I think I once read somewhere that ideas can have their time and so when one person starts writing about something, it often happens that another can be writing about the same thing at the same time without connecting in any way. This must be the case as I drafted this post around 10 days ago after listening to some of the excellent K12 Online Conference presentations.

I then picked up on this excellent blog post from Kim Cofino in my Google Reader last week. Kim wrote about lone voices trying to make a difference to schooling for students who wish to learn in ways that are more relevant in a digital, connected, always on world. Don’t I know about this lone voice feeling!!

My comment to Kim’s post was as follows:

Kim,
Don’t know how you did it but you must have somehow been able to read the unpublished post in my blog Your thoughts exactly echo what I had written, even down to the references to Scott’s K12 Online Presentation. I have ordered “Disrupting Class” on the back of this.
Thanks for your take on Jon’s presentation too. I listened to this as an audio file but did not take away as much as you. I will revisit and look at the visuals.
I have been thinking a lot about my future lately. I left a great job with a shifting school in Australia to take a position with a school in Hong Kong who said that they were on a similar journey. Upon arrival I found the leadership sadly lacking in understanding of what ICT could do for learning across the school. They were really just into investment in technology that looked good in glossy photos. Unfortunately, they also did not really work to get the staff onboard. It was just about putting it in place and getting staff to use it, usually in addition to existing demands and responsibilities. Talk about a lone voice! From what I have seen of your colleagues they are generations ahead!
I eventually decided that over 2.5 decades of teaching and a master’s in effective use of ICT for learning must have some application in Hong Kong and the region. I set up a consultancy as a Digital Learning Advisory based in HK but working around the region. I am afraid to say that after around 2.5 years of doing that, it is still a huge challenge!
The IWB staff I took on and trained can make double what I can pay them as English Tutors in spite of the fact that there are IWBs in almost every school here with an English affiliation (in this former colony, that is most.) Apart from an elite couple of schools here, I dismay at the pitiful use of the boards. There are some great things I can show them and have for free but most schools here say they have no funds for “non-essential” workshops like using ICT for learning. I KID YOU NOT! I had a teacher suggest to me the other day that I should “disguise” my blogging and wiki workshops as “Using Poetry for the Teaching of English” as it would make her job of getting approval for the workshops a lot easier.
It sounds to me like Thai and Shanghai Schools are more supportive of embracing the disruptive technologies than here. At least you guys are employing integrators like yourself and Jeff.
I agree that we all seem to be a long way from finding schools like the Science Leadership Academy in this region.
If you do happen to know of one, let me know!
Or perhaps a few of us should get together and set one up. Now there is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal for you.
Cheers

I then read a similar post lamenting the lack of vision in educational leadership in the state of Oklahoma from Wes Fryer. Then I happened across this report mentioned by someone which attempts to get business leaders in the US to identify the skills that they want to see in people coming into the workforce in the 21st Century. not many surprises in this report unless you think that businesses are happy with kids coming in with the skills from the schools of the past!

Having read all of this, my post now seems completely redundant but here it is anyway!

Having listened to a podcast on the weekend from Chris Betcher’s Virtual Staffroom where he was interviewing teachers, Principals and Ed-Tech experts about the second Leading a Digital School’s Conference held in Sydney recently, it made me feel incredibly homesick for a country where School Leadership really do come onboard with 21st Century Learning. I know that it has been a rant of mine for a while that Hong Kong is just not moving beyond the very traditional uses yet. One can only speculate how long it will be before schools here even dream about something as “out there” as ePrincipals.

Unfortunately, there are still too many in School Leadership here who think that ICT integration is all about adding on laptops to the standard curriculum because that seems to be the thing to do, or installing EWBs in classrooms and then pushing the teachers to make use of the technology in addition to what they already do.  I am wondering how long schools here can continue to ignore and fail to properly embrace the presence of the powerful technology that is threatening to turn around and bite them on the bum.

Christiensen calls this technology “disruptive” and predicts that classrooms who continue to suggest that knowledge of pure factual content over how to learn via these technologies will be in for a rude shock by 2012 when it will be too late for them to “shift”. The reason that schools need some time to “get on board” is spelt out well in many of the research articles in the February issue of Educational Leadership which is themed around “teaching students to think”. Sylvia Martenez makes some great comments about a lot of the research from this issue in this excellent blog post.

I think a good indicator of the status of schools in Hong Kong is the great lack of Blogging Senior Admin Team members. The only blogging Principal in Hong Kong that I am aware of is Peter Kenny at Renaissance College and this seems to be more of a marketing exercise on the school website than a real blog of reflective comments inviting feedback. I could be very wrong about this and there may be a lot of Senior Admin Blogs out there. I am very keen to hear about them!

Photo: Redundant by Taylor Hain