Again, the best part of what I’m doing here in Shanghai is the conversations — especially having Jeff Utecht around, learning from his experiences in his classrooms (check out Teentek — http://www.teentek.com/) and a lot of the thinking he is doing about where classrooms and schools need to be.
We had another conversation the day before yesterday (was that Monday? Sunday?) with the Tech committee making plans for spending the significant money they have coming next year. It was an interesting dynamic to watch and finally participate in, and not one that is uncommon. We are trying to talk about facilitating learning that is more relevant to today’s children and their future, and to do it without talking about technology. Once you get into the technology, the the talk becomes about shopping lists. It’s a challenge to keep the conversation on the kids and learning.
Yesterday, the tech staff met for a couple of hours in the morning and probably came closer than any conversation I’ve been engaged in, to seeing, out there in the discussion, a vision for 21st century learning, classrooms, and schools. This school has developed at listing of 21st century skills, with is not dissimilar to other listings that are emerging in other places these days. But what we started talking about was classrooms that are set up for students to learn these skills — not to be taught this skills.
I think that there is a subtle but important distinction here.
I am blown away at the fast rapid pace of technology and the way kids use it. Furthurmore, how easily accessible information is and the ways it gets delivered to the researcher instantaneously!
Sometimes I worry that students are not developing patience anymore with so much avaible and ready at their finger tips immediately, but I understand that this is the way of the world and it’s exciting! I can really see the benefits of this and (after listening to David Warlick!) realise that we as educators need to teach kids how to work the system and choose the sites appropriate for them, learn the tools to have information reach us to collaborate with the world. To me, this is exciting.
David Warlick asked us this morning ‘what would school 2.0 look like to you’? This was recorded into an IPOD and sent on a Podcast. I wasn’t brave enough to speak into the IPOD without writing something down (ha! Old habits!) so I thought I’d share my thoughts here.
School 2.0 is preparing learners for life….. Setting up students/teachers who learn how to manipulate information to reach us and work for us, so that we (students/teachers) learn how to use knowledge to share/discuss with the world/collaborate with the world, to survive in this new changing and adaptive global community.
I’m a music teacher at Puxi Middle School, SAS, and obviously grammar is not my strong point, so feel free to edit!!
David,
The distinction that you make between talking about technology and talking about learning is very important. It prompted me to ask the following question: Does it really matter anymore what types of machines students have in front of them? So much of the web 2.0 is indeed web based, which means that as long as you have a connection you can access the learning. Isn’t talking about the types of machines that students need a little about talking about the type of pen or pencil that they need. I know that there’s a #2 pencil, but does #3 or #1 really exist?
Andrew Pass
http://www.pass-ed.com/Living-Textbook.html
The highlight of the week for me was David joining the Student Programs Commitee and Educational Task Force joint meeting. In that 2.5 hours meeting, there was recognition by parents, teachers and administrators that providing students with, teaching, 21st century skills is no longer optional but integral to student and school success. That we were able also to share and understand a draft document (EAGLES stating schoolwide student learning results) defining those 21st century skills that would set the bar for ALL students preK-12 will change the course of SAS forever. The community defined a Vision last May and this meeting catapaulted our common understanding of what it would take to achive that Vision…”by 2012 SAS will enable all students to achieve their academic and personal potential in a global society through creative and authentic use of technology.” We bandied about a variety of ideas in terms of what hardware to purchase next year – and there was a wide range of opinion from laptops for all teachers to cretaing 24 “classrooms of the future” with the pot of money available – but the base understanding was that it is not the tools but what we do with the tools that matters. Thank you David for helping us have such an inspiring meeting.
I was interested in both David Warlick and Andrew Pass’s comments. This is a reaction I have had while reading Literacy in the 21st century. It matters that students know about the technology, but it is not as important as teaching them to be critical thinkers and lifelong learners- excited about the whole process of changing their brains. It was also mentioned that we have to set up the technology,so that students can learn to use it -not so that we can teach it. Frankly, no worries here – can barely keep up with the changes- don’t have an ipod, don’t know how to download a .smil file, which is frustrating because there is stuff out there in those formats that I would like to use, but there is not much danger of me teaching my students about technology unless they are about my age or have been a refugee camp for 5 years( which is possible) I am an English as a 2nd language teacher in St Louis, MO. Thanks Mr Warlick for the book. It really has made me think about literacy in lots of new ways. I was kind of stuck in the language aspect. Now however, I am expanding my vision of literacy to be much wider and more in line with the the idea of multiple intelligences. There are so many facets to literacy that we as teachers need to tap into in our students to bring them where they need to be in this world.
I found it extremely important to hear you comment on how you participated in a conversation that focused around better preparing student’s for their futures. Technology inedibility needs to be part of this solution. It seems to me that students are expected to understand and participate in numerous technologies throughout their school day. The computer has essentially become the once pen and paper within classrooms. It is however as you mentioned, important to remember to focus on what each individual student needs are, and not simply the technology itself. I completely agree with your comment that if we do otherwise we will simply be creating shopping lists. Yet, how do schools find the equilibrium between providing technology and explaining technology to help better their student’s understanding? One possible answer to this would be to not focus on simply teaching student’s about technology. Combine the two together to show every student how both their participation in learning, and the aide of technology, can get them far. Teach every student the fundamentals of learning that will in turn provide them with the necessities to realize between good and bad technological finds. Teach every student to go beyond the basic requirements inside the classroom and the basics the technology around them has to offer. Doing so will enable all of our students to collectively grow and develop while learning new things in different ways.
Your distinction between technology spaces in which students can learn skills, as opposed to being taught these skills, is interesting. What I find most important about teaching is the willingness and eagerness of the student to learn. I think our most important job as teachers integrating technology into the school system is giving the students access to classrooms set up to learn new technology: to let them experience, explore, and eventually to learn important skills that will help them later in their post-secondary education where colleges are increasingly concerned with the integration of technology. Often students can learn more from individual software programs than we have the capacity to teach them, for any number of reasons (lack of time, newness of program, etc.).
As always, giving students these new forms of technology is difficult, especially considering the extremely limited budgets in many public schools. Once students are given the means to learn, they will. However, first we must be able to provide the resources for them to do so.
This is so cool! I found people who believe in the same things I do. I spent the last 4 years of my life trying to build the perfect online educational tool. Unfortunately, I did not have luck getting it into schools. It seems they only care about their state test. It’s a crazy world we live in!