Archive for the ‘21st century skills’ category

Student Cheating and Plagiarism or Creativity and Innovation?

October 19th, 2010

During a recent conversation with my #ecosys Twitter friends, the topic turned to a recent BBC article about how Danish students were being allowed to use the Internet during exams. Danish pupils use web in exams

What followed was a thoughtful conversation about the advantages and disadvantages of allowing students access to the Internet during exams and if this amounted to cheating or plagiarism.

Phil Hart (@philhart) wrote an excellent and thoughtful piece on his blog (A techie’s view) titled “Is Using the Internet Cheating?

Phil notes that, “People now have access to levels of knowledge that was inconceivable 20 years ago. Rather than having to carry thousands of facts around in one’s head, what is needed today is an understanding of the context in which the question is being asked and being able to place the answers within that context.”

In terms of cheating during an exam Phil clearly points out that, “So when we see somebody ‘cheating’ in an exam, what are they doing? They are taking information from another source, in this case a fellow assessee. Is it legitimate to do so? Probably not, but … accessing the Internet with the correct question and being able to use the resulting answers when responding to an exam question requires an understanding of the context. In other words: “How well is the assessee able to remember the context (and everything that goes into making a context) rather than being able to merely regurgitate facts?”

I agree with Phil’s points and conclusions.

But beyond having access to the internet to answer test questions is the the larger question of taking existing ideas, research, work and “pirating” it into other “improved” or “reinvented” works.

Is if this is an actual skill that should be developed and encouraged in our students?

Is it piracy and plagiarism, or is it creativity and innovation?

Which do you suppose we should be teaching our students to do?

We live in an age where anybody can produce, mix, or re-purpose information and ideas.

When we pirate information and ideas, we may just be innovating new ideas and creating new ways of doing things.

Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and musicians viewed it as piracy. He was pirating their music, recording it, and selling it. They feared the end of live performances, instead an entire industry was born, the music industry.

MP3 players existed prior to the iPod, but the iPod pirated that technology and created it’s own phenomena. Music lovers, wanting to share music with each other without paying, created digital music sites like Napster. They were pirating their way around and outside of what the music industry existed to do. Steve Jobs figured out that to beat the pirates he had to compete with them and built iTunes. The pirates ideas had become mainstream and put old music sellers out of business. It is piracy or innovation? Is it plagiarism or creativity?

The iPod itself is just a combination of pre-existing ideas; the battery, operating system, hard drive, screen, MP3 technology, etc.

Reggae, Disco, and Hip-hop music demonstrate that we can repurpose music into something new. The pirate old songs and create new and innovative versions. These versions become so popular that they create entirely new music genres. It is piracy or creativity?

Moviemakers, not wanting to pay high fees in New York pirates their way around the system by setting up studios in California. Today we call it Hollywood.

India reverse engineers drugs for the poor pirating what they themselves could not afford to do. Drug companies, sensing the good public relations they can benefit from, begin selling their drugs at huge discounts an in some cases giving them away. They respond to the pirates by creating an entirely new approach of serving the poor of the world. Piracy or creativity?

Teachers pirate great lesson plans and instructional ideas from other teacher all the time. It helps them to be more effective and learn new ways of instructing their students.

So, is piracy and plagiarism just another way of being creative and innovative? Are they a source of new ideas, methods, and models? Are there links to each other or are they mutually exclusive?

A senior business executive needing the most current research on a company or economic trend asks his junior executive to find the best and most current information. The junior executive doesn’t start his or her own research project, rather he or she Googles the information looking for the most current research on the topic that has already been done by the most respected and knowledgeable experts. He or she copies it, rips it, digitizes it, scans it, re-purposes it, integrates it, synthesizes it, and puts into a usable document to give the senior executive. This is what we call good research.

In the classroom we call plagiarism.  So, it is plagiarism or creativity?

Most of the examples I shared, which come from Matt Mason, would be examples of plagiarism and cheating if they happened inside a classroom.

Doesn’t there seem to be a disconnect from what we do in the classroom and what the real world expects of them? I know most of you are saying it’s about the process. But if that is true, then why do we spend so much time evaluating and grading the result?

If it really is about process then Pat Dixon has an idea;

  • Give the students a question they know nothing about.
  • Give them 30 minutes to put together a 3000 word report on that question.
  • Grade for Correctness in the answer
  • Authoritativeness of sources used
  • Uniqueness of of the pieced together report.

Catalytic Questions:

In what ways could you re-purpose your research report assignments to develop real world skills that focus on the process, the correctness, the authoritativeness, and uniqueness of synthesis?

What might that look like in your classroom or school?

How does your current understanding of technology, business, and innovation impact your thoughts?

How might your students be better served with the assignments they work on?

In what ways have you been successful in the past in adjusting assignments to meet the changing needs of the students and the world they live in? How might you draw upon that experience?

In what ways does the discussion of plagiarism and pirating vs. creativity and innovation force you to think in new ways?

What are the underlying principles at work in this discussion and how does it/they impact your approach to education?

What if you were to reverse the process and have students examine existing reports and determine how well they meet the criteria for a good research report?

Which assignments could you substitute with these new ideas?

Recommended Reading:

Plagiarism and Pirates

Plagiarism Is A Good Thing?

Where’s the Respect? A 21st Century Learning Question

The Dangers and Benefits of Piracy and The Pirate’s Dilemma

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Posted in 21st century skills, assessment, Authentic learning, Creativity, Grading, Innovation, Rob Jacobs

The Teaching Story: August 2010

August 22nd, 2010

We educators teach learners that stories have a beginning, middle and end. We also know that each annual cycle of our career takes the form of a story, too. Many of us look forward to writing a new story each year-creating fresh learning plans, developing new relationships, redesigning our learning spaces to gain different perspective upon learning. On the flip side, some of us change so little over the course of our careers that we seem to simply repeat the same story over and over; almost as if stuck in the movie Groundhog Day. What leads teachers to choose one or the other of these two career pathways? Years ago, I worked on a little writing project to ask and answer the question: what motivates some teachers to continue evolving practice over the course of their career? After hours of listening to and transcribing audio tapes, a few specific themes emerged from these teachers’ reflections on their practice- or artwork- as one teacher labeled it.

2 generations of teachers; Ashley's retiree mom helping her set up kindergarten

Each year, just before school refreshes its cycle, I hear those teachers’ voices reminding me of their perspectives on the importance of the first day of school. These teachers, all recognized master teachers with years of teaching under their belts and with no intention of ever doing anything else, believed that the power of their successes was grounded in the relationships they began to build with young people in the first moment of the first day. One teacher said to me something akin to this, “When I began teaching, one of the old-timers advised me to not smile ‘til December.. I ignored that advice and think it was one of the best decisions of my career. How can you begin a positive relationship without smiling?” Another said in thinking about a mentor who helped her survive her very first day of school, “A teacher in the math department stepped in to help me with discipline early on. She became a mentor and critical friend for life. Every time I was failing to reach a student, we would talk. She would ask questions. I would think about different approaches. Eventually, I began to realize I owned the change that’s needed, not the learner. Sometime it’s about the relationship. Other times it’s about their needing a different learning strategy from me. Sometimes, they just need more time and – more of my time.”

These teachers engaged in professional careers grounded in efficacy. They believed they were capable of making a difference in every learner’s life and they never gave up on a young person, especially those who challenged them the most. Importantly, they all shared a professional power gained from finding and connecting to one or more critical friends with whom they bonded because of a commonly held belief in their own self-efficacy. They supported each other, listened to each other, pushed each other, and shared with each other. Often, they considered themselves to be part of an underground group of educators who stayed out of the fray of others’ criticizing conversations; not because there isn’t always something to criticize in a school but because they saw those discussions as debilitating to their work with young people. They held a viewpoint about their students and their work that could be labeled as “glass almost always full.”

Paragons of teaching? I don’t think so. Teachers aren’t perfect but I believe teachers who care and work hard are more the norm than the exception. As I walk schools and chat with teachers, step into their rooms, listen to their dreams for the first day and every day afterward with the learners they serve, I think the media, the politicians, and our communities often sell short the many professionals who teach their heart out, day in and out; living their careers inside and outside of work. These teachers know what’s worthy to learn and they put their energy into realizing that work to the greatest degree possible, even if means being a bit of a Neil Postman-like“subversive activity” teacher. They understand the importance of staying current and working to learn new skills. Despite being beleaguered professionally by back-to-school stories such as the recent teacher evaluation coverage of the LA Times, they work on new ideas for learning projects while on unpaid summer leave, rearrange their learning spaces over and over again before pre-service week, put a smile on their faces, and reach out to find the good in each learner who crosses the threshold into class on that first day of school. Our schools, our learners, and our teachers represent a different century of learning than the one Norman Rockwell captured when he painted Happy Birthday, Miss Jones, an image of what once was America’s quintessential teacher. However, today’s teachers still represent the best of what teachers have always been and always will be; educators who make a difference in the lives of the young people they serve.

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Posted in 21st century skills, narrative, Pam Moran, Sphere of Influence, Teacher Efficacy, teaching, voice

Let’s Banish Critical Thinking, Part 2: Learn

February 15th, 2010

Kyle examined his bookmarks. If he’d printed out all the information he’d found the paper would pile up to well over an inch high. Even though he’d been discerning in the references he noted, the information available was overwhelming and defeating, an obstacle that prevented Kyle from moving past the data collecting stage of his project. Whether he chose the traditional approach and wrote a paper or the technological option of a multimedia presentation, Kyle couldn’t communicate ideas he didn’t yet “own” himself, and the list of bookmarks represented more than he could ever apprehend.

His teacher expected evidence of his learning, but Kyle lacked the know-how that could enable his success. Kyle was a successful student in traditional classrooms, but he did not know how to learn, especially when he was responsible for the process.

As teachers we tend to focus on our teaching and assume students know how to learn. It’s a natural perspective—we teach, students learn. Focusing on learning can seem misdirected because what we’re going to do in the classroom demands our immediate concern—it’s what we describe in the required lesson plans. However, failing to focus on student learning capacity produces the predicament Kyle faced: expectation without enablement.

I suggested in the previous post that we examine thinking as a target. “Memorize” formed the target’s outermost ring.

Learning represents a movement toward the target’s center and beyond mere recall. In fact, we’re moving from a relatively straightforward process (rehearse→remember→recall) to more complicated combinations of processes.

Learning often involves four core processes, or four “states” of thinking. (Thinking is more fluid than the term states suggests, but this simplification can help us understand its flow.) Through experience, the brain gains raw sensory data. During comprehension, the brain sorts, labels, and organizes the raw sensory data. Through elaboration, the brain examines the organized data for patterns, recalls relevant prior experiences, and blends the new data with your experiences to construct understanding. During application the brain practices using or expressing the new understanding. There’s much more that could be said just about these core processes (an entire chapter of The Architecture of Learning explores these in depth), but allow me to move on and introduce a related idea.

The influential book 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times argues for a greater emphasis on “Learning and Innovation Skills.” Such skills, explain authors Trilling and Fadel, “are the keys to unlocking a lifetime of learning and creative work.”1 We should increase instruction in the skills of learning, not just guide student learning of core subject matter. In other words, we need to place more value and emphasis on teaching students how to self-teach (or self-learn). We need to teach them how to engage learning’s core processes; we need to teach them the thinking skills that enable self-directed learning.

As we explore learning’s core processes in detail, a myriad of related skills emerge. Here’s a partial chart I’ve compiled. All these skills either contribute to a core process or engage a combination of learning’s core processes.

Going deeper, learning to learn becomes even more interesting (or complex, depending on your perspective), but what we can actually teach comes into focus.

For example, a group of educators in Philadelphia took part of the very first skill (identifying, clarifying, and phrasing questions) and discussed, “What is the range of this skill? What do its initial steps of development look like? What would its fullest expression look like?” After we grappled with these concepts, we considered when instruction for each step might begin and where it might mature to mastery. Here’s what evolved:

As we saw this potential scope emerge, the group became excited. For the first time, many of them felt they knew what to teach to equip students to think critically. (I know, I used the term I’m advocating we banish!) My response, and what I still believe, is that we identified, at least in part, the skills we could teach that would equip students to learn independently. Learning is not separate from thinking but dependent on it:

What we know results from what and how we think. Researcher and critical thinking expert Diane F. Halpern explains:

Knowledge is not something static that gets transferred from one person to another like pouring water from one glass to another. It is dynamic. Information becomes knowledge when we make our own meaning out of it…[We] create knowledge every time we learn a new concept.

Educator Laura Erlauer agrees, explaining that thinking processes “allow the brain to thoroughly understand the new concepts and internalize them into meaningful memories.” Learning is a product of thinking.2

Where does that leave us? Here are a few possible conclusions:

  • Learning is more than memorizing. It engages cognitive processes (comprehension, elaboration, application) that extend beyond rehearsal and recall. Learning is powered by thinking, and learning provides new material for thinking. (As one commenter on the last post put it, you have to have something to think about.)
  • Teaching students how to become learners requires helping them develop these cognitive processes and their associated skills/sub-skills.
  • The associated skills possess “steps” of development that provide more specific direction for what we can emphasize in the classroom.
  • Teaching these skills should be our priority. Everything else, such as the specific topics we teach, should be the material students learn through practice in using these skills. In other words, these skills should “drive” the curriculum. That does not mean we do not teach the traditional disciplines, but that the traditional disciplines are a means to the desired end of equipping self-directed learners.

I realize this leaves plenty of unanswered questions, such as:

  • What are the developmental steps for all the other skills?
  • What about problem solving? creativity? reasoning?
  • How can we “cover” the mandated curriculum while teaching students the skills to become self-directed learners?
  • How does teaching students to become self-directed learners aid achievement as measured on standardized testing?
  • Are there approaches we can use that would engage students in utilizing these skills while becoming knowledgeable of new subject matter?

I’ll address some of these in future posts, but honestly, I don’t have answers to all of them. It seems current educational mandates and structures hinder good answers to some of these critical questions (and produce the very problems Kyle faced). Changing direction likely requires a rethinking of current emphases and structures.

But then you probably already knew that.

References

  1. Trilling, B. & Fadel, C., 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 49.
  2. Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 186).

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Posted in 21st century skills, architecture of learning, Authentic learning, Cognition, comprehension, critical thinking, Education, elaboration, k-12 education, thinking

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Reform on Learning’s Terms

July 26th, 2009

At a press conference announcing the “Race to the Top” initiative, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan pledged nearly $10 billion in federal grant money to public school divisions that can deliver on four assurances:

  1. Worthy divisions will develop more rigorous standards and assessments.
  2. Worthy divisions will monitor growth in student learning and use that data to identify effective teaching practices.
  3. Worthy divisions will identify effective teachers and principals, find ways to reward them, and find ways to improve or replace ineffective educators.
  4. Worthy divisions will reorganize or close failing schools.

Looking at the assurances, I have to ask: is continuous quality improvement the same thing as innovation, or even change? Does it really cost $10 billion to assure the status quo?

First, the federal government wants to provide states with the money to develop new assessments based on common, internationally-benchmarked standards. These assessments and standards need to go beyond content or we tread water in curriculum and instruction. So long as we use a single measure like external test data to compare students, schools, systems, and states, divisions will allocate resources to teach to the test. If we’re going to stay locked in that mindset, then we’d best dramatically overhaul assessment in American education to drive changes in curricula and instructional practice.

What about paying for common performance standards and a common performance assessment to overlay state content standards? What about funding multiple assessment measures of different types?

What about funding a pilot that excuses participating divisions from yearly testing so they can teach to assessments more aligned with 21st Century Skills, like the NAEP math assessment or College and Work Readiness Assessment?

What about a pilot that excuses participating divisions from yearly testing and evaluates them instead on high school and 4-year college rates and the consequent changes they make to curriculum, assessment, instruction, scheduling, and community engagement in-house?

What about funding persistent online testing outside of set windows so students can test ahead or test until they demonstrate mastery?

How would you innovate assessment to close the gap?

Second, the “Race to the Top” grants ask divisions to close the data gap, measure student growth, and identify the teaching practices that cause growth. So how about paying for portfolio, project, and performance-based assessment pilots? Look at the College Success Portfolio from Envision Schools, or these projects from an Expeditionary Learning school as examples. Summative assessments like these and the formative measures leading up to them would both be information-rich for teachers making instructional decisions. They would also cause real change as divisions revamped professional development to support teachers in using practices like authentic engagement, entrepreneurship, and service learning. If schools permeated instruction with these practices, there would be a paradigm shift in education. Instead of being siloed in special programs or isolated in rock star teacher classrooms, these practices could be the national agenda, not an add-on to it or a field trip from it.

We already know that to ensure real learning, learning must be relevant to the student. Countless teachers take it upon themselves to design relevant instruction, but the way to make sure all teachers are supported in doing so is to make states assess for learning in ways relevant to students, their education, and careers.

The kind of information-era innovations called for by the Obama administration will not come from enabling all kids able to pass easily-scored tests or by testing kids on school work. The innovation the administration wants will come from adults who were habituated to academic risk-taking and open-ended problem-solving as children in schools where failure was seen as part of the engine of success, not as its opposite. To innovate products and services in the global marketplace, we’re going to need to support brave teachers modeling inquiry for our brilliant students and to administer messy “tests” with canny scorers. We should invest accordingly.

Secretary Duncan says he feels hope for transformational change in American education, but the four assurances of “Race to the Top” only assure that some schools and programs will improve at what they already do: preparing students to pass tests that in the near future will continue to vary in rigor and content from state to state.

This raises questions about merit pay, part of Assurance Three: “reward effective educators.” We have yet to adopt national standards, let alone national assessments; therefore, we are not ready to evaluate teachers fairly, nor should we begin differentiating their pay based on the results of different state tests with inconsistent levels of validity.

I completely support differentiating teacher pay when all teachers can earn increases by meeting benchmarks in their careers that are proven to correspond to teacher quality and student achievement, such as National Board Certification, and when school divisions provide financial support for teachers pursuing such certifications. Teachers should be able to earn pay increases based on a portfolio of professional accomplishments empirically indicative of their learned skills. This is akin to the knowledge- and skills-based pay approach. We should no more assess teachers on a single measure than we should students. There are too many inequities and dangers to catalog, in the notion of paying teachers more just for better student test results.

President Obama did recognize that it’s meaningful to move a student ahead in achievement even if the student doesn’t pass a test, but providing merit pay for student growth is a slippery slope. Imagine two students, both entering 3rd grade 2 years behind their peers in achievement. The first student has 2 ineffective teachers in a row, and then a fantastic 5th grade teacher who helps the student be on-grade-level by the end of 5th grade, still just a bit behind peers ready for 6th grade. Under the four assurances, perhaps this teacher would get merit pay for causing so much growth.

The second student, though, makes a little bit of progress with three skilled teachers in a row to finish on-grade-level at the end of fifth grade. However, he or she never grows a full grade level with any one teacher. Would those teachers each get a share of merit pay for catching the student up over three years, or none at all for failing to move the student ahead a full grade level in any single year? Are these teachers considered ineffective?

Money would be better spent in rewarding teachers for attaining a menu of meaningful professional accomplishments, rather than in paying an hourly rate increase on the basis of how many grade levels of growth equals an “advanced pass” on a state test. It would also be a real change to how the nation understands merit pay and would provide career paths for teacher-leaders that keep those teachers in the classroom.

The fourth assurance calls on superintendents to re-organize or shut down failing schools. This assurance echoes NCLB sanctions for schools that serially lag behind AYP. I am all for meaningful accountability, but I’m against using a single measure like state testing data to determine a school’s fate. I have more questions here than counter-points. If AYP goes by the wayside, what will be the measure of a school’s success? Will superintendents shake up staffing and appoint successful teachers to failing schools? What if those teachers fail, too? What’s the incentive for risk-taking? What are the incentives for letting a school fail? How much time will be granted for innovative programs to get past start-up jitters? If AYP doesn’t go by the wayside, what happens to schools that only have a 99% pass rate beyond 2014? Is the federal government awarding grants to divisions based on their willingness to shut down failing schools? What if a division wanted to charter a failing school to innovate? Can a division dodge the failing-school assurance by chartering failing schools for charter money? Will a division get grant funding for shutting down a failing school this year that wouldn’t be shut down by post-AYP/NCLB criteria?

We need more than these four assurances to reform American education. Innovation doesn’t come from assurance. In fact, assurance is anathema to innovation. If what Secretary Duncan decreed were innovative, we wouldn’t already be assured of how the money is going to be spent. If success for all were already assured, we wouldn’t need to innovate. We do need innovation and we need it from classroom teachers.

United States Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, our nation’s first CTO, recently implored our schools’ innovators to help him find them. That’s an assurance more inviting than any of Secretary Duncan’s. Help him, classroom teachers; share your ideas. Share them with your colleagues at work and online, with your principals, coordinators, directors, and superintendents. Spread your vision of learning and ask for what you need to make it happen. As your divisions compete in the “Race to the Top,” remember to start a dialogue with CTO Chopra and his office, as well. Get yourself the support you need in your classroom to change your own professional practice and ensure learning through genuinely reformative and relevant practices like authentic engagement, entrepreneurship, and service learning. Students can master any content through the skills needed for these endeavors, but no set of standards spread across separate disciplines will help them master those skills. Students need your help to facilitate the real, joyful work of learning.

Teachers: there’s energy in our country for real change, not just improvement. You are uniquely positioned at an intersection of students and learning, and networked by the technology and PLC-driven practices necessary to help each other with do-it-yourself instructional innovation. You can be the hub of students’ and teachers’ rediscovery of learning. We know what works; it’s difficult to do; we can help one another change our teaching. Advocate for your students, for yourselves, and for each other. Reform our schools on learning’s terms.

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Posted in 21st century skills, Arne Duncan, Chad Sansing, Innovation, Race to the Top, Testing

Or Is It About the Technology?

May 11th, 2009

By Kelly Hines, Keeping Kids First

A few weeks ago, I published a series of my thoughts on 21st century learning and teaching in a post titled “It’s Not About the Technology.” For a tech integrator and enthusiast like me, it was almost uncomfortable to articulate these ideas independent of technology. As a quick recap, my main points were that educators must focus on the skills of problem solving, addressing the needs of individual students and learning, as opposed to teaching.

This week, Ben Grey posted a thought-provoking article to “Tech & Learning” titled “Why Technology?” As friends of mine in ed tech positions across the United States are losing funding for their departments, and even their positions, Ben Grey’s questions are all the more pressing. As the author of a post titled “It’s Not About the Technology”, what would I say if I were asked to stand in front of a board of education or other decision making body and answer the question “Why should we continue to use and pursue technology in our district?”

Honestly, I would start by taking a quick, informal poll. Where have you received and made most of your recent calls? Your cell phone or your land line? Have you ever by passed a gas station because they didn’t have pay at the pump? Where do you look for information? In an encyclopedia or on the internet?

What do our children need to know in order to be successful in our world? Already in 2009, you must be able to navigate the internet and be savvy about decision making and purchasing. North Carolina’s Department of Motor Vehicles is no longer sending out license plate renewal notifications by US Postal Service. All drivers in North Carolina will have to go online to renew their registration. Our children have to be prepared to live and prosper in this world.

But what are we really talking about here? We talking about standing in front of a decision making body that has to weigh sustainability, budgets, personnel and other political factors. They can easily argue that technology use in the classroom has not been proven to raise test scores. Technology is always changing, so how can we keep up? Opponents say that kids get enough social media at home. So, let’s talk a language that they will understand.

The state of California spends approximately $400 million dollars per year on textbooks. Yes, that’s $400, 000, 000 every year. A university professor I know figured out that his university could hire three full-time teaching faculty positions if the university would go paperless. A particular school system in Maine spent nearly $10, 000 this year on hospital/homebound services, not including labor costs. It costs $200 per person to send a teacher to interactive whiteboard training with particular software companies. Webinars can be included for free for unlimited participants to learn on their own time in their own way. For any governing body, these numbers should be staggering. The great news is that we have the resources to combat these things in a modern, all-inclusive and multi-functional way. Technology.

What do high schools need in order to establish academic credibility? They must offer a high variety of courses in all disciplines. They need to provide opportunities for individual and collective groups of students to pursue independent areas of advanced studies. What do you do when you cannot afford a Japanese teacher for ten interested students or an Advanced Placement Biology teacher for nine motivated students? You coordinate with a community college, university or partnering school to offer these courses to students virtually. How can you provide SAT test prep for students who have to work late and on weekends? You create a free Moodle course that students can access from home at times that are conducive to their busy schedules. How do you provide high quality hospital/homebound instruction for students? You enroll them in a regular education classroom and you have them Skype in to a grade-level appropriate classroom where they can interact with curriculum, teachers and peers to facilitate learning. How do you make sure that teachers are getting “just in time” professional development? You create a series of professional development activities that are collaborative in nature to address the demands of individual teachers on a schedule that meets family obligations as well. How do you create an environmentally conscious school system while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment, toner, repairs & paper? You help students. to learn and share in a paperless learning environment. How do you avoid spending millions of dollars on loosely correlated textbooks that are error riddled and often out-dated before they are printed? You build courses around free, open source resources that are web-based, accessible from all edges of the globe and are easily differentiated to address the learning needs of all students without sacrificing the integrity of the curriculum’s content.

Before systems around the United States (and the world) start cutting technology positions and funds, I hope they will consider that these positions and resources may be exactly what saves us in this time of economic uncertainty. While I will holdfast to my ideas that there are fundamental concepts that must be in place before 21st century learning will be at its best (with or without the technology), maybe it IS about the technology when it comes to best serving our students today and beyond!

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Posted in 21st century skills, Kelly Hines, learning, technology

It’s Not about the Technology

April 19th, 2009

(By Kelly W. Hines, Keeping Kids First)

I am sitting here at my laptop, occasionally watching my Skype and Tweetdeck notifications in case I miss something from a family member or colleague, and I’m going to honestly tell you that learning in the 21st century is not about the technology. Blasphemy! my tech-savvy friends are saying. Six months ago I might have agreed, but today I’m more than willing to stand by my words.

We are hearing more and more talk recently about what learning and teaching will look like in the 21st century. What do we need to bring us into the future? What will our children need to know and be able to do? The first thing to comes to everyone’s mind is technology. We need computers. We need ipods. We need wireless connectivity. We need 1:1 initiatives. We need blogs, wikis and podcasts. While I completely agree with the fact that these are innovative tools for teaching and learning, I do not agree that these are the first things we need to initiate change in our classrooms.

Before anything else, the educational community (including state and national organizations, teacher preparation programs, and local systems) must recognize the need to change an overall approach to teaching and learning. The tools mentioned earlier, like netbooks, 1:1 initiatives, and web 2.0 tools, will not be effective vehicles for instruction without an evolution in mindset. Here is a list of four things that every teacher must recognize in order to effectively and positively impact students in a new generation of learning.

1. Teachers must be learners. As teachers, most of us have completed a specialised teacher preparation program. We have passed a test of proficiency in basic educational theory and child psychology. We have demonstrated mastery of our own content areas. Think about the teachers in your building. The years that these teachers have exited these initial requirements span decades. If you put them all in one room, you will probably find that their experiences in these areas were very different. Yet, they are all teaching children today. Teachers today must be perpetual learners who are invested in their professions. We must be up to date on current trends, research and tools. We must know what our students are doing and where they are coming from when they enter our classrooms. This learning cannot just include mandated workshops and occasional required readings. Teachers who want to be truly succesful must be voracious and self-motivated in their pursuit of evoloving understanding.

2. Learning and Teaching are not the same thing. How many times have we heard a colleague say, “I don’t know why these kids don’t get it. I’ve taught it a hundred times.” I equate teaching and learning to a basic physics principle. If an object does not move, no matter how much force has been applied, no work has been done. Therefore, if a student has not learned, not matter how much effort has been exerted, no teaching has been done. Teaching in the 21st century is going to be about working smarter and not harder. It is not about adding to our proverbial plates. We must look at learning as the product of a successful day. Learning will not look the same to all students or all teachers, but it must be the goal.

3. Technology is useless without good teaching. We have countless technological tools at our disposable today. These tools range in cost from free to thousands and thousands of dollars. When we put innovative tools in the hands of innovative teachers, amazing things can happen. If you put these tools in the hands of teachers who are not willing to innovate, money has been wasted. There are arguments against spending the money on interactive whiteboards for classrooms. At approximately $5000 each, you would think these boards would facilitate better teaching. It is not about the board. It is about proper training and mindset of a teacher who is already willing and eager to do amazing things. The lack of comprehensive and curriculum-related professional development for teachers is why schools have thousands of computers that are being used as game systems and word processors.

4. Be a 21st Century Teacher without the technology. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has published a framework for learning in the 21st century. The core outcomes for students include:

1. Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes
2. Learning and Innovation Skills
* Creativity and Innovation
* Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
* Communication and Collaboration
3. Information, Media and Technology Skills
* Information Literacy
* Media Literacy
* ICT Literacy
4. Life and Career Skills

Upon careful consideration, these are outcomes that can be achieved with little technology (excluding of course some components of the Information, Media and Technology Skills). If a teacher can find ways to prepare students with the capacity to be creative and innovative, those children will be well prepared to face the future. Teachers who customize the learning experiences of their students to involve critical thinking and problem solving are doing their students a greater favor than those who misuse technology as a means of facilitating learning. Those teachers who know how to foster communication and collaboration within their classrooms and school buildings are equipping their students with the abilities to apply these core skills to more areas in their own lives.

Now imagine a classroom where the teacher has embraced these principles. The teacher is a learner. The teacher teaches with learning in mind. 21st century skills are highlighted through facilitative leadership. These foundational components of a quality classroom experience will ensure that students value experiential and focused learning. Now if you take this teacher and introduce them to the wonders that technology offers for students, the possibilities are endless. But, it really is not about the technology.

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Posted in 21st century skills, k-12 education, Kelly Hines, learning, teaching, technology

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