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

Support engineering - Crazy high school robots that battle for supremacy

Yesterday I got the e-mail below. I watched the video trailer and made my contribution this morning. Crazy high school robots battling it out for engineering supremacy? How can you not support that?!

Hi Dr. McLeod,

For the past year I've been working on a documentary following high school robotics teams build combat robots for the National BotsIQ Championship.

My goal with the film is to be entertaining to all, yet motivational to students to get them involved in science and engineering (STEM) programs and for educators to see these alternate teaching methods. A lot of the teams featured are all girls teams.

I'm trying to raise funds to film the championship through a Kickstarter project. http://kck.st/bhzbBq

Basically this equates to pre-ordering a DVD. For educators I have a special offer that anyone who pledges $25 or more (DVD level) and forwards their confirmation email to [email protected], I'll make sure they get an educational licensed version to show in classrooms.

I'm also working on an educational video (that will be on the DVD) on getting students (especially girls) involved in STEM programs, which I'd love to get input on from teachers to shape it so it works best for their needs.

If you would be able to post something about this, either on your website, Twitter, Facebook, etc., it would greatly help me reach my goal and make this the best film and project it can be.

Thanks for any help you can provide, feel free to ask me any questions. I have a special press area on the website for photos, videos, and other media.

http://www.botshigh.com/press/

Take care and talk to you soon.

Joey Daoud, [email protected]
Bots High, Producer & Director
http://www.botshigh.com

Is 'The School of One' the future of schooling?

Is this school in New York City the future of schooling?

The School of One: Program Overview

(see also the write-ups at Teaching Matters and The Huffington Post)

Video - You can't be my teacher

Not sure how I missed this video last October but, in case you haven't seen it, here's You can't be my teacher. Happy viewing!

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

Notes from India: Pictures and Tweets from ASB Unplugged and Mumbai

For those of you who are interested, here is the Flickr photo set for ASB Unplugged, a February 1:1 laptop conference for international schools that was sponsored by the American School of Bombay in Mumbai, India. You may recognize a few edublogger faces like Vicki Davis, Julie Lindsay, Doug Johnson, Kim Cofino, Susan Sedro, Nick Sauers, and others!

And here is the Flickr set of the pictures I took of India while I was there (these also are intermingled in the ASB Unplugged set above). I also took some video.

And here is the Flickr set of the pictures of India that I took two years ago when I was there for the inaugural ASB Unplugged event. I also took some video.

Finally, here are all of the Tweets from this year’s conference:

• Twitter search for #asbup2010
• Google spreadsheet of Tweets

ComETS 2010 - Academic blogging communities, extreme presentation makeovers, and 21st century learning in universities

Iowa State University held its second annual ComETS symposium a couple of weeks ago. Faculty, professional staff, and a few outside folks gathered together to talk about technology integration and implementation in higher education.

Building a community of practice through blogging

Below is my 10–minute ‘lightning strike’ presentation, Building a Community of Practice Through Blogging. I didn’t have my ‘A game’ that day and wasn’t as energetic a presenter as I usually am. I also spent too much time on the ‘creating a listening station’ portion and not enough time on the ‘participating in the conversation’ portion. That ratio was supposed to be 50–50, not 75–25. Despite all that, I think that the presentation came out pretty well and is a solid introduction to RSS and blogging communities for academics. Here’s a quote from my talk:

Most academics have yet to realize the power of social media. . . .

The reason we go to academic conferences is for the conversations. It’s not for the research presentations because you know how good those are. And it’s not to access the papers because we can get those in other channels. It’s to be around other people and have those conversations in the hall and after the sessions and at dinner and so on that solidify our relationships with people. Well, now we can have those conversations year-round. All we have to do is choose to be part of the conversation.

Extreme presentation makeover 

My faculty colleague, John Nash, also gave a lightning strike presentation titled Extreme Presentation Makeover. He took some slides from our rejected UCEA presentation proposal and went to town. [Note to self: always present before John, not after, because he’s a hard act to follow!]. He also has a blog post about his presentation. Here’s a quote from his talk:

The other thing that we generally fail to think about when we give presentations is a call to action. What is it that you want someone to do after you’re done?

All of the symposium videos are available at the ComETS symposium web site and also are being uploaded to the ISU YouTube channel. 

Charting our course: Exploring 21st century learning

Our keynote for the symposium was Malcolm Brown from Educause. Here are my notes from his talk:

"Improvement in postsecondary education will require converting teaching from a 'solo sport' to a community-based research activity." - Herbert Simon

Technology predictions v. course charting

The pace and scale of Internet change is unprecedented, so it's very hard to wrap our heads around it. 

Every second 1,157 videos are uploaded to YouTube.

2.2 million e-mails sent every second

What Colleges Should Learn from Newspapers' Decline

iTunes has many academic lectures / lessons

So does Academic Earth

I love this line from the Kaplan University video: "?"

Funny thing about paradigm shifts: If we knew what the next paradigm was, we'd already be there.

Where is the student in all of this?

The opportunity is in increased student engagement [Do most profs at research universities really care about increased student engagement? If so, they haven't really showed it to date.]

How we learn, National Academies Press

Discussed the impact of the printing press

The 3 Cs of mobile computing

1. Content - delivery, anywhere anytime, ebooks, etextbooks, etc.
2. Collaboration - language learning, formative assessment, first-hand data collection, etc.
3. Community - student authors, leveraging messaging, enhanced polling, etc.

Angela Maiers: We haven't invited our students to be creators or co-creators of content.

Malcolm just cited quick penetration of clickers as examples of higher ed moving more quickly on the tech front

'Some' is not a rebuttal

Expanding from those that already are technology-inclined to those that need to be

I think that all colleges and universities should have technology communities like ComETS at ISU and at University of Wisconsin-Madison. I said to Jim Twetten, who’s heading the ComETS efforts here:

I like ComETS because it's an opportunity to learn from other ISU educators, both faculty and professional staff, across campus who are doing interesting things with digital technologies. The annual ComETS symposium gives us an opportunity to intersect face-to-face in a variety of different ways. The ongoing ComETS listserv connects us and allows us to share and discuss in between symposia. We're off to a good start. Now the challenge becomes: how do we expand from those that already are technology-inclined to those that need to be? The latter group is much larger than the former...

You can see some backchannel conversations from the symposium by searching for the Twitter hashtag: #comets. Happy reading!

Our April 7 Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I) is full!

Just a quick post to note that registration for our Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I) on April 7 is now closed. We hit our mark of 500 attendees last week despite doing very little publicity.

I’m excited. This conference has grown very organically (we’ve used Edubloggercon as a model; thanks, Steve Hargadon!). It’s going to be a great day!

Our April 7 Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I) is filling fast!

Just a few weeks after publicizing our first-ever Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I), we already have over 300 people who have registered to attend on April 7. Our registration is capped at 500, so if you’re interested, sign up soon! Oh, did I mention that attendance is FREE?

Angela Maiers has agreed to be our keynote speaker. It looks like Wes Fryer will be coming to do a few sessions. The CASTLE staff will be in action as well.

What else are we doing that day? Well, how about a couple of Web 2.0 Smackdowns, a TweetUp, and a variety of role-alike conversations for teachers, administrators, and board members? And some space set aside for an ‘unconference.’ And, of course, lots of good sessions from 1:1 laptop districts in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Illinois. And whatever else we come up with…

Stay tuned. Hope to see you in Des Moines in April!

Video - The Class

Here’s the latest educational technology video that’s making the rounds. I know a few professors like this!

“If you are here, why are we Skyping?”

Grading student projects: Separating content from delivery

I am a big fan of student choice. When students work on projects, I think that they should have as much choice as possible regarding both the topic and the delivery. Choice increases student buy-in and ownership.

Teachers allow choice of topics, not delivery

When teachers and I talk about integrating technology into their lessons, I encourage them to try and build in more choice for students. Most teachers already allow students to choose topics of study, at least some of the time. For example, students are allowed to pick a historical figure, select a mystery book, decide what they sculpt out of clay, and so on.

Fewer teachers seem to be comfortable with student choice of delivery. For any given project, how students show their learning often is tightly circumscribed. Teachers, not students, typically decide whether the end product will be a written report, diorama, oral presentation, mobile, clay sculpture, poster, etc. Teachers, not students, determine what the evaluation criteria will be for delivery, often in excruciating detail. I have seen many of these delivery mechanism evaluation rubrics: they’re normally designed to be student-proof. There’s very little leeway for student decision-making and thus, in the teacher’s mind, error.

The digital technologies that we now have available to us open up a wealth of new ways for students to show their learning. Many of these tools also make it easy for students to work collaboratively. I think there is growing pressure on teachers to open up student delivery choices to include many of these new digital learning options. Parents and students see what the possibilites are and wonder why they aren’t available in their local classrooms.

The need to separate content from delivery

As teachers move in this direction, I think it’s going to be increasingly important to help teachers learn how to separate content (what students need to learn) from delivery (how students show they have learned). Often the two are intertwined in teachers’ minds, and it is hard for many educators to partition grading of the learned content from grading of the delivery mechanism.

I also have heard from teachers that, even if they’re amenable to - and/or experienced at - giving separate grades for content and delivery, they don’t know how to grade effective delivery when students use digital tools. Over time the teaching profession has evolved general ideas about what ‘quality’ looks like when it comes to a written report, a poster, or an oral presentation. Fewer instructors know what they should look for to determine the quality of a video, collaborative mind map, wiki, or photo essay.

It might be helpful for a group of teachers (and students) to come together to create a set of quality rubrics for various common digital tools. Those content-neutral rubrics could then be applied to relevant student work, regardless of subject area. Obviously these rubrics would have to be age-sensitive; what we’d expect from an 8-year-old would be different than what we’d look for from a high-schooler. Also, there may be certain projects for which the creation of a ‘content-neutral’ delivery evaluation rubric is infeasible because the content and delivery are too tightly intertwined. For many situations, however, I think that these rubrics could be incredibly useful.

We need to figure this out

I think we’re going to have to wrap our heads around this as educators. Our tools for exhibiting our learning are going to continue to proliferate. We can’t just keep assigning the tried-and-true, analog-only solutions that we still see dominating current classroom practice.

I confess that to date I have exhibited a lack of flair for creating these types of rubrics, so I’m not sure I’m the one to look to for examples. Others, I know, have a real gift for making rubrics; at least some of them have to be tech-savvy enough to take this task on. Doea anyone know of folks who are doing good work in this area? Do you have other thoughts on this topic?

Photo credit: Making the grade

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!

Transform the instructors first?

Here’s a short Twitter conversation that I had with Mary Zedeck on Wednesday:

I’ve been thinking about the question that I asked Mary. I wonder how many P-12 teachers or postsecondary faculty have had transformative experiences using technology. In other words, how many of them have personally intersected with some of the world-changing and paradigm-shifting possibilities that are out there? And for those who have, how many of them really understood what happened (i.e., how many recognized the bigger implications of the event that they personally experienced)?

Can we realistically expect educators who have not personally had (and understood) transformative technology experiences to create such experiences for their students? If not (and I’m guessing not), what implications does this have for our preservice and inservice training efforts?

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.

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!

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?

CASTLE has a new blog! Check out 1to1Schools.net

Some of you have noticed that CASTLE has a new blog: 1to1 Schools. We’re excited about this new venture, which is meant to highlight news, stories, videos, and other resources related to elementary and secondary 1:1 laptop programs.

1to1 Schools is a group blog. For example, check out Nick Sauers’ series on using John Kotter’s 8–stage change process as a model framework for schools that are considering 1:1. Or his post on banning boredom, not laptops. Nick and I also have been on the road with our Flip camcorders, making videos of educators who are involved in laptop programs (see, e.g., our chats with Wynn Draper-Bryant and Marge Beatty).

Pamela Livingston, author of 1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work, recently had two posts about an international survey of students in 1:1 programs:

• Part 1
• Part 2

She also wrote recently about how laptops are NOT for listening.

Blair Peterson, another occasional contributor, has noted that we should be prepared for the expected opposition to laptop programs.

The blog is a work in progress - and like many new blogs we’re still working on finding our voice - so please contact us if you have suggestions. If you’d like to be a contributor (or know someone else who’d be a good writer for us) please let us know that too.

Happy reading!

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!)?

4 tales out of school

Here are four tales out of school, as relayed by parents:

Hatshepsut and Thutmose

Four questions from a study packet for a middle school World Civilizations class:

A. Nubia developed trade routes over land because:

1. there was not enough wood to build boats
2. the Egyptians controlled the Nile
3. the cataracts prevented river travel in Nubia
4. Nubians only traded with West Africans

B. According to legend, who united Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt?

1. Hatshepsut
2. Menes
3. Amon-Re
4. Thutmose III

C. Thutmose III was all of the following except:

1. a conqueror
2. an educated man
3. unmerciful to the defeated
4. a great Pharaoh

D. What was the kingdom of Kerma known for?

1. great poverty
2. skilled archers
3. delicate pottery
4. ironworking

These are just a sample; most of the items in the packet are similar. Students have to ‘learn’ these because they’ll be quizzed on them.

It’s very hard for me to see this kind of schoolwork and not think that vast amounts of student time are just being wasted. And I’m the first to admit that I did this when I taught 8th grade. I didn’t know any better, but that didn’t make it right. There are lots of great higher-level concepts possible in this unit, such as the inter-dependent relationships between people and land, what influences where civilizations develop, and so on. But I don’t see those concepts here (and I wasn’t ever taught to focus on those as a teacher or student teacher).

[Correction: I've been informed that students did get to learn/write about some of those higher-level concepts too. That doesn't remedy the multiple-choice items for me, but it does help me feel slightly better.]

Study hall rules

In a high school cafeteria, there are flyers about study hall that say (among other things):

• Students may eat and drink as long as they clean up after themselves.
• Students may listen to music as long as they have headphones.
• Students may talk quietly.
• Game/Card playing, laptops, or any other such devices are not permitted in Study Hall. I-Pods are for music only.
• NO CELL PHONE USAGE!

In other words, you can eat snacks, hang out and talk with your friends, and listen to your music during ‘study hall,’ but you can’t use what may be the most powerful learning devices that humanity has yet invented.

Assessment reliability, validity, and parent (dis)trust

An e-mail exchange between a parent and a high school teacher…

Parent

Dear [teacher], I would like to find out how to get a copy of my son's exams for his Algebra 2 class. My son's name is XXXX XXXX. He informed me that he is not allowed to take them home. I am very surprised by this. I don't know how I, as a parent, am supposed to help him if I don't know what he is not understanding. Also, it is very helpful to students to have their exams to study for the final. I am happy to pay for copies. Please let me know what I need to do. Thank you.

Teacher

I am attaching a pdf of our departments rationale for keeping students' tests on file. In addition, students are welcome to set up times when they may review a test in the math study center. When exams are returned, they are welcome to write down a question in their notes to which they may refer later.

Parent

I am very disappointed by this policy although at least the department lets parents and students look at their old exams. I appreciate not letting them come home until all students have taken the exam, but it seems that waiting a week would be fine. The "needing copies on hand" can be dealt with by letting a parent pay for a copy to take home if requested or by scanning and emailing. As for the issue of not wanting to make up new problems, math is one of the easier subjects to do this in so I'm really surprised.

I hope that students have been informed of this policy; I as a parent certainly haven't been by any department. My son didn't seem to be aware of it though, but that could be a teenage thing. What times are available for me to come in and look at the exams? Do I make the appointment with you to get the exams or go through the math study center? Thanks for your help.

In other words: No, we don’t trust you or your child (and/or we can’t be bothered to make an alternative assessment); if you are willing and available to take off work and come down here, we’ll show you what you want to see and you can take some notes but you may not have even a copy of your child’s work.

No computers for you!

It’s December and some upper elementary students have yet to use a computer this year for anything other than typing practice and to look up things in the library catalog.  [I’m not sure there’s anything to say about this except to sigh in dismay]

Wrap-up

Four tales out of school. Four tales that could exist in most districts in the country. Four tales that illustrate the disconnects that often exist between our schools and the caring, empowering, relevant, meaningful, modern learning environments that we should be creating for students and their families. Got one or more tales to share of your own?

Does your school organization reflect our new digital information landscape?

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

CASTLE has been doing a great deal of technology leadership training for the School Administrators of Iowa, some of the Iowa Area Education Agencies, some of the Minnesota Service Cooperatives, and other school organizations across the country. One of the discussion activities that we’ve been doing lately asks session participants to think in groups about the impacts that the Internet and other digital technologies have had on various sectors of our society:

• newspapers, magazines, and the news industry
• banking, money management, and personal finance
• television, movies, and video
• maps, travel agencies, and the travel industry
• radio, CDs, and the music industry
• medicine and personal health
• reading and books
• how we communicate, connect, and share with each other; and
• universities

[Download these slides: ppt pptx]

This is not an exclusive list - for example, it doesn’t include the postal service or politics / political campaigning [or real estate agents] - but it does include many of the major sectors in our society that are information-oriented. In other words, they’re societal sectors and activities that, at their heart, are all about information and knowledge in one form or another.

In groups, participants can quite easily identify that ALL of these societal sectors are undergoing major, radical transformations because of digital technologies. Information-oriented societal activities are being reshaped in significant ways, and it’s just getting started as digital tools and environments continue to advance at a rapid pace.

Characteristics of our new digital information landscape

If asked to describe the ideas or themes that cut across all of these societal changes, participants can identify the general characteristics of our new digital information landscape. It is

• open
• more accessible
• more convenient
• more immediate / real-time
• networked
• connected
• shared
• collaborative
• interactive
• individualized
• empowering
• flexible
• adaptive
• less dependent on “experts”
• rapidly-changing
• more comprehensive
• searchable
• often crowdsourced
• creative
• multimodal / multimedia
• more efficient
• often less expensive
• global
• less dependent on geography
• technology-suffused
• less dependent on physical media
• and so on…

These apply to us too!

The challenge for us as leaders, of course, is that P-12 schools also are information-oriented institutions. At our hearts, we too are all about information:

• information mastery
• knowledge transmission and transference
• organizing and accessing information
• making meaning
• etc.

Because of this, 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 significant and as-yet-unknown ways.

How many of the big ideas / cross-cutting themes above describe your school? Does the daily work of your school organization reflect our new digital information landscape?

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.

Survey results: Why isn't your school organization making more progress?

I’d like to thank everyone who participated in my 3–minute survey, Why isn’t your school organization making more progress? We had a total of 561 participants. Some charts and tables are below (click on images for larger versions). Also, here are some downloadable files:

• Complete data packet
• Excel spreadsheet
• Word document
• “Live” results page

My online survey software provided some summary data:

The chart below shows the average rank of each item, along with standard deviations. The lower the rank, the more important the reason.

Although Lack of adequate funding emerged as the top reason cited, Ineffective leadership had more top 3 appearances than any other item. I admit that Accountability demands of NCLB came out lower than I expected.

Finally, Jon Becker wondered if maybe some demand characteristics were in play here…

Feel free to do any other analysis you‘d like on the raw data; just leave a link in the comments area for this post so we all can find it. Thanks again to everyone who participated and/or publicized this survey!

3 MINUTE SURVEY: Why isn't your school organization making more progress?

Why aren’t schools making more progress when it comes to effective implementation and integration of digital technologies? Here’s what K-12 educators usually tell me when asked (list is in no particular order):

• Lack of adequate funding
• Unsupportive state / federal legislators
• Teacher / union resistance
• Lack of professional development
• Ineffective leadership
• Lack of time / space within curriculum
• Accountability demands of NCLB
• Parent / community resistance

I’m curious about your own situation. So I created a 3–minute survey! Simply click, drag, and drop the items to reorder them.

1. Take the survey!
2. Follow the results live!

Survey closes Thursday, November 19. Hope you’ll participate (and pass this along to others)!

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)!

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]

Technology Mentoring: A Timeless Idea

First, I'd like to thank Scott for hosting me as part of my virtual tour to support The Best of Learning & Leading with Technology. You can follow the entire tour at Ed Tech Jen. To thank you for taking the time to find out a little about me and about the book, I'll be giving away a copy of the book to one lucky commenter.

Technology Mentoring

In pulling together this collection of the best articles from a five-year span of Learning & Leading with Technology, I looked for three things:

1. Articles that were compelling to read.
2. Articles that many of our readers responded to, nominated for the collection on The Best of L&L blog, or had included in course packets.
3. Articles that contained ideas that transcended specific technologies or educational settings.

One article that really stood out in the technology leadership area was "Teacher to Teacher Mentoring" by Kathleen Gora and Janice Hinson. (ISTE members can read this article here.)

Gora and Hinson described a program in their school where the more-experienced technology users helped teach their fellow teachers to integrate specific technologies into their instruction. They found much better results from these mentorships than from other professional development methods they had tried in their school.

One of the nice things about this program was that it had the deep support of the principal. This was really a key component of its success, and the main reason that the program is still in effect today.

When I contacted many of the authors whose works are included in the book, they shared a different result. Some had retired, and some had moved into other educational settings where technology use was not as well supported. Those who were still teaching used many of the same pedagogical techniques, but were unable to include the technology component. Thus, the fact that the program described in this article is still active is notable.

One of the compelling points for me was that this school had taken a solid teaching truth and applied it to itself. We know that students learn a topic really well when they have to teach it to their fellow students. So it makes sense that teachers who have to train other teachers in a technology integration technique or the use of an application would learn it better than if they were just using it personally.

What about you. Have you used mentoring in your educational setting? If so, what sort of process have you used to group mentors and mentees and to assign topics of study? How do assess the effectiveness of the mentorship?

Have you taken any other tenet of effective student learning and applied it to teacher professional development or to your own professional learning? How has it worked? Have you thought about sharing that idea with other technology leaders?

About Jennifer Roland

Jennifer is a writer living in the Portland, Oregon, area. She holds bachelor’s degrees in magazine journalism and political science from the University of Oregon. Her education also focused on history, economics, linguistics, and educational policy and management. Before embarking on her freelance career, she was a staff member at ISTE. Follow Jennifer on her blog tour at http://edtechjen.com; each tour stop includes a chance to win a copy of The Best of Learning & Leading with Technology.

About The Best of Learning & Leading with Technology

ISTE’s flagship magazine, Learning & Leading with Technology, is where the organization’s members and industry experts share and discuss the latest and greatest in using technology to enhance education. This collection includes the very best articles from 2003-2008. Along with the articles as they originally appeared in the magazine, the book includes commentary and context introducing the articles as well as short essays from the original authors, who further discuss the issues and topics of their articles and how they’ve affected the ed tech world.

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… 

Laptops and the Social Web are dangerous!

A while back I shared one of my two favorite passages from Pamela Livingston’s excellent book, 1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work. Here's the other one:

[W]e need to make “The Shift.” The Shift: to classrooms that are not solely teacher-centric, with the teacher as lone disseminator of knowledge and the children in the awe-stricken and lesser role of recipients of the knowledge. The Shift: where the teacher sometimes has the central role when he or she explains and coaches and elaborates on work to be done … but not always. The Shift: where the learners sometimes have the central role, either individually or in groups. The Shift: where the roles of teacher and learner are fuzzy; sometimes the teacher learns from the students; sometimes the students learn from one another; and, yes, sometimes the students learn from the teacher. The Shift: where sometimes it’s hard to know who has the central role, where activities are buzzing along, learning is happening, dynamics are shifting, and no one is “looking up” to anyone as the sole source of knowledge.

Nothing jumpstarts The Shift quite like 1–to-1. Because when every student in the room has a [laptop], he or she does not have to look “up” to the teacher for resources or ideas - the student has resources at his or her fingertips. There is no distribution or retrieval of materials, no sole purveyor of information, and no firm start or stop to learning because it can continue beyond the classroom into the library, or home, or anywhere.

Some find The Shift dangerous. And in a way, it is. It’s dangerous to the educator who controls the classroom with an iron fist and wants all the answers on the test to be things he or she said in class, repeated word-for-word. It’s dangerous to educators who have assigned the same report on Gandhi over the past 20 years and haven’t started to require synthesis or analysis of information. It’s dangerous to teachers who physically stay in one place – the front of the classroom – and move only to write on the chalkboard or whiteboard. It’s dangerous to educators who don’t want anyone to “read ahead” or to “think ahead.”

It’s dangerous to educators who view themselves as the most knowledgeable person in the room and are personally invested in staying that way. It’s dangerous to teachers who haven’t paid attention to their unengaged students and keep covering the material anyway, they way they think it ought to be covered, believing students should adapt to their approach.

If you haven’t checked out Pamela’s book, it’s well worth the read. I give it 4 highlighters.

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!

See you in Mumbai?

The American School of Bombay (ASB) in Mumbai, India is hosting a 1:1 laptop computing conference in February 2010. While the conference is aimed at other international schools, it should be an excellent learning opportunity for anyone who can attend. I attended (and keynoted) ASB's first conference two years ago, brought my buddy, Dr. David Quinn, and had an absolutely wonderful time. I met a bunch of really great international educators and learned a lot about effective 1:1 programs. I highly encourage you to try and attend; Mumbai's a fascinating city! The conference is a collaborative effort of ASB, the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation (AALF), the Laptop Institute, and the NESA Center.

If you'd like to submit a proposal to present, the deadline is September 5. The deadline to register and attend is November 15. More information on the conference - including how to register and/or submit a proposal - is at the ASB Un-Plugged Ning.

CASTLE will be sending three representatives to the conference. We're going to make sure we're there in time for the preconference with AALF, which looks totally amazing. ASB is the best 1:1 school I've seen to date; I'm looking forward to seeing how much progress they've made since my last visit. I'm heading up the leadership strand of the conference. Vicki Davis, Julie Lindsay, Doug Johnson, Scott Klososky, and Helen Barrett will be leading conference strands too. Hope to see you there!

Related posts

• Sharing the global stage: Musings on Mumbai
• Musings from Mumbai: Fostering a climate of innovation in the middle and high schools

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. 

Laptops empower students to get to the thinking faster

I have two favorite quotes from Pamela Livingston’s excellent book, 1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work. Here's the first one:

If it takes 40 minutes for an environmental science class to gather weather data from atlases and almanacs and turn it into pencil and paper charts, how much time is left to think about what the chart is saying? How much time is there to consider “what if” scenarios, such as, “What if the mean temperature rose by ten degrees?” Equipped with a laptop computer, access to the Internet, and a spreadsheet/graphing program, however, students can quickly find and analyze current data. They can plug that data into spreadsheet templates and prepare charts for half a dozen different “what if” scenarios in the same amount of time it would take to make a pencil and paper chart. [Laptops] allow students to get to the thinking faster. [emphasis added]

We waste so much time in school doing things on paper that are more efficient on the computer. One of the primary reasons that adults use computers instead of paper is enhanced productivity. What could teachers do with all of the time that we’d free up if schools made a significant shift away from paper and pencil?

If you haven’t checked out Pamela’s book, it’s well worth the read!

Got any ideas for this reading teacher?

A reading teacher contacted me:

As the school's remedial reading teacher I was asked to research a reading program for an extraordinarily bright 5th grader. Do you have any suggestions? His 4th grade teacher said he is too advanced to stay with this fellow students now that he is no longer in her class. The best I have come up with is a one-on-one literature program. Are you familiar with  HOTS or Mindlink?

Here is my reply:

I don't know. Sorry. Can't keep up with all of the learning software that's out there. Also not a reading specialist... That said, maybe my readership has some ideas for you?

And here is hers:

Thank you, thank you, thank you... I am most appreciative. As you can see I can never find anything on the Internet and I want to help this student reach his full potential. Although the district I work in has a suburban zip code it has the personality of a city school. Most of our resources are utilized to help students reach proficiency and not to enrich exceptional students. I can't thank you enough for your help.This child is special and I don't want to lose him due to boredom or have him become a thorn in his young teacher's side when she can't handle him because he is zoning out or misbehaving.

Any ideas for her?

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?

  

"I'm not good at math." "I'm not very good at computers."

The personal computer has been around for about 30 years. For most of us, the Internet has been around for about 10 years. And yet we still have a sizable percentage of teachers and administrators who can barely work their computers. What does this say about us as educators? As employees of supposed learning organizations who purportedly are all about 'life-long learning?'

Is saying "I'm not very good at computers" the modern counterpart to "I'm not good at math" (both typically accompanied by a chuckle and a c'est la vie hand wave as if it didn't matter)?

Photo credit: Nonchalant glamour

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.