Dangerously Irrelevant

Fresh from the Digital Media & Learning conference in San Francisco are two new web resources, Connected Learning and the Connected Learning Research Network. The work is centered around three learning principles and three design principles:

Learning principles

• Interest-powered. Interests power the drive to acquire knowledge and expertise. Research shows that learners who are interested in what they are learning, achieve higher order learning outcomes. Connected learning does not just rely on the innate interests of the individual learner, but views interests and passions as something to be actively developed in the context of personalized learning pathways that allow for specialized and diverse identities and interests.
• Peer-supported. Learning in the context of peer interaction is engaging and participatory. Research shows that among friends and peers, young people fluidly contribute, share, and give feedback to one another, producing powerful learning. Connected learning research demonstrates that peer learning need not be peer-isolated. In the context of interest-driven activity, adult participation is welcomed by young people. Although expertise and roles in peer learning can differ based on age and experience, everyone gives feedback to one another and can contribute and share their knowledge and views.
• Academically oriented. Educational institutions are centered on the principle that intellectual growth thrives when learning is directed towards academic achievement and excellence. Connected learning recognizes the importance of academic success for intellectual growth and as an avenue towards economic and political opportunity. Peer culture and interest-driven activity needs to be connected to academic subjects, institutions, and credentials for diverse young people to realize these opportunities. Connected learning mines and translates popular peer culture and community-based knowledge for academic relevance.

Design principles

• Shared purpose. Connected learning environments are populated with adults and peers who share interests and are contributing to a common purpose. Today’s social media and web-based communities provide exceptional opportunities for learners, parents, caring adults, teachers, and peers in diverse and specialized areas of interest to engage in shared projects and inquiry. Cross-generational learning and connection thrives when centered on common interests and goals.
• Production-centered. Connected learning environments are designed around production, providing tools and opportunities for learners to produce, circulate, curate, and comment on media. Learning that comes from actively creating, making, producing, experimenting, remixing, decoding, and designing, fosters skills and dispositions for lifelong learning and productive contributions to today’s rapidly changing work and political conditions.
• Openly networked. Connected learning environments are designed around networks that link together institutions and groups across various sectors, including popular culture, educational institutions, home, and interest communities. Learning resources, tools, and materials are abundant, accessible and visible across these settings and available through open, networked platforms and public-interest policies that protect our collective rights to circulate and access knowledge and culture. Learning is most resilient when it is linked and reinforced across settings of home, school, peer culture and community.

Infographic

Below is an infographic made by Dachis Group that highlights these essential components of connected learning. What if every learning environment was centered around these principles?

Here’s a short video highlighting what flexible classroom furniture might look like in schools and universities. Other than the assumption that the default setup of the classroom is students in rows facing the front, I like the ideas shown here. What do you think? Are you doing something like this in your classrooms?

Happy viewing!

Hat tip: Ashley Tan, Where to stand?

Well, yesterday was Digital Learning Day. By all accounts, it was a busy day across the country. Lots of conversation and high-profile events and demonstrations of students doing cool stuff with technology…

Should every school day be Digital Learning Day? Nope. We still need down time from these electronic and virtual spaces of ours, times when we experience the joy of human connection, nature, solitude, reflection (and all of those other things that people say I should be experiencing!). But, nonetheless, we definitely need ‘more digital, more often’ in most of our primarily-analog schools, so it was good to have a nationwide day that reminds us of the power of digital learning.

Here are a few things that caught my eye from the unrelenting stream of educational technology news yesterday:

1. Instructure Canvas is now available to P-12 educators. If you’re interested in a better learning management system, you definitely should check out what Canvas has to offer. Canvas is free for individual teachers and professors. Set up a Canvas account and start playing around with it for a course; you’ll quickly see why its social media integration and other features blow the doors off of Blackboard or Moodle. Here are some other materials to get you started: overview video, Park City case study, Rockingham case study, teacher data sheet, administrator data sheet.
2. The online Student Opinion section from The New York Times is full of fascinating commentary and insights from youth. Hear from students 13 and older about learning, teaching, technology, and other issues. Similarly, also see the StudentsSpeak section of the MacArthur Foundation’s Spotlight web site. There is great material at both locations to mine for instruction and conversation purposes.
3. Speaking of student voice, check out Using media to (re)claim the hood: Essential questions and powerful English pedagogy. Then see I love my city: Youth as community problem solvers and creators in 21st century classrooms. After that, be sure to investigate the other amazing resources and ideas for teaching writing in a digital, hyperconnected world at the National Writing Project’s Digital Is web site. And then, before you collapse from exhaustion from all of this awesomeness, go visit Youth Voices. There, those will keep you busy for a while!
4. Apparently some students got to testify before the Ohio House of Representatives about digital learning. I love to see tweets like this one or this one. In contrast, I’m not so enthused about tweets like this one (from a district in Alabama).
5. The current issue of AASA’s School Administrator magazine focuses on P-12 laptop initiatives, particularly issues related to learning, teaching, affordability, and planning. Districts profiled include Mooresville (NC), Pascack Valley (NJ), and a host of others, including Van Meter (IA), Owensboro (KY), and Piedmont City (AL).
6. Other things that I found yesterday included a great story on students with autism spectrum disorder using Google SketchUp, information about teaching digital literacy through game design, the Oakridge Elementary (VA) blog featuring book reviews written by elementary students, and news about the plan by MIT and Lego to bring robotics and coding to young children.

And, of course, we here at CASTLE were busy too. We launched our new online School Technology Leadership graduate certificate, Master’s, and Ph.D. programs. We also gave our 1-to-1 Schools blog a visual makeover and opened registration for the 3rd annual Iowa 1:1 Institute, an event that focuses on high-quality learning and teaching in P-12 laptop programs. Last year we had over 1,300 participants for the Institute. Maybe this year you’ll join us on April 11!

Short version

We’re relaunching our online School Technology Leadership courses and programs today! Woo hoo!

(This is all pending final approval by Faculty Senate)

Long version

It’s Digital Learning Day here in the U.S. As I said in my guest post for the event:

We … need school leaders who can begin envisioning the implications of these [new technology-suffused, globally-interconnected] environmental characteristics for learning, teaching, and schooling. We need administrators who can design and operationalize our learning environments to reflect these new affordances.

I also said:

If a principal or superintendent isn’t receiving [assistance] from the university that prepared her, her state and national leadership associations, her regional education service agency, her state department of education, the federal government, or a corporate or foundation initiative, where is she supposed to get the information and training that she needs to improve her technology leadership skills? From a book or a few web sites?

When we underinvest in the people that control all of the resources that instigate and facilitate change – money, time, training, personnel allocation, structural (re)alignment, organizational mission/vision, etc. – we shouldn’t be surprised when desired changes in our schools fail to materialize. We also shouldn’t be surprised when school administrators make technology-related decisions because of fear, lack of knowledge, or community or political pressure rather than educational appropriateness.

When an administrator’s mental light bulb turns on regarding technology, it’s not just an individual or classroom that’s affected, it’s his entire building or district. As such, it’s time for more attention to [the technology leadership needs of] our principals and superintendents.

Those of us who work in Educational Leadership preparation programs are a big part of the problem. We should be envisioning what it means to prepare P-12 students for the demands of tomorrow and then designing principals’ and superintendents’ preservice experiences so that they then can go out and start to make those things happen. Instead, at best we’re teaching traditional course content online or showing prospective administrators how to use a few tools. That’s if we’re doing anything at all regarding technology (and that’s a BIG if in many/most university programs). Our self-affirmations that we’re ‘integrating technology’ ring hollow.

Graduate certificate, Master’s, or Ph.D. in School Technology Leadership

It is within this context that I announce that we’re relaunching our online School Technology Leadership courses. When I was at the University of Minnesota, we received a federal grant to create the nation’s first graduate program designed to prepare technology-savvy school leaders. Our evaluator, the American Institutes for Research, verified that our program had positive, statistically-significant impacts on participants’ technology leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities. We ran 4 national cohorts through that program before I left. Working with those educators was incredibly wonderful. I can’t express in words how delighted I am that our courses are now available again.

So if you would like a graduate certificate, Master’s degree, or Ph.D. with a focus in School Technology Leadership, this is your chance to go deep in all five of ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A). All courses and programs are online and cohort-based; the Ph.D. program requires a few additional summer visits. All tuition is at the in-state rate. See the links below for more information. (This is all pending final approval from Faculty Senate)

I hope that many of you will apply or will encourage those leaders around you to boost their own technology leadership skills. We’re aiming to start at least one American and one international cohort this Fall but can handle much more if the demand is there. And if we’re not exactly what you’re looking for, check out options from ISTE and Johns Hopkins University, Kennesaw State University, Leading Edge Certification, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), Intel, and others. There are 200,000+ school administrators in the U.S. alone. Most of them need a lot of help when it comes to technology, so find a program that best fits their needs and get ‘em started!

Additional info about our STL programs

• Flyer
• Overview
• Graduate certificate
• Master’s (or Ed.S.)
• Ph.D. [for which we expect a VERY competitive admissions process]
• Admissions requirements and application info [Fall deadline is May 15]
• Questions? Contact Dr. Justin Bathon, CASTLE Co-Director

Image approved for copy by Creative Commons.
Source: http://bit.ly/vYUkXB

When laptops first arrived in my classroom, I worried about classroom management. How could I create an environment where students used their computers as tools rather than toys?

I was worried for nothing. The following are suggestions for keeping students engaged in a project and accountable for their time with computers:

Students make a plan. 
Students are most tempted to open widgets, games, and social chats when they are faced with a blank screen and have no plan.

Much of the time, students think they have a plan. If you ask them What are you going to do?, the answer is usually I’m gonna make a Power Point about… or I want to make a movie about… Those answers indicate that students are thinking of technology before content.

Instead, ask What are you trying to learn? or What are you trying to communicate? or What are you working on as a writer? Those questions get answers like I want to know more about the horses that Civil War generals rode or I want to convince people that Justin Bieber is the best singer ever or I’m trying to describe the character’s actions.

When you ask about learning and communication, you are signaling that the content is more important than the technology. Pull aside those who are struggling with plans. Let them talk together and encourage them to sketch their ideas with diagrams or bullet points and return to the computer later. Students with a plan tend to stay on task.

Students set time-bound goals.
Once students have a plan, they break the project into smaller tasks that can be finished in 10- to 15-minute chunks of time. Have students write the specific tasks on Post-it notes. Post-its are set beside the computer. On their Post-its, students finish the sentence, “In the next [x-amount of] minutes, I plan to…” They generally write things like…

• Create an outline for my essay
• Write my introduction
• Find three pictures about…
• Do my voice recording
• Finish four slides of my Power Point/Keynote
• Find at least three database articles on…
• Draft at least three paragraphs
• Use Google docs to peer-edit so-and-so’s essay
• Upload my story to Voicethread

Tasks should be specific. I’m gonna work on my project is not specific enough. At the end of class, Post-its become “exit slips”. Students tick off the tasks they have completed and hand the Post-its to the teacher so the teacher can see the progress.

Laptop screens are “fisted” or “put at half mast”.  

Teachers don’t lecture much in a project-based learning environment. However, sometimes student work time is interrupted so the teacher can give reminders or clarify directions.

Ask students to “fist” their computer (or “put the screen at half mast”). Screens should be gently lowered so that students’ fists fit between the edge of the track pad and the screen.

When screens are fisted, students are not distracted by items on their screen nor can they type. At the same time, students do not lower their screens to the point that the computers go to sleep. In an iPad environment, students might carefully face their screens down on the desk.

Fingers indicate the amount of time students need to complete a shorter task.
Some tasks are shorter and need to be completed within a few minutes of class. After students have worked for a reasonable amount of time, ask students to show fingers for how many additional minutes they need. Fisted computers signal completion.

If a student is far behind the rest of the class, try to determine whether the student got distracted or if the student needs reteaching. Have the student take a screenshot of his or her progress. Screenshots are helpful to guide future conversations.

Circulate the room, conferencing with students.
Walking and talking with students is important with or without computers. In her article 10 Ways to be a Terrible Teacher, Vicki Davis describes the terrible teacher as one who is working on his or her own computer and not paying attention to students. 

Students welcome teacher conversation. They are eager to share their progress and request advice when they’re stuck. You build relationships with students when you talk to them about their work.

Rather than banning chat, teach students how to use it for collaboration.
Chat features are programmed into Gmail and Google products. The first year, I banned chats. Then, I realized that chats can be used for student collaboration.

I glance at the chat windows as I circulate the room. Since students have specific, time-bound goals, most chats are used to ask peers to look over a paragraph or help with another aspect of the project.

Don’t be afraid to have tough conversations with individual students.
Each year, I have to pull aside one or two students to talk about time management. It’s not a punitive conversation. The conversation goes something like this:

I’ve noticed you haven’t made much progress on…I need to know what’s getting in the way of your progress. I’m not asking because I want to get you in trouble. I’m asking because you’re now x-years old and I’m worried that, if you get in the habit of…,then school will be really hard for you in the future.

Many of the suggestions above apply to project-based learning environments both with and without computers. The trick in a 1:1 environment is to maintain focus on learning and communication. Then let technology naturally enhance those outcomes.

What tricks do you use to keep students engaged?

Janet Moeller-Abercrombie is the author of Expat Educator. She has 16 years of teaching experience and currently works full time at Hong Kong International School. Janet is a doctoral candidate with the University of Minnesota and has begun curriculum consulting with administrators and teachers. She is certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. @jabbacrombie

 

[cross-posted at 1-to-1 Schools]

Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies – it happens when society adopts new behaviors.
– Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, p. 160

I visit many schools that have ‘new technologies,’ but not enough of them also have ‘new behaviors.’ It’s time for us educators to raise our game (leaders, I’m pointing to you first).

Beginning in the 2010-2011 school year, our school went through a number of transformations and changes, all aimed at enhancing the quality of the learning and teaching within our building. We adapted a 5 x 3 trimester schedule providing longer class periods and a lower student-to-teacher ratio. We added a house system separating the student body into six different houses mixed by age. Through a partnership with Apple, we implemented a 1:1 laptop program with our students receiving MacBooks. Below are five lessons we learned and the two biggest struggles we continue to face.

Lessons learned

1. It’s the pedagogy not the technology. Technology should always be at the service of pedagogy. If you’ve heard Gary Stager speak or read his posts, I’m sure you’ve heard this theme before. When technology integration moves from what Alan November calls automative to informative, the real fun begins. Technology integration in schools should not be about tacking technology onto poor pedagogy. Rather, the real joy and power of integrating technology into the classroom is the power it has to redefine the relationships in the classroom and reorient them toward a more student-centered approach to learning. In our efforts, pushing for a longer class period also allowed our staff to move away from lecture-driven instructional models and to start implementing strategies that are more constructivist in their nature. Project-based learning, challenge problems, and creative and collaborative work are all enhanced and enabled by high quality technology integration. Using a Google Doc and the Web to do a 20-minute kick-start with teams of students finding, validating, and creating information on a topic within the curriculum is a very engaging way to begin a new unit. Using various tech tools to easily integrate peer instruction strategies based on the work of Dr. Eric Mazur is a great way to leverage the technology. But in all of these examples, it is really the orientation to and relationship with the learning that has changed.
2. Support the pedagogy at all costs. Teachers will and can change their methods when they are comfortable with their knowledge and inspired by what they see from those around them. Any new teacher quickly begins to teach like her peer group. To support this shift in pedagogy, we spent the entire year before the 1:1 program began creating a full period a day for staff to attend PD sessions throughout the year. We created a new position, Director of Instructional Technology, to lead a good number of these sessions with the goal of staff literacy in a number of pedagogical tools before the 1:1 initiative started. As the work is ongoing, we now offer PD sessions after school on Tuesdays and Saturday mornings, giving our staff an array of choices, with a certain minimum number that need to be attended. We compensate them at $27 an hour through our Title II funds. A list of this year’s sessions is here. This model has created small groups of teachers who attend sessions that they are personally interested in and who want to integrate these strategies into their classrooms.
3. The plumbing and the plumbers. For staff to choose these strategies, they have to be guaranteed the network and bandwidth will be supportive. To that end, we added to our technology staff, doubling its size from one to two. Additionally we upgraded in a significant way the technology infrastructure by adding numerous access points and made sure our bandwidth pipe could handle 800 students pulling on it at once. I believe these changes are essential and that without them our program would be in peril. Access to the Web has to work and work quickly if these strategies will be relied upon. Additionally, every student and staff member was given a gmail account hosted through the school. In a year and half of running, our network has been down for approximately one hour. It just so happened that one hour coincided perfectly with the superintendent’s annual visit and the need to log mid-term grades. Funny how those things work out.
4. Student ownership. We had the choice early on to either externalize ownership to the students or keep the ownership of the machines on the books of the school. In our case – and after much study – we decided to externalize the cost and have families purchase their laptops through the school. We provide financing options to our families. As a private school we have this opportunity. I realize that in many public schools the machines must be school-owned. In visiting with other schools who have school-owned 1:1 programs, the breakage rates seem to be higher. In general our breakage rates have come in below expected numbers for the students. Yet, interestingly, the staff break their machines at a rate four times that of students. If our students want to put stickers and other stuff all over the machine, they can have at it.
5. Principal leadership. If it isn’t important to the leadership, it won’t get done. I’m not the world’s greatest principal by any means – and I make a whole host of mistakes every single day – but if I do anything well it might be modeling technology use. I teach a class every year in the high school and lead a good number of the professional development sessions related to technology-rich teaching strategies. I believe that by spending my time modeling what I believe is important, it allows the staff to get on board. I won’t ask you to do something I won’t do or won’t be willing to learn to do. Of course I pay for the time spent teaching by having to log more early mornings or late nights in the office, but I think the relationships built with students and staff more than make up for it.

Biggest Struggles

1. Classroom management. Our staff has learned rather quickly that if they want to continue to use lecturing as their dominant instructional strategy, equipping the audience with a laptop is not conducive to that end. The computer should be more than a $1,000 pencil for note-taking. Direct instruction in its proper place and within limited time frames can be an effective strategy. When everyone has a machine, how do you guarantee that they are all on task? To this end, our staff has learned about where to be physically while they lecture and how to set up the classroom. Some staff use the LAN monitoring program. In some sense, though, student engagement in a lecture-driven classroom has always been an issue. Note passing and eye rolling have always been there. Switching from passing a note to chatting on Skype is the same problem in different clothes. Good teachers have engaged students.
2. Assisting parents. Our students take their laptops home at the end of the school day and for holidays and the summer. At school we use the Barracuda system to filter the Web and their access and to block the traditional things that a school would block. When our students take the machines home, we presume competence on the part of our parents that they already are dealing with their own rules and Web access issues. For the most part this proves to be true, but I do think we need to do a better job of supporting some of our families that struggle in this area. One fear that some of our staff and families had is that our students would spend all of their time staring at the screen in front of them. This may be true the first week they pick up their machine over the summer, but over the last two years a few interesting things have happened. Discipline referrals have fallen by 50%, absenteeism is down by 30%, participation in school events like Homecoming and the canned food drive has more than doubled, and the number of student-initiated clubs and activities has grown by around 30%. And enrollment looks to be growing for the third year in a row. We interpret these changes to mean that technology is helping our school to form an environment that is truly conducive to student learning in a number of areas.   From what we see school is becoming more relevant and a place where our students want to be.

In conclusion, our journey is an ongoing one. Simply buying the machines and upgrading the network is not enough to be a 1:1 laptop school. The true work is in shifting the pedagogy to be more student-centered. As Gary Stager says, less “us” and more “them.” The rewards to this point have been worth the risks.

Charlie Roy is the principal of Peoria Notre Dame High School, an 800-student coeducational Diocesian Catholic school in Peoria, Illinois. He also is an adjunct instructor for Aurora University, teaching courses in school leadership and instructional technology. In his former career, Charlie was an options trader on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. Follow Charlie on Twitter at @caroy.

Over the past month I’ve been reading and thinking about the new Education Blueprint proposed by the Iowa Governor and the Iowa Department of Education (DE) as well as various reactions to that document. If you haven’t yet read Trace Pickering’s insightful (and also lengthy) response to the Blueprint, be sure to do so. Another important read is school change guru Michael Fullan’s recent paper, Choosing the Wrong Drivers for Whole System Reform.

Here are some additional thoughts of my own. These are not all-encompassing – I have additional questions and concerns – but they do constitute a few important issues that caught my attention. I’m also intentionally not commenting on topics for which I’m fairly ambivalent (e.g., charter schools) or don’t know enough (e.g., teacher salary schedules and compensation tiers) and instead will leave those to others who care or know more than I do.

Failing 3rd graders fails our 3rd graders

I’ll pick the low-hanging fruit first. Failing 3rd graders who can’t pass some reading assessment is a really, really bad idea. It doesn’t matter how many safeguards and second chances there are and I understand why the policy is being proposed (both educationally and politically). The bottom line is that, regardless of the ‘social promotion’ rhetoric and whatever gut intuition parents or policymakers may have, the research evidence is overwhelmingly unidirectional that in-grade retention does far more harm than good. Desired test score increases often never materialize and, even if they do, they usually don’t persist past a few years. One of the stronger and consistent findings in educational research is that, in the long run, in-grade retention is at best a long-term wash score-wise and the resultant negative impact on students’ psyches and their likelihood to graduate is horrific. The Governor and DE don’t get to advocate for research-driven practices in other parts of the Blueprint but ignore that requirement here.

Input-Process-Output

We can visualize a box that represents the day-to-day occurrences within a classroom or other learning environment. That box is the most important aspect of schooling: if what students and teachers do on a daily basis in their learning-teaching interactions doesn’t change substantially, all hope of achieving ‘world class schools’ in Iowa vanishes. WE LEARN WHAT WE DO. There are a variety of inputs (e.g., standards, curricula, teacher quality, funding and resources, school structures, technology infrastructure, laws and policies) that hopefully impact what occurs inside the box. We also look at what comes out of the box (e.g., student knowledge, skills, and dispositions) to see if what we wanted to happen actually did happen. This is a classic Input-Process-Output systems model (that hopefully is accompanied by a recursive feedback loop that informs the system).

There are 85 main bullet points, or action ideas, in the Blueprint. As you can see in my annotated version of the Blueprint, I tried to place each action idea into one of three categories: Input, Process, or Output (coded I, P, & O in the document). You are welcome to disagree with my categorizations (and I admit I struggled with some of them), but the evidence is quite stark that the Blueprint is overwhelmingly focused on inputs and outputs and gives very little attention to the day-to-day learning and teaching processes that occur between students and teachers.

This is unsurprising. This is traditional school reform stuff:

We’ll change some inputs; let’s try better teachers and higher standards. Oh, and we’ll also change some structures around. How about reallocating some monies, reorganizing traditional schools a bit, and allowing for charter and online schools? On the back end, we’ll assess like crazy by changing our tests or using new and/or additional ones.

In the end, we change only a little and, if we’re lucky, we see a little change in results. This is the way most states do it, but it’s neither the only way nor the required way. Where in the Blueprint is the recognition that we need to do something DIFFERENT in our classrooms? Where’s the acknowledgment, for example, that we need to invest heavily in teachers’ ability to facilitate learning environments that foster higher-order thinking skills (an increasing necessity these days)? Where’s extensive language about better facilitating student engagement in their courses? There’s virtually nothing about students’ interest in what they’re supposedly learning. There’s nary a bullet point about student hands-on or applied or problem-based learning or authentic intellectual work (a great program already being piloted by DE, by the way). To the extent that PBL and AIW and similar issues are addressed at all, the Blueprint does so indirectly; all hopes lie with effective implementation of the Iowa/Common Core and the Smarter Balanced assessments. Instead of just holding educators ‘accountable’ on the front and back ends of the process, how about directly investing in them so that they actually can be successful? The overwhelming emphasis of the Blueprint is on accountability rather than capacity-building. Go ahead and do a search in the Blueprint for the terms training or professional development or capacity; you won’t find anything. If DE and the Governor are truly serious about ‘world class schooling’ in Iowa, they should be focusing heavily on the Process box – the day-to-day learning and teaching processes occurring in classrooms all across the state – and right now they’re not.

Low-level testing

Much of the Governor’s education concerns appear to be driven by NAEP scores and proficiency levels, despite the fact that most of the items are predominantly factual recall and low-level procedural knowledge AND despite the fact that the designers of NAEP freely admit that the level designations are arbitrary AND despite the fact that the American Institutes of Research notes that most of the nations to which we are comparing Iowa also wouldn’t score well on NAEP. If we want our students to be gaining higher- rather than lower-order thinking skills, end-of-course assessments appear to offer us nothing better. So there’s a lot of new and/or additional testing in the Blueprint that’s focused on stuff you can easily find using Google – or that can be done cheaper by people elsewhere in the world – instead of on the skills and capacities necessary to really foster a world-class citizenry and workforce. We’re not talking about assessments like the College and Work Readiness Assessment or what they do in Singapore. Again, when it comes to higher-order thinking skills, there’s virtually no proposed investment in the Blueprint for the instructional side and all of our hopes rest on the Smarter Balanced assessments, for which right now we have no idea what they will look like and no idea how they will operate. The Blueprint essentially validates and tweaks and expands current testing schemes, despite significant warnings to the contrary from our very own National Research Council.

Digital, global world. Analog, local schools.

It’s a globally-connected world out there, but the Blueprint primarily focuses on globalization as an economic force to which we must respond, not a societal / learning / citizenship issue to which we should attend for mutual benefit and empowerment. The Blueprint also says that Iowa students and graduates need to be internationally competitive but most of what it proposes is vastly different from what other countries are doing to achieve better results. The Blueprint contains no significant investment in teacher capacity-building, no emphasis on early childhood education, no amelioration of the impacts of family and neighborhood poverty on learning, and no recognition of the importance of strategic foreign language learning (particularly at younger ages), just to name a few.

It’s also a digital world out there, but you wouldn’t know it given the lack of emphasis placed on technology in the Blueprint. For example, only nominal attention is paid to online learning, despite the fact that it’s booming nationwide and despite Iowa’s meager offerings compared to other states. Even though Iowa ranks abysmally low when it comes to Internet speed and access, there’s nothing regarding the importance of universal statewide broadband Internet access for both educational and economic development purposes. Most damning, there’s absolutely no recognition of the power and potential of digital technologies to transform learning, teaching, and schooling, despite the rapid and radical reshaping of every other information-oriented societal sector by digital tools and the Web. In the world of the Blueprint, it’s as if computers and the Internet essentially didn’t exist. Go ahead and do a search in the Blueprint for the terms Internet or digital or technology; the omissions are quite alarming, actually. There’s one meager shout-out to the rapid growth in 1:1 laptop initiatives across the state, but no support for giving every Iowa child a powerful digital learning device, for providing technology integration assistance for educators, for upgrading woeful infrastructures, for rethinking policies, or for anything else of substance when it comes to educational technology. It’s 2011. Personal computers have been around for three decades and the Internet has been around for at least a dozen years for most of us. Digital technologies are transforming how Iowans and the world connect, collaborate, and LEARN; this omission is both sad and shameful.

A lost opportunity

There are a few things that I’m glad the Blueprint included. Although there is only a single bullet point referencing competency-based (rather than age-based) student progression, if done well that one thing alone has the potential to significantly and positively reshape much of how we do education in Iowa. I also like the willingness to invest in district-level innovation and to give districts some flexibility. The proof of most of this, like everything else, will depend on the legislative language and the resources committed.

As I think about the Blueprint as a whole (and we are encouraged by the document to treat it as ‘a set of changes designed to work together’), it feels like a lost opportunity. The Governor and DE had the chance to dream big and swing for the fences. They had the chance to propose impactful, sweeping changes to the current system. They had the chance to create learning and teaching environments that prepare students for the next 50 years rather than the last 50 and to educate the public as to why those changes are necessary. The Blueprint rhetoric is right but the action items fall far short. I don’t know if it’s a lack of knowledge or vision or courage that’s holding them back, and of course there are political considerations with all of this. But the result is a a tweak of the current system, a tinkering at the edges rather than a rethinking of the core. Perhaps it’s foolish of me to wish for more.

I welcome all feedback. Thanks.

I’m working with a school district that’s asked me to focus on the primary and elementary grades (Kindergarten through 6th grade, or Years 1 through 6/7). If you only had 1 hour to show some teachers and parents a maximum of 8 to 10 really interesting educational technology projects happening with younger schoolchildren, what would you show them?

I can pull ideas and projects from CASTLE’s list of subject-specific blogs but thought some of you might have more targeted recommendations for me. As usual, I’ll compile the comments and share back out as a blog post. Thanks in advance for any help that you can give!

Image credit: Flat Classroom Skype

[cross-posted at The Huffington Post]

Earlier this week the New York Times wondered whether investments in educational technology were worth it since most schools don’t see any concurrent improvement in students’ standardized test scores. That’s not exactly a new issue but it’s worth examining again. After all, we are talking about large sums of money here. I’ll start with some broad categories of pushback against the article…

1. Striving for different, higher-level learning outcomes

It’s hard to get at critical thinking, problem solving, effective communication and collaboration, complex synthesis and analysis, and other higher-order thinking skills with a bubble test. Many schools aren’t aiming at low-level factual recall and procedural knowledge with their technology initiatives.

2. An appalling lack of support

Most school districts ask their technology coordinator(s) to support computers and/or people at ratios that would absolutely horrify folks in the business world. Support ratios that are 3 to 10 times higher than in other sectors don’t result in meaningful, reliable technology usage. Also, many (most?) school districts still don’t have technology integration personnel on hand to work with teachers; they just have IT support folks.

3. An appalling lack of training

We shouldn’t expect test score gains when few teachers have been trained well to use digital technologies to improve learning outcomes. Instead, teachers usually are just given various technology tools and, if they’re lucky, some minimal training in how to access the various features. Deep, rich technology integration training that has the potential to change educators’ pedagogy is rare.

4. We need more technology

There’s not enough technology in schools to adequately judge the claim that they don’t impact test scores. The average student still uses digital technologies pretty infrequently. Ask the children in your extended family / circle of friends how many minutes per week they get to use technology to further their learning in school. Most likely will say very little…

5. Technology at the periphery leads to replicative use

Digital technologies have yet to significantly impact the day-to-day core work of learners and teachers. Instead, we have seen mainstream adoption and growth of replicative technologies (i.e., those that allow teachers to mirror traditional educational practices only with more bells and whistles). We still primarily see learning environments where teachers push out basic information to student recipients and then assess them on the kind of stuff that you can find on Google in 3 seconds. Also, when digital technologies are used, it’s primarily teachers using them, not students. Schools still mainly buy teacher-centric tools, not student-centric tools. We’re not actually seeing technology uses that would ‘change the game’ and thus maybe ‘change the scores.’

6. It’s the future [actually, it’s the present]

In case we haven’t noticed, it’s a digital world out there (and will be even more so in the future). What’s the alternative to putting learning technologies in the hands of students? Is there one? Knowledge workers in the real world (i.e., outside of school) use computers to do their work. Can educators really claim to be relevant to life outside of schools while simultaneously ignoring the technological transformations that surround them, as if digital technologies were a fad that were going to go away?

So, let’s sum up…

We have schools and classrooms that are still doing what they’ve always done, but with some additional infrequent and marginal uses of new learning tools. We have educators who don’t really know how to use the tools very well and who also have little access to those tools, reliable IT support, and/or regular integration assistance. For some reason we expect changes in certain learning outcomes to occur anyway, despite these environmental factors and despite the fact that those outcomes may not be what the schools were striving for in the first place. And, if we don’t see those outcomes, we’re going to claim it’s the fault of the technologies themselves rather than human and system factors and then we’re going to claim that traditional analog learning environments are just fine in a digital, global world.

Does this make sense to anybody? Apparently it does, because plenty of people chimed in to support the slant of the New York Times article…

Wrap-up

This has been a long post so I’ll close with three thoughts:

A. I think that George Siemens has it right:

If it changes how information is created…
If it changes how information is shared…
If it changes how information is evaluated…
If it changes how people connect…
If it changes how people communicate…
If it changes what people can do for themselves…
Then it will change education, teaching, and learning.

Digital technologies and the Web WILL change education, teaching, and learning. Maybe not yet, at least not in the ways that we hope (and definitely not in the ways that we think). Maybe not until we get our collective act together and actually get serious about these technologies and start recognizing their learning potential and begin doing the things we should be doing to realize their affordances. Maybe right now we’re still in that place where corporations were in the 1980s and 1990s when pundits bemoaned that productivity gains were yet to be realized from technology investments, the place where we have yet to change the human and system factors sufficiently to realize the desired goals. But change is coming (and for many of us it already has).

B. I also think that Virginia Heffernan has it right (look, also at the New York Times!):

we can’t keep preparing students for a world that doesn’t exist. We can’t keep ignoring the formidable cognitive skills [that students] are developing on their own. And above all, we must stop disparaging digital prowess just because some of us over 40 don’t happen to possess it. 

These I didn’t have technology when I was a kid and I turned out okay or technology makes kids dumber attitudes to which Heffernan refers are both rampant and unhelpful. Again, what are we supposed to do, go back to the quill or slate? I struggle particularly with folks like Larry Cuban, who somehow can internally reconcile his statements that digital technologies have no place in P-12 learning environments (“There is insufficient evidence to spend that kind of money. Period, period, period. There is no body of evidence that shows a trend line.”) with his own admission that he has learned greatly from using the very tools he criticizes (“Learning also has come from the surprises I have found in the 1300-plus comments readers have posted. From those comments, I have received ideas I had not considered, sources sending me off to explore other topics, and counter-arguments I had overlooked.”).

C. And, as usual, David Warlick has it right:

There are many barriers that prevent us from retooling our classrooms for 21st century teaching and learning. But at the core is the story of education that resides in our minds. Most adults base their knowledge of schooling on their education experiences from 20, 30, or 40 years ago. It is a story that is etched almost indelibly by years of being taught in isolated, assembly-line fashioned classrooms.

How do we retell the story of education and fashion a new image of the classroom as a rich and comprehensive environment where students learn by asking questions, experimenting with a rich and diverse information environments, and interact with people around the world — in order to discover and build knowledge?

Right now – as evidenced by the New York Times article and its many supporters - we educational technology advocates still aren’t telling ‘the story’ very well to many educators, parents, community and school board members, policymakers, and/or the news media. That’s something we all have to work on if we ever are to accomplish the goal of making our children’s learning environments relevant to the world in which they and we now live.

Image credit: Holly and Victoria download datasheets