Storage on the machine was not possible and things like networking or the internet were not even on the horizon. What was there, however, was an excitement about the possibilities and a hearty discussion about the possibilities partly fueled by Alan Kay’s Dynabook Vision which I think anyone interested in making education more relevant had read. As a result, there was not a single notebook programme that I was aware of that did not have tools for creativity on them, in spite of their clumsy interfaces and problems with loading the programme into the memory from floppies. The result was that companies like LCSI, JASC, Inspiration Inc., and Lego moved very quickly to modify pricing models and support their software on disks for student laptops.

What this naturally lead to was a lot of staffroom discussion about the use of these tools in core subject areas. Admittedly, it was a lot of hard work to get the very traditionally oriented chemistry/physics teacher or the senior literature teacher espousing the “smell and touch of books” to embrace the possibilites of making some interactive exercises to demonstrate understanding of a principle in Microworlds or to construct a mindmap prior to a book review focussing on characterisation but the conversations were taking place. Given that this was taking place in the early 90s, it is bringing a tear to my eye to read a lot of the discussion on how Australian schools should use the government money to put computers in front of students. This sort of post is typical of a focus on the machine and what IT can do. Note the absence of any comment about what students should or could be doing with it.

I was recently asked to join a meeting of School Leaders at a school that wanted to discuss the planning for a 1:1 programme at the school. Interestingly the primary (elementary) section of the school had employed a facilitator who was also an Apple Distingushed Educator. Regular readers will know that I am not a great fan of the “you promote us, we promote you” programmes of big corporates like Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc., but the teacher in question is a very professional, knowledgeable and caring educator and had clearly conveyed a well thought through argument to the leaders in the section of the school that they worked in. On the other hand the teachers in the secondary section clearly had not thought through what they saw the students doing with the tools. I could tell  from the email exchange prior to the meeting that this was the case so I tried to set them up a little better in the meeting by making comments like these:

Given that the emails that I was being copied in on were continuing to be about the network, the infrastructure and the clients that might access all of this, I decided that the only thing I could do was try to leave them with something after the meeting to reflect on and, maybe, assist them at a later date. To try to achieve this I created the attached document to which I added the following comments:

Some comments about the attached checklists if I may.

1.      This is the sort of list I put together when I was initiating
the discussion about what we needed on computers in every student’s hands
when I was responsible for the 1:1 program. I intentionally went as far to the
creative, collaborative open-ended side of the spectrum as I could. Some
of the teachers would have lists including such things as Math textbooks as
PDFs and extensive English literature extracts to be read verbatim on
the screen. I welcomed this as it lead to a very robust discussion which
really helped us clarify what we saw the students doing each day.
2.      The support team who worked under me would add their list of
capabilities for the machine and the ensuing document would be turned
into a checklist which we used to evaluate whether a vendor could assist us in
helping us get to where we wanted to go. (In Australia, every notebook
vendor supplying to schools offered curriculum materials, professional
development and conference sponsorships. Very different to Asia.)

I hope this helps.

learning tasks discussion paper

By the way, here are a couple of resources about schools that went with tablet PCs based on the analysis above. The first is from Paul White formally of NIST Thailand and now with the ESF in Hong Kong who talks about a tablet programme supported by wireless projectors in classrooms in this video. A more recent podcast from June 2009 has Bill Campbell, Associate Director of Technology at the Dwight Englewood School share his experiences at a Tablet PC School.

I would be very interested to get some comments from some of the educators whom I know read this blog and are in schools considering 1:1 programmes for the new school year. Are you having these sort of conversations about what learning on these machines looks like? Are you just looking at a machine that enables access and then seeing where it goes from there? Are you being seduced by the vendor that promotes the “creative notebook” and thus falling into the “iMovie project in every classroom” trap? (Had a great reference for this but can’t think how I tagged it!)

Comments, as always very welcome.

Photo: Teaching is not Rocket Science http://www.flickr.com/photos/shareski/2942564830/in/pool-858082@N25

I have been doing a lot of thinking and discussing with people lately about how the students and the parents are starting to gain momentum for cutting schools out when they begin to lose relevance. Naturally we see more of this in the US and Europe with the growth in the home schooling movement but something similar is happening in Asian schools were kids rush out of the school and head to an after school class.

Whilst, in many cases these after school classes are “cram classes” which are based around rote learning and couldn’t be further from 21st C Learning, there are more and more offering “creative learning“. Parents are starting to pick up on the fact that their children need more than the basic skills to be effective.

In the lead up to the Hong Kong 21st C Conference, I have been having a lot of discussions with regional educators about whether their schools have any funds to send them to conferences. I am always surprised by many well-equipped schools that do not spend funds on PD. Here is a discussion I had with David Carpenter from Taiwan last week:

I think you have a great idea going straight to the parents and putting the students out as the “sales people” sharing sharing their desires to be in Learning 2.0 schools. We spoke a little about this on the last SOS podcast with Andy Torris. Though we were not as direct in pointing this idea out, we do find ourselves saying that the students at some point are going to bypass the regular school program and make their own. Part of going to the parents is having them describe the skills they look for in employees and in citizens. I think the list most parents would agree upon are the 21st century skills we are trying to incorporate into our schools.

When we explain that just doing well on standardized testing mainly incorporates low level Bloom’s Taxonomy thinking skills, parents will demand that the higher order skills be a larger part of the program. Then the students can educate the parents as to what shifted instructional and assessment strategies get them to analyze, synthesize and create.

Remembering back to the SOS podcast with you, I think we now have an answer for the schools that don’t have the administrative leadership to shift their schools. One works with shifted teachers and interested students to design parent meetings and coffees to discuss what the parents want for learning outcomes with students as they share their insights and examples of constructivist and collaborative learning projects. The newly educated parents are then empowered to demand changes in the school.

David is commenting about some comments I made about schools where the leadership is not really wanting to shift mainly due to the fact that they think that the parents are not supportive of teaching that is not traditional and specifically geared towards maximising points on a standardised test at all costs.

I aware that parent involvement is not all smooth sailing. There is an excellent series of 4 articles on this topic in Public School Insights. The whole 4 are worth reading for perspective but they are a little more focussed on a discussion of urban and rural US schools and under performance of groups than about 21st C learning.

How Much Parent Involvement Do Educators Really Want?

Parent Involvement or Parent Engagement? This article in particular outlines a model for building relationships with parents and not just feeding them information in a one-way mode.

Education is Becoming More Consumer-Driven Which gives teachers the imperative in terms of the option of parents choosing other options if we decided not to engage them.

Building Community Trust in Urban Schools is Hard Work

These articles do a great job of pointing out that, like everything, we cannot just “say we want parent involvement” and then run a few information evenings and check the box. We need to build in regular, ongoing opportunities for parents to learn about the new models of learning for a new century and ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to maximising authentic learning opportunities for students.

What about your school? Do you think that the parents might “get it” more than some of the management? Do you have opportunities for parents to come in and discuss the direction that learning is taking in the school?

Anyway, Jenny was reflecting on her learning via her Personal Learning Network (PLN). To try to summarise it, she was reflecting on trying to come to terms with the prospect of being able to learn using the interperonsal network rather than from written material. My comment to her was as follows:

As someone who has always (since around the early 80s) valued the computer as a tool that motivated and supported my learning and someone who lives as an expat, I had an easy transition to a connected learning network. I am interested to see that some of the relative newcomers have been hooked to this way of learning recently.
As a facillitator for teachers, I am interested to know what motivated newbees to use ICT for their learning network and thus got them over the peak of frustration with the use of a new tool?
Also followed the link to the PLP. Keen to know more about getting onboard but my lack of a regular income from a school may be a problem.

Jenny was gracious enough to offer a reply.

From my perspective Paul, it was taking the leap into writing this blog that helped me to form the connections I needed to establish a personal learning Network. I see joining the PLP as a means of introducing newbies to the benefits of immersion in a learning community that is using the tools to form the connections. We operate in a private ning and have the benefit of many expert voices to support those new to this type of learning. It’s really a very high entry point and newcomers who are unfamiliar with the names probably don’t realise how fortunate they are to be able to establish connections so easily. The cohort I am involved with is Sheryl and Will’s first foray into the international scene. We have 8 Australian schools, a group from New Zealand and 9 American Schools. Other cohorts operate in the United States.

So true that people don’t realise how fortunate they are to be able to part of a community involving such great people!

Photo: Ethel Chop, Melbourne comedian

The post and the links to the comments on the initial post are well worth a read and a good think.

Enjoy!

I had a short, online conversation with David Warlick about this on the Learning 2.0 08 Ning. David mentions the need to have some artifacts of what 21st Century Learning looks like. I am looking forward to carrying this conversation with David a lot further when we catch up in Hong Kong in September. In the meantime, I really think that we need to think about these artifacts and try to get our heads around how we can show all stakeholders what we are trying to do to shift schools to places of genuine, engaged, authentic, 21st Century Learning.

I do not have Stephen’s presentation to share with you here but what I do have is some notes taken by David Muir of a recent talk he gave at the Lighthouse called “Learning Spaces, Working Places”

What I really like about the discussion here is the great question towards the end of the notes that I have heard from Stephen before:

How do you measure creativity? How can we work out the struggle of the ‘exchange rate’ of assessment? What is the equivalent of a 1500 word essay?

• An animation?
• Managing an online discussion for a week?
• Creating a 10 second video?
• Scripting and posting a 3 minute podcast?
• Authoring an explanation in Flash?
• Annotating a week’s worth of delicious links?

The additional points are copied from Ewan McIntosh’s blog (Ewan obviously attended the same presentation.)

I am curious to hear what others think of this. If you need incentive for trying to get this right, consider this quote that was apparently also made by Heppell:

“In the next 30 years, more children will leave school worldwide than in the whole of history up to now.”

Food for thought?

Also posted on the 21st Century Learning @ Hong Kong ning.

I then went to BlogPulse to see what was happening in the IWB world and immediately found a post Freezeray.com – clicky-clicky! from Steve, who teaches at Bandung International School. He has shared some great resources here which I will try to pass onto my community. Additionally, I located Jo McLeay’s Blog which had some great refective comments that I can immediately use with teachers in workshops this week.

What a great world of information for the receptive learner!

I really do believe that this will be the best opportunity so far to promote the concept of sharing ideas and resources and bridging the all too evident gaps between local, international and other private schools here in Hong Kong.

Help me get the word out!