Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

You Have Been Warned

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From Audrey Watters ebook “The Monsters of Education Technology,” now on sale in various forms for $4.99 and worth every penny:

As Cassandra, I must warn you that education technology’s monstrosity will bring about our doom. Education technology is the Trojan Horse poised to dismantle public education, to outsource and unbundle and disrupt and destroy. Those who will tell you that education technology promises personalization don’t actually care about student autonomy or agency. They want surveillance, standardization, and control. You have been warned.

This collection of 14 lectures/keynotes that Audrey gave in 2014 is required reading for anyone interested in being more fully informed and aware of the histories of ed tech and the current motivations of those building the latest tools and services for “learning” in schools. I don’t agree with everything Audrey says in these essays, but I have come around to the view that we in the education space are now in real danger of losing what is best about public schools and schools in general. The danger comes not just from those who seek to co-opt the language and story of education and learning and schooling for their own profits, something they are doing very well, btw. Sadly, it also comes from our own ignorance about learning, what it means to learn, what it takes to learn, and what we believe our roles in kids’ learning lives to be.

Recently, I asked a roomful of about 150 administrators how many of them regularly set aside time to talk about and reflect on and articulate their beliefs of how kids learn, and how that is changing in the context of technology and the Web. About 10 hands went up. Yet when I asked them how many were having regular, ongoing discussions around technologies and services plans for their classrooms, over 100 hands went up.

The two are not separate. We cannot think critically and make great decisions about ed tech for our students if we don’t make learning the starting point. And we can’t make learning the starting point in a relevant way if we have no evolving, articulated belief around what learning looks like in a modern context.

Ed tech is not all evil. Ed tech can be a powerful amplifier for productive learning. But ed tech in a vacuum pushes hard against much of what progressive educators believe schools should and can be. It’s about increasing dependence rather than increasing freedom. With billions of dollars on the table, those desiring the former are highly motivated.

The question for us now is, how highly motivated are we to fight back?

The fight begins with knowledge and context. Read Audrey’s keynotes. Read The Children’s Machine by Seymour Papert. Read And What Do You Mean by Learning? by Seymour Sarason. Read How Children Learn by John Holt. Read and discuss and figure out what you believe about learning and the role school now plays in that. And state that belief aloud.

And then talk about ed tech.

The Best Time EVER to Begin

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What if we said the following to all of our students on opening day of school, and them committed ourselves to helping them invent, innovate, iterate, and make a positive imapact on the world? 

Kevin Kelly:

So, the truth: Right now, today, in 2014 is the best time to start something on the internet. There has never been a better time in the whole history of the world to invent something. There has never been a better time with more opportunities, more openings, lower barriers, higher benefit/risk ratios, better returns, greater upside, than now. Right now, this minute. This is the time that folks in the future will look back at and say, “Oh to have been alive and well back then!”

The last 30 years has created a marvelous starting point, a solid platform to build truly great things. However the coolest stuff has not been invented yet — although this new greatness will not be more of the same-same that exists today. It will not be merely “better,” it will different, beyond, any other. But you knew that.  

What you may not have realized is that today truly is a wide open frontier. It is the best time EVER in human history to begin.

Sure, we educators have to believe this version of the future for ourselves. But can we take a serious look at the amazing innovation of even the last 15 years and not think that it’s only just the start? That the opportunities for kids who are tinkerers and playful, continual learners are unprecendented in our history as a species? 

More and more teachers and classrooms and, in some cases, schools are waking up to this reality. But our collective sense of the Internet filled world and it’s opportunities for learners is still painfully slow to evolve. The vast majority of educators and decision makers are still about “better.” But what’s coming is “different, beyond any other." 

I believe that. You?

You a “Tenacious Oddball”?

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Jaron Lanier:

Roughly speaking, there are two ways to use computers in the classroom. You can have them measure and represent the students and the teachers, or you can have the class build a virtual spaceship. Right now the first way is ubiquitous, but the virtual spaceships are being built only by tenacious oddballs in unusual circumstances. More spaceships, please.

Amen.

Choose Your Own Brit Lit Adventure

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I love this description of a classroom at my old school. Students are given the ability to direct their own learning as the teacher guides them each to the standards and objectives. Harder, no doubt, but better.

Meg’s class is run like a choose-your-own British literature adventure! Students move through literary eras together, but they choose their own texts and areas of focus. Students track their learning by basically writing their own learning plans. They identify standards they work toward, they write their own questions, and they identify their own understandings. Meg conferences with them, monitors their progress, and teaches them to question and reflect. I love this whole concept. It makes learning collaboratively differentiated and amazing!

Kids Owning the Learning

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It’s been a great 10 days in Australia, one that’s been too packed for much blogging, obviously, and one that was highlighted yesterday by a visit to one of those “I really wish my kids went to school there” type of schools in a Melbourne suburb. It’s hard to capture everything that’s cool about the Wooranna Park Primary School in a blog post, but let me boil it down to this: the kids are driving the learning, from the design of the school and the curriculum to the decision making around school policy and more. It’s one of those inquiry-based learning environments where the moment you step into it you just feel something different. Different spaces. Different colors. Different conversations. Different stuff up on the walls.

I’m hoping to write more about what the principal Ray Trotter is trying to do at Wooranna, but for now, here are some of the highlights:

  • When the school got funding to renovate the year 5/6 part of the school, the teachers and students got together and decided that the theme for their studies that year would be “design”. So the students set out to create the timeline, select the furniture, create the space plans, and manage the budgets. It was an involved process, driven by important questions and fueled by the students’ desire (and passion) for creating a learning space they could flourish in. In the process, they interviewed architects, over-ruled the principal in the choice of classroom furniture (after doing detailed research on neck injuries caused by having to sit at round tables,) designed work stations (using Google Sketch-up), and oversaw the entire process. The result? A really stunning mixed open-space, flexible, comfortable learning environment that the students take pride in.
  • Everywhere you look in the hallways of Wooranna you see questions. One poster asks “How can we invent colors?” Another says “How have our tomatoes been coping with the 40+ (C) temperatures?” And my favorite, “What is learning?” The walls aren’t filled with products; they are filled with process. And the teachers and leaders model it. Hung prominently on the wall and often discussed with the students is the school’s “Raison D’Etre”. It quotes Plutarch, Vygotsky, Betts and others, and it’s based on questions; “What are the key principles for transformative learning?” “What do I want to change?”
  • School government takes the form of the fifth and sixth grade students meeting each Friday in a discussion session that replicates the Australian Parliament. For the first half of the year, half of the kids run the government, and the other half takes over at the midway point. The leaders are elected by the student body, and they go about making real decisions about real projects and policies.
  • When they graduate from Wooranna, students perform original music and dance that they have written and choreographed. In fact, they compose a lot of their own music throughout the year. And art. And media.
  • Ray Trotter, the principal, talks easily about social constructivism, connectivism, George Seimens, Stephen Heppel and many of the other ideas and people in this space. But at present, due to some restraints with the technology, there is not a great deal of connecting out to the world, though his is looking for schools to video conference with and is beginning to move down that road.

There’s more, as usual. But I’ll leave it with this one thought from Ray, one of many, that jumped out at me during our conversations: learning is not a linear exercise, it’s random, it’s self-directed, it looks like spaghetti. And at Wooranna, it’s very, very obvious.

Advice From Students to Teachers on Technology Use

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Edutopia writer Sara Bernard is looking for student input in terms of advising teachers on how they might use technology in the classroom.  I’m wondering if anyone out there might want to pose the following to his/her students and send Sara some responses. It would be great to comment back here as well so we can see what kids are thinking.

What if you had to teach the classes you are taking now or something you learned years ago? How would you use technology to do it? What devices, software, games, networks, or applications would you use to help students learn more easily — and have more fun learning?

For instance, imagine that it was your job to teach algebra, Charles Dickens, volleyball, poetry, a foreign language, science, or the Civil War. Would you have your English students use Facebook to create profiles for each main character in Jane Eyre? Would you have them use Garage Band to create a World War II song or the national anthem of a fictional country?  Would you use instant messaging or cell phones as tools for classroom discipline? Could you learn math from Mario?

The point of this is for Edutopia to gather specific ideas and advice from you for teachers to try in their classrooms. So, be sure to describe things in a way that a teacher – any teacher – would understand. You might want to mention any rules about technology and media that exist at your school and whether or not they would need to be modified. We’d love to hear as many suggestions as you can think of!

According to Sara, “student responses can be based on experiences that they’ve actually had in class or just ideas that they’ve come up with themselves. They should also feel free to offer basic advice for teachers about technology integration, or any other thoughts they have on the topic. Also, this isn’t an essay contest, so no pressure — students can just drop a few lines into an email if they like (though I’d appreciate it if they could include their name, grade level, school, and location).” Her e-mail is sara.bernard@edutopia.org.

(Full disclosure: I am a National Advisory Board member for the George Lucas Education Foundation which publishes the magazine.)