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- As the President mentioned earlier this year,
he announced the ConnectEd Initiative,
an effort to connect more schools to high-speed broadband.
And I'm now pleased to introduced Gene Sperling,
the director of the National Economic Council and assistant
to the President for Economic Policy.
We're so lucky to have Gene here today to discuss why the
ConnectEd Initiative is so important and describe
what's at stake for classrooms across the country.
Thanks for joining us, Gene.
[applause]
Gene Sperling: Well, what you always want if you're doing
public speaking is --
and you want to generate just a lot of excitement
about your appearance --
is follow the President of the United States.
If anybody just wants to yawn because I'm up here,
just go ahead.
It's all right.
I -- back in 1993, I was here in the Clinton administration,
and we were in this room, and we used to have this thing called,
like where we bring all these people in from one state.
And this -- that day it was Texas day,
and for those of you who are old enough,
and if you're young enough,
you should know this from your history --
the most prominent Texan and the governor at the point
was a guy named Lloyd Benson.
He was the Vice Presidential candidate in 1988,
and he was supposed to appear and everybody
was sitting here waiting.
But he was stuck up on the hill.
And so somebody was up there just trying to stall.
Finally, somebody calls over to me in the White House and says,
"Can you just come over here real fast and talk to this crowd
because they're all waiting?"
So I said, "Sure."
So I ran over, and they signaled
to the person up there that I was going to come speak.
Unfortunately, that person didn't
quite understand the signal.
So she started, like, introducing Lloyd Benson.
So she starts saying, "And now next to Sam Houston
and, you know, next to Houston and Sam Rayburn, you know,
the greatest Texan, you know, of the last century,
Senate Finance Committee chair, vice President's candidate,
the secretary of Treasury, Lloyd Benson."
And that gets like a standing ovation.
And then I walk out and there's like this really, really,
like terribly awkward moment.
And of course, the woman has no bio on me at all, too.
And she goes, "Oh, uh, uh, I guess we don't have
Lloyd Benson, but we have Gene Sperling.
I think he works in the White House."
And I went on.
And not being -- being, you know, pretty good on my feet,
I said, "I feel like I've just replaced Brad Pitt on a date."
[laughter]
So anyways, look, you know, the other thing --
the other right thing to say
if you're the economic advisor to a President
and you're speaking after he did,
most of your speech should be probably, "Like he just said."
So I'm going to do like he just said,
but a little bit -- a few more facts before you go off.
You know, speaking of when I was here in the '90s,
we were very focused on connectivity, too.
But back then it was just like, could you connect school to a --
I mean, the internet to a school.
I mean, that was it.
That was just kind of the goal.
It's like, you know, we didn't have to have a digital divide.
You wanted schools to be connected.
That vision really didn't go to the quality or type of learning.
It was just more every school should be connected.
And truthfully, most schools today are that vision.
They are connected so that they, you know,
could have a computer lab or somebody just said, you know,
have the teachers' computers.
They say that the average school has the same connectivity
as the average home.
So guess what?
If 230 people show up in your living room and start using
their computers at the same time, it ain't gonna go so well.
And so but the -- but so we really now look and say it's not
just good enough to be connected.
You really need to have, you know, full-speed,
strong broadband.
And why?
Why?
It's not just for the sake of wires or wireless.
It's not about connectivity.
It's not about the equipment or the infrastructure.
Those are all means to an end.
And the end is a vision of learning where every kid,
no matter what school district they're in,
has the ability to do individual digitized learning
at their desk with the same content and the same capacity
as anyone else in the country or the world.
And no matter how dedicated your teacher is,
no matter how visionary your principal is,
if you have what 80 percent of K through 12 schools have
right now, you can't do it because you just couldn't have
that degree of connectivity so that you could learn in that
visionary way of everybody at their desk with a computer
going at their own pace.
You just couldn't do it.
And so what we realized was that when you looked at why
this was not the case, boy, you said, well, actually,
there's many reasons.
Digital devices are too expensive.
You know, it's too expensive to have to just buy a laptop
or lease a laptop for everyone.
And there's really not enough content to really use that as
opposed to textbooks or be able to update content and --
as you would like.
Arnie Duncan always says that the average turnaround
in a textbook is seven years.
So, you know, you could be learning about President Bush
right now in most classrooms or the scientific invest --
you know, invention of 7 years ago, or 10 years ago,
when in every other capacity of our lives,
we're able to get up-to-date information.
So you say, well, it's many things.
It's teachers aren't trained right.
There's not the -- a content.
There's not the digital devices.
Yeah, and there's not the connectivity.
But the thing we realized -- and this is the key point --
is that the connectivity is the, like, tipping point.
It's the, you know, the -- those you remember the movies,
"Fields of Dreams."
If you build it, they will come.
What you realize is that once you had every school having
high-speed broadband, everything else would start to flow.
So if you are making digital devices, you might say,
"Well, why should I spend a lot of time doing, you know,
spending time doing this when there's a very limited market
and there's just a few schools here or there?"
If you suddenly heard that the top 20 states
in the United States were all going to do a bulk purchase
of a digital device, guess what?
People would start spending a lot of time coming up
with a cheaper, affordable device that was appropriate
for learning in the classroom.
And as those prices went down, more principals
and school districts and governors would say,
"Well, that's quite affordable.
In fact, that might even be more affordable than textbooks.
I might actually be able to save money doing that."
So that's the tipping point, the positive cycle.
And then, of course, you start telling people that if you can
come up with a pool of 2nd grade or 7th grade or 11th way
of teaching geometry or, you know, geology,
that there is this huge market for you -- for it, guess what?
You're going to spur that market as well.
So what we really realized was this was the tipping point.
If you could do this, a lot else would happen.
Now we, policy-wise, we have to do our part.
You have to make sure you have teachers that are trained
to be able to know how to do this.
But I want to give a sense of like why this is so important
to our vision of learning.
You know, a couple of things: One, just want to, you know,
remind people where the President
made this announcement.
He announced this at Morrisville, North Carolina.
There are 115 districts in North Carolina
and Morrisville was the 100th poorest of 115.
And yet -- or they had the 100th worse spending per student.
And yet, after they institutionalized this kind of
individualized digital learning, they went to the top three
in both their performance and their completion.
So a school -- I mean, so we've seen the success,
but it's still here and there, not everywhere.
And that's what we need to help promote more.
Now, again, you know, if it's -- it's not about wires
and wireless and infrastructure.
I wanted to say a moment about what this means
for how we could learn.
You know, my mother used to instruct second- and third-grade
teachers on how to do assessment.
And she always used to start by saying,
"You know, they don't teach doctors to figure out at the end
of the year whether the patient lived or died.
They didn't just do an end-of-the-year test.
They learned to assess how they're doing every day
and what they can do to make them better."
So the vision of teaching should be much more that assessment
is not about an end-of-the-year standardized test.
It's about helping teachers assess how a student is doing
each and every day and being able to work with them
and their parent, et cetera, on helping them improve.
When you have this type of individualized digital learning,
the ability for a teacher to give individualized assessment
in the classroom goes way up high.
Secondly, we all know that a lot of people get discouraged
and drop out because of the social pressures.
So you're not doing well in a classroom,
you put your hand up once, you ask a question.
You know, most kids, they're pretty self-conscious
about asking that second question or third question.
And so they fall behind because they don't have a way of asking
again and asking again and trying again
without feeling embarrassed.
But when you're sitting with, you know,
with the kind of digital content where you're working at your
own pace, you can keep trying and trying again.
And you ask some of the teachers in Morrisville,
they'll tell you in some of the places this works,
that one of the best things is that without shame
or embarrassment, a student can keep plugging and plugging away
with this vision of learning.
But again, that vision of learning can't happen
if you don't have high-speed broadband in the schools.
And another issue, too: Right now a lot of our schools
feel they have to make a choice, sometimes,
between convincing parents
who think their students are doing --
are advanced from staying in the schools.
They face that conflict versus the conflict of not wanting to
have to trap or segregate their students in a way that might
make some feel -- students feel they're not gifted,
which we shouldn't be saying to any child.
We shouldn't be lowering sights or diminishing aspirations
or expectations for any child.
The people feel they have to separate because, look,
this child is, you know, a fourth grader who's had
seventh grade math, and this is a fourth-grade child
who's had second grade.
So of course we have to separate them.
But when you have individualized learning in the classroom,
you can keep those kids in the same classroom.
They can be learning at different paces.
You don't get the stigma.
You don't get the -- all the disadvantages of tracking.
And that kid who's, you know, killing it in math might realize
that the kid next to him who's maybe doing better in English
is more talented in something else.
And likewise, that student who's not achieving can be
inspired by the student doing well and realize he's better
or she's better than him at something else.
So this is more than about wires and wireless.
This is a vision of a 21st century school
where you can have the most up-to-date content,
where you can learn at your own pace,
where we don't have to separate kids or stigmatize anyone,
where people can try and try again without having
to feel embarrassment.
That is a very good vision of education.
It's one we support.
It's one this President supports.
It's one our secretary of education, Arnie Duncan,
and his deputy secretary, Jim Shelton, support.
And it's one that we're going to do our best
to promote with ConnectEd.
So I really, you know, want to echo with Valerie
and the President said:
It is inspiring for us to see the Champions of Change here.
Being in here 20 years, I have learned that nothing inspires
public policy like success.
The people who are successful, like you are,
are showing how great things can happen.
It makes people say, "Why can't we do more?
Why can't we help that person out?
Why can't we replicate that effort?"
And I see it with you.
I saw it the other day with this woman, Estella Pifram,
who's 76 years old:
took all her money and bought a bus and put computers on it.
And that's what she's doing in her retirement.
You know, those things do not have the impact of saying,
"Oh, well, there's some Champions of Change
out doing it.
We don't need to."
It has the opposite effect.
People get inspired by your success,
and you become the inspiration for public policymakers to want
to expand it and spread it.
So thank you for what you're doing.
We are completely committed to this cause,
and I hope the rest of the day is outstanding,
though I realize that it's going to be all a little
anti-climactic after this.
Thank you very much.
[applause]
- Thanks to Gene, and thank you all for your
patience and the flexibility while we were rearranging a few
things, but now we're actually -- it's time for the main event,
which is our very first Champions panel.
I'd now like to bring up the first panel that will be
moderated by assistant secretary for the Office of Elementary
and Secondary Education at the Department of Justice,
Deborah Delisle, and she's going to be moderating
this conversation today.
We are so excited to hear these Champion stories and hear about
Assistant Secretary Delisle's passion for Connected Education.
So we'll bring that first panel up.
Deborah Delisle: Great.
We're going to go ahead and get started.
I'm actually at the Department of Education, so --
That's okay.
I didn't want to think I was hanging out with the Department
of Justice, so...
Either I did or I thought maybe there was like something
in my folder that I'm a little afraid of, so.
Female Speaker: [inaudible] overwhelmed with the President.
Deborah Delisle: Sure, totally.
And we're going to shorten our panel a little bit,
and I think we think that we know it was well worth it
because having the President come in
is always just such a treat.
And I was so excited that the students got a chance to come
up here and to take a picture.
So I'm going to try to be a little bit --
have you be a little bit brief
so we can then engage in a conversation.
And I'm going to go through the line first.
I'm going to ask you -- so you're going to have
the hard part because you're going to start.
Want to prep you.
If you think about four sentences.
If you want to just introduce yourself to our --
to the group here and in four sentences or fewer,
describe your work so we get a concept of what the really
important work you're engaged in.
Misa Gonzalez: My name is Misa Gonzalez.
I work at Desert View High School.
I teach English to freshmen, and what we do is completely digital
English education -- paperless.
And the students work to connect with each other and communicate
through different resources we have online,
and to be able to collaborate with the world in our learning
English, reading and writing.
Deborah Delisle: Great, thanks.
And how long have you been doing that?
Misa Gonzalez: I've been at our school district for a year and a half.
Deborah Delisle: Wonderful. Thanks.
Brian.
Brian Walsh: I'm Brian Walsh.
I'm the director of Corrections Education for Peninsula College.
I run the education programs at a maximum security
and a minimum security prison in Washington State,
about as far away from Washington as you --
Washington, D.C. as you can get -- very northwest corner.
What we do with my faculty is we try to re-create the kinds
of digital tools that our students will experience
when they get out.
Since there's no internet access at all
within Washington State prisons,
we've had to innovate and create our own internet.
So our students are able to experience online courses
as if they were on our main campus in Port Angeles.
Deborah Delisle: Thank you so much.
And how long have you been doing that?
Brian Walsh: Six years.
Deborah Delisle: Great.
Daphne Bradford: Good afternoon.
I'm Daphne Bradford.
I'm the founder and President of Mother of Many,
a nonprofit organization that's been providing technology
integration in the classrooms since 2006.
My first program was called Developing Digital Media
Geniuses, and I became an Apple distinguished educator,
and now I'm a Microsoft innovative educator.
And so from integrating technology, YouTube,
Apple products, Microsoft products,
we've been able to grow into the gaming side of it.
And we've been supporting President Obama's Educate
to Innovate agenda since he's been in office --
actually in 2007, when he announced it.
Deborah Delisle: Great.
And I'm really happy you clarified that Moms of Many
because I wasn't sure when I first read your bio
if you were going to bring like 27
of your own personal children in here,
and then you're going to like really give you
some headache medicine or something.
So it's -- but it's -- what a great concept and a great title.
So thank you for doing that.
Daphne Bradford: Thank you.
Heather ***: Hi, my name is Heather ***.
I'm a fourth-grade teacher in Milton, Georgia,
at Crabapple Crossing Elementary School.
I helped start the Bring Your Own Technology pilot
for our fourth- and fifth-grade students,
and we have an after-school technology club for students,
and helped to educate the teachers and provide training
within our school and throughout the school system.
Deborah Delisle: Great.
Thank you.
Todd.
Todd Nesloney: My name is Todd Nesloney.
I teach fifth grade at Fields Store Elementary
in Waller, Texas.
And what I do is my students and I do a flipped class
and project-based learning environment,
which is really exciting for us because we are in a very rural
community with very limited internet access.
And we found ways to make things like that really work for us
so that my kids can learn creatively
and learn through creation.
And we've been able to work and get some great grants to put
technology in their hand so they have access to the tools
that they're going to be using when they leave my classroom.
Deborah Delisle: Great.
Thanks, Todd.
So I'm going to actually come back down this way,
but if one of you hears something that one of your other
colleagues is sharing that you want to jump in on,
please -- because I don't want this to be super-formal.
But I -- we each have different roles to play,
and you're in different environments.
And probably all of you feel like you're a far cry
from Washington, D.C.
Tell me -- you know,
we always think about technology as being a big game changer
for teaching and learning.
Can you give us one very specific example of that?
Our audience would say, "Yeah, that's a wow for us."
That is a total game changer for teaching and learning,
from the roles that each of you play,
the lives that you lead with kids.
Todd Nesloney: Well, I mean for me, since we are project-based,
my students love connecting outside of the classroom.
And so with the technology that we now have,
they're now able to create these incredible tools
and then share them with the world at large.
And I think that sometimes things that we forget about,
especially with being in very small districts like I'm from,
we forget to let our kids connect.
And many of mine won't ever leave the state of Texas
in their lifetime.
And so now through the tools that we have,
they're able to share their creations with people
from all over the world.
- Yeah, I think that's the important piece,
is that connecting outside of the classroom.
We focused a lot on the different tools to help
the students understand what is beyond.
And we use Skype quite a bit to reach out to people
that they may never meet, visit places, like you said,
they may never visit, and help to --
help them understand that things are beyond
just this tiny little town that they may live in.
Deborah Delisle: So before we finish down the road like --
so I could hear somebody -- not anyone in this audience
because you are all so awesome with folks, but, wow,
that's hard work, takes a lot of extra time,
don't know if I want to do it.
I'm sure you don't have educators or colleagues
in your own life like that.
But there are people, believe it or not,
in schools across the country who feel like there's
too much extra work.
How do you deal with that, like why do you not feel that way?
Todd Nesloney: With me, I mean,
when you see the look in a kid's eye when they get to do
that kind of thing --
I mean, my classroom is involved in a program
called Classroom Champions,
which is where they have an Olympic athlete that we get
to work with all school year
and learn character education from.
And we had our first Google hangout with him on Monday.
And to see the kids' excitement over our -- it was actually
a Paralympic athlete that we got to --
they finally got to meet and talk to.
And when you see things like that, I mean,
there's no bigger proof.
And when other people ask me,
"Well, how do you get other teachers on board?"
I say, "I let my kids do the talking
because they're the biggest element of change."
- Great messages.
- Yeah, we -- our students
just published their website for each --
each student in our class has their own website.
And they were just finally officially published,
and the excitement that somebody could go and read it.
"So anybody?"
Anyone could do it if they have the address.
It's that.
It's that what keeps you going, and then you marry somebody
that lets you spend all that time --
and working on those things, so --
- For those of you that are single,
that was like dating advice.
The champions are all about everything.
So Daphne, what about -- I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Daphne Bradford: For me, you know,
you're starting with the second largest school district
in the nation, LAUSD.
So for Mother of Many, I came from the professional
industry as a syndicated radio specialist.
So I was producing my own radio shows with a lot of well-known
celebrities, and so that was the carrot for the kids.
And so when you take them out and show them that they can do
the same thing, that inspires from a very creative,
visual learning perspective.
So you have them.
So to get the educators involved when they see that themselves,
they're interested.
"Well, how do you do that and how do we do that here?"
But I think the biggest advantage for me to remain
so long is I had a leader at the school that was very innovative
and says, "I'm going to give you the stage
because you can help save my kids."
So for me, having students from Watts, California,
and we've traveled to Washington, D.C.,
and we've toured the White House.
So to go from Watts to south LA, even to the valley
in Los Angeles, all the way to the White House,
you teach them to dream the most unimaginable dream
and make it happen.
But you're using it creatively.
You're using it with technology.
Technology is not going to wait on us to teach it.
And so when you have like a kid that comes
out of my personal class -- and I have one --
what is that teacher going to do with that child?
So it's Mom's responsibility.
We go into the classroom, because, you know,
most professional development -- 8 to 20 people --
and then the teacher is off on their own.
With me, I come in and I'm in your classroom.
I'm there to help you begin that integration.
Deborah Delisle: So you're cheerleading
and you're handholding and you're supporting.
Daphne Bradford: And I'm there.
And they can reach me via email, text, Skype.
And, you know, it's right now.
So that's how you're able to get the teacher and educator.
But, you know, as Todd said, when you see that sparkle in the
eye of that student, especially a student
that doesn't know the power of the --
ubiquitous power --
of technology.
Once you see that, you know you have that kid.
And so that it becomes an intervention piece
for math, science, English.
It's [inaudible].
Deborah Delisle: And Brian you work with kids who,
for a variety of reasons,
haven't found their own way in life.
And because of circumstances, they are in places far different
than so many of our students.
Brian Walsh: Actually, I work with adults --
Deborah Delisle: Oh, okay, I'm sorry.
Brian Walsh: [inaudible] case, so --
Deborah Delisle: Okay.
Brian Walsh: And many of our adults have come through
the juvenile detention system.
Deborah Delisle: So lost their way somewhere along the way, yeah.
Brian Walsh: And we have 16-year-olds who are now in their 20s or 30s,
who have never held smart phones, cell phones,
been on the internet.
Many cases, they've never used a computer at all.
So I think the image that comes to mind is an older student that
I had in his 50s, who had never been on the computer in his
entire life and is getting out, is reentering in two years.
And for the first time, he's -- he gets on the computer and
starts to learn how to design 3D objects and creates his own
website, and just totally -- just sort of embraces this idea
that I need to learn something about the world
before I get out into it.
So for me, what's inspiring is the student who can say,
"You know, I feel like I'm better prepared for release.
I know what I can do.
I have some skills that are marketable."
That's what inspires me.
I know that's what inspires my faculty.
And I think to answer your other question about people who say
it's too difficult.
To be honest, it's really boring to sit in the classroom
in a prison without technology.
And your students don't want to listen to lectures.
And we have a tough group of students to work with.
So working, you know, bringing technology in
is just a natural tool to make it more fun, more engaging,
and to address the kinds of challenges that we have.
Misa Gonzalez: I thought my freshmen were intense.
No, well, what really gets me is when I was leaving and I said,
"I'm going to be gone for three days."
And they said, "Does that mean we get to write the whole time?"
I'm like, "Yeah,"
because they're writing novels this month.
That's what they're doing.
And so they begged me not to give them any other assignments,
just to let them write.
They have to have 30,000 words at the end of the month.
"Okay."
You know, and when you have 164 freshmen begging you
to let them write, that's what you want.
And that's what the technology gives me the ability
to do because they can write 30,000 words.
And then we can edit them together as groups.
We can share it out.
We can send it to parents.
We can put it online if we want to.
Anything we can do, you cannot do with paper and pencil.
I mean, just writing a three-page essay takes four
weeks, three weeks, you know, if you edit
and revise and hand it --
can't do that [inaudible].
Male Speaker: To be a writer --
Misa Gonzalez: Yeah, so we're writing novels.
They're writing novels, and that's what really gets other
teachers inspired, too.
Deborah Delisle: So what about challenges?
Have any of you had one challenge in this integration
of technology where you thought, "You know what,
I just don't know that I can overcome this"?
What's been the biggest challenge?
You're nodding your head, Todd.
Todd Nesloney: Well, I mean, standardized testing plays a part
in everything that we do, even incorporating technology.
And when I transformed my classroom and went completely
flipped and project-based,
we got rid of [inaudible] questions.
We got rid of paper, pencil.
We wanted to do creation, and that was a very scary move.
My administrator at the time, Claudia Mordecai,
she was very supportive of me and very much
of a "You know what?
Let's try this.
Let's see if this can work?"
And so that was terrifying for me because regardless
of how much I believed in what I was doing,
I still have scores that I have to give the end of the year.
But it paid off in dividends.
Now I'm sending kids off and having junior high teachers call
back and say, "We can see a clear difference because your
kids understand what they're doing," because, I admit it,
I taught a test because I had to get that success.
And now I'm able to teach the skills
and the test comes easily now.
Deborah Delisle: Mm-hmm. Other folks?
- I was going to say with our Bring Your Own
Technology pilot, that could be scary for parents.
You know, they send the money on this devices.
We're asking them, "Send them with your children
and let us take care of it."
So that -- there is an occasional pushback.
And it was educating the parents on what exactly we were going
to do, that it wasn't just a substitution for paper and
pencil, that it was going to allow us to do things far beyond
what we were able to do already.
Deborah Delisle: Mm-hmm.
- Part of what I do is that I hit a roadblock
and then we just try and conquer it.
So things are scary but there's nothing that has stopped me
and said, "I'm not going to do this," or "this is too much."
It's just like, you know, we're going to figure this out, okay?
You don't have [inaudible] today, use your smart phone.
You have, you know, somebody else's laptop
or device or anything.
Whatever you're going to do, you're going to do it.
And we're going to figure it out.
And so I think that's part of what makes all of us, you know,
the champion that -- we just push through it.
I mean, you have to.
Deborah Delisle: So do you find yourselves often isolated or do
you feel like you're the only -- not the only --
I know you're not the only teacher who does that.
But there are times when you stop using textbooks
or you say to folks, "We're going to do this
no matter what,"
or you know, you have a whole different kind of ethos
around professional development and supporting teachers.
How is it that you can insulate yourself or, you know,
how do you deal with that in a setting because so many of our
folks, you know, that it's too easy to get caught up
in the why are you doing that?
It's not going to matter or it's too hard.
How do you sustain yourself, your own soul?
- You just keep talking about it and keep
letting the kids inspire you.
And that's part of what I have to do is I have to keep telling
all my teachers because we're completely digital
at our schools.
Everybody has a laptop.
They all take them home.
And there's teachers who are reluctant to step up and say,
"We're going to use this every day."
They say, "No, I'm going to put it over there."
And I keep pushing.
We have to do this.
That's how we run the world.
The way we got here today was completely digital.
There's nothing that we did with paper and pencil.
And so I just -- you just have to keep pushing the teachers
even though there is some fight back.
Daphne Bradford: For me, cloud computing is the key because it
can save you if you forget your flash drive,
if your computer crashes, just go to the cloud and get it.
[laughter]
And also for students, you know, it's like in a school
and somebody drove by and splashed water on my backpack.
Go to the cloud and let me have the assignment.
Don't worry about this.
Don't worry about losing your flash drive.
Female Speaker: [inaudible] suddenly those creative excuses
about the dog --
Daphne Bradford: Make the teacher feel comfortable.
Do a personal [inaudible].
Put your grocery list up there.
You know, or put your daughter's or your son's, you know,
something that you need to remember in the cloud,
and when you get to reading it, to just go up there and get it.
So that's a good answer for me
because there is no --
there isn't a technology challenge
that I haven't been able to conquer and get the support
from, you know, the schools that I deal with,
like Dorsey and Crenshaw
and [inaudible] High School in a class.
Female Speaker: Yeah.
Brian Walsh: I have a very different situation.
Technologically, we're not allowed to have the internet
at all within the prisons.
So that, I think, six years ago when I started
would have been a major roadblock.
But I think -- I surrounded myself with really innovative
faculty and just kind of set them free.
You know, what -- that'll come up with the ideas that --
and I -- and they will tell you that sometimes I drive them
a little crazy saying, "Well, why don't we try this?
Why don't we try this?"
And then they just kind of run with it.
So I think having people just within a team who want
to try things out and experiment and be willing to fail,
and we've had plenty of times where we realized
that technologically we were going to cause problems.
You know, we worked really closely with our Department
of Corrections because the last thing we want to do
is create a security issue.
So if you started off with just open communication with them
and sitting down with your faculty and sitting down
with security to create an environment,
that works very well.
And they are finally, you know, accepting
that there are going to be times where things look really strange
for a prison.
I have inmates teaching or creating computer games.
And the first thing I have to tell them is no,
we're not going to be making World of Warcraft
or Doom remakes, right?
It's just not appropriate.
But that's challenging for them.
But our Department of Corrections
is so supportive of it,
of preparing these inmates for release and our students
to be successful that that is also the inspiration.
Deborah Delisle: Just out of curiosity, you know,
when I travel around the country,
one of the greatest parts of my job is I get a chance to see
just amazing education going on.
It's not really the kind of things that media writes,
but I know in my heart of hearts that's there more
of that going on every day.
And I could say there are pockets of excellence all over,
whether it's with technology, blended learning.
Is this something unique in the prison system?
Is it gaining momentum?
Brian Walsh: I think it's starting to gain momentum.
There's a number of colleges that are trying
to do similar things.
I think there's -- there are challenges --
there's technical challenges and then there's the challenge
that all of us face with training faculty.
We're used to doing things a certain way.
So I think -- at least in Washington State --
we're fairly unique.
But one of the nice things is that all of the community
colleges that provide education programs there,
we share like crazy.
And the way we developed our system is we use
all open source tools so that it's not proprietary.
We want people to take what we've learned
and fix it and figure out better ways of doing it.
So we share everything.
Deborah Delisle: So let's just move a little bit to some
assessment of students.
You know, everything around our country right now is so focused
in the K-12 space, at least, in college and career-ready
standards and [inaudible] whether it's common core
or college and career-ready standards.
But for me -- I've been an educator for 39 years --
what has always been so essential to my students
is that they learn what I call life skills: you know,
the ability to get along with one another,
communicate, and all that.
And I hear sometimes people say if we get kids into technology,
there's the sort of social isolationism
or you can't grade --
I mean, I can grade a student's work in writing
a novel, but the other elements of human dimensions
can't always be measured.
Do you -- do any of you incorporate that
in the kinds of things you'd look at for growing students
or for how you assess whether or not you're successful?
Todd Nesloney: Well, we do.
I know that earlier you mentioned -- I'm one of the --
I'm a believer that, you know, negativity
can kill innovation really quickly.
And many of us may come from environments where people
aren't used to changing things.
And so becoming involved in social media connected me
with other educators from around the nation,
that that inspires me and gives me ideas
to do things in my classroom.
And so now, I mean, everything we do in my class is partner and
group work because they need to learn to work with people.
And I always tell them, you know,
I don't like everybody I work with;
you're not going to like everybody I put you with.
But you got to learn --
But I tell them, I say, "You know,
do you know who I don't like?"
No, you don't know because I learn how to work with them
and make it work.
Female Speaker: Great.
Todd Nesloney: And so you have to do the same thing because
that's the environment that we have to set them up for,
is that no matter who I put you with,
you have to be collaborative and creative
and give me an end product.
You can't not give me something
because you don't like that person.
And in fifth grade, that's really a challenge
to [inaudible].
Female Speaker: -- actually this is a really funny story.
I was in a school in California and one --
it was in a high school.
And one of the ways in which they were working
in groups that every person,
every student in the school got two pink slips for the year.
They could hold them on tight
and then when they worked in a group,
they could actually give a pink slip like a firing notice
to one of the people in the group.
They could only use two all year.
And they had to go defend to the principal or counselor
why they were firing that person.
So well you get fired one time from a group,
like that's a little bit scary, right?
But it was a great life lesson, too,
about what you're talking about, so.
Deborah Delisle: Yeah, others?
Yeah, Daphne?
Daphne Bradford: For me, I am specific.
My specialty is college and career
because I come from career.
I know what they need to survive and make it.
So you must collaborate.
You must be a team.
Everything is project-based.
And so when you start with ninth graders,
because I've been in high school, they're a blank canvas.
And so -- and it's a good way for them
to learn about each other.
But when you're on a job, somebody is better at something
and you're not as good as that.
So this is how you come together and make a really good project.
So as a result of doing that, you have, you know,
some 10th and 11th graders teaching podcast engineering
at Cal State, Dominguez Hills.
I can send them over to get an internship
at a major corporation.
And when you take them out and beyond their environment,
and they can actually see it and then come back in the classroom
and do that, then that creates
a whole other dynamic in the brain.
I can really do this.
But they can become an entrepreneur,
a content producer, and not just a consumer of the product.
Deborah Delisle: So it sounds like --
and even Brian, in your work, you're --
as Daphne just explained,
you're also making connections to real-world experiences
so that lesson on page 32 suddenly comes alive and that,
sort of that sterility -- the sterility of a textbook
preceding page 31, 32, 33, which is really ever so boring,
suddenly comes alive because of that question
of when am I ever going to use this is suddenly becoming real.
Is that accurate?
- Mm-hmm.
Deborah Delisle: Yeah, yeah, go ahead [inaudible].
- When we work together,
it's all through email, it's all through communication outlay,
so just like with getting here, I had to email,
I had to talk to people all digitally.
So my students have learned to communicate with me
at 11:00 at night.
They'll send me, you know, "Is this due tomorrow?"
And I can send them immediately back a response,
"No, it's okay.
We'll take care of it tomorrow."
So just that, being able to use basic email,
being able to communicate appropriately through email
and not like tweeting or Facebook or whatever,
that's a life skill that everybody needs to know.
And if they ask me, "Are you going to write a novel with us?"
I go, "You know, I just wrote a 5000-word email yesterday.
I don't think I'm going to."
And then they're like, "Okay."
So, you know, I -- just because they're writing novels,
they still have to learn how to communicate
and that's the way [inaudible].
Deborah Delisle: So how has this all changed how you think about your roles.
And I'm assuming any one of your preparation programs
didn't necessarily set you up to do this.
And I always find when I meet these absolutely amazing people
in work like Champions of Change and just amazing people.
Somewhere it came from someplace and you had to learn.
What happened for you to change either your paradigm
or your philosophy about this?
Todd Nesloney: For me, I was going to quit teaching.
I taught for five years, and I had success but, like I said,
I was a test teacher and I felt
like that was the only way I could be successful.
And I didn't like that.
It's not why I became a teacher.
I didn't become a teacher --
I wanted to change lives,
and I didn't feel like I was doing that.
And then my coworker Stacy Huffein came to me
and gave me this new idea and said,
"Let's try to be creative.
Let's try this wild idea that nobody else is doing around us
right now, and let's really try to run with it."
And I did that, and it just reinvigorated me.
And then when I could see the joy of learning in my students,
I thought I could be here forever.
Deborah Delisle: So you found sort of that calling
and that new place for you.
Yeah.
Heather ***: Yeah. As a fourth-grade teacher,
you're always hearing [inaudible]
"We have to get them ready for middle school.
We have to get them ready for middle school."
And for me, it's -- I never really understood that.
I'm much more of that, I want to light that fire or inspire
or have them find that thing that they want to do beyond,
beyond the college, even.
What do they want to do?
And that's really where I've been focused.
Deborah Delisle: That's great.
Daphne Bradford: The life-changer and the game-changer for me --
I was set up to do an interview with Rosa Parks.
So after I got over the fact
that I'm really talking to Rosa Parks on the phone,
I learned that she had learned
how to send email in her 80s.
Some of my friends, they shun email.
"I don't have time.
I don't want to worry about learning that."
When I told that and they could hear her tell me that,
because it was a recorded interview, I said,
"Well, if you have the mother of the Civil Rights Movement
sending email, I think we should do that."
And that was in 1999.
And we were moving into the 21st century.
So I'm like, I'm going with this.
If she's going, I'm going too.
Deborah Delisle: That's great, great.
Brian Walsh: You know, what was the game-changer for me was coming
from a world of connectivity on our main campus,
going to a world where you had no connection.
And that just wasn't going to work for me.
I just -- I think our offenders are --
they're going to release,
they're going to come back to society,
they need to be prepared, and they need the same tools
that every other student, college, K-12 needs.
So I wanted to bring that to them as well.
Misa Gonzalez: I was at the U of A.
I graduated a year and a half ago.
And I did everything digitally.
All of my work was online.
I sent all my papers in through the computer, everything.
And I showed up at the school and I went,
"Where's the computers?"
And then they gave them to us.
And so that really was like, "Oh, that's what I need."
I was already there.
I was already wanting it as a student.
And as soon as they gave it to me, I went,
"This is what I'm doing with my students."
This is how our world works in college.
It needs to work in high school that way too.
Deborah Delisle: Yeah. Thank you so much for being on this panel.
I know that our time has been limited.
I really appreciate it.
But one of the things I'm hoping all of you got from at least our
very brief conversation, which could have gone on
probably for hours,
is the fact that one of these individuals talked about,
"I want my kids to master the states and the capitals."
They all talked about relationships
that they were building with kids.
And honestly --
and with adults -- and the relationships
that you build to help people --
adults and children, what it is that you really value.
So I really, from the bottom of my heart,
from the secretary of education, I really want to thank you
for teaching and learning in a totally different kind of way.
It just gives my heart such great warmth to know that adults
and children are in your presence and you are taking care
of them for our present as well as our future.
So thank you so much.
I really appreciate it.
[applause]