One of the biggest financial and technological questions facing schools these days is one that has also been a long time coming: Microsoft Corp. is ending support for the Windows XP operating system, which is expected to leave districts across the country with some major buying decisions.

The loss of support, slated for April 8, 2014, means that users of XP—who are thought to include a substantial portion of the nation's K-12 districts—will not receive the automatic patches and upgrades to provide them with security, or the technical support they need when problems arise. And new software and programs are increasingly unlikely to be compatible with the XP model, Microsoft has warned.

The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant has been stating its intention to end support for XP for years. But as I explain in a story this week, many districts appear to have been slow to face that reality, and so now they face a time crunch.

Another factor adding to the pressure: More than 40 states have said they plan to implement online tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards, beginning in the 2014-2015 school year. The two consortia of states that are designing the tests are recommending that districts upgrade to Windows 7 or 8, or a similarly up-to-date operating system, to get ready.

But many tech advocates who work in or with districts say that some school systems that upgrade to 7 or 8 will also have to upgrade their aging stocks of computing devices, which may not be compatible with newer versions of Windows. That's no small investment. In one district described in my story, serving Janesville, Wis., school officials are likely to buy more than 3,000 computers over the next two years, and their tech equipment budget could jump from $900,000 to $2.2 million, with $1.3 million of that going to equipment.

Districts could, of course, also choose other operating systems, like Linux or Mac OS X. Or they could try options such as moving towards virtualization of operating systems.

In any case, it appears that many districts will be exploring their tech options soon, if they haven't already

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Schools are flooded with data these days, but students, parents, teachers, and administrators often lack the ability to make use of it because the systems for collecting, storing, and analyzing that information don't mesh with each other, many officials who work with, or in, K-12 education say.

That lack of "interoperability" between data systems—which results in everything from long lag times in schools receiving useful test results to educators and students having to deal with multiple logins to systems—is the subject of a new report, which calls for a streamlining of those systems, and attempts to offer solutions.

"Transforming Data to Information in Service of Learning," released today, calls on policymakers on all levels to develop long-term plans to increase the capability of technology systems to work together. It also says they need to do so while ensuring student privacy, and calls on state and local officials to demand that private-sector vendors deliver products that are capable of working within a broader tech system full of many parts.

"In spite of the fact that we are awash in useful digital-learning applications and potentially valuable data, the systems we use to collect, manage, analyze, and report on that data are often disconnected and don't work well together," according to the report, produced by the State Educational Technology Directors Association, a nonprofit organization based in Glen Burnie, Md., that represents state tech leaders.

"Most data currently being collected isn't captured to inform instruction; it's used for the purposes of state or federal accountability reporting. Some kinds of data that could give teachers and students immediate insight for personalizing instruction are not being captured at all or not in a systematic fashion.

In other parts of the public and private sector landscape, such as in health care, law enforcement, the entertainment industry, and transportation, systems typically work in smarter, more seamless ways that handle data with more speed and sophistication than schools often do, the association argues.

Where do the breakdowns in K-12 interoperability occur? The state tech association cites several factors at work. Among them:

• Integrating systems and apps is hard work, and today it often has to be done manually;

• Many of the processes for aligning digital resources to state standards are incompatible and costly;

• Districts and schools are often forced to piece together complex storage solutions, both on-site and through other options, such as cloud computing, to maintain the data churned out by their information systems;

• Confusion abounds about student privacy and legal provisions surrounding where student information is stored and how it can be used;

• Families often don't have a way to access students' personal data, from test results to accomodations for children with special needs, to share that information in secure ways;

• Users have to muddle through lots of logins and passwords to get to classroom resources or compile data, because different systems have different authentication processes; and

• Once student data is compiled, educators and school leaders lack ways to display it in useful, understandable ways.

The report also offers an overview of what it labels 14 "interoperability initiatives," led by organizations that are addressing standards for data and improving how it is shared and used. Those efforts range from "open badges infrastructure," or a standard and platform for issuing and storing microcredentials recognizing student achievements; to inBloom, a system that offers states and districts tech infrastructure to coordinate data, services and applications. InBloom has run into opposition in some states over privacy concerns. (At an event in Washington introducing the report, Doug Levin, SETDA's executive director, said the overview of initiatives was meant to provide readers with a list of resources, and was not meant as an endorsement of any company or approach.)

One of the event's attendees was Richard Culatta, the acting director of the office of technology at the U.S. Department of Education. He said policymakers and technology experts need to work harder to convey the benefits of creating a "coherent, interwined, ecosystem," so that digital novices understand the payoff for students and schools.

The difficulty of explaining the technology and its benefits "is not an excuse not to involve them in the conversation," Culatta said, adding, "that's on us to explain it to them."

The report also says that states and districts, through the requests for proposals that they issue, need to require assurances from vendors that new technologies will meet "widely accepted data and interoperability standards," or include plans to do so.

When policymakers consider the costs of procuring new products, they need to take the price tag associated with ensuring interoperabiltiy into account, the report says. Even tech products that are offered for free, the authors argue, need to be put through that review.

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Fueled by a $2.2 million grant, Khan Academy will develop online content and tools over the next two years to help teachers and students meet the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics.

The popular producer of free online content already has a large volume of practice materials and videos that are "mapped" to the common-core math standards, a press release says, but with the grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, it will build new diagnostic tools to help better identify gaps in student learning. In addition, the grant will enable Khan Academy—best known for its math instructional videos—to more "deeply cover" the standards.

Khan Academy has drawn some criticism over the pedagogy in its math instructional videos. An Education Week Storify—"Anatomy of a Khan-troversy"—produced last year examines the emergence of the nonprofit organization and the growing debate over its approach. The Storify also includes an interview with founder Salman Khan, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Business School. Khan's organization grew out of his efforts to help his young relatives with their homework.

Khan Academy's instructional materials cover a variety of subjects, from math to biology and even art history. Last summer, it announced plans, in fact, to turn some attention to computer science.

Originally published by Erik Robelen on the Curriculum Matters blog.

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When Coursera begins providing "massively open online courses" focused on teacher professional development this year, the Web-based offerings on the menu will be supplied not only by schools of education, but also by a number of the country's best-known museums.

Museums have been involved in professional development for years, and so in one sense their connection to the Coursera "MOOC" project is not surprising. If anything, it's a reminder of the breadth of sources of PD out there for teachers, options that can be offered by districts, commercial providers, nonprofit organizations, and other sources—and a reminder that schools of education are hardly the only players.

In addition to seven schools of education partnering with Coursera, the company listed three museums as joining in that effort: the American Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York City, and the Exploratorium, in San Francisco.

I wrote about the Coursera project recently but wasn't able to include information from an interview with Lisa Gugenheim, the senior vice-president for institutional advancement, strategic planning, and education at the American Museum of Natural History, who spoke about why the institution signed on to the program, and what she expects ahead.

The museum sees its partnership with Coursera as a continuation of the science content it offers K-12 educators, Gugenheim explained. The museum currently provides a mix of online for-credit courses and non-credit professional development, as well as courses offered on site at the museum's facilities. (The credit is granted by higher education institutions that partner with the museum.) It also recently created a master's of arts in teaching program, which is being piloted and supported with money from the National Science Foundation and the New York State Department of Education.

"We've been looking to broaden our work in PD," Gugenheim said. "We see ourselves as a content-provider. ...What we've heard from the field is that there's an enormous need for science content."

About 4,000 educators enrolled in either online or on-site profesional development programs at the museum during the most recent year. The average course costs $495, museum officials said.

Through Coursera, the museum plans to initially offer three online classes, each of which is four weeks in duration. Their titles: Genetics and Society, the Dynamic Earth—focused on the planet's geologic history and related topics—and Evolution.

Coursera's intention is to charge online users of its courses a fee in order to receive a certificate stating that they have completed the course, the co-founder of the company, Andrew Ng, told Education Week in a recent interview. An official from one school of education told me that his school does not plan on accepting revenues through certificates, but museum officials say they plan to receive revenue through that model.

As with many higher education institutions that have jumped into the MOOC game, it remains unclear whether Coursera's venture into K-12 teacher education will provide a steady flow of revenue to the participating colleges and museums any time soon. Gugenheim said her institution recognizes that uncertainty.

But ultimately, museum officials hope the partnership with Coursera will help resolve an important financial question, she said: "What is the market for the content we have?"

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One of the two major consortia designing tests to match the Common Core State Standards has hired a technology director to try to make sure the ambitious online testing rollout and implementation goes as planned.

Brandt Redd was recently named chief technology officer of Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, which along with the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, is moving ahead with plans to establish online exams in 2014-2015.

Redd comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—a major backer of the common-core standards—where he served as a senior technology officer for education programs.

He joins Smarter Balanced as states and districts face major questions about their technological capacity to handle the common tests. A recent string of meltdowns in online state assessments has increased the anxiety among policymakers and others.

Redd's hiring was made in partnership with the State Educational Technology Directors Association, the consortium said in a statement, as part of an "ongoing effort to address the technology readiness needs of states for next-generation assessments."

His bio includes having co-founded Folio Corporation, an electronic publishing software company, and Agilix Labs, described as a developer of learning solutions.

In the statement from the Smarter Balanced group, he emphasized the consortium's intent to focus on interim and formative assessments—generally defined as practices designed to determine how well students are learning and to provide feedback to teachers and students.

Redd said his goal is to ensure that the testing system "informs every teacher and student about their progress sufficiently early so that teachers can adapt the learning experience to the needs of each individual."

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When the E-rate program was launched in the 1990s, just 14 percent of schools were connected to the Internet. Today, there's near-universal access, new technologies are constantly being introduced in classrooms, and demand for Web access for students and teachers is rising. And the E-rate is not keeping up, many school and tech advocates say.

In a story this week, my colleague Alyson Klein examines the current state of the E-rate—a pool of money drawn from telecommunications fees and directed toward schools—why so many people say it is not meeting demand, and what options are available for increasing schools' E-rate funding.

One of the reasons the issue is important is because state and district needs for reliable connectivity come into intense focus in 2014-2015, when states begin giving online assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards. But there's also the overall strain put on schools' tech systems by rising Web usage.

There are several potential fixes, though their political viability is unclear, as Alyson explains. The Federal Communications Commission, which oversees the program, can increase the flow of money to the E-rate, though that might mean taking that money from another program. The commission could limit the number of services currently targeted for discounts under the E-rate. It could redirect savings from another Universal Service Fund program, Lifeline, which supports telephone service for low-income individuals. (Recent audits have resulted in savings from that program.) Or federal officials could make a one-time invstment of federal dollars to help school districts improve their tech infrastructure—which could cost more than $7 billion, by one estimate.

Backers of overhauling or tinkering with the E-rate have one thing going for them: Many of the proposed fixes that interest them could be approved by the FCC, and not have to go through a hyperpartisan Congress.

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Middle school students, most of them digital natives, are pretty comfortable using online video chatting. Usually, though, they aren't engaging with elephants.

At East Side Middle School in New York City, science students have the opportunity to participate in a program in which they video chat with an elephant conservation camp in Thailand via Skype. During the chats, the students observe the elephants' behavior, ask questions, and design and conduct experiments.

"When it comes to Skyping directly with the elephants it's really a treat for the students," Josh Plotnik, the founder of Think Elephants International, said in a Skype interview. "We bring the elephants literally right up to the camera and it gives kids the opportunity to ask us direct questions."

The program also seeks to get students actually involved with the research. Recently, the East Side students who participated in the program contributed to a published paper exploring the ways in which elephants communicate and receive cues.

Plotnik, who is currently living and researching at a Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation camp in Thailand, founded Think Elephants International as a way to get students around the world involved in conservation research and education projects. When he started the Skype classroom program, he reached out to longtime friend David Getz, the principal of East Side Middle School.

Getz and Plotnik met when Plotnik was eight and Getz was writing children's books.

"I mentioned in the dedication to one of my books that I had a hamster," Gets said. "He wrote me a letter saying he read the book and also had a hamster. I had my hamster write back to his hamster and we kept in touch as he grew up and became more involved in animal science."

Plotnik moved from hamsters to elephants and upgraded from writing letters to Skype and began looking for ways to bring his research into classrooms. He found that Skyping with the elephants is a great way to generate student interest and passion about conservation.

"The elephants will always be the conduit for attracting children into the program and engaging children in conservation, but we want students to realize that even in their local communities there are important programs going on," Plotnik said.

The program also retains student interest by making them a part of the research and giving them real experience as opposed to simulation.

"The kids love elephants and it sounds like so much fun, so they're drawn in that way," Getz said. "Then they stay and keep coming back I think because of the authenticity and the respect they get."

Although Think Elephants was the first Skype-based project at East Side Middle School, the school has since used Skype for various other purposes. The school holds weekly Skype conferences with its sister school in Kibera, Kenya, and recently used Skype to allow students to interview a World War II veteran.

For Plotnik, Think Elephants is part of a larger effort to get students more involved with their science work, and specifically with conservation and environmental efforts.

"It's a way to educate the next generation on how important conservation is through research," he said. "In the long term, I want to have an impact on how science is taught in school to a more project-based approach."

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A pair of national school organizations have released a guide meant to help teachers and adminstrators conquer an important yet often confusing task: how to make wise use of the reams of educational data flowing through the K-12 system.

The American Association of School Administrators and the Consortium for School Networking, along with Gartner, Inc., a tech research and advisory company, say the guide, "Closing the Gap Professional Development Toolkit," will provide a "step-by-step curriculum and cadre of professional-development resources" to help district and school leaders train employees on how to use data.

Why aren't educators and adminstrators more adept at using data? One reason is that few states require an understanding of assessment issues for principal or teacher certification, according to the authors. And once teachers enter the classroom, there's relatively little PD on the topic, the report contends.

The toolkit is meant to close that gap. It offers videos, case studies, references to reading tools, and specific teaching tools for educators. The report offers a PD curriculum that is divided into five sections:

• Building a culture on how to use data effectively;

• Creating professional learning communities, which can be defined different ways, but which the report calls "structures in which teachers engage in the regular habit of working together to deepen the learning of their craft to support the goal of student academic success";

• Evidence-based practices for supporting the use of educational data;

• Analyzing data; and,

• Technologies that enable the use of educational data.

The toolkit can be used across districts, as well as by schools, teams of educators, or individuals, the report says. For background on school officials' frustrations in figuring out how to make use of data, see my colleague Katie Ash's story from last year, "Data Evangelists See People Power as Top Priority." It describes how many school officials believe the tech foundation for good data use is now in place in states and districts, but what's lacking is expertise among all kinds of school officials is guidance on how to make sense of all the information. Will the new document help?

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Lawmakers in Florida, long a hospitable setting for virtual education, are on the verge of opening the door further to online providers, while also encouraging "MOOCs" in K-12.

A measure sponsored by state Rep. Manny Diaz, a Republican, which recently cleared the legislature, would loosen requirements for the experience required for virtual providers, according to the most recent draft of the legislation.

Normally, online providers in Florida need to have shown "prior, successful experience offering online courses" in elementary, middle, or high schools, to operate in the state. But the bill changes that, stating that providers without prior experience may be conditionally approved by the Florida Department of Education, which would review their records after a year.

The measure would also expand the pool of eligible applicants who could offer online courses to include massively open online courses, or "MOOCs." To date MOOCs have resided primarily in higher education environments, though there are some signs of a shift into K-12 settings. The MOOC provider Coursera, for instance, recently announced a partnership with teacher colleges and other institutions to offer online professional development for educators.

To date, the biggest and best-known provider of online education in the Sunshine State is the Florida Virtual School, which has seen the number of course completions by students rise fairly dramatically, to 314,593 today. Other, private providers also operate throughout the state, including K12, whose operations have come under criticism from some local officials recently.

The Miami Herald reports that the legislation would clear the way for other private companies providing virtual education to do business in the state. During the legislative session, backers of the new legislation depicted it as a way to break up the "semi-monopoly" of the Florida Virtual School, in the words of one lobbyist making that argument.

But the passage of the measure in the waning hours of the legislative session, not to mention the bill's overall content, provoked a major fight on the floor of the Florida Senate, according to the Herald.

The newspaper quoted one lawmaker, Sen. Darren Soto, an Orlando Democrat, as blasting the bill as "another way to privatize our public schools."

But Rep. Diaz argued that his bills was "not about private business."

"What we're doing here is not replacing Florida Virtual, by any stretch of the imagination," he said. "We're trying to provide more access to our students, especially those students who advanced and learn better by this modality."

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Join us tomorrow at 2 p.m. ET as Education Week hosts a webinar on colleges and universities creating programs and courses designed to spawn entrepreneurship in K-12 education, a growing area of focus on campuses nationwide.

You can register for the event, "Producing the Next Generation of K-12 Enterpreneurs," and submit questions, through Education Week's website. The topic is one that has a lot of relevance today, as K-12 and higher education officials and business leaders look for ways to make school systems more innovative, academically and financially.

Our guests will be Andrea Hodge, the executive director of Rice University's Education Entrepreneurship Program, located within the Jones Graduate School of Business; and Kendra Hearn, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan school of education who helped design a new course on educational entrepreneurship. I'll be moderating.

You can see my recent Ed Week story for background on the issue, as well as an item I wrote on the University of Pennsylvania creating a new center designed to give enterpreneurs and startups access to academic scholars and advice on research and other issues.

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