Why Shift?
Jeff Utecht and I will be starting our “Shift Our Schools” podcast this week. Our bi-monthly discussion involving guests, blog posts and other assorted topics will focus on a guiding question each show. Our hope for the netcast is to further the discussion among educators (especially those in Asia) about moving their instruction, assessment, communication efforts, professional development, etc. towards a second generation of the way we teach and manage our schools. We call this version of learning and schools “learning 2.0″ and “school 2.0″.
My focus for the podcast will be to interest teachers and administrators to listen to the podcast and to add to the discussion. As an instructional technologist, my work has always centered around working with teachers one to one and in small groups to design instruction, create content and assessments that bring about real understanding for our students. While Jeff has a world following of many already “shifted”educators, I am hoping that the two of us will be able to provide information that reaches both the shifted and those wondering what “shifting” is all about. As I remind teachers, it isn’t about the technology. It is about the way we facilitate the learning starting with the sound, best practices the teachers are already using. The technology and innovative instructional strategies just help us do a better job.
A big part of the task in education is to prepare our students to be citizens who have the skills to participate, contribute to and work in our society. So just looking at the “work” portion of this outcome, let’s assess what employers want as far as skills for their current and future employees so that they will be ready to do their jobs effectively. The answer to this one doesn’t call on anyone’s best guess or judgement. A consortium of American companies came together to compile a list of the skills they want us in the education field to teach to our students.
These “21st century skills” are well-documented and discussed on the Web. Here are some links to provide more information.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills
What is 21st Century Learning?
Following the Understanding by Design (UbD) model for curriculum development, we start with the end in mind which are these 21st century skills as we go about designing our instruction, developing content and creating assessments.
Let’s look at some of these 21st century student learning results:
- being creative and innovative
- to think critically and problem solve
- to be a good communicator
- to collaborate, work effectively with teams
Yikes! Handing out worksheets, reading from textbooks and direct instruction (try telling students to be creative, be innovative and work well with others) won’t get us very far in helping our students develop, practice and use these skills in real world situations. So how are we going to change our schools (which in many cases are focused backwards on early 20th century job skills) to reach these new outcomes?
We shift. We come up with a whole new way to approach learning that connects learners (students, educators, parents/adults) to a networked world community where individuals have more control over their learning. This shift to the new learning is being called “learning 2.0″. Much of what defines it has been around for a long time (e.g., John Dewey) and their are plenty of educators, writers, innovators who have been writing and blogging about it for some time. One of my favorite articles written on the topic is by Thomas Carroll entitled If We Didn’t Have The Schools We Have Today, Would We Create The Schools We Have Today?
You can find additional resources at our del.icio.us SOS podcast site that gets into a further description of Learning 2.0.
What are some reasons to make the shift?
1) We agree that learning and true understanding comes from reflection, discussion with others, sharing and building ideas together forming networks of shared intelligence. Our brains are natural networks connecting our constructed learning so that we not only remember but have information from which to create new ideas. Learning 2.0 starts with good teaching practice that doesn’t depend upon technology use. We make the learning much richer when we offer new ways to reflect, discuss, share and create by using technology and information literacy skills to expand our learning communities.
2) So many schools already say they are doing it. So how can we argue with them? Here are just a few examples from around Asia.
- HKIS Academic SLRs that mirror the 21st century skills
- TAS TIE job ad saying it is a school that “integrates technology and information literacy across the grades…” and a mission statement saying it is “an innovative 21st century learning community”.
- WAB shares that is wants the following characteristics in its new hires: “skilled in IT”, “experience in and knowledge of inquiry based learning”, “flexible and adaptable” among many other requested characteristics.
3) When comparing the technology rich and connected world of our students outside of school to what goes on inside school, we see quite a difference. Take a few moments to ask your students how they communicate and learn outside of the classroom. Web 2.0 is Life 2.0 for our students. Relevancy is pretty powerful! Various technologies and communication networks have transformed the fields of medicine, engineering, real estate, banking, etc. Why do we put up so many barriers to this transformation coming to our schools?
4) For schools that are not tied to the No Child Left Behind knowledge-based assessments and are working towards higher level concepts in the form of Essential Questions, we need to ask how they are doing in reaching those understandings. Are these schools willing to try some new instructional strategies and assessment techniques to reach their goals? If the schools work with their instructional technologists and library media specialist to pilot some new approaches and then review the student assessments, they will find that Learning 2.0 technology tools do enhance student learning.
5) Learning 2.0 means going deeper into the concepts and skills that support them. We hear so much of American style curriculum being so wide in what it tries to cover. This leads to a quickening of our teaching pace which often means more direct instruction and less facilitation of learning that pushes students to use higher level thinking (as opposed to pour it in knowledge/facts). Few teachers will argue with having to cover less but with more depth so that their students really learn.
6) Art Costa’s Habits of Mind connect nicely to 21st century skills. The 16th habit that we “remain open to continuous learning” which I would adapt to also say “while continually learning how to learn” hits a homeroom on why we need to shift to Learning 2.0 in our schools. With so many new fields of work and study being constantly created, we as educators cannot teach all the specific skills needed for these future skill sets. What we can do is teach our students how to be learners. Learning 2.0 instructional strategies that empower students and adults to learn together naturally empower members of our learning communities to desire the skills that make their self-learning possible.
The list of reasons to shift goes on and on in the educational blogosphere…it seems to me that the question should really be “why not shift?” I would be interested to hear someone try and take the opposite view. I think a strong argument against shifting would not be about what it means for student learning. It would be about the tendency in our schools to not properly pilot initiatives and then not build a systematic program for change that gives teachers time and support to really learn and practice their craft.
For a nice explanation of Learning 2.0 that demonstrates how a learning community can be formed using online tools (i.e., blog and reader comments), check out Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach’s post on the topic.
