Dangerously Irrelevant

From Will Richardson:

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

Last week I posted some questions that have been swirling in my head about RSS readers, including the thought that perhaps school employees should be required to have and use them. There were many thoughtful comments (thank you!), and I now have some additional questions whirling inside my cranium…

1. Many commenters commented on the undesirability (or futility) of “requiring people to learn.” I understand and probably am in agreement with that idea. And yet we try to do this all the time, in education and other professions. The idea that we should require professionals to stay up-to-date in their field is by no means radical. Teachers, administrators, lawyers, doctors, nurses, etc. - we all are required by law to go back to school, participate in workshops, attend conferences, and so on (interestingly, professors aren’t). If we can require people to learn via face-to-face (or perhaps online course) settings, is requiring educators to use RSS readers any different?
2. Another thread in the comment stream was that we shouldn’t force educators to do anything. Rather, we should demonstrate the utility of tools like RSS readers and then hope that educators will be drawn into using them. This, of course, is the professional development strategy that we use for most desired changes in P-12 education. How’s that working for us? Do most school organizations achieve whole-scale educator adoption through the use of training that is designed to induce, rather than initiatives that “force,” educators into action? While I’m a big fan of individual choice, I also confess that I’m skeptical of the efficacy of the inducement approach. I think we get a few educators that way - usually the ones that are change-oriented in the first place - and the rest go about their business as usual. For example, Suzie Martin said in her comment that she hopes to get 5 staff members out of 40 to use RSS readers. I don’t think it’s naive to believe that we can do better than that with our professional development.
3. In a similar vein, we all can think of examples where desirable wide-scale educational and/or social outcomes only were possible through forced action. You know, things like mandatory school attendance, seat belt usage, vaccinations, and desegregation. Is “forcing” people to do things always bad?
4. Douglas Reeves says that “action drives belief,” not the other way around. He contends that it’s usually difficult to see the benefits of something before we do it because it’s too abstract. We have to start doing it - and thus turn the conceptual into something more concrete - before we actually see the benefits and buy in. This is why, for example, many school districts require educators to be in professional learning communities (PLCs). At the beginning, most educators aren’t clear what the benefits of PLCs will be to them. Over time, however, if the initiative is done well (and, unfortunately, in education that’s a big if), the idea is that educators will start seeing - through their ongoing PLC activities - the benefits of belonging to such a group. Does action drive belief or does belief drive action?
5. Stephen Downes has been hammering at us edubloggers for years to get out of the echo chamber and expose ourselves to a diversity of voices. Similarly, Tim Kastelle notes in his commentary on Ethan Zuckerman’s TED talk that “Connecting ideas to each other is the core creative act in innovation. And it is well-documented that we make more creative connections between ideas when we are exposed to a greater diversity of ideas.” Do we believe that exposing educators to a diverse set of high-quality peer voices is beneficial? If so, how do we go about making that happen? In the past we’ve relied on conferences, workshops, book clubs, and the like. Can’t we take advantage of digital technologies’ efficiencies to help us accomplish this goal?
6. Daura said in her comment that “Not everyone is on the technology train, and I don’t think anyone should be forced to jump on board.” Kalyn replied in her comment, why not? I agree with Kalyn, not Daura. I realize that I’m mostly preaching to the choir here, but technology really isn’t an “edufad,” is it?
7. Gerald Aungst said in his comment that “if admin says we must do it, it’s probably not good for us.” Really? Have dialogue and trust levels between administrators and teachers degraded so much that a blanket statement of that sort is true? I know that’s a fair statement for some districts but I hope that’s not true at a large scale because, if so, we’ve got much bigger problems than whether educators are effectively integrating technology into their work.

These are some of the main thoughts that I’m mulling right now on this topic. I’m still sold on the idea that exposure to a (perhaps pre-curated) diverse set of high-quality voices of professional peers who are doing interesting things with instruction and/or technology would be beneficial for all educators. For me, the questions are not around the benefits but instead around the scalability of such a change.

As always, I welcome your feedback. Thanks, everyone, for the great conversation!

Image credit: Modified podcast logo with my headphones Photoshopped on

Last summer many of you helped create our wonderful lists of grade-level and subject-specific blogs that other educators could load into their RSS readers. I’m bouncing around a few thoughts in my head about those lists:

• Should we require school employees to have loaded RSS readers (with a concurrent expectation that they spend time checking them and reading in them)?
• How would the lives of the educators in your school organization be different if they regularly spent time with their loaded RSS readers?
• How would the lives of preservice educators (i.e., student teachers) be different if they regularly spent time with their loaded RSS readers?
• Can we figure out how to give educators professional development / licensure renewal credit for time spent with RSS readers, interacting with other educators in social media channels, etc.? We seem to be able to do so for face-to-face training, discussion groups, school book clubs, and so on…

Thoughts on any of this? Got your own questions you’d like to add to my list?

Image credit: Modified podcast logo with my headphones Photoshopped on

My colleague, Dr. Tyson Marsh, has our Educational Administration graduate students doing autoethnographies. Melissa (Feilmeier) Osborn just finished her Master’s program with us as part of our Atlantic, Iowa cohort. Below is the video she made, which was her first experience using iMovie.

As Marco Torres and others show us, the power of video to capture student voice is pretty compelling. Most schools aren’t doing nearly as much as they could to harness this power for academic and student engagement purposes.

I think Melissa’s story is pretty compelling. If you have time, watch the video (it starts a smidge slow but ends big!). Happy viewing! 

Two years ago CASTLE hosted its first-ever online summer book club. We had over 105 individuals sign up to read and discuss Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. Last year we had our second online summer book club. Over 246 people signed up to read and discuss Why Don’t Students Like School? This year we’re going to have our third online summer book club, but it is going to be very different than what we’ve done before.

1. We’re going to run two discussion groups. One for Iowa and one for the rest of the world. You must be an Iowa educator to be eligible for the Iowa group.
2. We’re going to read two books instead of one: Education Unbound: The Promise and Practice of Greenfield Schooling and The Future of Management.
3. Our discussions are going to be synchronous rather than asynchronous.
4. Because of the discussion format, our groups are going to be smaller (no more than 9 individuals plus me) and thus are going to involve an application process.

Why the changes in this year’s book club? Well, we had a very productive conversation when we talked live with each other in February 2009 here on campus about Seth Godin’s Tribes. More importantly, however, our first two book clubs were marked by widespread lack of participation (although we had great conversations with those who did participate!). In other words, people registered and bought (and even liked) the books, but rarely or never participated in the conversations. We ended up doing a LOT of logistical work for a relatively small number of actual participants. So this year we’re going to try something different…

Are you interested in participating?

Here are the guidelines for participation in this year’s book club:

1. You must commit to reading BOTH books and participating in BOTH synchronous online conversations. Our conversations will occur on July 15 (Education Unbound) and August 12, 2010 (Future of Management). The World group will meet online from 5:30pm to 7:00pm Central. The Iowa group will meet online from 7:00pm to 8:30pm Central.
2. You will need a webcam. You also will need a headset with a microphone OR regular computer / media player headphones plus the microphone that’s built into your computer. No matter what, you should have headphones (to avoid audio feedback). You should learn how to use these BEFORE the first online conversation. We don’t want to spend our time troubleshooting your equipment!
3. After each online conversation, we will ask you to submit a 2– or 3–paragraph written reflection summarizing your thoughts at that point. That reflection will be due within a week of the conversation.
4. If you participate, you are granting CASTLE permission to a) make a video recording of the online conversation, and b) publicly release on this blog both the video recording and your written reflection under our typical Creative Commons license.
5. We reserve the right to give your slot to someone else if you have trouble with these guidelines.

Are you sure you’re interested?

If you’re still interested in participating, please complete the online application form. Applications are due by 6:00pm Central on Sunday, June 20. You will be notified about your application status by 9:00am Central on Wednesday, June 23.

• CASTLE Summer Book Club 2010 application form

Please understand that we are going to have to make some difficult choices. We anticipate more applicants than we have eligible slots and extend our regrets in advance if you are not selected.

If you have questions, please leave them as a comment to this post. We’ll answer them in the comments area so that everyone can see our replies.

Happy reading! Looking forward to talking with you this summer!

My goal for June: 30 days, 30 book reviews. Today’s book is Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America, by Allan Collins and Richard (Rich) Halverson. This book is a worthy addition to any school administrator’s nightstand and should be required reading in university educational leadership preparation programs or teacher education programs’ history of education courses.

What I liked about the book

The authors blend a historical perspective on schooling with a keen understanding of the potential of technology for the present and future of learning. Notice the distinction between schooling and learning. In this book, that distinction is important. As the authors say early on, “It is time that educators and policymakers start to rethink education apart from schooling” (p. xiv, emphasis added). They also note that “most of the changes in the way people acquire information are occurring outside of schools” (p. 5) rather than in them.

Collins and Halverson state that our society already made the shift from an apprenticeship model of education to the universal schooling era. At present time we are living through a new shift: a move from universal schooling to an era of lifelong learning. This is resulting in big changes related to responsibility, expectations, academic content, pedagogy, assessment, location, culture, and relationships (see Chapter 6). The authors emphasize that the local school will not be replaced, but the role of new alternatives such as community-based learning centers where students and adults work side by side, workplace learning, home schooling, and virtual schooling “will make us rethink the dominant role of K-12 public schools” (pp. 3–4).

I liked how the authors devoted a chapter apiece to the arguments of technology enthusiasts (Chapter 2) and technology skeptics (Chapter 3). While they are admitted technology enthusiasts, I thought they did a pretty good job of presenting the opposing arguments fairly and thoughtfully, particularly when one also adds in Chapter 7, which addresses what we might gain and lose in a new educational paradigm. I also liked the discussion in the book about the growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots. As the authors note, “if educators cannot successfully integrate new technologies into what it means to be a school, . . . students with the means and ability will pursue their learning outside of the public school” (p. xv). We are not talking enough about these social justice / equity issues.

One of the key points of the book is that there are “deep incompatibilities” between current schooling practices and the “demands” of new technologies (p. 6). Significantly, the authors recognize that technology makes teachers’ work more difficult: it requires instructors to acquire new skills, undercuts the lockstep model of schooling, and undermines educators’ classroom expertise (p. 6). Many technology enthusiasts - including myself - often don’t pay enough attention to the complexity and difficulty of what we’re asking educators to do.

Halverson has done a great deal of work related to educational gaming. I’m glad that he and Collins integrated throughout the book some discussion of the enormous potential of computer simulations for both student and adult learning.

Key quotes

While the imperatives of the industrial-age learning technologies can be thought of as uniformity, didactism, and teacher control, the knowledge-age learning technologies have their own imperatives of customization, interaction, and user-control. (p. 4)

AND

We are not going to fix education by fixing the schools. (p. 142)

AND

Apprenticeship was not a viable pedagogy for mass schooling. . . . The pedagogy of computer tutors echoes the apprenticeship model in setting individual tasks for learners and offering guidance and feedback as they work. (p. 97)

AND

We suspect that someday it will occur to people that these certifications are more valuable than high school diplomas, in the sense that they specify more precisely what a person can do in some area of knowledge. (p. 88) 

Questions I have after reading this book

• How many parents will really pull their students out of school because of learning concerns? Will credentialing concerns, historical affection for local schools, and/or child care issues trump more abstract issues related to “learning?”
• Could / will we create certificates of mastery in other fields like the ones that have been developed for information technology professionals? If so, will those eventually replace to some degree the credentialing role that typically has belonged to secondary and postsecondary institutions?
• Will we see the re-emergence of the apprenticeship model, this time facilitated by online mentors, software, and/or simulations?
• Are technology skeptics looking at and assessing relevant, appropriate student outcomes? For that matter, are technology enthusiasts?

Rating

This book was probably my favorite educational technology book that I read in 2009. I gave a copy to Will Richardson when he visited Iowa last December and he liked it too. It’s a very thoughtful, insightful work and I can’t recommend it highly enough. I have known Rich Halverson a long time and am absolutely delighted to award his book 5 highlighters (out of 5).

[See my other reviews and recommended reading]

Here’s an activity you can do with school administrators and teachers (and maybe school board members?). Total time: about 45 minutes.

Resources needed

• PowerPoint slides (pptx ppt pdf)
• Pre-made Google Doc formatted like this, with sharing set up so that anyone can view AND edit
• Internet access and a laptop for at least one participant in each group

Set-up (about 5 minutes)

Whem most folks think and talk about organizational change, they envision it in linear terms:

In reality, change in organizations looks more like this:

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?

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!