I did get to attend one session at the MN ASCD conference yesterday, Passion and Culture: Effective Schools for the 21st Century. The presenter, a university person, visited a number of schools that have been identified as exemplifying twenty-first century teaching and learning. Among them were:
- Mission Hill School,
- High Tech High, and
- John Dewey School
The presenter talked about the qualities of those schools that were unique, ending out with two areas of interest, Culture (clear, guiding and positive school culture) and Passion (an evident passion for learning). But what really got my noggin cooking was a question that one of the attendees asked at the end of the session. The young man asked if the presenter saw, in her studies and interviews, where the line was in these schools with regard to rigid structures of time, space, and expectations; and flexibility.
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| I talked about these rigid points of traction the other day in my article, More on School 2.0. I didn’t know it then, but students in the classroom and elements in the community had become these traction points as well as the software that facilitated the communications. |
What seemed to be implied here (and it may have been my own pre-conceived notions) was that you can have either a rigid structure or a flexible structure. That just didn’t ring true for me, and after some time to bounce this around in my head, I realize that it isn’t a matter of either/or, but, instead, it’s a when, where, and who. The rigidity is an essential element in teaching. To learn, you have to have something to push off of. It may be the textbook, the assignment, the lecture, what ever. There has to be something hard to gain traction from, or else all of that classroom energy just flares out, accomplishing nothing.
The question is who determines where and when those rigid points will be applied. Most recently, it has been government mandated tests, turning learners into mere reflectors of their learning. But in a more flexible learning environment, we might come to trust teachers, once again, to determine the points of rigidity — the traction points. They might be textbooks. They might also be blogging software that provides a hard place for students to express their knowledge and beliefs. It might also be other students, by which blogged ideas will be captured, responded to, and bounced back out. It might come to be elements in the community who do the same — see what and how their children are learning, and respond, providing yet another point of traction. All kinds of things are possible, if we can just let go of the fear, and start doing our jobs again.
2¢ Worth
Nice article Im linking it in my post.
Dave:
I like the way the conversation is going. The point that I would try to make is that as students become more adept in using the skills that are part of 21st Century literacy, that the compactness of your circle begins to expand. As the circle expands, there is more space between the students and more of the communication lines travel outside of the circle. You have three lines traveling outside of the circle in your diagram, I would suspect that you would see many more as student skill increases. (Hoping I’m not too redundant!) This would also be the case for the physical stucture of the school. The current assembly line structure would become looser and looser as the learning skills of the 21st Century are adopted, teachers are trained, and best practices are established. As for teacher training and learning in general, I am taking a more constructionist approach where students will create as a process to learn, therefore teachers cannot be the ‘possessor of all knowledge’ but the one guiding the process and becoming a ‘lead learner.’ So, instead of titling this ‘School 2.0’ we might be better off calling it, ‘Learning 2.0.’
Not that anything I just posted is new, but it is just a slightly different way at looking at the same information. I’m going to post on my own blog and link back… I think this is a conversation that needs to get much more involved with more voices to frame it properly.
Thanks!
Dear Dave:
One year ago I didn’t know what the word blog meant, and now I do it on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. Had I not decided to formally continue my education, I may have missed out on some pretty amazing technological resources. Several of my professors embrace and encourage the use of blogs to post assignments and share ideas. These blogs have been a key factor in creating an open, energetic forum in a particular english class of mine. Seeing twenty different perspectives on one common task is a learning tool am I thrilled to be a part of. At times my english professor allows his students the flexibility to choose the blog topic and continually expand on eachothers blog conversations. Usually those are the times I am inspired the most. Some of the greatest writing I have done and read is when I had the freedom to explore. We still use textbooks and lectures to initiate the overall topic of learning but the conversation-like blogs keep things stimulating.