Project Share Texas Conversation: Pros and Mostly Cons
This evening, I had a twitter conversation with some colleagues about a product that the Texas Education Agency has purchased for every teacher and every student in Texas: Project Share.
Project Share is AKA Epsilen in other parts of the world, and provides educators with the ability to do a lot of those “21st Century Skills” things we all have been talking about, but not a lot of people have been doing. What PS provides is, for all intents and purposes, free web pages, free online group building, free blogs, wikis, free online course content creation capability, free online professional development as well as a growing number of free online content providers, such as the New York Times, which is a part-owner. (Each Texas Taeacher essentially has a free NYT subscription going back to 1851.)
So, with all that coolness, one would THINK that districts would be jumping all over themselves to use the product. After all, the state has purchased it, the state has endorsed it, and the state , through various channels, has made it clear that they would like the districts to use it. But..it has not been used as much as it could.
Tonight, I set out to find out why, and here is what the twitter conversation said:
If I am reading these tweets correctly, the hesitation to get teachers to use Project Share is summed up as such:
1. There is a nagging feeling that it won’t last, and no one in Austin can say other than “It is funded until 20XX.” Some say it is tied to this current TEA commissioner and will die when he leaves. So why invest time and effort in something that might go away sooner than later?
2. Content, once put onto PS cannot be retrieved back. So say a student creates a years-long e-portfolio, what happens when that student graduates and goes to a non-Epsilen school? IS everything lost? Would that be worse than having no portfolio at all?
3. For course management, many say Moodle is better and cheaper. If that is the case, then Project Share either needs to put out some kind of comparison chart between Moodle and PS Courses, or stop saying things like “Its almost as good as Moodle.” If it is “almost as good” then why was it purchased in the first place?
4. There is nothing compelling in PS that is not found elsewhere. That sounds like the PS folks need to advertise the advantages of the system to me and show how the product meet the needs of the TA TEKS, and can help teachers create a PLN that is at least statewide, something again, sorely lacking.
5. Students need to be able to access the Content Repository, which is Project Share’s strongest feature, but it is limited to teachers.
6. TEA seems half-hearted at endorsing PS. If they were whole hog about it, then ALL training and ALL announcements would be posted on PS, not just a selected few.
If the Texas Education Agency wants Project Share to succeed, they need to do a better job advertising the benefits, take on Moodle head-on and show that ANY CMS is better than no CMS, which MANY district do not have.
Another thing that bothers me is this:
I recently had a conversation with some folks I met at the DELC 2011 Conference in Albuquerque. When I spoke about Project Share, to a person they said that they would give their eye-teeth to have their state provide them with something like that. When I told them what some of the hesitation to use it was, one of my colleagues looked at me and said “So what? Anything is better then nothing.”
Have we gotten so spoiled that we must insist that if a service provided by the state doesn’t meet our EXACT needs (it isn’t Moodle!), we, like a bunch of little teenage girls will badmouth it, not play with it, and ignore it?
From what I see with Project Share, the product, even if it is not going to last forever, provides a lot of bang for very little buck to districts, other than training.
There are a hell of a lot of teachers that do not get near using these pieces of equipment even 11 years into the 21st century.
Project Share provides a pretty tame way to get exposure, to open the door to the 21st century way of teaching.
Too bad some district technology people don’t want to use the tools because it doesn’t meet their exacting, and usually arbitrary standards. They are leaving a lot of teachers out in the cold I think. The selective indignation is maddening, and disheartening, because those same folks that are purposely ignoring Project Share because of some made up moral or political issue that has nothing to do with education in their schools, in their classes, in their districts, will be the first to complain when it is ripped away for lack of use, or they will use it a few years from now as an example of how the state “can’t implement programs properly.”
Too bad. Because the teachers and kids lose out. The state doesn’t give a shit one way or another. Use it or lose it.
