Month: November 2011

After keynoting the recent SchoolCIO Leadership Summit and then facilitating their “Digital Content” discussion cadre, I was asked to compile some of the highlights of our case studies and conversations into a 100 word scenario for the SchoolCIO Magazine’s followup articles. The word limit made the task feel like a job.  But it is in that sort of efficient deconstruction, reflection, and reconstruction process that we gain new insights — that I learn.

One of the linchpin moments of the recent SchoolCIO Leadership Summit was when one of the attendees, in a rather off-handed remark, said — and I paraphrase:

We should not simply be transitioning from print to digital content.

We should be facilitating a transformation from an old and obsolete way of teaching and learning to a new and more relevant way of preparing our children for their future.

This remark brilliantly packaged a lot of the issues that had been struggling with for quite some time.  It suggests that we take a step or two back and shift our focus away from a new device for content delivery and refocus on something much broader and suggestive of how the game is changing.

A 50 word cloud, generated by Wordle, compiling more than 20 definitions of curriculum from the Internet

The word Curriculum comes to mind as one way of labeling this broader view. Admittedly, the word is fairly slippery, already having different meanings to different people — even among professional educators. Formal definitions range from a zoomed out departmental view, “..the subjects comprising a course of study..” to a closer micro perspective, “..a predefined series of learning events designed to meet a specific goal.” Scan the word cloud to the right.

But as I worked through my notes from the Summit, struggling with the language for my scenario, it occurred to me that a precise and universally accepted definition of curriculum simply has not been very important. Teachers had the textbook; a physical, reasonably durable, easily understood (and operated), dependable, and trustworthy tool that was carefully designed for instruction by experts. We had a practical point of focus that rendered curriculum, as a term, lighter than air, floating to a high and misty place, where its Latin lineage evoked a classical aura to the profession. At least that’s the way I see it.

Today, the textbook, consisting of printed pages glued or sewn together and bound in covers, is obsolete.  I believe that its role as the central, dominant, and trusted tool for instructional delivery is been based on a myth and is equally obsolete.  Our information landscape has morphed into something that is larger, more dynamic and vibrant, highly personal and yet broadly shared — and almost entirely unforeseen.

This new info-environment has radically changed how we learn.

Therefore, it must also radically change the practices of teaching and the institution of education.

This is the last book that I bought in order to learn to do something (2000). Today, the idea of buying a book to learn a new programming language seems ludicrous. If we’re not buying textbooks to learn after school, then why should we force them on our children’s learning?

As the textbook (in the form that I used it in the 20th century) declines, becoming only one optional component of an expanding and shifting array of resources and opportunities, the role of teacher will change.

This notion of  crafting learning experiences by orchestrating webs of content, tools, opportunities and connections implies a broad, partly informed, partly intuitive, and largely personal act of crafting curriculum. It happens as a result of education; experience; professional conversations; research; information resources, tools, and skills; a connection to the community; a genuine caring for children and their self-fulfilling future success; and a professional obligation to be a constant learner and model that practice.

This vision of teachers as curriculum curator is inconsistent with a central and arrogantly authoritative blueprint for everything that learners need to be doing for hours, days, and years of their childhoods and youth.

Curriculum should empower learning, not merely guide and filter teaching.

By relying on teacher currated curriculum over state-adopted textbooks, the transformation we may well see is a shift from classrooms of compliant students to environments of skilled, resourceful, and habitual learners.

I wrote a blog post last week about home conversations about school.  It ended with a question  of sorts,

I wonder how a school or classroom might start that dinner table conversation by sharing everyday glimpses of teachers and learners exploring, experimenting, discovering, and sharing passionate and inventive learning.

So I thought I would compile some of the responses I got, with just a few of my own insertions into this 12 Ways to Provoke Supportive About Learning at Home.  The items are re-phrased in my own words.  Please return to that original post (So What did You Do in School Today?) to read comments in their original wording.

(cc) Flickr Photo by Flatbush Gardener Edited with Pixelmator

But I want to start off with something that my nephew, Ethan Warlick, student at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, wrote:

Three years ago, when I was a senior on high school, I had nothing to tell my parents when they asked what I had learned in school. After graduating from high school though, I have noticed that I want to tell my parents what it is I have learned in college classes. I think one of the issues with my high school experience was that I was being taught rules and principles instead of life relevant problem solving tools. (Ethan Warlick)

I still don’t know how he found my blog, but his comments feed wonderfully into the first item of this list.

1. The first thing to do is to ask yourself the question, “What happened in my classroom today that the parents of my students would be genuinely curious about?” (Ecaterina)
2. Find creative and effective ways to share with parents (and the community) what is being learned this week in my class, how it is being learned, why it’s being learned, and what my students are doing with it. Suggest questions that might be asked of children at home to provoke dinner table ((I’m using “dinner table” as a generic term for any chance family members have to talk. For me, it was riding home from a family visit, in the back seat of Dad’s ’52 Ford Wagon, with my chin resting on the back of my parent’s seat (before we had seat belts))) conversations. This can be done via letters and newsletters. But most of today’s parents are probably more accustomed to getting information via their computers, tablets or mobile phones. Consider a Facebook page for your class (observing safety policies), a Twitter feed, or daily updates to your classroom Web site. (Christina C & Alfonso Gonzalez)
3. Ask students (periodically or on a daily basis) to take inventory of their newly gained knowledge and skills and to write a letter to someone at home describing how they are growing through learning. (Christina C & Cary B. Todd)
4. Make learning more engaging for students by integrating the creative arts. Asking learners to express their learning through art, music, or performance helps to grant them ownership of their learning, and it gives them something to take home on paper, a thumb drive, or a web link. (Christina C)
5. Encourage students to engage their younger siblings in dinner table conversations about what they are doing in school and to share what they remember about their experiences in those grades. (Jennifer T.)
6. At open house, encourage parents to periodically excavate their children’s book bags for homework and test papers, letters home, unfinished art work, etc. The artifacts that they find can raise useful entry points for family conversations about school. (Jennifer T.)
7. Integrate social networking into classroom and school operations (observing safety policies). Encouraging students to engage in networked conversations, within the context of curriculum, and then making those conversations available to parents, can give those parents a window on the learning experiences of their children. There may also be opportunities to invite supportive participation from parents. (Ashley Bitner)
8. Engage students in edgy classroom activities that will not only inspire their curiosity, but also the curiosity of their parents and the community. (Sean Wheeler)

   Sean’s high school English class just built a chair as part of a quarter-long project. I’m curious as to why!

9. Record (video or audio) students working or performing, engaging in discussions, and other learner-active experiences, and share with parents through the classroom web site, blog or via email. Update publishings frequently (observing safety policies).
10. Look at the PBS and BBC web sites, how they often include text and other media to extend specific programs. Here is an alphabetical listing of PBS programs linking to web pages that expand on the issues of the program. If students could enhance some of their reports and presentations, utilizing a full range of media, and publish these multimedia expansions as an integral part of your classroom web site, parents (and community) would want to come in and see, learn, and engage at home.
11. Set up an ongoing online survey or Tweet out questions to parents (and grand parents) asking how the current curriculum topics connect with their work or personal experiences, drawing that information into the classroom through their children. “Have you ever seen a volcano or experienced an earthquake?” “What were your grandparents doing during World War II?” “Do you ever use algebra?” “Do you use chemicals in your work?”
12. Enable and empower learners to necessarily, resourcefully and responsibly teach themselves. When they earn their knowledge and skills, they own it — and students will take home with them what they own. (Heather F)