A Great Opportunity — and What Really Needs to Happen Next

OPSBA’s “What If? Technology in the 21st Century Classroom”

WhatIf_CoverNow with regards to a shared vision for educational technology, let me say that I’ve been trying to sort out the big picture here in my district and in Ontario for some time now. (I was involved in a Ministry of Education project for a five year term a number of years back, and so I had an opportunity at that point to gain some small insight into things then. But more recently, no.) And so perhaps you can imagine my enthusiasm when I came across a document entitled “What If? Technology in the 21st Century Classroom,” published by the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association (OPSBA).

Prepared by a cross-province group of trustees, directors, and technology heads, the OPSBA document was released on April 28th, 2009, and although the downloadable PDF version of the document was curiously dated April 1st, I decided that it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke, and was thus worthy of serious consideration. What If? is clearly targeted at engaging groups such as the Ontario Ministry of Education, the various teachers’ groups, and the general public in a discussion about some very important questions about role of technology in education and learning in the current and near future. The document attempts to create a space for dialogue among various stakeholders by presenting an achievable vision of edTech for Ontario classrooms. The vision highlights various initiatives underway in different Districts within the province.

While the whole document bears reading, my first inclination is to draw the readers attention to the numbered pages 25-27, where a “day in the life” portrayal of the envisioned near-21st Century school is portrayed. You’ll note references to various technologies such as SMART Interactive Whiteboards and WiFi-enabled 1:1 netbooks, but the specified tech is presented as part of an integrated vision that includes variations in classroom structure, learning experiences, day-to-day activities undertaken by students, teachers, and administrators, and reflects an amalgam of various bits and pieces currently in play within different Ontario districts. (see the section titled Classroom 2.0: Technology Engages Student Learning, by Mark Bailey, pgs 25-27. Bailey is a both a Trustee and an infoTech expert. If interested, you can hear him interviewed by the CBC, including a few call-ins from the public by following this link.) Coming in at a bit less than 30 booklet-sized pages (~15 page PDF), What If? can be purused in a decent time frame — and is well worth the time if you have any interest (Ontario educator or otherwise) in seeing what such a group can present as a realistic and tentative straw model.

An excerpt from the “day in the life” portrayal:

As they do every time, the 20 students filing into Nora Smith’s grade 8 history classroom each grab a random netbook off the rack and head to their assigned four-student team station. Jack sits at his assigned space, plugs his netbook into the power cord built into the desk and logs in wirelessly to the central server, using a username and password. The central server’s timetable database recognizes that Jack is in history class and identifies the three other members of his student team based on information that Smith submitted earlier in the year.

The screen on Jack’s netbook is populated with several pieces of relevant information, broken down into windows. First, there is the overview of today’s lesson. Next, Jack’s personal documents and multimedia files related to the class are listed. Finally, there is an instant messaging box that connects Jack to his team and to their teacher. Jack notes that today’s lesson is titled “The Life of Louis Riel.”

(What If? Technology in the 21st Century Classroom, pg. 25, paragraph 2)

And this is where I see a Great Opportunity — and What Really Needs to Happen Next.

Because, you see, this document, for all its wonderful potential, has been unleashed, accompanied by a press release, in a very close-to-traditional 1.0 media manner. Yes, it is posted on a website for ready access. Yes, it was supported by the CBC radio interview. And it does invite input, right there on page 20, buried in a paragraph, with a simple email address link (ITinSchools@opsba.org). What’s missing, in the 2009 Web 2.0 world, is an online space for public commenting and open, interactive discussion. That would go a long way to letting everyone participate in crowdsourcing input for a truly collective, shared vision. Yeah, Ontario is a big province, with many voices to potentially contribute and discuss. But that’s the great strength of our new 2.0 world, engaging folks and providing an opportunity for collaboration.

I’ve just now sent an email to ITinSchools@opsba.org, suggesting that they do set up a comment stream. In the meantime, if you take the time to review the document (do!), perhaps we can collect a few comments down below, perhaps discussing the content and your process in the interim.

The other thing that needs to happen, is that folks (in Ontario specifically) need to see that the document is shared with and discussed by those who need to read it and think about it. The evening I first read the document, I sent off emails to my principal, our senior IT guy, and the president of our ETFO office, along with a few of my local edTech tweeps, commenting on the document and pointing them to the press release and actual PDF document.

Maybe this is old hat for you, and maybe your district is actively engaged in discussing What If? and planning some next steps in direct response to it. If so, I’m sure we’d be interested in hearing about what you’re up to. (Comments?) If not, who would you see as key players in your district that you think need to ponder the What If? question? Maybe they just need an extra invite to get involved in the discussion?

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”
— Michelangelo

Empowering the 21st Century Superintendent

As one of a number of an interview series with superintendents engaged in the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), this selection features district administrators talking about students, learning in the 21st century, technology, and leadership.

Check out the terms these folks are using during this short video.  Is this the vocabulary of a 21st Century Superintendent?

21 Century Superintendent Wordle

Also consider viewing Learning to Change, Changing to Learn and other videos on the CoSN channel.

Technology in Education: What is Your Vision?

Scott McLeod's call for Educational Bloggers to write about Leadership in Ed Tech

Educational Bloggers write about the need for Leadership for technology in education.

Today is Leadership Day, 2009.

You are a Leader. As a leader, what is your vision?

What is your vision for learning in the 21st Century? What does it mean to be a learner and an educator in 2009? What role will technology play in education in the years to come?

I’m sure you have your own understanding of what it means to be a leader. Whether your role is officially recognized as such, or whether you lead more from the sidelines, you are reading this because you care about what it means to demonstrate leadership in education. And regardless of whether you are in an officially recognized leadership role or not, you’ve probably been exposed to a number of models and theories that espouse what leadership looks like in schools.

But if we cut to the quick, there are some key competencies that most would agree are reflected in effective leadership:

  • Leaders must make informed, sometimes difficult decisions.
  • Leaders must continually listen, think, and engage with the various stakeholders (in education, we think of students, teachers, administrators, parents, community leaders, governments).
  • Leaders must act as role models.
  • Leaders must seek out and enable leadership in others.
  • Leaders must be prepared to espouse a vision, and act as a champion in moving that vision forward.

    Education changed in response to the Industrial Age. Education was re-vamped in response to the Space Age. And now, once again, education needs to be re-assessed in light of the Information Age.

There are many questions that beg to be answered when we take time to envision how learning, educating, and the role of schools will and must evolve in the coming months and years.  You will no doubt have your own questions about how learning is changing.

I invite you to consider the following:

What is my vision for learning in my school? Managing a school and leading a school are not the same. When I think of what learning looks like in my school when everything is going well, what do I see? What are the learners doing? What are the educators doing? What are we doing this year that we weren’t doing before? Is this my vision, or is this someone else’s vision? Is it a shared vision?

How can I act to better enable learning for the children in my school? Being a learner today is not the same as being a student then. Ask yourself, do we need the children in our schools these days to be students, or do we need them to be active learners? What does this mean? What is my role in helping to support this distinction in our process? And what must we do differently to support better learning?

How can I act to better empower the educators in my school? The subject-matter-expert transmitting expertise to students is the old-school industrial model. Teachers today must extend their practice in response to the changing tide of information. How can I dialogue with my staff to help them collaborate in responding to the needs of the children who attend our school? Who can I support and who do I need to draw out? What can I do to support authentic Professional Learning Communities and Personal/Professional Learning Networks for my staff?

What role does technology play today in the lives of our students, and how are emerging technologies changing the nature of learning? The 2.0 Web and modern technologies cannot ‘end’ at 8:45 a.m. when school begins and ‘start up’ again at 3:30 p.m. when school lets out. How informed am I with regards to modern technologies and the role they will plan in transforming education? Who can I turn to to better understand what’s going on? What are our school and system short/long-term goals for making better use of these technologies to support learning?

What can I do as a leader to ensure that our students are responsibly cared for at school, while at the same time allowing them to engage in meaningful projects in the local and global community? Finding solutions to social and environmental issues of our day will require the active engagement of our leaders of the future, our children. How can we ensure that our learners are learning to engage in authentic problem solving opportunities? How can we help learners to develop their skills with the support of experts and co-learners from our community and other parts of the globe?

These are large questions, not easily answered in a single sitting. But they can be answered. A vision can be articulated. And then acted upon.

What is your vision?

I’ll be posting another part to this, looking to provide links to resources that might provoke some discussion. You can also check out the responses to Scott McLeod’s Leadership Day 2009 call — there’s bound to be a lot there!