"IT'S NOT ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY"

[Sean Nash]

Please allow me to make a suggestion... feel free to discuss this in the comments section if you don't agree.

*Full size image linked in citation below.

But folks... it really isn't about the "technology." I think most of us are starting to get to this realization. I would love for you to weigh in on this assertion. I am becoming less and less fond of the "...if we're gonna be the 'technology school'......." phrase. Are you?

To be honest, I never did want that. The reason we use the "technology" moniker is that it is familiar to all who hear it. We believe in a move toward a student-centered, constructivist learning environment. The fact that we believe the best way to achieve this goal is through the integrated use of emerging 21st Century technologies... does not make us a "technology school." A technology school is a school that is centered upon gadgets and tools. Some would say this is all "semantics." I couldn't disagree more vigorously.

Our goal as high school teachers is to deliver a relevant and rigorous curriculum laden with the concepts and facts of many different schools of knowledge... as well as (and perhaps most importantly) the processes of learning. "Technology" is not in our curriculum. Technological tools are way to interact with said content and process... but they are only the curriculum itself in a scant few of our courses.

I never wanted us to "teach technology." I have always wanted us to use modern and emerging technologies to access and extend our current curriculum. Are there times we need to directly teach the best uses of a tool? Yes... but this is just the first tiny step.

Therefore, I would like to propose a new set of language about what we are doing as we move forth into year two of our initiative:

"BENTON HIGH 21st CENTURY LEARNING INITIATIVE"

Really think about what this title says.

I think the kids who have had the opportunity to interact with our cohort teachers this year are far more adept at accessing information and in finding creative new ways of demonstrating their learning than ever before. We have all absorbed that which we found most valuable this year. Some of us have even carried the torch directly into our classrooms at a very high level already. I have seen it with my own two eyes. The district "tech study committee" saw this as well in our classrooms in a recent walkthrough of our building.

With the coming summer of reflection and relaxed study, we will surely begin our second year far more prepared to bring this learning to our students in the classroom in a very regular and integrated way. What do you think?

*Artwork: "move technology to invisibility" courtesy Will Lion on Flickr

HERE IS THE BLOG POST ON "NASHWORLD" => if anyone wants to cross-post.

It might be interesting to note the subtle differences between an article written originally for a local audience, and then adapted out to a wider audience. ;)





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[Kelly Lock]

For me, the technology is more about access to information. It's about liberating me from one textbook. It's about liberating my students from one textbook. Don't get me wrong, I love textbooks; after all, I am an English teacher and I love to read, but one textbook bought by a committee of teachers limits me as a teacher. Textbooks tend to anthologize the same pieces of literature over and over again. Although they have gone beyond the canonization of the old, rich, white controllers of knowledge, they are still limited. With access to information, I can find more than what any one textbook can give me.

I had a student this last week tell me that she had read had read more "different" kinds of readings than she ever had. I had to smile. Good. That's what I want. I want to be able to give the kids a variety of things to read; I want access and more importantly I want them to have access to the plethora of literature that's available to each of them.
Of course, I would love to have this technology in each of the kids' hands; I want them to be able to have that access. But when there is a computer issue, I hate hearing "we are the technology school" and we can't fix the problems. When we had issues with the PA system last week, I heard, "Ha, we are the technology school and we can't even have morning announcements." I agree that "the technology school" isn't likely the best way to denote what we are doing. It is about access and it is about showing learning in different ways. Today, it just happens to be that we have computers to help us do that. There will always be a different set of technologies--the feather pen dipped in ink, the mechanical pencil, type setting for printed materials, manual typewriter, the IBM selectric, the TRSdos80, Apples...Think about the transformations in each of our subject areas. I thought the copy machine was the best thing ever. For a high school presentation I was able to print copies of photos and literally cut and pasted them on a sheet of paper and make one copy. The key back then was showing my learning without showing the imprint of the scotch tape on the final product.
Access to information is critical whether we use the old fashioned card catalog, the updated on-line card catalog, EBSCOhost, MoreNet. It's about access and knowing HOW to access and WHY we should access and opening the world to our kids and not just one lonely textbook that was simply chosen to appease the loudest complaining school or teacher on the curriculum committees. I can do that with whatever technology that is handed me because it's not the stuff that's important but what I can access with the stuff.

[Sean Nash]

1) Kelly... this: "Ha, we are the technology school and we can't even have morning announcements." ...cracked me up. That is the statement I have heard many times. I didn't figure I'd be the only one to have heard those...

2) This is hilarious: "For a high school presentation I was able to print copies of photos and literally cut and pasted them on a sheet of paper and make one copy. The key back then was showing my learning without showing the imprint of the scotch tape on the final product." ...and made me think back to that time like it was yesterday!

3) I agree with this: "it's not the stuff that's important but what I can access with the stuff." ...although, I would add: "access and create" to the final thought.

[Kurt Westfall]

We have problems with technology where I work as well. It isn't just at Benton.

I want to get to the point where "technology" itself isn't the story, but the information we are sharing is. Hopefully hi-tech comm items will become so commonplace that the that term will seem retro.

Awesome discussion!

[Kerry Shepherd]

I'd add two points to the discussion.
One is that I am reminded nearly daily by my students to keep the learning relevant. Last week we used an Eyes Past Print article "A Model for High Schools," written by the Washington Post's David Broder. In the article Broder discussed a new high school program funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that allows high school dropouts to finish their senior year and earn a two-year associate's degree.

"Their concern is prompted by the fact that too many students are dropping out of high school, bored or dissatisfied with what it offers, and too many of those who graduate lack the skills needed for well-paying jobs or, if they go on to college, need remedial classes in English and math.
The Gateway experiment suggests that even for the hardest cases -- teenagers with few credits, low grade-point averages and a host of personal problems -- the challenge of a tough curriculum, backed by skillful teaching in small classes and plenty of personal counseling, can be a path to success."

Before we read it I asked the students to pay attention and determine if they knew any students or former students similar to those described in the article. Afterwards we discussed if they felt that this type of program would work for students for whom the traditional model hadn't worked. Many students thought this would be a great solution.
Throughout this year, my first year of teaching, I've seen what a difference it makes for my students when I can make the lesson truly relevant to their world. When we learned about persuasive techniques and I had them hunt for advertisements that were manipulating them via emotion, logic, or celebrity, the lesson became much more real. Allowing them to choose their research paper topic based on unique interests helped them to find out why research and information skills will be important to their futures. In addition, I learned a great deal about a wide range of topics from diabetes to tattoos, and from serial killers to "why dogs eat poop." The lessons about evaluating sources of information reinforced to the students that you cannot trust all sources, or maybe even any sources all the time.

Secondly, our students are much too savvy about technology for us to ever hope to wow them with the bells and whistles. During the past month when we had a dramatic slowdown of the network/internet access, the students behaved as if an ice storm had cut electricity. Our students, despite much poverty, are early adopters of technology and they are impatient when it doesn't work as it is supposed to. Just last week, when my students were completing the spring writing initiative assessment, they would practically climb inside the printer when it didn't spit out their papers immediately. If I were to attempt to make the lesson about the technology and wow them with what I could do, they would sniff out the deception and tune out immediately. A teacher who hopes to blind them with razzle dazzle will quickly be outed and branded a failure. I remember in high school when fancy (and expensive) calculators came out and some thought they were a way to cheat in math. The reality was that only when you knew how to enter the correct formulas and use the right function key would you get the right answer. You had to know the math to use the tool wisely.

As a communication arts teacher -- notice the semantic switch from language arts to COMMUNICATION arts, it's readily apparent that it's not about the technology, it's about the communication, sharing and thinking the technology facilitates.

[Tamara Talbot]

I, too, have witnessed the changes in technology related to teaching and learning. Anyone else remember blue fingers from the “ditto” worksheets or the smell from the correction fluid we used on the blue stencils? I love what technology has done to improve teaching and learning . . . document cameras, multimedia projectors, not to mention the students using web-based software programs to demonstrate their learning and share with others nationwide.

While some of my classes are about teaching students how to use some of these technologies and software, I believe that while using this technology and software programs the learning becomes student-centered. Usually the students are excited about using technology to increase their learning which is a real plus. I believe by creating lessons involving constructivist learning, the students will be learning by doing and become more actively involved and feel like their ideas are important. I would agree with Sean in the fact that we should focus to achieve this constructivist learning goal through the integrated use of emerging 21st Century technologies and not focus on being a “technology” school.

A challenge we still need to keep in mind are those students, for whatever reason, still do not have Internet access at home or the desire to use emerging 21st Century technologies. I know we can suggest they go to the library, stay late at school, etc., but some students do not have transportation for these options. The students may not even want to use any technology. This is not a challenge that should keep us from trying, but one that we should work on to close the gap between the haves and have nots.

[Kerry Shepherd]

As I was meandering around some favorite sites I found this blog post and found it especially relevant. We are all technology teachers. "That is, we are, as educators, responsible for guiding and shaping how our students think and learn with different tools. Even if we don’t fully understand what students are doing online, we know well how to ask critical questions about it. We don’t have to know what something is in order to ask students how they are learning through it. We only have to ask questions. As teachers, we should be quite good at that. It’s vital that pedagogy doesn’t give way to technophobia."

[Jeanette Westfall]

"21st Century Learning Initiative." It makes me think that is where Punya Mishra was going when he named "TPACK."

I too am pretty disappointed when I hear those jabbing remarks about the "technology school" when the server slows, phone announcements lock up, or SASI has to be "rolled." It isn't unlike a comment a parent made to me during parent/teacher conferences last week when he said, "You call yourself a school? All your teachers ever do is give kids worksheets and sit back on their computers. [Heck], I could do that. Why don't you people give the kids the computers and give the teachers the worksheets? Ha! That's a good idea. Might even pass then. And spend less time goofing in class and failing. You people need to think about that."

Oh, trust me, I do -- every time I see proof of the parent's claim. It's not the technology. It's what we do with the students. And we MUST be wary of the label -- we can't go down the path of slapping the PLC label over the door with this initiative -- we must live it. Constructivism demands deep teacher/student interaction on a very personal level. That is what the access -- to technology, in communication,to information -- allows us to have. Our newly hired librarian, Melissa McCush, said it best in her interview, " It doesn't matter where you come from [we were discussing how 50% of our students live in poverty], everyone has a real need for information, especially those with the least access."

[Sean Nash]

Another one from Will Lion that fits:

[Tori Grable]

Tammy's last thoughts really got me thinking: "A challenge we still need to keep in mind are those students, for whatever reason, who still do not have Internet access at home or the desire to use emerging 21st Century technologies....The students may not even want to use any technology." For many years now, we've known that not all students learn the same way--that some are visual learners while others are kinesthetic learners, for example. The same is true of 21st century learning and the use of technology. While I agree we must expose our students to technological tools for information-gathering as well as for a way to show understanding and the meaning made, we must also realize that do not all students have ready access to technology, some don't prefer to learn that way, and perhaps even others don't learn best that way. As always, we must look for a variety of ways to help our students make and demonstrate meaning so that each can find that way that works best for him or her.

[Sean Nash]

I agree, Tori, with the essence of what you are saying... that we need to study the modes in which each child learns best in order to better serve them. However, much research shows that the way we referred to kids in the past as either "visual" or "kinesthetic" learners, etc... is an oversimplification.

A study of the human brain shows that we are all overwhelmingly visual learners, for example.

I think identifying a student's strong and weak modes of learning is an important first step. I also think a logical extension is to allow them the freedom to fall back on, and even hone this strength when the toughest learning is on the line. However, what I also feel very strongly about is the need to build strength and to grow in ways we are weak. To me, that is 75% of education... personal growth in identified skills, processes and and factual acquisition in areas we aren't naturally strong.

That said, if we truly believe that being technologically illiterate from 2009 and on... is unacceptable, then we should proceed in a manner which seeks to help not only all students, but all teacher proficient to an acceptable level. Will some stand out and some lag behind in this area? ...of course. You find that with any set of skills to be learned. However the NETS-T and NETS-S standards seek to provide a proficient level that all staff much achieve in order to serve our children in the 21st Century.

We don't all enjoy standardized, high stakes exams either. That doesn't make them any less of a reality in 2009. The value of being technologically proficient in the modern world is also a necessity. As well, I believe I know which of those two entities will go farther for an individual students skills and preparation for their post high school future.