School leads Back to the Future
I attended #edcampisabc yesterday morning and was fortunate enough to participate in two excellent sessions. One was to talk about whether technology was essential for education and the other about educating students for an unknown future. When talking about technology being essential the conversation quickly branched out to discussions of assessment, pedagogy, parent expectations, and qualifying for university. To effectively use technology with K12 students, all four must change. If the expectation is to get better or the best marks, then learning will be designed to accomplish that and assessment will report it. If the way learning and teaching occurs is not redesigned, technology will never be able to effectively transform education to meet the needs of the future. One Kindergarten teacher in an independent school shared a story of a meeting with the parents of a four year old student who received a “meeting expectations” on her “report card” – the parents were distraught.