I do not like to talk, here at 2¢ Worth, about activities with my clients unless they are very successful. It is not that I don’t want to talk about it, when things do not go well. I simply don’t want to reflect negatively on the client. So I usually wait a few weeks to talk about it, because there’s always something to be learned and shared, especially here.
This time, however, I want to go ahead. I believe that it might be in the interest of the teachers and administrators from Rose Tree Media School District who might be reading this, for me to have my say right now.
First, a little background. Rose Tree Media is implementing Pennsylvania’s Classrooms for the Future program, which provides funding for laptop computers in high school Math, Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies classrooms, as well as projectors and other technologies. It’s a good place for such a program. Their superintendent, Dr. Denise Kerr, seems not only to be a highly energetic and driven leader, but also extraordinarily creative. Think Mall School, just for a small indication of the outside the box orientation of her and her director of technology, Patti Linden, a woman who has been involved in instructional technology since the TRS-80.
The day was part professional development and part celebration. After my address about how what we do with computers has more to do with contemporary literacy than with technology, they held a switch-throwing ceremony involving a brilliantly constructed giant light switch and twelve high school youngsters rolling 12 laptop carts down the isles of the auditorium.
It was fun. The teachers and the kids enjoyed it. Then I moderated a student panel discussion with nine of the students (three had disappeared). I’ve talked about student panels before, about how they can be extremely useful and enlightening, or they may not be helpful. It depends on the students. After that experience, I’m coming to believe that student panels might actually set you back.
First of all, these were bright kids. They were funny and they were compelling — the kind of students any teacher would love to have in their class. But I could tell pretty early that things weren’t going where we wanted them to. My first question was, “How many of you use IM, text messaging, social networks, video games, etc.” The all raised their hands for IM and text messaging, and most raised their hands for Facebook (MySpace seems to be passe now). Only one, and finally two then three, admitted to playing video games.
I realized that many of the questions that I’d planned were not going to work, because I wanted us to learn what these kids were learning from their outside the classroom information experiences and how they were learning it. Instead, we learned that they all spent all of their time doing homework and considered video games a distraction, and the few minutes they spend with Facebook, they consider to be mindless interactions.
I finally asked, “How many of you consider yourselves ‘good students?'”
All nine raised their hands immediately, and a teacher behind me said, “These are all top-notch kids!”
Patti had arranged for a broad cross-section of students, but it was a day off for the kids, and arranging rides was a challenge, and three of the original twelve kids who rolled the carts down, apparently panicked at the crowd of teachers and fled out a side door. We had the “A” students who were enrolled in AP classes. These were the kids we don’t have to reach, the kids who do what they’re told and who have learned, from many years in the classroom, to tell us what they think we want to hear.
The harm of it? They reinforced those teachers who believe that we are doing just fine with our kids, doing things the same way we’ve always done them. I suspect that most teachers saw through what was happening and recognized that there is much more to learn from our students. But I still worry…
I’ve seen this work very well — In Ontario where they brought in “at risk” kids, and at the Council for Chief State School Officers conference in Maine where a couple of the panelists had just finished their Freshman year in college, and were reporting on their K-12 years from that perspective.
I’ve said that these things can be helpful — and they can. But I know now that you have to be very careful in selecting the kids, and you might even consider holding a pre-meeting with the panelists to orient them to what you’re looking for. You want to get out of the classroom and you want to talk about (learn from) the information experiences that are distracting to them and disrupting to us. We want to learn about those experiences.
For those teachers at Rose Tree Media, I say, “The kids you saw yesterday are easy.” What about the kids you are not reaching. What might their answers have been? Where are they, when you’re trying to teach about rhyme and meter, Caesar, plant cells, quadratic equations, and nutrition? They’re being reached by video games and social networks. Might we learn more about teaching today by learning more about those experiences?”
Added later:
Sylvia Martinez quite fairly calls me to task in her comment below, and a corresponding blog post, Don’t Blame the Kids. Well, I hope that it did not come across that I was blaming these kids. We were to blame for thinking that merely asking some kids some questions would help teachers understand something about a new generation of learner. As I said, I’ve seen this sort of panel work and work well. I know now that you have to come at it in a much more purposeful way, and, as Sylvia says so well, because it’s part of her “line,” that we learn about our children from their actions. As she says,
Kids shine when they share their work, and they get better at it when caring adults work with them to support their project development. They should be praised for real accomplishments and the ability to articulate them, not what happens to fall out their mouths. It’s a failure of adults not to create those conditions EVERY DAY.
The question remains, what are the best ways to start those conversations between information-oriented students and teachers who still see their classrooms as places for content delivery.
Thanks for bringing this up.
Right message, wrong medium. I learned this truth in church listening to painful, poorly spoken testimonies: to make a clear, defined, don’t leave it to amateurs. Create a video with pre-taped interviews and cut them up so they tell the story (put some music behind it to really drive it home).
Panels seem more suitable for argument and debate: multiple people present more than one side of a story and then hammer out the pros and cons.
Your comment about the A students is dead on. Maybe you’ve already seen this, but check out this video of Tom Peters talking about education: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_w4AfflmeM.
This touches on the very ticklish subject of student voice. If we are going to give the students a voice, we have to be prepared for the possibility that some of the students will use that voice haltingly or even inappropriately. That they might say things we don’t want to hear using words we don’t approve of. If we only give voice to those who say what we want to hear, it sends a clear message on so many levels, and ensures that control remains firmly in the hands of the teachers.
All that said, I wonder (perhaps cynically) to what extent those 9 had been coached, because I have never met kids like that – not among my classmates during my own school years and not among the countless schoolkids I have encountered since!
A coach of mine once said
you learn more when you fail than when you succeed.
Well Said!
— dave —
David,
You set these kids up to deliver your message and they didn’t do that. That’s not their fault. It’s no surprise that a group of kids guessed what the adults wanted and tried to please them.
It’s disingenuous to use kids as props. There was no hope for a real expression of student voice. Student voice comes from action. It’s developed as adults and students work together, build trust and accomplish something real that’s worth sharing with an audience.
Your readers might like to read an article based on 10 years of research and work with student voice and technology at Generation YES. It’s called, Sharing Student Voice: Student Presenting at Conferences http://genyes.org/freeresources/ and has a section on organizing authentic Student Panels.
Sylvia,
I get your point, and you’re probably correct about “..no hope for real expression of student voice.” Still, the challenge remains, how do we include our students’ voices in our continuing attempts to retool our classrooms?
I look forward to reading the article that you mention…
— dave —
I agree, Sylvia.
A district administrator’s perspective: First, I’d like to say that in arranging for our part professional development, part celebration day, Dave and I discussed the need for diversity of all kinds among the students for the panel discussion. I was able to meet with several of the students who volunteered to come to school on their day off, students who do play a lot of video games and spend a lot of time online. The “A” students were too busy with other activities to meet with me beforehand (which was not a problem). Unfortunately, those students with whom I met were not particularly motivated to speak in front of all of their teachers. In addition, I discovered later on that these same students felt intimidated speaking alongside the “smarter” kids who spend all of their time doing homework. Dave’s morning presentation to the teachers was spectacular and addressed the “new literacy” that we as educators need to teach. When the students on the panel told the teachers that what they were doing was just fine, it defeated the purpose of the day. The purpose being to open teachers’ minds to new possibilities. “We don’t know what we don’t know” and neither do the students. If we as educators don’t expand our thinking, how can we expect that the students will. Oh, the “A” students will – they always have. I’m very worried about the ones that don’t enjoy what happens in school, the ones that don’t learn using the books and paper. Dave was correct when he asked about the students we are not reaching. Those are the students I think about when planning a day of professional development and opening minds to new possibilites. There has to be other ways to reach them, because the traditional ways don’t work for everyone.
Patti Linden, at Rose Tree Media, shared with me some teacher comments that were posted on one of the PD instructor’s blogs, and I was pleased to see that a number of them noted that they had seen only a very narrow representation of the students they were charged with teaching, and that a broader cross section might have been more useful.
But as Sylvia said, there are many more opportunities to facilitate these conversations.
David, Appreciate your addition.
Patti, I think that your intent to open teacher’s minds is great. The question, as David pointed out is how to do it every day. David is just one guy who popped in for a day. These kids and teachers are there together all the time. The way to open teacher’s eyes to who kids are (ALL of them) is to force conditions where they have to collaborate as equals on something that is important to them both. This takes time and energy, there’s no magic wand here! But you will reach minds and find hidden talents on all sides.
Without meaning to be defensive, but just by way of clarification…I had a hand in picking the kids for the student panel. Ideally, we would have had kids from all ability levels, all socioeconomic levels, and of varied ethnicity. Unfortunately, we only had a few days to recruit kids. I encouraged many students who find learning a challenge to come in and speak. Unfortunately, coming to school on a Monday morning when school was not in session seemed to be a major issue. The kids were either not interested in giving up their day off or did not have transportation. When you ask kids to give up their day off, you are unfortunately skewing your selection. Kids who work hard are willing to give up free time. The kids who showed up on Monday, gave up free time. Having said that, we did not meet with the kids beforehand to prompt or coach them. I was as surprised as anyone by their responses. As a parent of 3 teenagers who all use Facebook, I was very surprised to hear that none of them interact with or “friend” kids on-line that they don’t know. I guess they are using better judgment than I imagined. I think we need to take a hard look at the responses of the kids. They were very clear about their desire to learn and not let technology get in the way. I believe that integrating technology is like anything else in teaching/learning. If it doesn’t enhance teaching/learning, don’t do it. The kids haven’t seen enough good examples of how integrating technology helps education. So, we have a challenge. Let’s integrate technology and let’s make it valuable!
On another note, there may have been a miscommunication about what David was looking for in terms of the student panel. It was my understanding that the kids were going to get to spend a few minutes sharing how they use technology in their daily lives and in their education. They all came prepared with ideas that they wanted to share. They wanted to talk about how they use IM, video, iPods, cell phones, Facebook, etc in all that they do. I think they were a little thrown off guard when that was not asked of them. Just a thought.
As a teacher at Rose Tree Media and a parent of an 11th grader, I am both fascinated and troubled by reading this posting and the associated thread. It seems that Dave (and Patti?) was hoping to use students to ‘prove’ to us that we ‘need’ to use technology in order to reach them because all they do anymore is blog and IM and Wii and ‘friend’ each other– and that when these (acknowlegedly) ‘good students’ didn’t play their role, it screwed up the plan!
I can assure you that these students and many, many more (not just in our AP classes) meant exactly what they said when they encouraged us not to let technology distract us from our essential mission of teaching them the content. School is not a Led Zeppelin light show, nor is it an interactive social networking website. It is still a place for reading, writing, solving, thinking and talking. No amount of electronic gadgetry will ever replace that fact, I hope.
I guess I just took away a very different impression than those I’ve seen expressed here– rather than being disappointed that these kids did not admit to playing Halo 3 for hours on end, or ‘friending’ anonymously on Facebook (or worse, speculating that they were being disingenous at best, maliciously dishonest at worst)– I was very encouraged and reassured by what I heard. I heard these kids say that they do use technology, lots of it, both in and out of school. However, they all emphasized in their own way that technology is just a part of their everyday life, rather than that their life is about technology. Rather than being disappointed with the panelists for not confirming some preconceived notion of how ‘real’ high school students behave today, why not accept them at face value and think about ways that we can encourage other, more ‘normal’ students to adopt their values, work ethic, level of responsibility, and perspective.
As a teacher in Rose Tree School District, I received an email about this and thought I would check it out. After reading some of this, I want my five minutes back. Often, new teachers are told to avoid the negative gossip and innane chatter in the lunch room. Blogs should be added to that list!
PS: I bet the Chinese person had a really valuable contribution!
I would like to say first, that I enjoyed David. However, if we are meant to believe that these students are not using the internet, playing Wii (or xBox), or anything other technology for enjoyment, we are fooling ourselves.
I, for one, enjoy playing my xBox when I get a free minute. I like to consider myself a good student, I scored a 5 on the AP Calculus exam, but the idea of playing xBox for entertainment is fun to me. Although it can be mindless, many of today’s games can be a challenge for the mind. I enjoy playing Madden08, EA sport’s football game, trying to take the Eagles to the Super Bowl title while trying to manage the Salary Cap is something I enjoy. Cut a player here, trade a player there, see how effects the salary cap excites me. If there is a way that I can bring this sort of technology into my classroom, I would enjoy it.
Does this mean I am neglecting my responsibility as a classroom teacher? Absolutely not! The idea that technology is going to be part of their lives is important and we as responsible teachers should embrace this. However, I do agree with the student’s viewpoint that the teacher should involve the level of technology they are comfortable with. Some teachers are on a very high level and have interactive websites, PowerPoints, etc while others are comfortable with eMail. However, the more we embrace the technology in the classroom, the more we will realize that we are giving the students the best life long educational skills they need.
I don’t like to think of myself as a math teacher, but a life teacher. A teacher that wants to show that his subject level can apply itself to other aspects of their lives. It is important that we try to do our best to get the students ready for technology. I am ready to learn, if we are all willing to learn.
As a teacher at Rose Tree Media, I was also fascinated with the answers the students gave in our meeting. I realized immediately that these students felt pretty intimidated with more than 300 teachers listening intently to their responses. Even though their answers did not follow the “plan,” they did give some very thought provoking ideas. The best thing I took away from the panel discussion was what one student said: “Technology is only as good as the teacher who is guiding you.” This, I think, sums up the responsibility of the teacher to be the very best he/she can be in all areas and methods of teaching and learning – especially in the use of technology. We must be using technology or any other method to help students reach their greatest potential and that’s the bottom line. The use of technology must not be used as a crutch or as fill because we are not prepared that day. It must be used as any other tool, to enhance learning. Since students have many different needs, we need to give many opportunities to learn in somewhat unconventional ways. I think that came across loud and clear in Dave’s presentation as well as the panel.
Thanks for the great presentation, Dave. It opened my eyes to greater possibilities that I hope my students will benefit from soon.
I’m going to try to provide a last word on this conversation, though if you’d like to chime in after this, consider yourself invited.
I want to springboard from Kay Roberts comments, and say now, as I thought I said during the keynote, and what the student panelists said. “It’s not about technology in any direct way.” My message was about how information has changed and how this means that there are new skills that our students need to master — and they aren’t technology skills, they are basic literacy skills.
I started off asking the students if they used IM, text messaging, video games, social networks, etc. so that I could learn something about their outside-the-classroom information experiences. This is what intrigues me, and I think should be of interest to all educators. It isn’t important what technologies they are using. What is important is how it affects how they use information.
Do their near ubiquitous access to each other (IM & SMS), their social networking, and their video games involve learning. Do they learn here? What do they learn? How do they learn it? Does reading a chapter of text in a paper book make as much sense to them as making content available to them in some other, more collaborative, and interactive way? Might we take what we might learn from their outside the classroom INFORMATION experiences, and turn that into never before possible classroom learning experiences? I think that it is possible.
Once again, I had no agenda or hidden message that I planned to get from these kids. My intent was for all of us to hopefully learn something about the differences between how our children’s generation uses information and how we are presenting in our classrooms.
David,
I’ve been echoing the story you and others have been telling us for several years, that “digital kids” are “different” because, either whole or part, “they’re playing games.”
Some teachers look at me with skepticism. “Do all kids play games?” No. “Are they really digital kids?” Hmm… and I know what’s going through some of their minds…
It sounds as if you asked some leading questions… IM, games, etc.
Now we have some reputable reports (Pew Internet, among others) telling us more and more about student behaviors. But I think it would be a worthy pursuit/study in each person’s school to actually find out…
a) what games,
b) what behaviors,
c) how much socialization takes place outside of school,
d) how much socialization is technological vs. face-to-face,
e) do the differences in socialization, game types, etc., affect learner style?
It might be a doctoral dissertation topic, but it shouldn’t be too hard to gather the data in a large school by the kids themselves.
I agree with our Building Technology Coordinator that this blog has opened a productive conversation.
I found the remarks made by Mr. Warlick, Mr. Danson and Mr. Nolen to be provocative. Being a tech savvy teacher, I used Google translate to turn the response made by our Chinese friend into English. I think that the output from the translator says a lot about the limits of technology in aiding effective communication. I believe it tangentially addresses the use of blogs, panel discussions and surfing the internet as part of a presentation to an audience.
I found the leader left by Mr. Warlick to be offensive. I saw the limits of the panel quite clearly; as did all the colleagues I spoke with afterward. There is little need for worry about the impact of the panel discussion.
The obvious downside to any panel discussion or blog is that it encourages pedestrian observations. You often don’t hear what you want, and that should come as no surprise to any seasoned educator. To rely on this format for specific outcomes or content is foolhardy and risky.
Which brings us to the use of net resources as part of an instructional plan. A problem I have had when using the internet in class is that it is unreliable. When I surf the net I lose my audience and if I don’t find what I need, I am forced to use the line “Well, what you should be seeing is…†This tries the patience of my audience and makes for an incoherent presentation. I find it disruptive enough to limit my use of net resources as part of my presentations. Is their a solid technical solution to this problem?
I think Mr. Warlick raises a good question when he asks about the children we don’t reach. If technology is part of the answer I am all ears. However, I didn’t find a cohesive response in his presentation.
Similarly, I don’t think our anonymous friend from China is done justice by the miracle of Google translator.
Benefits Institute> OLDaily Chinese version »Blog Archive» December 12, 2007 Efficiency good student visual content more electronic touch slide presentation Portfolio
December 13th, 2007 at 9:50 am
[…] On this point I agree with Dave Warlick view, “These children … do what we ask them to do, and, from many years of classroom experience, they have learned to tell us they think we want to hear things. “This procedure exists in many teaching in the” Student feedback “to false” student approved “by unreasonably teaching procedures so that these rationalization. Because – as Warlick said: “They believe that more of those teachers in their children’s education problems, we are doing quite well – even though we have been inflexible in this education children.” When we tried to seek this kind of “students feedback “, surveyed students should not just” good “students. The school drop-outs and poor students should also be taken into account. After all, I did when it was the high school students. If they invited me to their educational meetings – especially when my 12-year, I was being boycotted language tests – I should be able to express some views, and even some of the views of the issues discussed are related? Dave Warlick, 2 Cents Worth December 12, 2007 [link] [Tags: Assessment,