JOIN US FOR WINTER
ACTIVITIES
If you are feeling the winter doldrums, why not join us for some of the
many winter athletic events going on at both VHS and Sailorway. Girls and boys basketball and bowling seasons
are in full swing, and the wrestling team has several meets coming up. Check the event calendar on our website for
specific dates and times.
MORE CHANGE IN EDUCATION
METHODS
Below is another interesting article discussing the way technology is
changing education. This article comes
from the website TE@CHTHOUGHT, and is written by Terry Heick.
9 Ideas
Education Is Having Trouble Responding To
As education changes, it depends primarily on internal
catalysts for that change. That is, the “things” that change it are on the
“inside” of that system itself, most notably data, assessment, PLCs, and
running a distant fourth, technology. It’s interesting that technology is
among the least impacting “agents of change” in the classroom. Certainly it has
caused teachers and districts to update some of their practices (e.g., budgets,
teacher training, and IT policies) but very little of their thinking (e.g.,
peer-to-peer and school-to-school collaboration, assessment forms, and learning
models).
At some point, this will change. Eventually the
tethers will break and education–in whatever form or forms–will shoot forward
like it’s been held back in a slingshot for nearly a century. It may not feel
triumphant at first. When things you lean on give way, you flail and panic and
yelp. There will probably be a lot of that. It may be messy, implementation dip
and all. It will require innovation and perseverance. But if we are courageous
enough to let these ideas “break” education, we have the chance to come out on
the other side evolved.
1. Connectivity is replacing knowledge. Or rather usurping it in terms of sheer
credibility. Businesses, education
institutes, groups, organizations, people—everyone wants visibility and access.
These occur through connectivity. The ability to survey digital landscapes,
identify trends, adapt language and rhetorical forms, experiment with the
fluidity of media, and create “traction” for products and ideas across dozens
of social networks—these are powerful agents for disruption and change. What do I know, and what should I do with
what I know? How does always-on access to Google, digital communities, and
vast multimedia libraries credit or discredit the idea of “knowing”
something? How are we connected to one another? How does technology
enhance and limit those relationships?
How can I use those things I am connected to and with to live the kind
of life I want to live? Now replace “the things I am connected to and
with” with the word “my education” and read it again. Knowledge will always matter, but in an
economic sense of supply and demand, information is boundless. Its authentic
feedback loops and resultant behavior modification that are now scarce.
2. Most academic standards have limited value. It doesn’t mean they’re not worth knowing, but the mix
of skills and understandings collectively represent an index of academic
priorities that don’t directly speak to the human experience. And that is an
extraordinary failure.
3. Adaptive software can replace 75% of what a teacher
does. No, apps can’t replace teachers, but in terms of the
way teachers spend their time, adaptive software—whether minor (like Knowji) or
major (like Knewton) in scale—can automate the bulk of these tasks. Ideally
this would free teachers for more human and emotionally complex interactions,
provided strategic adjustments are made.
4. Digital media is more engaging than non-digital
media. Whether because of social elements,
gamification, curation possibilities, or the lights, colors, and sounds,
digital media has the attention of our children. Think about YouTube. YouTube is packaged for
consumption. It’s visual, social, diverse, mobile, and “chunked” in ways that
promote (often reckless) consumption. Always-on learning must compete with
this—which means reading and writing must compete with this as well. This
doesn’t mean books and essays aren’t useful, but rather that they exist in a
new and dynamic context. Do we understand that context? What is the relationship between Walt Whitman
and poetry and race and bullying and texting and smartphones? There is one;
it’s on you and I as educators to find it.
5. Reading and writing should be social, and education
has trouble handling “social.” This doesn’t mean they always have
to be social, but they need that potential built-in from the ground up.
Blogging, tumblr, and eReaders with annotations is about as close as we’ve
gotten to social reading and writing, while we’ve got dozens of ways for people
to send one another minor little episodes of text, images, and video.
6. Mobile changes everything, and true mobility makes
schools nervous. That is, mobile technology will
eventually change everything we do as a culture. It’s not going to stop at
shopping, communication, and entertainment.
Not sure why this one isn’t agitating our thinking more. Companies like
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Honda, Amazon, and well just about every other
forward thinking company on earth are scrambling to adjust for a mobile
culture that is cloud-based and social. This should affect everything in
education, from how learning models and curriculum are designed, to how
students interact with one another and their local communities. “Mobile” isn’t a buzzword, it’s the future.
7. Parents don’t understand teaching and learning.
Parents speak in the language of terms and compliance
because that’s how we speak to them.
They understand grades, behavior, some of the
fundamentals of literacy, and other abstractions like effort, inspiration,
success, and failure. But what if they
understood how people learn even half as well as most teachers? What if they
understood the pros and cons of certain assessment forms (this isn’t rocket
science), the inherent limitations of letter grades (there’s no way they don’t
already have an instinct for this), or how to coach critical thinking and
observation on a daily basis? Parents
are the sleeping giants in education. Think of them as students with 25 years
of life experience added on. If they had any clue how poorly education serves
most students (no matter how “successful” the student navigates education in
its current form), they’d redirect anger currently pointed at teachers and
principals, and point it instead at policymakers, and perhaps even take up the
task themselves as entrepreneurs. Hey,
there’s an idea.
8. Universities are decaying. At least in their current form. Without quick thinking and rapid adaptation,
only the most prestigious universities will survive into the next
century—likely as cultural relics and niche training and certification institutes
(medical school, law school, etc.) They simply cannot survive as they now
exist—an awkward kind of hybrid of career prep and highbrow intellectualism. As
they sit, many are racing to justify themselves instead of serve the people
that depend on them, which is horrifying.
9. Students have real options. There are new options for learning, and the most
innovative don’t have the word “school” in them. Charter schools and eLearning
have been about as brazen as education can bring itself to be. But to appeal to
the children of millennials—and their children and so on–they will have to
compete with other possibilities that are frankly more compelling, creative,
and social than marching through indexed curriculum. How should schools and eLearning work together?
What is the relationship between Google and a test? An app and a textbook?
Mobile Learning and standardized assessment? As new options emerge, how can–and
should–formal public education respond?
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