Future of Education

I would like to share my experience last night. I umpire high school baseball. Over the last few years I have been assigned more and more varsity level games. Last night I was assigned a game between two of the better teams in central Ohio. I was exited to get the game, but once I got to the game I became very anxious. As I pull into the parking lot, there sits a production van for a local cable network, Columbus Sports Network. Think of it as ESPN for central Ohio.

This was a positive and negative to me. The coach in me was excited that I could go home, set the DVR (they are playing the game 7 times this week and putting it on the local on demand channel) and have footage to be able to evaluate my work. The human in me was anxious because any mistakes I made would be shown in slow motion over and over.

Skipping to the end of the story…It was a great game, 10 innings 5-2 final score. My partner and I did a great job. Every close call received some oohs and ahhs from the crowd, 50% of the people always think you are wrong (high school parents can be brutal). I look forward to seeing the game to find out if I was right on all of my calls.

Now what I took from this as an educator. How do 15-18 year-olds handle playing on TV. The coach told me the station had been working in the school for a week. Interviewing players and learning all about them. When I asked how the kids handled the distraction, the coach told me it was harder for the coaches than the players. It once again show the difference between these kids and us. If I knew a week in advance I was going be playing on TV, I wouldn’t have slept. They want to be published, to be on TV, and on the Internet. Lets keep pushing to get them there. When our students work hard, they deserve the recognition they get by being “published.”

Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting to a group of administrators of career technical schools. The presentation was in the form of a round table discussion around the topic of using wiki’s in education. This is the first time I have ever done a session directed towards administrators. It was an eye opening experience.

These administrators were very interested in how the technology can be used. They asked great questions, and I thank them for inviting me to be part of their professional development event. I believe I may have learned something more importaint than any of them did. As we try to get teachers to see the value of web 2.0 tools, we need to put a little more focus on getting administrators to see their value.

My new goal (I realy need to stop adding to this list) is to teach administrators how to use blogs, wikis, etc… as communications and collaboration tools. As they learn to use these tools, it will model for teachers how powerful these tools can be.

So my current goal list is:

• Do a better job of doing my job (should always be number one for all of us)
• Teach in a 1:1 environment (one computer per student)
• Get administrators to model how to effectively use web 2.0 tools
• Get teachers to effectively use web2.0 tools.

Now the challenge, how do I get the ear and time of the administrators? Off to start.

It is nice to be back to my blog again. After a week of making websites with 7th graders (very cool project, check out the final products). I have a few minutes free.

Life has been good over the last week. I found out my job isn’t being cut (this year), created the websites mentioned above and saw the Columbus Destroyers (Arena Football) win a game. Why did I mention the game? After the game my friends and I are sitting and listening to a band, interesting funk band at that. The table next to us are a bunch of kids (early 20’s) snapping pictures. I overhear this statement made from one of the young ladies to a young man: “what is your name? I’ll tag it.” Our kids are living in a world where they know what tags are and how to use them. How many teachers know what a tag is? How many teachers have even heard of a tag? I asked a teacher what a tag is in regards to technology and the reply was “is that the sticker with the number on the side of the computer?” A tag to a teacher is a sticker we use to identify the computer in our inventory. This comment stresses to me that we have a lot of teaching to do, not just to our students, but to our teachers.

 The question being when? With it being testing season finding time is tough. Everything right now is “I can’t till after the test.” UGH