal of collaboration and innovation takes place in the hallways, break rooms and in the downtime between tasks. Marissa Mayer came from Google, where they work very hard to keep people at work. Google provides lunch, dinner, has awesome work out facilities, spas, you can get your hair done, send out your dry cleaning, daycare, go to a game room and even sleep at work if you like. With a workplace like that, why would you want to go home? The benefit is extreme innovation that has made Google one of the most successful tech companies ever!

But not everyone needs to innovate and some folks would benefit from working from home. A great leadership team would find a way to innovate within the new virtual work environment not squelch it. If Marissa were to ask my opinion and I bet she never would, I would offer these suggestions:

• Keep the telecommuting policy as is. This will reduce office expenses and turnover.
• Create innovation zones that duplicate the Google model and recruit the best people to join those teams. 
• Like Apple, take projects out of the innovation zones and allow team members to choose and join those any project. 
• Create project incubator spaces where folks work to bring that project to fruition. 
• Successful projects go to market and the team members get rewarded.

Existing projects and support folks can continue to work from home because every organization needs folks to implement the plan, support staff members and keep the organization running. To force these folks to come to the office to innovate could get in the way of developing an innovative environment and may actually poison the creative sprit. 

Lets keep an eye on Yahoo! and see if the board will give Marissa the time she needs to be proven, or disproved in her vision to turn Yahoo! around. Because recently the biggest revolving door at Yahoo! has been the one leading to the CEO's office.

One to One Education

Back in the mid-1990s, everyone was talking about one-to-one marketing. Companies wanted to go beyond recognizing their best customers and utilize technology to build an experience tailored to the individual. Back then, I was asked to design a solution for a group of restaurants that would keep track of customers preferences, food choices, wine selections, and visits. The system allowed staff members at any location to recognize the customer and tailor the experience of the guest based on data collected over time.

A guest experience would be something like this: Welcome back Mr. Johnson, I see you enjoyed our chocolate soufflé on your last visit. Unfortunately, it is no longer on the menu, however, I can have our pastry chef start one for you if you like.

One to one marketing has become the norm for organizations looking to build loyalty with consumers by going beyond delivering a product and crafting an experience. Hotels now setup rooms in advance to individual preferences, credit cards allow holders to customize features and airlines accommodate seating preferences.

How would it be if we should tailor a child’s experience to her specific learning style? What would that look like? What impact would it have on the classroom environment? What kind of assessment would be needed to determine the specific needs of an individual student? How could a teacher address the specific needs of 25 or 30 students at once?

There seem to many barriers to be able to provide this kind of individual experience to each and every child. But the thing is, models exist for this type of educational experience. Special classes of students already are accommodated to provide the best learning environment. Academic Improvement Plans or AIP are already being used to assure students are getting proper accommodations in existing schools and classrooms. And there even schools that have extended this type of thinking to all students.

The New York City Department of Education is conducting a pilot called the School of One that provides “students with personalized, effective, and dynamic classroom instruction so that teachers have more time to focus on the quality of their instruction.” The school changes the traditional model of “one teacher and 25-30 students in a classroom, each student participates in multiple instructional modalities, including a combination of teacher-led instruction, one-on-one tutoring, independent learning, and work with virtual tutors.”

This blended approach to education sounds a little like what many Montessori proponents have been advocating for years. Can we leverage technology to provide a new kind of classroom that provides differing environments for each type of learning style? Ultimately will the classroom look less like a lecture environment where all students are expected to move at the same pace, to an environment where self-motivated students can learn on their own, while students who need more personal attention can get more individual instruction?

I believe that in a world that has innovated the way we access entertainment, provides personal experiences based on individual preferences and a new connected work anywhere workforce; educators need to consider that it is time to start working on a new education paradigm. The rate of change in the world is accelerating and we need to decide if we are going to lag behind, simply keep up or lead the way. 

Get Ready for the Next Tech Breakthrough

I continue to believe that the future of hand-held computing and to a lesser extent personal computing, in general, will be defined by tablet computing. This revolution started by eReaders and transformed by the Apple iPad will continue to gain ground on traditional PC Based computing. Think about all of the things you hate about computers: lack of portability, complex systems, software installation, operating software maintenance, slow startup times, data synchronization, high energy use, low battery life, and high cost. Tablet computing holds the promise of a manageable, easy to use, less complex and portable solution.

By harnessing the power of powerful servers and the internet, tablets will revolutionize computing for many people. Yes, complex functions like media production, software development, research, and finance will still require powerful systems. However, students, home users, and even offices can migrate to these new devices. In 1993 Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems was preaching that the network was the computer and put forth the idea that simpler devices would be used by individuals to access powerful information stored on the network. One of his early projects was headed by Eric Schmidt who later went on to head Google.

Think about the typical organization that maintains thousands of computers. These computers require a huge amount of IT resources to install and maintain. The actual cost of maintaining a desktop computer can easily exceed $5,000 per year. This cost goes way beyond the initial purchase cost and replacement every three years. There are software licensing fees, repairs, infrastructure, data loss, data recovery, software upgrades, operating system upgrades, imaging, and even disposal fees.

Tablets can reduce the complexity and expense in virtually every area. 2011 will be the year of the tables, lets quickly look at what is coming this year. New Introductions seem to fall into two camps, consumer solutions from Apple, Samsung and Motorola; and enterprise solutions from Cisco. 

Apple has taken a clear lead in innovation by producing the first successful device to deliver the promise of tablet computing. By extending the existing iPhone technology to a new device, Apple correctly chooses to use a small operating platform rather than try and make the complex OS/X or Windows simple to use. In February of March or 2011, Apple will release at least two new iPads, both with cameras, USB connectors, better screens, and one smaller screen size.

Samsung has jumped the gun and released what many believe to be the next thing in personal Tablet computing. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is an Android 2.2 based solution that comes in lighter than the iPad, features front and back cameras. The smaller 7" screen size allows the unit to be held with one hand. It also features cell phone functions so you can make and receive calls with a wired or Bluetooth headset. Available through Verizon, U.S. Cellular, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T. With prices starting at $399 with a new contract, this device can be purchased now.

Motorola is also expected to enter the tablet market in 2011. Motorola was early to offer phones using Google's Android operating system and is expected to leverage it's expertise in manufacturing handheld devices to develop and deliver tablet solutions for individuals in 2011. Initial reports look like this will be a Verizon device called Stingray with a 10" screen and Android 3.0 operating system. This may be the first Android 3.0 tablet available.

Google has been working very hard on two fronts to come out with a new Tablet software. Some believe that a new Android operating system specifically designed for the tablet will be the answer. Android cell phones have become very popular and some vendors have extended the software to work on tablets. One advantage would be the ability for Android-based tablets to access a large number of applications that can run on this popular platform. This new Android 3.0 version is expected to support tablet computing with no extensions. The thing is Google, is not putting all of its eggs in one basket. They are also working on Chromium OS that some believe will eventually be the killer tablet or laptop OS. Most of the buzz seems to agree that HTC, makers of the Droid, iPaq and Verizon partner, are working hard with Google to release a tablet. One rumor anticipated a November 26 announcement by Google, HTC and Verizon, but that date is not been pushed back to March 2010.

Cisco has announced a tablet called the Cius based on Android. The device is expected to be a front end to their successful VOIP communications solutions with a docking station that looks a lot like a desk phone.  Cisco has announced this device will deliver full 720p HD Video conferencing over existing IP networks. Of all the devices, this is the only one reported to have a user replaceable battery. The Cius features centralized management of all devices using the device and user access policies by the IT department using existing Cisco tools.  The Cius device is expected to be released in early 2011.

If you don't have an iPad, consider waiting until mid-2011 and select the device that is best for your needs. Organizations should be preparing for the new world of tablet computing by enhancing secure wireless networks and shifting focus to centralized network delivered solutions. Schools should be looking forward to delivering customized classroom content via tablets. A few years from now, reference manuals and textbooks may join the ranks of other "vintage" technology like wired phones, records, and CDs.

Park City School District, The Best in Utah, BUT...

We have a lot of great restaurants in Park City. When we first moved here, I decided to try one out and asked the server “what is the best thing on your menu?” She quickly answered, “The crab cakes, they are the best in Utah.” I had the laugh because I had just had what most consider to be the best crab cakes in Maryland. The thing is these Utah crab cakes cost $60 and the ones in Maryland were only about $16.

We may have the best School District best in Utah, but when making comparisons with school districts on a national basis how do we compare? My comparison looked nationally for districts that are similar (+/- 20%) to PCSD in 4 critical areas.

·         Per Pupil Expenditure

·         Student Poverty Rate

·         Student Enrollment

·         % Minority Students

I found 10 schools matched my criteria in the US. Now everyone uses different tests so it can be difficult to make valid comparisons. My favorite benchmark would be SAT scores, but that only measures the success of college-bound students. My next favorite is NCLB proficiency.  How did we rank out of the 10 districts I found?

I was pleased to learn that in high school reading we did well coming in 4^th place out of 10. The highest score went to Nordonia Hills City School District in OH taking top honors.

In math, we did not do quite as well coming 9^th out of 10. That is correct; we came in next to last in my sample. Once again Nordonia Hills City School District took the top spot in math. Checking the numbers, it appears we lose ground someplace between the elementary school years and the high school.

I’m prepared to let Maryland keep the title of the best crab cakes. After all, they have something we simply don't have here in Utah -- local fresh crab. But I’m thinking the students in Ohio are no smarter than the ones here in Park City. From my perspective, there is no excuse for us not to be #1 in student achievement.

District	State	4th Grade Math	4th Grade Reading	8th Grade Reading	8th Grade Reading	HS Math	HS Reading
Lockport Township HSD	IL	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	65%	67%
Auburn Washburn	KS	97%	98%	90%	93%	87%	91%
Braintree	MA	53%	66%	66%	88%	87%	88%
Zeeland Public Schools	MI	97%	91%	78%	84%	68%	66%
Nordonia Hills City School District	OH	83%	88%	78%	83%	96%	98%
Cornwall-Lebanon School District	PA	86%	81%	79%	87%	67%	74%
Dripping Springs ISD	TX	92%	93%	96%	100%	84%	97%
Park City School District	UT	85%	88%	86%	94%	56%	94%
Fluvanna County Public Schools	VA	88%	88%	90%	91%	93%	96%
Arlington	DC	56%	82%	51%	79%	32%	77%

The chart above is based on the 2008-2009 school year and are from the Federal Education Budget Project.