EdTechTrek

Edweek discusses a  June report released by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers that surveyed close to 2,000 K-12 public school educators from across the US. It finds that although there have been increases in technology in schools overall, there are still “significant disparities” when it comes to access to computer tools and networks. It also reportst that while many schools have computers, they are often out of date and unreliable. Here are some more statistics that are reported:

• 83% of educators report having 5 or fewer computers in the classroom; > than half report no more than 2.
• > half surveyed use computers for daily administrative tasks
• about half use them to daily communicate with other educators (communicate what?)
• about 40% use technology to monitor student progress (electronic gradebook?)
• about 37% use technology for research and information gathering
• about 32%  use it to teach lessons
• < a fifth of teachers surveyed use technology daily to post student and class information online or to communicate with parents electronically.
• a majority feel that professional development that they received was most effective for noninstructional tasks (hence, the second bullet point here)
• a majority were “highly optimistic about the impact of technology on their jobs and on their students” and that technology positively impacted student motivation

Yet…

• 89% said they view technology as essential to teaching and learning.

What’s missing here?

• No mention of teacher personal learning networks to share and collaborate
• No mention of teachers using technology to further their own professional development
• No mention of students using computers for learning in powerful ways
• No mention of students using networks for collaborative learning

What I find most curious is that the survey itself is so minimalistic in terms of what technology can bring to the teacher-learner. If focuses on access and administrative tool use, research, and teachnolgy as a teaching tool. It does not see the larger picture of the need for systemic change, the need for lifelong teacher learning and growth, and the full potential of networks and computer technologies. What is sad is that it would appear that we, in general, are failing at such a basic level. Although there are certainly pockets of innovation and change, they are not sweeping in scope. Here is a quotation from the report’s executive summary:

“The findings of this study reveal that although all educators and students in public schools
have some access to computers and the Internet, we have few assurances that they are able to
use technology effectively for teaching and learning.”

Well, that’s certainly less than encouragine, isn’t it.

So, we have schools lacking in current tools, lacking in networked access, lacking in professional development, lacking in vision, lacking in systemic change, and overwhelmed with the incredibly diverse burdents placed upon them. What do we need then? Leaders. We need leaders who are willing to put their necks and reputations on the line district by district, building by building. We need leaders who have a powerful vision of what learning can and should be and who can effectively communicate it to others. We need leaders who can inspire by example. We need leaders who reward risk-taking. We need leaders who understand the learning potential afforded by new tools and learning networks. We need leaders who understand what meaningful learning is and looks like. We need leaders (at all levels, including governmental) who value all forms of assessment - not just formal standardized assessments. We need leaders to support urban schools. We need leaders who understand the value all pedagogies. We need leaders who help their teachers be all that they can be.

We need LEADERSHIP. Without it, we will continue fulfilling this report’s outlook - “The findings of this study reveal that although all educators and students in public schools have some access to computers and the Internet, we have few assurances that they are able to use technology effectively for teaching and learning.”

I am reading the book, Blocks to Robots, by Marina Umaschi Bers, and I must say - the first few chapters do a fantastic job at putting technology into perspective as it applies to not only young learners, but adolescent learners as well. In particular, the second chapter presents to perspectives of how children should learn with and about technology: computer literacy and technological fluency.

Computer literacy “relies heavily on developing instrumental skills” whereas technological fluency “focuses on enabling individuals to express themselves creatively with technology.” Both are important and compliment each other. But what I appreciated in addition to this was the following statement that brings much needed balance to many on-going discussions today.

“While developing technological fluency is important for understanding the world of bits and atoms around us, it is just as important to provide children with the vision that technology can also be used to make a better world.”

So often this important dimension of ALL educational practice gets lost in our philosophical discussions and rants about which tool, pedagogy, style, approach, perspective, system, etc… is best. One of the primary goals of a democratic education is to contribute to humanity and make the world a better place for all. With this perspective, we need to think long and hard as to the purpose of our students’ PowerPoint on ________________ (you fill in the blank).

But amongst other great points, Bers  presents six assets or characteristics of thriving individuals taken from the work of applied developmental scientists whereby learners not only learn content, but also “to contribute in positive ways to themselves, their communities, and the world.” These six assets are:

1. competence - in intellectual endeavors and the acquisition of computer literacy and technological fluency
2. confidence - in their own learning potential through technology and their own ability to solve technical problems
3. caring - about others expressed by using technology to engage in collaboration and to help each other when needed
4. connection - with peers or adults to use technologies to form face-to-face or virtual communities and social support networks
5. character - to become aware of their own personal values, be respectful of other people’s values, and assume a responsible use of technology
6. contribution - by conceiving positive ways of using technology to make a better learning environment, community, and society.

This set of assets puts to shame any list of skills and proficiencies that have been generated over the years. It contextualizes isolated skills and gives them meaning. Aren’t we all looking for meaning? Do we really need to evaluate students’ ability to right-click or highlight rows, cells, or columns on a spreadsheet? Are we communicating to teachers and students alike that isolated skills make up learning? ISTE has spent countless hours developing, revising, rewriting, and “refreshing” a list of standards. On the NETS page, there it is: “What you and your students need to know to be tech savvy” and “Today’s Students Need Digital Age Skills”. How about a book that contextualizes skills and gives them meaning… gives them purpose.

Learning should be a gateway to better things… a better world. We forget this far too often. I forget this far too often as I get caught up in the “stuff”. Technology brings so many valuable tools to empower the learner. But meaningful learning contexts are still required.

So, what problems face your students and your community locally that they could tackle? Could they prepare a presentation to present to the school board, the town, the city… It makes me think of this video of a young girl presenting some compelling ideas at the UN titled, “The girl that made the UN silent“…. all done without PowerPoint, too

I am reading brain rules by John Medina and love this quotation as it relates to how we learn:

“If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom.”

He is not saying that one cannot learn in a traditional classroom. We all have. However, he does challenge the notion that it is the best or most effective way to learn.

Oh, what we sacrifice in the name of “efficiency”.

“It would be particularly oxymoronic to convey the idea of constructionism through a definition, since, after all, constructionism boils down to demanding that everything be understood by being constructed.”

~Seymour Papert

Hmmmm….

How well do we learn new concepts by simply defining them using a dictionary… a staple of educational practice in classrooms? There are certainly differing levels of knowing, and choosing a correct definition from incorrect distractors has value at some level. However, when real understanding is the goal, something else must be valued and sought after in the classroom. If we want our students to USE knowledge or information in meaningful ways, the definitions themselves hold very little value.

What are you doing to get your students to move beyond knowledge as definitions?

The ABC News headline reads, “Teens Prefer Computers to Doctors“. This headline is somewhat deceptive, though. More accurately, teems may be more likely to share sensitive, high-risk and confidential information via a handheld computing system called the Health eTouch than they would in a face-to-face discussion with their doctor.

One quotation that struck me from an article titled, “Waiting room gadget may prove to be a life-saver” reads,

“Our research has found that recent advances in information technology, such as the Health eTouch system, and the immediate reporting of computerized screening results may help overcome barriers to behavioral screening.”

It made me think about the complete opposite in education - the delayed reporting that comes from standardized assessments. I was talking with a teacher the other day and we were discussing the end-of-year paperwork that needs to get done on each child. Her perspective was that it was such a waste of time because nobody really looks at it, making the process even more trivial. It is a vicious circle, because the new teachers who get anecdotal and formal assessment data on their new students know that teachers like themselves just go through the motions of filling out these district-mandated forms and checklists. We also discussed the delayed assessment data results that come from standardized testing. By the time the data arrives, it is so close to the end of the year that teachers don’t really give it attention as they will be passing their students on to other teachers (this is assuming that the teachers can make sense of the data that they are provided with). It gets filed for the next teacher to sort out.

What if standardized assessment data reporting was immediate? Would that change things (assuming that the data was actually useful, valid, and reliable), or is something still missing from the equation like a doctor’s mind - one that understands the data and combs it looking for important information and correlations. Do most teachers really take the data seriously? Do most teachers really know what to do with the data once they receive it. I remember our faculty sitting in on one - yes one “in-service”…groan… where we were told what the data we had just received means. I never had a course in undergrad or Master’s program that helped me understand the data and take action based upon the data. Only during my doctoral program did serious attention to this ever emerge.

So, we have the problem of delayed data receipt, lack of understanding of what the data means, lack of understanding of what action to take based on the data, lack of credibility and respect for the data itself, and disenfranchisement with the whole formal data gathering, reporting, recording, and action process.

Imagine if your teacher was your doctor? What then?

Would a handheld data gathering device really help any more than a handheld computing device put into the hands of a novice or traditional teacher really bring learning innovation and power into the classroom?

As Obama would say, we need change. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Are we just waiting for change, or are we, as Hillary Clinton said, just repackaging things others have tried … “not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.”

We need educational assessment reform in this country as badly as we need healthcare reform.