The Key to Personalized Learning

It was nice to talk to Kathleen Manzo about student blogging and personalized learning; her piece on 'Digital Tools Expand Options for Personalized Learning' in Ed Week popped up on the Net the other day and comes out in print tomorrow.

From Manzo's article:

For educators who struggle to integrate technology into their daily routines and strategies, the notion of a kind of individualized education plan for every student is more pipe dream than prospect. Yet the most optimistic promoters of digital learning say the vision of a tech-immersed classroom for today’s students—one that offers a flexible and dynamic working environment with a range of computer-based and face-to-face learning options customized for each student—is not far off.

Reading the piece, I'm very interested in the progress of students at New York City's School of One. Especially because much of the focus there is on tech-individuated math learning.

But the success or failure of tech integration in education isn't going to be determined by the success or failure of the School of One.

And it isn't going to be determined by whether textbook publishers are going to be able to make the shift to digital.

Or by whether any particular venture capital firm supports education.

Rather, tech integration is a part of a cultural shift. It's becoming, and soon will be, something expected and necessary.

Teachers already tapping into the great free resources of the Internet and Web 2.0 already know this.

And so, I humbly submit that if we really want to bring meaningful tech integration and digital empowerment to every classroom, we can't do it by courting Big Tech and Big Textbook. We have to do it by demanding laws and statutes that ensure free universal Internet access and coverage for all.

Access as a Civil Right.

That's the key to personalized learning.

Make Active Patience a Habit of Life

So often in the discussion of ed tech integration -- and perhaps especially so in the discussion of bringing social media into the classroom -- teachers who consider themselves savvy in this digital age become frustrated with those who would rather not change their habits of teaching.

This frustration is understandable, but it is nonetheless unhealthy.

In my experience, the majority of teachers and admins opposed to social tech integration are those for whom social media itself has not become a habit of life. It is not that they are inherently 'against' whatever it is that social media suggests; if anything, they have so little understanding of it in the first place that 'engagement' is moot.

But engagement is the key. For engagement is active involvement; it is the truth of social media that often lies obscured by so much of that in the blogosphere and twitterverse that is banal and petty. We here in this conversation often tend to think of SM as fundamentally 'good', but a quick stroll through the comments on YouTube readily suggests that labels such as 'good' or 'bad' do not apply so easily to the Net; and perhaps we are better off gauging our critical eye towards modalities of static vs. dynamic, engaged vs. disengaged, active vs. passive. Certainly, the way in which we choose to describe what we find online tells alot about our own personal experience within the digital realm.

Now let's consider that admin who has heard some good things about social media, but who for several reasons resists allowing access in the classroom. Let's think about that teacher who by all regards has led a distinguished career, but who sees the current trends in ed tech as just another in a long line of educational fads. Let's think about the young teacher who can't wrap the mind around the idea that the same platform one uses to have a laugh with friends can be used to educate children.

How do we engage these folks? How do we get them to 'buy in'?

The traditional route in schools has been for those in charge to tell those on the ground that they are going to buy in. There is no choice: buy in or perish.

This route, however, is the source of so much frustration, anguish, and rough rivalry in education. It is all about power -- and the resulting friction is a source of untold amounts of unnecessary negative energy.

The second route is for those in charge to allocate limited control to committees with the charge of leading the parade. The problem with this admittedly very common solution is that it creates -- at least in the minds of many of those outside of the circle -- a minor hierarchy. Frustration therefore is directed towards the minor hierarchy, which by definition has only the most limited control and is therefore rendered passive by the negative energy directed towards it.

And so, we so often find ourselves in situations where stasis is tolerated in the name of definitional workplace satisfaction.

And so often with regards to ed tech and social tech integration, nothing gets done and no one understands why.

Well, the 'why' gets back to the very first point, namely: the majority of teachers and admins opposed to social tech integration are those for whom social media itself has not become a habit of life.

Without social media being a habit of life -- not unlike reading a newspaper or writing a letter have long been worthwhile and generous habits of life -- it will not be internalized. A operator within the realm of social media who has not internalized it as a habit of life will be as successful at understanding social media as an illiterate is at understanding a newspaper. Even less dramatically, consider the Op-Ed pages of your favorite paper. Given your familiarity with a given columnist, you may or may not truly be internalizing -- and thus understanding -- what is being said; but if the columnist is unknown to you, you may have more difficulty grasping certain habitual nuances of a given argument.

In other words, if you ain't a regular reader, you may not understand what all the hub-bub is about.

The same goes for social media.

In light of this, it should appear rather obvious to us that the best way to go about invigorating your faculty with the engaging values of social technology is not by some hamfisted top-down approach, nor through committee-level prognostication, but rather by allowing individuals themselves the opportunity to let themselves buy in.

And how is this done?

We so often think of 'patience' as a form of waiting. We are 'patient' when waiting in line at the supermarket; we are 'patient' when sitting in a traffic jam at rush hour. This type of 'patience' is passive; it is the patience of not being in control.

But there is another form of 'patience'.

There is the form of 'patience' that we need to exhibit when teaching a small child how to throw a ball. There is the 'patience' needed to get a bill through congress. There is the 'patience' of opening oneself up to one's inner feelings through meditation or prayer or ritual or deep thought. These are active forms of patience; they are forms of patience that are active complements to the will. The purpose of being patient with a child is to teach it. The purpose of being patient in legislating is to get the legislation through. The purpose of being patient in the approach to inner understanding is to manifest that which is within.

And it is that sort of patience -- active patience -- that should guide our thinking in making manifest our desire to get a whole faculty to 'buy in' to the full integration of tech and social media.

What does this look like at the practical level?

The key to becoming immersed in social media lies in the individual interest of a given person. While Teacher A may be an excellent history instructor and Teacher B may be a seasoned math teacher, in the life that exists outside-of-the-classroom the former's greatest passion may be for modern dance and the latter's for jazz. Rather than bring them together and try to get them passionate about using social tech in their classrooms, demonstrate to them what resources are available out there in the world of social media and then let them use it to pursue their own personal interests.

Let them experience the joy of discovering what social media has to offer them rather than telling them what a joy social media is.

Down the road, help teachers with similar outside interests start Delicious groups and write collaborative blogs. Give them time during the school day to collaborate on outside-of-school projects and encourage them to use the resources of social media to bring those projects to fruition. Re-allocate your scheduled meeting times and resource many of the mundane functions of faculty meetings to the Web and instead hold faculty meetings where you give teachers the floor to give presentations on the things they love outside of school.

This is all part of the method of active patience.

By letting teachers use social media to explore their own interests -- whether or not those interests are 'directly' related to school -- you will foster a culture that fundamentally understands and values the resources of the digital age. The 21st century faculty will create itself.

Just be patient.

Guest Post on Bringing Tech to the AVID Classroom: AVID Is Awesome, But...

Here's the second in our series of Weds guest posts on TeachPaperless. Today's blogger is teacher Ben Knaus.

Ben is a middle school AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) elective teacher and coordinator at Cityview Performing Arts School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. He is in his tenure (third) year of teaching, 2nd year with the AVID program, and 8th year working in a school (all at Cityview). Ben is also a devoted husband, father of two beautiful little ones, and a huge technology fan. In his spare time, he is an adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University-Twin Cities co-teaching (with @wwolfe105) the Technology in the Classroom course in the Master of Instruction program. Ben also blogs at LearnTeachTech.com and posts on Twitter as @learnteachtech.


What is AVID?

"AVID is a fourth through twelfth grade system to prepare students in the academic middle for four-year college eligibility. It has a proven track record in bringing out the best in students, and in closing the achievement gap. AVID stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination." [Source: http://www.avidonline.org/info/?tabid=1&ID=549]

Basically, AVID takes students who wouldn't normally be thinking about college, who have parents who didn't go to college, or who need an extra push to get to college and gives them the skills they need to make to college. How many times did I write college? Four. Yes, four in one sentence. Did I mention there is a push in the AVID program to attend college?

Why is AVID Awesome?

AVID is awesome because students who don't know how to be highly effective students get the skills they need to be highly effective. In the AVID elective class, we learn questioning, note taking (Cornell Notes), discussion and debate, public speaking, organization, and study strategies. We also learn a lot about colleges and careers from field trips and guest speakers.

I love just about everything in AVID. One of my favorites is that we have tutors. We have four adults (2 college students, 1 retired teacher and 1 adult from the business world) who help twice a week. They guide students on questions from other classes and ensure that they are getting the necessary support. The students eventually take over the tutorials and run them with tutor assistance. It's an amazing process to watch and be part of.

The other amazing thing is that I get to work with the AVID students for up to three years. I'll have the 6th graders until they leave for high school. The program and the class structure build relationships, which is the key to being successful in any area and I preach this whenever someone will listen.

But... The Technology

There are 8 general standards in AVID that are broken down into 42 objectives. Here's standard 2, objective 6:

"2.6 Refine research skills, including the use of technology, for all academic classes."
[Source: AVID Standards, link not available]

Out of 42 objectives to meet, only one deals with any sort of technology.

There is a serious lack of technology built into the program.

How many jobs have you had where you don't use some technology during your work day? How many college students do you know that don't word process, take notes on a computer, or research regularly on the Internet? How do you expect future college students to be successful if a college-prep course isn't requiring technology? (See how we use questioning in the AVID program?)

So, what's the solution? In my dream world, every AVID student would be given a netbook to use at school and at home. I would also request the City of Minneapolis to give AVID students access to Wireless Minneapolis. This proposal would give the students access to everything they need both inside and outside the classroom, 24 hours a day.

In the real world, AVID students need access to computers, at the very least, in the AVID classroom. No student, especially the typical AVID student, is prepared for college if they don't have the basic technology skills needed in the world outside of the school.

And since when is school not part of the real world? (Again with the questioning...)

That said, what am I doing now?

We use the Promethean board in the room for note taking and brain storming.

We use Activexpressions for short answer responses.

I have students use Wordle to brainstorm and reflect.

After the winter break, I'll have students start portfolios using eFolioMn and, hopefully, start some blogging.

Personally, I blog, Tweet, research, and RSS constantly to find new ideas, concepts, and strategies (both tech and non-tech) to bring into my classroom. That's done with two old eMacs, a teacher iMac, and my personal MacBook.

Finally, I've covered my back wall with whiteboards. We don't use chart paper for group work or other activities. The students just start writing on the wall.

How fun is that? (Sorry, had to sneak one last question in!)

Looking for Ideas for a Teacher Looking to Use Tech

Alright, folks. Let's help a teacher out. Reader Pam is a vet teacher looking to take advantage of her school's great tech resources. But don't take my word for it; here's what she had to say:

I'm curious about setting up a monitored blog/message board site for students. Where do I begin? Is there a "Blogging for Dummies?"
I also want to use texting, but resist because of all of those "lovely" teachers here in Florida that seem to cross the line, normally beginning with innocent texts.
I work in a very modern school that is wireless and is equipped with promethean boards, webcams, and student response systems. I want to effectively utilize the tools afforded me!

My first suggestion was setting up a Ning to engage the students in a communal and collaborative online environment. But then I thought, hey, let's ask the readers and get some of your ideas.

So, what do you think. If you had Promethean boards, webcams, and student response systems, what kinds of apps would you be using in class?

PS -- One of the things I really liked about this letter was that it addressed the fact that some teachers -- and not just in FL -- cross the line for one reason or another in communications with students. It's relatively easy to see how this can happen -- especially in the age of instant irretrievable communication. So, in terms of 'best practices', what are some of the guidelines you set out?

For instance, I refrain from friending students on FB (because while I occasionally use FB to illustrate things in class and while I encourage students to create groups on FB as an online presence for clubs and activities, I don't actually use my own FB feed for classroom purposes). I also insist on students having at least one Twitter feed exclusive to my class that I am at liberty to check at random for unseemly and digitally irresponsible DMs and Follows. This is all part of establishing the groundwork for the student's engagement with digital citizenship.

I am also vigilant about my own maintenance of separate Twitter feeds for my different roles as teacher, ed tech dude, musician, and dad. And I demonstrate this to my students via TweetDeck and explain to them the variety of ways I use Twitter. Because good modeling of digital citizenship is half the battle.

What's in a Tool?

Tonight's the first night of a ten week course I'm teaching on social tech and education at Johns Hopkins.

Here's a question directed to the folks out there using social tech in the classroom on a regular if not daily basis: if you were teaching the course, what are a few Web tools you'd insist that every new teacher learn about in grad school?

And the classic part two: Why? What is it about these tools that makes understanding them so essential to teaching in the digital age?

Comment away, I'm looking forward to reading your ideas, sharing them, and debating them with my students.

Alas, Math.

In the case of the paperless math resources, I thought it was interesting that by-and-large in terms of integrating tech into math teaching (at least at the secondary level) the math folks seem so far behind the folks in the humanities. And that's hardly the fault of math teachers; rather, as many folks have pointed out, it's a problem with hardware and the ways by which we think about physically using a computer.

In a serious way, if you don't have a Tablet, you don't have the full applicability of tech integration to learning math.

Whereas in the humanities, typing itself is hardly a detriment. And the keyboards we use today are really no different than the typewriters of our past. Therefore, tech in the humanities was quickly and easily able to get into the business of creating hyperlinked text databases, encyclopedias, and online books whereas math teachers were left to struggle with the question of how to 'show work' via a keyboard.

And I think it's especially pertinent to note this advantage that the humanities have had whereas so often it is suggested to us that math and science lead the technological revolution.

Certainly math and science have been the developmental foreground for digital technology, but what are the most popular uses of that tech? A cursory look suggests that it's all about reading the news, sharing photos, and listening to music.

Journalism, Photography, and Music.

Hmm. I wonder how many folks would consider that triumvirate at the top of the tech revolution?

And (I know it's a loaded question, but what the heck) why then don't we give the same elevated position in education to journalism, photography, and music that we do to math?

Could you imagine what high schools would look (and sound) like if journalism, photography, and music were four-year requirements?

Here's to hoping the technicians designing computers actually catch up to the digital needs of math teachers and their students. And here's to the folks in the humanities and arts who are using tech in authentic ways everyday.

Around the Horn: Aug 2nd, 2009

Big couple of days in the ed tech blogosphere and lots of new stuff posted. Here's a sampling of some of the best.

Nash wants us to back off and let learners learn.

Ira reminisces to 1999:

I remember that we went further - suggesting that the days of "computer labs" in schools were already past, and that standard machine set-ups made no sense.

Will realizes he's a technoslave (though I thought that was a KMFDM song circa 1991).

McLeod reports on a school failing in their bid to use cellphone jamming equipment in an attempt to keep Obi Wan Kenobi from infiltrating the Social Death Star.

Pappas tests out Wiffiti as an excuse to attend a kick-butt rock concert.

And Becker takes his 'Still Separate, Still Unequal' series to the doorstep of the digital divide.

Read up folks: you are living in a period of remarkable ed writers.

The Problem with 'Naked Classrooms'

There's a 'hilarious' article posted last week in the Chronicle of Higher Education and picked up on by the Digital Education blog today. It concerns one Dean Bowen of Southern Methodist University.

College leaders usually brag about their tech-filled "smart" classrooms, but a dean at Southern Methodist University is proudly removing computers from lecture halls. José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, has challenged his colleagues to "teach naked"—by which he means, sans machines.

And what is the cause of this new Luddite movement? Fear of social media breaking down traditional classroom hierarchies? Confusion over cloud computing and the meltdown in sales of proprietary software packages? Concern over mobile computing and Wi-Fi devices disturbing class?

No. None of that.

More than any thing else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather using it as a creative tool.

PowerPoint.

Seriously?

Um. Yeah. Seriously.

Haven't most of us realized for a long time that PP is rather limited? Isn't that part of the reason we've been bringing active media into our classrooms for a while now?

I don't know, maybe this is just a K-12 teacher vs. college teacher thing, but I kinda thought everyone already KNEW lectures were by-and-large yawn-fests.

[If you have Diigo installed (and face it, by now you have no reason not to), go bookmark and check out the meta-analysis battle going on over the Chronicle report.]

So, what's Bowen's big idea?

His philosophy is that the information delivery common in today's classroom lectures should be recorded and delivered to students as podcasts or online videos before class sessions.

Uh.

Duh?

I don't mean to be so obviously disrespectful, but I can't quite put into words how I feel about this. In one respect, I find it deeply funny. In another deeply disturbing.

I mean, this is all so... obvious.

Rather than try to re-construe, here are the comments I left over at the Dig Ed blog:

PowerPoint is hardly state of the art 'technology'.

PowerPoint presentations are precisely the sort of things so many of us in ed tech are trying to steer folks away from.

So I guess, in that sense, me and the dean are in agreement. Power Point often leads to a passive audience watching a lecture.

Where we disagree is in the 'naked' classroom concept. And this has to do with the fact that if the dean thinks PowerPoint is what we're talking about when we're talking about technology, then he's only demonstrating that he has no idea about what technology is.

We're talking social media, cloud computing, mobile applications.

Tech that actively integrates into learning.

Sounds like Bowen needs to catch up with what's actually happening in ed tech. He's a bit behind the times.

And that's really my concern. I realize I'm being a bit rough on him here, but here's a guy with a relatively prominent voice being quoted in a relatively prominent journal making statements about removing computers from classrooms -- and this is a guy who (apparently with the possible exception that he knows how to make a podcast of a lecture) -- obviously has no idea what the current state of educational technology is.

I'm all for getting rid of PowerPoint. I haven't used the damn thing in years. But, please, Mr. Bowen, have the tact to distinguish between passive and active technologies.

It's not tech vs. no tech.

It's active tech vs. passive tech.

And if you don't know the difference, just raise your hand and ask. If it's discussion and engagement you are looking for, there are plenty of social technologies that will enhance conversation and learning in any class. In fact, there are plenty of teachers using these technologies everyday in fantastic ways.

Social technologies empower teachers and students. Access to the Web and its information and communication features is vital to education, not a hindrance. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

What I'd suggest is that you let you teachers keep their smart classrooms and start investing time into teaching them how to integrate social and participatory media into their teaching.

Get engaged with what's going on.

Social Technology in Education Lesson Plan Wiki

Seeking teachers to submit content to the new Social Technology in Education Lesson Plan Wiki!

There are so many fresh approaches being taken to the integration of social and participatory media in education, I thought it would be a useful thing to have a practitioner-created resource full of lesson plans demonstrating the best practices in social tech enhanced teaching.

Feel free to submit content and ideas. It's a wiki... you can't mess it up. Experiment, mash it up, get some thoughts out there, and let's put together a nice free and collaborative resource.

The Boy Who Cried Tech

Been reading some of the old criticism of ed tech back in the 1980's.

And I have to say, from my vantage point as a child of the '80s who'd been put in a GT class to learn how to program in BASIC at age eight, I'd have to agree with a lot of the criticism. Memorizing how to write GOTO commands probably wasn't the best use of learning time.

I also remember the god-awful math games. Once a week, starting in fourth grade, our math teacher would take us to the school's "computer lab" (years-old Apple IIes and dot-matrix printers) and force us to play mind-numbing sprite-graphic ed versions of games like Space Invaders and Asteroid. In addition to being an insult to the aesthetics of geeky kids, the math games really just made all of us want to cut school and hike over to the bowling alley in Arbutus where they had real video games like Galaga.

As I recall it, there were two serious pre-WWW gaming events. The first was the release of Zork. Being a text-based game, a lot of folks now look back and figure that the game proved that graphics weren't necessarily the most important thing. That's not true. 'Graphics' at the time amounted to Breakout and Pac Man; so that was sort of a moot point. The cool thing about Zork was that -- to the degree that it could -- it put the player in the driver's seat. It, along with Oregon Trail [a rare engaging ed game of the period] and some others, presented for the first time a style of gaming that would be a different experience for each player (or at least that was the ideal). It was an ideal rarely, if ever, lived up to by most 'educational' games.

The second event was the release of Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers. That, in my opinion, was the game that killed pre-WWW ed tech. Mario took the concept of gamer-driven adventure and combined it with really cool graphics and -- most importantly -- tricks that only savvy players would be able to figure out. Whereas in Space Invaders and Donkey Kong, levels amounted faster or more populated versions of the previous level, in Mario you had the element of surprise: you really didn't know what was coming next. I've played the new Mario games for Wii and have the same immediate affection for them; at their best, they are sort of like little surrealist games. The point to winning is figuring out the logic of the virtual world. They are the complete opposite of simple didactic 'educational' games.

So, in the mind of a kid, this sort of gaming experience should have immediately dashed the hope of folks who would have us believe that a computer version of Hangman was really going to hold our interest. Unfortunately, it didn't. And rather than learn anything from Mario, ed games held on to Frogger.

And then came the MMOGs. Game over. As soon as you create a shared virtual environment in which players are collaborating with or competing against other live people, you've created a mindset in gaming that can never really go back to the old single player island games. How do we think about the old styles of games now? Well, it's sort of like trying to use a laptop without an Internet connection. You can do stuff -- like type documents or listen to music -- but it doesn't take long before you get antsy to get back online.

Because the connection is the thing.

It's what's changed the scene. It changed the way we use computers and it changed the way we play games.

The connection, therefore is the new technology.

A lot of folks don't understand this. To them, the computer is the technology. And computers have been around for a long time.

But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the network itself. We're talking about the paradigm of immediate global connection. We're talking about social technology.

We're not talking about computers and computer games.

And in our zeal for educational technology, I think we're seeing a backlash based on this misunderstanding of exactly what we're talking about when we're talking about technology.

We've got teachers who suffered through DOS and sprite-games. We've got teachers who suffered through the Word document wars. We've got teachers whose introduction to online management was SharePoint.

Give these folks a break.

In a sense, we've done nothing but fill them with the expectation that -- at the very least -- the technology we put in front of them and expect them to use is going to be clunky, difficult, and well, kinda boring and obvious.

It reminds me of a fable:

There was an ed techie tending the school's computer lab who would continually go up to the faculty lounge and shout: 'Hey! We've got fantastic educational technology that we can use here at school to make the learning experience so much more engaging!"

The teachers would all come running down to the computer lab only to find lame educational games and Byzantine proprietary productivity applications.

Then one day there really was a revolutionary shift in educational technology as social media entered the scene. But when the ed techie shouted, none of the teachers believed him and no one bothered to try out the new apps.

And so, they (and their students) all missed out.

This is the reason so many of our colleagues think we are full of it. Because for thirty years, we shouted to them about glorified typewriters, calculators, and overhead projectors. And then we're surprised when they show reluctance to try out social technologies.

We need to be careful about preaching to each other and thinking that the excitement we feel is shared by all of our colleagues. What we need to do is have an open discussion with our colleagues and admit that much of what we have considered beneficial educational technology in the past has in fact primarily been our own excitement dressed up as a learning paradigm.

But things have changed. And this time, it's for real. And if we don't all buck up, throw aside our differences, and engage this thing for the benefit of the students who are already living their own lives in this digital domain, we might as well hope that next time it's wolves.

Thanks to Aesopica, the Internet's best resource for all things Aesop.

Social Technology and Education Conference: Aug 14th

Will be headed to Massachusetts in August for the 'Social Technology and Education' one day conference at Harvard. Looking forward to it as I haven't been back up in the Boston area in a few years and have some dear friends to catch up with.

Here's a link to the conference info site and here's a blurb explaining what's going on:

This conference is a free one-day event where attendees can learn about how social technologies can be used to create and support communities of learning. Anyone who works in education or is interested in learning more about these technologies, and how they can be used in high schools, colleges, and universities. Students can also attend if they want to listen or be on a panel talking about social tools.

I plan to be presenting a short workshop on using Twitter in the classroom. It will cover using Twitter and several Tweet apps to create personalized collaborative reference bibliographies, using Twitter in real-time mentoring, and using Twitter as an assessment tool in the classroom.

Cell Phone Battle Royale

Ira's posted a good one over at SpeEdChange wearing the title 'Argument and Belief'.

The piece jumps straight out of the comments to a recent post on cell phones in school over on Change.org. (Cell phones have been a big topic this week, probably stemming from Arnie's comments earlier this month). A firestorm erupted in the change.org piece's comments when the author stated her personal preference that phones, laptops, and other pretty standard-issue 21st century mobile devices be left outside her classroom.

It would seem to be pretty innocuous if it weren't for the reasoning given for this preference (as well as the ultimate logical outcome of what it means in terms of the shifting models of authority in present day connected classrooms). But, I'll let you read the post, the comments, and Ira's piece to figure out where all this went.

Let's just say, one of Socol's comments to the original piece sums up one side of the debate quite nicely:

Why do your rights as a teacher trample mine as a student? Why must I function with the media and tools which make you happy? And why would you, as a teacher, refuse to help me learn the information and communication tools which I will use for the rest of my life?

Top Eleven Things All Teachers Must Know About Technology (or: I promised Dean Groom I wouldn’t write a top ten list; so this one goes up to eleven.)

The Top Eleven Things All Teachers Must Know About Technology

1. Technology is not a monolith.

Technology doesn’t tell you what to do and it doesn’t force you to behave in ways you’d rather not. Technology -- particularly social technology -- is whatever you make it. Use what you want, leave the rest. Mash it up, alter it to fit your needs, customize it, and own it. If you can’t do that with your technology, then you are using the wrong technology.

2. Technology is not a monolith, but many technology providers are monolithic.

There is very little that any teacher will need that can not be had via open source options. If your administration is spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on software and licenses, they are literally throwing their money away. They need to know that. And you need to be the one to tell them.

3. The Digital Age is not going away.

We have already produced babies who will see the 22nd century. So let’s stop trying to prepare them for the 20th. The Internet as it exists today is equivalent to the Model A; let’s be wise for once and not build the highway of the future with the notion that our kids are going to be driving Model As on it.

4. Meeting strangers is a good thing.

So often our fears about technological connectivity center around the fear of what sorts of strangers our students might bump into out there online. Fact is: we should want them to meet strangers. That’s the point. You don’t make the world better by isolating yourself; you make the world better by engaging with it and sharing opinions, ideas, and observations with all sorts of people. Our task as teachers -- and as parents -- is to help our kids understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy relations between strangers online. One way to do this is by modeling the behaviors we expect of digital citizens in the classroom everyday. That's not an option anymore; it's part of our job description. We are all health professionals now.

5. This ain’t your pappy’s technology.

Your students bring more tech power into school in their pockets each morning than you managed to procure spending untold hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last thirty years. All those folks who complained and questioned tech budgets back in 1983 and 1996: they were right. You were wasting money on gadgets with little educational value. But, guess what? Then it all changed. With the advent of the mainstream World Wide Web and subsequently with the development of Web 2.0, technology itself actually became something different. It was no longer about the hardware. It was about the network. Which brings us to the present: Mobile Cloud Computing. The new paradigm is about your information, your friends' information, the information of strangers, and how these informations all coalesce in the Cloud. The future is now. And despite the fact his job might be on the line, don't let your old school IT guy tell you otherwise.

6. The Digital Divide is not the result of technology being expensive.

The Digital Divide is the result of a failure of imagination and the poor -- indeed practically criminal -- allocation of resources. Does your admin realize how little it costs to bring Wi-Fi to your building? Does your admin realize they are spending more on textbooks in many cases than they would on netbooks? Has anyone ever sat down with your admin and demonstrated how to hack past your Internet blocks and filters? Does your admin realize how that money is wasted? Does your admin realize that your students can access the unfiltered web via their cell phones? Do 70% of your students arrive everyday with cell phones and yet your colleagues still say technology is out of your reach? It's time to rethink.

7. The most important thing we can do right now as teachers is to be campaigners and advocates and organizers for free universal Wi-Fi Internet access.

We work in the service of education. We give students information and we teach them how to use it. That’s exactly why we have to be the ones to lead the fight for free and universal immediate access to information. We should demand WiMax systems in all of our cities and suburbs and Wi-Fi grids throughout the rural hills and valleys. We should also insist that all highway corridors be made Wi-Fi accessible so that travelers can have access to the Internet as they are en route to whatever destination. Internet Access is a matter of fulfilling the promise of democracy. Internet Access is a Civil Right.

8. When it comes to authentic tech integration, parents are the best friends a teacher can have.

You have parents who use social media and Web 2.0 technology on a daily basis whether at home or at work. So why does your school treat it as taboo? Bring parents in to your building, collaborate with them. Have tech savvy parents demonstrate real-world applications of technology and help bring non-tech savvy parents up to speed. We are educators. We educate. In light of the changes going on in the new Digital paradigms, that's going to mean that we have to educate the whole community and allow the community to educate us.

9. Kids need to be taught digital citizenship.

Hate using YouTube because of the filth in the comments? Then teach your kids that commenting on YouTube is a part of their responsibility as digital citizens; because in all social media it is the users who decide the content. Digital citizenship being a daily component of classroom learning, in eight years time let’s see what the comments on YouTube look like. And that doesn't mean YouTube needs to be 'cleaned up'; rather, much of the passion related to YouTube happens in the comments and it's often raw and real (as well as sophomoric and prejudiced). But it tells us alot about ourselves and we shouldn't be afraid to help our kids navigate it and become critical participants in the dialogue. Never forget that you are a teacher: you aren’t ‘making’ the present, you are ‘facilitating’ the future. So don’t be discouraged about what you see now, rather be encouraged about what your teaching will let tomorrow look like.

10. Specific devices and tech apps become obsolete.

Don’t dwell on that. Instead, recognize that the Digital Age is more about a new networked and immediately connected way of thinking; that’s not going to change no matter whose name appears at the top of the browser or on the back of the smartphone. Obsolescence is the handmaiden of innovation. Get used to it.

11. You must be fearless.

The old rules are exactly that. The old system doesn’t work: just look at it and see for yourself. Everyone knows this. The admins know it. Your colleagues know it. The kids and their parents know it. So let’s stop tip-toeing around it. It’s time to do something about it. This is 2009: demand the impossible, again.

From the Archives: The Times They Are A-Changin'

Originally published March 4, 2009


He calls the Xerox a mimeograph machine. He writes in 'Scantron' on the sheet passed around during the faculty meeting about new technology in the classroom. He might even refer to the Internet in the plural.

But he is a teacher. Maybe a great one. And we need him on our side.

Regarding how the Stimulus should be spent in Ed Tech, reader Ms. Chow writes:

The reality is that school faculties consist of a diverse group of people. For the sake of this argument, they will be the divided into the tech-fearful and the tech-savvy. Billions of dollars spent, thousands of hours of man-power/training/logic utilized, and we will still be left with these two groups.

Ms. Chow, thank you for the honest insight. And Mimeograph Man -- prepare yourself -- 'cause this one's for you.

Teachers are on the front-line. We as teachers know that. Whether you teach in a public school or a private school; in the city or in the farmland; in packed classrooms in over-crowded suburbs or as a home-schooler in your own kitchen, we know the front-line.

It is the future. And it is ever closer. Either we approach it or it approaches us. But it is ever closer.

In light of this, we as educators have to make a few things public with regard to the future and with regard to the role of technology in our classrooms.

First: We have to state to ourselves and to the public that the point of educational technology is not to facilitate the use of technology but to use technology to facilitate education. Why do we need to do it via technology? Because that's where the world is. And that's the world our kids need to be prepared to engage.

Second: Long have we striven for 'authentic learning experiences and assessments'; well, in the context of the Digital Age which is upon us, it is inexcusable to ignore the authenticity of technology in the experience of our culture -- whether or not our students themselves are able currently to afford technology or access.

Third: We need to petition our government: Internet Access is a matter of civil rights; nothing produces democracy and growth like the transparent spread of information -- and especially as educators we need to see to it that all of our school-aged children have equal access to a free and independent Internet.

Fourth: We, as teachers, no longer have the luxury of being 'tech-fearful'. I know that there are people on your faculty like Mimeograph Man who swear they are 'against' technology. While I admire their perseverance, and I respect many of them and see that they possess a wealth of experience and have often delivered excellent educations to countless children, I dare say that they do not realize the precipice we stand upon with regard to preparing our next generation of children for a digital future.

The future of the Internet is going to make paper look like the manuscript codex which made papyrus look like wax and clay tablets which were a minor improvement on a stick and wet sand. There are few instances in the history of communication that produce times as important as this: it is a time to either acclimate to the new paradigm or be left disheveled and confused at how the rest of the world passed us by.

This isn't about our 'comfort-level' with technology. This is about the Digital Age being a cruel reality. Things have changed. Our children need us to buck up, come to terms with and learn how to use the new technology, and help them navigate the digital world.

Please understand, I'm talking not from the point-of-view of a tech guy. I'm not some computer whiz. I'm a high school Latin teacher. And I also teach Art History and dally in the art department to the occasional chagrin of my chairman.

I spent most of my time in college translating Plato and Homer and reading about archaeological digs.

I am a firm proponent of the Liberal Arts.

In fact, I think a Liberal Arts education should be the first qualification for any content teacher in America.

Furthermore, I understand and appreciate Ed Schools -- even when I criticize them. I am the product of an M.S.Ed. program and the tutelage of some excellent professors in GT and Reading certificate programs.

I'm not trying to beat your brains in about this Ed Tech stuff because I'm some geeky square with a chip on my shoulder or a means to capitalize on this stuff; I'm trying to express to you my experience and my admittedly limited insights because I really see this as something that is going to have a direct impact on the future of our children. And that's why I became a teacher to begin with.

So help us out, or get out of the way. But don't just stand there over-analyzing and complaining and pretending this Digital Age is not happening. No one is taking away your paper and pencils; no one is gonna force you to learn HTML. We just want to help you get up to speed and we want you to continue helping our kids. Because the future for my children and your children and all of our children depends upon us doing the right thing in this moment.

Lastly, as I've said before: educational technology is not one of the various useless educational theories that have been recycled again and again in endless classrooms and faculty development meetings over the last thirty-odd years. Rather, educational technology is the way in which the education experience will exist within the broader context of the Digital Age. That age is upon us. We don't have a choice in the matter.

So, Mimeograph Man, think about it this way: when your grandchildren sit on your knee and ask you what you did to help your students during the Great Digital Revolution, you won't have to tell them you were busy complaining in the faculty lounge.

Around the Horn: July 13, 2009

It's a good day to wander through the education neighborhoods of the blogosphere.

Nash lays out the blueprint for bringing tech and innovation into the olde schoolhouse. And he makes one of the best points I've heard in ages:

A school can have instructional innovation and local administrative support and still fail with regard to technological innovation.

Yes. It takes fearlessness and experimentation. Otherwise it's just the digital version of 'more of the same'.

Ira, meanwhile, steps to the plate over at change.org for a week of blogging. His first post has to do with the 'origins of failure':

If we want a different result, it is the system – not the students, not the teachers – not even really the management – which must change. These groups, after all, are just humans, humans responding to the system they are forced to survive in.

The educational system, and all the structures created to support that system – the buildings, furniture, time schedules, tests – are the problem.

And finally, McLeod's preso from NECC is finally online. Scott looks at ed leadership in the 21st century from an exponentialist point of view. Scary stuff.

Non-profits in Ed Tech

Looking from info from you all.

What non-profits are taking an active role in hardware/device accessibility as well as open source apps and the like?

Comment away. I'm interested.

2nd day over at Change.org: Talking 21st Century Skills Blues

Second day of guest blogging over at Change.org. Today's post: on the singularity, ed tech, and those 21st century skills blues.

Check it out, and while you are at it, sign the petition to ban the pre-pre-SAT!

The Hype Cycle

Over at elearnspace, Siemens blogs today about what he describes as the 'hype cycle' of new technology.

Discusses the sort of semi-tragic (in the structural sense) lifespan of any new technology. From obscurity to kingliness to downfall and obscurity to eventual heroic purposeful return.

Sounds alot like Sophocles' Oedipus.

As we suffer what will be bumps in the ed tech road with regard to the integration of social and participatory media technologies into the classroom, it's a point worth thinking about.

ISTEvision: Digital Stories from Teachers and Students

One part of the virtual NECC has been ISTEvision.

My favorite aspect of the site is the section devoted to digital stories by real teachers and real students.

From the story of a rural Idaho classroom which has connected to a classroom in New Zealand to teacher statements about their commitment to bringing authentic educational uses of technology into their classrooms, this series of videos -- from the amateur to the glossy -- is testament to the dedication of teachers and students to meeting the demands of the 21st century.

What's a School Day?

In a session on ‘Engaging the Digital Generation’, Vicki Davis brought up a really interesting point about global connections that I hadn’t thought about.

And it’s not some big conceptual thing and it’s not some little touchy-feely thing; it’s a practical thing.

A practical thing with rather profound implications:

Logistics.

A true real-time global classroom can’t expect to work on a North American school-day schedule.

You want your kids to understand what ‘global’ means?

Have them participate in a real-time session with students in Australia… during the Australian kids’ regular school day.