Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Announcing: Educating Modern Learners

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Today, I’m happy to announce that my friend and colleague Bruce Dixon and I are starting a new membership website, Educating Modern Learners (EML). It’s a site and an accompanying newsletter that’s aimed specifically at helping school leaders and policy makers from around the globe be better informed about the huge technological changes that are impacting education, and to help them make better, more pertinent decisions for the students they serve. And I’m equally excited to announce that we’ve hired one of the best education bloggers / thinkers we know, Audrey Watters, to be the editorial director / lead writer for the site. Our official launch is scheduled for mid-February.

Our hope is that EML will offer a reader-supported, independent voice to help articulate what is as yet a struggling but growing new narrative in the school reform discussion, one that provokes serious conversation at the leadership level around a more learner-centered, inquiry-based, technology and access-rich school experience that more powerfully and relevantly serves children in this fast-changing modern world. We’ll be commissioning some of the best writers and thought-leaders in the world to produce analysis and commentary on all aspects of modern learning, from local, state and ministry level policy issues, new literacies and pedagogies for 21st Century learners, effective change-centered leadership, new technologies, and best school practices, among others. Also in the mix are regular whitepapers, live events, podcasts, and more. More details to come.

Here’s some of where we’re starting from in our thinking about this:

  • We believe that we live and learn at a moment of rapid and radical change across institutions and cultures, and that technologies are in large part driving those changes.
  • We believe that today’s students will be immersed in creative and connected technologies throughout their adult learning lives, and that they require new skills, literacies, and dispositions to succeed in the modern world.
  • We believe that the web and other technologies can be a powerful source for good in the world.
  • We believe that schools must move away from “delivering” an education to, instead, empowering students to organize their own education.
  • We believe technology implemented with vision can be a powerful part of effective teaching and learning in schools.
  • We believe that relevant reforms are occurring too slowly because not enough of our efforts are aimed at those who make decisions regarding technology’s role in learning in schools.
  • We believe that top level decision makers often act without a relevant, global, modern lens for how technologies can best serve progressive teaching and learning. This is through no fault of their own as much as it is the consequence of leading at a moment of rapid and radical change.
  • We believe there is a real need for a diverse set of expert voices to use a global lens to intelligently curate and contextualize the changes, new technologies, future trends, best practices and more on a regular basis.
  • We believe this is a time of unprecedented opportunity. A time for boldness, and a time for well-informed leadership to shape new thinking around what schools could and should be; about where, when, and how learning takes place.  A time for us to truly rethink the possibilities that technology offers education, and a time for creative and courageous leadership to show the way.

EML is hopefully just the first step in what we hope will be a collection of resources and events that will help expand the contexts for learning and leading in the education leadership space. If you’d like to be notified when we officially launch, just sign up on our “Coming Soon!” page. 

The Local Internet School

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Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Yale professor David Gelernter in the Wall Street Journal, lengthy but important:

A local Internet school sounds like a contradiction in terms: the Internet lets you discard geography and forget “local.” But the idea is simple. A one-classroom school, with 20 or so children of all ages between 6th and 12th grade, each sitting at a computer and wearing headsets. They all come from nearby. A one-room Internet school might serve a few blocks in a suburb, or a single urban apartment building.

In front sits any reliable adult whom the neighbors vouch for—often, no doubt, some student’s father or mother, taking his turn. He leads the Pledge of Allegiance, announces regular short recesses to clear everyone’s head, proclaims lunchtime. He hands out batteries and Band-Aids and sends sick children home or to a doctor. He reloads the printers and futzes with malfunctioning scanners, no doubt making any problem worse. But these machines are cheap, and each classroom can deploy several.

Each child does a whole curriculum’s worth of learning online, at the computer. Most of the time he follows canned courses on-screen. But for an hour every day, he deals directly, one-to-one over phone or videophone with a tutor. Ideally there’s a teaching assistant on an open phone line throughout the day, each assistant dealing with a few dozen students. In early years, parents will need to help here too. And each child needs a mentor who advises parents on courses and keeps track of the student’s progress. The wealthy conservative foundation, think tank or consortium that spends liberally to get this idea off the ground will probably provide mentors, in early years, from its own staff.

The online courses—some exist already but not enough—are produced by teaching maestros. As these new schools gather momentum, they will make use, as tutors or assistants, of the huge number of people who are willing and able to help children in some topic for a few hours a week but can’t or won’t teach full time: college and graduate students and retirees, lawyers, accountants, housewives, professors.

Parents must be far more involved in children’s educations than most are today. They must choose—with online help and advice from mentors and friends—a set of courses for each child every year. They must talk to their children about school every day, to make sure things are moving forward. They might need to take turns supervising the class. A few will have taken the hugely time-consuming step of organizing the school to begin with.

Obviously these schools aren’t for everyone. But for many thousands of students, they are likely to work well—and better every year, as the pool of courseware, tutors and assistants grows.

And that vision isn’t the most troubling part. Read the comments.

I’ll say it again: The key question we need to be asking AND answering is “What value do schools have in a world where technology can deliver the traditional curriculum and raise standardized test scores "better” than teachers can?“ Even if that last part is just perception. 

If we can’t answer that question compellingly, we’re toast. 

The “Immeasurable” Part 2

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I’ve been thinking about ways to represent the emphasis on the measurable that I wrote about a few weeks ago, and I’ve come up with this graph which, I think, comes close to capturing the problem right now. 

What I’m trying to get at is that our school assessment lives primarily in the bottom left part of that graph, and that we rarely if ever get to the “immeasurable” stuff that resides toward the top right. To put it another way, we focus in schools on that which is quantifiable when, I think, our real value as places of learning rests in that messy stuff that isn’t.

What do you think? Am I capturing something worth capturing here? Am I missing something? 

Our New Value Proposition

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George Seimens writes about higher ed here, but I wonder to what extent this is relevant for K-12 as well:

What is valuable, however, is that which can’t be duplicated without additional input costs: personal feedback and assessment, contextualized and personalized navigation through complex topics, encouragement, questioning by a faculty member to promote deeper thinking, and a context and infrastructure of learning. Basically: human input costs make education valuable. We can’t duplicate personal interaction without spending more money. We can scale content, but we can’t scale encouragement. We can improve lecturing through peer teaching, but we can’t scale the timely interventions and nudges by faculty that influence deeper learning. [Emphasis mine.]

As schooling becomes more “personalized” through technology (and it will), our articulated value will have to change away from content delivery and more to a focus on the learning process. Still up for debate for me is to what extent to which that human input is done face to face or virtually. (See the Granny Cloud, for instance.)

Gaming Gains Respect

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From the Shameless Self-Promotion Dept, here is the cover story on gaming I wrote for the latest issue of District Administration magazine.

Seven-year-old Chanse, a first grader in Kathleen Gerard’s classroom at PS 116 in New York City, is in a “World of Goo.” On an iPad, he’s using his index finger to pull little black animated “goo balls” around the screen and to connect them in an attempt to build what will end up being a flimsy but balanced bridge made of oily glop. He’s building across chasms and cliffs, avoiding windmills and spikes, trying to connect to a pipe that will suck up any goo that he didn’t use to score him big points.

“It’s tricky, but it’s a lot of fun,” Chanse says. “There’s so many ways you can go. But I’m good at it. On my mom’s phone, I beat the whole game.”

Read on here…

“Amplifying” Education…Not

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So here’s the latest salvo over the education bridge by people who have a vastly different ideas of how to improve “learning” than the progressive minority:

Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate that owns FOX News and the Wall Street Journal, among other properties—on July 23 unveiled its new K-12 education business, called Amplify, and said it was partnering with AT&T to fund a pilot project that aims to put tablet computers in students’ hands in the coming school year.

But it’s not just about the hardware, which will be free to selected schools:

The idea is to put tablet computers into the hands of students for use at school and at home. The system tracks their progress and is meant to tailor lessons to each student’s level.

The idea 

…brings together the student assessment software business Wireless Generation with a new curriculum it is developing.

And as you read on, you see there are whole bunches of ways to make money in this deal down the road:

Wireless Generation founder Larry Berger said the pilot project was not just meant to convert participating schools into future customers. He said it was a way to improve the system and prove it works.  “There’s no way to do high-quality research and development without working in schools,” he said. Once the pilot project is complete, the company hopes to market its services to as many schools as possible.

Again, I don’t begrudge businesses making money. My struggle here is with the thinking that would move schools and boards to work with these folks to try to layer technology onto an outdated delivery model for narrow, increasingly irrelevant curricular goals that are now being used to pit schools against schools, teachers against teachers, and kids against kids. 

Makes total sense, right?

“Amplifying” Education…Not

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So here’s the latest salvo over the education bridge by people who have a vastly different ideas of how to improve “learning” than the progressive minority:

Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate that owns FOX News and the Wall Street Journal, among other properties—on July 23 unveiled its new K-12 education business, called Amplify, and said it was partnering with AT&T to fund a pilot project that aims to put tablet computers in students’ hands in the coming school year.

But it’s not just about the hardware, which will be free to selected schools:

The idea is to put tablet computers into the hands of students for use at school and at home. The system tracks their progress and is meant to tailor lessons to each student’s level.

The idea 

…brings together the student assessment software business Wireless Generation with a new curriculum it is developing.

And as you read on, you see there are whole bunches of ways to make money in this deal down the road:

Wireless Generation founder Larry Berger said the pilot project was not just meant to convert participating schools into future customers. He said it was a way to improve the system and prove it works.  “There’s no way to do high-quality research and development without working in schools,” he said. Once the pilot project is complete, the company hopes to market its services to as many schools as possible.

Again, I don’t begrudge businesses making money. My struggle here is with the thinking that would move schools and boards to work with these folks to try to layer technology onto an outdated delivery model for narrow, increasingly irrelevant curricular goals that are now being used to pit schools against schools, teachers against teachers, and kids against kids. 

Makes total sense, right?

Redefine “Better”

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I’m constantly provoked by Umair Haque’s essays in the Harvard Business Review, and his bit on “Declare Your Radicalness” is no exception. The whole essay is definitely worth the read, as are many of the comments, but as is often the case, there was one line that really jumped out:

“…We can’t merely call for a set of broken institutions to work slightly better, to restore the present to the state of the past. We’ve got to redefine better; to redesign the future.”

This isn’t news; I’ve been harping about the problems with settling for “better” for a while now. We need different, not better, and I think that’s what Haque is advocating for here as well. As in:

  • We don’t need better assessments; we need different assessments that help us understand students as learners and constructors of their own ongoing education instead of knowers of information and narrow skills.
  • We don’t need better teachers; we need different teachers who see their roles as master learners first and content guides or experts second. 
  • We don’t need better schools; we need different schools that function as communities of inquiry and learning instead of delivery systems for a highly proscribed, traditional curriculum.

And so on…

Are these ideas radical? For some, I’m sure they are. And I know there is a lot more radical thinking about “education” out there than I can come close to. But the idea of a fully networked, progressive learning environment would for the vast majority constitute different and would require us, as Haque suggests, to redefine the future. 

The Needle Moves Away From Schools Some More

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From an ISTE wrap-up by Sarah Cargill:

Startups are moving the financial needle of the education marketplace. They’ve said that they’ve had enough with the top-down, slow P.O. buying structure of school districts and they’ve decided to name new targets: students and parents. As it turns out, they’re spot on and parents are hungry to take their children’s learning into their own hands – and homes.

And where the startups go…

Most parents will be unwilling or unable to take their kids’ learning “into their own homes;” I get that. But don’t underestimate the pull of marketers who will frame this as a way to “raise student achievement." As long as that’s the way that most parents define "their children’s learning,” there’s a lot of gold in them thar hills.

Unless, of course, we help parents reframe that learning thing. In our “Welcome Back!” letters this fall, what if we hammered home the idea that command of facts and figures and knowledge and test scores tell us very little any more as to whether or not their children have the literacies and dispositions to flourish in this “new” world of access?  What if we articulated the idea that if parents really want their kids prepared for anything, they need to be in classrooms where we’re focused on solving real and important problems, creating provocative and meaningful work, connecting to other teachers and students from around the world, and doing stuff that can only happen when a vibrant, engaged community of learners gets together to do real work?

Change. The. Narrative.

Open Up Those Budgets

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That technology as education deliverer thing seems to be ramping up. “Smart Education” to boot.

…The Global Smart Education and Learning market is expected to reach $220.0 billion by 2017 at a CAGR of 20.3% from 2012 to 2017.

Smart Education consists of a wide range of technologies that are used to convert traditional education systems into automated virtual learning environment through web based courses, assessment materials, online tutoring, professional development, and data management systems. Smart Education technology will speed the processes of providing curriculum, communicating with and managing the education communities. These technologies comprise of software such as educational ERP to disruptive technologies such as LMS and LCMS. Interactive whiteboards and simulation based learning hardware are also included within the ambit of this smart education market report. [Emphasis mine.]

Follow the money.

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So, I’m going to go so far as to say that I think Jeb Bush’s address to the Education Innovation Summit last month should be required viewing for every parent and educator who wants a better picture of the direction the national conversation around education reform is taking right now. He’s addressing an audience primarily made up of “edupreneurs” who are developing a variety of technologies and businesses around a rethink of how we should do K-12 education. If you can spare the 30 or so minutes, I think you’ll find it to be an eye opening line of thinking, right from the “wartime conditions” comment at the outset. And if you do watch, I’d really love it if you shared your thoughts here afterward. What questions should we be asking about these ideas? And how should we respond, if at all?

(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)

https://willrichardson.com/so-im-going-to-go-so-far-as-to-say-that-i-think/

Wake Up Call

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I think this series of Tweets by Chris Lehmann from the Education Innovation Summit at Arizona State University yesterday pretty much speaks for itself. Read from the bottom up:

I know I’m not the only one who has been suggesting for some time now that we’re at a critical moment in the education conversation in terms of the future of public schooling as we know it, but if you’re an educator and you’re not feeling a sense of foreboding for the near future, I’m not sure what it’s going to take.

The strategy has become really clear: villify unions and teachers through policy and public outcry in ways that effectively compromise our voices when we push back, continue to frame education accountability in terms of our ability to compete against the world (as opposed to collaborate with the world) and, finally, promote more and more objective tests as the way to measure everything from “student achievement” to teacher effectiveness to teacher education programs to, oh, I don’t know, maybe how well the plumbing works. That is the recipe now to a) gain political favor and b) make lots and lots of money.

And it’s working.

I’m not convinced anyone in the conversation wants to do harm to kids. But I am convinced that all of this is being driven by dollars. Tech is a huge part of this, not because it can enhance real learning in all of the ways we share in our network, but because it creates all sorts of efficiencies that are just now being realized. Want to really personalize learning in ways that a single teacher in a classroom can’t? Not a problem. Want to have kids write more, a lot more, while not having to grade any of it? Not a problem.

You get the idea.

Remember this from last November?

This legislative juggernaut has coincided with a gold rush of investors clamoring to get a piece of the K-12 education market. It’s big business, and getting bigger: One study estimated that revenues from the K-12 online learning industry will grow by 43 percent between 2010 and 2015, with revenues reaching $24.4 billion.

And thereyago.

“We need a grass roots rejection of this,” Chris Tweets, and I agree. We as a community of educators who see the learning world in quite a different light really do need to start discussing and debating this in meaningful, ongoing ways.

Anyone up for a conversation (again) on how we really start to do this at scale? 

The “Shift to Networks”

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Just a couple of quotes that found me this morning, some pattern recognition in my sleepy brain.

Joi Ito in the New York Times:

I don’t think education is about centralized instruction anymore; rather, it is the process establishing oneself as a node in a broad network of distributed creativity.

And George Siemens at his blog:

Planned information structures like textbooks and courses simply can’t adapt quickly enough to incorporate network-speed information development. Instead of being the hub of the learning experiences, books, courses, and classrooms become something more like a node in part of a much broader (often global) network. The shift to networks is transformative in how a society organizes itself.

Two pretty smart guys echoing each other and making me think more deeply about what needs to happen to make this a reality in our classrooms. How do we help our students establish themselves as a “node” in a broad, global network of creativity and learning? Shouldn’t that be one of the fundamental questions that drives our work in schools right now?

The answers start, as always, with our own willingness and ability to go there. But they also start with transparently asking the big questions in our schools and communities. In light of the changes that the Web is bringing to our learning lives:

  • What do we mean by learning?
  • What does it mean to be educated?
  • What is our value in a world filled with content and teachers?
  • How do we best help students become patient, self-sufficient, sensitive, intelligent learners?

And finally this from George a couple of weeks ago:

When the education system is synchronized with the interests and passions of learners, the process is invigorating and tremendously motivating. However, when learners and educators have to fight the existing education system in order to learn and teach, it’s time for dramatic change.

Too many of us are fighting the system to learn and teach. We’re out of synch. If we’re not having these conversations in our communities, we really need to be.

SOPA in the Classroom

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As Royan Lee points out, there’s every reason to have a conversation with students about SOPA and PIPA in almost any classroom right now. (If last Wednesday wasn’t a teachable moment, I don’t know what was.) For most older kids, the debate strikes at the heart of their practices online, and even for younger kids, the larger themes are well worth the mention in general terms. My guess, however, is that a very small percentage of students have had a chance to learn and think about those proposals in the presence of peers and teachers.

Why? For one, I wonder how many teachers could lead a cogent discussion about them. The whole world of online interactions and knowledge sharing is not something most teachers yet participate in. But as Royan points out, in order to have a really meaningful conversation about SOPA and PIPA, students need to have a larger context other than the pirating of copyrighted music and films. He writes: 

Do you know what made it a lot easier to have a discussion about SOPA and PIPA in my class? The fact that my students post regularly to the internet, comment on one another’s work, receive comments from the far reaches of the globe, remix work, share links, and honour CC licensed work.

I asked the students how they would feel if their ability to do all of things was restricted, or even taken away, without debate or a tribunal of some variety. The room went silent for a minute which felt like an hour, but we proceeded to have a rich discussion about democracy without ever mentioning the word itself.

I know they still care much more about whether the next Eminem song will get on their iPods, but at least we were speaking about something we really know, not just have heard of.

And Royan can do that because he really know this through his own practice as well. Those conversations in his class would have been far less relevant without that.

2 in 2000

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So here’s a little state of the world update from my recent trip to Wisconsin to speak at the state school board association conference there.

First, let me say there are a lot of folks who are beginning to talk with more relevance around change when it comes to education. The rhetoric, at least, around inquiry and problem based, student-centered classrooms seems to be expanding despite the frequent references to “higher student achievement” and “college readiness” that at the end of the day still drives the conversation around reform. As most know, Wisconsin is at the center of the firestorm when it comes to rethinking education, and not much of that rethink resonates with the real world, to be honest. But I met a lot of people who seem at least to be waking up to the realities of the moment and who seem willing to engage deeply in the big questions that all of us have to be asking when it comes to what best serves our students and their learning lives.

Two moments of zen…

First, as I normally do, I asked the 2,000 or so folks in attendance to raise their hands if I could go onto Google and find examples of their best practice or thinking around how to meet the educational challenges of the day and learn from their experiences or connect with them for a conversation. Two hands went up. Two. I know that most of these folks were school board members, but the silence that followed really struck me. How can they make policy and advocate for meaningful changes in what happens in schools without any practical sense of the connected, transparent world in which we now exist?

Second, US Senator Herb Kohl was in attendance (at least until I got up to speak…maybe someone warned him.) Twenty-four years in the senate, a man respected in Wisconsin and obviously well-liked. He helped present some awards to teachers and gave a short, very supportive speech to the audience thanking them for their work with kids in their state. Seemed like a very nice, thoughtful person.

But I couldn’t help thinking as I watched him amble out of the hall that there’s no way he has any clue about what’s really happening with education right now. In fact, in this country run by primarily old white guys who probably don’t know the difference between a Blackberry and a strawberry, guys who pretty much get their talking points from aides and advisors, I can’t imagine many if any of them have a clue. I think some of them probably woke up a bit with the whole SOPA protest, but by and large, I wonder to what extent our leaders can even hold a conversation around the ways in which the Web is impacting education. And the money to keep things status quo is flowing on Capitol Hill.

Sigh. Sigh.

What Qualities do “Bold Schools” Share?

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First, let me thank everyone who commented and Tweeted examples of “bold schools” over the last few days. Very much appreciated, and over the next few weeks I’m planning to dig into the list and make some connections and inquiries around the learning that’s going on in those places. Meantime, if you have any other ideas for schools that might be worth checking out, I’d invite you to add them to the doc. 

Over the past month or so, I’ve been trying to come up with some “qualities” that might help separate a “bold” school from an “old” school. Actually, much of this whole effort stems from a similar search a couple of months ago by Sam Chaltain to find “the world’s most transformative learning environments.” (His list is a great starting point as well.) Sam decided to use the QED Transformational Change Model to use as a benchmark, and while I like the general tenor of the qualities listed there, I’m hoping to focus it down to a more manageable list.

So, I’m going to offer out the following with hopes that you’ll chime in with reactions, feedback, push back, and ideas toward creating a clearer picture of how to describe schools that really are trying to move toward a technology-rich, student-centered, inquiry-based learning practice that effectively prepares kids for the required skills and dispositions and realities of the world today and yet also prepares them to pass the test and satisfy the current expectations of parents and policy makers. Places, importantly, where those two things are not mutually exclusive ideas. 

So, with a minimum of description, I’m thinking “bold” schools are:

1. Learning Centered – Everyone (adults, children) is a learner; learners have agency; emphasis on becoming a learner over becoming learned.

2. Questioning – Inquiry based; questions over answers

3. Authentic – School is real life; students and teachers do real work for real purposes.

4. Digital – Every learner (teacher and student) has a computer; technology is seamlessly integrated into the learning process; paperless

5. Connected – Learning is networked (as are learners) with the larger world; classrooms have “thin walls;” learning is anytime, anywhere, anyone.

6. Literate – Everyone meets the expectations of NCTE’s “21st Century Literacies”

7. Transparent – Learning and experiences around learning are shared with global audiences

8. Innovative – Teachers and students “poke the box;” Risk-taking is encouraged.

9. Provocative – Leaders educate and advocate for change in local, state and national venues.

I want to delve into each one of these in more detail, and my hope is that as I visit schools this year I’ll be able to connect these ideas to stories and practice that make them come to life. 

But for now, what do you think? What am I missing? How else might you describe a “bold school” as I’ve defined it above?

It’s 2012: Help Me Find Some “Bold Schools”

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For lots of reasons, some of which I articulate here, 2012 feels like it’s shaping up to be a critical year in the conversation about schools. Politics and money are no doubt driving the mainstream conversation, but I sense an Occupy Wall Street-ish push back coming from a lot of parents and educators that seems to be finding some traction as well. In fact I’ve had some interesting conversations of late with some very “successful” public schools who have hit their testing boiling point and are starting to resist the status quo. As this year starts, I’m actually feeling a bit optimistic for the first time in a long time. Not optimistic that change will come any time soon. Not optimistic that we’ll adequately deal with the poverty problem that is a the root of so much about what is wrong with this country and its education system. But instead, optimistic that we might at least be on the verge of gaining a voice in the larger conversation around real equality in education, equality that in some part stands on regular, dependable access to technology and the Web.

Given that window, we need schools that are bold in their practice right now. And by “bold” I mean schools that make sure their kids pass the test and get “college ready” because, unfortunately, that’s about the only definition of “success” that people want to talk about right now, but also schools that prepare their kids for a world that the tests and the definitions of “readiness” or “achievement” haven’t caught up to yet. A world that I think is so wonderfully articulated by the National Council Teachers of English 21st Century literacies that I keep trotting out wherever I go. In other words, bold schools are the ones that do both, because to do anything less at the moment would not serve our students in the ways they need to be served. Equally important, bold schools are the ones that know that those two outcomes are not mutually exclusive. You look at SLA or High Tech High and you see that creating student-centered, inquiry-based, technology-rich learning opportunities in our classrooms can help kids navigate the world they live in AND pass the test. 

What a concept.

To that end, I’ve decided to dust off my journalism degree this year and do some “real” reporting and writing about those schools that are being “bold” in that context. As much as my travels will allow for side trips and site visits and interviews of teachers and students and leaders in those spaces, I want to really wrap my brain around what’s special and replicable about those schools and share them back out. Who knows, there may be a book in it as well.

Along the way, I’d like your help, if you’re so inclined. And my first request is to help me identify some schools that I might visit. But one caveat: I want these to be entire schools where that type of boldness is being displayed, not isolated classrooms or teachers. I’m looking for places where there has been a commitment as a school community to the best of what a progressive education can offer along with an immersion in technology and connectedness to the world. Schools whose teachers and whose graduates are literate by NCTE standards. And schools that are advocating in their communities for this different path. These schools can be public or private and anywhere in the world.

Any come to mind? If so, please note them in the comments.

At some point in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be asking you to help me flesh out in more detail the characteristics of bold schools. I’m hoping to have lots of these conversations at SLA during Educon in a few weeks. I’m sure I’ll be picking a lot of people’s brains while there. 

Regardless, my sincerest wish for you to set a powerful path for your work and learning this year. As someone who may or may not be Goethe once said:

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

Let’s be bold this year. 

“The Network is Literal Survival”

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Some interesting thoughts on networks by Deborah Mills-Scofield:

For me, the network is literal survival. My family, throughout history, escaped to places where we had family or friends who would support, hide, and in the case of America letting my mom and grandparents enter, sponsor us. No sponsor, no entry; no entry, Auschwitz. Without the network, the odds of survival were slim to none. Fortunately, for most of us this is not the case. But don’t let that negate the importance of the network for your survival.

Without the network, you don’t get new ideas into your organization, you don’t see trends and issues that affect you and your customers, you don’t grow and develop your people with new challenges and opportunities, you aren’t attractive for young talent, you don’t learn about new technologies or business models, you don’t create new markets and you risk deluding yourself with your own ideas. You don’t increase your own value and advance your own career. Without the network you stagnate, you become stale. With the network you grow, provide meaningful and valuable solutions to your customers and not just survive, but thrive.

Much of this rings true for our learning networks as well, assuming, of course, we’ve done good job of including a diverse set of voices in the mix. 

The “Dirty Work of Education”

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No question, one of the most talked about, Tweeted about, blogged and written about ideas in the past year has been the “flipped classroom,” the idea that we can use technology to deliver the “lecture” as the homework and then use class time, ideally, to bring the concepts to life in meaningful, real world ways. And it’s been interesting to watch the “debate” around the merits. 2011 ed tech media darling Sal Khan and his Khan Academy supporters would tell you it’s a transformative, new way of thinking about the classroom fueled by technology. Detractors argue it’s old wine in new bottles, that a lecture is a lecture regardless of form, and that at best the opportunity is to help kids who need remediation or extra help.

While I’m still leaning to the latter (I’ve encouraged my own kids to use Khan as a way of answering questions about the concepts they’re covering in the classroom), my visit last week with the folks at Knewton has me wondering if “flipping” is going to be around very long at all regardless the positives or negatives. And even more, I’m wondering if Knewton’s vision of its role in education is in some ways as brilliant as it is inevitable given the direction things have turned.

In case you’re not up to speed on what Knewton is doing, here’s the brief from their website:

Knewton’s award-winning Adaptive Learning Platform™ uses proprietary algorithms to deliver a personalized learning path for each student, each day. Knewton’s technology identifies each student’s strengths, weaknesses and unique learning style. Taking into account both personal proficiencies and course requirements, the platform continuously tailors learning materials to each student’s exact needs, delivering the most relevant content in the most efficient and effective form.

But here’s some of what I found out during my visit. First, the data crunching that their platform does is mind-boggling. Without getting too far into the minutia, it’s not just identifying strengths and weaknesses. Basically, after a fairly short period of time working with Knewton, the platform can begin to identify, for example, what time of day is “best” for a student to be studying science as well as a myriad of other tendencies that then allows the platform to select the most effective stacks of content in its database based on what has been most successful for students with a similar profile. In the next year as the network of Knewton users grows, it will then be able to connect individual students to other users who share those profiles, allowing them to ask questions, work problems and help each other learn in real time. In other words, it’s able to “socially personalize” (my words) the content learning interaction solely using the technology. And more.

The bottom line? Knewton wants to do “the dirty work of education,” the content part that we’re so hepped up about testing. CEO Jose Ferreira feels that by putting individual students into Knewton’s data-driven, highly personalized and adaptable learning environment, they will more effectively learn the concept mastery necessary to then do great things in the classroom with teachers who spend far less time on skills and far more time on the practical application of the skills in real life. To put it another way, Jose says “we want to fix the factory side of education and do it better and let teachers do the important stuff that technology can’t.” When I asked him about other entrepreneurs who seemed much more focused on just having students do better on the test, he said “the practical application is the sea change; that’s the part that’s going to benefit kids.”

Let’s be really clear. This is not Khan Academy, which at the end of the day is a one-size-fits-all lecture with a little curricular personalization built in. This is one on one (student to machine) that creates a different path to understanding based on the individual needs and dispositions of the student. Your path to learning algebra in Knewton will be decidedly different from mine, but at the end of the day, in theory, we’ll both have mastered the concepts.

Let’s also be clear that this is still in the early stages of development, and Knewton hasn’t made any inroads into the K-12 space…yet. No question, its recent $33 million investment from Pearson is going to steer it down that path soon enough. Currently, Knewton’s being used at a number of universities, primarily for remediation. For instance, at Arizona State University, 30% of incoming freshmen need remediation in math. (Says a lot about the current standardized testing regime, doesn’t it? Every one of those kids had to pass the math section in their states I’m sure.) So rather than spend teacher and class time getting those students up to speed, ASU uses Knewton to do the bulk of that work. But it’s not hard to see the path to Knewton-esque platforms becoming the primary methods of concept instruction (and, inevitably, more.)

Which, as I’ve been droning on about here and elsewhere for most of this highly disruptive year in learning, compels us to begin figuring out both the challenges and the opportunities of what is quickly becoming a viable “new story” for education whether we like it or agree with it or see it as good for our kids or not. I’d love to get rid of the factory side of education, not just do it better, but that’s a far off reality given the current climate. So what are the questions we need to be asking at this moment?

Here are some of the random bullet points that have been hanging around in my brain of late:

  • For some kids, especially those in classrooms with 50 other students who have little chance at having any real differentiated, personalized instruction, these technologies will be a boon. In schools where the emphasis is on the factory, however wrong we may feel that may be, being able to do the factory better will be a good thing for the students ensconced there.
  • But having said that, if we continue to value the factory and the assessments that test for that factory learning at the expense of real world problem solving and effective writing and speaking skills and adaptability and all of those important learning dispositions that we want kids to have, schools in their current iteration are toast. We’ll simply be Knewton factories, irony intended. (Interestingly, Jose has a bit of a different view on the whole testing debate, saying that he feels raising test scores is important if only to reduce the focus on the test. “Once we get everyone passing the test better, the pressure will come off.” Not sure I agree, but I hadn’t heard that line of thinking before.) 
  • While it’s great in concept that teachers will be “freed up” to do the really important learning with students who have concept mastery, I wonder what percentage of teachers will be able to take advantage of that opportunity in meaningful ways. Let’s be honest, by and large, we’re still preparing new teachers to be curriculum delivery specialists, not participants in and facilitators of deep student inquiry in the classroom.
  • And to what extent (and when) will technology make inroads into the practical application piece of it as well? Digital gaming environments are already becoming more socially constructivist and focusing on problem solving, and they will continue to evolve to present content and skills and application. What, with all of that, is the role of the face to face teacher and physical space classroom? (I think there is still an extremely important role for both, btw, but it’s one we’re not articulating very clearly yet.)
  • And finally, who gets Knewton and who doesn’t? While I think it’s admirable that the company wants to use 20% of its profits to provide free access to students in schools or developing countries that can’t afford it, I don’t think we’ll escape a developing divide in this type of “learning” either.

Look, at the end of this day, at least, I’m feeling conflicted about much of this. I worry that we’re heading down a path that will turn schools into private, for-profit spaces that will put our kids’ best interests behind bottom lines, and that rather than starting a decidedly new conversation around learning, we’re just going to keep reaching for the low-hanging fruit of knowing, the stuff that’s easy to assess, the efficiencies that businesses love. That Nation article from a few weeks ago paints that picture all too compellingly, and as one of my network friends said in an e-mail after reading it, “last one out, turn the lights off.” It could be that bad.

But I can’t help holding out hope that at some point, the idiocy of the current regime will fall out of favor. I think a growing number of parents (like me) who have pretty much had it with the current emphasis will find themselves wondering what relevance much of our kids’ education has in their ability to live and flourish in a growingly complex world, and they’ll start really screaming “Stop!” (Hey, a guy can dream.) 

I’m sure for some, that test score will always be a powerful way of defining “educated” for their kids, and if technology can raise that score, they’ll buy in. But we educators who see learning as more than a score have to advocate even more loudly for for a different definition. While there may be a certain appeal in the world Knewton proposes, I worry it will be too easy to lose the best of what that world offers simply because the good stuff that teachers do that technology can’t isn’t easy. It’s messy, complex, resistant to standardization which despite being better for kids, is harder to define and deliver. In the near term, that “defining and delivering” part may be our greatest challenge of all.

“Forget About Your Children”

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One of the things I’ve been wondering more and more as I’ve been reading and thinking at length about the recent wave of corporate and private (mostly online) inroads into education is what happens when it no longer is about the best schools for our kids but, instead, the best education service? As more and more choices and paths crop up for MY children to “get an education” that are not dependent on geography or place, what happens to that sense of community that currently comes with a local education?

I know that most online providers include some type of “blended” approach to their thinking. They understand that schools will not be going away any time soon, and so they have to combine the virtual and the physical in some way. But I can’t shake this feeling that given the competitive nature of the education game to begin with, there will be a lot of folks who will jump on the virtually personalized education bandwagon with little thought as to the effect on the larger community. 

Diane Ravitch’s quote from a MisEducation Nation panel a couple of months ago brought it home for me even more:

But this is what I see as the next wave: demonize the public schools, create this marketplace where people think, instead of thinking of the common good, instead of thinking of community, instead of thinking what’s good for our children, we say, what’s in it for me? What about my child? Forget about your children, that’s your problem. My child. That’s market thinking…But the goal is to move away from public education as a public responsibility, like the fire department, like the police department, like public parks, like other kinds of public facilities. Privatize public education so that everyone becomes a consumer, children become products, and entrepreneurs can find lots and lots of money to be made. That is somehow going to make us globally competitive.

There is more than an ounce of truth in that, I fear. And that’s why I think we have a huge marketing job of our own to do when it comes to the value of schools, one that, so far at least, diverges clearly from the achievement-as-higher-test-scores narrative that most “providers” and vendors are selling. 

I can’t stop asking, what do we mean by learning? By education? What are now the fundamental, powerful advantages to places and communities in a world where instruction and content and answers are a screen tap away?

Questions for Knewton

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I’m looking forward to spending about an hour or so on Thursday morning in NYC with Jose Ferreira, the founder and CEO of Knewton. In case you may not be familiar with the company’s work, here’s a short synopsis from a release announcing their new partnership with Pearson:

Knewton’s award-winning Adaptive Learning Platform™ uses proprietary algorithms to deliver a personalized learning path for each student, each day. Knewton’s technology identifies each student’s strengths, weaknesses and unique learning style. Taking into account both personal proficiencies and course requirements, the platform continuously tailors learning materials to each student’s exact needs, delivering the most relevant content in the most efficient and effective form.

I’m trying to make sense of this new-ish personalized “learning” world fueled by technology and data, and I’ve got quite a few questions that I hope to ask Jose that will help me understand how he and his company define learning and how Knewton does or doesn’t help develop lifelong learning dispositions in its users. Obviously, there are a lot of potential implications for schools, teachers, classrooms and students. I’m wondering what you might be interested in knowing as well.

Any questions you think I should consider asking?

Privacy in a Networked World

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danah boyd articulates the move from private to public in online spaces about as well as anyone, I think:

Social media has prompted a radical shift. We’ve moved from a world that is “private-by-default, public-through-effort” to one that is “public-by-default, private-with-effort.” Most of our conversations in a face-to-face setting are too mundane for anyone to bother recording and publicizing. They stay relatively private simply because there’s no need or desire to make them public. Online, social technologies encourage broad sharing and thus, participating on sites like Facebook or Twitter means sharing to large audiences. When people interact casually online, they share the mundane. They aren’t publicizing; they’re socializing. While socializing, people have no interest in going through the efforts required by digital technologies to make their pithy conversations more private. When things truly matter, they leverage complex social and technical strategies to maintain privacy. [Emphasis mine.]

And this is more than just knowing how to “leverage complex social and technical strategies to maintain privacy,” something that in and of itself should be a required literacy for anyone using social media. (Are we teaching this?) It’s also about how we consume and share what others make public. 

We had this discussion during a Leading Edge session yesterday, and I was struck by how little I had really thought about that piece of it. That it’s not just about making good decisions when we publish, but it’s also about making good decisions when we consume what others publish as well. Not so much in terms of what’s good content and what’s not so good content. But in terms of what responsibility each one of us has as gatekeeper for the other. 

Are we teaching that, too?

All of which leads me back to why, I think, we have to help move educators into these public spaces online. There are levels of complexity here that can only be understood by participating, and while I realize there are risks, we have to find ways to mitigate them for the sake of teaching our kids those network literacies that will allow them to flourish. 

“My Teacher is an App”

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(This is a long one.)

So I hope no one minds if I continue to try to document the ways in which “education” is being reframed in this country at the peril, I think, of losing everything that is best about schools and teachers and classrooms.

If you’re not up to speed with these reframing efforts, the above titled article in the Wall Street Journal this morning should do the trick. The canary is singing in full throat. And let’s not make any bones about it: the Journal has a vested interest in making the type of online learning it describes successful as it owns a large stake in many of the vendors trying to occupy the space.

The author would like us to believe that education is being “radically rethought” by the online and “blended” options that are available to students. But let’s be clear; the only things being rethought here are the delivery models of a traditional education and, most importantly, the financial models to sustain it and make lots of money for outside businesses who see technology and access as a way to not only line their pockets with taxpayer money but also bust the unions that stand in their way. 

It’s a disheartening and disturbing vision of what an education might become:

Tipping back his chair, he studied a computer screen listing the lessons he was supposed to complete that week for his public high school—a high school conducted entirely online. Noah clicked on his global-studies course. A lengthy article on resource shortages popped up. He gave it a quick scan and clicked ahead to the quiz, flipping between the article and multiple-choice questions until he got restless and wandered into the kitchen for a snack.

And this vision is exploding:

In just the past few months, Virginia has authorized 13 new online schools. Florida began requiring all public-high-school students to take at least one class online, partly to prepare them for college cybercourses. Idaho soon will require two. In Georgia, a new app lets high-school students take full course loads on their iPhones and BlackBerrys. Thirty states now let students take all of their courses online.

It means the elimination of schools and teachers:

Although some states and local districts run their own online schools, many hire for-profit corporations such as K12 Inc. of Herndon, Va., and Connections Academy in Baltimore, a unit of education services and technology company Pearson PLC. The companies hire teachers, provide curriculum, monitor student performance—and lobby to expand online public education.

And the selling point is not just cost but personalization, which I’ve written about here before.

Advocates say that online schooling can save states money, offer curricula customized to each student and give parents more choice in education.

But this isn’t different. Notice the ways in which the “success” of online schools is being judged.

In California, Rocketship Education, a chain of charter hybrid schools that serves mostly poor and minority kids, has produced state test scores on par with some of the state’s wealthiest schools. Rocketship students spend up to half of each school day in computer labs playing math and literacy games that adjust to their ability level.

At Southwest Learning Centers, a small chain of charter schools in Albuquerque, N.M., standardized test scores routinely outpace state and local averages, according to data provided by the schools. Students complete most lessons online but come into class for teacher support and hands-on challenges, such as collaborating to design and build a weight-bearing bridge. The high school recently received a statewide award for its students’ strong scores on the ACT college admissions test.

And don’t miss the point. It’s all about how we define learning. Listen to this one parent quoted in the article.

“I don’t think learning has to happen at school, in a classroom with 30 other kids and a teacher…corralling all children into learning the same thing at the same pace,” she says. “We should rethink the environment we set up for education.”

It’s an easy way for us to minimize the role of the teacher in a child’s education:

The amount of teacher interaction varies. At online-only schools, instructors answer questions by email, phone or the occasional video conference; students will often meet classmates and teachers on optional field trips and during state exams. Southwest Learning Centers requires just 14 hours a week of classroom time and lets students set their own schedules, deciding when—or whether—to come in on any given day. And in Miami, students at iPrep Academy work in free-flowing “classrooms” with no doors or dividing walls but plenty of beanbag chairs and couches. Teachers give short lectures and offer one-on-one help, but most learning is self-directed and online.

“If it seems strange, that’s because it is strange,” says Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of the Miami schools. But he sees no point in forcing the iPod generation to adapt to a classroom model that has changed little in 300 years.

Cut teachers, save money.

The growth of cybereducation is likely to affect school staffing, which accounts for about 80% of school budgets. A teacher in a traditional high school might handle 150 students. An online teacher can supervise more than 250, since he or she doesn’t have to write lesson plans and most grading is done by computer.

In Idaho, Alan Dunn, superintendent of the Sugar-Salem School District, says that he may cut entire departments and outsource their courses to online providers. “It’s not ideal,” he says. “But Idaho is in a budget crisis, and this is a creative solution.”

Other states see potential savings as well. In Georgia, state and local taxpayers spend $7,650 a year to educate the average student in a traditional public school. They spend nearly 60% less—$3,200 a year—to educate a student in the statewide online Georgia Cyber Academy, saving state and local tax dollars. Florida saves $1,500 a year on every student enrolled online full time.

Make war with the unions.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who co-founded the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which promotes online schools nationwide, says learning will be “digitized” with or without cooperation from the unions. “I’m happy to go to war over this,” he says.

And make, potentially, lots of money.

Last year News Corp. bought a 90% stake in Wireless Generation, an education-technology company that sells hand-held computers to teachers to help monitor student performance.

And there, in a nutshell, is the future. (And to be really scared, read the comments on the article.)

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Look, not for nothing, but if we don’t start writing and advocating for a very different vision of learning in real classrooms, one that is focused not just on doing the things we’ve been doing better but in ways that are truly reinvented, one that prepares kids to be innovators and designers and entrepreneurs and, most importantly, learners, we will quickly find ourselves competing at scale with cheaper, easier alternatives that won’t serve our kids as well.

No doubt this will be hard. And I wonder if we can pull it off. But here’s the other thing. It’s not so much about tools and technologies as it is about that learning thing. To be honest, I think we’ve all got to stop cranking out blog posts and Tweets that tout new tools and the “10 Best Ways…” and instead begin to make the case in our blogs and in person that technology or not, this is about what is best for our kids. That in this moment, 20th Century rules will not work for 21st Century schools. That direct instruction and standardization will make us less competitive, not more. That those strategies will make our kids less able to create a living for themselves in the worlds they will live in. That as difficult as it may be for some to come to terms with, this moment requires a whole scale “radical rethink” in much different terms from the one Jeb Bush wants, the same type of rethink that newspapers and media and businesses and others are undergoing.

And it’s time to raise our game, write comments and op-ed pieces and journal articles and books, have conversations with parents (or at least give them some reading to do), speak up at conferences and board meetings and elsewhere, not about the wonders of technology but about the changed landscape of literacies and skills and dispositions that the current system, online or off, is not able to provide to our kids in its current iteration. That schools can be places of wonder and exploration and inquiry and creation, not just force fed curriculum 75% of which our kids will forget within months of consuming it. That learning and reform as they are currently being defined are both nothing of the sort. 

</rant>

“My Teacher is an App.” Really? If that’s fine with you, stay silent. If not, I don’t think it’s ever been clearer where the lines are being drawn.

You are the lead learner in your community. Not Jeb Bush. Not Rupert Murdoch. Not Pearson. You. 

Lead.

The Not So Great Jobs Reality for Kids and Teachers

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Still think we aren’t facing a bigger crisis in the teaching profession than we’re currently talking about? Try this from the Economist this week:

The conventional explanation for America’s current plight is that, at an annualised 2.5% for the most recent quarter (compared with an historical average of 3.3%), the economy is simply not expanding fast enough to put all the people who lost their jobs back to work. Consumer demand, say economists like Dr Tyson, is evidently not there for companies to start hiring again. Clearly, too many chastened Americans are continuing to pay off their debts and save for rainy days, rather than splurging on things they may fancy but can easily manage without.

There is a good deal of truth in that. But it misses a crucial change that economists are loathe to accept, though technologists have been concerned about it for several years. This is the disturbing thought that, sluggish business cycles aside, America’s current employment woes stem from a precipitous and permanent change caused by not too little technological progress, but too much. The evidence is irrefutable that computerised automation, networks and artificial intelligence (AI)—including machine-learning, language-translation, and speech- and pattern-recognition software—are beginning to render many jobs simply obsolete.

This is unlike the job destruction and creation that has taken place continuously since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, as machines gradually replaced the muscle-power of human labourers and horses. Today, automation is having an impact not just on routine work, but on cognitive and even creative tasks as well. A tipping point seems to have been reached, at which AI-based automation threatens to supplant the brain-power of large swathes of middle-income employees.

That makes a huge, disruptive difference. Not only is AI software much cheaper than mechanical automation to install and operate, there is a far greater incentive to adopt it—given the significantly higher cost of knowledge workers compared with their blue-collar brothers and sisters in the workshop, on the production line, at the check-out and in the field. [Emphasis mine.]

A few observations here. First, what does this mean for the kids in our classrooms (and in our own homes)? How are we going to have to think differently about their potential for employment in light of these trends? What are the broad brush outlines of what a job will look like for our kids?

And second, what will be the impact on the teaching profession? I really invite pushback here: am I wrong to say that if we keep defining learning as the consumption of a discrete curriculum that can be easily assessed that sooner rather than later economies of scale will radically restructure what we as “professionals” do in schools?

Good on those 400 Long Island principals who have stood up and said “Enough!” to the state of NY in terms of teacher evaluation and student assessment. (Let me note, however, that they’re not appreciably moving the “learning” conversation to any better place in their arguments.) How long will it take for teachers to start articulating a different vision for schools and classrooms that, aside from being better for kids, might just save their jobs?

“Blowing Up” Education

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So, regardless of whether you think Khan Academy adds real value to the learning conversation, don’t miss the shift in rhetoric around the potential:

In case you haven’t noticed, lots of people want to “blow up education” right now. And the monied interests are going to have much to say about which direction education takes from here. I know I’m sounding like a broken MP3 here, but the question once again is whether or not the focus moving forward will be on learning or test taking. 

We do have a voice in this, obviously. We need to start using it.