Preparing for educational climate change

Like most edubloggers, I am impatient for educational change. Unlike most edubloggers, I am old and cynical about schools being able to change themselves. Only forces from outside the established educational community will create fundamental change in schools - for good or ill.

We're already experiencing one external force in action - NCLB. Schools are fundamentally changing by having high stakes testing of basic skills drive planning, budgeting, and evaluation. This is school climate change that occurred over the past six years and not for the better.

But I am anticipating an educational meteor is on the educational horizon that will so dramatically alter the school climate that our current dinosaur-friendly environment will cease to exist and give rise to a new breed of educators -  affordable 1:1 computing.

Why am I thinking about this today?

Because yesterday I, along with a couple dozen other educators, spent six hours or so attending a workshop delivered over interactive television. I noticed a few things about the day's stand-and-deliver experience:

1. Adults have no more patience with unengaging materials than kids.
   
2. Everyone's standards for engagement are rising.
   
3. Technology itself does not make an educational experience engaging.
4. Given the opportunity, learners will find a way to be engaged without help.

About half of us had laptops. Our venue, one that normally does not provide guest wireless access, found a way to do so. Work/learning continued for those of us with laptops even when the program was about something we had already heard, was difficult to hear (poor video QOS), or was simply not delivered in style that invited attention. (I am trying to say this politely since the presentations were no worse than any one would see at a conference, but certainly no better either.)

Those of us with our own means of engagement tuned out - at least partially. We've all seen this happen at meetings and workshops - anywhere people have access to computing devices and means to get online. Prentsky says "Engage Me or Enrage Me." I don't know that it has to be that dramatic - "Engage Me or Lose Me" seems more likely.

Now what happens when parents 1) provide wireless access devices for their kids and 2) petition school boards for their kids to have access to them through out the school day? The call by parents for student cell phone access will grow after the tragedy at Virginia Tech on Monday (Vicki Davis expresses this very well.) and the line between cell phones and PDAs and laptops is blurring more everyday.

So what might be the hallmarks of the teachers who  survive this meteoric change? I'd put my money on those who:

• are diagnosticians who use technology to help them create effective IEPs for all their kids using evaluation data that is accessed and manipulated electronically
  
• are masters of differentiated instruction
• communicate online easily
• can identify, organize and prescribe online learning activities
• are dynamic and engaging discussion leaders (and possibly lecturers)
  
• figure out new ways of teaming with other educators to specialize in learning styles rather than content areas
  

What do you do when you have their bodies in your classroom, but their minds are everywhere but? I hope our pioneering 1:1 educators in Maine and Africa and elsewhere will be offering guidance!  

Photos from Plugging Africa's kids in to $100 laptop.

Before?

After?

Comments

[john brandt]

I generally agree with your list of attributes good teachers need, but am not so sure of the fifth bullet and its reference to "lectures." I think "21st Century Teachers" need to be architects, constructors and facilitators of learning. I hope the lecture disappears soon.

I've blogged more about your comments here http://maineascd.blogs.com/

[Doug Johnson]

Hi John,

I appreciate your comments here and on your blog.

I suppose I threw in the bit about lectures a bit selfishly since I've heard some good ones and would be sorry to have missed my chance to have heard them. I still get a charge out of the Press Club lectures on public radio.

Well done, any educational method can and should be used. Poorly done, none should be.

Thanks and all the best,

Doug

[Vicki Davis]

Actually I agree with the fifth point. The best educators I know are fascinating "lecturers" however they are not the bone-dry namby-pamby lecture of bespeckled educators with a monotone but rather, often border on the theatrical. They are exciting, intriguing, stimulating, however they allow interaction and discussion. People who love their subject and talk and converse about the subject are an important part of the educational process. But, also, in this day and time, it is even more. Great post.

[mark richardson]

A good lecturer can be very engaging...and it doesn't hurt if the content is something you want/need/find interesting. The problem with lecturing children in class (my students are 8-11 yrs old) is that no matter how dynamic I am I might not be able to engage all of them because the list of prescribed content and skills are I am required to "teach" or help the students learn are simply not of interest to someone their age. If the talk concerns a need as identified by our standardized test it might not matter what form that instruction takes...lecture or otherwise...if the students don't want the content they won't take it in. Doesn't matter if it was as a lecture or perhaps even programmed into a game. Perhaps it is our content that needs to be more engaging. How often does an adult need the bits and pieces of minutia our curriculum sometimes calls for...

Mark

[Ed]

I think it's ok if teachers have their own way of teaching as long as the students understand their lesson and they both the teacher and students enjoy the technique.

[Carolyn Foote]

I see colleges already grappling with this.

I attended a lecture by Lawrence Lessig at U.T. recently(speaking of great lecturers--his slides were amazing), and students all around me were on their laptops through the presentation.

High schools will be facing this before we are ready!

[Tim Lauer]

A six hour video workshop? What did you do to deserve that? :-) I'm interested in learning the topic of the workshop...

[Frank]

Technology is a big yes for education. Any new generation teacher who doesn't use it or doesn't want to use it is definitely not concerned with the their student's education.