Dangerously Irrelevant

You can't get to outer space with a rowboat

You can’t get to outer space with a rowboat. You need something with a little more oomph.

Neither can you get to genuine 21st century learning environments without putting a computer in every kid’s hands. Not just some of the time. All of the time.

Is 1:1 computing sufficient in and of itself? Will magic happen if every kid gets a laptop or a netbook? No, but it’s a necessary and essential condition without which the true magic never will occur.

Why aren’t you moving more quickly to get a computer into every student’s hands? (Yes, I mean you.)

Photo credit: Woman in rowboat

The status quo no longer suffices: An open letter to the Ames (IA) School Board

The Ames (IA) Community School District – my kids’ district – is hiring both a new superintendent and a new high school principal for next year. Below is the letter I just sent the school board members. I thought some of you might be interested. Everything I do has a Creative Commons license, so feel free to use as desired. Also available in Microsoft Word (.docx) and/or Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format!

——-

March 7, 2010

Fellow Ames citizens and Board members of the Ames Community School District,

I am the coordinator of the Educational Administration program at Iowa State University and the director of the nation’s only center focused on preparing technology-savvy school leaders. I also am a parent with three children in the school district. With the pending departure of Dr. Beyea and Mr. McGrory, you have the chance to hire both a superintendent and a high school principal that share a new vision for P-12 schooling. I sincerely hope that you will avail yourself of this unique opportunity.

The economic imperative

We currently are living in times of exponential change. Not only have digital technologies radically transformed how we conduct our professional and personal lives, they also are destroying entire segments of our society. Non-location-dependent manual labor jobs are increasingly offshored to the developing world, coordinated through technology-suffused global supply chains. Many service jobs also are increasingly fungible, able to be located anywhere in the world that has an Internet connection. The next two decades will see many complex service jobs broken up into component parts, much as we did in previous decades for manufacturing work. Once these tasks are disaggregated, they will be done by lower-skilled workers who can do these discrete components of the overall work, facilitated by software. In other words, many high-paying service jobs will turn into globalized piece work. Since the service professions represent 60% of our nation’s economy, the impacts of this are going to be quite significant. Our school system must prepare graduates for our new economic reality.

The educational imperative

We are creating a new information landscape for ourselves, something that we have not done as a society in centuries. The printing press removed third-party intermediaries (the king’s messenger, the priest) between average citizens and access to information. This new revolution is disintermediating the creation of information, allowing us all to be content creators, not just recipients.

We no longer live in an information push-out world where we passively receive information that is broadcast out to us by large entities. We all now can have a voice. We all now can be publishers. We all now can find each other’s thoughts and ideas and share, cooperate, collaborate, and take collective action. Time and geography are no longer barriers to working together. This too is destroying entire segments of our society.

Long-existing barriers to learning also are disappearing. We now have the ability to learn anything from anyone, at any time, anywhere. Our informal learning is exploding. Formal learning institutions are scrambling to reinvent themselves for the new digital paradigm. Our school system must prepare graduates who are masters of our new information landscape.

The status quo no longer suffices

We are blessed to live in a community whose families possess a tremendous amount of intellectual and social capital. We have a community that understands science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) issues like no other in the state. Our community is not just globally-aware but globally savvy, with international experience and understanding rarely found outside of large cities. We have a community that deeply cares about its children’s education. These are powerful assets, but we cannot afford to be complacent. The status quo no longer suffices.

The technological and information revolutions that now are occurring are upending everything. Our society is being reshaped in significant ways, and the process is just getting started as digital tools and environments continue to advance at a rapid pace. Every information-oriented societal sector - journalism, banking, medicine, politics, travel agencies, music, higher education, television, and real estate, just to name a few - are finding that transformative reinvention is the cost of survival in our current climate. Schools shouldn’t expect that they somehow will be immune from the same changes that are radically altering other information-oriented societal sectors. We can’t continue to pretend that these revolutions aren’t going to affect us too, in compelling and as yet unknown ways.

Dr. Tony Wagner, Harvard University, notes that there are two achievement gaps in this country. The first is the gap between the educational experiences of middle-class children and those of most poor and minority children. The second gap is that between what even our very best schools are teaching and testing versus what all students will need to be successful in today’s globally interconnected, technology-suffused, information economy. The new educational paradigm requires an emphasis on critical thinking, collaborative problem-solving, creativity and innovation, information fluency and media literacy, data synthesis and analysis, and the applied use of many other higher-level cognitive skills, much more frequently than we currently are doing in our classrooms.

Our students and schools have a tremendous track record of academic success here in Ames. We have many things of which to be rightfully proud. But the second global achievement gap that Dr. Wagner so aptly describes will increasingly be an issue for our schools and our community if we do not transition from a system in which student success is judged by mastery of lower-level cognitive work to one that emphasizes to a much greater degree the skills of higher-level thinking and real-world application.

Future-oriented leadership

The Board has an opportunity this year to fill two critical positions with educators who understand the new landscape that I have described above, who may even have a track record of success at preparing students for the demands of the next half century. The Ames Community Schools already are an exemplar for many of the state’s school districts. Given the tremendous assets that we have in this community, with the right leadership we not only could do what’s right by our kids but also be an exemplar for the nation and the world. I am hopeful that you will see this hiring opportunity for what it is and act accordingly.

If you are interested, you may view my presentation to the National Education Association Board of Directors on this topic at www.3dwriting.com/mcleod. My presentation to the Dubuque School Board is available at http://bit.ly/c3NnNt. I also would be happy to talk further with the Board about this at any time.

Thank you.
 
Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D.
dangerouslyirrelevant.org/bio.html
dangerouslyirrelevant.org/contact.html

Many service jobs will become globalized piece work

I’m reading a fantastic book right now: Futurecast, by Robert Shapiro. In the section on globalization, Shapiro notes that the first waves of globalization primarily affected manufacturing. Millions of American jobs were 'offshored' in the 1970s and 1980s as global companies set up factories overseas instead of here in the U.S. For all of the current rhetoric about ‘Benedict Arnold’ corporations that offshore jobs, they essentially have to since their competitors are doing so. Few companies can survive in a hypercompetitive global economy when they’re paying labor rates 5 to 25 times that of the competition. FYI, the average manufacturing worker earns between $21 and $25 per hour in the USA, France, and Japan. Contrast that with the average hourly rate of a manufacturing employee in Korea ($14), Taiwan ($7), or Mexico ($3). Or recognize that factory workers in China or India earn an average of less than $1 an hour. It’s easy to see why any manufacturing job that can be offshored probably will be offshored.

Although manufacturing has been an important component (about 20%) of the American economy, the services industries are a much larger segment (about 60%) of our economic productivity. Shapiro notes that in the next 10 to 15 years, we’re going to see this employment sector dramatically impacted by globalization and offshoring due to advances in software. It is now possible to take many complex service jobs and break them up into component parts, much as we did in previous decades for manufacturing work. Once these tasks are disaggregated, it becomes much easier to train lower-skilled workers to do these discrete components of the overall work, facilitated by software. In other words, instead of companies needing highly-paid American workers, developing countries ‘will be able to train millions of their young people to carry out discrete subsets of those jobs’ (p. 103). Corporations ‘can divvy out the pieces of larger service jobs to any number of professional staffs, connected through Internet networks, and then assemble the results in one place’ (p. 104) [again, like in manufacturing]. As you can imagine, the impacts of this on the American economy are going to be quite significant.

Yet another reason to teach our students to be adaptive and for them to spend as much time as possible on higher-level cognitive work (i.e., the kind of work that can’t be turned into piece work).

Iowa 1:1 Institute and Iowa 1:1 Network

Iowa’s first-ever conference dedicated solely to P-12 laptop programs, the Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I), will be on April 7, 2010 at the Polk County Convention Complex in Des Moines. Administrators, teachers, media specialists, technology staff, and other educators are all encouraged to attend.

Registration is FREE.

• Learn more about the Institute
• Register to attend (registration is now CLOSED)
• See who else is attending
• Register to present  (no commercial sales pitches allowed)

Also, the Iowa 1:1 Network is growing rapidly. Learn more and join yourself!

Van Meter students wow the Iowa legislature

On January 28, several students in the Van Meter Community School District demonstrated to Iowa legislators the work that they are now able to do as a result of the district’s 1:1 laptop initiative. Sandra Dop, the Department of Education’s 21st Century Skills Coordinator, wrote about the encounter:

When the legislators asked, “So what can we do to get out of your way and let you go?”, I nearly cried.

I will forever be proud to have witnessed it!

Will the legislators follow up their words with action? I can be hopeful, can’t I?

Our kids don't have a choice. And neither do we.

Will Richardson says:

[T]his generation of kids in our schools is the first not to have a choice about technology. Most of us grew up in a time when technology was an add on, and for many of us, we still see it as a choice, especially in education. (Just the other day I was at a meeting of about 25 school leaders and teachers to discuss how social learning tools can be infused into an inquiry based curriculum and only one person was using technology to take notes…me.) I look at my own kids and I know that technology will be a huge part of their learning lives because a) they want it to be and b) they’ll be expected to be savvy users of the devices of their day to communicate, create and collaborate (among other things.) They’re not going to be able to “opt out.”

and

We may not feel comfortable in a world filled with technology. We may not like the way it’s changing things and, even more, how fast it’s changing things. We may not like the way it pushes against much of what we’ve been doing in schools for eons. But our kids don’t have a choice. And if we’re going to fulfill our roles as teachers in our kids lives, neither do we.

Taking others' assessments: How brave are your educators?

So here’s a crazy idea…

• Ask teachers in your building to bring a recent quiz or test to the next staff meeting. Make sure their names are on the assessments they bring.
• Mix up all of the assessments in a big pile and hand them back out. Each teacher gets one. No one is allowed to get a test that’s in his or her subject area (i.e., no English teacher is allowed to take any other English teacher’s test).
• They spend 20 minutes taking the test that they have in hand.
• Return the test to the teacher that created it. That teacher then grades it and returns it to the one who took it.

What would this do?

• It would allow educators to see how others are assessing.
• I’m guessing that many teachers are going to miss a bunch of stuff, at least in secondary schools. Which then leads, of course, to the issue of:
  
  Most of us would consider ourselves successful adults and yet we couldn’t answer a lot of this. What does that mean for our teaching and our students’ learning? 
  
  Follow-up questions might include How important is the stuff we’re teaching? and If this stuff is important, why did we miss so many? and If this stuff is not important, why are we teaching it?

I think this could prompt some good internal discussion for a teaching staff. Thoughts? Anyone done something like this?

Note: A few years back, the College of Education and Human Development booth at the Minnesota State Fair had ten sample questions from the 8th grade state assessment. Those of us staffing the booth tried to get fair attendees to answer the questions to see how they’d do compared to what the state expected middle schoolers to know. We couldn’t get anyone to do it; the number of takers was extremely low. There were lots of nervous laughter and comments, though…

Related posts

• “Knowing the parts of a neuron isn’t really that important.”
• 4 tales out of school (see Thutmose III)

"Knowing the parts of a neuron isn't really that important"

I recently had the conversation below with a high school science teacher (and, yes, I did it respectfully for those of you who are wondering)…

Teacher

I want my students to learn the parts of a neuron.

Me

In an era of near-instant Internet search, it’s possible that knowing the parts of a neuron isn’t really that important. For example, if I don’t know what the parts of a neuron are, I probably can find a couple dozen images of neurons - with parts labeled - in about 5 seconds using an online image search engine. It seems to me that what’s more important is generally knowing what neurons are, how they work, why I should care about them, how they impact my health and well-being, how current cutting-edge neurological research may impact me in the future, and so on. 

Will I need to learn the parts of a neuron in the short term so that I can understand these bigger issues? Yes, most likely. Six weeks from now, will it be important if I still remember the parts of a neuron? Probably not, because I always can look it up again. But the bigger-picture understandings about neurons and how they impact me? That’s what I need to remember six weeks from now - and six years from now. That’s the stuff that’s important. Assess on what’s important.

Your turn

What do you think? Would you have responded differently than I did?

Creating the new schooling paradigm: Educational technology policy priorities, Part 1 [due date: Jan. 20]

ISTE’s Top Ten in ‘10 list of educational technology priorities for this year is a worthwhile read (hat tip to THE Journal). Some of its items are more vague than others. For example:

2. Leverage education technology as a gateway for college and career readiness. Last year, President Obama established a national goal of producing the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by the year 2020. To achieve this goal in the next 10 years, we must embrace new instructional approaches that both increase the college-going rates and the high school graduation rates. By effectively engaging learning through technology, teachers can demonstrate the relevance of 21st century education, keeping more children in the pipeline as they pursue a rigorous, interesting and pertinent PK-12 public education.

6. Leverage technology to scale improvement. Through federal initiatives such as i3 grants, school districts across the nation are being asked to scale up current school improvement efforts to maximize reach and impact. School districts that have successfully led school turnaround and improvement efforts recognize that education technology is one of the best ways to accelerate reform, providing the immediate tools to ensure that all teachers and students have access to the latest innovative instructional pathways. If we are serious about school improvement, we must be serious about education technology.

10. Promote global digital citizenship. In recent years, we have seen the walls that divide nations and economies come down and, of necessity, we've become focused on an increasingly competitive and flat world. Education technology is the great equalizer in this environment, breaking down artificial barriers to effective teaching and learning, and providing new reasons and opportunities for collaboration. Our children are held to greater scrutiny when it comes to learning and achievement compared to their fellow students overseas. We in turn must ensure that all students have access to the best learning technologies.

Those all sound great to me, but I confess that I need to think further about what these would look like in terms of specific legislation or policy initiatives that would be implemented. In other words, for what would we ask legislators and policymakers in order to make these happen?

Ask your legislator

Here in Iowa we’ve been having our own conversations about legislative and policy initiatives for which educators, school board members, business leaders, and others should be advocating. We may not know what the future of schooling is going to look like, but I think we can already identify at least some of what the key building blocks and policy levers are going to be. Here’s a quick list, in no particular order, of some things that we’ve been discussing:

1. Get every kid/home connected (universal broadband access, preferably wireless) [this also is an economic development priority, not just a schooling priority]
2. A computing device (probably a laptop) for every teacher
3. A computing device (probably a laptop) for every student (maybe start at the secondary level?)
4. Statewide curricula that emphasize critical policy needs (e.g., STEM, global awareness) and higher-order thinking skills (e.g., critical thinking; problem solving; synthesis and analysis of complex data to make meaning; creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship; reading, writing, and multimedia creation in digital, online, hyperconnected information spaces) rather than factual recall and low-level procedural knowledge [the Iowa Core initiative is intended to do this for our state]
5. Additional and/or different professional development initiatives that help educators (teachers AND administrators) implement the curricula described in Item 4
6. More online coursework options for students (e.g., a statewide virtual high school; the ability of districts to provide courses for others’ students) [Iowa students’ options in this area are anemic right now]
7. Different statewide assessments that better assess higher-order thinking skills rather than fact regurgitation
8. The creation of and/or permission to use low-cost or no-cost electronic textbooks and other online learning materials instead of paper texts
9. Greater flexibility for schools to repurpose existing funding streams (e.g., the ability to use textbook monies for computing equipment and learning software; removal of Iowa’s $500 minimum for equipment purchases)
10. Repeal or revise Dillon's Rule here in Iowa, which is getting in the way of school district innovation (by essentially saying that if you don’t have express authority to do it, you can’t)
11. Ramp up the understanding of educators and citizens about needs and issues pertaining to 21st century teaching and learning, workforce development, and a globalized economy (e.g., a statewide publicity / visibility initiative aimed at educators, school board members, citizens and community members, business leaders, the press, and so on)
12. Utilize professional development, funding, accreditation, and/or promotion and tenure policies to make preservice educator preparation (teachers AND administrators) more relevant to new curricular and instructional paradigms

Okay, your turn

You’ve seen our list and ISTE’s. What would you add / change / delete? Contribute your ideas by January 20 and I’ll make a new list that we can collectively rank order in Part 2 of this series. Thanks for participating!

Video - What kids learn when they create with digital media

Here’s a 59-minute webcast of a forum on what kids learn when they create with digital media. The forum was sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, the National Writing Project, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

What I said to the NEA

Earlier this month I asked what you would say to the NEA Board of Directors if you had the chance. Thank you, everyone, who chimed in with thoughts and suggestions. Here’s what I ended up showing and saying to NEA’s Board. As you’ll hear, I pushed them a bit…

• Audio of presentation (21 MB mp3)
  
• Audio of post-presentation Q&A (26 MB mp3)

UPDATE: Art Wolinsky kindly synchronized the audio and the slides for me if you'd like to watch the presentation as an integrated whole rather than accessing the slides and audio separately. He's also added the video to TeacherTube. Thanks, Art!

Interesting observation #1: The room was set up kind of like the United Nations. Here is the delegation from North Carolina. And over here is the delegation from Idaho…

Interesting observation #2: If you say the word ‘Walmart’ to NEA folks, they instinctively boo and hiss? Apparently they're not big fans of Walmart...

Everyone at NEA was very kind to me and I appreciated the opportunity to speak with them. I’m not sure what they’ll do (if anything) with what I said but I guess we’ll see! For those of you who are interested, you can check out my NEA web page, which includes additional resources.

Related posts

• What would YOU say to the NEA?

A day with Will Richardson, Part 3

Here is Part 3 of my notes from our day with Will Richardson. You also can see the live chat and/or follow the Twitter conversation and/or participate in EtherPad.

• We started with a visioning exercise (and accompanying discussion)
• Are we suffering from information overload or information overchoice?
• The nichification / ghettoization / balkanization of society
• Communities of interest don't look like communities of geography
• The #1 characteristic of a healthy network is diversity of ideas. (Stephen Downes)
• Adolescents are growing up in a much more transparent environment than previous generations; whatever they do is likely going to be public (whether they like it or not)
• We are spending a lot more time interfacing through screens
• We are failing to teach adolescents how to use these technological affordances in socially responsible and productive ways
• This is because the vast majority of educators aren't information literate themselves
• If you can't figure out who's behind http://www.martinlutherking.org/, you're illiterate these days
• It's not hard to make the case that the world is now 24/7/365 anyone anytime anywhere. But we need access to it.
• Turning to the National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A). We used this document as a self-rubric.
• 1a: share the story of what it could look like for kids, lots of meetings with stakeholders, showed videos/inspiring tool usage by educators, visited other places, created cognitive disconnects, built partnerships with business/industry
• 1b: has to be an ongoing process/conversation
• 2b: making videocasts, using iPod touches for teacher observation/evaluation, moved to Google Docs, using digital discussion forums, using blogs/wikis/EtherPad, school board is now paperless
• 2e: working with SETDA or iNACOL, being active in the blogosphere / Twittersphere
• 3c: are you creating opportunities for staff to do this?
• 5c: give credit when you use photos (modeling attribution),
• We've got to share more with each other and with others (can CASTLE collect some of these stories?)
• For example, Todd Abrahamson (Sigourney) is doing podcasts
• Could we fill in the rubric examples as a group and then share with others?
• Networks are about people who are cooperating and sharing; communities are groups of people who know each other, roll up their sleeves, and collaborate (go even further than networks)
• We now live in an era of perpetual professional development
• Check out the Electronic Crime Institute (John Carver)
• Digital literacy/safety/security issues need to infuse everything; it's not a stand-alone unit
• Are our safety/security efforts both everywhere and nowhere?
• I want my kid to fail safely in the vicinity of some responsible adult that can help her recognize the ramifications of the mistakes that she is making
• It can't all happen at school (Dave Keane). Where else is it going to occur? (Will Richardson)
• Modeling by adults implies intentional, visible behavior
• Models that Will has seen
• Science Leadership Academy (Philadelphia, PA) - inquiry-based laptop magnet school, students are patenting a student-created biodiesel generator, SLA is tough to scale, defining questions = how do we learn?, what can we create?, and what does it mean to lead?, core values of inquiry/research/collaboration/presentation/reflection
• High Tech High (San Diego, CA) - very tech-infused but not getting the global/networking piece yet
• Australia is getting every kid a netbook/laptop by 2012
• Can we do this? Is it possible? What choice do we have?

A day with Will Richardson, Part 2

Here is Part 2 of my notes from our day with Will Richardson. You also can see the live chat and/or follow the Twitter conversation and/or participate in EtherPad.

• How are you personally taking advantage of these online / technological affordances?
• If you're not, can you participate in the conversation? 'Cause you don't have the context.
• The business sector is behind this; they want specific policy initiatives (can ISEA / SAI / Iowa business leaders / etc. all get behind these?)
1. Get every kid/home connected (broadband)
2. A device for every teacher
3. A device for every (secondary?) student
4. Do you have a curriculum that supports the things that Will is talking about? (does the Iowa Core go far enough?)
5. Community forums that educate the average Iowan / statewide visibility initiative
6. More online coursework options (e.g., statewide virtual high school)
7. Education of teachers / community members about workforce / 21st century skills / globallization needs/issues
8. Greater flexibility for schools to use existing funding streams
9. Repeal / revise Dillon's Rule?
10. Different / better assessments
11. Allow schools to use/create free textbooks and use textbook money for student computers
• We are the last generation that had a choice about technology (Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach)
• I am amazed that schools are investing in all of these technology tools
• Schools should be in the curriculum business, not the hardware business or connectivity business
• We need learners, not teachers, in the front of our classes
• Teachers are no longer the smartest people in the room; the smartest people in the room are the ones you invite in from outside
• Teachers come in all shapes and sizes from all parts of the world
• We need to create learning communities, not teaching communities
• I don't know any kids or teachers that have SmartBoards in their bedroom; why aren't we focusing on the technologies that our kids have in hand?
• We need a new graduation requirement: Students will be able to create, navigate, and grow their own personal learning networks in safe, effective, and ethical ways
• In Iowa, we need a movement!
• If folks aren't at the table, get them there!
• The world is about networks right now (how can I get the answer I need when I need it?), it's not about textbooks and memorization
• Check out fanfiction.net to get a sense of user-generated communities
• We're preparing kids for a world in which they're going to be Googled over and over again in their lives
• If you don't share, you don't get hits / visits; you're not visible
• If you can't be found, you're irrelevant (Scott McLeod)
• You have to put yourself out there in ways that people can find you
• Kids are doing this every day without us
• Kids don't care about much of what we have them do in school - it's inauthentic, it lacks meaningful and relevant purpose, it's disconnected and decontextualized
• MIT is offering all of its courses online
• Tough questions from Will
• Can you please teach my child to read and write in the context of <insert student's interest here>?
• How many of your schools teach Wikipedia (how it works / how to contribute / etc.)?
• How many of your schools teach kids how to read/write in hyperlinked environments?
• How many of your schools teach kids how to be Google-able?
• It's just not us edublogger blowhards; see, e.g., the NCTE Framework for 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment
• Gut check: How many of these bullet points can you do? Are you literate according to NCTE? And if you're not, how are you going to teach our kids?
• This stuff is here already; this is not future stuff
• Will demonstrates Diigo using this Science Daily web page
• Annotated web pages, for example, are social reading. No one is teaching our kids how to be social readers.
• We gotta rethink "Do your own work." Collaboration is everywhere.
• Schools spend money on a lot of things that they don't need to be buying except in limited numbers: software licenses, textbooks, etc.
• It's increasingly an open source / Creative Commons world
• See the Flat Classroom Project 2006, 2007, and beyond
• Will collected all of the work that got sent home in his two kids' Friday folders for a year; the stack was 2.5 feet tall
• This didn't include all the work that stayed at school
• His kids never went back and looked at all that paper; they had zero investment in it
• Will showed Radio WillowWeb
• Will showed the 2009 Horizon Report
• "Increasingly, those who use technology in ways that expand their global connections are more likely to advance, while those who do not will find themselves on the sidelines. With the growing availability of tools to connect learners and scholars all over the world — online collaborative workspaces, social networking tools, mobiles, voice-over-IP, and more — teaching and scholarship are transcending traditional borders more and more all the time."
• Is your own personal learning practice transcendent? Are you learning / interacting differently? And if not, why not?
• Will quoted Howard Gardner: "[A]fter millennia of considering education (learning and teaching) chiefly in one way, we may well have reached a set of tipping points: Going forward, learning may be far more individualized, far more in the hands (and the minds) of the learner, and far more interactive than ever before. This constitutes a paradox: As the digital era progresses, learning may be at once more individual (contoured to a person’s own style, proclivities, and interests) yet more social (involving networking, group work, the wisdom of crowds, etc.). How these seemingly contradictory directions are addressed impacts the future complexion of learning."
• The reality is that the way we've done professional development for the last 30 years doesn't work.
• You have to create a culture in your teaching staff where, if they need to know how to blog, they can go online and learn themselves (in communities)
• We've made teachers as passive about learning as kids - kids wait for teachers to tell them how/what to learn; teachers wait for us to tell them how/what to learn
• NSDC agrees: it should be long-term, job-embedded professional development that really shifts practice
• There aren't enough educators / policymakers that are looking at the current system of schooling and saying "Oh, crap! We need to stop tinkering."
• Leadership is a choice. It's a choice not to do nothing. (Seth Godin)

A day with Will Richardson, Part 1

Here is Part 1 of my notes from our day with Will Richardson. You also can see the live chat and/or follow the Twitter conversation and/or participate in EtherPad.

• I'm going to make you uncomfortable; you should be uncomfortable
• If you're not uncomfortable right now in education, you're not paying attention
• Conversations are spreading far beyond physical space, in ways that previously were not possible
• My learning today looks nothing like the learning that's occurring my kids' classrooms
• There are no adults right now teaching kids how to LEARN, not just be social, in these networks
• Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuFsDN8dsJU
• He assumes there's an audience and that they'll respond
• He's comfortable asking for help
• He views YouTube as a learning tool (Elliott Smith)
• This is inquiry- / problem-based learning
• After 101 views, he had 10 comments (10% hit rate); all 10 had specific feedback/suggestions for him
• This 12-year-old kid can throw out a question to 1.7 billion people
• Shirky: We are experiencing a tectonic shift in how we form groups and self-organize
• Wesch: This is not simply a technological revolution, this is a cultural revolution.
• Outside of school ALL of our learning is inquiry- / passion-based
• That's the way that world looks for anyone with an Internet connection
• Finland has legislated nationwide broadband access by 2012
• Schools have a lot of tech, but nothing's really different
• Still memorizing a lot of stuff
• Curriculum hasn't changed
• Instruction hasn't changed
• This group-forming ability is everywhere
• Obama's use of social media for Presidential election
• Flickr tag: iranelection
• Raw information is being released rather than it being edited / filtered first
• We now can live stream video from our phones; imagine a world in 5 years where everyone's phone is iPhonish
• Justin Bieber became famous by uploading his talent show videos to the Web
• Check out surfthechannel.com
• Today, instead of writing a letter to the editor / Better Business Bureau / CEO, you make a video
• Business is different today because people can form groups,
• Allstate (and others) has hired people to monitor the Twittersphere; don't call; tweet!
• Best Buy has 1,200 people monitoring TwelpForce; don't call, tweet!
• Alvin Toffler: if you're a cop with a speed gun, the car going by at 120 mph is business, the car going at 5 mph is education
• This MacArthur Foundation report is a must-read
• Kids are using social networks to connect with their friends / peers
• They're also connecting with adults around the world in interest-based networks
• Educators need to teach kids how to do this responsibly and powerfully b/c this will be the majority of their online interactions in the future
• Adults are uncomfortable with the idea of being hyperconnected and hypertransparent
• They're wary of being open and findable
• How are we going to think differently in 3-5 years when every kid comes to school with ubiquitous access (via cell phones) and has the world's sum of knowledge in their pockets? (see Will's post on this, along with the 130+ comments)
• Research shows that the online predation issue is not nearly as big as we think; the threat is overblown; we've been Datelined to death; and that most kids are pretty good at navigating the Web safely
• It's a basic risk-reward equation
• Adults are not having these conversations with kids, they're simply blocking and/or ignoring the issue
• Just like we have driver's ed, we need Internet ed (Dave Keane)
• There's nothing personalized or passion-based about what we're asking kids to do in school
• How can we square this with entrepeneurship, innovation, creativity, 21st century skills, etc.?

Never going to happen?

True statement by a teacher (said with all sincerity) in one of my workshops this semester:

We’re so far behind our students. How do we catch up and move past them so that we can then teach them things they don’t know?

What would YOU say to the NEA?

I have been invited to speak to the Board of Directors of the National Education Association (NEA), our nation's largest teacher union, about disruptive innovation. I'm scheduled for the morning of Saturday, December 12. I only have 20 minutes, plus another 10 minutes for questions and discussion. If you were in my shoes, what would you tell them (stick to the topic, please!)?

Dear Will

Dear Will,

In less than two weeks you’ll be here in Iowa. We’re excited to have you visit. We’ve got an eager bunch of state leaders awaiting your insights.

Just to let you know, this probably isn’t your typical group of school leaders. This session with you is invitation-only and we deliberately kept it small to foster good discussion. We only have 40 attendees and, as you can imagine, we had to make some extremely difficult choices about whom to invite.

The group includes 18 of our state’s most forward-thinking superintendents. Many of them have initiated 1:1 laptop programs, have begun student virtual reality initiatives, and/or are otherwise on the forefront of technology-related school reform. In addition to the superintendents, we’ve also invited 4 building-level administrators who live on the cutting edge.

CASTLE has been working extensively with the School Administrators of Iowa (SAI) and Iowa’s Area Educational Agencies (AEAs) to provide technology leadership training across the state. Four of the attendees represent the AEAs; three attendees represent SAI. We also have the 3 individuals from the Iowa Department of Education (DE) who are in charge of P-12 technology, the new Iowa Core Curriculum’s 21st century skills component, and administrator quality.

We have good relationships with the business associations in Iowa. In attendance will be the executive directors of the Iowa Business Council, the Iowa Association of Business and Industry, and the Iowa Chamber Alliance. One of the education reporters from The Des Moines Register also will be there.

Finally, rounding out the group are 4 attendees from CASTLE: myself; my new faculty colleague, John Nash (who used to be the director of evaluation for the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning); and two of our graduate assistants who have been helping us with our technology leadership initiatives.

You should be prepared for keen thinking and tough questions from this group. They’ve been mulling big ideas and ground-level implementation issues for a while now. They’re chomping at the bit to move forward but also are cognizant of current policy, funding, and staffing realities. It should be an excellent day of conversation.

Here’s what you need to know about us

There are a few things you should know about us. For example, Iowa has long had a commitment to and history of educational excellence, which has resulted in our students consistently scoring at or near the top of all states on standardized assessments. Unfortunately, as our citizens and educators are slowly coming to realize, our past success and current practices often don’t meet 21st century needs very well. Shifting our populace out of complacency and into a different understanding is an enormous undertaking for us. The whole state is struggling to shift from an agriculture and manufacturing mindset into a knowledge economy orientation.

We have other challenges. In a rapidly-globalizing world, we are one of the least ethnically diverse states in the nation, which means that most Iowans have had little substantive interaction with people of other cultures. Most Iowa communities are small; we only have two cities larger than 100,000 and another dozen that are larger than 30,000. Most Iowa school districts are small; nearly a sixth have fewer than 300 students, 70% have fewer than 1,000 students, and less than 9% have more than 2,500 students. A third of our students currently live in poverty. Our young adults leave the state, never to return, at the second-highest rate in the country. Our rural bandwidth and technology infrastructures are less than desirable. Our online learning opportunities for P-12 students are anemic.

We’ve also got some assets. Because Iowa’s communities are so small, they often are more closely connected to schools and students than in many other states. Our state government, local community, nonprofit, and corporate organizations all care about and have been working extensively with our schools for many years; there is a successful track record of engagement and conversation. The Wallace Foundation recently found that Iowa has the most cohesive school leadership system of any state in the country. Our state’s leading newspaper actually prints numerous positive stories about schools.

Here’s what we need from you

We need you to stretch our minds and our imaginations to the utmost limit. They’ve already heard me speak about digital revolutions, globalization, and changing workforce needs. They’ve already heard me challenge existing ways of thinking and doing at the school, district, and policy levels. Many of the educators in attendance have heard Alan November, David Warlick, Daniel Pink, Tony Wagner, Yong Zhao, Richard Longworth, and others.

We’re ready to take the next step. We’re ready for you to take our already-forward-thinking brains into 2015, 2025, or even 2050. We need to hear from you what the new information and technology landscapes are going to look like. We need to hear from you what school organizations could / should / MUST look like. And because you work with schools all over the world, we need to hear from you what innovative schools currently are doing to make the shift.

We can handle whatever you throw at us. Don’t be afraid to E-X-P-A-N-D our brains exponentially by asking us difficult questions and offering us enormous challenges. We need grounding in a future reality, but we also need concrete details about current and potential transformative practices. We need our mental models to be rearranged, reframed, and reconfigured. And, of course we want lots of opportunities for discussion and hands-on experiences. All that is not too much to ask, is it?!

So that’s our context. We appreciate your willingness to come to Ames. We’ll be sitting at tables in small groups. All of us likely will have laptops and Internet access. Rock our world, put us to work, move us forward. Thanks.

Did You Know? video series featured on Huffington Post

The Did You Know? (Shift Happens) video series has been featured twice on The Huffington Post in the past few days. One of the stories currently is the lead for HuffPo’s technology section.

• Anatomy (and meaning) of the “Did You Know?” video series
• “Did You Know?” tracks progress of information technology

According to Technorati and Compete, HuffPo currently is the world’s #1 blog. I know that Karl Fisch had no idea that his video would turn into the worldwide phenomenon that it has. We still hear from people and organizations every single day about it. I feel very fortunate to be affiliated with this video series!

The (un)certainty of professional persistence

There has been a lot of good discussion on my post about the future of books, libraries, librarians, and schools (thank you, everyone). In addition to the comments on the post itself, there are some excellent thoughts elsewhere as well:

• Flat World Library Corporation
• Dangerously irrelevant libraries
• Ten hard questions
• Random questions on future libraries by Scott McLeod

I was struck, however, by something that Erin Downey said in her own post:

What has, does, and will distinguish us from [coffee shops, community centers, and Internet cafes] are LIBRARIANS. Your barista doesn't know how to help you find a price guide for 19th century china dolls, or figure out what the primary motivations were of the Romantic poets, or locate the best resource for building an addition to your house (as well as getting the right permits for local construction!). We do all that and more on a daily basis without breaking a sweat - we're trained information professionals.

As I read Erin’s post, she seems awfully certain that librarians will be around and will be essential to the new order. I confess that I’m not that certain.

Perhaps I’m reading her wrong, but her paragraph strikes me as one of absolute certainty in librarians’ worth: Of course we’ll be around in the new paradigm! We’re LIBRARIANS, dammit! We’re TRAINED INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS who are VALUABLE in and of ourselves and also PROVIDE VALUE TO OTHERS. As I read her paragraph, I started substituting other professions in place of librarians: Of course we’ll be around in the new paradigm! We’re JOURNALISTS / TELEGRAPH OPERATORS / BUGGY WHIP MAKERS / TRAVEL AGENTS, dammit! We’re TRAINED PROFESSIONALS who are VALUABLE in and of ourselves and also PROVIDE VALUE TO OTHERS.

I think that the shifts we are now beginning to experience are going to be much more disruptive than we expect. I don’t think that we can take for granted that any current information-oriented profession is going to be around in the new paradigm. I think it’s a safer bet to assume that most of us in information-oriented jobs either are going to be replaced by something new or will see our professions so radically transformed that we may need to give them new labels.

Whether we’re librarians, teachers, administrators, or professors – or newspaper journalists, television producers, radio broadcasters, or magazine publishers – or travel agents, stockbrokers, medical professionals, or postal service workers, I think we need to be more uneasy. We need to be less complacent, less certain. We need to be more proactive and forward-thinking rather than self-congratulatory and self-satisfied.

The professionals in information-oriented fields who will be best able to navigate the seismic transitions that are yet to occur will be those that DON’T take their individual jobs – or even their entire professions – for granted. We all need to be more on edge than we currently are.

Photo credit: Officemate disappears

Are we too connected?

WHO TV (Des Moines) aired a special report, Are we too connected?, on last night’s news broadcast. Among others, they interviewed me and Dr. Michael Bugeja, Professor and Director of Iowa State University’s Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication.

I have interacted with Michael a couple of times. He’s a very good guy and a fun guy to talk with, but he’s also a nationally-visible technology critic who is interviewed often by the media. His technology skepticism is probably understandable given that his entire profession is struggling to reinvent itself because of the impacts of these new digital tools, but it’s also at least a little ironic given that he utilizes multiple web sites to publicize his work. He and I often fall on opposite sides of technology issues. I really need to read his book, Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age.

Here are a few quotes from the special report:

All this really does is send a message that someone somewhere else is more important than the place we are and the person we're with. [Bugeja]

That's not a loss of connection, that's a gain of connection compared to where we were before the technologies existed. [McLeod]

There's a time and a place in society for all manner of communication. Former platforms define those areas with real boundaries. But this has no boundaries. It blurs the boundary between home and work, between school and home, between church, temple, mosque and school. It blurs everything. Why? Because it's programmed for revenue generation. ‘We want to make money off you at any time of the day.’ [Bugeja]

Happy reading!

10 questions about books, libraries, librarians, and schools

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

October apparently was ‘Library Month’ for me. I was the keynote speaker for the Minnesota MEMO conference and did a breakout session for the Iowa Library Association (ILA) conference. I also brought Dr. Mike Eisenberg to Iowa for three days to talk with school administrators about technology and information literacy. As a result, I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on books, reading, and the future of libraries and librarians…

Random questions

1. What constitutes a “book” these days? When books become electronic and thus become searchable, hyperlinkable, more accessible to readers with disabilities, and able to embed audio, video, and interactive maps and graphics, at what point do they stop becoming “books” and start becoming something else?
2. The Amazon Kindle e-reader currently allows you to annotate an electronic book passage with highlights and your own personal notes. Those annotations are even available to you on the Web, not just on the Kindle device itself. As Seth Godin notes, there hopefully will be a day when you will be able to share those notes with others. You’ll also be able to push a button on your e-reader and see everyone else’s notes and highlights on the same passage. What kind of new learning capabilities will that enable for us?
3. If students and teachers now can be active content creators and producers, not just passive information recipients, doesn’t that redefine our entire notion of what it means to be information literate and media fluent? Are our librarians and classroom teachers doing enough to help students master these new literacies (for example, by focusing on student content creation, not just information consumption and/or interpretation)?
4. The Cushing Academy boarding school in Massachusetts may be the first school in the country to have its library go completely electronic. In addition to using library computers, students now check out Kindles loaded with books. How tough would it be for other schools to move to this model (and what would they gain or lose as a result)?
5. When books, magazines, newspapers, reference materials, music, movies, and other traditional library content all go electronic and online - deliverable on demand - what does that mean for the future of the physical spaces known as “libraries?” Mike Eisenberg said to me that we already should be taking yellow caution tape and blocking off the entire non-fiction and reference sections of our libraries. As content becomes digital and no longer needs to be stored on a shelf, with what do we replace that now-unused floor space: couches, tables, and cozy chairs? computer stations? meeting space? And if we head in these directions, what will distinguish libraries from other institutions such as coffee shops, community centers, and Internet cafes?
6. Our information landscape is more complex than ever before. We still need people who know how to effectively navigate these intricate electronic environments and who can teach others to do so. But does that mean we still need “librarians” who work in “libraries?” Or will their jobs morph into something else?
7. How much of a librarian’s current job could be done by someone in a different location (for example, someone in India who answers questions via telephone or synchronous chat) or by computer software and/or an electronic kiosk? I don’t know the answer to this question - and I suspect that it will vary by librarian - but I do know that many individuals in other industries have been quite dismayed to find that large portions of their supposedly-indispensable jobs can be outsourced or replaced by software (which, of course, means that fewer people are needed locally to do whatever work requires the face-to-face presence of a live human being).
8. Can a librarian recommend books better than online user communities and/or database-driven book recommendation engines? For example, can a librarian’s ability to recommend reading of interest surpass that of a database like Amazon’s that aggregates purchasing behavior or a dedicated user community that is passionate about (and maybe rates/reviews) science fiction books, and then do so for romance, political history, manga, self-help, and every other possible niche of literature too?
9. If school librarians aren’t actively and explicitly modeling powerful uses of digital technologies and social media themselves and also supporting students to do the same, should they get to keep their jobs? And if they are doing so individually (which is what we want), what’s their responsibility to police the profession (and lean on those librarians who aren’t)?
10. There is no conceivable future in which the primacy of printed text is not superceded by electronic text and media. If that future is not too far away (and may already be here), are administrators doing enough to transition their schools, libraries, and librarians / media specialists into a new paradigm?

Reactions from librarians

I posed these questions in both my MEMO and ILA presentations, explained in more detail my thinking about each one, and gave participants time to talk with each other after each question. I even told them up front that they wouldn’t like some of what I said but that I had nothing against librarians and was just asking questions that I thought the profession should be discussing. Reactions of the few librarians from whom I’ve heard have been interesting…

Librarian 1 (I received this one indirectly)

[Scott spoke] to the Iowa Library Assoc conference this past week and he really was quite negative about the future of libraries and librarians with the technology shifts.

Scott is speaking a great deal for our School Administrators of Iowa and also to principals/supts through the AEA's this year and I'm worried for the future of our profession in times of tight budgets with folks like Scott out speaking to leadership and not promoting the role that teacher librarians can play with technology AT ALL.

We had Mike Eisenberg here in Iowa this past week also speaking to administrators ... which I think is a good thing ... along with Scott McLeod ... which may NOT be a good thing. The topic was information literacy, but in speaking with those in attendance at these Iowa meetings, I heard that the role of teacher librarians was not at all highlighted, and in in fact, I heard there was a bit of librarian "bashing" by administrators in attendance. (Now this is just hear-say as I wasn't there to hear these presentations)

Now, I agree with you that teacher librarians need to be stepping up to the plate at this time and demonstrating the role that we can play with these 21st century tools, but am just wondering how we compete with loud, negative voices like Scott McLeod in Iowa? You know us polite Iowa librarians, we just kept quiet during Scott's session and did not argue with him!

Librarian 2

I’m the librarian that said you scared the #### out of me! It’s kind of settled in now and I’m reviewing my job duties and seeing what I can do to stay “relevant” and to be a viable information contributor. Thank you for the thought provoking presentation!

Librarian 3

I want you to know that I have had a few of my professors writing me today about you.  They said that after having a few days to think about what you said, they are REALLY happy that they heard you speak. And that you spoke at the ILA Convention to the librarians there. Librarians and teachers alike need to hear the message of change. I also sent them the link to your blog and guess what... think you have some new followers now too.

Librarian 4

I had the opportunity to listen to you present at the ILA Conference yesterday. Your presentation was very unique compared to the speech you shared with the twelve laptop initiative schools earlier this month.... As a leader in [my] district and a huge supporter of the advocacy of information literacy skills, I feel that you underestimate the role of a good teacher librarian. I see the evolution of technology advancing and embrace what opportunities it provides myself, my fellow educators and our future citizens. You see, I was selected by my district to represent them at the 1-to-1 meeting and have been asked to attend [some of your future workshops] because of my leadership and my active role in the integration of technology. And, yes, I am their teacher librarian.

Being curious, I would like to know more about your work with teacher librarians. I'm afraid that you may have assumed the role of a teacher librarian as being one of 'holding back' the age of information. That is very far from the truth. Currently, we live in a world where both print and electronic information are accessible to all. My role is to support both realms and the patrons who use the material. While open access may soon be upon us, I know that I must help students and staff while this evolution is taking place. I know the importance of being visionary and open-minded while at the same time being grounded.

I would challenge you to collaborate with me and learn more about my role as a teacher librarian. I think the role of libraries and librarians is evolving. And, I feel that a good teacher librarian is the 'Ace' in an administrators back pocket! What other position in a school district revolves around information access, collaboration with students and staff, all while taking on a role as an educational leader in learning? Instead of demanding teacher librarians to 'get out of the way' if they are not welcoming technology, maybe we need to look at the role a librarian can play. Their opportunities to support the learning environment can become an asset. Some librarians just need to know in what direction to lead. I hope in the future you consider the value teacher librarians have in this ever-changing world. I know that I am thankful for the opportunities I provide the students at [my district], and I would like to think that they feel the same about me.

Suggested reading

If the topic of the future of libraries and librarians interests you, I highly encourage you to read the recent article in School Library Journal, Things That Keep Us Up at Night, by Joyce Valenza and Doug Johnson. It’s caused quite a stir in the school librarian community…

Marge Beatty, Nebraska ESU 16, talks about 1:1 laptop programs

[cross-posted at CASTLE's 1-to-1 Schools blog]

While at Nebraska’s first-ever Educational Administrators Technology Conference, I learned that 8 of the 16 districts in Educational Service Unit 16 have 1:1 laptop programs. Marge Beatty, chief administrator for the ESU, was willing to let me ask her a few questions. Happy viewing!

ITEC 2009 - Tweetup videos

Russ Goerend posted a couple of short video snippets from our small Tweetup at ITEC 2009 (for some reason a host of Flip cameras suddenly emerged…). In addition to a number of us Iowa tweeps, David Warlick and Steve Dembo kindly joined in the conversation.

Here’s the first video: 

And here’s the second one (FYI, the first 2.5 minutes is a repeat of the end of the previous video): 

I love the end of the second video where Angela Maiers talks about the lack of teacher time to learn/do technology:

They have time to run copies. They have time to go make blackline masters. They have time to correct 15,000 true-and-false questions. They have time to make cute little art projects for kids to cut-and-paste for 45 minutes…

Happy viewing (and thanks, Russ)!

ITEC 2009 - PLN: A gardener's approach to professional learning

David Warlick is a wonderful speaker and an even more wonderful person. I was very fortunate to spend some time with him last night and this morning. I have very much enjoyed being a learner in his presence...

My notes from David’s second presentation at ITEC 2009:

• Blogging is about listening as much as it is about writing
• David is talking about who he reads (for example, Stephen Downes serves as a filter for David)
• PLN = personal learning network
• There's nothing new about PLNs; they existed long before the Internet; they were just more limited than they are now
• Everyone's PLN is different
• David: "I blog to learn. Many of my blog entries are questions from which I learn from others."
• For a lot of people, Twitter is the heart of their PLN. For others, it's their blog, Facebook, Second Life, Ning, Delicious, Flickr, or whatever.
• The Classroom 2.0 Ning has 31,705 members as of this morning
• The real power of PLNs is in mining the conversation. Because conversation is getting laid down, becoming part of the record, it can be monitored, mined, etc.
• Founder of Technorati: "Blogging is the exhaust of the human consciousness."
• Warlick: “As a 6th grade teacher, I learned very quickly that the amount of time students paid attention to me was directly related to the strangeness of what I was talking about.”
• David’s bookmarks are at www.delicious.com/dwarlick
• Social bookmarking is my personal digital library
• Tagging is a key function in the networked Internet

See also: A gardener’s approach to learning

Keywords: personal learning network Warlick

ITEC 2009 - David Warlick keynote

Group notes from David Warlick's keynote at ITEC 2009.

Keywords: redefine literacy Warlick

ITEC 2009 - Daniel Pink keynote

Group notes from Daniel Pink's keynote speech at ITEC 2009.

The end of teacher sameness and solidarity

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

[I]n American education, policy making is not guided by what is best for children or the larger public. It is a political process driven by power. And the most powerful groups in that process are special interests, led by the teachers unions, with a stake in keeping the system as it is. . . . Reforms of real consequence are vigorously resisted and watered down. (p. 149)

Traditionally, teachers have taught students face-to-face in classrooms. This is the standard role, common across virtually all teachers, and has allowed for a pervasive sense of occupational sameness that has long been a very good thing for the unions. It encourages teachers to see themselves as having a common set of work interests, as being equally deserving, and as sinking or swimming together. And all of this promotes solidarity, which is critical to the unions’ ability to attract members, gain their financial and emotional support, and mobilize them for economic and political ends. (p. 158)

[T]eachers unions are steadfast in demanding sameness . . . [t]he idea is to minimize all sources of differentiation, because they undermine the common interests and solidarity that so contribute to union success. . . . [H]owever, technology gives rise to a differentiation of roles among teachers. Some may still work face-to-face with students in classroom settings. . . . Some may work with students in computer labs, handling much larger classes than today’s teachers do (because the computers are taking over much of the actual teaching). Some may work with students online but still do it in real time. Some may engage in distance learning but do it asynchronously . . . Some may work mainly with parents, monitoring student progress and assuring proper student oversight. Some may oversee or serve as mentors to the front-line teachers themselves. And more. These and other jobs . . . require different skills and backgrounds, may call for varying levels of pay, . . . offer teachers a vast array of occupational opportunities they didn’t have before, encourage a level of entrepeneurialism and individualism among them . . . The profession of the future will be a much more differentiated and entrepeneurial one, and such a profession spells trouble for the unions . . . it is destined to be a profession that will no longer concentrate teachers in common geographic locations and monopoly employers – and the resulting dispersion of teachers to new locations, combined with the diversity of employers that goes along with it, cannot help but create additional layers of differentiation that affect how teachers see their own interests. (p. 159–160)

[T]he pervasive sameness that the unions have always counted on will slowly fall apart. As the years go by, they will have a harder time generating the solidarity they need to motivate teachers to join, to keep them as members, to mobilize supportive action - and to do the things successful unions need to do if they are to wield power in politics. As sameness and solidarity decline, so too will their political power. (p. 160)

[Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education]

Previous posts in this series

1. Education’s resistance to technology will be overcome

2. It would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and NOT have transformative implications for how children can be educated

3. Technology will free learning from the dead hand of the past

4. Technological change is destined to be resisted by the teachers unions

5. Correlation or causation? Teacher resistance to state technology initiatives

6. Greater use of technology allows for decreased numbers, but improved quality, of teachers?

Greater use of technology allows for decreased numbers, but improved quality, of teachers?

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

There is every reason to believe that technology will only become more effective with time. The same cannot be said of the traditional “technology” of education - teachers and classrooms - unless that world changes fundamentally. (p. 77)

Scores of technology-based instructional programs are being used in schools throughout America. . . . A recent survey indicated that the two main issues holding back technology use are “It doesn’t fit in the schedule,” and “There is not sufficient time to train teachers.” Nowhere does it say that the software is inadequate or that technology has dubious instructional value. (p. 77)

If elementary students spend but one hour a day learning electronically, certified staff could be reduced by a sixth. At the middle school level, two hours a day with computers would reduce staff requirements by a third. High schools, with three hours of usage, could reduce staff by up to a half. This level of computer usage is quite feasible given instructional technology that exists today. (p. 80).

The quality of teachers would benefit from the increased use of technology in at least two important ways. Even after investing in hardware and software, which are trivial compared to the cost of teachers, schools would have funds from staff savings to increase teacher pay and to provide more time for teacher training and planning. Added time for professional development, with proper supervision and accountability, would improve teacher quality. Added pay would help attract and retain better talent. Better talent is the most important ingredient of better schools. The [Dayton View Academy and Dayton Academy] charter schools . . . are already demonstrating the feasibility of these ideas – in the toughest of circumstances. (p. 80)

[Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education]

Previous posts in this series

1. Education’s resistance to technology will be overcome

2. It would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and NOT have transformative implications for how children can be educated

3. Technology will free learning from the dead hand of the past

4. Technological change is destined to be resisted by the teachers unions

5. Correlation or causation? Teacher resistance to state technology initiatives

Correlation or causation? Teacher resistance to state technology initiatives

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

A. “The average technology score [from Education Week’s Technology Counts 2008] drops as union membership grows. . . . technology seems to be advancing more quickly in states where the unions are weakest” (p. 107). [chart is from p. 108]

B. “The percentage of states with state-level virtual schools drops steadily as the unionization of teachers grows” (p. 118). [chart is from p. 119]

C. “[We] look at the percentage of states . . . that have data systems with the capacity to link students and teachers . . . [and see] the same basic pattern as for virtual schools – which is telling, as virtual schools and teacher identifiers have little to do with one another aside from their impact on union interests” (pp. 138–139). [chart is from p. 139]

[Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education]

Previous posts in this series

1. Education’s resistance to technology will be overcome

2. It would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and NOT have transformative implications for how children can be educated

3. Technology will free learning from the dead hand of the past

4. Technological change is destined to be resisted by the teachers unions

Technological change is destined to be resisted by the teachers unions

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

The fact that [technology] offers enormous benefits is not enough to guarantee that it will be embraced by the public schools and its potential fully realized. Technological change will run into the same political roadblocks that all major reforms have run into, and for exactly the same reasons. Powerful groups will try to block it. (pp. 29–30)

It is a fact that the teachers unions have vested interests in preserving the existing educational system, regardless of how poorly it performs. It is a fact that they are more powerful – by far – than any other groups involved in the politics of education. And it is a fact that in a government of checks and balances they can use their power to block or weaken most reforms they do not like. To recognize as much is not to launch ideological attacks against the unions. It is simply to recognize the political world as it is. (p. 54)

If anything is stone-cold certain about the current structure of power, it is that technological change is destined to be resisted by the teachers unions and their allies. This is “their” system, and they are compelled by their own interests to preserve and protect it. They will go to the ramparts to see that technology does not have real transformative effects. (p. 55)

[Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education]

Previous posts in this series

1. Education’s resistance to technology will be overcome

2. It would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and NOT have transformative implications for how children can be educated

3. Technology will free learning from the dead hand of the past

Technology will free learning from the dead hand of the past

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

The American education system faces much more than a performance problem. It also faces a political problem that, in the grander scheme of things, is more fundamental than the performance problem itself - because it prevents the performance problem from being seriously addressed and resolved. . . .

What sets technology apart from other sources of reform is that . . . it also has a far-reaching capacity to change politics - and to eat away, relentlessly and effectively, at the political barriers that have long prevented reform. Technology, then, is a double-barreled agent of change. It generates the innovations that make change attractive, and at the same time it undermines the political resistance that would normally prevent change from happening. . . .

This will mean real improvement, and real benefits for the nation and its children. It will also mean something still more profound: the dawning of a new era in which politics is more open, productive ideas are more likely to flourish – and learning is liberated from the dead hand of the past. [Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education, pp. 10–12]

It would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and NOT have transformative implications for how children can be educated

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

Even today, with educational technology in its earliest stages:

• Curricula can be customized to meet the learning styles and life situations of individual students.
• Education can be freed from geographic constraint.
• Students can have more interaction with . . . teachers and students who may be thousands of miles away or from different nations or cultures.
• Parents can readily be included in the communications loop.
• Teachers can be freed from their tradition-bound classroom roles, employed in more differentiated and productive ways, and offered new career paths.
• Sophisticated data systems can put the spotlight on performance [and] make progress (or the lack of it) transparent.
• Schools can be operated at lower cost, relying more on technology (which is relatively cheap) and less on labor (which is relatively expensive). . . .

Information and knowledge are absolutely fundamental to what education is all about . . . and it would be impossible for the information revolution to unfold and not have transformative implications for how children can be educated and how schools and teachers can more productively do their jobs. . . .

Precisely because technology promises to transform the core components of schooling, it is inevitably disruptive to the jobs, routines, and resources of the people whose livelihoods derive from the existing system. [Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education, pp. 7–9]

Education's resistance to technology will be overcome

Terry Moe and John Chubb say…

The revolution in information technology is historic in its force and scope: reshaping the fundamentals of how human beings from every corner of the globe communicate, interact, conduct their business, and simply live their lives from day to day. Education has so far resisted this revolution, as we could have predicted. But . . . we believe the resistance will be overcome – not simply because technology generates innovations of great value for student learning (which it does), but . . . because it is destined to have surprising and far-reaching effects on politics and power . . . . Technology will triumph. But the story of its triumph is a political story. [Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education, pp. xi-xii]

Tony Wagner speaks to Iowa educators, Part 3

Dr. Tony Wagner of Harvard University, who authored The Global Achievement Gap, is speaking to over 600 Iowa administrators and teachers today in Des Moines. Nearly 30 students are liveblogging their reactions to Tony’s presentation. Part 3 is below…

Tony Wagner speaks to Iowa educators, Part 2

Dr. Tony Wagner of Harvard University, who authored The Global Achievement Gap, is speaking to over 600 Iowa administrators and teachers today in Des Moines. Nearly 30 students are liveblogging their reactions to Tony’s presentation. Part 2 is below… 

Tony Wagner speaks to Iowa educators, Part 1

Dr. Tony Wagner of Harvard University, who authored The Global Achievement Gap, is speaking to over 600 Iowa administrators and teachers today in Des Moines. Nearly 30 students are liveblogging their reactions to Tony’s presentation. Part 1 is below… 

Video - Did You Know? 4.0

Three years, 20+ million online views, and many, many face-to-face showings later, the Did You Know? (Shift Happens) video still is going strong. Just this week it was mentioned in TIME magazine. Karl Fisch and I continue to get a bazillion e-mail messages about it…

Karl, XPLANE, The Economist, Laura Bestler, and I are very pleased to announce the release of Did You Know? 4.0, created for The Economist’s Media Convergence Forum in October.

I think XPLANE did an absolutely fabulous job with it, but let me know what you think in the comments. Downloadable versions and source files are available on the Shift Happens wiki under a Creative Commons license. Happy viewing (and please spread the word)!

Update: Be sure to read Karl's post on this too!

Two thoughts about President Obama's speech tomorrow (and my own speech the day after)

Much ado about nothing

I just read the text of President Obama’s hotly-contested speech tomorrow. I encourage you to do the same. Could it be any more innocuous? Whatever happened to waiting to see what happens first and THEN hollering about it? A lot of crying wolf has been going on lately…

If only these opportunities actually existed at scale

I was pleased to see this passage:

What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

I just wish I had more faith in our current schooling system to nurture the problem-solving and critical thinking skills and creativity and ingenuity that the President mentions. Right now I don’t think we’re doing so well in these areas…

On Wednesday I spend the day with 80 or so high school students (juniors and seniors, mostly) in Northwest Iowa. What should I be saying to them about their schools, technology, globalization, and their futures?

Video - The Digital Education Revolution in NSW

The New South Wales province in Australia is on a quest to outfit every Year 9 to 12 student with a customized Lenovo netbook by 2012. It is expected that over 200,000 computers will be distributed to students and teachers. If you’re interested, you can read more about the project or listen to a podcast about the initiative. 

I think this is a GREAT idea. Guess which high school graduates will be better prepared for a digital world: those who get to use computers in interesting and empowering ways on a regular basis or those who don’t?

Below is the publicity video for the initiative (thanks, John Strange, for leading me to this). Happy viewing, everyone!

Video - I Need My Teachers to Learn

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a video created by Shawn Gormley and Kevin Honeycutt that highlights some of the digital disconnects that exist between students and teachers:

Thanks, Angela Maiers and Wes Fryer, for blogging about this. Happy viewing, everyone!

Chris Lehmann speaks to the FCC

I don't know how Chris Lehmann finagled an invite to speak to the FCC, but I sure am glad he did (and that he filmed it!). Click on the picture below to listen to Chris' 10-minute presentation. I promise it will be WELL worth your time. 

Don't teach your kids this stuff. Please?

  

dear parent

  teacher

  administrator

  board member

     

don't teach your kids to read

  for the Web

  to scan

    RSS

    aggregate

    synthesize

 

don't teach your kids to write

  online

pen and paper aren't going anywhere

since when do kids need an audience?

no need to hyperlink

  make videos

    audio

      Flash

      

no connecting, now

no social networking

  or online chat

  or comments

  or PLNs

blogs and twitter?

  how self-absorbed

  what a bunch of crap

and definitely, absolutely, resolutely, no cell phones

block it all

lock it down

keep it out

it's evil, you know

  there's bad stuff out there

    gotta keep your children safe

    

don't you know collaboration is just another word for cheating?

don't you know how much junk is out there?

haven't you ever heard of sexting?

  of cyberbullying?

a computer 24-7? no thanks

  I don't want them

    creating

      sharing

        thinking

          learning

you know they're just going to look at porn

  and hook up with predators

we can't trust them

don't do any of it, please

  

really

'cause I'm doing all of it with my kids

can't wait to see who has a leg up in a decade or two

can you?

  

Slide - Global awareness instruction must move beyond foods and holidays

Download this file: png ppt pptx

See also my other slides and the Great Quotes About Learning and Change Flickr pool.

Slide - Any educator that buys wall maps or globes should be fired

Download this file: png ppt pptx

See also my other slides and the Great Quotes About Learning and Change Flickr pool.

UPDATE 1: In addition to the great comments below, see also my follow-up post.

UPDATE 2: We're having a slide remake contest! Deadline is Aug 22, 2009.

Dr. Yong Zhao at SAI 2009

Here are my notes from Dr. Yong Zhao’s presentation, Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, at the 2009 School Administrators of Iowa (SAI) conference…

• Dr. Zhao’s book will be out soon from ASCD.
• Thomas Friedman: “When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me: ‘Finish your dinner — people in China are starving.’ I, by contrast, find myself wanting to say to my daughters: ‘Finish your homework — people in China and India are starving for your job.’”
• When something bad happens in America, it has to do with education. When something good happens in America, it has to do with some politician.
• March 24, 1958 article in LIFE magazine comparing Russian students’ work with American students’ was very similar to the rhetoric of 2 Million Minutes.
• 1983, A Nation at Risk: “a rising tide of mediocrity” and “we are raising a new generation of Americans that is scientifically and technologically illiterate.”
• Achieve, the College Board, and ACT are writing the upcoming national standards. Ask yourself who stands to benefit from the new standards?
• 2 Million Minutes: now the ‘enemy’ is China and India. Dr. Zhao grew up in China and is back there almost every month. He disagrees with Bob Compton, the director.
• The USA continues to be the most economically competitive country in the world. We continue to be the most innovative, as measured by patents issued. And of course we are the most open, democratic.
• No other country comes close to the US when it comes to exports of intellectual property / knowledge (patents, royalties, copyrights, license fees). China dominates toy exports, not knowledge exports. China is a country built on cheap labor, not knowledge.
• If the US educational system is so bad, why are other countries (like China) trying to emulate us (see, e.g., China’s 2002 and 2005 curriculum and assessment reforms).
• Singapore is emphasizing the explicit teaching of critical and creative thinking skills.
• The correlation between the 1964 First International Math Study test scores (FIMS) and economic output, hourly productivity, quality of life, etc. 40 hours later are all negative. Democracy, creativity, livability all have no relationship or a negative relationship with the FIMS scores.
• Recommends reading Day of Empire: How HyperPowers Rise to Global Dominance – And Why They Fail, by Amy Chua, and The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida. Diversity of talents, creativity, entrepeneurship, and passion are what allow nations to thrive.
• We are busy closing the achievement gap. Asian countries are busy closing the creativity gap.
• The strengths of American education: school talent shows (value individual talents, inspires passion and responsbility, tolerate deviation, cultivate entrepeneurship) and children are popcorn (some pop early and some pop late; respect individual differences; have faith in every child; second, third, and fourth chances)
• Creativity is fundamentally to be different. America is a society that tolerates, values, and celebrates difference.
• We do face new challenges. For example, globalization (i.e., the death of distance). Columbus took about 3 months to get from Spain to the Bahamas. Now it takes 13 hours on airplane. Electronic information, money, voice phone calls, etc. now get there instantly.
• Global supply chains: corporations can fragment their production and distribute it wherever it makes sense (outsourcing of labor). Products are now made from parts that come from a multitude of different countries.
• New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce: “Today, Indian engineers make $7,500 a year against $45,000 for an American engineer with the same qualifications. If we succeed in matching the very high levels of mastery of mathematics and science of these Indian engineers - an enormous challenge for this country - why would the world’s employers pay us more than they have to pay the Indians to do their work? They would be willing to do that only if we could offer something that the Chinese and Indians, and others, cannot.”
• Equalling China’s or India’s performance on standardized tests doesn’t differentiate ourselves, doesn’t allow us to offer what others cannot.
• Problems in other countries also affect everyone now (e.g., swine flu, poverty, violence, financial meltdowns). We no longer can keep ourselves isolated.
• Where does the new hope lie? With Madonna and eBay! Many people don’t like Madonna. But across the globe, there are enough who do for her to be successful. Globalization allows us to find the other crazy people across the world who find value in what we offer. eBay allows us to find others outside our local area who will buy our trash. Globalization expands our audiences and allows our skills, talents, products, etc. to find new places that they can thrive. What do you have that others don’t? What can you contribute to other markets? What’s your niche?
• Societal changes create new job opportunities. Right now, for example, we need people who understand other countries’ cultures, languages, politics, etc.
• Technology demands new skills (e.g., virtual designers). Virtual “gold farming” is now a $2 billion industry worldwide.
• The Partnership for the 21st Century Skills framework is too long and complex. Our problem in America is that we keep adding, we never take away.
• See Jenifer Fox’s www.strengthsmovement.com.
• We need to take technology and the digital world SERIOUSLY.
• Every child should have a personalized curriculum. This is happening in other countries (e.g., United Kingdom).
• We should think of schools as global enterprises, not local entities, and draw on global resources.
• Never send a man to do a machine’s job. Let people and computers each do what they do best.
• Slides available at http://zhao.educ.msu.edu

At an information feast, what value must graduates and teachers bring to the table?

On page 52 of Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Chris Anderson notes:

Products that can become commoditized and cheap tend to do so, and companies seeking profits move upstream in search of new scarcities. Where abundance drives the cost of something to the floor, value shifts to adjacent levels.

And that’s really it, in a nutshell, for our students and our school systems, isn’t it? Because the need to store information in our heads has diminished yet again as our storage media have become more sophisticated (this time it’s computers and the Internet instead of books), the value that our graduates bring to their jobs increasingly is dependent on what they can do with what they know, not merely what they know. Because previously-scarce information is now freely and abundantly available on the Web, the value that teachers bring to their current jobs is not how well they can spew forth content and then assess what kids can regurgitate but rather how well they can - and their students can - think critically about and act upon important facts and concepts.

I think most educators and policymakers have yet to give much thought to the occurrence (or magnitude) of this shift…

[Many folks have disagreed with the premise of this book, but I found much to think about inside. I give it 3 highlighters.]

Gen Y: Your 'real' friends are your online friends

The New York Times reports today on a study of MySpace users from the United Kingdom. Here is a quote from the article:

The MySpace study asked social networking users between the ages of 14 and 21 (aka "Generation Y") questions about their interactions both on social networks and in their real life, too. Some 36% of the respondents said they found it easier to talk about themselves online than in the real world, leading them to share more about themselves using technology. This group also felt that their online friends knew more about them, and so, in a sense, were closer than offline friends because they all knew what was going on in each other's lives.

Outside of the social networking sites, the survey respondents overwhelmingly felt ill-at-ease in social groups. A whopping 72% said they felt "left out" and didn't think they fit into any particular group. More than four-fifths (82%) said they moved between four or more different groups of friends in an effort to find acceptance.

So is this…

1. Proof that Internet naysayers are correct that the Web is eroding young people’s ability to communicate effectively face-to-face?, or
2. Proof that Internet advocates are correct that young people are breaking free of local, geographical constraints to find affinity groups that matter to them?

In other words, are these results something about which to be concerned or to celebrate? Both? Neither? Thoughts?

School mobile phone jammers and shoe organizers

The Des Moines Register reported today that the St. Ansgar (IA) Schools have given up on their proposal to purchase a device that would jam mobile phone signals after confirming that such equipment only can be used by federal agencies. The district had looked into the possibility of buying a jammer because it was struggling with inappropriate student mobile phone usage. One of the school board members said:

I don't think they have a place in the educational environment. The educational environment is supposed to be about students learning and teachers teaching and teachers can't teach over a cell phone. If a student is busy on the cell phone they aren't learning. It's a distraction ... and we need to minimize the distraction.

The interim superintendent also noted that he was concerned about students using mobile phones for cheating.

I e-mailed the interim superintendent a couple of days ago and asked him to consider a different, less hard-line approach, noting schools’ responsibility to prepare students for a digital, global era and that other districts have had success with more-accommodating strategies. Maybe I’ll hear from him sometime.

One of the comments to the Register’s article cracked me up:

Oh, For Crying-out-load. Just hang one of those shoe orginizers next to the door and require each student to check in thier phones on entering the classroom, then they can retrieve them after class. Just drop your phone in your slot and pick it up on the way out. Hey look, I solved the problem for less than $5.00

I don’t know if this is a fantastic idea or not, but it sure made me laugh. Sometimes easy solutions to our problems are staring us in the face if only we have the courage to think creatively. As we head into the new school year, who thinks their local school has an effective solution for inappropriate student use of mobile phones?

It's not 'the tests.' It's us.

I often hear educators say...

We could be teaching differently if it weren't for ‘the tests.’

Or…

We could do a better job of meeting our students’ needs if it weren't for ‘the tests.’

I emphatically dispute these assertions. We must take ownership of our own culpability.

Our prevalent instructional model that emphasizes low-level, decontextualized, factual recall was dominant long before ‘the tests.’ Our challenges of providing higher-order thinking experiences, opportunities for authentic collaboration, and real-world connectedness existed long before the No Child Left Behind Act. Our inability to effectively facilitate empowered technology usage, true cultural/global awareness, and other necessary skills for a digital, global, information age is a byproduct of long-held, deeply-rooted cultural and pedagogical norms, not recently-acquired beliefs and behaviors.

Is anyone willing to argue that achievement gaps were smaller before evil NCLB came along and messed us all up? Does anyone think that we were doing a fine job of meeting the needs of underserved populations before ‘the tests?’ Have we all forgotten that school has been boring for generations?

It's not ‘the tests.’ It's our unwillingness and/or inability to do something different, something better.

It's not ‘the tests.’ It's us.

 

UPDATE: There are some phenomenal comments below. I hope you'll take a few moments to read them. Be sure to also read Greg Thompson's reaction to this post.

Video - 21st century schools (Stephen Heppell)

Thanks to Wes Fryer, I found this new video from Dr. Stephen Heppell on 21st century schools. Happy viewing!