Sliced Bread

As I relax into my weekend, I think I’m more content due to some recent connected learning developments. A few new North Coast Region DET contacts after last weeks Quality Teaching conference and leaders are responding, collaborating and even asking for or offering more answers. Great stuff.

Try this quick quiz, dead easy it is.

To date, which scenario has had more impact on DET NSW connected learning? 

a) “Extrinsically imposed employer/political pressure because web2.0 connected learning is coming via massive and never seen before financial investment, “ready, fire, aim” style.”

OR

b) “Intrinsically lets engage because I actually want to personally take deep individual ownership and walk the walk in my learning and leadership life?”

I am seriously curious as to the main motivations and attitudes behind the current positive DET shift we are seeing. 

The answer will have an enduring impact on the up take and embed rate of any transformational change DET expects.

If teachers understand why? with real purpose, learning will stick bottom up b) style but if its DET mandated and imposed from above, learning will be reduced to box ticking a) style.

ICT has been in schools since before I arrived in 1985 so it sure isn’t new. With this massive injection of edrev largesse we need to do something fundamentally different this time so we see transformation for kid’s futures. If I was cynical, web2.0 tools are not new or difficult skills to learn, I’d be leaning to a) above. Luckily I’m not.

There is a palpable sense of major urgency within DET, almost panicky misalignment, amongst higher up DET bureaucrats charged with specific fields of the wide gambit of connected learning responsibilties.

Elements of ICT rollouts still have elements of “left hand/right hand” as different DET departments push their connected learning project barrows as if riding the carnival dodgems at side show alley.

Whoops, sorry L4L, didn’t see you coming so soon, you must have got some real super polly fuel to get here so quick.

Hey CCP get outa my way you old timer, I’ve got a modern web2.0 tool suite to deliver but L4L has just cut me off, again!

Oy! shut up down the back there and stop running off course, none of you will have anything if we don’t get my paradoxically improved bandwidth and restrictive filters in place” 

As Sharon Strzelecki says, “Play noicer, please, guys”.

 

 

If leaders themselves have no metacognition of or deep personal engagement with the changes they are pushing, then teachers will quickly sense the superficial lip service. 

Can’t blame them, but hey guys this web2.0 stuff is NOT new and maybe we should have been playing the web2.0 game a tad longer than just now?

 Playing connected learning catch up may lead to enduring pain if all the components do not align. We don’t want our dodgems spinning wildy in circles as DET jumps on the back to spin our wheel and get us going again.

Idealistically scenario two is my personal carrot response.

It’s the one I’m trying to promote at my place through DIDOW. Trying hard to create the individual need of why transformative participative learning (web2.0 if we must!) is stronger by raising awareness and changing attitudes, in baby incremental steps.

Early days but so far I think its working. I’d rather teachers know the why and build their own PLNs so they can feel the networked learning difference themselves.

This is what all school leaders at all levels should be doing now. PLN’s only take a technical day or less to set up. Even our most tech shy participant was heard to comment “RSS feeds of my delicious links into netvibes was really easy” Language unheard of only weeks ago. They also understand how their own PLN will organically grow if they contribute, share and teach others.

No one wants another DET mandated brick in the wall on connected learning initiatives. Groans heard at previous School Development Days (SDDs) has been loud as top down mandated attitude adjustments wrapped as “policy” has been force fed on the troops. It is so obviously just DET ticking DET boxes for DET motives and no real professional learning ever occurs.

Stop it DET and start trusting us to professionally learn for ourselves, just give us some time to engage. A place to authentically share our professional learning via eportfolios will be welcome too. Carrot or the stick? It’s your call DET NSW. I know which way my kids respond.

L4L are planning teacher think tanks, the blinkers are off and learning barriers are coming down. Laptops for Learning (L4L) bulletin 3 was again informative clbulletin03 and may answer more questions. At least I found it more easily than edition 2 in the DET NSW intranet, someone must be listening at DET HQ?

Now if only the counter intuitive web1.0 portal, excessive DET filters and lack of RSS feeds can be sorted, I’d be a happy camper indeed. 

There is critical infrastructure work to be tackled on these issues if DET is to be taken seriously as a web2.0 player. That’s what worries me in the longer term about transforming our Public Schools ICT and connected learning initiatives. I still can’t sense the bigger picture alignment as earnest project managers furiously micro manage their little boxes of a far larger picture.

Wish you well in your local and/or general attitude adjustment missions.

Ours is on track and staff are asking, doing, engaging and experimenting with all that we’ve been given so far. Some of the tools we are learning are posted below.

  RSS in Plain English via Commoncraft

  Social Bookmarking eg Del.icio.us in Plain English via Commoncraft.

Independent learners may prefer this online Time4 module. It is one of the best and simplest self tutorials and covers all the topics you need to establish your own Personal Learning Network (PLN).

Sue Waters, the edublogger, also has PLN starter advice with great links to all the basic tools.

 So DET NSW gets another step closer to announcing who wins the final contract for 220,000 wireless learning devices.

The tender cull from 21 to 6 was announced yesterday  and includes Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Asus, Lenovo and ASI.

The wireless list will also be culled from 15 to the winner before installs start in 571 NSW schools in April.

I hope schools are ready. It will be interesting to watch the ready, fire, aim approach.

cl-bulletin-no-2 NSW DET laptop Bulletin Number 2 gives a comprehensive update, I just wish the link on their website was easier to find.

Please FIX YOUR BROKEN WEB1.0 SITE DET NSW and yes I am yelling, because no one is listening.

Queensland DET’s at least looks vaguely web2.0ish with RSS and intuitive navigation.

The Government of Utopia has set teachers a reflective challenge for 2009. Are you up for it?

• How do you currently assess your 21st century transformative learning?
• Should you be allowed to?
• Do you possess an impartial perspective to do so?
• Is what you do better learning? How? Show me the evidence.

Prove to those who ask, by applying web2.0/interactive/read/write/semantic tools in your lessons, that you can measure the improvements in learning outcomes.

Talk is cheap, conferences extolling web2.0 virtues expensive with often disconnected, agenda laden, key noters developing a dangerous novice base.

But I still want to see why I tell the best colleagues at my place why they need this? Do they? Prove it.

Where is the test, the assessment tool, the control class, the hard evidence that proves the argument that all this edrev being dumped in our laps is of improved learning worth?

Maybe the leaders doing the dumping just want an expeditious fix (or a convenient kicking post?) if the expected “transformative change” does not magically result. They are entitled to know why if it fails and more importantly why when it succeeds.

For my evidence I don’t want

• “warm fuzzy, teacher/student feel good statements”,
• nor nebulous “engagement, 21st century web2.0″ motherhood tosh 
• Don’t dare dish up improved retention statistics, or reduced suspension rates or less counsellor referrals
• let alone “oh the kids just like coming to my classes better”

Pleeease, no. It won’t cut the mustard if real change is to follow for the mainstream majority.

Not unless your rigourous, repeatable, reliable assessment evidence is directly attributable to a specific innovation and the assessment tool was built to do so from the get go. 

Why do I ask?

I don’t yet believe you if you say ICT, and more specifically web2.0, caused “transformative learning change”, thats why. Others are asking this too;

Teachers, administrators and policymakers have every right to demand evidence and to expect that calls for change be based on well-founded and supported arguments.

Sue Bennett, Karl Maton and Lisa Kervin.

I have great faith in expert teachers continuing to teach expertly using traditional methods for a while to come, a long time in fact. Good on them, even if it is not right; they comply and follow what they are told is “best learning”.

Of course what we teach is broken, but convincing a status quo ancient industry of high stakes testers is a future study learning societies are addressing now.  What BOS do is great, but it’s still wrong and not life long learning for the 21st century. It’s a pigeon holing exercise for tertiary entrance and summative stamping/comparing/ranking schools, it’s NOT about learning for 70 more years post schooling.

Concurrently, and more importantly to me, the sticklers, the gate keepers, the laggards, the untrained or unprepared also need to deblinker and just imagine there is a better way of learning. 

Are more kids just compliantly learning the best syllabi boxes from a broken 200 year old system?

Test, stamp, issue an education pass to the rest of your life and then the participants quickly forget that massively critical result for evermore. The HSC is just a stressful ticket, designed more for the bastions of data to justify their own existence, not the participants inflicted. Yeah like 412/500 still comes up a lot in my life, no, never has, never should, Why? It means nothing.

Are parents going to passively accept this for another generation? When I stop playing devil’s advocate, of course we can get more bang for our learning buck. We must.

Engagement in the reflective thought process we ask of our students, developing critical enquiry, to experiment, try new methods, not have all the answers immediately, devolve real control and ultimate responsibility to learners is essential if the expected changes are to materialise anytime before I retire. The mindset of many must change. Do not even mention technology, for that is not the real debate needed. The continuation of antiquated learning practices will be folly as millions of networked global learners emerge each year. This is the gap that may be difficult to redress. The only certainty stagnation will deliver is an education quagmire that’ll suck you under. Baby steps, having a go and letting go of the control syndrome will all help, but this innovation still needs to be rigourously assessed before the major gatekeepers give up their current, and pointless, testing regimes anytime soon.

However I still want empirical evidence from a properly conducted assessment before I get too excited for my valued colleagues and tell them to “get with it”. If DET supplies the assessments that we really need, of course teachers will change. They are actually very compliant when they see the learning purpose, or some just do as they are told. Either way, if assessments were to change, the emerging 21st Century learning debate would be a whole lot easier for all to accept.

Proof that innovators are not simply rose colouring the results, ‘you want it to be true therefore you’ll make it true’, skewed to a personal bias or chanting the mantra of panacean technology. Marc Prensky come on down, a key noter here, I hope his 2001 native/immigrant furphy is wisely updated by now.

If you already are an advanced, engaged, user of web2.0, a 21st century teacher I want to share your assessment evidence at my place. It will be listened to.

Prove to us how the following “21st century skills” (yuk jargon) have been significantly enhanced in your classroom and measured.

Same proviso, nothing nebulous, links to proven evidence please.

An easy task?, difficult for others? impossible for some? Therein lies a pressing issue that needs addressing in the broader edrev we need to be debating, assessment reform. 

Imagine this, sometime in the soon future I hope. We have;

• ubiquitous 1:1 tool boxes and high speed wireless connections
• the human learning skills, attitudinal wherewithal and expertise
• an agreed 21st century skill set 

but what’s next? That may well prove to be the easy reform.

How do you assess this “new” learning to ensure learning is rigourous with high expectations and improved outcomes?

If teachers keep teaching well with a broken “it”, while the above 7 skills are not meaningfully assessed, then technology should not be lauded as the cure all some see, or hope, it is. That is giving a box of wires way too much creedance.

We have a problem, and a need for a far braver education revolution. Not many seem ready to address the industry schools have slavishly and understandibly followed, summative high stakes testing.

Alternate voices are questioning this and feeding results to governments.

They are listening,  Krudd & Nrees. We hope.