Things influencing this post: Christian Long — Getting Back to Basics
Re-reading Understanding by Design
The conversations about Twitter and Second Life, such as Will Richardson’s What the Tweet? and Sylvia Martinez’ Second Thoughts on Second Life
So interestingly, Christian is asking "What if the tech tools went away, would we have still changed our teaching?"
For me, that’s one of those questions that I don’t quite know how to answer because I’ve spent my entire career in progressive schools. Beacon was an amazing place to be a tech coordinator because the pedagogy was in place, and it was a question of how to marry the tech to it. In fact, early on in my careerI had the problem of teachers who already grasped many of the things that we, in the ed-blogger world, are talking about now, but they didn’t see the need to use the net to do it. (And remember, this was mid-90s when the tools were not what they are today.)
And it’s interesting in today’s context, because I’m in Buffalo today working with the administrative team from a school that is moving into a 1:1 laptop, inquiry-driven, project-based model. I wasn’t there to show them how to use technology to achieve this, I wasn’t there to show them how to use wikis or RSS or blogs. I was there to talk about pedagogy and how this idea of schooling is totally different. We talked about curriculum design (thank you UbD!), we talked about student schedules, we talked about professional development, we talked about supervision of teachers, we essential questions and supporting / scaffolding student inquiry. (Thank you, Konrad for the incredibly timely blog post.)
And yes, in that context, we talked about technology. We used a wiki to tease out our ideas. I started the day by showing them Did You Know 2.0 and Ken Robinson’s TEDTalk, and in both the discussions that came out of those short films, we talked about the ramifications of technology and information access on our schools. We did use Did You Know to talk about the impetus for change, and how technological advancement is creating a need for a new citizenry and therefore new schools, but that is lens for change, not a tech workshop. (In fact, can we all agree to use Did You Know instead of The World Is Flat from now on? Can I get an amen? Thank you.) And I showed them our Moodle site when we talked about supporting teacher development and supporting student discussions.
But the fun thing was that the discussion of the technology only happened when it made sense within the framework of the school reform we were talking about. "How do you support teacher development with limited common planning time?" "Well, let me show you our staff planning site…" "How do you encourage students to continue to develop answers to their questions…" "Let me show you how our teachers use the discussion forums…"
I think that’s really important because it puts the horse before the cart. How can we create engaging schools? How can we teach students toward wisdom? How can we move beyond facts and skills and into enduring understandings and deep, connected learning? Those are the questions we need to be asking, and then we need to find the tools that support that vision, not the other way around.
In Understanding by Design (really a must read for folks thinking about curriculum / school reform), Wiggins and McTigue talk about "activity-based teacher" and how it’s a bad thing. The kids are engaged, the classroom looks fun, kids are enjoying their work, often there are great examples of student work on the walls, but if you dig deeper and ask students and teachers why they are doing the activity they are doing, the answers often are shallow or non-existant. It’s a half-way step to the kind of teaching we want and need to be doing, which is working toward deep, complex and thoughtful understanding.
My fear with the excitement over all the new tools at our disposal is that we are rushing head-long into "activity-driven" teaching and not toward understanding. In our rush to talk about Second Life or wikis or laptops or twitter, we need to stop and question how the tool will enhance deep understanding on the part of our students. We need to stop teachers who say, "I want to do a wiki project…" and say, "What do you want your students to learn, what is the project you want to do, and how will a wiki enhance your student learning?"
The tools are amazing, I use them every day. I even, in personal usage, use the tools just for the sake of the tools (hellllooooo Twitter), but our greatest limiting factor in our schools is still time, and we owe it to ourselves and our kids to step back and ask ourselves questions like:
- How does the use of this tool contribute to a students’ understanding of the unit / project / class.
- How does the use of the tool enhance a students’ ability to communicate their ideas / refine their presentation skills?
- Does the tool change the frame or lens with with students can view their learning process?
- Does the tool powerfully expand or change students’ learning network?
- Is the tool more fun than useful? (Not that fun is bad, I like fun, but let’s also acknowledge that, in schools, our learning should be "serious fun.")
In the end, what I’m hoping these tools do is help us to define a language… a process… for changing our lens from "What’s new?" to "What’s good?" and for the continued process of grounding our new literacy, our new tools, our new schools in strong, deep veins of pedagogy and process.
Thoughts?
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