TBLOGICAL

There is lots of talk about how our schools must change to prepare students for the 21st Century.  In fact, given the new technologies being developed everyday and the way in which young people embrace technology in their daily lives, it is obvious that our schools will change. So as leaders in our schools, where does that leave us? There is so much to change that it seems overwhelming.  Where do we start?

Many of today’s veteran educators used project-based learning and a constructivist approach in the early 90’s if not before. Students were taught to construct their own meaning using cooperative learning and projects. Current brain research confirms the effectiveness of such approaches.  Yet, in this decade, assessment became the guiding mantra, and students and teachers now focus their efforts toward higher test scores. Project-based learning and constructivism faded into the background as direct instruction and teaching to the test took center stage.

Today there is hope as project-based learning again gains momentum. One thing we can do is encourage this type of learning in the classrooms and beyond the school walls. The Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow 2 project has rechristened it challenge-based learning.  Whatever the name, the goals are the same.  Apples’ white paper, “Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow—Today,” is good reading for anyone who wants to share the future with others.  The following quotation is from that paper.

These are profound changes that require schools to become more than information repositories; they must also be places where students can acquire knowledge and skills they can use to solve complex problems for the rest of their lives. These changes affect the role of educators even more dramatically. Educators must become more than information experts; they must also be collaborators in learning-leveraging the power of students, seeking new knowledge alongside students, and modeling positive habits of mind and new ways of thinking and learning.

As we grapple with our current economic woes, new technology purchases will likely be minimal.  Yet there is important work we can do that will cost us nothing.  We can  share the goals for 21^st century learning.  We can share them with parents, other administrators, teachers, support staff, and students.  The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills Framework is widely accepted and provides guidance in every possible area.

The road ahead for schools will be a challenge, but there is always hope.  Many new teachers will already know the technologies, but they need wisdom and guidance from us as leaders.  We will need to help young teachers learn how to share their knowledge with students in ways that will embrace 21^st Century Skills.  We will also need to give them the freedom to help seasoned teachers reach new levels of teaching.

It is a small start, but it is a hopeful one. You aren’t alone and others have already laid out some guidelines. Share the information and point others to resources.  Then watch as the new generation takes over in our schools, and know you helped lead the way.

We’re not up to speed.  We are delivering content in antiquated fashion.  We are teaching too slowly.   Kids are leaving us behind, using technologies that remain a mystery to us.

Take texting as an example.   My 13-year-old daughter can carry on fifteen simultaneous text conversations at once. Her fingers fly across the cellphone keyboard.  Her dexterity is amazing—especially when you consider that despite eight years of public school and parental nagging, she has yet to develop the ability to hold a pencil correctly or write legibly.

Yet, what assignments come home from her Spanish class?  Word searches.  Crossword puzzles.  Endless black-and-white vocabulary exercises with not a picture in sight.   It’s the equivalent to my using a calculator to develop my $500,000 categorical budget.

Instead of fighting texting, twittering, and iPhone apps, why don’t we educators tap into them?  For example, go visit Larry Keim’s “Rolling R’s” site. His free videos would be an excellent regular homework assignment for kids in Spanish class.  Students could access his Spanish instruction on their iPods while standing in the lunch line or riding home on the bus.

Think of the possibilities. With so many rich educational resources online, and kids with access, kids can learn anytime anywhere—even without teachers. Go online yourself and check out the the major K-12 textbook sites. They all have online components including the textbook itself, complete with weblinks.  An enterprising 6th grader could learn about ancient cultures without a single teacher’s lecture.

As teachers and administrators, we’d better get up to speed before we lose our profession.  The U.S. auto industry is not immune to the global economy; neither are the public schools.

Again and again we hear that we must get students ready for the 21st Century.  Yet,  here we are nine years into the 21st Century and we’re educating students the same way we’ve been doing it for years.   We’re doing a pretty good job; in fact, we could probably continue the status quo for the remainder of our careers with fair results on measures such as test scores, college entrance rates, and graduation rates.   The downside of continuing with our present way of doing school is, of course, that our children—and they are our children—will be totally unprepared to compete in a globally connected society.

What do I mean when I say “our present way of doing school?”  I’m talking about our current preoccupation with constantly testing students’ accumulation of knowledge, without ever stopping to consider if the knowledge we’re forcing them to accumulate will be of any use to them.  Consider this:

If it’s easy to test, it’s easy to digitize.

Hank Rubin, president of the Institute for Collaborative Leadership, heard that remark made at the release of the 2007 PISA study.  It piqued his interest enough that he contacted the person who said it: Andreas Schleicher, the study’s lead author.  Says Rubin:

…in subsequent correspondence with Schleicher, I confirmed the deeper meaning of his observation: if you can ask a person a question for which we know there is a limited number of appropriate responses, then we can teach a computer to run through those same responses and select what evidence tells us is the most correct response. In other words, if you can test it then you can delegate the task, knowledge or skill to a computer! The implications are profound: why in the world will we need to invest education dollars in preparing students with knowledge and skills that will be the domain of computers by the time they are ready to enter the world of work?

The $64,000 question is, “What will students need to know to be successful in the future?” For starters, we must ask, “Is this something that a student can access in a nano second with a web search which yields thousands of references?”

I can’t count the number of times a day I do a quick search on the web to find the answer to a question.   It would seem very archaic to only have one textbook sitting here at my desk to look up needed information.  Yet students in our schools face this challenge daily due to limited access and our tight filtering policies.  It’s not until they leave school that they have unlimited access  to the rest of the world.  Until we find an answer to access, we will continue school as usual.

But wait!  The answer to the $64,000 question has changed since I started writing this post a couple of days ago.  I was operating on the assumption that when we want to know something, we make a quick search for the answers we need.  Not necessarily, it seems; the answers may find us on their own!  Puzzled?   Take a look at this TED Talks video and you’ll see what I mean.

I have fond recollections of the early days of e-mail. What a cool way to share information and, at the same time, save our schools printing and duplication costs, not to mention the staff time spent making copies and stuffing mailboxes.  I worked with like-minded colleagues to install an intranet program just so we could exchange internal e-mails among staff.  In those days, our main challenge was to get people to log in and take a look.

Fast forward ten years and you might have seen me tremble—literally—as I opened my e-mail for the first time each morning. My bleary eyes bulged at the sight of 100 or more chronologically listed messages. California Department of Education listservs, county office bulletins, colleagues, parents, concerned citizens, e-blasts from numerous publications that I had at some point asked to receive, and notifications from various services overflowed my screen. I lived in constant fear of losing key information, forgetting to show up at important events, and generally being unresponsive to the overwhelming flood of incoming mail.

Fortunately, I wasn’t alone.  In conversations with other school leaders, I heard their frustration with their own attempts to manage e-mail.  I began to approach the problem analytically.  I read books, pored through articles, watched videos, and connected with bloggers.  I found some ways of processing, organizing, and responding to e-mail that fit my own way of organizing time and tasks, and I set out to implement them.

Despite a few bumps along the way, I definitely feel now a greater sense of control and much less anxiety.  I have systems to identify which messages are most important, which ones require responses, and a sequence of steps to deal with those tough e-mails that require interpersonal responses.  While some days are tougher than others, I am able to start every day with an empty inbox.

In addition to improving my effectiveness, that empty inbox symbolizes a refreshed way of thinking as well. For me, this shift has been transformative, and so I feel compelled to share some of what I’ve learned. I have created some resources to accelerate your own learning process.  As an orientation, I recommend the 7-minute Quicktake called Taking Control of Email that is posted on the TICAL website.  Additionally, I have created a blog by the same name with links to articles, videos, and other resources that I think may be useful in your journey.  Also, TICAL Leadership Cadre member Gabe Soumakian has posted an excellent presentation on e-mail etiquette.

You, too, can achieve a sense of control and comfort with your e-mail!

Last October, Barak Obama promised that if he were elected, he would create a new cabinet-level position. Saying that the United States has not done nearly enough to tap into technology and its potential for creating new jobs, Obama proposed creating the position of Chief Technology Officer (CTO).  Now, six months later, this promise has come to fruition. During his weekly address on April 18, President Obama announced that Aneesh Chopra will be the nation’s first CTO.

Currently serving as Secretary of Technology for the state of Virginia, Chopra’s new position comes with three goals that support the new administration’s top priorities. First, he is charged with promoting use of technology to support job creation. Second, Chopra is to explore ways technology use can be leveraged to reduce health care costs. Finally, he is to focus on use of technology to increase national security.

The business world sees this as a welcome step toward updating and expanding a national infrastructure that recently has received little attention. This sector also views this appointment as a commitment to returning the U.S. to a leadership role in technology-related advances worldwide. But what do educators think about this new position and the impact Mr. Chopra might have on bringing schools into the Digital Age?

Whether it happens in K-12 grades, post-secondary programs, or on-the-job training courses, every one of the three goals listed above must include an education component in order to be successfully implemented. How will education leaders take advantage of this fact to leverage resources and launch innovative programs designed to help the new CTO meet his goals? What related conversations are taking place in your school, district, or region? Share your ideas here.