Dangerously Irrelevant

Just thinking out loud here… Should colleges, universities, and/or P-12 schools be required (or encouraged) to indicate on student transcripts that a particular course or program is partly or wholly online?

There could be codes. For example:

• Wholly face-to-face
• Face-to-face with some online aspects
• About equal time online and face-to-face
• Online with some face-to-face aspects
• Wholly online

I'm not sure this is a good idea. But maybe it is. What's the obligation, if any, to be transparent about the delivery of the learning experience?

Image credit: Internet

I had a conversation recently with some folks from another state’s educational administration licensing board. This is the board at the state department of education that oversees educational leadership preparation programs and accredits them.

This state apparently has experienced a wave of institutions that have come in from outside the state and are offering preparation programs that are primarily or wholly online. There are concerns - from existing university preparation programs and perhaps the licensing board – that these programs are “just out to make a buck” and are known across the state as being cheap and easy ways to get principal or superintendent licensure. It’s also worth nothing that most of the traditional preparation programs in the state are not utilizing online instruction to a substantial extent and, of course, have market shares that they’re trying to preserve.

The board is wrestling with ways to ensure the rigor of its school leadership preparation programs and the quality of its newly-graduated administrators. One of the regulations being considered is the following:

No educational leadership program will be accredited unless at least 50% of its instruction is face-to-face rather than online.

I expressed some of my concerns about the proposed regulation, noting that there always will be variability and that I believed they should be separating issues regarding quality of program content from quality of program delivery. While some face-to-face programs/courses are of high quality, others are not. The same is true for online programs/courses. It is both possible and probable that some of the best programs/courses that are primarily online will be better than some of the worst programs/courses that are primarily face-to-face. The critical factor is not necessarily the online nature of the instruction but rather what happens in the instructional process, whether online, face-to-face, or some kind of hybrid model.

Any thoughts on the state licensing board’s attempts to ensure the quality of its programs and their graduates?

Image credit: Good vs Evil

“If institutional education refuses to adapt to the landscape of the information age, it WILL die and SHOULD die.”

The video is An Open Letter to Educators. Happy viewing!

Scott Elias and Dave Meister are sponsoring LeaderCamp 2010, an online unconference for school administrators, on June 24, 2010. As they say, “it’s gonna be awesome.” Follow LeaderCamp on Twitter and save the date!

As part of our never-ending quest to tap into the potential of social media to enhance the practice of school administrators (and the university programs that prepare them), I am pleased to announce that CASTLE has added three new blogs to its portfolio. Two of the three blogs have been in existence for a long while; the third is a new blog by a faculty colleague.

Are we trying to become the Weblogs, Inc. or Gawker Media (or Education Week) of the edublogosphere? No, not exactly. But we ARE trying to assemble a portfolio of blogs that meet the various technology and/or leadership needs of practicing school leaders.

Our blogs

Here are the blogs that we’ve initiated to date (and their topical focus):

1. Dangerously Irrelevant (technology, leadership, and school reform)
2. LeaderTalk (school leadership; group blog)
3. Edjurist (school law; group blog)
4. 1to1 Schools (1:1 laptop programs; group blog)

To this mix, we’ve now added the following (which fill in a few significant topical areas in which we were lacking)…

5. Virtual High School Meanderings (online schooling)

Dr. Michael Barbour, an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University, has been blogging about online schooling for years. As you’ll see if you read it for a while, if it has to do with online schooling, you’ll likely find it at Michael’s blog. Michael posts A LOT; the comprehensiveness of information he provides is astounding. Michael also maintains a virtual schooling wiki or you can follow him on Twitter. Michael’s blog soon will be renamed Virtual School Meanderings to reflect the growth of online schooling in earlier grades. 

Here are some representative posts to get you started:

• Idaho needs our attention
• Documenting Clovis - End of semester edition
• The impact of opencourseware on paid enrollment in distance learning courses
• Virtual schooling in the news
• Virtual schooling presentations at SITE

6. Educational Games Research (educational gaming)

John Rice is an educator, author, and speaker, as well as a doctoral student at the University of North Texas, who has been blogging about educational gaming since February 2007. I am a learner in the area of educational gaming so I always gain a lot from John’s posts. John does a nice job of looking at K-12 and higher education and also includes a post now and then on corporate simulations, serious gaming, and the like.

Here are some representative posts to get you started:

• Learning STEMs from McLarin’s Adventures in Oklahoma
• Animating the news: How videogame technologies can alter our perceptions of real live events
• How to design an educational video game: Three important considerations
• Study: Reaction times lowered via video games
• Toy spy robots: A practical way to teach programming

7. School Finance 101 (school finance / policy)

I have known Dr. Bruce Baker, school finance professor extraordinaire, for many years. Bruce is a fantastic scholar. His interests extend far beyond school finance to include a variety of policy and leadership issues. Those of us in educational leadership academic circles know that Bruce is not afraid to take on the establishment and confront uncomfortable political and educational truths. I was delighted to see that Bruce started blogging more extensively last fall and was even more pleased when he agreed to join us. Bruce writes about deep, significant school funding and/or policy issues, but does so in a way that’s accessible to those of us who aren’t experts in this area. You also can find Bruce on Twitter.

Here are some representative posts to get you started:

• Racial achievement gaps and within-district funding inequity
• Why do states with the “best” data systems have the worst schools?
• Pondering the usefulness of value-added assessment of teachers
• NCTQ teacher quality ratings: Where’s the “quality?”
• New Jersey teacher salaries: Spiraling out of control?

I encourage you to subscribe to all three of these blogs for a while. There is some really important information and thinking coming out of all three of these channels. I can guarantee that you’ll learn a lot and gain some valuable resources for your own work.

Next steps

What lies ahead for the CASTLE blogs? Well, we will be shifting a couple of our existing blogs over to WordPress, so you’ll see some visual changes and added functionality in the next few months. We’re going to add some new authors to our group blogs, particularly LeaderTalk and 1to1 Schools. And we’re in conversations with our sponsor, the University Council for Educational Administration, about initiating a blog that deals with school leadership for social justice. If you’ve got some other suggestions for us, or know of a blog that might be a good addition to our portfolio, let me know!

Happy reading!

Here’s a 10-minute video I helped make that advocates for P-12 online learning. Created by Intermediate District 287 in Minnesota, which heads up the Northern Star Online collaborative, the video features Mike Smart, 2007 Minnesota Teacher of the Year, and a number of other Minnesota educators and students. The video will be used for educational and policy advocacy purposes with community members, parents, administrators, and legislators.

Here’s my favorite statement I made in the video (at 7:20):

One of the things I think we have to ask ourselves as school leaders is ‘What’s our moral imperative to prepare kids for a digital, global age?’ Right now we’re sort of ignoring that requirement. . . . I think you would take a look at much of what we do in our current schooling system and just toss it and essentially start over. So the question for school leaders and for policymakers is ‘How brave are you and how visionary are you going to be?’ And you don’t even have to be that visionary. Just look around right now and see the trends that already are happening and just project those out and see that it’s going to be a very different world.

Happy viewing!

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.

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)

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.?

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?