So Sheryl and I have spent the last week here in Melbourne kicking off a four-month PLP project with 120 or so teachers from Victoria who are part of a pilot where all of their students will have netbooks in hand in the next few months. There seems to be a growing commitment here to put technology in the hands of kids (instead of spending huge sums on stuff that students can’t use outside of the classroom) and to thinking about how practice and pedagogy changes when that happens. There are a number of other initiatives that are attempting to reframe the way Victorian teachers think about teaching, namely something called E5 (pdf) that I’ll be giving some more attention to on the plane ride home but that at first blush has some interesting language that focuses more on learning than teaching. And that’s really what our work here has been about, trying to create opportunities for teachers to be learners first in both face to face and online communities, and in doing so, helping them see ways to implement technology in ways that go beyond just publishing.

All of us have been doing a lot of thinking and questioning around the idea of what it would be like if every 5th grade student and above had ubiquitous access in hand, and there’s no question that’s a huge shift. (When I made the slide at right for a part of our kickoff presentation, I was surprised at the reaction it got on Flickr.) If this is really where we hope to get, and I think it should be, the required shifts in educator practice and school culture are significant, as are the implications for professional development. It’s not just about if every student had a computer; it’s about if every teacher had a computer as well. (As opposed to if every teacher had a whiteboard.) Imagine if our students were being taught in systems where technology was just a natural part of the way we created and constructed and connected and learned, that it was how we do our business. Sure, things would be different. There would be distractions. (We’re having an online conversation about “attention literacy” already.) And there would be teachable moments. But don’t we have enough faith that we would learn our way out of those challenges (and others I haven’t mentioned) to come out the other side with a more relevant, effective experience for our kids? One that is more in tune with the way the world seems to be headed?

What I’ve liked about this trip is this sense that I’m getting, here at least, that some people are beginning to think about 1-1 in ways that scale, and that it’s not just about technology for technology’s sake but that there is some real, powerful potential in a world where every student AND every teacher has a computer and access to the sum of human knowledge we’re building online. Those leading this work may not feel all that comfortable with that vision in their own practice yet, but they seem more able to put that aside and and see things from a more long-range perspective. We’ll see how it plays out, but in that regard, at least, it’s been a pretty refreshing visit.

During Boot Camp last week, Sheryl turned me on to Phillip Schlechty’s newish book “Leading for Learning: How to Transform Schools into Learning Organizations” and I had a chance to get through a chunk of it on the cramped, smelly plane(s) to Melbourne. In it, he makes a pretty compelling case that “reform” is really not going to cut it in the face of the disruptions social Web technologies are creating and that we really do have to think more about “transform” when it comes to talking about schools. There are echoes of Sir Ken Robinson here, and I’ve still got Scott McLeod’s NECC presentation riff on Christensen’s “Disrupting Class” on my brain as well, especially the “the disruption isn’t online learning; it’s personalized learning” quote. And while there are others who I could cite here who are trumpeting the idea that this isn’t business as usual, I think Schlechty does as good a job as I’ve seen of breaking down why schools in their current form as “bureaucratic” structures will end up on the “ash heap of history” if we don’t get our brains around what’s happening. In a sentence:

Schools must be transformed from platforms for instruction to platforms for learning, from bureaucracies bent on control to learning organizations aimed at encouraging disciplined inquiry and creativity.

To that end, Schlechty refers to past efforts at reform as “tinkering toward utopia” and says that if we continue to introduce change at the edges, we’ll continue to spin our wheels. He says that schools are made up primarily of two types of systems, operating systems and social systems, and makes the point that up to now, most efforts to improve schools have centered on changing the former, not the latter. Here’s a key snip in that case:

As long as any innovations that are introduced can be absorbed by the existing operating systems without violating the limits of the social systems in which they are embedded, change in schools is more a matter of good management than one of leadership. Such changes can, in fact, be introduced through programs and projects and managed quite well by technically competent people who are familiar with the new routines required by the innovations and skilled in communicating to others what they know.

In these cases, while it is sometimes difficult to break old habits, usually after a brief period of resistance, old certanties are abandoned and new certainties are embraced. For example, teachers now routinely use PowerPoint slide shows where once they used overhead projectors and slate boards. The reason this transition was relatively easy to accomplish is that it did not change the role of the teacher. Indeed, PowerPoint makes it easier for teachers to do what they have always done, just as a DVD player is easier to use than a 16 millimeter projector. Moreover, the technical skills required to use a PowerPoint slide show are easily learned and communicated, making the process of diffusion relatively simple.

But when innovations threaten the nature and sources of knowledge to be used or the way power and authority are currently used and distributed–in other words, when they require changes in social systems as well as operating systems–innovation becomes more difficult. This is so because such changes are disruptive in inflexible social systems.

So, from the social media standpoint, the message here is clear. This isn’t about doing what you’ve always done as a teacher or as a school. It challenges those social constructs in the classroom and in the system, and therefore, these shifts are going to be much harder to embrace. Channeling Christensen, he says that existing organizations seldom successfully adopt truly disruptive innovations, and that it’s easier to build something new than to change the old. And if you listened to Scott’s presentation, you get the idea that the time is ripe for those innovative systems to form and flourish in education. (My question is whether commercial interests will be at the heart of those efforts.)

What I really like about this argument so far, however, is that while the thinking is rooted in the affordances of the technologies, Schlechty also makes the case in the context of citizenship in a democracy as well as a moral imperative that we create citizens who “have discovered how to learn independent of teachers and schools.”

Many Americans fear that an inadequate system of education will compromise America’s ability to compete in a global economy [hearing Friedman here]. In fact, they have more to fear from the possibility that young people who graduate will lack the skills and understandings needed to function well as citizens in a democracy. Americans have more to fear from the prospect that the IT revolution will so overwhelm citizens with competing facts and opinions that they will give up their freedom in order to gain some degree of certainty than they have to fear from economic competition around the world. Leaders should be far more concerned that Americans will cease to know enough to preserve freedom and value liberty, equity, and excellence than they are with how well American students compare on international tests. As numerous scholars have shown, authoritarian leaders and charlatans thrive in a world where ordinary citizens are overwhelmed with facts and competing opinions and lack the ideas and tools to discipline thier thinking without appealing to some authority figure for direction and support. [Emphasis mine.]

That resonates with me on so many different levels, on trying to navigate the arguments about global warming, for instance, or in attempting to explain the nuances of the world to my kids who more and more are coming to me with questions inspired by their interactions with online media. The key to this all, to me at least, and a piece that I don’t think Schlechty gets, is that much of that now is dependent on our “network literacy” in terms of building our own personal systems of filters and sources that are balanced and open.

The idea that schools become “learning organizations” is compelling in the way that Schlechty describes the shift.

Schools will be places where intellectual work is designed that cause students to want to be instructed and will become platforms that support students in making wise choices among a wide range of sources of instruction available rather than platforms that control and limit the instruction available to them.

That “vision” started me thinking again about what our expectations are for teacher “learning” and the ways in which we might move toward a culture that celebrates and models and makes transparent learning in every corner. One thing that I constantly hear from Sheryl is the idea that we need to see teachers as leaders and as learners, not just teachers. That’s such a huge shift here, one that we talked a lot about and struggled with in Boot Camp. And it all makes me wonder what the next decade or two will bring.

In light of the interesting back and forth that occurred on my last post, I’ve been thinking about what the fundamental lessons of schooling ought to be and the role of technology in helping us teach them. “ceolaf,” someone who is new to commenting here, has spent a lot of time pushing back and articulating in some pretty compelling ways the friction between creating lessons to fit the technology or vice versa. I think at the core, we agree that the larger lessons are the larger lessons (or at least that there are larger lessons). And while at the heart of it I don’t think we disagree that technology can be a useful tool for learning those lessons, there is obviously a difference in the way we approach it. It’s been a good conversation, one worth digging into a bit more.

I think “ceolaf” sums it up pretty well here (and if this isn’t the best kernel then I’m sure he’ll tell me):

I fear that Will would lose sight of the real importance of the lasting lessons for the possibilities of today’s technology. (I think that Will might fear that I am not giving enough credit to what a different world our students live in, and therefore must learn to operate in.)

Assuming that we can can come to some general agreement on what those lessons might be, no doubt we need to question and examine the choices that we make around these technologies in our own practice and in our classrooms when it comes to learning those lessons for ourselves or for our kids. We can’t take those choices lightly, and we have to be able to make those choices from a certain foundation of personal learning with technology in those contexts. It’s one of the reasons that I get continually frustrated with NECC sessions and Tweets and blogs that celebrate tools without giving weight to the considerations that goes into choosing a tool in a pedagogical sense. We need more sessions on “why?’ not “how?”, more thinking about teaching with technology and less of what Gary classicallly described as “Burping with VoiceThread.” (That’s a whole ‘nother post.)

Regardless, I believe that used well, these still nascent Web technologies can help us teach those larger lessons, and do so in a way that engages our students and has more relevance than “old” pen and paper, face to face ways. Not all of the time, but some of it. “ceolaf” pointed to this post by Diane Ravitch titled “The Partnership for 19th Century Skills” which eloquently makes the case that in terms of those big lessons, nothing much has changed.

I for one have heard quite enough about the 21st century skills that are sweeping the nation. Now, for the first time, children will be taught to think critically (never heard a word about that in the 20th century, did you?), to work in groups (I remember getting a grade on that very skill when I was in third grade a century ago), to solve problems (a brand new idea in education), and so on. Let me suggest that it is time to be done with this unnecessary conflict about 21st century skills. Let us agree that we need all those forenamed skills, plus lots others, in addition to a deep understanding of history, literature, the arts, geography, civics, the sciences, and foreign languages.

She goes on to list 16 such skills which are definitely worth the time to read, and many of which thoughtful use of technology can enhance. And, I would argue, many to which  social media add a new layer of complexity which we must be able to model and teach. While many if not most of these lessons can be learned without technology, I think transferring those lessons into the contexts of online networks and global, cross-cultural, sometimes anonymous interactions is not necessarily fait accompli with our kids. Self-discipline and idealism and certainly communication (among others) in these environments have additional complexity that compels us to explore the affordances of these technologies (again) for ourselves, for our classrooms and for our kids.

There’s much more here, obviously, in terms of even bigger questions about the roles of schools and teachers and classrooms in a networked learning world. But I agree that here is where we have to start. What is it we most want our kids to know about what it means to be a person of this world, and how do we best convey it in ways that make sense for the times we live in? Everything else flows from that.

What do you think?

(Photo: “Playing Water Games and Learning” by Ivan Makarov.)

I’ve got a mental stack of blog posts piling up on a bunch of seemingly random though thinly connected topics on NECC, the environment, note taking with Evernote, my kids’ schooling, the death of RSS and other stuff which I’ll hopefully get to at some point here, but this morning I read a couple of things that seem more interesting, to me at least.

Dean’s reflection post on NECC drew a whole bunch of great comments, but the one that made me really think hard was by Ira Socol who wrote:

So, it is not a question of whether these technologies add value somehow to education, but the reverse, can education add value to the communications and information technologies of our present day world, and its future?

That’s one of those really concise shift statements that makes me bend my own frame a bit. I think too often I fall into looking at these tools and wonder what they can add to our classrooms and our teaching when the real question is how can our classrooms and teaching add capacity to the tools. As he points out, we reframed education with the advent of the book; we need to reframe it once again with the advent of a networked, inter-connected medium that creates incredible new affordances for learning. He writes:

It is the job of education to alter itself to prove itself of value to the world which now exists.

Amen. Arguably, there is a great deal about the current system which has lost its value as compared to what is possible for those who are passionate learners with a connection. (More about that connection piece in a bit.) I mean grouping by geography and age are becoming less and less relevant, and while I’m not suggesting there isn’t a body of core knowledge all students should learn, the emphasis on what we know rather than how we learn it is becoming more and more frustrating to those who are already networked learners. As Ira Tweeted later:

Educators often think that school is the point, when it needs to be the path.

Part of being that path, however, is providing the access to our students that’s necessary for them to participate. Along those lines, I came across an interesting post from Renee Blodgett (via a Tweet from Howard Rheingold) who is writing about “Redefining Digital Inclusion.” The seminal question was “do those that enjoy the benefits of technology have a moral right over those who do not?” As Renee suggests, this isn’t a new thread, but the shift here is that the attitude of parents and teachers around this are just as important as the financial and logistical issues. Inclusion can no longer just be seen as having a device and a connection.

We need to redefine Digital Inclusion. The definition of digital inclusion today is basic access. It doesn’t include basic skills such as understanding some of the technology and social media schools to network and make friends not just locally for globally. It increases their job and life opportunities significantly. It’s time to move that definition beyond simple access. We need a new definition that policy makers, technology creators, parents, and educators can rally around. There will be a revolution when more and more students get their hands on some of these devices and start using them in the classroom.

While this is not a post on where the lever is, I’ve been arguing for a while now that not much of this is going to change until the stakeholders, in this case parents, take it upon themselves to demand something new. Something more relevant. But the only way that parents are going to DEMAND access is if they see that not simply as a way for kids to get a computer but to see connections online as a way to a better future, a way to help thier kids become more educated, better learners than by books and paper alone. Unfortunately, we’re losing the media war on this one right now. Feeling like a broken record, but we need to do a better job of making this case beyond our own still small, nascent network.