TEaCHNOLOGY

The school where I teach is moving towards a one-to-one student to iPad initiative next year with the hope that the unlimited access to information at the tip of your fingers will somehow miraculously boost student performance and the caliber of instruction across the campus.

The verdict is certainly out on the role and impact that technology plays in education. Nonetheless, the incorporation of technology into the classroom is a current that even the most stubborn luddites (like myself) would do better to not resist and, instead, invest their energies towards investigating the questions of HOW, WHY, and WHERE would technology best enhance the learning experience of our students.

To prepare myself for a classroom full of giant cellphones, I've been reading numerous essays and articles on the topic of technology in education. Amidst all the yea- and nay-saying, I found a particular quote from Jake Glasgow, an Instructional Technology Specialist in New York, to be particularly interesting. He writes -

"Obviously - just purchasing technology and putting it into a classroom isn't going to do anything. It's all in how our teachers are using it to facilitate student learning. This is where the problem is." (The21stCenturyTeacher.com)

What was interesting about this statement was Mr. Glasgow's focus on teachers and the role we play in answering the question of HOW we are use technology "to facilitate student learning." At this point, Glasgow provokes a rather interesting paradigm shift in how we generally discuss the role of technology in education.

Rather than asking how technology can improve teaching, I believe that we should focus on how teaching can improve technology.

The "problem" Glasgow points out is huge! We are constantly reminded as educators that we are preparing our students now for jobs tomorrow that don't yet exist. We are told to equip our students for the future with methodologies and systems from a past long gone. As a result, we get a laptop, an iPad, a smartboard, and a library of apps shoved at us and we're told to "pave the way towards a better future." More experienced teachers are suddenly strangers in their own classrooms and new teachers are stranded in a profession where experience is suddenly a matter of trial-by-fire, which could mean life or death depending on the school.

If technology is to be effectively integrated into the classroom experience, it cannot be passed out to teachers like a new toy they need to figure out how to play with. Instead, teachers have to trust and use technology as a professional ally. Beyond the campus email or online gradebook, teachers need an online platform that allows them to stay organized, accountable, connected, and creative as professional educators.

We live in an age of unlimited inter-connectivity. Teachers in America should never feel isolated and alone when they enter their classroom. Best practices and high quality instructional strategies should no longer be confined to individual schools or districts. Teaching as a profession should be and must become America's most creative and progressive enterprise.

Technology makes all this possible. In fact, the technological tools to make this happen are so basic, so simple, it's laughable that we are still twiddling our thumbs and staring dumbfounded at this problem of how technology can improve education.

Teachers improve education. Teachers facilitate student learning. At the FourTeachers Project, we believe technology has to support, trust, and endorse the profession of teaching first and then allow teachers to shape and mold it to most effectively fit in education.

Cheers!
Josh

FourTeachers Project

No More Empty Desks

(Photo by Jerry Jackson, The Baltimore Sun))

I just caught this story about the College Board's "Don't Forget Ed" initiative to keep education at the forefront of our national political conversation.

Education should definitely be at the forefront of our national political conversation. I think we can all agree that there is or are problems with our current education system. However, I worry that education as a political conversation has reached a stalemate. I certainly do understand the benefits of increased funding and pragmatic spending but I do not believe that the solution to the education problem is one of finance. In the same way, I understand the value and importance of state and/or federal standards at each grade level and the need to assess those standards across the grade levels; but, I do not believe that students' education, knowledge, or performance increases or decreases by continuously re-adjusting a standard's level of difficulty.

What is particularly striking about the display at the Washington Monument is not the 857 desks, but what's missing - students.

The question we must answer then, the question at the heart of the education problem is - how do we keep students in their desks?

More to the point, how do we whet a student's appetite for their own education?

Politics cannot keep a student in a desk no matter which view you prefer to take on the issue. Politics can never and will never understand the true grit-and-grind of the classroom day-in-day out where a teacher is pitted against twenty to thirty competing wills and interests and the advent of the smartphone. Politics can never cultivate a classroom environment where the seeds of inspiration and empowerment can grow. Politics cannot build the bridge between learning and genuine human interaction. Politics cannot look into the lens through which you can catch a glimpse of the first glimmering rays of a brighter future.

Maybe before we ask 'how', we should ask 'who'. If not politics, WHO will keep students in their desks? WHO will whet a student's appetite for their own education?

Teachers.

You cannot have an engaged and empowered student without an engaged and empowered teacher. We all know the power of an engaged and empowered teacher. The teacher whose class you couldn't wait to get into. The teacher whose passion was palpable and whose lessons tore down the walls of the classroom to reveal a whole new world beyond. The teacher who loved what they did and, because they loved it, they taught to perfection.

We became better students because we had better teachers.

Our teachers, the engaged and empowered teachers, are the only people WHO know HOW to keep students in their desks - WHO know HOW to whet a student's appetite for their own education.

The engaged and empowered teachers cultivate a classroom environment where the seeds of inspiration and empowerment can grow. The engaged and empowered teachers build the bridge between learning and genuine human interaction. The engaged and empowered teachers look into the lens through which you can catch a glimpse of the first glimmering rays of a brighter future every single day.

It's time to mobilize, engage, and empower our teachers! Let's solve this problem and start the education revolution!

Let's guarantee that there'll be no more empty desks!


Cheers!
Josh
FourTeachers Project

Creative Education

"We now need to be equally radical in how we think of education. Raising academic standards alone will not solve the problems we face: it may compound them. To move forward we need fresh understanding of intelligence, of ability, and of the nature of creativity.”
Sir Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative

Without fail, the word "creative" or "creativity" comes up in every conversation I've ever heard or been apart of addressing the problems facing education in our country today. From the top executives at Apple to the kindergarten teacher preparing a lesson on basic addition, we all talk about how much we need to be "creative" in education but so often, it seems, we don't really understand what the word means.

What is "creativity"?

Sir Ken Robinson certainly has some brilliant insights into what the word "creativity" might actually mean as it pertains to education. When I read the short excerpt that I included above, four words seemed to highlight themselves above the rest -

Radical. Intelligence. Ability. Nature.

What is creativity?

Radical

Creativity is radical in the fact that creativity does not cower to failure. I've been in education for three years now and I've learned that teaching is a strange and precarious profession in the state of Texas. Your livelihood and your school's existence is determined by and at the mercy of an all-powerful state assessment that is built by and implemented by people who have long since lost or never had a grasp of the classroom experience. Educators are operating in a dated system that is assessed and modified by politicians. The disconnect is baffling.

However, failure to meet the standard of this system is unacceptable. Failure to meet the standard for a teacher, and for a school, means certain death. As a result, we cower to failure and stick to the same old safe, comfortable, convenient strategies and methods of teaching because exploring new ideas seems far too great of a risk. We become afraid to fail as teachers and that paralyzing pressure is often transferred to our students.

A bird will never realize it has wings and a whole sky to fly in if it never gets the courage to break out of its own shell.

We need an education system with the courage to be radical. We need creativity in education that will not cower to failure. We need education to realize it has wings and a whole sky to fly in.

Intelligence

Sir Ken Robinson calls for a "fresh understanding" of intelligence and I couldn't agree with him more. However, in educational system we've created, it's almost impossible to escape the concept of intelligence as a good test score. According to this model, intelligence is offered to the passing score and denied to the failing score. Tragically, failing a test often shatters the confidence and the courage of a student and a teacher.

Creativity in education must understand intelligence according to individual strengths and weaknesses. A creative education supports and allows teachers to teach according to their individual strengths and passions. A teacher who teaches according to their individual strength and passion teaches with authenticity and that authenticity is not encumbered or compromised by a standard or curriculum that is not true to who they are.

As students, we all gravitated to authentic teachers. The authentic teachers were the great teachers because they knew their strengths and passions and helped us to see our own.

They were the teachers who gave us confidence and courage to move forward even if we did fail a test. The great teachers showed us we had wings to fly with because they used theirs.

Ability

The understanding of ability in education seems devastatingly narrow. The combination of standardized testing and set curriculum requirements can often disenchant students and teachers who don't or fail to "fit in" to the system. Ability is then defined by performance within very small and limited confines. As a result, the radical student or the radical teacher whose abilities lay outside of those confines are abandoned without a place or home in education.

Creativity in education must broaden its understanding of ability by allowing time and space for new or different abilities to be realized and exercised in the classroom. This broader understanding of ability has to start with the teacher. Once a teacher is offered the time and space to realize and exercise their individual ability as educators, they can offer the same time and space for their student to realize and exercise their own ability as learners.

Nature

Nature is the foundation of creativity. Creativity is our nature. As human beings, we are not isolated. We do not exist in a vacuum. We are born into a world of people, places, sounds, and smells. We live in a world with people who lived before us and will live after us. We live with each other from day we're born to the day we die and together we spend our entire lives learning and creating ways to do just that - live.

It is our nature to create. We are all born with unique intelligences and abilities that help to mold and create our nature, ourselves. Creativity in education embraces the unique intelligence and ability of the individual and allows the time and space for both to be adapted and contributed to the world we live in and the people we live with.

We cannot remain stuck in this shell. We have the intelligence and ability to creatively break free. Education has wings and a whole sky to fly in.


Cheers!
Josh
FourTeachers Project

*Author's note - Maybe creativity is radical intelligence with the ability to be natural?

Guide, Not Goal

In today’s education system, standards, whether set by state or federal legislators, are the key focus of all instruction. In our high-stakes testing environment, these standards are what schools and by proxy, teachers live or die by. But are educational standards really what make education great?

When any of us think back to a great teacher that we once had, do we really remember how he or she taught us a certain standard? Or do we remember how they made us view ourselves or our world in a different way? Do we remember the way that they made us feel that we could be successful, or the way they dragged meaningful work out of us? As an English teacher, I know that my students will not remember that I taught them how to “summarize text and distinguish between a summary that captures the main ideas and elements of a text and a critique that takes a position and expresses an opinion.” However, I hope they remember the work that they put into reading and writing, the success that they achieved, and the potential that they discovered in themselves.

These standards are nowhere to be found in education. There is no commandment for students to “discover new things about themselves and the world around them.” I can’t point out a standard that states “student will fail and learn perseverance in the face of adversity.” And yet these are the greatest lessons we learn in school. As every teacher knows, the most important things that we give our students will never show up on our lesson plans or standardized testing. That’s why we must be mindful of these standards and their minimum expectations, but we cannot be focused on them. We must look beyond the short-sighted standards if we really want to impact our students’ lives.

DN

Real, Authentic Value

There is a myriad of questions swirling around in the wake of the Facebook IPO fallout.

Despite my reluctance to set up an actual account on the networking site (I am the luddite of the group), I cannot help but be a bit fascinated by Facebook as a cultural/social/economic phenomenon. As a result, I have spent the last three weeks or so perusing the articles, the business dailies, and the blogs to figure out what exactly happened on May 18th.

The most interesting question that keeps popping up in the discussion is simply -

What exactly is the VALUE of Facebook?

There is no denying the intrinsic value of Facebook for advertising but the question as it's posed is aimed directly at the users - us.

What exactly is VALUABLE about Facebook?

I guess my preoccupation with the whole ordeal stems from the sense that we are standing at a unique turning point in how business, networks, culture, art, music, information, and ideas are created, shared, passed along, and used. On the heels of Friendster, Myspace, etc., Facebook helped to usher in a new era of how we use communication technology. As of today, Facebook is certainly the epicenter where we connect with people we knew from our pasts and where we connect with people will meet now and into the future. Facebook is the network. However, the future of Facebook cannot be sustained on the fuel of connectivity alone without supplementing that interaction with something more tangible, practical, authentic, REAL.

I've been told that nothing is going to be the same now that we have smartphones and social networking - that you have to "get connected" if you're going to survive.

Honestly, I don't think a whole lot really has changed. Facebook has become a new marketplace, a new front porch, a new mall. Our phones and our computers are now just new places where we get together. The responsibility now is ours to guarantee that those connections have meaning and purpose.

With the shadow of a struggling economy growing longer into the future, this responsibility is all the more urgent. The United States stands at a strange and unpredictable crossroads. We are losing jobs but we are no less talented and no less able to get the jobs done and done well. We know the problems in our communities. We know the solutions. Yet, why does it seem like we're waiting for someone else to fix everything for us? Are we waiting for permission?

We have to connect. We have to get together and create something meaningful, tangible, authentic, REAL. Our responsibility today is to channel the power of social networking towards revitalizing the American worker, the American entrepreneur, the American artist, the American tradesperson, the American teacher, the American student.

Imagine a network where every post promotes practice and every practice progresses to perfection!

Imagine a network where you could connect and creatively collaborate with colleagues in your career or vocation!

Imagine a network that catapults it's users out into their communities, into their jobs to do something more tangible, practical, authentic, REAL everyday!

The irony is Facebook and any other social networking site cannot provide nor guarantee it's own value. Value in interaction can only be provided and guaranteed by us.

It is our responsibility to ensure that this value is authentic and REAL.

Cheers!
Josh