Mindblown

“The winds of change blow through our minds,
They call to kith and kin and kind,
To gather strength and linger where,
Our visions, hopes and dreams adhere
To conscious thought and weighty plans
That tilt the platforms where we stand
And skew aged vantage points to view
The stirring landscape of the new.”

Welcome to the threshold of the 21st Century – “The stirring landscape of the new”. A blank canvas for writers of Science Fiction and a much vaunted destination for futurists. It’s a place of promise, of great change and new beginnings, but more substantially, it is the evolving environment our children must grow to maturity in.

We accept that advances in technology are immense catalysts for societal change, (ask any sci-fi reader), and we are, without doubt, experiencing exponential change on a global level. Great news for all techie help-desk personal, but what implications does it have for people in the business of education? Well, for starters it means we’ve reached a place where we need to step out of the classroom for a moment and confer. We need to consider our present position, to examine emerging opportunities ,and ultimately, to re-consider our direction. It’s time to stop and think, and ask a few questions – and we are. In fact, many of us are throwing our arms and eyes heavenward fairly regularly .

The Shift
If I could choose just one question from the exhaustive list , it would be;
“How can we possibly prepare our students to thrive in a world that is changing so fast we barely recognize it?”
The question itself tells us something about our discomfort, it hints at powerlessness. We are accepting that our society is changing dramatically, but also presupposing that we have no part in this change, that the whole thing is totally out of our control. That it will happen to us and not as a result of us. We’re even fearfully assuming some kind of apolcalyptic change when we could be planning for a welcome re-genesis. In short, change scares us.

So, let’s consider shifting our vantage points. Couldn’t we simply be asking how we can manage this change to our best advantage? We’ve already recognized the increasingly urgent need for change in our present system of education, so what if we decided to use this opportunity to take control of the process and become active designers of a newish and more effective version of an education ‘system’?

Well, we have exactly that opportunity. The advent of the new New Zealand Curriculum provides a chance to examine our traditional practices, to examine context and content, to discuss what applications we would keep from earlier systems and what we could sensibly discard. Here’s an opportunity for our profession, as a whole (rather than as pockets of isolated educators within random timeframes), to examine what evidence we presently have about learners and effective learning environments, and use current pedogical understandings as an informed basis for change in our communities. We have an opportunity to establish ‘systems’ that don’t simply pay lip-service to popular phrases such as ‘seamless education ‘and (that old favourite) ‘lifelong learners’.

Old World Metaphor
For tailors & seamstresses; this is a chance to bravely unpick stitches, re- measure the fit and re-cut the pattern accordingly – with the realization that the finished garment may be fundamentally different to the original and will , without doubt, need ongoing alterations.

New World Metaphor
For techie geeks; this is a chance to run a new system on another platform – something that better recognizes and serves the needs of today’s users. A platform that considers the opportunities brought by emerging technologies , one that recognizes and addresses the needs of people living in an information-rich society and coping with such things as flexible specialisation in the workforce and changing social roles.

Sowing it up

We need to plan this carefully. It would be so easy to place patches over our existing systems and processes without examining their present, and future, functions and effects. It would be equally easy to rush at this and establish rapid changes without due consideration and effective consultation.

We must consider that everyone has an interest in sewing this up. We’ve always known that it takes a village to raise a well-balanced child and we recognize that both educators and communities know what is best for their students. It is obvious that our communities are increasingly aware of the need for 21st century change and are just as concerned about the future of their children as those whose business is education. We need to make time to listen to them, and to listen most carefully to those who are truly effected by any proposed change ; our students, their families and our teachers. Equally, we must nurture and encourage the innovative dreamers, planners, designers, developers and implementors abounding within our profession.

If we do, we have a wonderful opportunity to build something special for future generations : to plan, design, develop, and implement a more seamless system of educational policies and processes within and between our learning communities. ‘Systems’ which use available technology sensibly to support effective communication, on-going developments, day-to-day operations and collaborative programs, and ultimately : to support the development of an integrated framework effectively linking our individual learning institutions (schools), and our wider learning community ie. REAL learning communities. Communities where learning is truly celebrated and supported for all individuals.

DM Dyet May, 2008.

Apologies in advance. I pounded out this post to relieve myself after a week surrounded by the miserable and pessimistic. At the time it gave me some pleasure to mentally list unsuspecting colleagues under the following categories. Empathy and optimism have since kicked in .. but heck, sometimes it’s hard to resist.

Categorising the ‘Digital Immigrant’ Educator Settler Types

Settlers in a Brave New World
I like aspects of Mark Prensky’s Digital Immigrant/Digital Native allegory. After all, we are supposed to be in the midst of the biggest mass movement in our history, and the speed of it makes our last huge paradigm shift into the world of print and bookstuff, shrink into relative insignificance. We could say we’re all immigrants. As a society we’ve set sail – and we’re in the process of settling into a brave new world.

Yep, it’s just like an early episode of “Lost”. We’re arriving in our millions in Internet Land (the world through the windows), and we’ve begun to disembark. Some are still on the boats, plenty are milling about on the foreshore, many have ventured further by degrees into the interior, and some have even rushed forward eagerly to strike their claims and plant some corn. Other brave souls have sought each other out and formed expeditions that are blazing trails through unexplored territory. The reports from these intrepid explorers are that we’ll find a veritable digital utopia just a little further down the track.

I’d like to look at it through the eyes of one particular group – the ‘Digital Immigrant’ educators. You and me. We arrived with the rest of them and we didn’t all come voluntarily, many of us are conscripts. We’ve teetered down the gangplanks (clutching our file boxes of photocopied unit activities), gazing around in awe at the obvious changes to our environment and wondering what strange discoveries and dangers we’re likely to encounter as we move forward. We know there are ‘increasingly less’ of us surviving in the old world and we realise that our level of adaptation to the new environment, and our adoption of some necessary new skills (most as yet undiscovered) will naturally affect our level of survival in this new land.
We can already distinguish several distinct types of fellow settlers…

1. The Still Camping at Kororareka Settlers (NZ’s Plymouth Rock)
Those who were perfectly-happy-back-there-thank-you and are still kinda hopeful that the boat’s coming back. These guys spend a lot of time reminiscing about the old country which was so much better in everyway because life was simpler and students had standards and attention spans – they knew their place, their times tables and their initial consonants. Sigh, how things have changed. “Remember the good old days?- Give me a strap and a chalk board sonny, and I’ll intimidate some short term recall out of any student.”

The ‘Campers’ aren’t certain how they got here. They do, however, clearly remember signing on for a lifetime position with 12 weeks annual leave, short repetitive working days, minimal planning requirements, relatively good pay and plenty of autonomy – and they’re prepared to fight to retain these ancient working conditions (who wouldn’t).
“You want me to attend professional development sessions sometime in the three months I’m not in class? Sorry, can’t – I’ll be on holiday. They gave me all the training I needed before I took up the job, anyway.”

These types haven’t bothered to adapt at all. They’ve ridden out change before and they’re confident that this too shall pass. They don’t bother with windows in their flimsy dwellings, they can barely believe that such a land as this can exist in their world and they see no need to engage with it. They’re more likely to use wardrobes to explore Narnia, than windows to explore the Web. No point in venturing out into this strange new landscape, what could possibly be more suitable than the customs and resources they’ve always managed with ? They’re not budging. “Never mind. It’s only a job and we’ll be retiring in ten/twenty /thirty years anyway. At least some of our methods will live on in the student teachers we’ve managed to cynically indoctrinate”.

2.The Missionary Settlers
Those that go bravely amongst the natives with dictionaries. We can have some sympathy for these guys. Their souls are dedicated to the traditionalist teachings they were immersed in… and they are on a mission. They believe their role as an educator is to pour as much ‘knowledge’ into students as possible in the hopes that it will eventually reach the ‘understanding’ and ‘application’ marks invisibly etched on the side of student’s heads.

These Missionaries gather in their gradually decreasing staffroom-support groups to congratulate each other on their self-sacrifice and steadfastness in the face of change. These guys work hard. They stride exhausted (you would be too if you were the font of all knowledge), but purposefully across their classroom stage (their favourite spot) , employing the dusty strategies of their own distant academic experiences and deploring the limited engagement of their present day students.
They continue to line the natives up in straight rows (all the better to see the board they’re copying from, my dear) and provide generous amounts of felt pens, worksheets , OHT’s and boredom. The technology is arranged in straight rows and the natives are carefully instructed in the proper and correct use of every key and button – their recall of which is promptly tested, in case, in their later lives (at PTA Quiz nights) they may be asked how to do a mail merge in this particular out-dated word-processing programme.

Although educator missionaries are usually there for the right reasons they often refuse to acknowledge that their teaching is almost always for the test. Maybe they know deep down that that’s not what learning is all about, that’s just what schooling is about (and they don’t want to muddy the waters by examining the differences).
They’re actually hurt that other colleagues (the happy-clappy evangelists) dare to use other somewhat more engaging strategies and still seem to get their students to scrape past any testing–
“Humfph -They’re just buying the natives off. There can’t be that much fun in learning if you’re doing it right. Schooling has always been about self-control and suffering and … summative testing. Accountability, you know. I know I’m doing my job as an effective teacher when 50 % of my students can get 50% or more on a recall test or whatever that bell-shaped-curve-thing says.”
“There’s no place in schools for student, parent, or community input – what would ordinary human beings know about learning and assessment? We’re the experts!…and we’re not lowering our standards to allow any of these dangerous new ways in. The next thing you know we’ll have people from all over the place commenting on our student’s work and questioning the quality of our input.”

3. The Deserters (Gone native)
The educator immigrants prepared to abandon the customs and tradition of the old country and jump ship to join the natives. Much more exciting than the missionaries because of their enthusiastic and unquestioning acceptance of native ways. These are the (((kewll))) ones.

In the 70’s, despite their obvious middle-age they’d be the first in bell-bottoms, affros and sideburns . They have an innate drive to be ‘hip’ and ‘with it’. (Terms yet to be re-discovered in Antiques Roadshow episodes). Yes, these guys are superficially in touch with the natives. They don’t doubt for a minute that the kids know all there is to know about this new world and the bright, shiny tools that help them survive in it. .. and they don’t tend to question the applications the young natives put the tools to. That’s just how the natives live. Let them bombard each other with intimidating txt messages, let them post humiliating videos, we just have to accept that this is their world and since being connected is a part of it – they’ll be fine. Eventually they’ll just mutate into creatures with thicker skins.

For them it’s all about the technology anyway.
“ I nagged the boss until I got a centrino enabled vista wireless pod, 2 million gig, with remote access and CSS racing stripes etc. He/she gave it to me because she/he knows how great I am with technology. I just let the natives loose with it, they’re always on the net mucking around. I get young Holden and Ford to set everything up in my class. They find these funny-as vid’s in youtube and flick me the links for my Bebo site” etc.

These guys can’t be faulted for their admiration and enthusiasm for native ways but let’s consider our role as educators and temper it with a little reflection – maybe some of the customs and traditions of the old country are worth keeping. At the very least they provide some kind of familiar structure to both immigrants and the emerging natives. Like that charming old idea of the educator pre-identifying the learning intentions in an activity. Not just giving our students a spade to play with (because it’s shiny and we like the look of it too) – but encouraging them to experiment with the tool until the wielder knows the basics principles of it’s use, then helping them discover that they can, for example, use it to help plant and manage vegetable growth and there’s possibly other useful spade applications that we haven’t thought of yet, but they might. Some of them may even prefer the fork.

There’s both wisdom and foolishness in tradition… and in change. Don’t we need to examine these new tools as educators and consider all useful applications ? Just because the natives have matches doesn’t mean it would occur to them to make a fire hot enough to melt the ore they’ve been gathering from the hills and pour it into moulds to make useful implements. Heck, some of the natives I’ve worked with are more likely to raze forests. We have a choice, we can leave it up to time and experience or we can guide them into discovering useful applications as young learners.

It’s hard to tell which are the most concerning; the Missionaries- who hold stubbornly on to tradition, or the Deserters who abandon it all so recklessly without much thought as to what they are creating.

Still to come…
4. The Explorers – These guys are the ground breakers. Those that go boldly where not many people have gone before etc .
5. The New Settlers – Where are these new settlements and will the gatekeepers let us in ?
DM Dyet, May 2008.