Paradigm Shifting

The elephant in the room for education is the degree to which the majority of teachers and administrators believe that slow and steady can continue to be the pace at which educational change can be embraced.

All around the web there are dramatic examples of rich, amazing educational experiences that leverage the power of 21st century learning skills.

Sadly though, examples of these occurring in traditional brick and mortar schools are extremely rare.

My theory is that 20 years of standardization has made administrators and teachers wary of any instructional approach that does not have the teacher firmly at the center of the learning experience. Using the reap what you sow model, it should not surprise anyone that students are less engaged than ever under this paradigm of instruction. Information has been liberated by the internet. So, why do we (educators) still treat it like a finite commodity which must be parceled out to students in measured, uniform doses?

True educational reform will start when education ceases to be something we 'do' to students during the 7.5 hours they are in a building each day.

Moving Closer Towards 1 to 1

From the county I live in came this article today:

http://www.middletownjournal.com/news/middletown-news/schools-adjusting-cell-phone-policies-1296985.html

The past five years have brought about a rapid increase in the number of students carrying around powerful devices that can only be 'legally' used to access information 16.5 hours per day. By and large schools across the nation force students to power down largely out of fear. The popular narrative is that students will cheat, cyber bully, sext, text, and generally distract themselves from any 'real' learning. What if schools took an opposite approach and accentuated the positives of personal devices? Instant access to information to supplement learning activities (Don't we as adults 'Google' something the moment we want to go deeper on a subject?), the ability to collaborate with peers on projects, a way to instantly poll classes using free polling technology, an ability for students to check grades, calendars, and task lists, a way to replace dated texts with dynamic ebooks.

Would this take training (both for students, teachers, and parents)? Absolutely. However, if we are serious about making brick and mortar institutions relevant for learning in this connected age, we must get past the notions of what school used to be and quickly embrace what school can and should be in an era of interconnectedness.

Odd and Ends from Around the (Edu) Web

1. I'm sure it's been around for a while, but I just came across YouTube for Schools. The link below will take you to a blog that discusses it in more detail:

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/12/opening-up-world-of-educational-content.html

Perhaps this is a middle of the road solution that will allow school district IT administrators to open access to YouTube and the wealth of educational material that is out there for teachers to use?

2. From the twitter universe came this link from Karl Fisch referencing a blog by Anne Smith on the use of QR codes linking filmed book reviews (in the form of movie trailers) to specific library books. A great 21st Century way to authentically engage students in summarizing and synthesizing information.

http://learningandlaptops.blogspot.com/2011/10/banned-book-movie-trailers-and-qr-codes.html

Position Statement Part Whatever

(So, if you've ever witnessed an accident and saw what was going to happen before the event occurred, then you can get a mental image of what it looks like to watch traditional brick and mortar schools speed towards a crash with the technological future they won't embrace.)

Are we preparing students for their future or our past?

What types of experiences in the classroom are necessary for students to be competitive in a global marketplace?

If class opens with the phrase “Today we are going to learn about”, then a signal has been sent that students will most likely be passively receiving knowledge and the teacher will be the focal point and director.

This approach was acceptable in the 20^th century, when there were jobs available for those who were not self directed and standardization of outcomes in the classroom was the focus.

Education is at a critical juncture.

Measurement and standardization are making a last stand to defend their relevance against a digital onslaught of learning that carries the banner of customization, personalization, and authentic engagement.

How will traditional schools remain competitive in an era of on-demand, personalized, self-directed learning?

The answer is not to reinforce the traditional, hierarchical structure that has been in place for over 100 years.

Whose future is it?

Ohio 2.5 Summit

Whenever you sign up for a professional conference there is a lingering concern about the quality and whether or not it will be worth the effort to go. The Ohio 2.5 Summit on 21st Century Education was anything but a waste. It was so rich that it will take days to digest it. I ended up sitting with a dynamic, engaging group who taught me, among other things, how to follow a conference back channel on Twitter. The result was a 21st century to crowd source note taking. Only the best ideas (and there were lots today) made it into the back channel, and most tweets contained links to outside resources that the speakers were referencing. How amazing is it that you can take a group of individuals, all interested in providing relevant, real time information, and you can end up with a rich, permanent archive of the days events. In order to begin processing the information I printed the tweet stream (all 79 pages). Speakers included Dan Pink, Ewan McIntosh, and Karl Fisch. Even the State Superintendent, Stan Hefner, had some interesting things to say (now he just needs to fix the accountability system and its creativity killing focus on standardization). Over the next week or so I'm going to be processing the highlights in this forum, and will provide links to the best of the Summit content. In the meantime, search #21oh11 for the full back channel feed.

Mindset

I have been running multiple book groups recently on the book "Mindset" by Carol Dweck. If you are in the field of education or if you are a parent I highly recommend it. The posts to this blog are shaped by my worldview of the educational field, and "Mindset" has enriched my vision of what education should (and more importantly shouldn't) be in the 21st century. Our fixation on standardized tests, summative scores, and ranking student performance reinforces what Dweck refers to as a fixed mindset. In this state success is reserved only for a limited few, not everyone can make it, and your ability to grow is limited. In our (educators) race to 'raise achievement', we label and pigeonhole kids as 'in need of remediation' and other euphemisms that indicate they do not fit into our narrow paradigm of educational success in the standards era. When students get these messages, they internalize them into fixed mindset statements that limit their ability to experience true growth and success. If we wanted to turn this paradigm on it's head, we would create authentic learning experiences that allow students to demonstrate mastery in ways that make sense to them and capitalize on their unique skills and talents. When they don't succeed the first time on an assessment, we would provide alternate pathways and additional opportunities to demonstrate mastery and (more importantly) to improve. This is how we behave as actualized adults.....(the old try/try again model)....but why is it that we don't afford our students the same opportunity? For states it is about the cheapest way to measure performance, and this is destroying creativity among our young people and creating a generation of learners incapable of operating independently without steady, specific directions from 'authority figures'. Is this what we want for our country?

(Mis)Information

To be competitive in the global age in which we find ourselves, flexible, adaptable thinking must be the hallmark of student processes that are imbedded into lessons on a daily basis. Students must be able to develop unique, creative solutions to authentic problems as a result of their learning. This is the heart of Project Based or Problem Based learning. While there is underlying knowledge that can serve as a foundation for these types of experiences (and can be tested using selected response items), the emphasis should be on the application of knowledge in new and unrelated circumstances. The current generation of standardized accountability measures do not test for this type of learning, and has had the effect of diminishing students creative problem solving capacities. The new generation of assessments must emphasize authentic demonstrations of problem solving ability over students ability to pick the one right answer out of four in a test item bank. The world we live contains multiple pathways to arriving at satisfactory results. Why do we still insist on pigeonholing our kids by teaching them to always look for only one correct answer? The past 20 years of this emphasis has created a generation of students who are not divergent thinkers and who are dependent on others to tell them the correct answer. What is scary is that educational leaders have also been boxed in by the emphasis on testing. This recent article demonstrates the damage that the overemphasis on standardized tests has caused to school leaders:

http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/dublin/news/2011/11/29/dublin-schools-expect-benefits-from-new-state-tests.html

Here are two quotes from the article (which are in direct competition with one another):

“What will happen is a shift to more authentic tests,” Axner said. “We’ll get away from more standardized tests that don’t allow our kids to think.” (This is a reference to the new PARCC assessments that will measure the common core in Ohio)

Then, there is this:

But secondly, the plan is instead of the district waiting 60 days for the results, you’ll have the student results within 60 seconds. ... That will improve the ability to provide intervention and remediation.” (The only types of items that you get this type of instant feedback from are selected response items)

Mr. Axner espouses getting away from standardized testing, but in the VERY SAME ARTICLE speaks of the benefits of standardized testing. (If you're not from Ohio, he leads one of the best districts in the state).

What this proves is that breaking free of the paradigm of standardized testing is extremely difficult if you live within the paradigm (and is yet another threat to the long term existence of brink and mortar school districts if leaders lack the ability to work outside of this paradigm).