This particular podcast, we will be focusing on the question, “How Do We Connect Technology and Classroom Instruction Seamlessly?”
We’ve presented at Learning 2.0 in Shanghai and ETC in Kuala Lumpur on our work at ISB on moving towards an embedded curriculum focused less on tech skills and more on the 21st Century skills that you read so much about in the edublogosphere. We wrote about our thinking in our blogs and as guest bloggers on Dangerously Irrelevant. We’ve put up our work to share and collaborate with in wikis, initially in newliteracy and then as an ISB21 team.Now we are excited to take questions, speak to solutions, and tackle issues that relate to implementation on these very Big Ideas.
SOS is a biweekly podcast produced by educators in the Asian region discussing the latest conversations in the educational blogosphere as well as deep thinking about education and the changing nature of learning. Join us on Ustream.tv for the live broadcast. Listeners will have an opportunity to Skype into the conversation “on the fly” as well as listen to an archived version via iTunes.
Here at ISB, I am lucky to be working with a couple of tech studs: Justin and Kim. Together, we’ve restructured our PD this semester to customize the help we provide teachers and to encourage the conversation to move forward in the direction that tech and ed need to go.
Of course, we continue our embedded technology approach with teachers and work with classes directly building in PD right into the sessions we do with students. Teachers learn best when they see best practices and new tools being used practically and with kids.
On Mondays, the 3 of us hang out in a room and take on ANY and ALL questions and problems teachers have been having. iPods to e-mail, SmartBoards to Garage Band, Audacity to cleaning up a desktop, we customize the PD to what they want to know. With 3 of us there, we can handle A LOT of traffic.
Here’s our Personal Tech Support “commercial”, nice work Justin!
On Wednesdays, we run Wired Wednesdays, a discussion based session around the philosophy and direction of education, technology, and learning. Usually inspired by a video (think mwesch), we then just talk and then hopefully redirect the conversation into the blogosphere and classrooms. These sessions we are going to broadcast on Ustream.
So join us on Wednesdays, 2:15 pm, Bangkok time on UStream for our Wired Wednesdays. Or watch the sessions in rerun from our channel.
For more on this check out Justin’s post too, which includes our blurbs out to teachers promoting the sessions.
Will Richardson, Karl Fisch, and Anne Smith presented outside of Philadelphia on the Read/Write web in a session called, “21st Century Education: 20/20 Vision for Schools”. In preparing for that, they put out a plea to edu-bloggers to chime in with tips, sites, or encouragement for the educators in seeing the direction that we believe education needs to go.
They have a wiki for this which is quickly developing into a fine example of the power of our Web to tap into the collective intelligence/knowledge of people - in this case the edu-bloggers.
As Will suggests in his blog, our contributions prove the very point we try to make about the power of the current and future web.
In essence, we want them to walk away understanding the power of connections that can reach far beyond the classroom.
Today, Justin, Kim, and I were de-briefing after a UStream presentation with the FLNW guys and Justin mentioned how important that online community is for the unconverted in helping them to see that lots of people out there are “getting it” and on board. That online community’s participation - whether through a blog comment, a wiki contribution, or a live chat presence - give credibility to the very tools that we extoll in our presentations. That presence does more for getting teacher buy-in than anything we could say. It’s like seeing the impact of learning happening right before their eyes.
So get on that wiki and add! Prove that the collaborative power of this technology can tap into the intelligence of the many.
I am already adding that single page to my Delicious - it’s going to grow into a fine resource.
Are you kidding me?! That’s like a who’s who of Ed Tech RSS feeds! And as exciting as that line-up is, also attending are Always Learning’s Kim Cofino and Medagogy’s Justin Medved (then again I work at the same school - so I see them regularly) and Thinking Stick’s Jeff Utecht (one of our hosts).
How can I not be psyched?!
SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT: Justin and I are presenting one session on our ideas for embedding the new literacy we all talk about into school life and curriculum. We believe that our approach may give it a chance to be successful finally. We’ve seen too many IT scope and sequence documents fail. Our approach, we believe, makes all of this accessible to teachers and their buy-in ultimately seems to determine the success of a program. If you are at the conference we hope to see you there in room C-228, for Session 8.
We are hoping that the minds of fellow Ed Tech people will help us frame our work and improve it as we go. The collaboration in our jobs is just so great.
Every now and then you get lucky. And then even more rarely, you get professionally lucky. And then, if all the planets align and you have your lucky socks on, and you eat the right breakfast something happens that fills you up with professional optimism.
In Ed Tech blogging, we tend (not always) to blog about similar ideas. About the need for change and about the power of the change we see coming for learning. And sometimes we ask each other about how to change. Because change is not easy. It is particularly “not easy” in education where the professionals who do the job have a great deal of autonomy and often are resistant to change. So we ask ourselves, “what do we need to do to affect change?”
How do we convince the teachers and administrators at our schools that what we see as NECESSARY, fundamental change needs to happen and it needs to happen soon?
What is the Tipping Point for this change to happen?
Lucky little me might be about to find out.
You see, last year, when I took the technology facilitator job, I was lucky. I joined a technology director whose focus is on learning. He makes his decisions for technology spending on learning and he still has conversations about learning. And he’s supported by a School Head and CFO who also focus first on learning.
Then this year, Justin showed up. Suddenly, I had a NextGen leader pushing my thinking. We bounce ideas off of each other and share in our efforts to create something new, dynamic and effective in educational technology and learning. Well, that’s pretty lucky.
But how lucky would you be if you then are joined by ANOTHER NextGen teacher next year? Yup, that’s happening. Along comes Kim, always learning, to join as an information specialist. Are you kidding me?!? I am not.
Well, that’s just unfair lucky.
It gets better. (now I’m just bragging!)
Our administrators are embracing this thinking about thinking - the focus on thinking as curriculum in itself. This is awesome and it makes me think that I may be seeing the beginnings of real change possibilities. And that’s pretty exciting.
The previously mentioned voices, you’ve been reading, or if you haven’t you should be: Justin at Medagogy and Kim at always learning. But now add a new, different voice to that mix. Our ES Principal, Annelies has begun to blog about “Thinking” in her blog In-tu-it-think and what she’s come to realize in her own growth as a school leader.
What we can do together is more than what I can do.
So I am late chiming in on the NY Times laptop article. You know the one…the one that says one-to-one laptops are not showing any improvement in learning and schools are ditching their programs left and right. Justin wrote a great post on it over at Medagogy. Chris Lehmann chimed in over at Practical Theory. Warlick put in his 2 pennies. In the Ed Tech blogosphere, this article is everywhere.
Here’s the thing. Almost every complaint/dig/slam of the laptops in students’ hands came from the perspective of the teacher. Laptops “did not fit into lesson plans”… “It’s a distraction” … “The box gets in the way … “They are too hard to manage” …
Where laptops and Internet use make a difference are in innovation, creativity, autonomy and independent research…
[Oh, I get it, and we wouldn't want that? (where is that sarcastic font when I need it?)]
It could be that laptops in students’ hands are useless as the article suggests, but doesn’t that seem counter-intuitive? Doesn’t access to information and opportunities to engage, communicate, and think with students in a way that they use, interact, and enjoy in their own time sound like a good thing? And doesn’t providing students in a school setting with tools that they use regularly,outside of school, seem like a chance opportunity to engage them in discussion about responsible use, being safe, and the implications of their online behavior? I could go on.
Instead, I offer this question: is it not also likely that the teachers are not sure how to use the laptops with the kids in a proactive, educationally sound way?
Could it be that teachers are the very digital immigrants that we talk about as being so different from our digital native kids? And if that’s the case (it is) then isn’t it likely that if scores aren’t supporting improved learning then maybe it isn’t the technology failing, but rather the people entrusted with using them well who aren’t doing the job. (before you lynch me, it isn’t their fault…read on)
Often the most simple, logical answer is the right answer.
News media like to emphasize possibilities that surprise you. It’s not a secret that they like to sensationalize. Even the New York Times. Providing laptops and access to information to kids is a positive move for learning sounds right. It’s why so many people did it. It should be a good thing.
So why isn’t it?
Were we wrong? Maybe, but not likely. Ideas that are so intuitively sound are usually not wrong.
Instead, could it be that WE DID IT WRONG? Probably.
Most teachers are not social networking and blogging and thinking about the needs of 21st century learning. They are Math teachers and English teachers and Grade 2 teachers who were trained to be the kinds of teachers that we had when we were kids. Their ideas of best teaching practice come from a world before laptops in classrooms and probably before Internet access was possible (particularly for schools).
And I’ll be the first to say that good teaching is good teaching. That sharing passion and engaging students in subject matter and learning has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with a teacher.
But that’s not what we are talking about here. We are talking about the teachers for whom the technology was expected to solve less-than-good-teaching (or at least not inspirational teaching). And that wasn’t going to happen. It was unfair to teachers and to the technology to have expected it. (luckily, the technology’s feelings weren’t hurt)
What teachers need with technology is REAL professional development and REAL support. They need technology support people whose job is to make sure that they understand what good laptop classroom management looks like. It isn’t hard to keep kids off of mySpace during class. But if you’ve never had to think about it before, you might not know how to do it. These tech support facilitators need to be 100% devoted to the implementation of technology in their schools. They need to be available to team teach with teachers to model good laptop classroom management strategies and share integration ideas. It is their job to learn new technologies and figure out their implications on learning. Teachers are too busy to keep up with that stuff. (see Kim’s post on always learning)
The shame of it all is that the reaction of schools to abandon laptop programs is hurting the students. Once again, decisions are being made that are “most convenient for us, not best for them.” (Dangerously Irrelevant) Sure, in this case, the decision is couched behind scores that haven’t improved, but the causality is all wrong.
Do it right and it will work. Do it wrong and it won’t.
“A good craftsman never blames his tools.” (thanks, Keith Olbermann and ESPN Sportscenter!)
It’s worth noting that perhaps these schools and districts concede that they will never hire these support people or create a professional environment in which teachers have an opportunity to succeed. If they concede this, then they might as well abandon the laptops.
But if they really want kids to learn WHAT THEY NEED TO LEARN, then the cause of why it didn’t work must be looked at. And then they must bring the laptops back with an infrastructure in place (training, personnel, HELP) so that teachers aren’t pre-destined to fail, but rather are given a real and fair opportunity to succeed.
In the end, if teachers, schools or districts resist or deny this, then it is the students who suffer and who ultimately will not be prepared for their future. Our past is over. We must stop insisting that learning only happens when it matches the testing and models of that past.
Laptops are gateways to information. They can instigate real learning about ethics, communication, safety, responsibility, and high-order thinking. But they need a teacher to do that. A teacher supported and prepared and passionate to do that.
Our curricula of content mired in Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies is not preparing students for anything but further education focused on these same subjects.
What students learn needs to be different and how they learn needs to be different.
Day 2 of the conference brought us another wonderful student keynote who spoke on the Chinese tale of the Frog in the Well. The frog only has a limited view of the sky through the top of the well, and until she is moved and shown the true nature of things, her horizons and her perspective are never changed. A fine start to the day for teachers to think about and to consider international education.
Then, the ever dynamic, Ian Jukes came on to speak. With excellent supporting visuals, Ian spoke on the dire need for our schools to address the thinking skills needed to prepare students for the world that outside of education has changed and continues to change so rapidly. Great quote from Woodrow Wilson, “it’s easier to move a cemetery, than it is to change a curriculum.” He makes a terrific point that the main difficulty is that the change we are dealing with is hard to comprehend and so it is hard to make our own changes when we are dealing with the “tyranny of the urgent.”
Kids today are different - Jukes spoke on how the visual cortex of the brain is larger, more developed than kids of 20 years ago. “Screenagers”, he called them, citing two Time Magazine articles. Interestingly, he talked about how current research seems to indicate that our brains continue to adapt and make new connections. But the brain needs regular exposure to the “change-maker” to make this change. So does this have implications on our schools? (rhetorical)
Jukes talked a fair amount on games and their impact on kids. He encouraged us to learn about these games, to play them with kids and to get our “asses kicked” by kids. They are hard-wiring themselves through these technologies. We should need to tap into this.
I saw a lot of Ian Jukes this week. And the message is clear. Change is here…change is fast (exponential) and getting faster. And predicting the future? Impossible. So what does that mean for us? It means that we need schools to be different. I haven’t had “my own” class in a few years now and I do think about how I would do things differently if I were in the classroom again. But my need for change in education is even greater now. As the tech-guy, this stuff seems to fall under my umbrella for change. And I need to work out how to convince a curriculum office to dump content and adopt thinking skills, a faculty to include me in their lesson planning, and an administration to hire and evaluate based on a willingness to adapt to these ideas and change the way schools work.
Is this overstepping my bounds? Probably. But the need seems to strong to ignore. Education really seems to be failing kids. They seem to be learning in spite of us, not with us. Maybe that’s too harsh, but I liken it to the exact opposite of wikipedia. Wikipedia is accurate at the macro-level, but could be inaccurate at the micro. I think real learning is possibly working in individual rooms with individual teachers, but we are failing miserably on the school-wide education-as-a-whole level in preparing kids for futures requiring 21st century skills. (speaking of which, I attended a workshop on these skills that set us back on moving forward more than anything I’ve seen….good presentation is good presentation and when it isn’t good…ouch. Until I get up and start presenting myself in that forum, I suppose I should not judge).
Luckily, I am spoiled. I work with a forward thinking leader colleague and am about to be joined by another in the ES. I saw many faces from my school at the various Jukes sessions. The tide could start changing at ISB and I think that those who are interested is as good a place to start as any. Let’s see how many come to school on Monday wanting to be committed.
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