hard deadlines

In an e-mail this morning, Portsmouth High School principal Robert Littlefield formally announced the new "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) program which will enable students to use their own internet-enabled devices, starting in January.

To all Portsmouth High School families,

We are gearing up for rolling out a significant development at Portsmouth High School shortly after New Year’s Day in January 2014. Soon we will be opening up our school to a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) practice where students, teachers, and visitors will have Internet access through our own Wi-Fi on campus.

It seems like each week I become aware of a new learning opportunity being offered by teachers that is dependent on students having access to the Internet. We have invested a great deal of resources toward modern computer labs and laptop carts and our Information Technology department does a tremendous job maintaining our network, implementing software, and keeping our hardware up and running. Yet, there are times when a trip to the computer lab is not necessary if quick access to the Internet is available.

Opening Wi-Fi
Starting in January, students will be invited to bring smartphones, laptops, tablets, netbooks, etc. to school in order to employ the devices for educational purposes only. In addition to opening Wi-Fi, each student will have an account for storing assignments on “the cloud” for easy access and sharing.

If we had our wishes, we would be issuing computers to every student. However, that is not possible at this time. However, we feel students run the risk of losing out on learning opportunities by limiting access to the Internet to only those students sitting in computer labs. We hope to allow those students with devices to use them while at the same time offering the opportunity without devices to borrow them from the school.

Challenges
Obviously, this presents some challenges. We have a faculty committee working on guidelines for the proper use of devices while in school. For instance, students must only access the Internet through our properly filtered Wi-Fi and not through the 3G networks supplied by their telephone service.

More information and opportunities to purchase
Much more information is available on the Portsmouth School District website, including offers by vendors for purchasing devices at an educational discount. I invite all parents to explore these opportunities.

PSD BYOD page

This is an exciting time for our school. I will continue to keep you posted on developments as the roll-out date approaches.

As always, if you have questions or comments please do not hesitate to reply to this email.

Robert Littlefield
Principal

Editorial note: Written from a PHS e-mail.

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month.

Friday marks the beginning of November and the kickoff of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a yearly challenge in which hundreds of thousands of writers aim to crank out 50,000 words in 30 days. Since the program started in 1999, organizers say, more than 250 writers have seen their novels published, including Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, Hugh Howey’s Wool, Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, Jason Hough’s The Darwin Elevator, and Marissa Meyer’s Cinder.

But the real aim of the event is encouraging creativity and participation. Last year, according to the event's organizers, 341,375 people signed up on six continents, and even more are anticipated to start on Friday. More than 80,000 students and educators will participate in the "Young Writers Program" which is supported with free classroom materials. And it's not just a virtual experience: nearly 700 regional leaders will hold write-ins at libraries, coffee shops, and other locations around the world.

"NaNoWriMo is an unbeatable way to write the first draft of a novel because it's such a powerful antidote to that horrible foe of creativity: self doubt," Grant Faulkner, the project's executive director, said in a release. "NaNoWriMo is a rollicking conversation about all aspects of writing, and an invitation to dare to do what seems impossible. As many NaNoWriMo writers have discovered, the best way to learn to write a novel is by simply plunging in to write a novel."

Once again, I'll be taking part, and reporting my progress in that widget over in the right-hand sidebar (or underneath the post, if you're reading on a phone. Yay responsive design.)

While I haven't won since 2009 — honestly, haven't even come close — I'm feeling good about this year. Have a story I started over the summer at my yearly writing workshop at Toronto's Artscape Gibraltar Point which has extruded all sorts of limbs and pseudopods as I've continued to noodle with it in the notebook, and I'm thinking it will turn into a novella-kind-of-thing that might benefit from a 50K length.

The project is called "After the Gold Rush," and it's a time travel story set in New York City in September, 2001. Here's the open:

Photo courtesy NASA.

It would always be the sky she remembered from that morning, a preternatural blueness that stilled her to a breathless gape as she slipped out, morning coffee in hand, to the tiny patio overlooking Washington Street. The sun was up somewhere over the East River and Brooklyn, and the invisible roar of West Street traffic bounced off buildings, muted and out of phase. But it was the sky that held Bernadette captive: a late-summer azure that poured through the skyscrapers all the way down to ground level, soaking the waking world. She felt the pebbly paving bricks on her bare feet and sank into that depthless blue, savoring the caffeine buzz rising in her back brain.

Full disclosure: Written partially from a press release. And no, I didn't stick in the quote from Faulkner and the first graf of the story just to boost my word count. Although that is good practice...

File photo of Karen, John, and Cub Scout Jack McDaid at scouting event where they were told "We don't have to be tolerant."

According to the posted agenda for next Tuesday night's meeting, the Portsmouth School Committee will hear the concerns of parents about an 8th-grade field trip to participate in the Narragansett Boy Scout COPE (Challenging Outdoor Personal Experience) program.

Full disclosure: We're the parents.

At the previous school committee meeting on October 8 (just after the permission slips went home) this reporter made the following statement during the public comment time:

I'm speaking tonight solely as a parent and not on behalf of any organization.

I'm here to ask the school committee and the administration to consider the policy on field trips involving organizations which practice religious and gender discrimination.

On October 28, the Middle School plans to take 7th and 8th graders to an outward-bound-style training session, called COPE, run by the Narragansett Boy Scouts of America. The funding for student participation is being covered by a grant -- about which BSA has refused, despite repeated requests, to disclose any details. [Ed. Note: Narragansett BSA Program Director Mike Brown did respond, and identified the Prince Charitable Trust as the source.]

BSA has a policy of denying membership to gay and atheist scouts and leaders. A recent policy change will allow gay scouts, but the exclusion for leaders and the nonreligious remains.

Our students have the right to learn in an environment free from bias, including field trips. I respectfully request the committee and administration take three steps.

First, publicly identify the source of the grant money funding this trip. Parents deserve to know who is paying the bill. Since this amounts to an in-kind donation exceeding $2,000, I'm invoking district policy 3269 which says "the Superintendent *will* consider the advisability of accepting" such donations.

Second, revisit policy 5210 on field trips, which delegates decisions to building principals and only requires that trips "positively contribute to the academic curriculum." The policy subcommittee should add guardrails to trigger review by central administration on questions of suitability and craft language excluding organizations with discriminatory policies.

Third, make this a teachable moment. We all recognize BSA has made progress, but there is still much to be done. If the district continues working with the BSA, it should commit to engage constructively. Institutions are most likely to act when feedback from partners and customers creates a felt need for change. The district, which must be committed to core values of religious diversity and gender tolerance, has an opportunity to demonstrate these values by speaking up.

I thank the committee for your time and your consideration. I know the committee cannot comment tonight, but ask this be added to the next meeting agenda.

Right up front, I must apologize to Mike Brown. Although he did not respond immediately (and cc'd what appeared to be their public relations firm) he actually did reply on Monday, Oct 7, but his response was caught in my spam filter. We clarified this on Oct. 10.

Also, I want to stress that I respect BSA's rights as a private organization. The Boy Scouts have the right to determine their membership, and they have aggressively defended that right, earning a victory in June, 2000 in the Supreme Court decision Boy Scouts of America et al v. Dale, which held, "Government actions that unconstitutionally burden that right may take many forms, one of which is intrusion into a groups internal affairs by forcing it to accept a member it does not desire."

But here's how that decision played out in personal terms for some families in Portsmouth. Our son, Jack, wanted to try Scouting, so we signed him up for Cub Scouts a few years ago. At the first large-scale event, held with children and parents at one of the campgrounds, while the kids were off at an activity, a scout leader explained this principle to the parents in no uncertain terms. "We don't have to be tolerant," he said "and we have a Supreme Court decision to that effect." I can confirm that I am not the only Portsmouth parent who has a clear and vivid recollection of this event.

The question we're going to put to the School Committee and administration is not the Boy Scouts' private membership restrictions, but rather the entanglement which ensues when a public institution expends public money for student participation in a program run by an organization which, as a matter of policy, excludes participation based on sexual orientation and religious belief.

Full disclosure: No disrespect is intended to my friends and neighbors who have shared their many positive stories and experiences with Scouting. I don't expect this to be a popular position, but I believe this is the right thing to do.

Portsmouth School committee represents at the RIDE tech conference (l-r) Tom Vadney, Dave Croston, Fred Faerber, Terri Cortvriend.

More than 600 educators from Rhode Island and beyond gathered in Providence today for the RI Dept. of Education 2013 Technology Conference. In just a year since the inaugural event, the conference has doubled in size and adopted a multi-track format spread across function rooms at the Rhode Island Convention Center.

RIDE Commissioner Deborah Gist kicked off the event, followed by a day of plenary sessions, breakouts, and demos by both students and vendors.

In the spirit of digital disintermediation, rather than describe the event, you can take a look at some photos up on Flickr, watch an exclusive harddeadlines interview with keynote speaker and iSchool CEO Travis Allen on YouTube, and read the voluminous and detailed tweets by attendees who used the hashtag #RIDEpowered2013.

Tweets about "#RIDEpowered2013"