In the last several months I have seen an increasing amount of news articles, and blog posts extolling the value of 21st century education, 21st century teachers, 21st century classrooms, and 21st century learning… After this 21sat century deluge…I am still wondering exactly what it is that is being sold here…
I can only imagine that this may be comparable to the Interactive Whiteboard initiative presented as a fundamental change in how we teach and learn…15 years ago… I am still waiting for that one, to be succinct, all of this sounds and feels like rearranging deck chairs…
What is a 21st-Century Classroom?
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2011/06/what_is_a_21st-century_classro.html
The vision of what a 21st-century classroom is has changed from 2010 to 2011, according to a new report from CDW-G.
Students, teachers, and IT administrators now peg a 21st-century classroom as one that includes wireless Internet, an interactive whiteboard, and digital content. Last year’s survey found that an Internet connection, a teacher computing device, and an LCD projector constituted a 21st-century classroom.
The results of this year’s survey come from roughly 1,000 high school students, faculty, and district IT administrators.
As we’ve heard many times before, students reported using less technology in class than after school. The survey also pointed to a disconnect between technology perceptions of those at the district level versus those in schools. While 64 percent of IT administrators rate their district’s technology as "cutting edge," only 45 percent of faculty and 39 percent of students report being satisfied with their classroom technology.
Creating a 21st Century Classroom
http://www.samanthamorra.com/samanthamorra/21st_Century_Classroom.html
Video
Prezi
http://prezi.com/gbqiep4xof3w/21st-century-classroom/
A technology broadside against school leadership preparation programs
http://bigthink.com/ideas/38884
Well, I finally wrote the article I always wanted to write: a letter to my 3,000+ faculty peers in Educational Leadership preparation programs all across the country about how our collective inattention to technology-related issues is an embarrassing indictment of our lack of relevance:
- Are we irrelevant to the digital, global world in which we now live? [PDF] [UPDATE: A HTML version is now available too!]
Regular readers of this blog will recognize some of the language that I used in my broadside against my own profession. Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite:
We also are witnessing the early adolescence of a vastly different global economy. For instance, the rapid growth of the Internet and other communication technologies has accelerated the offshoring of jobs from the developed world. Complex corporate global supply chains locate manufacturing work wherever costs are lowest, expertise is highest, or necessary talent resides. Geographic or product niche monopolies disappear in the face of Internet search engines. Micro-, small-batch, and on-demand manufacturing techniques facilitate customized, personalized production. Whatever manufacturing work remains in developed countries is high skill, is high tech, and, more often than not, requires greater education than a secondary diploma. The low-skill industrial system that was the backbone of the developed world’s economies in the previous century is increasingly a bygone memory.
Like manual work that is non-location-dependent, knowledge work also is frequently done cheaper elsewhere. Service jobs are increasingly fungible, able to be located anywhere in the world that has an Internet connection. Ongoing workflow and final products are exchanged at the speed of light via e-mail, instant messaging, and other corporate networking tools. The same technologies that facilitate interconnected global conversations also facilitate interconnected global commerce. As was done in previous decades for manufacturing work, the next two decades will see many complex service jobs broken up into component parts. Once these tasks are disaggregated, they will be done by lower-skilled workers who can do these discrete components of the overall work, facilitated by software. In other words, many high-paying service jobs will turn into globalized piece work. Since the service professions represent over three-fifths of America’s economy, the impacts of this are going to be quite significant.
AND
If every other information-oriented societal sector is finding that transformative reinvention is the cost of survival in our current climate, schools and universities shouldn’t expect that they somehow will be immune from the same changes that are radically altering their institutional peers. We shouldn’t pretend that these revolutions aren’t going to affect us too, in compelling and often as yet unknown ways. And, yet, for some reason we do.
As long-existing barriers to learning, communicating, and collaborating disappear – and as what it means to be a productive learner, citizen, and employee shifts dramatically – it’s worth asking how we as educational leadership faculty and programs are responding. Are we doing what we should? To date the evidence is pretty clear that most of us are not.
AND
Can we as educational leadership faculty do better? Given the scale and scope of the transformations occurring around us – and their power and potential for student learning – we MUST do better. It’s embarrassing to consider how little we’ve done to stay relevant. A learning revolution has occurred and – given the attention we’ve paid it – it’s as if many of us didn’t care.
AND
We know, simply from projecting current trends forward, that in the future our learning will be even more digital, more mobile, and more multimedia than it is now. It will be more networked and more interconnected and often will occur online, lessening dependence on local humans. It frequently will be more informal and definitely will be more self-directed, individualized, and personalized. It will be more computer-based and more software-mediated and thus less reliant on live humans. It will be more open and more accessible and may occur in simulation or video game-like environments. And so on. We’re not going to retrench or go backward on any of these paths. We thus need school leaders who can begin envisioning the implications of these environmental characteristics for learning, teaching, and schooling. We need administrators who can design and operationalize our learning environments to reflect these new affordances. We need leaders who are brave enough to create the new paradigm instead of simply tweaking the status quo and who have the knowledge and ability to create schools that are relevant to the needs of students, families, and society.
Like teachers, administrators, and media specialists, educational leadership faculty have a voluntarily-assumed (and paid) responsibility to be relevant to the needs of children and education today and to prepare administrators as best we are able for tomorrow. Our professional priorities must be aimed at preparing our graduates for the world as it is and will be. Otherwise, what are we here for? In other words, who’s going to prepare these school leaders if we don’t?
Teachers behind curve when it comes to digital devices, Students lead the way, conference of educators hears
http://www.yorkregion.com/news/article/1016805–teachers-behind-curve-when-it-comes-to-digital-devicesCell phones in the classroom may be distracting, but banning them is not the answer — changing teaching methods is — a conference on digital learning in schools has heard.
“The press got it wrong. It’s not about the phone, it’s about the electronic device,” said Laura Williams, chief information officer with Learning Technology Support Services for the Peel District School Board.
Ms Williams was taking part in a conference of educators held Friday on social media use in the classroom.
Educators from across the province met to discuss issues such as cell phone bans, distraction, and online bullying at a conference in Etobicoke, with York Region educators at the forefront. The conference also used the recent yorkregion.com series on digital learning as resource material.
An Ontario survey released earlier this year showed most high school students don’t want cell phones allowed in schools and the Toronto District School Board caused a stir recently when trustees voted to lift a four-year ban on cell phones. However, many of the participants in Friday’s conference said the survey did not paint an accurate picture of what students want.
They may not want to phone or text people, but they do want to use their electronic devices, and the issue gets muddy when a smart phone is also a computer, Ms Williams said.
“ Students get it, but I’m not sure the press gets it. It’s a very fine line.”
Dr. Jim Greenlaw, dean of education at the University Of Ontario Institute Of Technology, agreed digital devices may be distracting. At UOIT, where savvy students are supposed to understand the use of technology in education, he still sees situations where the teacher is droning on at the front of the room and one third of students are playing video games, because they’ve figured out what the teacher is saying already. The challenge, he said, is keeping them engaged.
Part of the answer to the distraction problem lies in the age students are introduced to digital learning, said Royan Lee, teacher at Beverley Acres Public School in Richmond Hill.
Mr. Lee, who is at the forefront of the digital learning movement, believes there’s a strong urgency to teach kids to use the devices for education at an earlier age.
“Some of the problems arise because we’re too late coming into the game.”
It’s difficult to expect students who’ve been using their smartphones for a “realm of independence” to suddenly be told teachers are going to join them and they may have to “unlearn” bad digital habits, he said.
Dr. Greenlaw agreed. “Yes, the ship sailed a while ago and yes, Grade 12 students may not know how to deal with it because we didn’t start them in Grade 4. We need to get moving.”
Hazel Mason, superintendent of education with the Peel public board, added, “Educators are always catching up. We’re always at the cow’s tail.”
It’s time, she said, to re-evaluate how budgets are spent and how to teach differently so students aren’t distracted by technology.
“We’re going to have to change how we define homework and the role of the teacher. We can’t do the same thing we’ve been doing for 100 years.”
Geoff Thompson, a teacher at Uxbridge District High School, said he has had to change his teaching style. He describes a recent class where a good student was not taking notes as the teacher wrote on the chalkboard. When asked why not, the student responded “when you’re done, I’d like to take a picture [of the chalkboard] and post it to the [online] forum” and Mr. Thompson realized it may no longer be necessary to insist students take notes — although for some, it helps them learn.
Royan Lee says his classroom full of devices in Richmond Hill means he has to stop trying to force students to memorize facts — it’s all available at their fingertips. “I realize it’s totally unnecessary and pointless and I’m forced to think about teaching higher order, critical-thinking skills.”
“ Everything useful about computers I learned from my students. We fail to listen to students at our peril,” Dr. Greenlaw said.
The difficulty, he said, is harnessing students’ social networking skills within the constraints of most Ontario classrooms.
The Ontario College of Teachers recently warned their members that the dynamics between teachers and students are forever changed when the two become friends in an online environment and advises teachers to question whether the interaction enhances learning or satisfies a personal need, if the photographs or comments are reasonable and professional.
“ If online discussion is so dangerous, why do many of us still think it is important?” he said, suggesting it’s because it’s necessary to become responsible workers and citizens in the 21st century.
Another challenge, said Bernie Smith, principal at St. Augustine Catholic Secondary School in Unionville, is motivating teachers. “Not all teachers are onboard” and educators must grapple with student equity when not all students have access to the technology.
Students from Uxbridge High and Beverley Acres in Richmond Hill explained how they use social media and why they think it’s important it be incorporated into the classroom.
“When we leave school we’re going to be collaborating and so learning how to do it now is important,” said Jenna Bruno, in Grade 12. Universities now use live Twitter feeds to allow students to ask questions of professors, breaking down the shyness barrier and allowing discussions to continue after class.
Skype conversations with students around the world are “mindblowing,” said Sabrina Adams, Grade 12 student at Uxbridge, who says accessing information on web means “kids who don’t pay attention pay attention … and people who never talk, talk.”
