Some are faster ways to do tedious things (like repeated calculations, making graphs, or maintainig draft versions of writing). These are helpful.
Others provide flashy ways to present ideas (like web sites, presentations, and publications). These can be incredibly powerful. They can also be painfully mis-used.
But there is a part of technology that we have only begun to tap into that is transformational. There are things technology can do for us now, that simply were not possible before.
Really, that’s what I’m asking…what’s it good for?
How is the content curriculum that we teach kids helping them?
(And I am not accepting any version of “it prepares them for the next level of school.”)
In older posts on this blog, I’ve written that school curriculum NEEDS a major shift: (whole post here)
21st century learners need thinking skills. They need to be able to find, process, and evaluate information that is EVERYWHERE and always accessible. They need to be able to participate in an interconnected, wired world in effective and responsible ways. They NEED to be taught how to manage/handle/thrive amidst all of the information that is out there and continuing to grow.
Our allegiance to English, Science, Math, and Social Studies as core curricular ideals and the end-all-be-all in student learning needs to make room for higher order thinking, questioning, and information literacy.
And after sharing my thoughts on the NYTimes reported failure of a laptop program, I offered: (whole post here)
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.
These are not unique ideas. Throughout the edublogosphere in varying degrees, educators are talking about the importance of a 21st Century Curriculum (for lack of a better name).
So I ask this question, in light of the shared belief that a 21st Century curriculum focused on thinking, communicating and collaborating skills is necessary for a world in which knowledge is so readily accessible.
What is the point of the way current curriculum is setup?
More specifically, break it down into the classic subjects:
Why do we learn Language Arts (or English in HS)?
Why do we learn Social Studies?
Why do we learn Science?
Why do we learn Math?
Why do we learn Art (performing and visual)?
(note: I stick to these subjects, because Language learning seems to have an obvious practicality, as does Health/PE.)
Is this too bold to ask? Can we defend what we do as schools?
No more, “That’s the way we’ve always done it” defense.
Out of the box time.
Prove that what we say we value is useful.
Truly no offense intended to any of these subjects and the educators who teach them. I just want to hear from the experts what the right answers are.
Please feel free to answer any and all in the comments.
In our last post, Justin and I shared with you our 5 essential questions for the 21st Century Learner as well as our thinking behind how and why we felt the need to re-shape the way “technology” curriculum is embedded into classroom learning. We built our work on our new literacy wiki – as a collaborative environment for us, but also in anticipation of wanting needing to share our work with a greater audience for feedback and ultimately contribution at a later date. The wiki was the perfect environment for this. By documenting the evolution of this curricular journey in a public venue we hope to garner feedback and critical friending that will hopefully lead to a better and stronger framework.
Besides isn’t this “shift” all about the power of sharing and networks?
While it’s focus is on making “technology integration” more accessible to teachers and more meaningful to students, it actually attempts to articulate an approach and create a through line that run beside all other subject curricula. Finally an answer to the question “who is going to teach these skills?”……….. Everyone is.
We called it Curriculum 2.0.
Once we finished the initial framework it was time to get some feedback.
Involving our Curriculum coordinators, Technology Director and our new colleague, Kim Cofino (how lucky were we?!), the conversations that emerged were awesome. We felt it important to shop the concept around to as many different people as possible in order to get a balanced perspective. Teachers ultimately want to know “what will this look like?” and “how will be it be supported?” and we had to have some answers ready. Through conversation, challenging questions, and true collaboration, we were able to fine tune our original 5 questions into three focused roles of technology in 21st century learning. More on this and the on the philosophy behind our structure in our next post, but until then you can ruminate on the diagram below.
In this post, we wanted to focus on the conversations that got us here.
In addition to working with key people at ISB, we presented our work at the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai in mid September. The feedback was very positive. It was validating to see that other technology coordinators were experiencing the same sort of difficulties with past IT integration scope and sequences. And it was energizing to see that our work was striking a chord. [side note: Dennis will present the work further at the EARCOS Teachers' Conference in Kuala Lumpur in March. If you are there, it'd be great to see you at the session.]
With positive vibes flowing all around, the next step was to include our school leadership. As we mentioned in an earlier post, we work closely with our school Leadership Team in a distributed leadership model with them often looking to us for guidance – leadership in a different direction. Over the past year, we have been presenting various technology tools and ideas to the LT to give them a better sense of what to look for in classrooms and what to expect in educational change in the coming years.
Here in the edublogosphere, we often preach to the converted. In general, there is a lot of agreement on how education needs to change and technology’s role in that change. We recognize the shift that is happening and the impact that will have on our students and should have on their learning. We commiserate on how administration or faculty just don’t get it and celebrate together when they do.
We seldom talk about how important the process to bring them along is – that is a conversation that matters.
Our work with the LT brought this to light for us. To a large degree, they trust us. And that’s a great start, but to enact major curricular change, we had to first convince them of the need. We had to describe an inevitable world that required innovators, thinkers, collaborators, and communicators. One in which knowing something was less important than creating something and in which working in a group meant talking to people around the world and being able to communicate in more than one way.
We had to create a shared understanding of what 21st century learning is and why it’s important. We had to allow them to help frame the context in which this could work at ISB. With that individual, personal input, you can achieve buy-in. Then you can challenge them by asking, what are we going to do about it?
Our point: you can’t skip these conversations.
As other schools or technology folks begin to use our framework to develop their own integration plans, we remind them, make sure you have the conversations. Use our work as a starting point for conversations that encourage questioning and challenge thinking. If we can’t defend our rationale for a curricular model like this, then it isn’t worth doing. Give stake holders a chance to process, question, and understand. (sounds like good teaching!)
Whether it comes via top leadership or from another direction, in order for school change to happen, buy-in has to come from shared understanding. And that only comes from conversations that matter.
For us, the next steps are to flesh out our framework and bring it more formally to teachers, where again, conversation will lead to shared understanding. It’s what didn’t happen at T.C. Williams and why all the tech in the world isn’t improving student learning there.
No matter how “right” we know we are, you must get buy-in and shared understanding.
You can’t skip the conversations.
with Justin Medved Tomorrow’s post: Refining the Idea
Last year, Justin Medved and I sat down to tackle the big question, “How does an information and technology curriculum stay relevant and meaningful in the 21st Century.” As Technology and Learning Coordinators at the International School of Bangkok this question was important to us for three reasons.
1) 2006-7 was a WASC accreditation year for ISB and we were charged with taking a look at the K-12 Information Technology curriculum and creating a plan of action to improve it.
2) The discussions and writings coming out of the edu-blogosphere last year were rich in ideas all about “shift” , “re-thinking” and “who is teaching these new skills?”. It was hard not to feel like there was some momentum building around a fresh educational paradigm and a shift away from the “integration of technology” in the classroom, moving towards “embedding” it in the way schools “do business”.
3) Prior to our roles as coordinators we had both taught in schools with elaborate technology scope and sequence plans which we felt had little to no impact on learning and often became outdated the moment they were written. We also felt that the previous NET standards were too bulky and disconnected from the average classroom teacher. We wanted to create something that could stand the test of time and be manageable to the average teacher.
With initiative and a purpose driving us forward we sat down to write a rationale to guide our approach. We came up with this:
“We believe that technology is a tool that can help and enhance learning. Everyday we see technology used as a tool outside of formal schooling for communication, collaboration, understanding, and accessing knowledge. It is our goal in developing an integrated curriculum to ensure that the way students learn with technology agrees with the way they live with technology.
Technology is in a constant state of evolution and change. Access speeds, hardware, software, and computer capabilities all evolve and improve on a monthly basis. This change occurs at a rate at which it is impossible for schools to keep up and adapt. Is it not time that we create a curriculum model that understands and this fact and works with it rather than tries to control it?
Too often typical information technology curricula have focused heavily on skills and their scope and sequence across the curriculum. The hard reality of this approach was that they became outdated as soon as they were printed due to changes in software, hardware and the skills that students came equipped with.
Instead of asking the question “What technology skills must a students have to face the 21st century?” should we not be asking “What thinking and literacy skills must a students have to face the 21st century?” These skills are not tied to any particular software or technology-type, but rather aim to provide students with the thinking skill and thus the opportunity to succeed no matter what their futures hold.”
We felt strongly that for too long that way technology was integrated with learning focused more on the tool and less on the curriculum/content that it could be used to support. To compound this fact ,since technology changes so rapidly it became almost impossible to map what “skills” students needed to learn from year to year as new technology arrived on the scene and old skills trickled down age groups. It wasn’t long ago that spreadsheets were the domain of high school students in accounting classes. Now we introduce them to fifth graders doing graphing and data analysis.
Typically teachers saw teaching these technology hardware and software skills as “someone else’s job.” IT skills to be learned in isolation. Yet schools rightly began to insist that technology be integrated into classroom practice.
Under this technology skill curricular model, faced with teachers ill-equipped and not believing that it was their job, IT integration was doomed to failure.
We had to think bigger different ……..
Looking at Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design approach to curriculum and unit design we liked how big “essential questions” and “enduring understandings” had helped us plan and design units when we were teaching math and social studies. What if this same “best practice” approach could be applied to the way technology was used and talked about in the classroom? If this was good curricular design practice, why should technology and thinking curriculum be any different? What if that same approach was used in the way we looked at connecting technology and learning across the curriculum? What if there were only a few manageable questions that even the most tech-resistant teacher could see value in?
Over the school year we fleshed out these questions and ideas and came up five essential questions that we felt addressed the core elements of a comprehensive technology and learning curriculum – one focused on the thinking that was needed for the 21st century learner, rather than the technology.
We spend a lot of time at schools talking about what learning looks like.
We design assessment to be authentic, specifically to ensure we see children demonstrate what they have learned in an applied, meaningful way.
We debate and discuss how to recognize learning. Will we recognize it, when we see it?
What does learning look like?
Maybe we think too much.
Today I saw learning so clearly, it almost slapped me in the face.
My 2-soon to be 3-yr old son finally got a shot at our new/old little blue iMac (hard to believe that this model was ever an adult desktop computer!). He was on a Playhouse Disney online game – his older sister was out playing with friends. He simply had to navigate Pluto through a maze to the different musical instruments.
Watching him play this game, his processing was so clear that it was as if you could see into his brain. While his eyes scanned the screen and then looked down at his finger poised above the 4 arrow keys, you could almost hear the loud clap of pieces snapping into place. He would catch himself pushing the arrow too many times or in the wrong direction and he would shake his hands in the air as if to say…whoa, I did too much!
Then he’d make adjustments and correct his path.
Amazing. Awesome.
I sat there, watching him, so proud. Not because he was on a computer and I’m a geek, but because I was watching him learn…my kid was learning. It happens all the time (and I’m proud every single one of those times), but today, it was just so blatantly clear.
I loved seeing him raise his tiny fists in the air in celebration when he achieved his goal (and got immediate feedback – thank you technology). And I loved seeing him want to do more…to practice his newly learned knowledge/skills.
And we think kids on games are bad…why again? (Another whole post…I know.)
But today, I was reminded so clearly what learning looks like. I have not done its power justice here in this post. Maybe I’m still beaming too much with pride to write clearly.
Or maybe it’s something that’s hard to describe, which is why we educators spend so much time laboring over what it will look like and designing just the right assessment tools.
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.
Given the realities of our modern age and the demands of our children’s future, is it really okay to allow teachers to choose whether or not they incorporate modern technologies into their instruction?
The comments that followed this particular question from his readers are worth reading.
Here’s the thing…it isn’t about whether technology must be included in children’s educational experience. It’s actually about the THINKING SKILLS that must be included.
There is no doubt that students live in a digital world. That they behave and think and communicate in digital ways. And including technology in their schooling will probably serve to engage them and make their education seem a little more relevant.
But they need more than that.
21st century learners need thinking skills. They need to be able to find, process, and evaluate information that is EVERYWHERE and always accessible. They need to be able to participate in an interconnected, wired world in effective and responsible ways. They NEED to be taught how to manage/handle/thrive amidst all of the information that is out there and continuing to grow.
Our allegiance to English, Science, Math, and Social Studies as core curricular ideals and the end-all-be-all in student learning needs to make room for higher order thinking, questioning, and information literacy.
I am not arguing for the abolishment of those subjects (though a part of me thinks that they continue to drive our curriculum because they suit us the teachers, rather than our intended audience, the students – see another McLeod question on this). I do think, though, that major curricular overhaul is needed and schools need to consider an overarching or interwoven curricular piece that embraces the skills that 21st century learners need.
Going back to the original question then, No, it’s not okay.
To accomplish these thinking skills and to get students to evaluate and understand the world they are in and the world we will be sending them off into, technology needs to be there. Technology is the tool for information access. Technology is the tool for communication of ideas, thoughts, opinion, fact and bias. Technology is the tool from which a massive discussion of ethical behavior continues to emerge. How can we not include technology in children’s education? If we don’t include it, what are they learning?
I don’t know what Techlearning’s readership is…but I am sure that it is greater than mine.
Regardless, I want to share a good article by Scott Meech that was posted there that really sums up our need – as educators – to teach kids how to be 21st century literate (fluent?).
The blind assumption of truth on the Internet has reached alarming proportions.
The article talks about how our assumptions as educators are that kids “know how to use the technology and information resources”. After all, they are digital natives. But our assumptions are far from the truth.
Educators need to break away from the traditional role of teaching to embrace these new learning strategies. Too many times I have heard colleagues mention their personal preferences as a reason for not embracing technology in their classroom. I have heard colleagues mention that they would never read an E-book from a palm or laptop computer because they enjoy a real book so much. These same teachers are not using new technologies in their classrooms, which hinder their students learning.
Scott Meech is right on here. Our assumptions of strong ability and use by our students is not accurate or fair, yet too often we see teachers release their kids on the interent or refuse to have conversations with students about ethics or information validity or research skills.
Just because students appear to know more about computers than adults doesn’t mean they are truly technically literate.
It is incredible how often educators default to the idea that these digital native kids come with an inherent gift for using the technology (and use it well). It speaks more to their own insecurities than it does to a student skill set.
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