Future of Education

I just came across this interview with David Sherman, the principal of South Park Elementary School in Deerfield, Illinois. I’m sure he gets plenty of cracks about “South Park”. One statement he made stood out to me;

…I believe that I must model the use of Web 2.0 tools for the staff and parents. I feel that it is my responsibility to keep learning about these tools, which I do mostly through RSS feeds. I am confident that the teachers now know enough about Web 2.0 tools to start using them, so I am starting to “push” a little harder at the individual teacher level whenever the time is right. I spend a lot of time talking with teachers about ways to incorporate these tools into their teaching. Often, these discussion come from my classroom visits and teacher observations.

I don’t expect all administrators to as tech savvy as David Sherman, or others such as Chris Lehmann. What I would like to see is all administrators to have a basic understanding of technology, specifically web 2.0. I want them to understand the role technology plays in an effective 21st century school. I want them to be able to employ these technologies to increase student achievement in their district/building . When I say administrators, I mean superintendents, principals, directors and any other personnel in a position of leadership.

Once the administrators take on this role as a technology user, then more teachers in their district will take steps to do the same. At that point we will be able to push the way David Sherman is. Getting his teachers to a new level. If the teachers are moving to a new level, just think about the places they must be taking their students. I hope I can play a role in helping my district reach these new levels.

As I prepare for my presentations over the next week (school board tomorrow and Ohio eTech Conference next week) I want to use this space to thank my personal learning network (PLN). In my preparations, the responses I have gotten from my twitter friends,  Diigo Groups, co-workers, and my wife (she is my co-presenter at eTech) have been an amazing resource. I would suggest to all teachers to create an online PLN to be an add on to your face-to-face contacts. You will become a better teacher in no time because of the ideas and resources that will come your way. So thank you PLN.

Today is the Sunday many educators dread. After two great weeks of celebrating the holidays and being with our loved ones, we must now cram in all the work we have been putting off the last two weeks. I am no different. I have four videos to create for a presentation to district administrators this Friday, I need to create a wiki for a central Ohio technology integration collaborative I am working to create, come up with a 15 minute how to session for elementary teacher centered around Word, update my materials for Ohio Etech Presentation, and reply to all the emails I have received the last two weeks. So, why am I writing this post?

One of my goals for 2009 is to blog consistently. This means I may have to force myself to procrastinate some of my other work in order to write (wish my high school teachers could read that line, they would pass out from the shock). I believe I have some great ideas to share, and it is time I put my thoughts out for the world to see.

I am going to start 2009 with a series of post about what a 21st century school should look like. Few of my ideas are going to be original, but I hope it to be another place to start a conversation. The first post later this week will be about assessment in the 21st century. It is time to end standardized testing and put the technology that is available to work. From there I will branch off and discuss; taking bells out of the school, integration across curricular areas, writing, research, the use of course management systems, web 2.0, etc. By the time I’m done, this may be a 30 part series.

I’m looking forward to doing the research and hope to see what the educational bloggers think and have to share.

Here is one of the few reasons I like my Mac better than the PC I used last year.

Photo Booth is a blast. The question I have for the education community is, what are the educational uses? Creative writing, science, art? Would love to hear how people are using this ‘fun’ tool in classrooms.

There is an article in todays Columbus Dispatch titled A-Twitter over youths.

Bob Evans is looking past the farm to bridge the digital divide between its traditional customer base and the tech-savvy younger crowd it also wants to reach.

To help, the Columbus-based restaurant and food-products company has entrusted a new marketing campaign to an Ohio University student-run public-relations firm. The students will help it create pages on Facebook and Twitter to reach younger consumers.

(If anyone is not familiar with Bob Evans, it is a large restaurant chain based out of Columbus, Ohio)

The business world is moving into social media. What about education? The question arises, does Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks have a place in education? Should teachers have Facebook pages?

In Ohio, Ohio Education Association has made public statements to teachers to delete Facebook pages if they have them.  To me this is another example of a knee jerk reaction in education. Someone, somewhere has used it inappropriately, so instead of educating the masses how to use the tool properly, we are going to tell them to stop using it and use our filters to block it at school.

Students are going to use social networks no mater what we do. It is part of our society. So isn’t it the roll of schools, in conjunction with parents, to teach students how to use the tools responsibly and effectively? How can you teach a student to use a tool in which you don’t know how to use yourself. For me, I’m not going to stop using it. I see a huge benefit to my social network and my online professional network. I would say I gain as much knowledge from these groups as I ever have from any other source in my life. As important to the knowledge I gain, it the fun I have participating.

As you ponder my words and thoughts, you might follow it up with Will Richardson’s most recent post that talks about students use of social networks and their learning. It includes some interesting findings from a recent study by the MacAuthor Foundation.

As I work toward the future (or catching teachers up to the present), I struggle with where to start. The day to day tasks of emails, meetings, etc… sometimes move my focus. I am now trying to refocus on the question, how do we get teachers into the 21st century. Some are already on their way. Those are the early adopters. Many are interested, they just don’t know what direction to take. Should I focus solely on these folks right now. There are enough of them to fill my days. The dilemma I run into is, what about the kids who don’t have these teachers? Is it fair? A student could luck out and get all the “21st century teachers” and live an engaged life. Another students could sit through 6 hours of lecture a day. The only engagement they would get would be lunch conversations.

My goal today is to figure out what the focus of my work is. Do I target groups? Do I fight the fight to change the entire system? Do I keep spending my time with the teachers who come to me (the good news is there are enough of these to fill the majority of my time)? Oh, my brain is already aching and I haven’t even started?

I am furious. I just received an e-mail from a counselor in our district that her wiki is blocked. I then tried to go to my wiki, blocked. Seriously? We are blocking wikispaces? We use a consortium for our filters. Many of the schools in central Ohio use this same filter. This means that at least on of these schools has asked for wikispaces to be blocked. When will this ignorance end? When will our students and teachers be aloud to enter the 21st century? I’m so mad at this moment I cannot even formulate intelligent solutions.

Lucky for me, we have override power. I’m confident that our district will have their access back before the end of the day. What about the other local districts? Do they have people inside who are educated enough to know these sites shouldn’t be blocked? What about the great collaborative learning experiences their students are missing? Words cannot tell how sick I feel right now.

A while back I wrote that my new goal was to get administrators to model the use of web 2.0 tools so staff members would see their value. Since I wrote that post, I moved to new district. I have a different set of administrators to try to convince. I envisioned this could go two ways. I could walk into a dream school where the administrators were ready to go day one. Dream is the key word.  The other way was more realistic, it would take months or years to build trust and relationships before we would really make any changes. To my surprise, it has been a little blend of the two.

My working partner and I were meeting with HS admins a few days ago. We were giving them some updates as to what we’ve been doing and where were going next. Then out of the blue the principal asks us if we can teach him about blogs and wikis. He is a great leader, an excellent principal, but not very high tech. For him to jump into the 21st century will be a huge boost to our efforts to create a 21st century school district.

The next step is to actually get him into the training. Not only does he want trained, he wants to do it along side his teachers. I went to the Language Arts department head today to see if his department would like to take part in this event. Sounds like we are a go.

I am starting to see a little bit of light through the trees. We have a long way to go till we have a 21st century school, but the first step is to have teachers and administrators walking down the same path we are.

After a long layoff, which I will explain in a future post, the “Future of Education” Blog is back. As I start writing again, I want to truly focus on the title of the blog and its tag line. What is the future of education and where are we going?

In my writing, I am going to focus on educational change and 21st century skills. That is the future and the direction we should be going in.

In the area of educational change, I want to reflect on what is good in education today as well as what is not. I will not list the problems schools have. I will talk about solutions. In some post I will be seeking out solutions. I have many answers. What I hope this blog becomes is a way for my answers to become better ones with the help of a community of readers (assuming I build a group of readers again).

With 21st century skills, I will share; successful examples of 21st century learning I see, resources to help educators in the 21st century and links to blog to other sites that do the same.

It feels good to get the keyboard clicking again. Hopefully you will join me in moving education into the 21st Century here at the Future of Education blog.

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.”