Managing Endless Stream of Ideas in Education
CUE CEO Mike Lawrence discusses professional development, the organization's advocacy work and its growing number of conferences for educators.
CUE CEO Mike Lawrence on choosing five things to do well, the STEAMpunk Mobile Labs, the teacher shortage, teacher preparation and ESSA advocacy in 2016.
Mike Lawrence, CEO of CUE, talks about professional development and the role CUE plays in advancing technology and learning. Lawrence also speaks about advocacy efforts and the growing number of conferences and learning events to support CUE members including the CUE 2016 Fall and National Conferences.
Mike Lawrence, CEO of CUE, says the hard part of running an education nonprofit is not finding ideas but choosing which to do. In 2016 he described how CUE decides, the STEAMpunk Mobile Labs that let teachers try new technology for free, CUE’s work on the teacher shortage, and what educators should push for under ESSA.
Five things done well
“We have a phrase we throw around; there’s no shortage of bad ideas, there’s just bandwidth to implement,” Lawrence said. “You have to prioritize, and you have to say, I can’t do 14 things badly. I’ve got to do five things very well.” CUE’s board of directors helps decide “what are those five things and which of those five things do we need first.”
The STEAMpunk Mobile Labs
The STEAMpunk Mobile Labs began when CUE was offered 10 free Spheros. Lawrence handed them to Jon Corippo, hired two weeks later: “here’s a box of 10 Spheros, can you somehow get these out to classrooms and do something with it?” Corippo set up a sign-up form and a shipping box, “and the only expense to CUE was to build that box and then to pay the shipping to the school.”
“There’s no cost to the teacher; they just sign up, and we just ask that they contribute back in some way,” with a lesson plan, video or a blog post. The program grew to drones, helicopters, Dash robots and Matchbox race cars with physics lessons. It helps teachers “justify the purchase of these types of devices in front of the administrator or to justify writing a grant for it rather than having to spend the money first and then demonstrate the value later.”
When staff are tapped, the community steps up
CUE works from a five-year strategic plan broken into annual, monthly and weekly goals. When staff are at capacity, Lawrence said, “the community steps up. We have an amazing group of volunteers who because they’re so passionate about Edtech, they volunteer their time in addition to their day jobs.” His example was Doug Robertson, The Weird Teacher, a full-time teacher who became CUE’s social media champion and blog editor: “you get someone who’s in the trenches, in the classroom.” In his words, “Often, the answer is the community.”
The other answer is patience. “I have ideas that I have been cooking on for about three or four years now that still haven’t been implemented,” he said. CUE’s vision is “a world in which all learners are inspired and using innovative tools. That world doesn’t have to happen tomorrow.”
Making teaching attractive again
CUE partnered with Educators Rising, formerly Future Teachers of America, and its California affiliate through Project Tomorrow on the teacher shortage. Many CUE members face retirement in the next five to ten years, Lawrence said, and “a lot of great talent” is choosing other careers because teaching “is in society, often the punching bag for politicians and for policymakers.” CUE wanted “to make teaching sexy again if that’s a phrase we can use.”
Its Next Gen Teaching program sends CUE’s “lead learners” to events for high school students thinking about careers, and to college students and pre-service teachers, “to inspire them and show them what’s happening in the classrooms.” CUE also works with teacher preparation and induction programs. When he trained, Lawrence said, “I was learning the pedagogy that they were taught when they got their credential 20 or 30 years prior.” Too many programs still see technology “as an add-on or ending with PowerPoint,” missing “robots, programming, computational thinking, mobile devices.” In his view, “We are doing a disservice to the students in the future if we don’t infuse that into teacher preparation programs.”
ESSA and the National Edtech Plan
“The biggest topic right now is ESSA, and the Every Student Succeeds Act,” Lawrence said in 2016. He and CUE’s COO and CFO were at the White House on December 10, the day President Obama signed it, for the rollout of the National Edtech Plan, “a very forward-thinking document” that the news coverage “completely ignored.” ESSA “has some great provisions for technology if we act,” he said, because it gives states choices over federal funding. CUE, the other ISTE affiliates and ISTE were lobbying states to spend on professional development and on infrastructure and support, “not just the hardwires and the boxes, which everyone goes to first.” There is a tendency “to take the figure and divide by the cost of an iPad or a chrome book,” he said, “forgetting the piece that has to be there which is supporting teachers in changing pedagogical approaches.”
He urged educators to act locally: “push your local school board, to act on it and make sure that your priorities are set to support the use of technology and forward-thinking, innovative tools.” In his words, “It’s moved beyond replacing overhead projectors with laptops.”
MIKE LAWRENCE, CEO
Mike Lawrence has been impacting education as a teacher, administrator, technology coordinator and non-profit leader for twenty years. He is a respected presenter, at national conferences and events and was named an Apple Distinguished Educator in 2003. He assisted in the development and launch of the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) and co-founded the Google Certified Teacher program. Mike is an author and editor and can often be found at his local coffee house on his iPad.
He currently serves as CEO of CUE (CUE.org), supporting its membership by advancing student achievement through technology on an international level. Each year, thousands of educators attend CUE’s conference events and professional learning opportunities, making it the premier Educational Technology association of the Western U.S.
Mike also serves as Director of the California Student Media Festival (mediafestival.org); the nation’s oldest such festival. In 2010, Mike received a “Gold Disk,” CUE’s longest standing recognition, honoring his contributions to the organization and to technology in learning. He was also elected to the ISTE Board of Directors the same year.
In 2011 he led the development and launch of Leading Edge Certification, a national certification program leveraging an alliance of over 30 nonprofits, universities, and educational agencies. Certifications will focus on online teachers, administrators, librarians and other educators.
In 2012, he was appointed to serve on the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing’s Teacher Preparation Advisory Panel and was honored as one of the National School Board Association’s “20 to Watch in Educational Technology” in March of this year and was given the ISTE Making IT Happen award at ISTE 2013. Mike was also honored to have the Infinite Thinking Machine, an award-winning web TV show focused on creativity and innovation in the classroom.
Mike began his educational career teaching high school English, often writing his own English elective courses to engage students typically disinterested in the core subject (Science Fiction Literature, anyone?). As a Technology Coordinator, he led the development and delivery of hands-on technology professional development, including Principal Training Programs for Southern California administrators, as well as the Student Technology Showcase and Technology Proficiency programs.
Mike’s humor and background as a teacher inform all of his presentations, making them accessible to educators of all levels and curricular areas. He lives with his wife Julie, and kids, Jay and Kellen, in Southern California.
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