GENERATION YES

Eight more California schools receive GenYES grants
Based on years of significant research results in the state, the California Department of Education announced last month that eight additional GenYES schools would be funded using Round 6 EETT grant funds. This makes 58 California schools that have been provided EETT funding to utilize GenYES to prepare students in grades 4 to 12 to help support technology professional development.

Arizona EETT funds GenYES expansion
Schools in Hayden-Winkelman district teamed with neighboring schools to write a successful grant application to continue and expand their successful GenYES programs. The Arizona State Department of Education supported the GenYES approach as a comprehensive way to "connecting the dots with what we know has been effective in showing that Ed Tech can increase student achievement and teacher effectiveness (eMints, Gen-Y, peer coaching, etc.)."

Paradise Valley expands from 5 to 19 GenYES schools
This year, the Paradise Valley school district in Arizona started GenYES in 19 schools, expanding from 5 schools last year. Students in elementary, middle, and high schools are helping their teachers with technology, while learning 21st century skills like collaborating with adults, project planning, and of course-technology.

"Almost all of our students are computer-literate but the adults on campus are not, so we use the students to help adults use technology more at our school," said Ms. Marianne Bursi, principal of Explorer Middle School.

Still room to sign up!
The Constructivist Celebration @NYSCATE will be held the day prior to the New York State Association for Computers and Technology in Education Conference, on Saturday, November 17th in Rochester, NY at the Hyatt Regency.

The Constructivist Celebration @NYSCATE will be a day-long workshop that's so much fun we should call it a playshop. Recapture the feeling of being a learner AND get free software -- what a deal!

There are still seats available - email Sylvia Martinez for details if you would like to attend. (Or just reply to this newsletter.)

More information can be found on the Constructivist Consortium website.

Jonas Salk High-Tech Academy in the San Juan School District (Sacramento, California) is featured in the Sacramento Bee as a technology success story. Jonas Salk is a double-duty Generation YES school, using both the GenYES and TechYES programs. We've watched the amazing work their GenYES students have been doing to support teacher use of technology and how their TechYES students have stepped up to mentor their peers in tech literacy to receive TechYES certifications.

The story, Technology reboots student interest: Test scores show a 33-point jump for Jonas Salk chronicles the turnaround of Jonas Salk from a campus struggling with high teacher turnover and low student achievement, to one where both students and teachers are eager to show up every day. For them, technology was the key. And guess what, test scores improved as a result.

Jamal Hicks, GenYES and TechYES teacher says,

"GenYES has been vital to the success at Jonas Salk. Empowering the students through technology has really worked by giving the students an important reason to learn technology and to stick with it. Many of them are used to avoiding work when they find it difficult. But because they are responsible for teaching teachers about technology, they don't want to give up. It instills high expectations and gives them satisfaction when they finish. This carries into their approach to other classes and their schoolwork."

Dennis Harper shared the stage at two spotlight sessions at the Iowa Technology and Education Conference (ITEC) with Ann Malven and her students from Nevada, Iowa, who are doing the TechYES technology literacy certification program to meet the 8th grade tech literacy standards.

Dennis says, "You can't expect responsible kids if you don't give them any responsibility." Very true!

They used our Sharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences whitepaper (free PDF download) to prepare the students, and the students shared the projects they did to satisfy national technology literacy standards. Each student did two projects, one to satisfy a social studies class assignment, and the other of their own choice. Of course they all chose to show their personal project!

G1G1 - Give One, Get One. Buy a laptop, change the world?
OK, you can see the theme here. The One Laptop Per Child initiative is also a direct outcome of Dr. Papert's vision of putting computing power directly in children's hands in the developing world. Now this revolutionary program comes to the U.S. and Canada.
Find out how you can be a part of history (and get a cool laptop.)

Collected online works by Seymour Papert
Besides his three books (Mindstorms, The Children's Machine, and The Connected Family,) Dr. Papert wrote many essays and articles that are collected online. These are excellent reading for their continued timeliness and articulation of the vision of constructivist educational technology. Online works of Dr. Seymour Papert.

Support for Dr. Papert
Nearly a year ago, Dr. Seymour Papert was gravely injured when hit by a motorcycle in Hanoi, Vietnam. His recovery is still undergoing with limited progress--yet there is always hope. Read more. This man's legacy is yet to be written, because his work and ideas are still relevant today. Laptops in schools, logo, Scratch, and so much of what we call best practice in educational technology all stem from his inventive mind. Wikipedia article

The impact of the Speak Up data over the past 5 years has been tremendous. Each participating school or district gets online access to their own aggregated quantitative data with national benchmark data; districts use that data as input for programs and budgets. For more information or data from previous years, check the Project Tomorrow site.