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An Open Letter to Commentators and Those Who Read Them A response to "Is the children learning" in the August Red Herring One would hope, two decades after the introduction of computers to schools, that something had been learned (and it has). Just as one would hope, after three decades of brain research into how people learn, that classroom practice would reflect this new knowledge (and it has). The disconnect between what has been learned, how practice needs to change on a wide scale, and what's being reported in the mainstream media is most disconcerting of all. Like Rip van Winkle, many commentators on educational technology may have slept through a fundamental change in the discussion. Without this conceptual update, Jill Landry's observances in "Is the children learning?" transform into a series of dreamlike distortions. We need communications that elevate the discussion. Instead we get fake news. News! Schools aren't performing as well as we'd like! News! Poor practices don't work! News! Businesses selling to schools profit, while schools themselves struggle! Let's blame the technology, and move on to the next nauseating fad to swing the pedagogical pendulum.The Real News: Good teaching and good learning have been redefined in our society, by expanding what the best teachers have always done, and challenging all teachers to rise to that level of performance. This new definition places unprecedented demands on the education system. It places unprecedented demands upon learners as well as teachers. Accordingly "professional development for teachers is the single most important decision we can make." In such a world, technology has been absorbed into good practice, transparently, with little trace. The places described in "Is the children learning?" are places where this hasn't happened yet. As Jim Hirsch, Chair of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) notes in his reply "Is the writers learning?": "The real problem is that the complexities of achieving meaningful progress long ago surpassed the capacity of the sound-byte. Schools face a set of significant challenges in responding to No Child Left Behind's requirements to bring 'the power of rigorous, objective, scientific understanding to bear on improving decisions about educational programming and thus student achievement.' " <see http://www.cosn.org/resources/082902.htm for Jim's full response> Jim continues, "These decisions shape fundamental questions about how we design, implement and assess instruction to meet the needs of all children. These are questions not simply about technology, but for all learning, by all learners". While some writers were sleeping, the discussion moved beyond "yes" or "no" to technology, and focused on educational evidence in order to level the playing field, where any and all interventions must prove their effectiveness. It is a change we all should welcome, because so much is at stake, and because the new and old visions of learning are fundamentally incompatible. It is time to "put up or shut up" and change the venue from the pundit's chair to the proving ground of the classroom. To my many friends who work so effectively and tirelessly as communicators of positive change made possible when education reform and education technology work in concert, please know that my comments are not aimed at or critical of you! You know who you are ;-> Accordingly, for the remainder of this piece, I'll address my comments to the commentators (you) in the forms of assessment that educators (we) would provide in the respectful and sincere desire to improve performance (yours), so that all of us (the readers) can more effectively contribute to the progress we require. Despite your editor's desire to prove or disprove the effectiveness of technology investments, you continue to measure results by means developed when rote learning and taking one's spot on the assembly line were all that society required. Policy makers recognize this; that is why they shifted the emphasis to evidence-based decision-making. Technology both raises the stakes, and provides the pathway for individualizing instructional needs, assessing results and guiding changes required for all students to learn. Determining how learning can be improved through the effective use of technology is a sophisticated information-based problem solving activity. Living and working in the digital age elevates the importance of information literacy. Accordingly, the students in our classrooms, if tasked to explore your topic "Is the children learning?" would use a proven information-problem solving technique called the Big6. Their work would be assessed on six dimensions: Task Definition, Information Seeking Strategies, Location and Access, Use of Information, Synthesis and Evaluation. Let's see how well you did, compared to the Oakland PowerPoint students, and the kids we teach. Task Definition: What does Good Teaching and Good Learning Look Like Today? Jim Hirsh notes, " A decade ago, we formed the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) www.cosn.org because we were just scratching the surface of the potential of the Internet to improve learning. We knew that the biggest challenges were human, rather than technical. Ten years later, we enjoy technical capabilities few of us could have imagined, yet the human problems seem even greater than before." Some people thought the issue was "training" but we saw instead that until key leaders at the school district, state and national level had help in moving from vision to practice, many of the promises we saw would remain underutilized. CoSN is the venue for developing and providing this help. Technology makes the teacher more important than ever. Not just any teacher. Highly accomplished, highly skilled teachers are required to reach every child (something incidentally that we've never attempted, let alone achieved in the good old days of "Ozzie and Harriet.") The children being left behind need more than "an expectant look or an encouraging smile from a teacher or tutor." In the real schools where real kids are making progress, it is because we (real teachers) have become perpetual learners, seeking to share successful practices with our peers, applying the lessons of research to our practice. In doing so, we are using the tools educators and students require to learn, interact and grow in ways necessary for success in the 21st century. Your score: As part of their task, our students would want to know what a red herring is. Dictionary.com says "Something that draws attention away from the central issue." Well done! The false forced choice of "teachers" or "technology" misses the point! However, for our project assessment, we need a higher quality task. We're sorry; you'll have to do better. Information Seeking Strategies: Where Can We Find Evidence? Why ask the clueless? Ask someone who knows. There are many thousands of us. We've been at this for a decade. In that time, the questions have changed. Are you paying attention? Jim Hirsch reminds us "No district should invest money, time, or effort without understanding the contribution such expenditures will make to student learning." What makes you think that the quality of decision-making in the schools from which you draw your examples is any higher for traditional than technology-based educational decisions? Bad decisions yield poor results. Surprised? The benefits of educational technology do not happen in a vacuum; instead they flourish in an environment that reinforces research-based recommendations for improving education as a whole. While these recommendations may be controversial in some settings, both technology friends and foes agree that the most important person in education is the teacher. Therefore, isn't the most critical goal to provide the most effective, best-prepared teachers possible? Data from the 1998 Teaching, Learning and Computing (TLC) Survey (www.crito.uci.edu/tlc) provides substantive insights about what is required to do so. In The Beliefs, Practices, and Computer Use of Teacher Leaders, Margaret Riel and Hank Becker (University of California, Irvine) describe a spectrum of classroom practice. This research analyzes the responses of 4,000 U. S. teachers concerning their educational background, teaching philosophy and instructional practices both with and without computers. Their findings are profound. "Models of school reform, professional development programs, state and federal policies increasingly support teachers in expanded roles, including as Teacher Leaders: teachers who place a high value on sharing their knowledge with their teaching colleagues. At the opposite end of the continuum are Private Practice Teachers who report little or no engagement in professional dialog or activities beyond those mandated…[and] engage in a form of 'private practice' behind closed doors. Closed classroom doors open concerns about maintaining high standards for both teaching and learning." CoSN is comprised of these Teacher Leaders, and the districts that provide the context within which they play out their professional growth. Our students would have been smart enough to seek out these folks and their stories. Here's what the research suggests they'd have found:"The findings are consistent and strong??Teacher Leaders are better educated teachers, continuous learners, computer users, and promote constructive problem-based learning over direct instruction. Their position in the educational community mirrors students' positions in their classrooms. They use computers to help their students achieve the same level of respect and voice that these teachers have achieved within their professional educational community." Your score: We're sorry; but when it comes to finding the real story, you'll have to do better. Location and Access: What Are Our Sources for Evidence? In January 2001, Educational Testing Service (ETS) convened an international panel to study the growing importance of existing and emerging Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their relationship to literacy. Their report, Digital Transformation, has just been released, putting forth a framework for ICT Literacy that provides a foundation for the design of instruments including large-scale assessments intended to inform public policy and provide diagnostic measures to test skills associated with information and communication technology. Published by Educational Testing Service's Center for Global Assessment, Digital Transformation states a definition of ICT literacy as "using digital technology, communications tools, and/or networks to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in a knowledge society." A free PDF copy of this report is available at http://www.ets.org/research/ictliteracy/ictreport.pdf Your score: The annual assessments required by No Child Left Behind are not the end point, they are just the starting line for improvement. Certainly we are not satisfied with the general quality of technology use in schools, and we are even less satisfied with the instruments available to us to measure student growth and learning. We observe in our schools and classrooms the chilling effect of punitive accountability, greatly reducing the choices of children. More students have lost art class, music class, even science class because "those subjects aren't on the high stakes test" than have lost these classes to technology. Again, we're sorry; but you'll have to do better. Use of Information: What's Relevant? For every child to learn, every child needs a high-quality teacher. In the days of Ozzie and Harriet, technology wasn't integral to society, so the question didn't arise. Today, the kind of teacher you'd want your kid to have uses technology in ways you can't imagine (and certainly didn't report). Chris Dede notes that some day (perhaps sooner than we think) "the refusal by a teacher to use more than one media will be considered professional malpractice." As Jim Hirsch reminds us, "In an effective classroom, technology is just one more tool, opening up a new set of strategies to widen the ranks of those who identify themselves as learners, and deepen their learning through meaningful tasks". Like a healthy lifestyle, it requires balance (activity and rest, carbs and protein, strength and flexibility). A decade ago, when CoSN was founded, it was perhaps understandable that compelling models and exemplars of these new ways of learning required some searching. Overlooking these successful practices today is harder to understand. Our students could have found them easily, many looking no further than their own experience. Our use of information means use of technology, even if we most frequently use it at home. So do our students. If you've seen the new study for the Pew Internet & American Life Project "THE DIGITAL DISCONNECT: The widening gap between Internet-savvy students and their schools," you're aware that "Internet-savvy students are far ahead of their teachers and principals in taking advantage of online educational resources," according to Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "Many believe they may have to raise their voices to force schools to change to accommodate them better. And their voices should be added to policy discussions. Educators have a choice: Either they need to adapt or they will be dragged into a new learning environment." Your score: Did you miss the information in these reports? Did you ask students who are not waiting for schools to catch up about the role technology already plays in making them capable, lifelong learners? We're sorry; you'll have to do better. Synthesis: Organize the Material, Present the Information By the way, when it comes to "Power-Pointlessness" (your poster-child for technology use), it is not news to those of us who actually work with kids. Our students would have found it much more effectively discussed two years ago at Jamie McKenzie's "From Now On" website: http://www.fno.org/sept00/powerpoints.html In a recent survey of Big6 users, Synthesis in turning information into meaning was rated the skill most difficult for students to master. The illustrations in your article reinforce this finding. Given the new national educational policy focus on improving student achievement through research-based practices that document student growth, the work to develop assessments for Information Communication Technology literacy is both timely and imperative. As noted in the 1999 National Research Council report "Being Fluent with Information Technology", the "requirement of a deeper understanding than is implied by the rudimentary term 'computer literacy' motivated the committee to adopt 'fluency' as a term connoting a higher level of competency. People fluent with information technology (FIT persons) are able to express themselves creatively, to reformulate knowledge, and to synthesize new information. Fluency with information technology (i.e., what this report calls FITness) entails a process of lifelong learning in which individuals continually apply what they know to adapt to change and acquire more knowledge to be more effective at applying information technology to their work and personal lives." The goal of developing measures of these skills needs to recognize both the context as well as the nature of the process, and how this process differs from those typically measured in schools. The report notes, "Because FITness is fundamentally integrative, calling upon an individual to coordinate information and skills with respect to multiple dimensions of a problem and to make overall judgments and decisions taking all such information into account, a project-based approach to developing FITness is most appropriate." Contrast these ideas with your finding on educational technology. You say, "while everyone agrees that there's a place for technology in schools (it makes record-keeping more efficient, helps teachers analyze student-learning trends, and is good for all sorts of back-office administrative functions), educational software and hardware companies have long boasted that their products are the answer to shrinking budgets and overcrowded classrooms." We (as part of everyone) agree. Moreover, sorting out the claims of competing vendors is another instance where well-developed information literacy skills are crucial. The new What Works Clearinghouse, announced by the US Department of Education, represents a concerted, rigorous effort to validate claims through evidence. More importantly, however, is the growing sophistication of district Chief Information Officers (CIOs) with whom CoSN works. Their demands are forcing vendors to develop products that meet the operational needs of schools. (There's a great idea for your follow-up story, by the way.) Your score: We feel it is too early to tell how this will work out, but it is clearly inappropriate to write off or ignore such important work. So, we're sorry, you'll have to do better. Evaluation: Have We Learned? Was It Efficient? Was It Effective? Our students would seek to authenticate the claims in your article. Hank Becker's seminal work concisely conveys an alternate conclusion, based on extensive classroom observation. Becker writes "Under the right conditions - where teachers are personally comfortable and at least moderately skilled in using computers themselves, where the school's daily class schedule permits allocating time for students to use computers as part of class assignments, where enough equipment is available and convenient to permit computer activities to flow seamlessly alongside other learning tasks, and where teachers' personal philosophies support a student-centered, constructivist pedagogy that incorporates collaborative projects defined partly by student interest - computers are clearly becoming a valuable and well-functioning instructional tool." Jim Hirsch's conclusion places the discussion in context. "The section on "Selling into the $350 billion education market" is misleading. The technology component only amounts to 2% of all expenditures. And, that two cents on the dollar may be one of the most important contributions to the discussion and resulting actions to improve educational achievement." Wake up, smell the coffee, visit our classrooms, learn with us, and help us transform learning for the new century! ----------- Ferdi Serim 11 Palacio Road Email: ferdi@oii.org |
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