Lessons Learned

Kim Cofino is the 21st Century Learning Specialist at the International School of Bangkok. She recently posted the standards/outcomes of what the 21st century literacy and technology outcomes are for the school. I shared at her site that they are very clear and easily understandable for the school community to process and then act upon. As change agents, one of our main tasks is to explain why we need to make changes. Well-written and sometimes obvious explanations to us ICL leaders are not so obvious to the community. The ISB team did a nice job.

The next step is to communicate the new ICL outcomes to the community. This will involve buy in and involvement by the administrators as well as real support from the teachers. This education phase first for teachers then to students and parents is very important. They then become supporters as your innovator teachers try new instructional strategies and assessments that lead their students to the ICL understandings.

As I look at look around the Web at international school sites, I am find more and more mention of “21st Century Skills”, “information literacy” and “technology skills” in mission statements and skill sets for potential hires. Having sat in committee meetings wordsmithing statements with all the buzzwords, I can say that we often leave out the most important steps of then communicating and then creating the mechanisms to move us into action mode. The way to move the 21st Century ICL skills into the classroom is through the curriculum development process.

This becomes much easier after the communication has taken place and members of the community really understand the value of good design in presentations, the importance of reflection in all aspects of student learning but especially in their information sources, the place of bias in information coming in and going out, etc. Again, check out the list the ISB team put together or see the HKIS ICL Standards & Benchmarks.

One thing to note about the HKIS ICL standards is that they are the same as the school’s academic student learning results. This makes sense in that shouldn’t the skills for 21st century learning naturally be what all our teachers are building a portion of their lessons around? Much of our teaching involves skills and we want to be teaching about ones in the present century, correct?

On a side note, Kim has a very interesting job title. Looking back at my previous posts on job titles, I like the one she is using. However, as I just mentioned that ICL standards should really be a part of the school’s student learning outcomes, is there a need to designate a learning support teacher working towards those outcomes with “21st century” or “technologist” as part of the job title? Well, as I concluded in my post, we need to use those terms for the time being until ICL becomes totally integrated into a school’s learning systems. One day folks like Kim and myself might just be called “learning specialists” collaborating to design curriculum that is differentiated and focused on reaching the school’s academic student learning outcomes which naturally contain the ICL outcomes.

We use the term “shift” to describe the process of moving our schools to “learning 2.0“. If you follow the learning 2.0 link to Wikipedia, you will be redirected to the “eLearning” page. This concept is definitely a fluid one! As you scan down the page, several Web 2.0 technologies are mentioned. A portion of the shift is moving our classrooms from ones mostly directed by teachers to ones driven by students. We use the term “teacher facilitators” who design learning opportunities which often involve the use of technology to connect students to each other and to the larger learning community. This shift is also towards designing curriculum that leads our students to learning outcomes that are being termed “21st century“ skills. A big part of these skills involve various literacies (information, visual, tool, etc.). The ICL standards for HKIS tie in nicely to these skills and literacies. Lots more can be writting about supporting student learning by using social networks and read/write online tools but the point of this post is to share how one school has made this shift.

I  recently visited with Brent Loken and Grant Ruskovich at the Hsinchu International School secondary level in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Brent showed me around the brand new facility sharing plans and ways the students would be designing how the classrooms and open spaces would be further used and enhanced. Project-based learning as well as student ownership of the facility is a big part of the school’s mission.

For those of us who sometimes struggle to make just small gains in shifting our schools, it was pretty incredible to see so much of what we believe in actually happening.  I found myself offering Brent an idea or two while asking questions about learning 2.0 instruction. It became humorous after a while with his response consistently being “yes, we are doing that”.

Here are a few of the highlights of the afternoon:

•    The school’s five learning outcomes are embedded into the regular curriculum with some classes having blogs where students reflect and rate how they are doing in meeting the school learning goals on a weekly basis.
•    Students are preparing the video that will be used when school adminstrators go to recruitment fairs.
•    Courses in the Upper School are called “learning expeditions” and last two years. Each is centered around a single essential question with second level ones guiding the various topics being covered.

I will be adding more information about HIS as I connect further with Brent.

I skype weekly with Jeff Nugent who is the associate director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Virginia Commonwealth University. Jeff and I have connections as international educators and from the instructional technology program at the University of Virginia. We share thoughts on our separate but connected worlds of education as we work with our teacher partners to design instruction.

The following are some notes that Jeff took after our last call with my responses.

Jeff- The notion of the “Digital Divide” (in educational / social context) has been transformed in radical ways, ways that make it more subtle and difficult to detect. It is no longer about access / boxes / wires…its about making meaning on the web. Its about organizing the open web in ways that make it a meaningful learning environment. To me this means understanding how to connect, create and participate in meaningful ways with others on the web…it is about participation, exchange and social interaction. This is NOT a given…I contend that students need to learn how to do this. If they don’t get it at home, and they don’t get it at school….they don’t get it….EVER. The divide is subtle and I fear…expanding.

David- Jamie McKenzie termed the over purchasing of computers and then leaving them with limited teacher training or instructional technology support as “screen saver disease” as that is what one often viewed in empty computer labs in American public schools. It was one thing to simply not use the hardware and newly connected Internet, it is now the case as Jeff points out that some students are gaining rich learning experiences via teachers and whole schools supporting the building of online learning communities. Others are not.

Beside the learning that takes place in well-structured forums and wikis, online journaling with one’s teacher, blogging on current events, there is the whole world of various literacies as connected students access online databases, search for visuals to support their ideas, concept map Essential Questions, storyboard learning projects with their teams, choose the right tool to meet their needs- the list goes on and on of what a learning 2.0 environment can offer a student. The skills gained in this environment are transferable to the ones the will be using as employers look for students with 21st century skills.

Jeff- School administrative leaders must be centrally involved, knowledgeable and concerned about the educational value of the web. My view is that if you are a school principal you MUST be one of the most savvy web researchers at your school. This means having many of the fundamental understandings that you and I routinely take for granted.

David- Jeff and I spoke a little about the pre-service teacher training that takes place at UVA. It was recently celebrated as an innovative program be the George Lucas Educational Foundation. I asked Jeff about what is happening at the Ed Leadership program at VCU as he we reacted to a recent post by Jeff Utecht on adminstrators realizing the value of hiring networked educators. We had the same reaction of administrators probably having limited experience in the blogosphere and not really understanding what a well-connected teacher blogger can bring to a school. Jeff clearly hit it on the head that administrators need to be the instructional leaders of their schools which in today’s world means being networked into the benefits of the read/write Web.

Jeff- I think the conversation needs to include school level leaders (principals, admins.), and I don’t see where this is happening. There is a lot of focus on preparing the individual classroom teacher, however I do not see Educational Leadership programs in schools of education engaging school leaders in the kind of dialogue / inquiry that results in them taking seriously the radical transformations we are witnessing. I am wondering what the question is that needs to be asked the answer to which results in them saying: “I must engage my faculty and students in this process us understanding, creating and participating on the web because it is fundamentally transforming all aspects of society…if my students don’t get this here they will emerge form my school disadvantaged.”

David- Jeff really ties all our points together very nicely in the statement above.

Jeff- I really enjoy the dialogue I’ve seen unfold on the Edu-blogger playing field. However, much of the talk about technology focuses on tools that are cool and their potential uses in the classroom. I think this kind of stuff is interesting, and of value to some classroom teachers, and those of us who promote it and try to make sense of it. At the same time I think this stuff is often at too fine a level of granularity to be of central interest to school admins. It rolls off of them like – as my father was fond of saying – “water off a duck’s ass.” There needs to be a more fundamental experience – in their preparation as school leaders – that helps them make the tough decisions about where they stand in relation to education technology. I don’t think they are ever really encouraged / forced to ask the questions.

David- I will add that I am finding too much “tool talk” in the posts I follow. I realize that the leaders in the field need to speak in broad terms to try and entice teachers in professional development settings to try something new. From an instructional technologist’s perspective, our training is to focus on the individual needs of the teacher or group of teachers working towards some learning goals for their students. As we partner and work from the teachers’ expertise, our learning community often becomes a rich environment for creativity and new strategies to support student understanding. The tools slowly work their way into the process. I can say that it certainly would make a big difference if administrators are sitting in on those conversations asking questions about learning outcomes and the best ways to build personal learning environments for the children.

Jeff- When they get into a leadership position, where do principals look for guidance about the role IT should play in the school? How should it be used? Who is in charge? Who decides? I think more often than not they off-load this decision to the system admins. (or maybe worse they really have no say). Managing boxes and wires, and securing the network – have little to nothing to do with decisions about the meaningful and powerful uses of technology in education…yet at the same time this has everything to do with it. Locked down networks become the mental model for understanding how technology should be viewed. They succumb…

David- great point, Jeff. I think you point to the next step in the evolution of the instructional/educational technologist. I consistently find in my reading of journal articles and blogs that the IT/ET is present in many schools in the US and in international schools. However, I have yet to hear of a Director of Educational Technology position until recently. Some schools try to combine the educational role with that of the technology infrastructure upkeep just as schools once tried to do the same with computer and printer repairs for the Technology Coordinator and hope he/she had some time to work on the educational side.

The International School of Bangkok is advertising a Director of Educational Technology now. I would think this individual will be the go to person at that school along with the Curriculum Director when the administrator needs big picture advice and guidance to support learning in the school. One can only hope that more schools follow ISB’s leadership to separate the need for leadership in educational technology and infrastructure into two positions.

I was planning to make this post about a possible new name for those of us in instructional/educational technology stressing how we are teaching partners focused on student learning. The job title would be “learning specialist”. Well, after speaking to three different people, I am reminded that “learning specialist” often is connected to resource teachers so it doesn’t quite work.

All three individuals pointed out that while the instructional technologist can help design lessons that don’t always involve technology, we really are the leaders in our schools for using it. One reason I was thinking about removing the term “technology” from the title is that it carries so much baggage for many educators. We know the fear factor many feel concerning using technology in general but there is also the “tech guy” connotation that goes with it as well. Being the “tech guy” often means the fixer/technician as opposed to the fellow teacher and learning specialist.

One of the ways I start each school year is to meet with teachers in grade level teams to refresh their memories as to what my role is and to introduce the technicians that support the school network and AV. This has definitely worked along with monthly Tech Update information sharing about curriculum, instruction, information literacy and technology infusion. Now that I finally starting blogging, I will use this information conduit sharing lessons learned and best practices to further demonstrate my position in the community as a teacher, learning specialist and technology/information literacy leader.

Lots, I think. I have always felt that we communicate a great deal about what we do by using a job title that describes at least a portion of our skill set. When I was at UVA studying instructional technology, members of our cohort met several times to discuss how we should title the position a few of us were working towards in K-12 schools. Most members of the group were getting their doctorates to work in higher education but many of them would be teaching pre-service teachers and grad students that would be getting instructional/educational technology degrees. A few members eventually wrote an article about this somewhat new job role with the title of “Technology Integration Specialist”. You can check out the article yourself.

I lead a discussion at the recent Learning 2.0 conference on the role of the technology integration specialist or instructional/educational technologist in our schools. Our task was to develop a job description. It was clear from the over 30 attendees that this person is clearly an educational leader within our schools and in no way a technician. I bring up this point as some schools still use the term “technology coordinator” even when the individual is truly an educational technologist leaving all of the technical concerns of running the network and repairing the hardware to the technicians.

I researched the technology coordinator title while in graduate school where I discovered that schools were making the break from hiring in school technicians who also tried to work with teachers and students when possible. Administrators were realizing that they needed trained teachers working to bridge the gap between classroom instruction and the new technologies coming on the scene. The research showed that these the technology coordinators usually did not hold graduate degrees in instructional/educational technology or instruction/curriculum. They often were individuals who enjoyed working with computers and networks who could step in to help schools especially during the 1990’s when so many funds were going into connecting American public schools to the Internet. Someone needed to manage the networks and expanded computer labs.
I will post more on why this title “technology coordinator” sends the wrong information while also sharing my thinking that we instructional technologists might be better named “learning or instructional specialist”. One thing to think about is how often it is an easy out for teachers to say they are uncomfortable with technology so they hold back from trying new ways of teaching that have nothing to do with technology. More to come…