Future of Education

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.”

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.

From time to time I believe all teachers ask this question to themselves. I had a frustrating day yesterday and I started asking questions to myself (I don’t believe you are crazy if you talk to yourself, you are only crazy if you answer yourself out loud in a public place). Questions like: why am I working so hard to get teachers to use technology as and instructional tool? Why am I trying to start a 1:1 initiative when I have no idea if the districts administration will even listen to my ideas let alone implement my plan? How do I get the majority of educators to buy into a huge shift when I cannot get them to sign out a camera properly?

My reason why comes down to one answer. I Believe. I believe this is the right thing for the kids. Our country is an amazing place to live, but we are at a turning point. We need to make a change before a change happens that we don’t want to see. I believe our kids need to be creative, not spoon fed facts that can be found in seconds on hundreds of different websites. Yes they still need to know how to add, subtract, etc… But why not embed those skills into creative, real world, collaborative projects that will engage them? Technology does not create these projects, good teachers do. We have good teachers, they just need a catalyst to spark the change. I believe technology is that catalyst. If we; put a computer in every teacher and students hands, teach them how to use them, train the teachers to shift their lessons from one small lesson a day to teaching a big lesson over time that incorporates all the little skills, then we will be on our way to change.

Now I’m off to work some more on that change….

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.

Nine months ago, I wrote One at a time. After reading David Warlik’s post, My Apologies, I revisited my post to evaluate how successful have I been at my “One at a Time” theory? The reusults:

• Three teachers, who I never thought would get on the blogging bandwagon without a fight, came to me and got the ball rolling.
• Four others, who I expected to hop on board, are blogging. 
• I have another teacher ready to use a wiki to post a summary of his class each day. He isn’t going to post the summary, the students are. The students will also have access to the unit assessment on a wiki. They will be allowd to make changes to the assessment to make the questions better fit what they have been taught. We are just developing this, I will write more about this in the next month. Thank you to Steve Dembo for this great idea.
•  We wrote group research papers using wiki’s in a language arts class. (Each kid wrote a section and the group worked together on the into and conclusion.)
• Outside of web2.0 tools, all 400 of our 8th graders used Photostory 3 to create a video on the life-cycle of a star. I love digital story telling and if you haven’t seen it, Photostory is one of the best tools to date for simple videos. (side note…i didn’t work with a single 8th grade science student last year)

I’m not a patient person, but when I think about it, this isn’t bad. My next step is to get a pilot 1to1 team going. Anybody have some money they want to donate to a good cause?

This video “Digital Students @ Analog Schools” was made for the college level. The majority of what these students had to say applies to k-12 education also. Give it a look and share your thoughts.

Download Video: Posted by marottam at TeacherTube.com.

Does this inspire you to change the way you teach? What is blocking us from changing the way we teach? Why are educators content not understanding the tools students want to use for learning?

Here is a direct link to the video on TeacherTube.

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=b5c8973ade16764156be 

Since this site wasn’t getting many hits, I stopped writing for quite a while. I am now ready to get back to writing and hope that the few people who currently read this enjoy it and get something out of it.

I am teaching a session next week during our districts in-service day on blogging in the classroom. I have what I feel is a great plan to engage the 20 participants in the two hour session. My goal is for each teacher to have a blog-space of their own setup and ready to use in their classroom the following week. The one area where I want to be better prepared is giving the group ideas to blog about. I have created the fancy name of “The Blogging Idea Project.” For this project, I have set up this wiki for the education world to create a database of blogging ideas. You can add entire post, or simply topics you would have your students blogs about. If there are other similar list out there, send me the links and I will add those to the wiki. Thanks in advance for your contributions.

My question is not why use web 2.0 in the classroom, but how do we get teachers to get on board? I was very frustrated by the fact that it wasn’t just happening. I am currently teaching an online professional development class centered around blogging and a few other technology topics (websites, inspiration, digital images). I have 11 teachers from my district in the one semester hour class. They posed a lot of questions and concerns about blogging in the classroom. They were concerned about; security, management, replying to 150 students post, rules and guidelines, tech skills, home access, and so on. I feel like I calmed the fears of the majority. Enough that two of the teachers have started a classroom blog and at least half of them will start one next school year.

So, how do we get teachers into the web 2.0 world? One at a time. We need to get our best, our most vocal, and our inovative teachers on board first. We have to help them out and make sure they are doing it the right way. We have to make sure they are successful. When they are successful and they see growth in their students due to the blogs (and wiki’s, podcast, ect…), we will see an exponetial growth.

If you are searching for the same answers I was, go out and find those few people. Focus on them. Make sure it is a success. Then make sure the entire administration, building, district or city sees the success.  The others will hop on board.

This week I sat through 2 meetings in the same day. The two meetings seem to have gone in opposite directions. The morning meeting was a group of our districts technology teachers discussing how we get the message out (the message of teachers not being the source of information for students, but to teach students to find their own sources and then become the source themselves). We came up with this great list. Due to time that is all it was, a list. At a future meeting we will be discussing strategies how to make that list come to life. I was feeling pretty good. We were using a Wiki to collaborate our thoughts and ideas. Blogging on various edtech topics was happening at the same time. We were not using our computers because we were the technology people; we were using our computers because they helped us communicate more efficiently.

I went back to my building for a while in the afternoon to finish preparing for the 20 minute presentation I had to give at a staff meeting. 15 minutes of the presentation were about a district data initiative, the other 5 was to be spent on how to log into the blogging and wiki’s I setup for our teachers so they could: experience blogging, communicate using a wiki, and learn about these great new tool that was available for them to use in their classroom. When the staff meeting started I was first on the agenda, good sign. I presented, answered a few questions and sat and listed to the rest of the staff meeting. 

Here is what made me feel like I was fighting a battle that is not winnable. The rest of the meeting discussed: NCLB proposed changes, upcoming standardized testing, union issues, AYP, and various other topics. A quote from our principal, “I’m glad I am in year 29, not year 10.” WOW, I’m not feeling so good anymore. My poor wife is going to have to listen to me rant about this one. 

Two days later, not one teacher has logged onto the blog I set up. With all that is going on, teachers are overwhelmed. Those of us who have “seen the light” realize technology and web2.0 tools have the power to help revolutionize education. The problem is; how do you get the mass population to see it? Humans have an animal instinct, when they are under attack; they protect themselves with the tools they know best. Teachers know how to teach with direct instruction, overheads and chalkboards. They are good at it. With all the pressure of testing, and now job security if you are in the bottom 25%, how do you convince teachers to come out of their cave and take a chance? More importantly, how do you convince administrators? I was on the verge of being depressed.

I’m an impatient person. I want things to happen now! I’m also realistic and know that change takes time. My job is to help change take place. Once I had a bit of time to reflect, I’m glad I am in year 10. I am going to spend the next 20-25 years finding answers the question “how do we get there?” Right now I just need a little help figuring out where to start!