Human Voices Wake Us

On February 23, I attended a workshop presented by David Warlick on Contemporary Literacy.  I’ll admit that I already supported the topic ahead of time, so me thinking it was fabulous might be a little biased.  I’m going to highlight some ideas that stuck with me:

What has changed is the nature of information.  We don’t need to teach our kids technology skills; we need to teach them how to work the information.

The technology has had a profound impact on our culture.  We will communicate in profoundly new ways.

We learn in the 21^st century by sharing.

Education society was perfect to prepare students for work in straight rows, performing repetitive tasks, under close supervision in an industrialized society.  Now the mills are gone. The current workplace is the home office with informational tools.

Cell phones connect families in a way never before.  We’ve decided as a culture that we want to carry our information devices with us in our pockets. 

Only 1/100^th of 1% of all new information in 2003 was printed.  We are spending too much time in the classroom teaching students how to use paper.

Don’t let distance and walls get in the way of the learning we want to achieve.

We are not preparing children for our future; we are preparing them for their future.  We know almost nothing about the future we’re preparing our children for.  What do our children need to be learning today to prepare them for an unpredictable future?

We are still working on assumptions that information presented is always true.  Examples include not only web information, but curriculum texts. We need to teach students that they can’t assume authority.  Need to teach students to question everything.  Teachers should bring as much information out of the Internet as possible to teach students how to judge information. We need to teach kids to teach themselves. 

Students have no recollection of the 20^th century.  We should be teaching 21^st century skills, but we are in 19^th century classrooms.

50% of students say they do school work in social networks online.

Kids no longer have to say goodbye to their friends when they leave high school.  They can now stay in constant contact via social networks.

We want our children to be students we want to teach instead of learners they are. We need to ask students questions as if they had Google in their pockets.

The huge problem in our schools is the disparity of kids who are in a community of learners online versus kids who have no access. If we’ve decided as a nation that all children need to read, we need to provide technology access too.  The new illiteracy will be technological. 

Teachers used to make students experts.  Now students are making themselves experts. 

It’s not about the technology; it’s about the information. For teachers, information is a product to consume.  For students, it’s something to remix.

We don’t need to provide project-based learning, but job-based learning. Technology doesn’t get students excited- it’s not new to them. 

If students become intellectual property owners, they will respect others’ intellectual property.  One way to do this is to house students’ projects in the library as a resource for others.

Teachers who don’t use technology are emphasizing technology and the Internet as a playground.  They are not teaching students how to evaluate information and use technology as a tool.

Some suggested websites:

www.davidwarlick.com            presenter’s site

www.uuorld.com          explain the world with maps

www.prezi.com            zooming editor for stunning presentations

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/fair_use/            fair use & copyright

www.ning.com create own social network

www.phunland.com      2D physics sandbox

www.gamesforchange.org         real world games; real world impact

www.missiontolearn.com          26 learning games to change to world

www.scratch.mit.edu                create stories, games, and animations

www.tagcrowd.com                 visualize word frequency through tag clouds

www.wordle.net                       generate word pictures 

www.tikatok.com                     create books to share

I’ve been struggling lately with the perceived line between what administrators do and don’t do.  Tradition says they discipline, manage, make sure others know they are in charge, etc.  I love instructional leadership, but miss kids.  I don’t want to spend the rest of my career just interacting with “the bad kids.”  As an administrator I’m not supposed to be able to teach a class or have friendly relationships with teachers. But as we’re encouraged to move away from a hierarchical system to a learning community, why are these old standards still the norm?  I believe that I can still make opportunities for me to teach both teachers and students.  Someone once told me that if I missed having relationships with students that I needed to get back into teaching.  I believe I can have the best of both worlds.  I’m not sure how it will happen, but I know I can work to redefine what it means to be an administrator.  I also know if I were to go back into teaching I would be a much better one than when I left, but I would be worrying about what was going on in other classrooms and itching to guide those teachers. 

Education is all about what goes on in the classroom.  My job as an administrator is to teach the teachers so that they can be better.  But if I forget about the students or what it’s like to be in a classroom with them, then what’s the point? 

I want to have my cake and eat it too.

I’m reading Jim Collins’ Good to Great.  One section talks about the “Doom Loop.”  I believe a lot of schools are in this loop.  This is the section that made me immediately think of what I’ve seen happen in schools:

“They sought the single defining action, the grand program, the one killer innovation, the miracle moment…They would push the flywheel in one direction, then stop, change course, and throw it into yet another direction.  After years of lurching back and forth, the comparison companies filed to build sustained momentum and fell instead into what we call the doom loop.”    -(p. 178)

This is what schools call the “initiative.”  One new great program comes along and usually everyone’s expected to do it and only it.  Then, something else comes along.  This is why teachers are notorious for believing that, if they hang on long enough, it will change.  And it usually does:  “Each new …CEO brought his own new program and halted the momentum of his predecessor.”  -(p.179)

How many times has a new principal or superintendent come in and changed the focus?   I’m willing to admit that the focus might need to be changed, but what if it doesn’t?  What if things are slowly improving?

I was once a part of High Schools That Work.  One thing I heard during a conference was that teachers who are on the right track should “interview” a new principal by telling him/her:  here’s what we do, here’s what the school does.  If you’re not on board, then we won’t hire you. The teachers keep the ball rolling (with central admin support, of course).

I’ve seen many schools in the doom loop because they don’t go anywhere.  There’s no progress, no forward movement.  The focus is constantly changing and isn’t done long enough to see results.  In Good to Great, it takes some companies 10, 20, or 30 years to see results.  Granted, schools don’t have that long.  But by continually changing focus, how can anyone expect any progress?

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