Art Willer has been around computers and education for a long time and has seen first hand the evolution of computer assisted learning. Dating back to his days at Colgate University, Art has remained impressed at how computers can manage complex mathematical and scientific information.
Since his early exposure to computer learning, Art has pursued a fulfilling and varied career in education. As he puts it, “I’ve been a classroom teacher. I’ve been a teacher of teachers. I’ve been a leader in technology in education and, subsequently, a publisher and developer of educational learning tools.”
Necessity was the mother of invention for Art as a district shortage of computer programming led to his development of publishing software. Art found himself in a large school district in Canada that had a surplus of computers but no software to run them on. In response, Art supervised the development of high-quality software that eventually became the brainchild of a publishing company for educational learning tools.
Today, Art is President of Bytes of Learning, a company that develops software tools and supporting materials for many areas of education, including UltraKey the very popular keyboard typing software.
Interview
Host: Art, let’s look back. In your experience in education, what makes you think about the past and gives you pause?
Art Willer: I actually go back forty-five years. Interestingly enough, it was forty-five years ago that I had my first experience with computers in education as a learning tool.
It was at Colgate University where we studied computer oriented calculus and computer oriented physics. The complexity of the subjects aside, what we were using the computer for was the model for the concepts. Even then, I couldn’t believe how powerful it was as a creative tool to get concrete understandings of phenomena.
Since then, I’ve pursued a career in education. I’ve been a classroom teacher. I’ve been a teacher of teachers. I’ve been a leader in technology in education and, subsequently, a publisher and developer of educational learning tools.
Host: With that, how can we best support communities around the country and the world that are not in education.
How can we better prepare them to be ready for change, to embrace it, to be excited about what those changes can do to support students and teachers?
Art Willer: Interestingly enough, it’s in communities around the world that we’re seeing some of the best uses of technology. This goes back to years ago, one of the best uses of technology I ever witnessed was in Costa Rica, where a teacher had an old clunky computer in the corner. She had five, six, and seven-year-old children working as a team to develop educational software. They weren’t coding; they were using a product that was subsequently published to create the program. And it was a leading tool developed in Costa Rica, and its purpose was to engage children in incorporating multimedia so that they could express themselves.
I witnessed not only that one little classroom but subsequent classrooms where she had children working as a team using computers as learning tools. It was very powerful.
So that’s where we can begin, to recognize the excellence in different pockets around the world. We in North America would like to believe we’re the leaders, and we are to the extent of how much we’ve implemented technology, but instances of brilliance can be found anywhere in the world.
Host: Given the knowledge and the experience that you’ve had in education, tell me what it was like when you decided to look at publishing, to look at the next chapter of your life and how you could provide benefit to the learning environment as a whole?
You could have gone down a number of different paths; you chose this one. Why did you choose it and what was the impetus for you to say, “This is where I can make my mark”?
Art Willer: Like a lot of things in life, there are circumstances that often cause things to happen. We find ourselves with an opportunity or in a situation. The situation in my case was that I was directing software development for a large school district in North Canada. And the reason we were developing software was to fill the gap. Computers had come along, but we had almost nothing to run on them. So the idea was we would develop software until better stuff arrived.
One of the things I noticed was that better stuff didn’t arrive. Stuff was arriving but was often not well designed from an education perspective. The other thing we realized was that we were building significant stuff and, unfortunately, it couldn’t be published. A publishing company is needed to distribute information and media.
So that was how we got started. It wasn’t on a particular product idea, it was on a product development process where we involved practicing classroom teachers, subject experts, curriculum experts ─ that’s my background ─ and forward-thinking technologists and computer programmers. We came up with some really top-notch products we developed technically well as well as educationally.
Host: There’s a lot of interest from folks who say, “I am in the classroom and I want to engage in the business of education.” What was that learning curve like for you to go from classroom to the boardroom?
Art Willer: First of all, way back to the 1850s, publishers began to develop learning resources for school use. For me, like I often say, I’m an educator. I happen to be on the commercial side of the education world.
Of course, that means that I need to make a profit. I need to deal with money. In fact, whenever an educator suggests to me that I’m motivated by money, I say, “I’ll tell you what. We’ll just not drop your paycheck in the inbox this month.”
When we have that conversation, people realize that’s why we’re all here. We just happen to operate privately. One of our advantages is that we can actually do what needs to be done. We’re not governed by politics; we don’t have to please a lot of people except for shareholders. My aim is to make great software for our schools to use.
I’ll add that it’s through very constructive and positive partnerships with educators that we have been successful ourselves. That’s been a very key element, and it’s one of the things that I’d suggest to anybody looking to do business with publishers. They should look at that aspect. Is there a way to connect with them and have input into product development?
Host: Art, from your perspective, are we doing a good job of integrating educators ─ their thought processes and their expertise ─ into the technologies that we are developing?
Art Willer: At the risk of sounding negative, I’ll answer “no.” But, on a positive side, there is lots of room for improvement. And I don’t think it takes a lot to improve. We just have to come to grips with a few realities.
One of the things I often say is that technology changes very quickly. People do not.
That’s not a put down on people. Some of the best educators I know are those who have been around for a while; they’ve experimented with different things, but they don’t jump in on new wagons once a day. They’re very plodding people.
One of the things I see is the more successful school districts move slowly, carefully, and persistently. They don’t just do the shopping for computers. They ask themselves, “How are we going to implement this technology?”
When we want to change anything in education, what we’re really saying is we want to change the people. We can bring in the technology and change the environment, but if we don’t change the people, we don’t get anything out of it. That includes buy-in.
I have teachers tell me, “Oh, the technology department decided to take all my computers and replace them with iPads.” Who made that decision? Why was it not decided with teachers? And what on earth was expected to happen?
I was talking to a technology director who said, “Oh, the principal said to me he wants to buy iPads for our kids.” And the technology director asked, “Why?” The principal couldn’t answer the question. He couldn’t give him a good, educationally sound answer.
That takes time to think, and it takes time to plan. And until we have that, we really shouldn’t be doing anything.
Host: What excites you about the world where we have young children using technology in a ubiquitous fashion? And the fact that they can become the next innovator, the next breakthrough curriculum specialist who understands and figures something out that we haven’t been able to thus far? What’s exciting to you about the world where these young children get to experience technology as just a part of life, and how that might change their own creativity and contribution to education?
Art Willer: I’m sure you would agree that the greatest skill you and I can have is the ability to communicate, the ability to empathize, the ability to understand what’s going on in another country, in another county, and in another community. What excites me about computers is the wonderful real-time communication it provides us.
Take Facebook, as an example. Because of Facebook, my family is now connected. Because of Facebook and other media that we have, there’s the opportunity for kids in our classrooms to reach out and be everywhere.
As a teacher myself, I’m proud to say that for twenty-two days of the year, my kids were actually out of the classroom. They were traveling to the library, to the zoo, or down here, down there. The class trip wasn’t just a treat. It was something we used for education.
One of the things I see today is that technology lets us make virtual trips everywhere, any time of the day. We can go anywhere we want. Timbuktu if we want to. It’s a wonderful opportunity.
Host: What a wonderful opportunity, and I think what the young people don’t realize is that we are the benefactors because we get to learn and watch what they create.
Art, it’s been a real pleasure and continued success. It’s great when someone can talk about their legacy and the breadth of that, looking at 45 years of contributions in education. Thanks, Art.
Art Willer: Thank you.
About Art Willer
Art Willer has a Master of Education degree in curriculum from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (U of Toronto). He is the founding president of Bytes of Learning Incorporated.
Art likes to say he is “always ready for new ideas and creative ways to move forward”.
Art values your input. Give him your feedback by starting a conversation thread with Bytes of Learning.
As many as 15 percent to 20 percent of the US school population demonstrates a significant reading disability. But ask the superintendent of one of Atlanta’s school systems and she will tell you and The Atlanta Journal that her system has NO dyslexic children.
The fundamental and powerful assumptions of our culture regarding literacy are that it is inherently good for the individual, good for the culture, difficult to acquire and should be transmitted in classrooms. If literacy is difficult to acquire, then it becomes necessary to create a multitude of reasons to explain why some read better than others, as well as the cultural imperative to label as inferior those individuals who have poor reading skills. The consequence of believing that literacy is best learned in classrooms enables schools to create a monopoly in which they blindly repeat the same failed instructional practices with the expectation of a different outcome.
The difficulties and concerns of a parent advocating for the child with reading disabilities are already significant. The confusion and misconceptions surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of dyslexia only add to the parental dilemma. Unfortunately, there are charlatans who will take emotional and financial advantage of the desperate parents of the reading disabled. Providers of costly vision therapy require parents to commit to 60 – 90 hours of left to right tracking exercises at $90 – $120 per hour. Trendy movement therapy promises improved balance in the body and the brain.
The Dyslexia Institute of America describes three distinct types of dyslexia:
Dysphoneidetic Dyslexia: A type of dyslexia associated with a combination of differential brain functions in the Angular Gyrus and the Wernicke’s area. A person suffering from this type of dyslexia will have weak visual-motor skills, and is often the most difficult to treat.
In order to answer this question – “Why Can’t My Child Read?” – we must delve to the complex reading brain as well as the decades long Reading Wars. This will require the acquisition of the vocabulary of literacy and an understanding of the interaction between memory, attention, and reading. Thus, we begin our journey over the next months to determine why our children can’t read.
Lynn realizes an important part of her job is to be visible to the parents and students of the district. Whether it’s helping with morning drop off or using social media to keep the community aware, parents need reassurance and transparency from school leadership.
Basically, I touch almost everything in the district. I’ve had the opportunity to really impact teaching and learning, and professional learning. I work diligently with the superintendent and the business manager to refine the budget process; tap into HR issues and challenges we might have there; and work diligently to tell and promote the story about our district.
I’m probably a little more of an extrovert that might be thinking about somebody who is looking at this role, somebody who is willing to walk up and down the aisles and shake people’s hands and say “hello” and introduce themselves when they’re sitting and waiting for a concert or greeting those parents and taking concerns in a bus line
Lynn Fuini-Hetten is the Assistant Superintendent in the 
Science is: boring, hard, worksheets, watching videos, vocabulary, my least favorite subject.
Hey, kids! Today we are going to read Chapter 2.1 and then do the Chapter 2.1 worksheet. Tomorrow we will move onto Chapter 2.2 and then complete the Chapter 2.2 worksheet. Tomorrow, you guessed it, Chapter 2.3 and of course the Chapter 2.3 worksheet. And just to mix it up on Friday we are going to do the Chapter 2 quiz from the back of the book. Go ahead and memorize those highlighted yellow words from the text and don’t actually read the pages in each chapter to fill in those worksheets, just look up answers in the back of the book. If you do all these things, you are bound to get an A+.
44-minute lectures where a writing utensil can’t move fast enough. Students sit with one hand resting on their face and their other hand has black smudges on the side of it because their hand is moving across their paper faster than the ink can dry. Ugh. That’s rough, but I’ve been there and so have you! Conversation is one of the pillars of my class. And it’s not a one- way conversation where I speak to (or at my students). I want engaging dialogue where all students are participating, asking questions, researching responses, respectfully inquiring or disagreeing, and most importantly… thinking!
Triple Beam Balance. Expensive Glassware. Density Cubes. What do these three items have in common? They are all science equipment that is unnecessary because it doesn’t actually enhance the learning experience. I get that fancy science gear can be fun at times, but it also sucks the life right out of the yearly budget. We know that times are tough when it comes to school funds, so why not say no thank you to next year’s allotment of high-powered magnets. Instead, why not do an entire curriculum with practical everyday objects.
Step 1: Put 10 pieces of cereal in each bowl
You see, in my class, I throw all the lab handouts and step-by-step directions out the window. I want my students to have conversation, creativity, and of course that last pillar, collaboration. When we tell students exactly what we want them to do and exactly how we want them to do it, we stifle the entire learning and thinking process. We disregard their ability to engineer and image. There is nothing greater than putting a bunch of supplies on a table, writing a driving question on the board and then declaring to the kiddos, “Go for it!”
RTI’s interventions need to be accompanied with cognitive learner strategies. As example, effective learners know that if they receive learning accommodations, that is not an excuse to stop listening and learning, since they are active participants in the RTI process, regardless of the tiered level of intervention that they receive. Students, who exhibit increased cognitive buy-ins, are continually on a road that hones their skills. Effective learners know how to ask for help and how to interact and collaborate with peers and adults. Students then develop skills to shift gears as educators assist learners to navigate the curriculum.
Time well-allocated and accompanied by a set schedule of responsive intervention is a learner’s friend. The gains achieved are never identical ones for all learners. The tortoise and hare are seated in the same classroom, but a lion of a teacher in a group or pride of interventionists facilitates ongoing growth to nurture each learner’s skills and strengths. School staff collaborates with students and families to determine and deliver the effective instructional approaches. Bottom line is that responsive interventions offered within the RTI framework, honor successful classroom and life outcomes.
Laurence T. Spring is Superintendent of the Schenectady City School District, a K-12 public system that educates nearly 10,000 children.