The evening of Day 15, I pulled the Cycle of Education into the Atlantic Ocean coast home of John and Dian Thomas in the city of Ormond Beach FL.  After unpacking my things we sat down and discussed my mission---> Education Ride 365.  When I explained that I am interested in national perceptions of continuous improvement in schools and how I believe data management opportunities enabled by 21st century technologies will further professionalize our efforts, introduce efficiencies, provide for more consistent follow through, and better target individual student needs...at first they seemed a bit dubious.  Paraphrasing: how many homes really have internet and email access?  Is technology accessible enough for all students, parents, and schools to take advantage of these new capabilities?  How does all of this really work and are we ready for this?  Might it be better for us to go back to 'old school' approaches and eschew the 'new school' wave of change that may be balanced on a proverbial house of cards?

I am probably condensing a number of conversations in the paraphrase above that I've had with others who seemed to have a similar initial skepticism like I sensed in my conversation with the Thomas'.  Folks with these reservations are not Luddites...they are just cautious in their assessment of the value of the flavor of the day to solve long-standing problems.  This is a reasonable stance.

After we discussed it further, they seemed to more fully embrace the vision.  It is a vision that successful businesses adopted a decade or more ago.  Schools perennially tend to be a decade or two behind successful businesses in terms of adopting progressive technologies and philosophies.  Were many 21st century businesses run like a good portion of schools still are...they'd be bankrupt.  Thriving businesses tend to be more responsive to advances in capabilities and efficiencies.  Schools are often painfully status quo, slow adopters.

For instance, it is true that many schools, if not most, now use technology to collect data on individual students, sub-population groups, and of course the whole school population.  Some are using newer computer technologies to do so, while others are still collecting this data in Word, Excel, and other such relatively static programs.  How many of these schools, however, are using this data in meaningful ways?  How many are able to work with the data in a timely enough manner to, for instance, make near real-time instructional decisions...or to truly tailor each individual child's instruction to that individual child's unique needs?

---

Riding stats: Day 15: 83.36 miles traveled, 2 hours and 12 minutes moving time, 3 hours and 12 minutes stopped time, and a max speed of 83.36 miles per hour.  Day 16: 73.55 miles traveled, 2 hours and 15 minutes of moving time, 3 hours and 51 minutes of stopped time, 32.5 miles per hour moving average, 12 miles per hour stopped average, and a max speed of 73.55 miles per hour.