The time has come to put aside the question of whether or not digital learning works for students; we need new, more important questions, like:
- How and when do young people learn best?
- What approaches to digital learning will benefit which learners under what conditions?
- What different or additional supports afforded by digital learning will help which learners?
two faulty themes ... needlessly limit educational technology discussions.
The first misguided frame, expressed by Core Knowledge’s Robert Pondiscio in USA Today, is whether technology, in this case digital textbooks, is a “magic bullet.” Pondiscio is right: Of course it’s not and anybody who claims so is foolish. . . .
The second faulty frame is the conspiratorial suspicion of nefarious intent: any technology initiative is just a cover for private profit-seeking. But let’s be serious. We wouldn’t be having this discussion around school modernization. Construction companies make a lot of money on educational projects. We understand though, that this is a reason to exercise strong oversight of public funds. It’s not a reason to oppose modernizing crumbling facilities.
It is clear that technology is increasingly seen as providing opportunities for personalization, flexibility, and differentiation, and the development of 21st-century skills.
It is less clear how technology can best be utilized in schools serving students who have struggled in school, fallen off track to graduation, or dropped out altogether. On the one hand, online credit recovery has long been a staple in alternative education. And all too often, it is the equivalent of an electronic workbook in a sterile computer lab with few opportunities for the development of the higher-order, critical thinking skills necessary for postsecondary success. On the other hand, blended learning holds promise as a strategy to help students develop exactly those skills. A blended learning classroom can incorporate the best elements of face-to-face classrooms and virtual learning environments for this population—accelerating learning gains, building next-generation skills, and ensuring college readiness.
[Jobs for the Future] is currently exploring how schools can implement blended learning in a way that delivers a rigorous, college-ready academic experience with proper social supports for their students, as well as an expectation for postsecondary completion.
No longer is learning limited by locality. No longer must instruction suffer from isolation. No longer can anyone limit what can be learned, by whom, from whom and when.
your goals and your strategy must be simple. You must have passion and certainty in order to make a difference as a leader. Your tactics, on the other hand, should be layered, multi-dimensional and reflect the patience of someone who cares about reaching a goal.
When Howard Schultz talks about coffee or Jill Greenberg talks about lighting or Cory Booker talks about education, they can impatiently demand clear and simple results. At the same time, successful leaders see the nuance they'll need in executing to get there.
The paradox is that the simplicity we often seek in search of solutions rarely leads to the patient leadership we need to get them.
Higher education prices increased 440% over the last 25 years – four times the rate of inflation, and twice as bad as health care. Elementary and secondary ed prices have skyrocketed, too, with not even adequate outcomes.
On the other side of the ledger is the Moore’s law ecosystem, the most ruthless force in technology and the world economy. Last quarter Netflix streamed two billion hours worth of video – or 228,000 years worth in three months. In just the last week of December, smartphone and tablet owners gobbled up 1.2 billion apps – 43% by Americans. Twenty years ago, a terabyte hard drive, if such a thing had existed, might have cost $5 million. Today, you can pick one up for $69.
The price of information plummets. Yet the price of education soars. These two trends cannot both continue. Guess which will crack first.
"The most deadly misconception about American youth has been the sexual predator panic,” [boyd] said. “The model we have of the online sexual predator is this lurking man who reaches out on the Internet and grabs a kid. And there is no data that support that. The vast majority of sex crimes against kids involve someone that kid trusts, and it’s overwhelmingly family members."
It's painful, expensive, time-consuming, stressful and ultimately pointless to work overtime to preserve your dying business model.
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The history of media and technology is an endless series of failed rearguard actions as industry leaders attempt to solidify their positions on a bed of quicksand.
Schools need to end their rearguard actions too...
Clintondale (MI) High School applied the flipped model gradually, beginning with just a couple of classes in the 2009-2010 school year. In the fall of 2010, all freshmen classes were taught using this model. After seeing an increase in student achievement and a decrease in the failure rate, administrators decided to flip the entire school this year.
In a span of about 10 minutes she had confronted a new and novel problem, tested different solutions, found one that worked, demonstrated it, and refined the whole process.It got me thinking...she did this all in 10 minutes with me and a free iPad app....did she get to do anything like this level of problem solving in her 7 hours at school today?
Teachers look to technology as a tool for learning. Legislators see it as a way to reduce cost. It is a way to deliver more content with fewer personnel. If legislators were serious about really putting tech in education on a large-scale for learning, then they would put the money up for proper professional development and implementation.
the easy part of tweeting is publishing content; the difficult side is actually committing to active public engagement
Readership of blogs is up infinity percent in the last decade (from zero), and online journals and magazines continue to gain in power and influence.
And there’s more unsettling stuff being read by readers of all ages. Books that question authority and force readers to consider deeply held beliefs. The words may have gotten shorter (along with the sentences), but there’s plenty of intellectual ruckus being made.
You could view this shift as the end of the world and a threat to how you publish, or you could view it as an opportunity and shift gears as quickly as you possibly can. Publish what people choose to read (at a price they want to pay), and odds are, they will choose to read it. There’s plenty of room for leadership and art here, but little room for stubborn intransigence.
around here we work very hard to make sure students don’t publish anything during school and overreact when we discover they’ve done it elsewhere.
Of course, many in our system will tell you that we do provide the tools for students to learn these skills. They come in the form of various “walled gardens”, resources which kids understand are artificial and far underpowered compared those they have available in their real world.
I will...
- link to others generously,
- retweet great ideas and give credit to original thinkers,
- mention people by name when they give me ideas, whatever the source may be,
- work to promote the work of others who support the cause of teaching, reaching, (and loving) every child,
- respect each person as an original,
- extend my hand of fellowship and friendship,
- be the Internet I want my children to inherit,
- be kind to others even when they don't deserve it,
- stand up for the right thing even when it means I will be ridiculed for it, (All it takes is for good people to be quiet for horrible things to happen.)
- discover and share new voices with the spotlight gifted to me by readers and friends,
- be passionate to speak for those who do not have a voice: those in slavery, the poor, those separated by the digital divide, and
- listen to you when you speak and seek discernment about what to do with what you say.
1. We used to imprison the learning inside the classrooms… Now the whole school is our learning environment.
2. We used to find information in books and on the internet… Now we also interact globally via Skype with primary sources.
3. We used to control everything… Now students take ownership of their learning.
4. We used to think ‘computer’ was a lesson in the lab… Now technology is an integral part of learning across the curriculum.
5. We used to collect students’ work, to read and mark it… Now they create content for an authentic global audience.
6. We used to strive for quiet in the classroom… Now the school is filled with vibrant and noisy engagement in learning.
7. We used to teach everything we wanted students to know… Now we know learning can take place through student centred inquiry.
8. We used to set tests to check mastery of a topic… Now learning is often assessed through what students create.
9. We used to plan differentiated tasks, depending on ability… Now digital tools provide opportunities for natural differentiation.
10. We used to have an award ceremony for the graduating Year 6 students… Now every child will be acknowledged at graduation.
Schools CAN change!
Maybe it’s different in your school district, but around here we work very hard to make sure students don’t publish anything during school and overreact when we discover they’ve done it elsewhere.
Of course, many in our system will tell you that we do provide the tools for students to learn these skills. They come in the form of various “walled gardens”, resources which kids understand are artificial and far underpowered compared those they have available in their real world.
Technology can help these kids. But only if the kids want to be helped.
Well, sure. That's true for any student, isn't it? But the 'black kid from West Philadelphia' rhetoric doesn't sit very well with me. Ugh.
Proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic has traditionally been the entry-level threshold to the job market, but the new workplace requires more from its employees. Employees need to think critically, solve problems, innovate, collaborate, and communicate more effectivelyand at every level within an organization. According to the AMA 2010 Critical Skills Survey, many executives admit there is room for improvement among their employees in these skills and competencies.
AMAs survey shows that an overwhelming number of respondents believe that these 21st century skills are important to their organizations today and will become even more important in the future, said Edward T. Reilly, AMA president and CEO. Many executives feel that their current workforce is not as well developed in these areas as they need to be.
we’re entering a digital age where students access the information they want—how they want it, when they want it and where they want it (think personalized learning at any time, place or pace). This will have a profound effect on critical thinking as people are increasingly fed only the exact type of information (specific political views, topical book themes and local environmental conditions) and sources (individual blogs, new media and ethnically oriented online spaces) to which they digitally subscribe. In many ways, hyperpersonalized (customized) digital spaces have the potential to limit students to only the content that they want to see, hear and read about. While considering personalization and technology, we need to think about the role of critical thinking, diversity and chance (serendipity), and their importance to learning and society, and to the long-term implications of driving digital personalization (customization) in terms of the future of public education.
Recently I heard a librarian complain that this digital age, is "not what I signed up for. It wasn't what I went to school for."Well, we've come a long way baby and that same line was spoken by: the Elevator Operator, the Pinsetter, the Lector, the telephone switchboard operator, the lamplighter and the typesetter--to name a few.
- Although Facebook’s minimum age is 13, parents of 13- and 14-year-olds report that, on average, their child joined Facebook at age 12.
- Half (55%) of parents of 12-year-olds report their child has a Facebook account, and most (82%) of these parents knew when their child signed up. Most (76%) also assisted their 12-year old in creating the account.
- A third (36%) of all parents surveyed reported that their child joined Facebook before the age of 13, and two-thirds of them (68%) helped their child create the account.
- Half (53%) of parents surveyed think Facebook has a minimum age and a third (35%) of these parents think that this is a recommendation and not a requirement.
- Most (78%) parents think it is acceptable for their child to violate minimum age restrictions on online services.
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While there is merit to thinking about how to strengthen parent permission structures, focusing on this obscures the issues that COPPA is intended to address: data privacy and online safety. COPPA predates the rise of social media. Its architects never imagined a world where people would share massive quantities of data as a central part of participation. It no longer makes sense to focus on how data are collected; we must instead question how those data are used. Furthermore, while children may be an especially vulnerable population, they are not the only vulnerable population. Most adults have little sense of how their data are being stored, shared, and sold.
Schools are supposed to be places of learning, not prisons of content. Content and information live everywhere now and the impetus is upon us to create opportunities to connect that content, not continue to limit it.
The United States education system really sucks. We continue to toil in a 19th century factory-based model of education, stressing conformity and standardization. This is all true even though globalization has transformed the world we live in, flipping the status quo of the labor market upside down. The education system has miserably failed in creating students that have the dexterity to think creatively and critically, work collaboratively, and communicate their thoughts.
Gen Y has grown up with unprecedented access to information. This access has allowed them to shorten their learning curve, make quicker decisions on what’s important to them, find like-minded individuals in far-away places to collaborate with, and develop a deeper and wider vision for imagining a world they want to live in and be a part of creating.
When Richtel and his Grading the Digital School series discusses schools with technology that don’t raise performance on standardized tests, standardized testing is treated as a near absolute be-all, end-all of educational success, but when celebrating a school approach without technology (serving then the anti-tech agenda), the importance of standardized testing success is happily set aside. This is not journalism, this is hatchet work.
where advocates for stocking classrooms with technology say children need computer time to compete in the modern world, Waldorf parents counter: what’s the rush, given how easy it is to pick up those skills?
“It’s supereasy. It’s like learning to use toothpaste,” Mr. Eagle said. “At Google and all these places, we make technology as brain-dead easy to use as possible. There’s no reason why kids can’t figure it out when they get older.”
there have been four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.
Somewhere, around 4000 BC, humans learned to write. Egyptian hieroglyphs go back to about 3200 BC, alphabetical writing to 1000 BC. According to scholars like Jack Goody, the invention of writing was the most important technological breakthrough in the history of humanity. It transformed mankind’s relation to the past and opened a way for the emergence of the book as a force in history.
The history of books led to a second technological shift when the codex replaced the scroll sometime soon after the beginning of the Christian era. By the third century AD, the codex—that is, books with pages that you turn as opposed to scrolls that you roll—became crucial to the spread of Christianity. It transformed the experience of reading: the page emerged as a unit of perception, and readers were able to leaf through a clearly articulated text, one that eventually included differentiated words (that is, words separated by spaces), paragraphs, and chapters, along with tables of contents, indexes, and other reader’s aids.
The codex, in turn, was transformed by the invention of printing with movable type in the 1450s. To be sure, the Chinese developed movable type around 1045 and the Koreans used metal characters rather than wooden blocks around 1230. But Gutenberg’s invention, unlike those of the Far East, spread like wildfire, bringing the book within the reach of ever-widening circles of readers. The technology of printing did not change for nearly four centuries, but the reading public grew larger and larger, thanks to improvements in literacy, education, and access to the printed word. Pamphlets and newspapers, printed by steam-driven presses on paper made from wood pulp rather than rags, extended the process of democratization so that a mass reading public came into existence during the second half of the nineteenth century.
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The fourth great change, electronic communication, took place yesterday, or the day before, depending on how you measure it. The Internet dates from 1974, at least as a term. It developed from ARPANET, which went back to 1969, and from earlier experiments in communication among networks of computers. The Web began as a means of communication among physicists in 1981. Web sites and search engines became common in the mid-1990s. And from that point everyone knows the succession of brand names that have made electronic communication an everyday experience: Web browsers such as Netscape, Internet Explorer, and Safari, and search engines such as Yahoo and Google, the latter founded in 1998.
When strung out in this manner, the pace of change seems breathtaking: from writing to the codex, 4,300 years; from the codex to movable type, 1,150 years; from movable type to the Internet, 524 years; from the Internet to search engines, nineteen years; from search engines to Google’s algorithmic relevance ranking, seven years; and who knows what is just around the corner or coming out the pipeline?
Steve [Jobs] devoted his professional life to giving us (you, me and a billion other people) the most powerful device ever available to an ordinary person. Everything in our world is different because of the device you're reading this on.
What are we going to do with it?
Apparently in P-12 and higher ed classrooms we're mostly going to ignore it...
