I’m waking up to snow this morning, here in Salt Lake City. Schools will be closed. The conference will be canceled. Bread and milk will disappear from the grocery store shelves. The entire city’s going to — Oh Yeah! I’m in Utah! It’s going to be business as usual. They’re going to pick me up at the hotel at 7:00, I’ll deliver my keynote to over a thousand Utah educators (a sizable percentage of this state’s teachers) and deliver workshops about blogging, podcasting, wikis, and harnessing the digital landscape.
It was nice to get to my hotel early yesterday. I’ve redone several of my slide shows, which is not necessarily a good thing. It means that for much of my presentations, I’ll not know what slide is coming up next. A little un-nerving — but heck, it’s snowing out side. I think we’re all going to be up for an adventure.
While at the METC conference, earlier this week, I took some time off and had a conversation with Christina Gordon from the National School Board’s Association. She’s writing an article for one of their publications and asked me a few questions. I spoke at one of their conferences a few weeks ago in Washington, and was evidently in “the zone” that day. In the presentation, I talked about what kids need to know today, what, and how they need to be learning. She asked…
What do school board members need to know today?
I answered with three things:
- They need to know that change is constant today. The market place is changing, our customers (the students) are changing, and the information landscape with which and within which we teach is changing dramatically. All of these drastically challenge the act of schooling.
- Our outcome has not changed. We must continue to have generations of literate, knowledgeable, and inventive citizens. What all of that means is changing, but the outcome is the same.
- All stakeholders in education must understand that teaching the creative arts (music, art, drama) is as critical to our continued prosperity as teaching the practical arts (science, technology, and mathematics)
Another question was about policy, which is a tough one for me since I have never been that much of a policy wonk. But I told her that I believe that No Child Left Behind has done far more harm to education in the U.S. than good. It is an industrial age solution to an information age problem. But NCLB is correct in that schools, teachers, and students must be accountable to their communities.
I think that we need to find new ways of assessing the success of our education endeavors, methods that are more relevant to a changing market place, changing customers, and a rapidly changing information landscape. I found a perfect example this morning when I ran across a podcast program from the Pudong Campus of the Shanghai American School. One of their tech people, Mr. Torris simply walked into grade 5 classrooms and started interviewing teachers and kids about what they were learning.
What’s different here is that rather than relying on numbers that describe learners as products, the community is almost literally invited into the classrooms to learn what and how their children are learning and what they are doing with it. This is what I would like to have known about my children’s schools. I’d like to have been part of it — not just an outside inspector.
2¢ Worth
Dave,
I find your post interesting and I am trying to create a better understanding of the impact or really the alternitive to accountability through traditional assessments. I just started working with a committee at my kids’ elementary school and we are discussing issues like “curriculum transformation”. This is good, but I can walk in like you mention and see the issues (as I see them I guess), they seem similar to the issues of 10 years ago. The teachers need better leadership (in our case) on the issues that matter most, strategies for individualized instruction and accountability for learning mastery. I just don’t see a lot of either from our teachers.
What is the evaluation model for that? If I were principal I would use the students score as a single (and important measure), probably create individualized evaluation for each of the classroom teachers, and focus on a continual improvement model.
Since I am not the principal but a parent, how does my assessment impact the school? Do I make recommendations in writing and submit them to the principal? (which I have done when the entire second floor lost recess due to a loud lunch room. I emailed a pdf on research countering the effectiveness of such an approach by 4:15pm) I have conducted a technology workshop for the teachers on using Google earth, pbwiki, and edublogs.org and my wife was pretty much a perment fixture in the school until we decided to homeschool our daughter this year due to health issues.
I guess sometimes I still feel like this is pretty ineffecient. I heard the former president of a western telco once say, “to create real change, you have to have a crisis that everyone understands”. It sounds to me like the crisis horn has been sounding for a long time…. but the leadership doesn’t understand what to do.
David,
Thanks for the mention of our podcast here at Pudong. That will get all of us EVEN more motivated to try new things. Funny thing is that I am going to write about this experience on my site this weekend. The teachers and students were very amusing; almost scared to speak. Some even ran away, but the response around the school has been remarkable. The kids especially found themselves just “talking” to me, and totally forgot about the iPod. Assessment can carry a whole new slant from there. I will be interested to see what the parents have to say.
Btw….. I appreciate the promotion to “tech person”- I WISH!!
That being said… I am the principal.
(smile)
Andy
Thanks for this posting! I am meeting with members of my school board this week to educate them a bit about Web 2.0 and your three items will come in very handy!
In answer to the comment about how do we assess these things, I think the idea you illustrated is a good one with the podcast from Pudong. Additionally, many principals are now being trained in the art of the “walk through” – explained here: http://www.education-world.com/a_admin/admin/admin405.shtml. You might share this book with the principal of the school and then help set some “exemplars” or “best practices” that specifically address the use of technology and the web that can be added to these “walk throughs.”
David
Thanks for the insiprational delivery in Rotorua, New Zealand a couple of weeks
ago. You have really shifted our thinking as professionals and we are all excitied about the integration of ICT this year. WE can now blog!
Kia ora
Gene
David, where does learning a second language fit into your equation of what students today need to know? Is it not a critical component of a “flat world?” I would like to read your thoughts on this.