Perspective affects everything that we do. It affects how we view a situation, how we react, our decisions and a myriad of other things. Now, I have the perspective of someone who is an administrator, thinks technology in schools is important, believes schools need to alter and change to assist students to become thinkers and creators not watchers and consumers. However, I’m beginning to think that we may have reached a point where the change being brought on by technology may be creating a gap that, without some pretty significant changes, the ability of any school or regular classroom teacher to keep up may have passed the reality point.
This was first brought to my attention by Stephanie Sander’s post over at Change Agency where she discusses the need for many of the leading technology people to step back and reflect on where things are going. I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I beginning to wonder if we aren’t reaching a point where the constant change that could be introduced with new innovations is paralyzing people from trying anything.
9 months ago I began blogging. When I began, there were some very prolific and high-profile people discussing the power of blogging and the impact it could have on education and educators. In that 9 months it has gone from blogging to Skype chat, to Facebook, twitter, SL, plus a whole host of other things that I use for my teaching that are not part of my social networking. I now belong to 11 Ning groups, including having my own that I hope will eventually become a place for administrators in my own area to discuss and develop social networks of their own. Wikis have become my tool of choice for homework collection and dispersal, discussions and other class and school needs. I teach students how to create and post both podcasts and videos, something I’d probably not do if it weren’t for my teaching.
The latest thing to hit the floor is streaming tv that allows you to broadcast via the net. Now, I’m not up on this for a variety of reasons although I can see it having implications in my class, school and school division. The one thing that I’m really beginning to wonder is how in the world are we going to get teachers to begin to look at any of these if they are changing as fast as my 2 year old needs his diaper changed! Really. Last week, or was it the week before, I was looking forward to the K12 online conference, school was beginning well and I was into a routine for myself. Bam! Wham!
I seem to have been able to catch my breath today online to find that I’ve missed the first week of the conference, I’m way behind on both reading and posting and something called Ustream has taken the edusphere nation by storm. I did make it over to one of the sites to take a look but no one was on the air. I’ve been trying to get a grasp of what this does all week. Today, as I was outside working on some minor fixes before winter, I was wondering how anyone could ever keep up with all these changes if they were actually working in a classroom plus doing the many other things that teachers do. Is there any chance? Where is our best leverage going to be in schools?
Stephanie’s post really hit something today. Right now, we are having trouble figuring out how and what we might need to do to change curricula to be better suited for students today while at the same time providing parents and society with some type of system that will demonstrate that students are indeed learning and building their knowledge. We struggle within buildings and on campuses with a host of extreme social problems, like campus shootings, like we’ve never seen before and yet we know that we have one of the smartest generation of students ever to grace our classrooms. We are debating the need for safety with the need to teach the students how to keep them safe and trying to convince IT departments that maybe they need to change their roles within the educational framework or things will get some ugly some fast. I could go on but we aren’t even able to be sure students will be able to access an off site email account on the one hand and looking at yet another tool that seems to offer the ability to change some aspects of education. At this pace, teachers won’t have to bother with any technology because there will only be a handful of people who know about the technology and they aren’t everyday classroom teachers.
To seriously look at any type of change, continuing to find new tools to use isn’t going to remove the moss from the stone. We have some incredible things going on in some places with some classrooms but they are the exceptions. Primarily, little has changed with education despite all the tools. I firmly believe that until we examine the curricula, change some of those objectives and rework others, making it relevant to the students, no amount of cool tool is going to create change. Really, 9 months ago, blogging was the way to go while today it seems almost blah. My technorati rating keeps dropping as fewer and fewer new people are reading and referring to what I write. (Maybe I need to explore this more.) Blogs are just one of the many places where we can discuss things and not as vital to interaction as they were when they were the primary way to get to know people. Now, I watch as many of the people I follow on Twitter present at conferences or attend conferences that, really, I have no hope of ever getting to attend without paying for them personally, which could happen (with a small lottery win.)
Will we ever, really, see a change in education? I beginning to believe that it won’t come from those at the head of the technology discovery. It may be possible that many following them will have enough influence to create some change. With the rate of change, I even wonder if they will have an impact.
photo http://www.vanguardcollege.com/swd/images/Perspectives%20logo.jpg
7 responses so far ↓
I agree with what you say here, and I think the educational technology community is a bit distracted right now with a lot of the newer tools. It all seems so frantic, if I miss a day on Twitter, I’ve missed a half dozen spontaneous PD opportunities and three new tools have been announced. Yet, at the same time, I’m witnessing shared experiences and issues, especially issues regarding barriers to tech in schools or the slow progress of change.
I think we as individuals have to focus and refocus, shape and refine our teaching and learning philosophies quite regularly. I’m happy to just take a day off from technology (all of it), and just ask myself three really important questions
What do I believe today?
How does that shape the way I view teaching and learning?
How doI shape my environment to make this happen?
Thanks for your post!
I sense some dismay in your post.
Here’s the thing. All this stuff doesn’t really matter. Ustream, SecondLife, Twitter, whatever….doesn’t matter.
What matters is connections, networks and learning. You already have that and so do I. I used to feel quite frustrated with the rate of change but I’m seeing change. Not on a big scale but it’s coming. Just as these new tools are coming at us so fast we can’t keep up, so are the requests withing my division to consider change. Not that everyone is looking at web 2.0 as the answer but they recognize that much of what we’re doing isn’t working and because they’re good teachers and good people, they are seeking changes. They are also beginning to see that our reliance on bureaucracy and protocols also has to be challenged.
Now you might say , “I don’t see it”. But I’ll bet if you look closely you do. So my personal interest in the changes is to be prepared to help others as they come to recognize somethings got to give.
The issue of civility and violence and how to help kids figure out how to behave in the world, is all related. It’s part of the issue.
As someone who considers himself an educational technologist, it’s my job to get my head around this. I’m guessing that for you as a principal, you’ve got different and more pressing concerns. That’s your job. But you’ve got a network that you can tap into when you need to and you contribute to a network that can access your good work as well.
As for technorati rankings. Phooey on that. Mine isn’t really creeping up but who cares. I contribute to a small network but they’re critical. You’ve heard of the Dunbar number?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar’s_number
150 is all you need. I just want the very best 150 in the world….not just Moose Jaw or Saskatchewan.
So don’t get caught up with the changes in tools and technology….you and I will never keep up on our own….That’s what the network is for. I didn’t buy into twitter till enough of my trusted network said it was powerful…Let you your network do the dirty work….You get that school of yours understanding the value of connections, relationships and values.
I know you’re already doing that.
We can change the entire curriculum of our schools, we can re-engineer their structure and organization, we can drown them in funding, equip them with the latest technology, we can change everything about our schools; but if we, as educators, stay the same; if we don’t change our practices, and behaviors…we will have accomplished little.
So much of our discourse leaves out the most important element of educational reform and transformation…people.
pete
What you’ve written mirrors so much of my recent thoughts. Chronologically, you’re a month ahead of me on the tech-growth learning curve, as I began blogging 8 months ago. I’ve felt intrigued, inspired, and overwhelmed by all the tools there are to learn, but I share your concerns about the need to examine our curriculum, and figure out what roles the tools can play in supporting, developing, and in some cases transforming what and how we teach. That takes reflection, and time, and it’s tough to do that with the world spinning the way it is.
Dean, it’s not so much dismay as it is questioning how we continue to move things forward when the technology is moving so quickly. I guess if we were to shift our focus from the technology to creating networks for people, like Pete says, it’s the people, then we can let the networks move the people along. As for the technorati, I didn’t explain that clearly. It wasn’t a case of the numbers but more an example of how things are changing with the technology changes. The numbers are dropping there, which doesn’t matter, since the networks have changed and the interaction doesn’t rely on blogging back but on more back and forth, like twitter or synergistic work through Google Docs or some other technology.
I guess, I just wonder if we are going to end up with a gap between what we can do and what we are asking students to do. Some things are necessary, like reading, while other things, like the countries involved in the preWWI conflict may not be as important as the current military missions of NATO or particular countries around the world or if students need to know about the fall of Rome or if the affect of migration on countries is maybe a better study. You see, I teach a Communication Production Technology class where most of the objectives do not fit – so I’m constantly trying to figure out what to do – no need for reel-t0-reel work, editing from a taperecorder, worrying about a soundboard since most of the work can be done on a computer with new technology.
Pete, I agree we need to focus on people. Ours is a whole system focused on interactions of people, which we sometimes forget. My desire is to draw people into growing their networks which leads to growing their skills. Social networking is, by far, the most important feature of the web.
I think the focus on people is particularly important. What I sometimes hear from teachers is that they don’t perceive technologies are about people, communicating.
It’s funny because even as we rapidly explore these new tools, for me, some of it is just about people, and about playing with people who get what I get, and just having a good time exploring.
The idea of learning as play.
How long has it been since a lot of us have felt that?
I agree that we certainly can’t expect teachers to keep up with a lot of these tools, and hopefully the value in some of us exploring them is we can have a “toolkit” ready when the pedagogy would find a tool useful.
But I think it’s good to slow down and consider what we are doing, ask these questions, and ponder our approaches. Because it is about the people, ultimately. Our students.
You’re are right about the play. So many of us are caught up in “working” that we forget that learning is suppose to be fun. We are suppose to have fun when learning – at least it’s more enjoyable that way. As I watch my CPT20 class read their children’s books, making funny noises and doing some silly things, I have to remind myself that they are having fun doing this and that’s good.
It is about the people – the students – and as we take some time to reflect, we may be able to use these tools to make learning fun, exciting and push these youth to demonstrate their knowledge in ways that are creative and fun. It will be interesting to see how the children’s books turn out!
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