Dangerously Irrelevant

Each month, Cable in the Classroom Magazine has a page called InterActive that asks educators to answer a question related to the issue’s theme. The magazine usually prints at least five answers from readers.

The magazine editors have requested my help finding contributors for the February question:

How have you used an online game to enhance your students’ classroom experience?

If you’re a K-12 teacher to whom this question applies, please . If you know a teacher who’s done this, please pass this post along. Thanks!

Are there videos out there of 21st century classrooms in practice? In other words, has anyone captured what high-level, technology-facilitated pedagogy looks like (or might look like) in action?

If you’ve got a link, please share in the comments area!

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

A collection of thoughts about P-12 professional development, with a (hopefully) whiz-bang ending…

Big idea 1: Most current staff development is awful.

We have known for decades what leads to powerful adult learning and what constitutes effective professional development. Yet the 3– or 4–days per year, ‘sit and get,’ one-size-fits-all training model still persists on a large scale. Shame on us.

Big idea 2: School vision statements are feckless.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a school organization that doesn’t have a vision, mission, or purpose statement that says blah blah blah life long learning blah blah blah. And yet we don’t really model ‘life long learning’ very well. Administrators feel that they can show no weakness in front of staff or parents. Teachers feel that they must be the experts before they can ‘teach’ students. No one has tried to operationalize the concept or delineate what it actually looks like. In terms of impact on daily practice, it’s a meaningless feel-good aphorism (much like all kids can learn). Shame on us.

Big idea 3: Schools have a great deal of internal expertise.

At the risk of impacting my occasional consulting income, I’m willing to say that most districts would be better served by having in-house experts deliver training rather than paying some outside guru big bucks to come in for a day (or hour). There’s a tremendous wealth of in-house expertise that goes ignored within school organizations. Shame on us.

Big idea 4: Students are experts too.

Tapscott & Williams note in Wikinomics (2006) that this is the first time in human history when children are authorities on something really important (p. 47). In other words, when it comes to digital technologies, our kids often are (or, given the chance, could rapidly become) the experts. We ignore this expertise in most school organization. Shame on us.

All of this leads me to…

Big idea 5: Have students deliver technology-related training!

Put Big Ideas 1 and 3 together and it’s clear that school organizations should do a better job of peer-to-peer training. Throw in Big Ideas 2 and 4 and we see that many school organizations could easily structure technology training opportunities for educators, parents, and students where children and adolescents were the instructors or co-instructors. The kids get the learning power and social/emotional benefit of being teachers and leaders. Adults and other students learn from the true experts.

All we have to do is walk away from our egos and our fear and embrace our mission statements, the ones that say that we all should be learners and say nothing about from whom we must learn.

How about it? You ready to start doing this?

I voted today (22nd in line!).

I voted for future-oriented leadership instead of compliance. I voted for anticipatory, not reactionary.

I voted for engagement with the world, not bellicosity. I voted for the view that education is a societal investment rather than a private good.

I voted for caring over self-interest. I voted for mastery of our digital world, not ignorance. I voted for hope rather than fear. Most of all, given the ambiguity and complexity in which we live, I voted for general promise rather than specific promises.

You have enormous challenges ahead of you. Tell us like it is instead of what you think we want to hear. The American people are amazingly resilient; they deserve the opportunity to rise to their potential. Lead us to a better place. We can do great things if properly informed, inspired, and enabled.

Good luck, Mr. President. Our hopes and dreams now reside with you.