Disaster Readiness - Lessons from Katrina

Several of us tested our technology savvy this week by connecting through a video bridge in Keenesburg out to Louisiana for a dialog with several officials in the Higher Education system. Our lead contact was Mike Abbiatti who is the Associate Commissioner of Higher Education for the State of Louisiana and he provided an excellent 2 hour discussion on lessons learned from Katrina and Rita.

I will prepare notes from the dialog to distribute later, but one of the most memorable statements he made was right near the end of the discussion when he said "Disaster is personal." His message was about how important it is for everyone to get involved in emergency planning and to participate in regular disaster drills. When this crisis arose, people lost families, lost homes and lost livliehoods. The response teams struggled with knowing who to call, how to use resources and how manage an onslaught of volunteers.

Education, both higher ed and K-12, are listed in Colorado's Emergency Plan. But do we have a seat in the Emergency Response Center? Does everyone know their roles and how educational resources can be brought to bear to help people in need.

One of the most important messages: prepare to respond at the local level. The federal response cannot always be counted upon and self-reliance and awareness are key.

What started out as an opportunity for a personal dialog with a friend of mine, became a useful round-table across multiple states. We had a bizzare miscue in Pueblo and I am still not sure why the college was not ready for the meeting. For this error, I apologize.

The technology was not perfect and I suspect that communication lines into Louisiana are spotty still which may have caused some fo the transmission static we encountered. But all in all, it was a great experience in networking and in learning from colleagues who have gone through one of he worst crises in our Nation's history.

A big thanks to Neil Schaal, Past-President of CALET for providing the bridge system for the meeting.

NSBA T+L2 2005

Once again, an exciting NSBA conference is underway in Denver. My personal favorite session so far has been John Kuglin's Luncheon where he demonstrated Google-Earth http://earth.google.com/, iPod technologyhttp://www.apple.com/ipod/ and Educationally Enhanced DVD http://www.mcrel.org/newsroom/SuperSizeMe.asp. The Google Earth was a great example of Google and satellite imaging of the Earth surface have come together for commercial purposes that are very useful for the classroom. The iPod was discussed as not just a fun way to listen to music, but can be a way to distribute audio and video to a large group of people... the idea being to use the technology our students are buying at record rates rather than prohibit them (hint: remember Alan November's comments at CASE 2004?). Speaking of record sales, John finished with the record DVD sales set by making it to 30 million units sold in just 5 years. He discussed his work on the EE DVD SuperSizeMe in which the documentary DVD has been enhanced to include lesson plans, student activities and standards-based curriculum. This is the medium of our world, it is fun to see how immersed we can be and what power we gain from that immersion.

-Dan Maas

Colorado Tech Week

It seems the Governor has opened a new blog on Technology. You can visit it at http://www.coloradotechweek.com/

His blog indicates that October 17-21 will be Tech Week and there will be all kinds of events occuring all over the state. CALET may want to consider partaking.

I have some ideas:

Across the State Video Conferences with hot sites at key locations on:

• Policy
• Student field trips
• State ET/IL Plan
• Funding

Do you have some others?

-Dan Maas

Cell Phones at School

In the "Maintaining Safe Schools" report Vol. 11, Issue 6, there was an interesting article on cell phones and school safety on page 9. Citing a discussion at the NSBA T+L2 conference, the author indicated that many of our schools are not equipped with adequate policies and procedures regarding cell phones. At issue:

• With a high number of cell phones on campus, in the event of an emergency, parents may give instructions contrary to school policies and may even swarm to the campus interfering with emergency and rescue workers.
• Cell phones often come with small cameras these days. Does your school prohibit such phones in bathrooms and locker rooms?
• Phone etiquette is a huge issue in almost every public venue these days. Should a communications arts class address when it is appropriate to have your phone turned on? When should you have private conversations on your cell phone? How about driver's education... should we have a lesson on cell phones and driving?

Not mentioned in this article, since it was about safety, was the curricular value of cell phones. Alan November suggested our lessons these days should take advantage and be designed around the ease of communication cell phones afford. And one of my little issues is awareness of health risks associated with placing a high frequency transmitter against your head for a significant portion of your life. How many people have read the warning labels on cell phones? This might make for a great health class lesson.

My cordless phone at home had a recommendation from FCC to keep the device 22 centimeters from my head when using it. I bought a little headset to go with my cordless phone for that reason. Not only am I hands-free, but I think I am keeping myself just a little bit healthier too.

What do you think?

For some policy references, see http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/54/44/5444.htm

-Dan Maas

Security: Awareness is critical!

Refer to eSchool News cover story "Data theft plaques campus networks" by Casey Murray in May 2005 issue for an interesting vignet into the ever-growing problem of cyber security. If stories about major universities, with their cutting edge IT departments, being hacked and personally identifying records from the most secure systems stolen without a trace does not scare you... well, my friend, pull your head out of the sand: we've got work to do.

Anyone in our realm of responsibility knows we've got to take responsibility for security and that means firewalls, intrusion detection, virus protection and ad-ware/spyware prevention and removal. Most of us work pretty hard within our limited budgets to design methods to protect our computing environment so it is a safe and workable place for our students to learn. But how many of us are spending time and even money on user awareness?

The truth is, most intrusions are not the result of a wizardly skillful hacker who compromises bristling security ala Mission Impossible... most instrusions are a result of the passwords falling into the wrong hands. How many of your users keep a password list on a sticky note on the underside of their keyboards? Kinda like the old wallet-in-the-shoe trick at the beach... no thief will ever guess that one! [;-)

We must be careful to engage in good practices like changing passwords on a regular basis, requiring interesting formats for the passwords, and use encryption technologies where we can.

But let's also consider the human element. Check out these links where a consortium has developed some tips and curricular elements to teach students and staff some easy do's and don'ts that will probably do more for your system security than any system you can buy.

Primary Level:
http://www.cybersmart.org/for/kids.asp

High School Level and Staff:
http://www.cybersmart.org/for/top_ten.asp

Concerning the E-rate Program and its effects on Colorado

E-rate is that rare Federal program that is a funded opportunity rather than the traditional Federal unfunded mandate for Education. Since the advent of the Internet, schools were slow to connect. In 1994, only three percent of classrooms in the United States were wired. This crisis was recognized by Congress and the old Universal Service Fund, once used to connect telephones in very remote areas, was retooled into a $2.25 billion fund to help schools, libraries and health care facilities connect to the Internet. That same $2.25 billion remains the funding cap in 2005 just as it was in 1996 when the Act was put into place by Congress. So E-rate has another rare attribute for a Federal Program: it has not seen an incremental increase in funding allocations in nearly 10 years.

During the life of E-rate, and as a result of the program, nearly 99% of schools have become connected to the Internet regardless of location or socio-economic status of the community. The National Educational Technology Plan points out that 97% of Kindergarten students have access to a computer either at home or at school serving as one of many fundamental justifications for the goals established in the plan. Computers and the Internet are now mission-critical to education. The E-rate program does not help schools put computers into classrooms, but it does help offset the impact of the costly connectivity and Internet Access that all schools must have.

E-rate means something to Colorado. In the 2004-2005 school year, Colorado schools were approved for $22,674,256 to offset the costs of Internet and Telecommunications. In Centennial BOCES, this program will pay $199,520 of the total Internet and Telecommunications costs for the Thompson School District in Loveland. The St. Vrain School District in Longmont will receive $255,759 in E-rate discounts. Even the tiniest school districts in Centennial BOCES need E-rate; Briggsdale will receive $17,829 this year.

There have been terrible controversies regarding fraud and abuse, which makes E-rate not so different from other Federal programs after all. The convoluted manner in which school districts must apply for these funds was intended to head off such fraud, but whenever the payoff is large, there will be those who try to cheat the system. Those who would like to end the system on this basis fail to recognize the huge benefit this program has had and continues to have on education in Colorado and in the United States. Clearly the complicated manner of applying for E-rate funds did not prevent fraud, so rather than flushing a successful program, it should be retooled to eliminate bureaucratic nonsense and spend more effort on auditing and punishing rule-breakers.

The mission of E-rate is right: to connect America’s schools, libraries and healthcare facilities. Anyone who would oppose that opposes America’s future. Are you with us?

State ET/IL Plan Meeting at Consolidated App Meetings

From today's meeting:
** Represent my comments in ALL CAPS

Agenda

• Roadmap of EETT Funding
  $5.6 Million for 04-05; 27.9% cut for 05-06; zeroed budget for 06-07
  **CONTACT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL IF YOU WANT E2T2 FUNDS CONTINUED FOR THE 06-07 SCHOOL YEAR!
  Program funding, Power Educators, COL, C2D3 and Power Results grants
• Techniques to collaborate with other Consolidated Application Process
  Tie in the ET/IL Plan and Accreditation Plan.
• Update and newly released National Educational Technology Plan
  Listed the Goals in the NETP and discussed correlation to CDE activity. Outlined the difference between a State ET/IL Plan and the CDE Agency ET/IL Plan. Working on both together. Concerning National Plans: First plan focussed on connectivity. Second plan focussed on 5:1 student to computer ratio. This plan seems to focus on e-learning and data-driven decisions using the same budget we currently have in place.
• Status update on the new Colorado state ET/IL plan
  Conducting online surveys at CDE to gather reactions to NETP and to the direction for ET/IL in Colorado.
• Preliminary survey results from current online surveys
  Check out http://www.surveymonkey.com/DisplaySummary.asp?SID=863033&U=86303341553

Title IID in Consolidated App

Power Results is the new competitive grant opportunity coming out very soon in Title IID funds from NCLB this year. While NCLB cuts the Enhancing Education Through Technology (E2T2) amount to about 27.9% for next year, there will be about $500,000 available in an RFP soon. The areas to be emphasized include High School Reform, Online Professional Development and Project-based Learning.

Where CALET members need to get active is concerning next year's funding alloaction for E2T2. The new proposed budget from the White House zeroes out this line item. The bill is going through Congress... call your Congressmen and Senators to support this program and get the funding reallocated.