Education and Technology
Beyond Barriers
Published August 11, 2009 @ 07:04AM PT
In my previous post, I introduced an idea for a different type of online class, one which is only possible because of available technology. Many people have, rightfully so, questioned technology's ability to seriously impact education. It is often over-hyped, oversold and overpriced, yet I still hold the belief that under the right circumstances, it can help learners (and their communities) reach new places. For me, the challenge will be to do more than simply move the traditional classroom model online, throwing in some Web 2.0 tools for good measure. It will rest on how to best combine current technologies with pedagogical approaches that lead to significance, flow, self-direction, group action, sharing, joy... and produce the type of learning that will help us tackle the distributed, complex problems of our day.
Technology has never quite lived up to its potential as a teaching/learning tool because critics have spent too much time analyzing the wrong thing. We've thrown billions of dollars of hardware and software into the classroom, analyzing it under a microscope without doing much looking at the pedagogy it's supposed to support. In a recent blog comment (post worth reading!), Ira Socol astutely points out, "It is the job of education to alter itself to prove itself of value to the world which now exists."
What would happen if education altered itself to take advantage of the mature, ubiquitous tools that let anyone become a mass publisher? Or that allow for the simple group forming that makes people and their ideas findable, that simplify sharing and collaboration, and that disrupt long-held power structures? What would happen if educational programs stopped viewing socializing and play as hostile to learning, but instead, in the words of a recent report (p. 35), "positioned [themselves] to step in and support moments when youth are motivated to move from friendship-driven to more interest-driven forms of new media use"?
A traditional class, with its small group of students, insulated from the outside world, fails to capitalize on what's happening beyond its borders. Bill Joy, Sun Microsystem's founder, points out that most good ideas and talent are not in your institution but outside of it. It would seem to make sense then to try to establish connections with those on the outside.
Today's technology has made it easy to create and join networks. This has drastically changed important quantitative variables involved in learning. When a networked class member connects to another networked class member, they do not simply add another person to their network--they add another person's network to their network. Interconnections grow geometrically. The possibility of finding just the right person for a collaboration, or to answer a question, increases dramatically. More people connected to more information and the minds that are producing it, improves the possibilities of getting better feedback, attaining quicker results, and connecting people to new ideas. All this connective growth has increased variety, catering to the long tail. Using social media, students can now join formal and informal affinity groups and take online classes that in the past, either didn't exist, or were prohibitively expensive for their schools to offer. The quantity of information available today due to the fact that anyone can become a mass publisher is greater than at any time in our history. Those using networks and social tools like Delicious.com, Facebook and TweetDeck, are figuring out how to take advantage of ever-increasing amounts of information, finding needles in the ever-deepening haystacks.
While networked learning has allowed us to access larger quantities of information and increased variety for learners, maybe even more importantly, it has the potential to improve the quality of ideas. In his must-read book, Here Comes Everybody - The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, Clay Shirky points out that, "... most good ideas came from people who were bridging 'structural holes', which is to say people whose immediate social network included employees outside their department. Shirky follows with a quote from researcher Ronald Burt, author of "The Social Origins of Good Ideas", who writes:
People connected to groups beyond their own can expect to find themselves delivering valuable ideas, seeming to be gifted with creativity. This is not creativity born of deep intellectual ability. It is creativity as an import-export business. An idea mundane in one group can be a valuable insight in another.
If we look at how schools are structured today with their often strict adherence to hierarchies and disciplines, it would seem there are plenty of opportunities for bridging structural holes.
As potential agents of change, schools spend too much time in the future, preparing their students for that fateful moment when they enter the "real world". Insulated classes, island teachers and outdated policies end up disengaging students from the very real (and current!) world just outside their classroom window. Millions of hearts and minds ready to engage with all types of issues sit idly, battling the clock. Here, technology has the potential to be a real game-changer. Not only does it put students in touch with important issues, it allows them to do something about them. Social media has changed power structures in unprecedented ways. With the ability to easily connect with others (often surreptitiously), take pictures, record video, mass publish, and share information with little or no interference from superiors, people today are taking on governments, corporations, mass media--and winning. Maybe it's time for students to be challenged to do more with their networked technology than simply check grades and hand in work.
Many of today's most pressing challenges like climate change, fisheries depletion, virulent disease, invasive species... are complex, distributed, messy, extend beyond borders, and will require cooperation and collaboration in order to solve. The traditional school model where a few people at the top provide scarce knowledge to passive individuals at the bottom in order to make them more competitive on the global stage, no longer seems to make as much sense. (If it ever did.) We're only going to get better at this when we realize that information is no longer scarce, that people actually do like sharing and helping, and that force and competition will not solve all problems. The tools to effect serious change are on our desks, in our pockets and in our schools. However, they'll never live up to their potential as tools for change while the pedagogy they're supposed to support goes unanalyzed.
Tell Your Teacher Where to Go
Published August 10, 2009 @ 09:08AM PT
Participatory Learning - Join Us from Plearn on Vimeo.
After 15 years of working in schools and observing and reflecting on the practice, I’d like to attempt something different. I’m curious to know if it’s possible to get fifty people (and possibly an institution or three) on this wired planet to take just one foot out of the mainstream of education and participate in a course that operates under a very different educational paradigm than the one they’re used to. I’d like to know if learners are willing to put their own creative desires and curiosities ahead of doing what’s educationally safe. Is the dissonance between how people learn on their own today and how they are taught in schools jarring enough to make them want to try something new? Can the Internet’s currently evolved state and the culture of sharing, collaboration and participation that it has fueled, lead to a new educational paradigm where independent educational contractors (IECs), working in more decentralized environments, are able to offer a variety of courses serving the long tail of educational consumers in a way that more hierarchical institutions cannot?
In order to try to answer these questions, I’ve quit my job as a classroom teacher for next school year and built an online space–-a class (ParticipatoryLearning.net)–-based on the principles of participatory learning, among others. The definition of participatory learning which I find most useful, is the one which was offered for the Digital Media and Learning Competition:
Participatory Learning includes the ways in which new technologies enable learners (of any age) to contribute in diverse ways to individual and shared learning goals. Through games, wikis, blogs, virtual environments, social network sites, cell phones, mobile devices, and other digital platforms, learners can participate in virtual communities where they share ideas, comment upon one another’s projects, and plan, design, advance, implement, or simply discuss their goals and ideas together. Participatory learners come together to aggregate their ideas and experiences in a way that makes the whole ultimately greater than the sum of the parts.
Here's the pitch:
Join international educator Bill Farren for two semesters as he travels through four different South American countries, connecting students to real people, real communities and real issues. The journey will begin in Peru. From there, the class will vote on what country they will visit next. Participatory Learners (Plearners) will be able to track their teacher who will be acting as their “reporter/guide in the field” via global positioning satellite. Through a request system, Plearners will be able to assemble information such as pictures, video footage, interviews, etc. for their learning use and for the creation of various learning objects including collaborative projects. Students will decide what projects (challenges) to tackle, and working with a variety of other people, get on with the business of changing the world today. Freedom of choice and expression will be an important part of this course. Students will be encouraged to extend their expressive abilities using a variety of tools and genres.
This class seeks to do more than simply take the classroom model and move it online. It seeks to challenge the status quo in various ways:
- Students will be active managers of their learning; with some guidance, they will manage what to learn, how to learn, who to pay attention to, how to learn from peers, how to assess their learning, and when needed, learn to redirect their efforts
- It will be democratic, bottom up.
- The class will self-organize, catering to the long tail. It will form itself, and it will largely run itself. We will investigate "the power of organizing without organizations". (Clay Shirky)
- Authority will be earned. It will be turned on its head.
- Outcomes will not be prescribed. We do not know how things will turn out. We may have to change direction as we see fit.
- Failure will not be punished. It will be treated as information.
- It will be open, inviting interested others to look in, collaborate, participate, assist... (There will be mechanisms for private communication between class members, as needed).
- It will not be graded. Assessment will come in various non-graded forms from teacher/guide, peers, visitors, and most importantly, self-reflection. The space will become a deep, rich electronic portfolio for each class member. Additionally, students will be provided with a formal, networked, electronic portfolio that they can manage as they see fit. They will decide what goes into their portfolio, who gets to see it, and when it's available for viewing. This holistic approach seeks to, “transform accountability driven by testing into richer conversations around inquiry into learning” ¹ (more)
- It will be multidisciplinary, anchored around various themes.
In their book, Disrupting Class, authors Christensen, Johnson and Horn state that innovation and change often happen when individual actors work outside of the regulated sectors, offering goods and services through independent commercial channels, eventually getting noticed by the regulatory systems once enough people, through their own choice, opt out of the dominant offering. The authors mention that change rarely happens from within institutions, being that those institutions are more likely to hammer down the sharp edges of innovation to fit their current way of thinking, in the process, sustaining the approach it has always used.
It is hoped that if this approach works, many other independent educational contractors will be motivated to hang out their own e-shingles. Students of all stripes and ages will have a much larger selection of courses and learning formats to choose from. Classes offered by experts, many in unique circumstances, connected to interested others, unshackled from obtuse regulations, could provide an incredibly rich, eclectic and tailored experience in ways that today’s institutions simply could never match.
Teachers with various specialties and interests, using a similar approach, could create some interesting learning opportunities by, for example, spending a semester:
- In a cloud forest, helping add to the EOL
- Traveling throughout the rivers of Europe, connecting students with local history and art
- On a sailboat studying themes related to oceanography, climate change, marine biology, meteorology...
- On a container ship learning about globalization, trade, economics...
- On an Amish farm, reflecting on appropriate use of technology
The possibilities are limitless. It seems like the TFA crowd and Peace Corps types might be attracted to this type of work, improving educational opportunities for all (including teachers!).
Will this type of learning obviate the need for schools or classrooms? Absolutely not. There are many times when people want and need to be in each other's presence. Often, that's the optimal situation. However, being together is not always feasible. What these technologies offer us today is the ability to find and then interact with people that we may never have had the opportunity to connect with otherwise. They offer us the ability to get information, create information, experience places, and work and learn with others in ways that previously were impossible. They lower costs. They make failure cheap and worthwhile. Clay Shirky reminds us that things get interesting when the technology gets boring. Today, nobody cares that you have a blog or use Facebook. It's time for things to get interesting.
I invite you to visit ParticipatoryLearning.net. In the spirit of learning from others, I ask that if you have ideas on how to increase the likelihood that a project of this type succeeds, please send them my way. I’d also kindly ask that if you find this approach good for education, to help spread the message via your own networks. Thanks for reading.
¹ from Making Common Cause: Electronic Portfolios, Learning, and the Power of Communication, Cambridge, Cambridge and Yancey
Still Separate, Still Unequal? (The Case of Digital Equity in Education)
Published July 31, 2009 @ 07:31PM PT
[This is Part 4 in a series on race, schooling and educational opportunities. Part 1 can be found here, and Part 2 can be found here, and Part 3 can be found here.]
Fifty-five years ago, the United States Supreme Court declared that providing “separate but equal” educational opportunities to students based on race denied students of color the equal protection of the law. Largely, the holding in the Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education has been examined with respect to equity of access to the institution of schooling generally. And, while much of the progress that was achieved by eliminating legally enforced (de jure) school segregation has been erased by de facto housing segregation patterns that beget de facto school segregation, it is also clear that students of color continue to be denied equal educational opportunities within the institution of schooling. That is, while the post-Brown focus was and continues to be between-school and between-district segregation by race, more subtle forms of racial discrimination have persisted and proliferated within schools and districts, even in the most “integrated” schools and districts.
Less an issue of “within-school” racial segregation than one of segregation across schools and districts, consider the issue of digital equity in education. I've written a bit about digital equity in education (see e.g. http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v15n3/), but mostly in academic journals. So, I thought I'd use this space today to mashup some text from blog posts I've written before.
In homes, there are significant disparities in computer access and use by race. Fairlie (2005) found that African-Americans and Latina/os are much less likely to have access to home computers than are white, non-Latina/os (50.6 and 48.7 percent compared to 74.6 percent), and those differences are more pronounced for children than for adults. Using advanced statistical analyses, he concludes that, “[e]ven among individuals with family incomes of at least $60,000, blacks [sic.] and Latinos [sic.] are substantially less likely to own a computer or have Internet access at home than are whites.” In the following table, we see some of those differences.
One problem these data present for educators is that the significant inequities that exist within homes present a huge barrier to using technology to extend the learning day and to bridge a home-school connection. That said, there are opportunities for schools to level the playing field with respect to access to technology. However, within schools, while disparities are less pronounced, digital inequities persist. Here are some selected statistics from an NCES report:
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In 2005, the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access in public schools was 3.8 to 1, a decrease from the 12.1 to 1 ratio in 1998, when it was first measured. However, schools with the lowest level of minority enrollment had fewer students per computer than did schools with higher minority enrollments. Specifically, according to my own analyses, schools in rural areas and schools with higher percentages of African-American students are more likely to have lower levels of computer access.
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In 2005, 94 percent of public school instructional rooms had Internet access, compared with 3 percent in 1994. There are no differences across school characteristics.
Thus, while Internet access in schools and classrooms is consistently good and equitable, access to computers generally is slightly inversely related to the percentage of students of color in schools.
What about use of technology in schools? Let's look at some recent statistics on computer uses in schools disaggregated by race. [NOTE: these data are generated with the NAEP Data Explorer. Thus, these are nationally representative data].
Looking first at computer use for math, by race, in 2007, at 4th grade:
[NOTE: click on the following images to see larger graphics]
and then at 8th grade:
What do we see? Well, two things: First, computer use for math is more frequent in 4th grade than 8th grade (BTW, that's a consistent finding across lots of ed. tech. research; what's up with the secondary school teachers?). Second, at both grade levels, white students are more likely than African-American students to "never or hardly ever" use computers for math (and, yes, statheads, those differences are "statistically significant"). So, I can't say that African-American students use computers for math more than white students, but I can say they are less likely to "never or hardly ever" use computers for math in school.
In fact, that's pretty much the gist of what I report in the article in the Educational Policy Analysis Archive to which I linked above. African-American students have slightly lower levels of access to computers in schools, but the frequency with which they use computers in schools is at least as high, if not higher, than other students.
The logical next question, then, is "What are the students doing on the computers?" Answering that question is difficult, mostly for a lack of appropriate data. For math. though, there are some interesting data. By further sniffing through the NAEP Data Explorer, I "explored" differences in digitally-infused pedagogy by race. One of the items on the background questionnaire of the 8th grade NAEP in 2007 was as follows: "When you are doing math for school or homework, how often do you use these different types of computer programs?" One of the listed programs was "A program to practice or drill on math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division)." Looking at the results for that item disaggregated by race, we get the following (again, click on image to enlarge):
Overall, African-American students are much more likely to use computers to practice or drill on math facts than White students. The learning affordances of the modern Internet seem to grow exponentially these days, but even in 2007 terms, using computers for drill on math facts is hardly taking advantage of the power of computer-mediated learning.
The educational research I have done over the last decade has taken me to schools all across the United States. I've been to schools in urban centers (e.g. NYC, Dallas, Houston, Miami-Dade, etc.), tiny rural towns (e.g. Beckley (WV), Gnadenhutten (OH), etc.) and everything in between. I can report with great confidence that the schools wherein I have seen advanced, progressive applications of technology have been schools that serve overwhelmingly Caucasian populations. Relatedly, if you consider all of the reasonably large-scale 1:1 computing initiatives in the United States, you would be hard-pressed to find such a program in a majority-minority community.
As the learning affordances of ubiquitous computing continue to expand, I worry deeply about creating a new sort of digital divide; one where students of color are not afforded the opportunities and advantages of learning in technologically innovative and important ways. The educational technology community is by no means bounded, but there is unquestionably a large, but tightly connected group of individuals who are arguably the "leading" practitioners with respect to technology in education. They are the folks who are connected through Twitter and through their blogs. They are overwhelmingly Caucasian, and I strongly suspect that if we polled them about the populations of students they serve, that population would be overwhelmingly Caucasian. A little over one year ago, Paul Bogush, a technologically-innovative teacher in Connecticut wrote:
Seventeen years ago a few months into my first teaching job, I was standing in an assembly when I realized something. I was the only white dude in the room.
I was looking around Twitter today at who other people follow and I had the same feeling come back. There are only white dudes in the “Twitter room.” I could not find anyone who was not. Out of every class that I have collaborated with this year only one person was an African American. Then I thought about the blogs I read, the wikis I check out, and the podcasts I listen to. Same deal as the Twitter room. What’s up with that?
Good question. What is up with that?
The Way It Is: How Walter Cronkite Makes Us Better Educators
Published July 19, 2009 @ 06:04PM PT
I did not grow up watching Walter Cronkite. I was born in 1977, so when Cronkite stepped down from the CBS Evening News in 1981, I was four years old and spent my childhood watching Peter Jennings; however, being the child of two Baby Boomers and having a genuine interest in what took place in the couple of decades before I was born, I knew who Cronkite was and understood his reputation. I also understood that in a huge way, he represented an entirely different era of America, one that is long gone.
The Toolbelt and Universal Design - Education For Everyone
Published July 17, 2009 @ 04:00AM PT
Education may be understood in one of two broad ways. Either it is about teaching people a discrete set of facts they will be able to repeat – multiplication tables and The Lord’s Prayer are two examples – or it is about helping people learn how to function in the world – crossing the street, using the Dewey Decimal System, reading a map all fit into this category.
The first understanding is not without value. It is important to know an alphabet, basic math facts, or what “President” means. But the second is crucial to survival. Humans, from the very start, needed to know how to hunt, how to recognize safe plants from poisonous ones, how to find their way back home.
And almost as soon as humans began to function as “humans” – this process of learning to function in the world began to revolve around tools. Humans are tool makers and tool users. It truly is our most significant distinction among the species on the planet. Sure, many animals use a few basic tools, but no other creature uses as many tools, or constantly refines those tools, or continuously invents new tools. It is almost a definition of “humanity.”
Our societies are defined by our tools. Our first complex tool is our language, which allows us a huge communicative advantage over most species with which we compete. And our languages significantly define who we are and what we know. The rest of our tools tend to define where we fall in social evolution. We describe much of our history by our tool sets: The Stone Age, The Bronze Age, The Iron Age, The Age of Steam, The Information Age.
This progress explains an important idea to educators. If you are teaching your students the tools of yesterday, you are preventing society from moving forward. Rather, we must be teaching our students to use the tools of this moment, and teaching them how to learn the next set.
Toolbelt Theory
For the past four years I have talked about something I call “Toolbelt Theory.” This began as an idea for allowing students with “disabilities” to learn and choose their own Assistive Technologies. But it very quickly expanded to all students, because every human on earth needs some kind of technologies which assist them in their interactions.
It is impossible for most to climb to the second floor of a building without stairs. It is very difficult for most to get to a meeting on the 25th floor without an elevator. And it is perhaps even more difficult for most to get to work each day if work is 30 miles from home, unless we use a car.
Because we are not whales, we need some form of “assistive technology” if we are to talk to someone 3,000 miles away. We call this a telephone. Because we are not birds or Monarch Butterflies, we need other “assistive technologies” if we are to cross from one continent to another. We call these planes and boats. And because we are not Socrates, we struggle to remember everything we have ever been taught without “assistive technologies.” We call these books and paper, pens and ink.
So we create toolbelts for ourselves. We not only collect hammers, saws, screwdrivers, we load up on books or television, typewriters and newspapers.
A toolbelt for everyone
I began to discuss Toolbelt Theory in my field – for students with special educational needs. I was frustrated when some “school-based team” would pick a single technological solution for a student’s “disability” which the student was expected to use no matter the task, no matter the environment, no matter how the student was feeling that day.
For example, a student with a reading problem might be given complex, expensive literacy software for his computer but not be able to read a menu at a restaurant or a sign on a school door. Or a student without verbal communication might be given a speech-generating device too large to use on the bus as she traveled home. Or lots of students might be given tools based on their “worst day” needs – rather than allow them to use “just” the help they needed.
It was the equivalent of breaking out a chain saw every time you needed to cut wood – even if you were trying to build furniture.
But once I began to see Toolbelt Theory work, I saw that every student needs this. There’s not a human on the planet that doesn’t need to reach for a tool sometime – and knowing how to pick the right tool for the job and moment, how to use that tool well, and how to find new tools, is an essential survival skill.
Universal Design
We don’t call someone “disabled” because they can not saw 100 sheets of plywood in half by hand. We get them a table saw. We don’t call someone “disabled” because they need a power screwdriver or they’ll be exhausted after an hour of putting down deck boards. We put a bit in our drill. And we don’t call people “disabled” because they can’t walk five miles to work every morning. They take a car or a bus or a train.
This is the idea behind Universal Design Technology, and behind Toolbelt Theory. We, as humans, differ. Our tasks differ. Our environments differ. Our circumstances differ. And we pick the appropriate tool.
This Wednesday I could walk much further, cane and all, in the 64 F degree weather in San Francisco than in the 98 F degree weather just south of there in Mountain View. I could decide if I wanted to drive between those two cities, or take the train. Get off early and take BART to my destination, or ride to the station by AT&T Park and walk to the streetcar – What’s the weather? Is time an urgent factor? How does my leg feel?
But without education, I can’t make these choices. I need to know how to know the temperatures. I need to know what transit options are open to me. I need to know how to drive and how to read a timetable. How to operate parking and train ticket machines. I need to know which way the streetcars run, and how to ask for help.
When I read I need to make similar choices. I read really slowly, really badly. But for short things I just tough it out with “ink-on-paper” (or paint-on-signs), though I have a Reading Pen with me if I’m having a very bad day - a day when no alphabetical system connects correctly in my brain. But I also use Click-Speak in Firefox for reading web pages. I use WYNN for big academic reading, and Read-and-Write-Gold – all of which convert text to audio (WYNN and Read-and-Write both highlight each word visually as it is being read aloud). Sometimes I use audiobooks – especially for novels, poetry, or great historical stuff, or I let WYNN, Read-and-Write, or WordTalk convert the text to an mp3 I can listen to in my car.
Without education I could not make these choices either. I need to know how to use those different tools. I need to know how to work with them – say, how to take notes effectively. I need to understand what the purpose of my reading is. And yes, I need to know about these tools, and where to get them.
Are you teaching your students those things?
Suppose your wealthy, white, typically-abled child is heading off to Europe. Can they read maps effectively? Can they read maps on their iPhone or Blackberry so they aren’t “screaming” “I’m an unfamiliar tourist” as they walk down the street? Can they translate information quickly from unfamiliar languages? Can they use Google to convert currency? Or to know if they’re being ripped off? Are they able to figure out the transit system maps when they arrive in a city?
Oh yeah, they’ll probably need all of those tools simply to start college in a new place or to go to that first big job interview in New York or Chicago or San Francisco.
Can they get through that last hundred pages of reading when their eyes hurt? When they need to finish as they drive to work? Can they dictate a text message or email to their boss while driving a 50 mph on the Eisenhower Expressway toward Chicago’s Loop? Can they switch their Firefox spellcheck when they communicate with that job possibility in London? Do they know if it will be better for them to buy the print version of that textbook or the digital?
Or have you left them clueless in the tool store via an education continuously committed to one way of doing things?
T.E.S.T.
Toolbelt Theory, and Universal Design, means there aren’t “disability solutions” and there aren’t “normal ways to do things.” There are just humans and the tools they need. And so we don’t write IEPs for some and insist on conformity for others, but we make the tools of the world available to all, and teach them to evaluate on their own.
We do this because we know, we know, that across everyone’s lives their tasks will change, their environments will change, their skills and capabilities will change, and the available tools will change. Or quick, grab your fountain pen, fill it with ink, look up the number you need in your Manhattan White Pages directory, and dial it via your rotary phone.
So: Task – Environment – Skills – Tools (a specifically ordered re-design of Joy Zabala’s SETT Framework for those educators playing along at home). When students begin a task they need to consider what that task really is – the essential purpose. They need to know where, when, for whom that task must be completed. They must understand their own skill set and capability position (which might vary throughout even the day as they tire). And they must know the range of tools available to them – and how to use those tools.
None of this is automatic. Don’t give me your “digital native” nonsense. People even need to learn to properly hold a hammer – tool skills are not natural. Nor is tool knowledge. Every day I go into schools where students struggling with reading are left in the dark – as if we denied wheelchairs to students who couldn’t walk on the theory that being left on the floor would motivate their legs to work. Every day I go into schools where the vast majority of students struggle – and often give up – as they are forced to use antiquated tools which fit their needs badly.
Teach your children well
We are humans. We are tool users. We are defined as humans by our constantly changing tools. Those tools, in turn, actually change who we are, as they alter our capabilities.
Your school must be a tool shop, where tools are demonstrated, taught, considered, respected, used, and deliberately chosen. Because we can not afford to send our students out without the toolbelts they need to function in their future world.
- Ira Socol
You can find my blog on education, technology, and "special needs" education at SpeEdChange . You can find my books on Amazon.com.
Today’s “School Reformers” vs Real Change for Education - II
Published July 16, 2009 @ 06:54AM PT
Yesterday I described my ideas for investigating fundamental change in how American schools function, but a big part of this change must come in how we find, recruit, train, and support our teachers.
Teachers are the least respected professionals in America. Oh, lawyers get all the jokes. And doctors - whose professional organization keeps trying to block universal health insurance for the U.S. - are seen as greedy. But George W. Bush's first Secretary of Education called teachers "terrorists," Obama's Secretary of Education lectures teachers on blocking change, and a whole bunch of rich and powerful people think that the teaching profession is so easy that any reasonably smart graduate of college can do it after listening to five weeks of lectures. And then, it sure seems like most of the U.S. population thinks teachers are overpaid and underworked.
I just want to remind everyone that these are the people we have placed in charge of our future. These are the people who change the lives and save the lives of our most vulnerable children.
There's history here. In the years after the American Civil War, as public education spread through the unique U.S. "local pay" system, school boards did not want to pay male salaries to teachers. So teaching switched from a male profession to a female profession at a time when pay for females was deplorably low. Of course, so were rates of female higher education. So teachers, at the beginning of the American system, were disrespected women, paid incredibly poorly, and virtually untrained.
This contrasts, for example, with Europe, where schoolmasters were clergy, and deeply respected members of the community.
As the 19th Century ended, "Normal Schools" (teacher training colleges) were appearing everywhere, and the march toward professionalism had begun. But in the early 20th Century, when doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers - all almost exclusively male - organized themselves as "professional organizations" with real public policy and public relations clout, female teachers were left out.
So today, no matter how much money the friends of Wendy Kopp have, no one like her could get away with suggesting that she could train people to perform surgery with five weeks of summer camp training, or build bridges, or design the new World Trade Center, or even take on a death penalty case in court (she has as much experience with those four skill sets as she has with teaching). But she can put completely untrained young people into life or death control of poor people's children, and can be treated as a national expert on teacher certification and education policy.
A profession, not a temp job
I think many teachers are doing a lousy job. I think much of our teacher training is hopelessly disconnected from the needs of our students. I think students lack a diversity of role models among their educators - African-American males, people with learning and attention "issues" especially.
But I can not imagine that "less training" is the solution - because I understand all which anyone must learn to become good at teaching.
On Twitter one day, a "charter school advocate" wondered why Michigan would not certify Civil War filmmaker Ken Burns to teach history. I asked, "What does Ken Burns know about LD, ADHD, EBD, ELL, AAC, UDL?" Because teaching, as anyone who has attended university and slept through the horrid lectures of an expert knows, is about a great deal more than content knowledge. All "human professions" are - which is why, though I might know much less about the law than many Law School professors, I was probably a better New York City cop than most of them could be.
Like all professions, teaching requires a vast amount of both factual and operational knowledge. It requires a constant update of both of those knowledge bases. And it requires an effective peer mentoring and peer review structure. A teacher needs subject knowledge, needs to know the DSM-IV, needs to know brain research, education research, communications technology research. A teacher needs to be a critical thinker, a creative developer of tools of engagement for a wildly diverse audience, and needs a rather stunning level of observational skills and people skills.
How do we find those people? recruit them? train them? support them? reward them? retain them?
Diversities
I want to find more new teachers from a few under-represented populations. I want more who have done poorly in K-12 schools, more survivors of special education, more from chronically failing groups. I want more who grew up in, who live in and are committed to, impoverished communities. And I want more teachers who arrive later in life, having collected big world experiences.
So step one is creating alternate certification routes which make sense in the building of diversity. This means we stop diverting resources to programs like Teach for America, and invest instead in the following:
Community-based Teacher Certification - A decade ago I ran a project in an inner city school, the kind of place which really struggles to hire teachers - especially at the secondary level. The community was impoverished and the tax base shattered. There were great teachers, but many others had checked out.
But there was a group of adults who held the school together. They were para-pros and bus drivers, cafeteria workers and custodians. They lived in the community. They were committed to the school. They knew the kids, in school and on the street. In many ways they were teachers in every way except content knowledge.
Of course they lacked much of that content knowledge, and they all lacked any kind of post-secondary degree. But I thought then what I think now - I'd rather try to teach community-committed, kid-committed adults the content knowledge they need to teach than try to turn uninterested content experts into teachers.
So let's fund in-community evening teacher-training in all those places which now hire those bright Teach for America corps members. Let's pay community members to get fast-tracked degrees and relevant educational training. And let's create life-long teachers who'll be legitimate role models in their communities.
Second Careers - I'm not interested in finding suddenly unemployed investment bankers who want to hide out in education until Wall Street recovers. But there are a ton of people out there who could make fabulous teachers if they could pause, and train. But America is hard: you quit your job, you lose your health insurance; you go to school, you get charged.
There are alternative certification programs for people like these in certain places, but too many are "district quickies" where the teaching is rote, the curriculum scripted, and the time to grow extremely limited. We need a national program to pay (and insure) these career changers for as long as two years, as they learn about education and spend time every week in schools working directly with students. Only then can they see if this is really the job for them, and only then can "we" see if they've got the people skills to do this complicated job.
The best undergrads - How do we bring our best and brightest to education? And how do we know if those "best and brightest" will be good teachers?
We encourage commitment from freshman year and we insist on time in schools/time with students from the very start.
Now at Michigan State we require time working with "urban" students from the very first education course - at the freshman level. And before our pre-service teachers enter their internship year, they will have probably interacted with more diverse students than a TFA member will during his or her "career" - and so we know who's got the stuff to be a teacher. But we don't have the incentives.
I want to nationalize that kind of time-in-school teacher education while offering tuition and room and board pay-backs for those who become teachers - with those pay-backs starting from the year an undergraduate student began education courses. In other words, try out teaching from the start, and if it works for you, and you work for it - college is free. If we build great teacher education programs, and we get great students to sample them, we'll find our share of great teachers. And if we find and train great teachers, paying for four years of college is a very small price for a nation committed to its children.
Supporting and Keeping Teachers
Finding great teachers, training great teachers, isn't the end. We need to support great teachers. I won't even discuss "merit pay" now, because it remains a ridiculous idea until we decide what "merits" bonuses. America lacks a reasonable track record on that issue.
But we know that teachers cannot continue to be paid the most for working with the easiest students. Teachers in the Bronx cannot earn less than teachers in Scarsdale. Teachers in Los Angeles cannot earn less than teachers in Beverly Hills. Teachers in Gary, Indiana cannot earn less than teachers in River Forest, Illinois. If they do, America's economic system will bring a different set of teachers to those poor communities. We know that.
And we know that we cannot let teachers continue to try to solve their on-the-job problems in isolation. We need to pay them to attend summer institutes and conferences. We need to increase pay to cover more days of in-service training, and we need to make that training excellent, make it differentiated by teacher need, and make it engaging and relevant.
We need to connect our teachers to the information and communication technologies of our times, so they can be comfortable with them and work with them in the classroom. Basic teacher perks must include anywhere broadband access, new computers, and smartphones - and support to learn what they can do.
But we need to do something more. We need to make the teacher workplace a safe place in every way possible. Physically safe and safe for professional experimentation. Because we cannot have teachers who come to work afraid - of students, of administrators, of parents, of tests scores. Just as with students, we can demand more from teachers only if we create high expectations and the kind of space which allows any human to reach their potential.
The role of teachers
If our schools are to be anything better than they are today, the role of teaching must radically change. Teachers will be "guides" rather than an information delivery system. They will function more like librarians than lecturers, helping students find both information and tools. They will need to operate on a critical thinking/creative plane all the time, if we are to get our students to do the same.
That change is going to be difficult. And we need great people, backed by great training and great resources, if we're going to do it.
- Ira Socol
You can find my blog on education, technology, and "special needs" education at SpeEdChange. You can find my books on Amazon.com
Teachable Moment a critical resource for new kinds of teaching
Technology: The Wrong Questions and the Right Questions
Published July 14, 2009 @ 08:04AM PT
"A black board, in every school house, is as indispensably necessary as a stove or fireplace; and in large schools several of them might be useful."
"Slates are as necessary as black boards, and even more so. But they are liable to be broken, it will be said, as to render it expensive to parents to keep their children supplied with them."
"But are not books necessary at all, when the pupils are furnished with slates? I may be asked. Not for a large proportion of the children who attend our summer schools, nor for some of them who attend in the winter. To such I believe books are not only useless, but on the whole, worse than useless. As they advance in years, however, they may be indulged with a book, now and then, as a favor. Such favor will not be esteemed a light thing; and will come in time, to be sought more frequently, and with more and more earnestness."
"At first, it will be well for the small portion of each day in which very young pupils are allowed to have slates, to let them use them much in the way they please. Some will make one thing, some another. What they make is of comparatively little consequence, provided they attend, each to his own business, and do not interfere with that of others."
In 1842 William A. Alcott, a now forgotten member of that legendary American family of letters, wrote a series of articles for the Connecticut Common School Journal, asking teachers across America to make use of the newest educational technology - the black board and the student slate. Well, it wasn't really new. West Point had been using these for instruction since at least 1820, but then, as now, schools were slow to adopt new ideas.
But in the 1840s everything in communication was changing. Wood pulp based paper and the rotary printing press had created the penny newspaper, an entirely new way of spreading news - and often gossip. The telegraph had arrived creating the revolutionary concept of instantaneous communication across great distances. And the world itself was shrinking as steamboats and railroads rushed humans from place to place at unheard of speeds.
These new technologies spawned new forms of writing. Authors such as Charles Dickens began serializing fiction for the masses - one no longer needed to buy expensive books and sit in that big leather chair. Writers even created the first blogs - think of American Notes. Others, people like Horace Greeley, were redefining journalism.
The world was changing, and certain people, led by Alcott, were desperately trying to drag the schoolhouse into the present.
The Question
Then, as now, there was furious opposition. Alcott admitted that he was seen as being "against books." He was perceived as disruptive. He was already forcing schools to buy costly new furnishings (individual student desks and chairs, to replace tables and benches), and now he was advocating a radical change in how teaching took place.
Then, as now, the wrong question was being asked. In 1842 the doubters wondered what these new technologies could do for schools as they existed. Today, educators and policy makers constantly wonder what computers, mobile phones, and social networking will do for a curriculum largely unchanged since 1910.
That was the wrong question then, and it is the wrong question now. The right question is, what can schools, what can education, contribute to these new technologies?
Just as in 1842, just as in Socrates' time when literacy appeared, the technologies of information and communication have changed radically this decade - the ways in which humans learn about their world have changed radically, and schools will either help their students learn to navigate that new world, or they will become completely irrelevant.
How you learned doesn't matter at all
If you are a teacher, a parent, an administrator, or the President of the United States, I do not care how or what you learned in school. Or, let me put it this way, your experience in school, or in sitting with your mom studying books in the wee hours of the morning, is completely irrelevant to any discussion of the education of today's students.
Maybe worse than irrelevant. Maybe dangerous. The belief that "your" experience is relevant leads to a nightmare loop. Students who behave, and learn, most like their teachers do the best in classrooms. Teachers see this reflection as proof of their own competence - "The best students are just like me." And thus all who are "different" in any way - race, class, ability, temperament, preferences - are left out of the success story.
The majority of our students do "poorly" in school, do not achieve their potential in school, do not enjoy education. Doing it "the old way," utilizing the old tools, ensures that they never will.
Mobile phones, computers everywhere, hypertext, social networking, collaborative cognition (from Wikipedia on up), Google, text-messaging, Twitter, audiobooks, digital texts, text-to-speech, speech recognition, flexible formatting - these are not "add ons" to the world of education, they are the world of education. This is how humans in this century talk, read, communicate, learn. And learning to use these technologies effectively, efficiently, and intelligently must be at the heart of our educational strategies. These technologies do something else - by creating a flexibility and set of choices unprecedented in human communication - they "enable" a vast part of the population which earlier media forms disabled.
Back in Socrates' time it was all about the information you could remember. With this system very, very few could become "educated." In the ‘Gutenberg era' it was all about how many books you could read and how fast you could decode alphabetical text; this let a few more reach that ‘educated' status - about 35% if you trust all those standardized tests to measure "proficiency."
But now it is all about how you learn to find information, how you build your professional and personal networks, how you learn, how to learn - because learning must be continuous. None of this eliminates the need for a base of knowledge - the ability to search, to ask questions, requires a knowledge base, but it dramatically alters both how that knowledge base is developed, and what you need to do with it. This paradigm opens up the ranks of the "educated" in ways inconceivable previously.
Technology is NOT something invented after you were born
Technology is everything humans have created. Books are technology - a rather complex and expensive one actually, for holding and transmitting human knowledge. The schoolroom is technology - the desks, chairs, blackboards, schedule, calendar, paper, pens, and pencils. These are not "good" or "bad," but at this point, they are simply outdated.
Yes, we still have stone carvers. Yes, we still have calligraphers. But we no longer teach students to chase the duck, pluck the feather, and cut the quill. We no longer teach Morse Code. We no longer teach the creation of illuminated manuscripts.
Now we must give up teaching that ink-on-paper is the primary information source. It is not. We must give up insisting that students learn "cursive" writing. Instead, they must learn to text on a Blackberry and dictate intelligibly to their computer. We must toss out our "keyboarding" classes and encourage students to discover their own best ways to input data. We must abandon much of Socrates' memorization and switch to engagement with where data is stored. We must abandon the one-way classroom communication system, be it the lecture or use of the "clicker," and teach with conversation and through modeling learning itself. We must lose the idea that "attention" means students staring at a teacher, or that "attendance" means being in the room, and understand all the differing ways humans learn best. We must stop separating subjects rigidly and adopt the contemporary notion of following knowledge where it leads us.
And we need to start by understanding that we are preparing students for the world that is their future, not the world that is our past.
- Ira Socol
essential related reading from Dr. Jonathan Becker of Virginia Commonwealth University on technology and leadership in education.
You can find my blog on education, technology, and "special needs" education at SpeEdChange. You can find my books on Amazon.com
