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

In the world of failed school levies and 4 million dollars in cuts, union negotiations, and all the other “stuff” that negatively effects our schools, I need a positive moment. Here is my dream school.

Every student has a computing device with wireless access. To make this even more of a utopia, they have wireless access to the network from home also. Every teacher has a laptop, smartboard and projector. All of these teachers have spent days of professional development time preparing themselves to engage their students in a 1:1 environment. The teachers are also given 2 periods per day for planning and professional development.

Gone are the days of the teacher speaking at the students for 50 minutes about something they truly could care less about. The students are creating content: wikis, blogs, videos, podcast, social networking sites, etc… The assignments are project based, not memorize these facts based.

My roll in this classroom will be very similar to what it is now. Ongoing training and support of how to seamlessly embed the technology into their lessons. When a teacher needs help, I will plan with them and go into their classroom and help.

Hopefully one day soon I will live in this utopia. There will always be issues and problems, but I hope we solve the big ones that exist today (at least in my district and state) very soon. 

My new motto (needs work)…”It’s not about the technology, it is about teaching and learning. The technology will allow us to change how we teach and improve the students learning.”

I struggle with the idea of filtering vs teaching. I believe we filter way to much and educate way too little. I’ll leave the rest of that thought for another post. I found this article to be very interesting. The article, quoted below, talks about how we are overdoing the “Internet is a dangerous place” talks.

“One of the biggest surprises in making this film was the discovery that the threat of online predators is misunderstood and overblown. The data shows that giving out personal information over the Internet makes absolutely no difference when it comes to a child’s vulnerability to predation.” (That one blew my mind, because every single Internet-safety Web site and pamphlet hammers repeatedly on this point: never, ever give out your personal information online.)

Read the entire NYTimes article

Any thoughts or reactions?

This video clip shows the amazing things we can do with technology today. If you need something a little inspirational, check it out. I have never used Skype, but I am looking forward to the day where we have the bandwidth to use it. If we all had this resource, like this video shows, less children would be left behind. 

If you have never watched the show Boston Legal, you are truly missing out on one of the most intelligent shows on television. MENSA put it on their 10 smartest shows of all time. I don’t always agree on the social commentary they are trying to make, but it always makes me think and more importantly, laugh! Last night, through the great technology of DVR, I watched the December 11th episode. Half of the show focused on NCLB and testing. Unfortunately they are not streaming this show currently. If this episode comes back on through reruns, I encourage all educators to watch it. It would be great if all legislators watched it also. It makes the point that our schools are failing, not the fault of the teachers. It is the fault of the system the teachers are forced to teach in. Today my building is spending an hour practicing for “the test.” When are we going to start practicing for the real world? Since Hollywood is were we get our political opinions from now a days (sickening) hopefully more of Hollywood will put on shows such as this to get the governments attention.

After reading this post by Bob Sprankle, I finally had a little light bulb click on in my head (it may be a dim bulb, but at least it turned on). The days of integrating technology need to end. For those of us who have had the job of technology integrator, it has been a great run. It needs to change. As long as we are integrating technology, the big shift into 21^st century learning will not happen. We need to embed the technology into the classroom, not just integrate it. What is the difference? Great Question! Look at the definition of the two words:

Embed: to incorporate or contain as an essential part or characteristic
Integrate: To make part of a larger unit

When we integrate, it is sometimes there, but it isn’t essential. You can integrate technology for one day, or one week and then not use it again. If the technology is embedded, it is always there.

There is only one way I know of to make this happen and that is to put a machine in the hands of every student. I have started a push for a 1:1 program in my district. It is actually being recieved better that I could have ever imagined. What are you doing to make the shift happen? I would love to hear.

I have been thinking about a way to get the students in my building blogging more and better. I have convinced a few teachers to create blogs where they post a topic or article and the students comment. They are doing this once per nine weeks. Good start, but not truly the idea behind blogging. Here is my first step toward the answer. Maybe it is a coincidence I thought of this the same week the Student 2.0 blog came out and I am writing this after reading David Jakes’ Post The Kids are Alright.

“Many educators want to change education, and have been looking for a way to do that-looking for that next great conversation that will make all the difference. Wouldn’t it be ironic if they’ve created just that, without realizing it, by teaching their third grade class to blog?So if you are someone who wants educational change, look no further. Change is coming, and it will ultimately rise not from us, but from the voice of our very own students.”

My idea is to give my students a voice by: creating a blog, in Moodle (I am using Moodle due to our districts blogging policy). I will post prompts for students to comment on their learning.  I will ask questions such as “how social networks could be used productively in schools?” I may get some junk answers, but the good ones could help us give students the voice they deserve.

Since the blog will be private, I will paste the good post on here once I get it started. It will most likely be in January since we start vacation in one week. Woohoo! Any and all prompts for the students are welcome.

I want to work in a 1-to-1 environment (one computer per student). So, I need to take some action:

1. Research what has worked for others 
2. Develop a plan
3. Get administative support of the plan
4. Find funding
5. Get teachers onboard who want to work in a 1 to 1 environment

Well, I have started to work on the all the steps except for #4.

http://future-of-education.wikispaces.com/One+to+One+Brainstorm

 What is my next step? Will administration buy into my ideas? Who is going to help me fund this? What schools schould I be looking at as examples? Oh the fun I have set myself up for. Any advice out there?