RJ Stangherlin

Keystone Technology Integrator and STAR Discovery Educator

This site is for Mrs. Stangherlin's classes at Salisbury High School.

Flat World

Just finished reviewing my blog notes from David Warlick’s Flat World, Flat Web, Flat Classrooms Webinar, and am still struck by the control issue that we as educators seem unable to relinquish if we intend to prepare our students for their unpredictable futures. Undeniably this statement does not pertain to all educators, just too many. We, and I include the emerging students teachers in this statement, are trained to be the disseminators of knowledge with our students as receivers--a very passive voice approach to knowledge. We lecture, they listen. Of course they have options to participate, but we are in control. We teach the way we learned, and because it was good for us, we assume it is good for them. We often are too busy to notice that the educational landscape has changed, and that we need to change with it. Our classrooms are far too often flat, while our students live in a round world. Take social networking, for example. Students understand, embrace, use, and pioneer social networking. They’re clickable; are we? What we need to consider is that we are no longer prepping our students for an agrarian, industrial, or informational job market. Globalism’s impact has changed our economy; should it not affect how we prepare our students to enter a changing world.

If Warlick is correct--and I believe he is--that we teach in an age of information saturation and instant access to facts, then our roles as educators (deliberately choosing educators v. teachers) needs revisiting. Will we not become managers of content, teaching our students to edit and evaluate. Should we not pursue authentic real-life learning with project-based experiences. Cannot students take control of their learning environment with structured choices. Why can’t we provide authentic assessments that show us what our student know, rather than what they do not know.

At a recent meeting, I mentioned my tenth grade students’ participation in an international videoconference. We were asked to create a memorable introduction for the keynote presenter, and memorable it was. Our subject was living history, a living hero. And the students loved the rush of preparing a multimedia introduction in way too short a time frame. They took control and went with the assignment, dividing into groups based on what they could do best: research, audio/video editing, script writing, recording. They selected their teams, and the lab was a buzz of on-task excitement.

Long story short: I was asked how this videoconference connected to curriculum. Having learned a long time ago to answer a question with a question, I asked them how it didn’t. What part of the PA Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening standards did we not address. For that matter, we certainly covered a slew of NETS benchmarks as well. Were we crossing curricula, working independently. Did we not have an authentic task with an audience of our international peers. Can you hear my smile right now....

And that, as I see it, is the real problem. Nothing wrong with being tied to curriculum; much wrong if we have not yet discovered different ways to deliver it, relevant ways for lifelong learning. Why are we reluctant to embrace emerging or out-there-in-your-face-been-there-done-it technology integration. This much I do know. Years ago when I jumped headlong into technology, I knew what I didn’t know about it, and that was significant. So I made a partnership with my students. I asked them if we could share what we know. I managed the content; my students taught me the technology applications. It’s just that easy. I asked them one day how would they design an assessment that could showcase what they learned. Could they design an authentic testing tool. You can guess the rest: it went digital.

In any good argument, with self or others, there’s that “ahaaa” moment we reach for, live for. My ahaaa--long, Southernesque “ahaaa,” where each letter becomes at least two more syllables--came when I realized who the real winners were-- --who could control their learning environment, make choices, present, and publish in three different places. Then, they were invited to collaborate with three high schools from the same videoconference to present at the Megaconference Jr. twelve-hour videoconference in February, 2007. Not bad for two class periods and two study halls.