Any cultural change - yet?

In belated honor of Digital Learning Day*

About five years ago Scott McLeod challenged us to consider if technology had caused any "cultural change" in our school. I stated:

... I was sincerely hard pressed to identify such a [cultural] change - let alone think about who or what caused it - especially a change abetted by technology. If I survive two more weeks in my current position, I will have completed 31 years as a teacher, librarian or technology director. And things are more the same in 2008 than they are are different from my first year teaching in 1976. Some changes, yes; cultural changes, substantive changes, no. For the most part adults are still putting 20-30 kids in hard desks in square rooms, talking at them, and requiring them to regurgitate what we told them. 

To use Zuboff's terms, we have "automated" some aspects of education with technology: attendance, grading, lectures, and communication. But what we have yet to do is "infomate it" - do things we could not do before there was technology. What would real cultural change look like in education?

• All students would have meaningful Individual Education Plans specifically written to their learning styles and needs.
• Classrooms would be truly differentiated with all students learning in their own way, at their own pace. Chronological segregation would not happen.
• Personal motivation and relevance for learning would be a prime ingredient in education.
• Constructivism would be the main pedagogy, not a once-a-year term paper or project.
• Data mining would genuinely determine the most effective teaching methods, teachers, and conditions for learning.
• Distance learning would be the norm, opening huge opportunities for students to learn according to interest from the very best instructors.
• Gaming would be standard practice and teachers would be game coaches.
• Schools would be genuinely pleasant places where students want to be.
• Assessments would measure individual growth over time and mastery of demonstrable skills, not compare students to artificial norms at snapshots in time.

We seem poised in our technology efforts to make some of these school culture changes. I am not holding my breath for any of these things to happen, but you never know.

I am still waiting for the cultural shift. In five years, I'll check again. Sigh...

* Yesterday - Digital Learning Day - both our webserver and Moodle server went down. Do servers think this is DLD is a national holiday and they are federal employees?

The e-reading advantage

Last month, Ryan Bretag wrote about an experiment in his school where students, often reluctant to leave print, read from e-books. (Students Reading Digitally: COD Pilot in Metanoia,1/25/13). Ryan's students' reaction to the brief e-reading experience was heartening. He writes:

Many of the students expressed just how much this could alter their reading and learning in the positive. In fact, two students talked to me a few hours later while I walked through our library. They continued to express their excitement for digital reading and talked about how they were finishing up their reading assignment right then.

Also, one item that really stood out to students was the sharing of their active reading notes. And I think this is a tremendous discussion point for teachers especially in English:

• what happens when our active reading can become social?
• what happens when our active reading can be shared with great ease?
• what happens to discussions when our active reading is more readily accessible and transparent, if desired?
• what happens to discussions and writing when our active reading can be captured and used as a visual?
• what happens to the pace and depth reading of classroom discussion with the search features?
• what happens to writing to learn when our active reading can be easily shared into social media and Google docs?
• what happens to blogging and the blogfolio with this easy tie-in to our active reading?
• what do we need to discard, keep, and change as a result of the features now available?

As one student said to me, “this changes how I see active because I can use my stuff so much more now and a lot easier”. How great of a thought? This student summed up both enhancements and transformative uses of the technology.

Tim Stahmer in Educon: Unraveling the Textbook, Assorted Stuff, 2/3/13 writes about a session by John Pederson and Diana Laufenberg that observed that while access to information has changed radically in the past couple of decades, textbooks used by most students have not. And that when schools have replaced print textbooks with e-texts. "many in the schools would rather just have the paper versions back." Tim then suggests that any replacement should:

• be accessible on any device, anywhere
• allow users to add comments
• allow certain users (teachers, trusted students) to add and update materials
• have a social media component to allow users to discuss the materials
• have content controlled by educators, not publishers

When talking to mainstream educators, I find that many see an e-text as simply a regular book or textbook viewed on a screen - a PDF version of print (with poorer graphics and worse interface). This is the view of too many traditional publishers as well.

The real reason to invest in the e-text comes not from a lighter backpack, reduced distribution costs, or even updateablity, but in the value-added features afforded by e-reading. As alluded to above, these features, impossible to replicate in print, include adding social networking functionality, searchability, and customizability by teachers. But I would also add:

• Multiple reading levels
• Instantly defined, pronounced, and translated text
• Clarifying multi-media content
• Built-in tools like graphing calculators, mind mapping software, timeline generators, and note-taking/organizing apps
• Built in pre-tests and checks for understanding
• Links to source materials, primary resources and additional reading, viewing and listening experiences
• Acitivities and games that reinforce concepts and increase engagement

Those are a few off the top of my head. (For a more thoughtful list see my article Turning the Page, School Library Journal, November 2004. Yes, this has been a pet topic/peeve/frustration of mine for a long time.)

Here's the thing. The successful publisher of the future - of both trade books and textbooks - will not be the paranoid but the bold. It will be the publisher who both reduces costs and, more importantly, adds the functionality that will increase reading abilities, engagement, and content understanding.

Watch for that breakout publisher. It's coming... In the meantime, did anyone else think that Tim's description of a textbook replacement already exists? (Hint: It rhymes with noodle and starts with an M.)

 

Image source

10 Sentences Google Students Never Hear

A terrific list from Kevin Brookhouser shared on Google+:

Love it. How about some sentences that Google Students never hear...

10 Sentences Google Students Never Hear - or shouldn't

1. Please write in ink on wide-ruled paper. Neatness counts as part of your grade.
2. You'll have a sub today since your teacher hurt his back carrying home papers to grade.
3. Pass your paper to the right.
4. You will be assessed a printing fee each semester.
5. I lost your paper. Sorry.
6. Your assignment is due before I leave the building on Friday.
7. Copy these instructions off the board.
8. Working with others is cheating.
9. It's your final draft.
10. Print this out for your portfolio.

It's less about the technology and more about the mindset, of course.

What do you and your students hear less if you are actively using GoogleApps?