Thursday was an incredible day in London. Not only did I get to work in Ontario with such hospitable people, especially Doug Pederson (thanks for the cab fare, bro), meet and get my picture taken with Amber MacArthur, and meet her fiancé, Chris — but I also got to meet two edublogger greats, Rodd Lucier (The Clever Sheep) and Quentin D’Souza (Teaching Hacks). Come on back, D’Souza. It’s a great blog.
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In his blog post on Friday (Fertilizing the Grass Roots), Rodd wrote:
At today’s Western RCAC Symposium, educators from across southwestern Ontario were called to engage with emerging tools in order to ensure learning is relevant to 21st Century learners.
He went on to say,
My personal suspicions are that most attendees will fail to make effective use of any of the many tools introduced today. Even with everyone recognizing that we have a long way to go: A significant knowing-doing gap will remain!
Then Rodd listed some comments that he overheard during the conference, that support his concern. I’m listing them here and will try to make some suggestions that may be useful. My suggestions are indented just a bit to better distinguish them from the overheard statements.
Comment 1: “Our IT department won’t let us!”
Granted, it’s easy for me to say that IT should work for you, the teachers. Their job is to make sure that you, the teachers, can do what you want to do — not prevent it. Getting them to realize this is the challenge. One of the best suggestions I’ve heard was when a tech director suggested that IT folks be required to follow students around for a day. I would suggest that IT folks be required to sit in a classroom for a day, each month or so, to see not just the challenges of teaching, but the passion of mission. We need to bring them into the mission.
I suspect that IT folks are evaluated each year just like teachers. Give them an instructional goal to accomplish each year, find some way to technically facilitate better reading, global awareness, creativity, etc.
One final idea. When you submit a request for technical service in writing, include a statement of it’s instructional benefit or goal, and write it clearly, succinctly, yet prominantly. This way, refusing the request is documented as preventing instructional activities — and fulfilling the request makes you partners in a holy cause.
Comment 2: “My superintendent doesn’t get it.”
Suggest that your superintendent read “The World is Flat.” I don’t agree with everything that Freedman says in the book, and some of it has been debunked. Yet, this book has probably had a larger influence on our rethinking our place in a rapidly changing world than any other message. You might start with your principal and work your way up.
Enlist your students. Help them make (our get out of their way) public service announcement videos expressing the importance of digital networked learning in an increasingly global marketplace.
Organize a 21st century education fair, arranging for teachers and students to demonstrate what they are doing with contemporary information technologies. Invite vendors to bring in interactive white boards, turn the kids loose on them. Invite the local paper, radio, and television stations, and allow students to organize booths where they can demonstrate what they are doing with technology and information outside the classroom, i.e. video games, social media, and social networking.
Comment 3: “We don’t have enough money.”
True enough. But I’m starting to wonder whether technology might be a cheaper way to do things. Find out how much you’re paying for paper and printing. Find out how much it costs to heat your buildings each day. Find out how much you spend on textbooks, that are produced by 15th century technology.
Then, what would be the cost of equiping all teachers with a state of the art notebook computer, every student with a netbook, integrate virtual learning environments, and establish a consortium of schools where teachers would collaborate to create a dynamic, customizable, digital networked textbook — available for free to the entire province and beyond.
Comment 4: “Our computers are too old.”
Your computers may be too old to run MS Office 2007 or Photoshop, but probably not too old to run, through Firefox, Google Docs and and a growing array of cloud applications. One young man, at the conference, talked about bringing in older donated computers, having his students refurbish them, and then install Ubuntu Linux, giving them an equal array of opensource software — and the cloud.
Comment 5: “The school networks are out of date.”
Well this is a problem. It seems that Alberta has established fibre to every school in the province, recognizing the critical importance of the Internet to teaching and learning. This is something that has to be accomplished from the top — connection to contemporary, digital, networked, and abundant information is as critical to education today as heat and electricity.
Comment 6: “We still ban cell phones in school!”
This is simply not one of the wagons I’m riding. I think that it will come, that we’ll recognize the value of pocket-based information technologies in education as we stop being afraid and come to respect what our students are doing with them outside the classroom.
But I’d not focus on cell phones. I do not believe that we should expect our children to learn about the world through a keyhole. They need larger windows on the world, more powerful lenses. We would never think of issuing textbooks the size of a matchbook.
If we’re working toward preparing our children for their (and our) future, then we can’t compromise on content space.
Comment 7: “I’ve never even heard of RSS.”
Well, my initial response is, “Why not?” I think that we have to stop excusing educators from not keeping up with what’s happening around them. It’s what’s wrong with Prenski’s otherwise brilliant distinguisher, Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. It can be an excuse for immigrants to say, “I can’t learn that. I’m not a native.”
As I said in the PLN session, “Start small.” Form study groups, set teachers up with RSS Readers (you don’t have to use the term RSS). Suggest a few connections for them, and have them blog (again, you don’t have to call it a blog if that will help) to each other what they’re learning. You have to start the connections. You have to start the conversations. You have to work toward the point to where the learning engine kicks in, and starts running on its own momentum.
Comment 8: “The kids know more than we do.”
No they don’t. They are more savvy at using technology, but we are better at using information. They know how to play the information. They desperately need us to teach them to work the information.
It’s one of the benefits of redefining teachers as Master Learners, that it give us permission to say, “Can you teach me how to do that with a digital camera?”
Comment 9: “I don’t have the time!”
This is too true. When Amber MacArthur interviewed me for her podcast after her keynote, lack of time is the barrier to retooling classrooms that I zero’ed in on. The teacher-day is virtually unchanged from the classrooms I attended in the ’50s and ’60s. Think of lawyers, surgeons, or even farmers. Do they spend all of their time in front of juries, in operating rooms, or in the fields. No! An important part of their job is research, collaboration, reflection, resource development, and professional development.
Now think of factory workers, who spend all of their time on the assembly line, installing parts. And think of teachers, spending all their time with students on a conveyor belt, moving through kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, while we install math on them, reading, science… Education is still an industrial age institution, trying to address information age problems.
This is a tough one, but, as you publish information about your schools, and take pictures of teachers on the job — include lots of pictures of teachers researching, collaborating, engaged in professional development, liaising with the community. These are all critical elements of being a teacher today. We have to get that message out there.
Just like you don’t want me teaching drama and dance, I don’t think that we should be aiming for a world where every classroom embraces all of these technologies just for the sake of doing it. There needs to be a good, solid pedagogy for why someone wants to use the technology and a predicted return on the time required to become proficient with it.
It’s been my experience that when you address the whys, it becomes easier to sell. We continue to live in a world where there are these blocks and they are there for a reason. To kick down all of these blocks at the same time could be even more devastating than we might suspect until we’re prepared to use it properly. I would prefer a more differentiated approach where the teacher, rather than the district, is in a position to allow or deny access to various resources. That also addresses the time issue. When a teacher decides to embrace any new way of doing things, significant professional development with a purpose and commitment is important. I have faith that good teachers will choose the best of tools available when they are ready to use them.
I’m still wrestling with the telephone issue personally. I force myself to take my life mobile to be in constant touch with those who I support. I’m still at the point though, that when I need to do something substantial, I’m headed to a traditional keyboard.
As for RSS, I’m turning to different avenues. I find Twitter makes me more responsive to a web on the move and really appreciate when people scrape their announcements of new entries there. For wider awareness, I find myself intrigued with the power of the Flock browser coupled with popurls.com and alltop.com.
I’m fully supportive of maturing social networks for professional development. It suits my style and I enjoy how much I learn on a regular basis.
In your presentation on December 11, David, I envisioned myself and my life with those tentacles. I view my daughter with her tentacles. I realize that both of us are constantly learning and growing, but in different ways with different priorities. The more I know, the more I know about what I don’t know.
If I was in charge, I’d be pushing for the technology to be in place along with the requisite professional development. I’d still want the teacher to be the ultimate arbiter as to whether or not it’s going to happen in her/his classroom on any given day. We need to find a way to honour professional discretion while supporting the best of breed pedagogy.
A quick comment about RSS: I really think this is a failure of technology, not educators. Few teachers will adopt technologies with geeky sounding names. The tool of RSS is great and transformative–but the branding of it will never catch on. In the same way as podcasts and wikis. Why can’t we stop forcing tech babble on teachers, and come up with names that are more descriptive of what they do. Instead of every webpage having a RSS feed, if it had a more user friendly name like Subscriptions or Newsletters, more people might adopt it. Instead of podcasts, audio or video shows. Instead of wikis, online resource pages. I think the labels we give to many new technologies is one of the greatest obstacles to them being adopted. I think it’s taken over ten years for blogs to enter the mainstream, where everyone knows what a blog is. This is unacceptable in my mind, and one of technology leaders’ greatest failings.
Mike,
I started reading your response fully prepared to disagree. Instead, you’ve convinced me. Do you think the friendlier sounding “Ning” is one reason that Nings have taken off so quickly? Facebook has its “wall” which sounds very non-techie.
What opportunities exist here?
I couldn’t agree more. I think all the technospeak baffles people. Teachers really need to see a purpose and have on-time PD to incorporate new tools (tools, not tech).
Need to add one more obstacle: the individual in charge of making technology available and accessible to teachers and students is frozen by fear. When a teacher’s log-in to the internet and accessibility is exactly the same as his/her students and filters block reasonable and valuable websites as a result, something’s wrong. Web 2.0 is viewed as the devil’s work by some. Faculty AUP’s are designed to keep attorneys at bay. Ever seen an iSafe presentation?
Teachers and administrators need to learn and “adopt technologies with geeky sounding names.” RSS is an acronym; the world of education has a million of them. Everyone knows what an ipod is… I say, suck it up and practice what you preach, be a life-long learner. And in the meantime, get out of the way of those who have and let them use what they professionally consider to be appropriate for their classroom as “21st century learners and teachers.”
David, the challenge is to get “So What Do We Do Now” read by the teachers, principals, and superintendents who NEED it and more than once. Perhaps equate technology with raising test scores or closing achievement gaps or you could always find a way to make this blog so controversial that everyone e-mails the url. I think you’re preaching to the choir.
I agree with so much of what you share. I have been asked to pilot a social networking tool for the district and was describing it to two other teachers. They were apalled that anyone would be asked to use this tool with their students–who has time to read a chat room, to do an online discussion with kids, or to grade papers that are submitted online. I explained to them that it didn’t add more to my plate but instead changed how I would do things. They didn’t buy my explanation… I do believe that the use of technology should have real purpose, but it is a part of our students’ lives and isn’t going away.
I have worked for a super who really believes in what the World is Flat says. She had administrators read it, she shared information with the school board and community, she connected data from our schools to the concepts in the book, etc. Unfortunately, the community at large and some in the schools, almost had her job because they didn’t get it. Change is a huge task that sometimes seems to be too daunting.
My school doesn’t allow students to use their cell phones, but they can have them on them. Since they can’t use theirs, I often pull out my iPhone and use it with the kids. They see me use it as a calculator, or I hand it to one of them to use the Internet. I also walk around taking pictures with it and then post it to the class blog. They sure get a kick out using the iPhone and are seeing me use it as part of the real world. Why not? They need to learn the value of using technology.
Thanks for your post. I enjoyed reading and seeing that I am not alone in some of my frustrations and that I am blessed because I don’t have all of the frustrations listed!
I think the time barrier/industrial model of education is the biggest of our problems. It’s not that we don’t want our students to be digitally literate; it’s that we want them to do it at the same time as they are doing all the other things we’ve always expected them to do. Add to that the fear/skepticism teachers have about technology, and you have a huge barrier.
Approaching teachers about technology is a delicate problem. At our school, they evangelize to us about the wonders of new technology, while at the same time being afraid to insist we use it.
David,
Two things really struck me from this post:
1. I suspect that IT folks are evaluated each year just like teachers. Give them an instructional goal to accomplish each year, find some way to technically facilitate better reading, global awareness, creativity, etc.
This is EXACTLY what helped me to find my calling as a tech integrator. I had a forward-thinking tech director that required us to do just what you’ve stated above. I thank him for that each day, even though at the time it was ‘one more thing to do’ for my job.
2. When you submit a request for technical service in writing, include a statement of it’s instructional benefit or goal, and write it clearly, succinctly, yet prominantly.
I’m going to start doing this myself and suggesting it to my peers. It’s such a simple idea and makes a lot of sense (wish I thought of it myself.) Thanks for the on-going professional development. 😉
David,
Do you have a transcript or archived copy of your session? I’d love to read/see it (and Amber’s).
Just hoping…
Hello from New Zealand. Loved what was posted. It addresses so many concerns that teachers raise regarding why they cannot use emerging 21st century tools. Good to know that it is just not me. I think that it really is about changing the way education is delivered. I work in a distance education environment using video conferencing and Adobe Connect as synchronous tools and an online learning environment as the asynchronous tool. We are now investigating how we can team teach courses thereby allowing us greater contact time with students, more collegial collaboration and better designed courses which challenge our students and encourages them to collaborate
I loved Joanne’s comment above – it is IMO spot on. I have encountered many comments like the ones you heard in the commercial world. And in every case, that person was looking for a way to preserve the status quo.
How many of the educators that made the excuses you quoted would accept those same excuses from their students?? I bet that number is zero. I wrote about this today: http://interacc.typepad.com/synthesis/2008/12/sometimes-you-just-gotta-say.html.
Students have by definition grown up with that which adults had to learn. Educators are in that same boat always. The ones that are great will be creative, tenacious and passionate about their desire not to be ahead of their students, but rather to include their students. And find ways to learn and teach together.
I love love love the responses. Sometimes people act as if they are up against an insurmountable brick wall – but usually that brick wall is in their own mind. We all ask ourselves – “How can we continue” “It is too hard” and yet, it is only through no-nonsense practical responses like these that we can progress.
I believe that we will look back on these times and see that the pioneers are the ones who just didn’t quit!
In response to Comment #8: The kids know more than we do.
I’ve been struggling to put this concept into words the past month or so as I work with kids who are tech savvy but are failing in school. They can find their way around a keyboard and navigate the network but when it comes time to apply their knowledge, they choke and burn.
In my classroom, there is always going to be a kid who knows more about a program or piece of technology than me. I have one advantage though, when it comes to seeing the bigger picture. I have the experience gained from living through previous technology successes and failures. A wonderful kind of learning occurs when student and teacher both accept the others strengths and recognize their weaknesses. In that place learning can happen.
“Working” and “Playing” the information are now a part of the way I talk about technology with my kids and colleagues. Thanks for the insight.
@al gunn: I know that this is something I’ve struggled with myself. Last year, Donald Leiu keynoted the TRLD conference in San Francisco, and his group at the University of Connecticut is developing assessments to measure students’ web literacy, the ability to use web-based content as opposed to book-based content. They actually found that there were students who were failing basic literacy tests, but nearly acing the web-literacy tests. It wasn’t that they could read, it’s that sequential, paper-based information simply isn’t relevant to them. Our question today should, is paper-based content going to be relevant to their future — the future we’re supposed to be preparing them for.
Thanks for continuing the conversation.