Jeff Utecht and I will start 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 for 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., toward a second generation of how 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-on-one and in small groups to design instruction and create content and assessments that bring about real understanding for our students. While 

Jeff has a world following of many already “shifted” educators; I hope we can provide information that reaches both the shifted and those wondering what “shifting” is. As I remind teachers, it isn’t about the technology. It is about how we facilitate learning, starting with the sound best practices the teachers already use. The technology and innovative instructional strategies help us do a better job.

A big part of the task in education is to prepare our students to be citizens with 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 regarding skills for their current and future employees so that they will be ready to do their jobs effectively. The answer doesn’t call on anyone’s best guess or judgment. A consortium of American companies came together to compile a list of the skills they want us to teach our students in the education field.

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 is 21st-century skills, as we design our instruction, develop content, and create 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, 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 will we change our schools (often focused backward on early 20th-century job skills) to reach these new outcomes?

We shift. We develop a 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 called “learning 2.0”. Much of what defines it has been around for a long time (e.g., John Dewey), and plenty of educators, writers, and innovators 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 further describes Learning 2.0.

What are some reasons to make the shift?

1) We agree that learning and true understanding come from reflection, discussion with others, and sharing and building ideas, forming networks of shared intelligence. Our brains are natural networks connecting our constructed learning so that we not only remember but also have information from which to create new ideas. Learning 2.0 starts with good teaching practice that is independent of technology use. We enrich learning by offering new ways to reflect, discuss, share, and create using technology and, information and communication 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 says it is a school that “integrates technology and information literacy across the grades…” and a mission statement says it is “an innovative 21st-century learning community”.
  •  WAB shares that it wants the following characteristics in its new hires: “skilled in IT,” “experience in and knowledge of inquiry-based learning,” and “flexible and adaptable,” among many other requested characteristics.

3) When comparing our students’ technology-rich and connected world outside of school to what goes on inside school, we see quite a difference. Please take a few moments to ask your students how they communicate and learn outside the classroom. Web 2.0 is Life 2.0 for our students. Relevancy is pretty powerful! Various technologies and communication networks have transformed medicine, engineering, real estate, banking, etc. Why do we put so many barriers to this transformation in our schools?

4) For schools not tied to the No Child Left Behind knowledge-based assessments and 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 new instructional strategies and assessment techniques to reach their goals? If the schools work with their instructional technologists and library media specialists to pilot new approaches and then review the student assessments, they will find that Learning 2.0 technology tools enhance student learning.

5) Learning 2.0 means going deeper into the concepts and skills that support them. We hear so much of the American-style curriculum being so vast 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 pouring it into knowledge/facts). Few teachers will argue about covering less but with more depth so that their students learn.

6) Art Costa’s Habits of Mind connects 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, educators can only teach some specific skills needed for these future skill sets. We can 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 be, “Why not shift?” I would like to hear someone take the opposite view. 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 learn and practice their craft.

Check out Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach’s post for an excellent explanation of Learning 2.0 that demonstrates how a learning community can be formed using online tools (i.e., blog and reader comments).