Building Understanding

Both administrators and teachers are busy.

(Phew, I got that out of the way.)

Many of the ideas we share in the edu-blogosphere revolve around new ideas (for education) and new practices.  Embedding technology into the classroom no longer means making sure that students word process, do spreadsheets, and “do PowerPoint”.

Thank goodness.

Instead, we now want teachers to understand that best practice technology use should be “transformational” (Alan November’s word).  The use of technology should be to do things we couldn’t do without a computer.  Kids should be collaborating, communicating, and managing information in ways that simply weren’t possible before.  Even using technology to provide efficiency to allow for greater depth of reflection and understanding is powerful.

We know this.

But teachers are busy.  How can they begin to learn and know all of these practices?  Who will “develop” their skills with technology and learning?

The tech folks?  Sure, but it’s an uphill task and let’s not forget that “busy” thing.  If teachers are expected to spend time developing their pedagogy involving technology one of two things need to happen:

1. They get it.  They see the need and they believe they need to learn it so that their students will learn.
2. It needs to be made clear that this is valued by their administrators.

I wrote before about the need to get administrators on board with the necessary shift in education.  This is important to school-wide change.

But administrators are busy too.  How can they possibly keep up with best practice?  They can’t know it all, but they can know enough to ensure that they are fostering positive professional growth in their faculty.  Using their supervisory role as an opportunity to see what teachers are using technology for and sharing what they value by asking questions, teachers are more likely to reflect upon their use of technology and make changes with the help of their tech people.

I recently presented at the EARCOS administrator’s conference on this very idea.  Titled, “Looking for Learning – How supervisors can foster best practice technology use,” I shared various best practice “things to look for” in how a teacher is using technology in their classroom. (I’d share the slides, but in doing it “presentation zen”, without the talking, they don’t read particularly well – a curse of “the zen”.  I did include a handout on my presentation wiki, but forgot to tell my audience.)

The goal: give administrators enough knowledge to do more than check off a box that indicates whether a class was “using technology” or not.

Give them enough knowledge to ask reflection-provoking questions and professionally grow their faculty.

Photo by Stephen Poff
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Here’s what I presented…

Physical space:

• Does desk layout foster collaboration (kids on computers are isolating enough)?
• Can a teacher move around and see all computers and all students?

Classroom Management:

• When the teachers wants attention, do they have students lower the lids (so simple, yet so under-used)?
• When students are working, is the teacher in front of the room only able to see the back of the laptops? (walking around checking on student understanding and work has ALWAYS been best practice)
• When beginning class with instructions and learning outcomes, are the teachers saving time by having their machines logging in?

After sharing these simple tips in how teachers use physical space and manage a class of students on laptops, I offered some key suggestions for what can be different with best practice use of technology.

Great pedagogy with technology can provide:

1. audience
2. voice
3. connections
4. collaboration
5. communication

All ultimately leading to important learning.

I then shared several questions for that post-observation conference:

1. In what ways did the technology enhance the learning?
2. Who were the students’ audience?  What feedback will they get?
3. What other audiences, could enhance the learning?
4. What technology skills did you expect students to have in order to be successful?  Did they have them?
5. What technology skills did you expect students to acquire if successful?  Did they get them?

Equipped with these questions, administrators share the thinking that goes into best practice technology use.  They encourage reflective pedagogy and consideration of what matters when selecting technology to enhance a lesson.

I hope it struck a chord.  I hope it leads to better instruction and more importantly better learning.

I hope we all continue to professionally grow.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

In returning from the Learning 2.008 Conference, I have had a lot on my mind.  The conference brought together educators new to all of this “shift happens” talk and those that were on board – our “converted” that echo in the blogosphere, sometimes too much.  And the conference continues to succeed in bringing an enthusiasm and energy to those new to these ideas – getting more people “on the bus”.  If that’s happening, then the conference is doing its job.

But I wonder where the rest of us are going.

Sifting through my RSS reader, reading through the blog posts of my Personal Learning Network, commenting and being commented upon, I find myself questionning where we stand.

How much change are we affecting?

How much “shift” is happening in our schools?

In isoloated projects or classrooms, some incredible stuff is happening.  Kids are collaborating.  They’re networked, wired, savvy, and being prepared to succeed.

But in those same schools and throughout education, we still that the majority are not on the bus – they didn’t even know that there was somewhere to go.

What is going to be the tipping point of this shift?

Will schools resist changing and render themselves obsolete? And at what stage does this become unethical to allow?

Real widespread change is going to have to come from administration.

In schools, we find ourselves clinging to proven pedagogy and content curriculum, because they have worked in the past and it’s what we know.

Now however, we also recognize that students need more different learning.  They’ve always needed the skills of communication, collaboration, and meta-cognition.  We’ve always valued Gardner’s disciplined and ethical minds (and other Five Minds).  But the context for which they need these skills and minds has changed, sped up, and arguably gained in importance.  As a result, students need different learning experiences to ensure their participation and success in a rapidly changing world.

So, here I go again, joining the echo chamber, preaching to the converted.  Where am I going with this?

Educators who get this idea, are on one side of a chasm from the rest of education still rooted in old practice (with best intentions).

In trying to lead change, educators are trying to manage this gap between what we’ve done and what we need to do.  It needs to be school administrators who lead this shift, by bridging the gap between the tried-and-true and the bold-and-new.

The edublogosphere made up of consultants and librarians, technology facilitators and teachers are doing their best and making headway, but the fog is still thick and they are navigating through it with a flashlight.

It will take school administrators who see the need for educational change (reform is too intimidating a word) to take isolated innovation and make it practice.

Truly make it the way we do business.

So, get to work on your administrators and get them on board.  Or better yet, become administrators yourselves.

Keep in mind that you lead a staff who are generally good teachers.  They have great intentions.  They care about student learning.  And all the good that they have done and can do is not yet obsolete (no matter how often we tell ourselves it is).

We find ourselves at a pivotal time, I believe, where a new wave of administrators could be coming through, grounded in traditional schooling, but also thriving in a wired world.  Educators who understand both sides of the gap.

It is these administrators who can bridge this gap.

You won’t find these educators satisfied getting on the bus – they’re ready to drive it.

Maybe one of these people is you.

Or me.

Photo by tread
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Also posted as a guest blogger on Dangerously Irrelevant

When Scott put out his initial request for guest bloggers on school leadership, Justin Medved and I considered whether we fit the bill. We are not school heads or principals, but rather a different kind of leadership that is emerging in this current era of technological change and efforts in education to use this change positively.

We are Technology and Learning Coordinators at International School Bangkok. Our primary role is to lead teachers toward embedded technology use, enhancing learning opportunities in the classroom and beyond.

More and more however, we find that school leadership looks to us to guide and inform on all sorts of decision-making, ranging from curriculum to hiring practice to processes involved in running the school. This defines a new kind of leadership in schools – one that breaks down typical hierarchical set-ups into one of collaboration and deferred expertise. One that is less top down and one that is more shared – at least in some areas. Ultimately, the buck continues to stop at the top, but input and influence seems to be growing from the “middle”.

Currently, many school administrators and curricular leaders are not “up-to-date” or savvy on current ed tech thinking or even on current technology tools. They lead from an understanding of traditional schools attached to isolated IT classes with computer labs for student use. They don’t grasp the possibilities of a participatory web or realize the true potential of the “network” (social and hardware).

For the most part, this is not because they don’t want to change, but because they don’t know what’s possible. This speaks less to their skills as an administrator and more to their backgrounds as educators. It is a credit to those administrators who recognize a changing landscape and ask for guidance from those in the know.

So they come to us.

We work in this dual role, convincing administration of directions we need to move, while at the same time working for teacher buy in. Administration defers to our expertise in these matters.

Both may be considered the jobs of the administrators, yet both jobs fall on the guys with the ideas and the people skills to get it done.

Do you have a similar situation in your schools? If you are reading this as a technology-type, what is your role in this alternative leadership? How much responsibility/say do you have?

Justin and I often tackle the question,

what does it take to bring administration on board to make significant change in schools, curricular or otherwise?“

This week we’d like to share with you the process that we went through from both a leadership side as well as a curricular side. We are in the process now, because we are trusted to do so, in moving ISB forward into a model of embedded technology founded on the Essential Questions of the 21st Century Learner. This curricular model has come directly from us rather than the curriculum office because we see a need for a different way to approach learning with technology.

In the coming posts, Justin and I will take you through our thinking on this curricular model with two purposes:

1. To get feedback from you and to push our thinking forward.
2. To hopefully inspire thinking at your own schools about how to best “embed” technology into classrooms so that is accessible to teachers and agrees with the way children live with technology.

This is a terrific opportunity to speak to a different audience than the readers we have already have at our own blogs (and those who have seen us present), so thanks, Scott. We are looking forward to the week.

with Justin Medved

Tomorrow’s Post: “Birth of a question and a concept” – How does an information and technology curriculum stay relevant and meaningful in the 21st Century?

Cross Posted at: Medagogy and Dangerously Irrelevant

(originally posted on harterlearning on Jan 17, 2007)

Some Thoughts About School 2.0 — Part 1 – Practical Theory: “It’s about the pedagogy. Too much educational software just attempts to turn these really powerful devices into the next version of the workbook. That’s criminal…

School 2.0 recognizes that our walls have broken down — and that’s a good thing. Our knowledge, our ideas, our communication is no longer bound by the walls of our school or the hours of our school day.

School 2.0 believes deeply in the old Dewey quote: ‘If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.’ “

This post was a terrific summary/introduction to what we need to recognize about the changing face of education that seems to be coming from a group led by Ed. Tech people. What most teachers and administrators are missing is that it is not a “tech-thing” and it’s not about the computers. It’s about learning and it’s about teaching kids in the best way for them to learn.

But also, it’s about what they are learning. And we can’t keep robbing these kids by teaching them the way that worked for us (and let’s not even argue whether it actually did ‘work’ for us). They need us to recognize that they need more…and they need US.

Let’s not let them down.