The IT department is an easy target, but most of the IT directors I know are doing their best to provide a stable computing environment for all the students and staff. The districts I know tend to run pretty lean in the tech department without a lot of extra staff to experiment on new technologies themselves. But most isn’t the same as all. Some IT directors are lazy. They refuse to consider anything new as they trot out the same old excuses about lack of money and time, network security, and the risk of rusting their servers’ router belts if they run open source software. There are some dinosaurs out there, and I’m afraid there’s not much that can be done with them.

But I choose to be an enabler. I choose to find teachers who are excited about technology so I can give them cool tools and see what they do with them. I choose to collaborate with teachers to find ways to maintain a stable network while the teachers experiment with online video, podcasting, and who knows what Web 2.0-ish site they find. I choose to trust teachers to make good decisions about what constitutes an educationally appropriate web site. I don’t have time to do all of that myself, and I’m not willing to be a bottleneck.

Enabling innovation doesn’t mean throwing caution to the wind. No one’s letting the inmates run the asylum around here. There has to be a wide open communication channel between IT and the teaching and learning department. (I meet regularly one-on-one with the Director of Teaching and Learning in my district so we can work in unison on initiatives.) Saying “yes” is so much more fun than saying “no,” so I don’t understand why any IT director wouldn’t want to be on the same side as the teachers and learners.

I write this less than a week after the voters in this community rejected three levy requests for additional school funding. Some nasty budget cuts lie ahead for us, and there won’t be nearly as much money in the tech budget as there would have been had the levies been approved. Now more than ever we’ll need to work together to set priorities and move the district forward. I want to be one of the ones moving forward, not holding us back. I’m more happy being an enabler.

• Canon ZR800 ($200) is low-cost camcorder that records onto DV tape. Canon has always provided a low-end camera with an audio input primarily intended for the education market. The audio input is key. Without it, you’re stuck using the relatively sucky built-in mic.
• Studio 1 Productions XLR-BP Pro ($180) XLR microphone adaptor. The Canon ZR800 audio input is a 3.5-mm miniplug which means that it will be almost impossible to find a decent microphone to plug in directly. This adaptor makes it possible to use standard XLR microphones with the ZR800′s audio input. It has two XLR inputs plus a miniplug and a ¼" plug. You can mix and match any two of these input simultaneously. It’s got a clip on the back that makes it easy to hang it from your belt or attach it to a tripod.
• ARTcessories Phantom II ($60) phantom power supply will deliver the phantom power you need to use condenser mics. I got this model because it’s battery powered and thus more friendly to mobile applications. If you’re using dynamic mics then you wouldn’t need this box. Most good lavalier microphones (aka lapel mics) are condenser mics that need the 48V phantom power.

We talked about microphones, and I recommended USB headset microphones like this Logitech model for student use. The beauty of a headset microphone is that once the proper levels are set, the student can move around and not change the distance to the mic. You’ll get much more even sound levels than with a microphone on a stand.

I’ll be at the MEMO conference tomorrow participating as a panelist talking about literacy (moderated by the Blue Skunk himself) and later doing an advanced podcasting session where I’ll probably do a lot of Q&A. I’ll do my best to post some summaries here.

Podcast examples

• Radio WillowWeb
• Grammar Girl

Equipment

• Rode Podcaster microphone
• M-Audio MicroTrack
• Marantz PMD-670

Copyright

• Creative Commons and ccMixter
• Freeplaymusic.com

I’ll update some more after this afternoon’s session.

If you can’t make it to NECC, or even if you want to expand your NECC experience, you can subscribe to Conference Connections in iTunes by clicking here.

Spread the word. Tell your friends. Heck, you can even tell people you don’t like all that much.

NECC is back and in Atlanta this year. I’ll be doing two identical half-day workshops (Podcasting—The New Voice for Learners) with a fellow ADE and all-around cool guy Joe Morelock from Oregon. In addition, I’m leading a team of Apple Distinguished Educators who will be producing the official NECC podcast channel on behalf of ISTE.

I’m really looking forward to NECC this year. Every year there are more friends to meet and greet. I’m very impressed with how ISTE continues to embrace blogging, podcasting, and other forms of web publishing. ISTE is really way out in front on this stuff compared to any other conference I’ve attended in the last couple years. They’re even getting on board with a systematic approach to Technorati tagging courtesy of Steve Hargadon.

See you there.

I’m a pretty sneaky guy, and I believe in the power of leaders leading with technology. So when our Director of H.R. asked me if I had any ideas about how we could streamline the process of recording applicant interviews, I thought it was a great opportunity to get the rest of the administrators podcasting.

So we bought a bunch of 30GB iPods with Griffin iTalk microphones for the principals and district administrators. We use a very structured interview process which ensures that the administrators can trust one another’s evaluations. That means that one elementary principal can interview a candidate and put that person’s interview recording into a pool that all the other elementary schools can draw from. The whole process goes like this:

1. Record (it’s a one-click operation with the iTalk)
2. Connect the iPod to the computer and transfer the WAV file
3. Compress the interview to MP3 format
4. Upload the file to a special area of one of our servers
5. Subscribe to a podcast feed that delivers all of the interviews for a given licensure area

No more sending cassette tapes around the district. Everything is password protected to ensure that only authorized people can upload or subscribe to interview podcast feeds.

I told my colleagues that I was treating this like a gateway drug to get them hooked on podcasting and digital media in general. How cool would it be for principals to be the ones on the frontier leading the charge for innovative uses of technology in the classroom? With a totally new web site going live in the fall (more on that later), I’ve challenged each of them to blog and podcast regularly next year. And wouldn’t you know that the iPod and iTalk mic each of them has makes a perfect little podcast recording platform. Sneaky aren’t I?

The Conference Connections page at ALI has all the information about the channel including a chance to rate each episode and leave comments. Our goal is to capture some of the best content from ed tech conference throughout the year. I’m thinking of it as IT Conversations for the ed tech market.

Here’s the RSS URL for the podcast. Click here to see the podcast info and subscribe in iTunes. I hope you’ll give the podcast a listen and that you’ll find something really interesting.