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 Time for changestudents, 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.  They worried that their daughter would not be successful in school, life, and could never become a doctor.  That poor student is in for some pressure filled years to get “the best marks”.  Interestingly we all agreed that marks are not the best measure of learning and are not really comparable teacher to teacher.  We talked about the value of a portfolio of evidence based learning as being a more relevant and honest indication of who a student is, what they know, and what they can do.

image

I asked my 6 year old great-niece today if she was excited about going back to school.  Her answer was “oh yes!”.  Isn’t that the attitude all students need to have to embrace their future?  School is about preparing young people for the future.  The problem it seems is that it prepares them for our future more than theirs.  As students get older, they figure out how to do exactly what is expected of them, some the minimum, others the most but often their learning isn’t driven by passion or interest, just a mark…

image

At the edcamp session, we lamented this.  I asked “why can’t all school look more like Kindergarten?”.  Schooling becomes so structured and subjects are taught in silos and artificially.  Why can’t it be more integrated, project oriented, purpose driven, and playful?  We talked about how there is no time left for teachers to “add” technology to the mix.  Add?  What if learning and teaching were designed in such a way that technology was essential and foundational?  What if there were many “teachers” in the room where students were as responsible for researching, preparing, and facilitating lessons as is the teacher?  Students need to learn to be responsible and self directed to survive in their future.  We talked about how quickly things change.  The future is not static or predictable.  Students leaving our education system need to be prepared for the unknown not just the known.

image

Yes, resilience.  Students need to learn to be continuously adaptable and on an exponential change scale.  For school to lead kids to the future, the experience needs to be less about content that “expires” or content that is perhaps not relevant to most, and more about process, critical thinking, and content that is essential and interesting not just interesting.  We talked about core learning to prepare all students to be productive and happy citizens, but that’s just the base not the end goal.

image

Technology, whether we like it or not, is driving these necessary changes for education.  Technological change is relentlessly accelerating and impacting every aspect of life, some good and some bad.  How will students be prepared to cooperate with robots, design them, govern them, etc.  Things are going to get very interesting in the next 10 years, are we ready?  Are you ready?  Schools, to remain relevant in their role of leading students to the future, must adapt quickly.  That will take a lot of work and iStock_000017723170XSmallcooperation to reset thinking around qualifications (university entrance), parent expectations and understanding of what is important, learning design, and assessment. 

I look forward to seeing what our schools will look like in the 2020’s.  I have high hopes they will adapt quickly enough to continue to prepare young people for a very uncertain future.  I wish you all the best in 2012-2013 in educating the next generation!  One of your students may be the doctor, engineer, police officer, or friend in your future that saves your life…

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teachers teaching with SMART Boards

Image
In my last post I talked about a learning team I facilitated for school principals.  Well, I also facilitated a team of K-5 teachers last year in their journey to figure out how to use SMART boards .  This was a great experience for me to have with classroom teachers learning a new and powerful technology. SMART boards are interactive white boards (IWB) or devices that allow the user to touch the white board and manipulate objects, text, and various software tools.  It is best to mount the IWB on the wall with an LCD projector arm built in.  This way it is always available and properly aligned and calibrated – which reduces setup time and frustration for the teacher.  Then use a laptop (or desktop) on a cart to connect to the IWB.  Software on the laptop controls the IWB’s functions. Schools have embraced IWB’s all around the world.  I believe Alberta, CA has a goal to put an IWB in every classroom in every school and is well on its way to achieving this. My team’s research goa
Read more

Research is critical to our Future

Image
It is amazing what we don’t know.  We take for granted so many inventions.  It seems sometimes that we have become immune to innovation.  Often we see blog posts or tweets complaining about what some new product or service doesn’t have rather than sharing their awe at what it does have.  I too get caught up in “what’s missing” sometimes.  Well, in this post I share some amazing (my opinion) things researchers at IBM are doing. I had the pleasure of joining about 40 educators and IT directors at IBM Research Almaden in San Jose (Silicon Valley), California.  It is located on the outskirts of the city on a high hill in its own private wilderness of 690 acres.  Researchers (currently about 800 chemists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and physicists) at Almaden have invented a whole host of new processes and capabilities including: relational database architecture (crucial to databases that govern our livelihoods and lives) all sorts of disk drive technologies
Read more

Joel's New Textbook

Image
Joel soaks up the sun this fine day on May 19, 2021 as he walks to school.  He’s excited ‘cause today his middle school is finally allowing him and his fellow students to engage with the new “textbook”.  He’s a little puzzled why it’s called a textbook .  It’s really a place to enter in and experience – it’s not a book.  Joel rarely actually uses “books” as in the paper kind, these days.  The students have learned that the new textbook requires them to wear a special headset with glasses and ear buds.  They can choose from a multitude of colors, shapes, and sizes that the school provides or they can purchase and bring their own along with their other school supplies.  These headsets or “Portal Sets” as their teachers referred to them as, work anywhere and anytime. Joel arrives at school and sees his friend Carrie – he runs up to meet her at the door.  Joel and Carrie catch up on what they did on the weekend as they walk to the great hall of learning, the gathering place for the 337
Read more