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People at Educon in Philadelphia (via Flickr)

Last week, I chronicled an academic discussion on the subject of where school reform should go under President Obama. Over the weekend, a bunch of tech geeks had a conference on the same subject — and their ideas will probably end up being just as important to the future of schooling.

The conference, called Educon, attracted members of the increasingly large but sorely underlooked education movement called Learning 2.0, the MySpace/Twitter-inspired approach to school, in which technology facilitates extra interaction between students and teachers (and students and students and teachers and teachers). Among the people gathered in Philadelphia was at least one group from New York City: 20 staff members at CIS 339 in the Bronx, a middle school whose approach to technology I profiled in the Village Voice a few months ago.

You can read 339 Principal Jason Levy’s takeaways from the conference at his Principal 2.0 blog, here, including notes from the panel he ran, on what to do if your principal says no to a new idea. (One apparently good consideration is “The ‘Media’ Test:  Where in the NY Post will this story end up?”)

David Warlick also provides good notes from a panel discussion on the direction President Obama should take education. The conference’s convener, Chris Lehmann, principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, made the case that “accountability has to be a richer more complex conversation.” Another person talked about making accountability more “intelligent” with tests that assess for deeper learning, not just memorization.

Naturally, Warlick communicated his own takeaway via Twitter:

I just twittered: “The point of ed reform is having classrooms where it just doesn’t matter if kids are getting tested — to them or the teachers.”

One of the free e-mail providers that could soon give an account to every New York City student and parent. (Via Flickr.)

Connecting with students over the phone may soon become totally passe. The Department of Education is looking for a technology company — think Google’s Gmail or Microsoft’s Hotmail — to create e-mail accounts for every public school student and parent, at no charge to parents or the city. Google already provides free e-mail services to the Los Angeles public schools, and Microsoft provides e-mail to students in Miami, according to Bruce Lai, the chief of staff for the city DOE’s division of instructional information technology.*

Lai said that e-mail addresses are meant to encourage teachers and principals to engage with parents and students outside of the classroom. He said the program is also an “equity issue.” While some schools pay companies to help them set up e-mail accounts for their students and parents (I know I had one at my relatively affluent public high school, in Maryland), other schools can’t afford the cost. “We wanted to make sure that all schools had the opportunity to engage parents as well as create a stronger home-school connection,” Lai said.

Companies have until March to write proposals pitching themselves as the best possible vendor. Lai said he doesn’t expect that the city would have to pay any fee to the vendors. The guaranteed exposure of students to, say, Gmail’s layout and product is enough of a value on its own to entice a company. Gmail and other free e-mail providers splash advertisements on the screens of regular users, but Lai said that city students and parents will see no advertisements when they use the e-mail servers.

*This sounds like a different title than the DOE’s technology staff had before. (Used to be the Office of Instructional Technology, as the web site still says.) I’m looking into it.

The online testing system's logo.

Here’s an unusual complaint from a Bedford Stuyvesant elementary school, about the city’s online testing system called Acuity. Acuity gives tests to students throughout the year and lets teachers and parents monitor how they do — what subjects the children are doing well in and which they aren’t.

Usually, critics complain that Acuity, which the Department of Education has purchased from the CTB McGraw Hill company, is a waste of money that encourages children to be over-tested.

But the complaint in Bed-Stuy, from Lisa North, a literacy coach at P.S. 3, is that Acuity isn’t available enough. North’s argument is that since the statewide English exam is scheduled for next month, the holiday break should be a natural time for parents to help students prepare for the test, which can determine whether a child is promoted to the next grade. But North says family prep time will be hampered because Acuity is scheduled to shut down over the holidays, from December 28th to January 4th. (more…)