Shift and Change in School: The “7 Things” Theory

I am toying with an idea that came up at a recent department meeting I had with my tech teachers here at Dubai American Academy.  I asked them each to talk about technology integration and what that meant to them and also how they percieved the success of that model at DAA.  Each talked about different things and I was struck that I agreed with each of them.  How then to reconcile all those ideas?

In relating the discussion to others afterwards I found myself repeatedly saying “There are 7 things that need to change in order to make a successful change in Tech use in schools.”  I am not sure where I got the number, but “7 Things” seemed to make my point that, even if you change one or two things about the school or about teaching, you will not effect lasting change or successfully shift the school into a 21st Century Technology Learning model.

Most importantly, these all need to be done at the same time.  They are not successful when only some of them are done and they are not successful when done sequentially.

So what are the 7 Things?

• Curriculum: The curriculum needs to change to reflect integrated technology opportunities within subject area units (even if they need to be changed every year or two)
• PD: Classroom and subject area teachers need good PD both in technology tools appropriate to their area and in planning units and lessons with technology tools from the outset (not planning their lessons and units and then asking the tech team for some help afterward).
• Schedule: The use of computer lessons as planning time for teachers (in the elementary school) and having mandatory (or elective) classes in “technology” needs to be thrown out to allow the tech “teachers” time to plan and teach collaboratively, to go to classrooms or work with other teachers in the labs.  The labs (if there are to be labs at all) need to be open for teachers to use.
• Hardware and computer labs: Students need their own computer.  Period.  Along with this, the network must be created/improved to handle the load of 1:1.  Accept this and start planning now because it takes years to get there.
• Perceptions of Technology: Technology can no longer be seen as a separate subject.  It is not.  Technology tools are tools that help students learn Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, Music, Drama, Art, etc.  They are the things that enable students to make connections in their learning.
• Collaborative teaching: Until all teachers are proficient enough in their own requisite tech tools, teachers must work together with their colleagues and the school’s technology integration specialists.  The team approach is essential.
• Choosing the right tools: We need to take a good close look at what technology tools are really necessary for each grade level and subject and work with teachers to get them and their students proficient in using those.  We do not need to teach students 10 different software packages each year.  Choose a couple of tools and use them over and over.  For learning.  Not for their own sake.  If a certain tool, like PowerPoint, is not serving the classroom curriculum, we need to stop using it and teaching it.  We don’t need to teach PowerPoint in Grade 3 because they will need it in Middle School.

7 Things.  All at the same time.

Some caveats of course.  What do you think?  Let’s hear some challenges and Yeah-Buts in the comments.

Let the students drive?

Good post over at Clay Burrel’s blog, reflecting on his school’s 1:1 program and how students see it.

An Old Prophecy Confirmed? On the Uses and Abuses of Laptop Learning

My comment:

I think that this is a trap many 1:1 schools encounter, forcing the tech and “making good use” of the expensive new toys. If students are not seen to be making iMovies constantly, the board will question the program and revoke the funding.

What if we did this instead? What if we gave the kids the laptops, because there is no doubt in my mind that kids need anytime anywhere access to these tools, and we relied on them to decide when and how they wanted to use them?

What if, instead of teachers continually telling students how to learn or how to communicate their learning, we instead formed a partnership with the students and allowed choice in student products? What if we stopped worrying about the cost of the laptops and allowed some students to leave them in their backpack for days on end if they simply did not need them?

So, in this scenario, the kids have the technology. The teachers have the curriculum and the learning outcomes, benchmarks, standards, whatever, and the students can use or not use the technology tools based on their learning styles, interests and aptitudes. Students and teachers need to learn about the technology tools and what their options are, but teachers only need to assign a task like this: Show me that you have learned X. Use whatever medium you like, imovie, pencil and paper, blog, podcast, etc. Communicate to me and your peers (or dare I say even an authentic audience somwehere) what you have learned. You have a laptop and all the tools you need. Bonus points for using the tech tools in a way that we have not seen before. Let the students teach us about how they use technology.

What if we stopped trying to force the technology and instead allowed different students to use different tools based on them, not us?

Imagine all the students, learning things this way….

Change is slow in education and change in technology in education has been particularly slow, compared to the rate of technology change and penetration in the “real” world.  I think that comes in many ways from schools and teachers trying to be experts at it and not giving students enough ownership over their learning.  Teachers have to assign the projects and set the tasks and if they are not comfortable with the technology or they only know the one thing they learned in the PD they got in August (used to be PowerPoint and now its iMovie), they use that over and over, even when it is not appropriate to the task.

The power and potential of technology, as we can see by the evolution of the web to a democratizing platform of user-driven content and services, is that individuals can use the things that work for them.  We must engage students in a partnership for learning.  Give them the tech tools and let them run with them.  Let them teach us and teach each other how they can best use the tools for learning.  Let them innovate.  Let them experiment.  Let them fail.  Let them learn.

What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is approaching being passe but it is still interesting to me that the term has varying meanings depending on who you ask.  I found this today on the new Microsoft World Wide Telescope website:

“Web 2.0 is the next generation of the World Wide Web wherein technologies and social practices use metadata or tags to enable communication and resource sharing in a variety of forms (text, audio, video, links, etc.) through the Web without a centralized authority’s intervention or approval. Rich visualization software provides a graphical visualization of large structured data sets. The software’s interactive graphical user interface provides users with a more data-rich presentation of the data and enables them to explore, filter, analyze, and interact with the data, resulting in a better understanding of that data.”

From this page: http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/whatIs/whatIsWWT.aspx

Thank you Microsoft.

Others of course claim that Web 2.0 does not really exist and still others claim that it has to do with the social web rather than the commercial web that pre-dated the dot-com bust.

For me Web 2.0 is all about data driven websites.  Interactive sites that allow you, as the user, to log in and customize your interaction with the site in some way, or give and receive data with the site.  Social networks, blogs and wikis are all examples of this kind of interactive web.  I distinguish Web 2.0 sites from the old HTML sites that gave info and left it at that.  Looking back in time, using the Wayback Machine for example, it is interesting to see web sites from the 90’s that have static front pages providing info on a company or brand and that offer no way to join or get more info beyond what the webmaster chose to put there. Hard to imagine now.

Web 3.0, if there ever is such a thing, will likely be an extension of the web 2.0 data model where data from diverse sites will begin to come together using tags across sites or by linking user profiles across sites.  Somehow the various stores of data will be connected and manipulated by users in ways that the data can not right now because it is tied to one domain or one company.

We’ll see.

Google Spreadsheets now as a Wiki!

Google Spreadsheets, the online spreadsheet program that is part of Google Docs, has just added a new feature by which you can make a spreadsheet open for editing to anyone and everyone.  Before, you could invite collaborators but you had to provide them with a link that included a secret code so only invited people could participate.  Now you can have it open for anyone to click a link from a web page or blog and edit in real-time with many others.  See a full explanation at http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-spreadsheets-become-wikis.html

Cool.

Asus EEE PC 900 review

Wired’s Gadget Lab has a preliminary look at the Asus EEE 900.  It looks awesome but the price is getting a little high to be an ultra-affordable ultra-portable.  I would say $400 is a max for a machine like this as you can get a full-fledged Dell laptop for around $600.  The new EEE 900 is priced at $550 according to Wired.

Wired Review

I suppose you could get three of these instead of one MacBook.  I really like the EEE, but the iLife suite is a great set of tools for students and I am not sure if the EEE, without a CD drive, would be as suitable for young kids, software-wise.