STSD Curriculum & Technology Update

Regular updates and musings on curriculum and technology in the Salisbury Township School District in Allentown, PA.

Flat World, Flat Web, Flat Schools Webinar

David Warlick: Flat World, Flat Web, Flat Schools Webinar is, in many ways, a test of the times. On November 15, 2006, participants blogging as they multi-tasked: participating in Skype conversations, webinar sidebars, emails, and watching the webinar.  David Warlick believes “the future is not what it used to be...it is certainly not your father’s future anymore.” Warlick advocates retooling our classrooms into learning spaces that effectively prepare our children for a future of unlimited possibilities.  “Our culture has rapidly evolved into one more technological, entrepreneurial and global.” The challenge to schools requires us to embrace a new vision that prepares students for a workplace that may not have yet evolved.  Let’s take a look at what Warlick believes is the new learning landscape.

What follows is my webinar blogging:

* The world is flattening as the informational landscape transforms without the knowledge of most Americans
* Outsourcing, off-shoring, globalization: we live and work in a world that is learning to cooperate with ordered in, made in, parts by, shipped to: and we are looking at global economies that collaborate and cooperate not compete; in today’s economy our job is about finding a place in the global economy, where we are in a niche market
* we need to change our thinking: instead of asking why outsourcing ask what do my students need to know to be a part of the global economy; what kind of learning experience do they need to become part of the chain of supply
* we are being surpassed by countries I cannot locate on a globe or pronounce if I could find them; “sitting still in a time of change is like going backwards”
* information has changed; more networked, more digital, and more information is overwhelming; virtual audience agrees; educationally, these three elements have changed what literacy means, and that connects to what it means to be a reader, including proving evidentiary supports for information which exceed decoding and moves understanding to a range of skills in employing information in an information storm
* sound, images, videos, text: which combination of ideas best express information?
* to manage information, use Technorati = the google of bloggers; Technorati takes a photograph of us; recording conversations of ourselves; thumbnail of peaks of use
* wikis, blogs, discussion boards--social networking of information sources are the changing shape of information; it’s not a competition between traditional textual information, just a decision of whether your classroom is flat or not.
* no longer important to TEACH the facts; they are out there and the kids know how to find the facts; our job is to teach how to draw conclusions, make money from the information, evaluate the information, use the information in their future, but not TEACH the information
* we need more innovative technologists; read Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class; we’ve left Industrial Age and moved into the Creative Age, which is how people make money today; what we will gain in jobs in the next decade will be creative jobs; read The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler; from Randy: http://concordia.csp.edu/BookoftheYear/
* in the information landscape, learning has changed, and gravity won’t work in a flat classroom; owners of the content [e.g. ]http://www.youtube.com] will make the money; the company that can grow and gain an audience will survive; the content is increasingly coming from us, so the company that will make it is the company who will grow in the new informational landscape; the classrooms that will work will go with the new landscape
* video games are a learning engine, if the games are good; you can’t move to level 2 or 3 if you don’t learn something; what is it about video games that intrigue students, so let’s take a look at gaming to get the techniques.

I believe students are amazingly flexible, and they learn best when they enjoy how they are learning.  Sometimes, as educators, we forget this simple basic.  In the sidebar I mentioned earlier, the discussion was lively, robust, exciting, and fast-paced.  Many discussion strands emerged, but one question still remains with me.  Warlick was talking about the role of teaching v. learning, and how teachers need to rethink teaching facts when facts--information retrieval--are at students’ fingertips via IM, Internet, gmail....So the haunting question, paraphrased [since the presentation is still not archived, nor the sidebar discussion] is this: are we still asking students to memorize the capitols of states when that information is online.  No question mark: the issue is rhetorical--and symbolic.  The question we need to ponder as educators: are our classrooms flat?  What do you think?

Related Warlick Blogs:
Flat Classrooms
Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century

The New Face of Learning

The power of technology derives from the people using it.  The new face of learning calls into question a rethinking of learning spaces that cross traditional boundaries. Students collaborate and build networks with the new basics. When was the last time you created a mobile podcast or tracked the blogosphere with your cell phone? Do you check your gmail daily? Which RSS web feed do you use? Checked out newer browsers - Firefox, Opera (mobile and device versions too), or Safari - which offer RSS support? Used online bookmarkers to aggregate and access all your website favorites? VODcast or semablogged lately? Created web tags? Have a mobile home? Chances are your students do, and that’s part of the problem. WE teach and THEY learn differently. Whether we like it or not, these cool tools are part of the expanding new literacy and we need to teach in the 21st century, moving toward the new basics.

Will Richardson asks, “What happens to time-worn concepts of classrooms and teaching when we can now go online and learn anything, anywhere, anytime?” He embeds his answer inside his question: “time-worn concepts.” Worn is not an essentially negative concept (think antiques, age-added value), but in the sub-text of this discussion, Richardson beg us to rethink as educators our own time-worn concepts and methodologies. And we resist, frequently with the full support of a district’s “block and bust” handbook. A district’s philosophy exists for sound, protective reasons, with the students’ health and safety foremost. But - and that conjunction is a huge separator between what is and what could be - we need to forge sustainable ways to implement technology, and we could begin by using the tools students carry in their pockets.

Last year in Denver at the T + L2 Conference, Hall Davidson, in his keynote address, Media for Motivated Minds, implored administrators and encouraged educators to shift the education paradigm to teach the way students learn best: with the devices they carry in pockets and purses. DEN Network Specialist Steve Dembo‘s webinar, Teaching with the Technology Tools of the New Generation, explored then-emerging ways a simple camera phone with Internet access can become a valid educational tool. Can a district implement a policy that enables students to learn with their own “textbooks”? Some already have.
Randy asks truly provocative questions: How will this shift impact our district? Our students? Us? Our district already feels the impact as we move forward proactively to implement a five-year district-wide Technology Plan. One of our most immediate challenges for the high school is the preparation for Pennsylvania’s Classrooms of the Future grant, a process requiring extensive in-service training for teachers with the grant technology, as well as developing technology integration in existing curricula. Pennsylvania has already begun the process of requiring NETS standards in all curricula. Most of our students know more about technology than we, as educators, know or use. That imbalance often intimidates us. Why not harness that skill base and learn from our students. For students not included in the most students category, Pennsylvania’s grant initiative levels the playing field, giving all students equal access to online learning. Is this concept not a moral imperative. Now we come to us, the educators - the aha moment of truth. We have the largest distance to bridge if we continue to teach in the 21st century. So, my question is, How do we begin?

Simply, I think. The first step is a self-inventory. Without asking where the technology will come from, or how you will budge me out of any computer lab (just ask and I’ll share or give it up), or without collapsing into the my-subject-can’t-integrate-technology response, just ask yourself Will Richardson’s question. Keep asking it until you are comfortable with a self-assessment: does my classroom methodology have just one time-worn approach that I can upgrade? Then ask yourself how technology could help your update. Think of it (if you’re female) as a wardrobe update: what can I add to change the look of my outfits? What new accessory could really update my look? Then ask someone for help. When I think of the long list of people who have helped me in my journey toward computer literacy, I realize that the list began with two students: Eric Gratz and Melanie Rutkowski. Debbie Green, former SHS technologist, helped me create my first two websites and Matt Meron, ‘06, created my current website. Michele Cotugno found my message board and uploaded my website for years, often several times a day. Now I am an independent learner, and I can do it myself, online directly. Chris Smith (scroll link to Our Focus - High Definition Authentic Learning) wears a halo you can see if you look closely; he survived all my help-me sessions and earned a much-deserved promotion. Tom Smith continues the family tradition and helps me as I move into new ground. Recently, I have even been helping faculty, and isn’t that the way it should be. There’s a lot of help out there; you just need to ask.

The second step is to take the leap and try it. Forget failure, or view it the way I do: a learning opportunity. I have never really learned from my successes in the same way I learn from things that didn’t work. Finally, realize that our students are amazingly generous human beings with a huge capacity to support our initiatives. I tell them when I am leaping into the unknown, the unfamiliar, and I ask them to come along and help me in the process. Somewhere in your classes you have real technology experts and you can ask them to help. They even teach well. Last year, Dan Lebo taught his Honors English class video editing and the finer points of Google Earth. Zack Creveling linked last year’s IP presentations on his website. The year before, Dan Lischner was my go-to technologist. This year, I am amazed by the number of students in each of my classes who are tech savvy; I use them as support networks in lab classes and they are wonderful resources. Take a simple step. Make a beginning.

David Warlick asks the question, What should a classroom look like in the Year 2015? I’d rather ask all of us what our classrooms will look like in the next five years?

Did You Know?

Definitely worth watching.

Karl Fisch’s Did You Know?

Karl Fisch’s What If

Karl Fisch’s 2020 Vision

Jennifer Dorman’s Adaptation [with permission of Karl Fisch] of Did You Know?

Definitely Worth Visiting.

The Fischbowl

A Web of Connections: Why the Read Write Web Changes Everything

Just finished an amazing webinar with Will Richardson on A Web of Connections: Why the Read Write Web Changes Everything.  Long story short: because the web is both read and write.  The write aspect of the web profoundly changes how we learn: in social networking communities.  Richardson’s thesis is simple: today’s students are digital natives who create their own learning environments where they make global connections.  What, as educators, Richardson says we need to come to terms with is the issue of control.  Students are engaged in connectivism: building and maintaining social networks where connections hold as much [or possibly more] relevance than content.  Digital natives build communities of independent learners, unlike the way most educational systems work: on dependence [of students’ learning to teachers’ knowledge].  Richardson suggests that whether we like it or not, the web has made learning transparent, and teachers need to move forward as connectors of information inside this educational mindset. 

Perhaps, for those of you who may not have participated in a webinar, I should give you a figurative screenshot.  Think of a webinar as a videoconference without the video.  What you see is a screen that the presenter controls [content] with audio via teleconferenciog.  But that’s only the beginning.  The sidebar discussion [imagine a chat room smaller screen insert] is often as exciting as the presentation, and just as lively.  Then picture many of the participants also Skyping [yet a second chat room, but separate from the webinar host].  Let’s count: webinar, sidebar, Skyping.  Add to that taking notes and blogging.  About this point you are losing your Digital Immigrant status.  And to this most students would add texting with cell phones, working on facebook, myspace, or fanfiction, and editing their wikispace.  Definitely Digital Natives.  This is our community.  This is how they learn, or would, if we let them. 

Richardson believes that within the next five years, the face of education will change exponentially.  We seem to have choices: move with it or be moved by it.  I think of our group as change agents, working collaboratively to provide the best possible education for our students.  With that in mind, here’s Will Richardson’s webinar wiki:

A Changing World

Some statistics.
*1 billion people on the Internet
*China will soon be the largest English speaking country in the world.
*China has more honors students than we have students.
*Name this country
*“None of the top 10 jobs that will exist in 2010 exist today.”—Richard Riley, (Former US Sec. of Ed.)
*57 million blogs, 1.7 million posts a day.
*We can all be community journalists.
*Millionaires in virtutal worlds.
*Mark Zuckerberg, the soon to be teenage billionaire
*The problem is not change...we’ve always had change. The problem is the speed of change, and that change is cultural now. Because of that it feels like our kids are leading the way with technology

Many more questions than answers.

The Web is Changing How We Learn

*Learning is not about acquiring knowledge as much as it is about building networks. (Articulated by George Siemens.)
*We are at times teachers and at times learners. Our roles shift with each interaction.
*My blog, Weblogg-ed is an example of network creation. It’s where my most powerful learning has taken place. Here are a couple of examples: “Dear Kids, You Don’t Have to Go to College” and “Owning the Teaching...and the Learning.”
*The power of being “clickable” is that teachers can find you. (Google search)
*My good fortune is that I have potential teachers visiting from around the world.
*Our kids are already creating their own networks. Fan Fiction is one site where “affinity groups” meet.
*And like it or not, MySpace is another example of kids creating their own networks.
*But so are student role models, (Meg Cabot)

*Millions and millions of people are participating in the new social networking services. (Wikipedia)
*But we can help our kids to start creating their own networks as well and work with people around the world. (Nata Village)
*Wikiville (John Bidder) is another example. And Skype is a tool that we can use to maintain our networks.

*And networking doesn’t just have to happen through text. (ClipBandits)
*We can also build networks in virtual worlds. (Second Life)

The Web is Changing our Assumptions About Knowledge, Information and Literacy

*It’s not as much about content anymore as much as it is about context. Knowledge and information used to be scarce...that’s what our was built upon
*But today, I can learn anything, anytime, anywhere providing I have access. Knowledge is no longer scarce. (MIT)

*And we tend to look at knowledge as hard or unchanging...but these days, knowledge is soft. It’s constantly changing. (Wikipedia)
*In this world, we cannot only seek information, but information seeks us. (Pageflakes)
*But in a world where anyone can create and publish information, how do we know what to trust? (Dove Beauty)

*How do we teach our students (and ourselves) to make sense of a much more complex literacy regarding who to trust as authoritative sources. When we can be manipulated or be the manipulator.
*We can no longer be “just” readers...we must be editors as well.

*And reading is no longer a passive, linear activity that deals simply with text. How do we read multimedia and hypertext? (A Tank of Gas)
*In this world, we must read with an ear for writing and responding, engaging and interacting.

The Web is Changing our Assumptions about Classrooms and Teaching

*If teachers are no longer the arbiters of knowledge in the classroom, our roles need to change.
*Now we have the opportunity to be connectors, to bring our classrooms to the world in a variety of ways. We can find other teachers who may know more than we do. (Secret Life of Bees)

*We can also connect our students to other students around the world so they can learn together. (Flat Classrooms Wiki)
*And in a world where all of our students can be content producers as well as content consumers, we need to re-envision the work we ask them to do.
*Our students can teach in powerful ways. (Pre Cal)
*As Marco Torres says, students’ work ”should have wings.” (Buckle Up)

We Need a 2020 Vision for Education

*How do we learn to help our students leverage the technologies they are already using instead of have them check them at the door? (Especially when our students can get around our efforts anyway.)

*How do we change? How do we re-envision teaching for a vastly changed world?
*How do we the use of these technologies in our own practice?
*It starts with one small step

*******
Let’s take that one small step.

21st Century Skills

Borrowing from fellow colleague STAR DEN Advisory Board Member Jennifer Dorman, I am including her research links for our learning community’s professional development.
* U.S. Department of Education National Education Technology Plan
* U.S. Department of Education Technolgy Evaluation and Research
* The Partnership for 21st Century Skills
* Noodle Tools 21st Century Literacies
* 21st Century Technology Support Project
* Landmarks for Schools
* enGauge: 21st Century Skills - Literacy in the Digital Age
* Skill Sets for the 21st Century
* The Evolving Definition of Literacy
* Big6 The Importance of Contemporary Literacy
* Teaching Information Literacy
* Learning in the Digital Age
* Preparing the Digital Generation for the Age of Innovation
* The Challenge of the Digital Age

Randy discussed enGauge in our initial meeting.  I thought if we shared a common list of resources, we might deconstruct our notion of “basics” in light of the what Pink [A Whole New Mind] calls the Conceptual Age.