June 2005 Newsletter

Volume 8 Issue 11  June 2005

Student engagement in the classroom is without doubt the greatest challenge for educators.  The obvious question becomes:  “how can we change the system quickly enough before disengagement becomes an endemic student culture?”

If school were a commercial product then we would be faced with the following scenario:

§         The CEO would be facing the sack

§         The shareholders earnings would be diminishing dramatically and they would not be happy

§         The marketing people would be frantically searching to see where the market was moving to, and redesigning the education product/system/environment

§         The salespeople would be asking for a new product/system/environment to sell

§         The employees would be wondering why things were not changing so that the company could make money and keep them employed

“In the US almost $50 billion each year is spent on education, so why are kids not learning?  40 percent of students lack basic reading skills, and academic performance is dismal.  In response to this crisis, schools are skilling-and-drilling their way "back to basics," moving toward mechanical instruction methods that rely on line-by line gripping for teachers, and endless multiple choice testing for kids.  Consequently, rather than learning how to think they are simply learning how to memorise."

Wired  Magazine May 2003 www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/view.html?pg=1

Part of the problem is that we have taken the artistic notion of bricolage; the random association of disparate elements; and applied it to teaching and learning within the first education paradigm.  The bricolage approach to education through the first half of the 20th-century was based on historical notions of what schools should be, but the basic elements (content, assessment strategies, social elements), were quite random.

The technology implementation process through the 1980s and 90s and the beginning of the 21st century saw that the bricolage approach to education migrate to the collage approach; the superimposition of selected and evocative elements.  Once again the technology was simply bolted onto the notion of what education was, as technology was seen not only as the essential core in the work place but also the essential core of educational transformation as we migrated to the second education paradigm.  The result of the "collage approach" to education has been extremely disappointing albeit its extreme predictability given the advantage of hindsight.

The third phase of this artistic metaphor[1] is the montage: the integration of elements into a single pictorial composition made by juxtaposing or superimposing many elements. The juxtaposition of socially minded educators and clearly impersonal technology elements conveys a powerful new approach. These two, together with the many other elements contribute to the overall effect of the montage which, when viewed from a distance presents a picture that is far greater than the sum of the elements. A montage that is constructed effectively and with flair conveys an overreaching cultural message while the essential elements recede into the back-ground.   

The second half of the first ten years of the 21st century will be about taking the collage view of education and building it into an effective montage.  This montage must engage students and provide them with a desire to develop and apply lifelong learning capabilities.

In order to do this we need to set the scene for how we can:

·       Make the technology as transparent as possible.

·       Decide on which core competencies students will need in their lifetime, and provide the opportunity for attaining them.

·       Eliminate large amounts of irrelevant content.

·       Be clear about our schools’ mission and purpose and set achievable and measurable goals.

·       Integrate strong social elements into the teaching and learning processes.

 In order to make the technology transparent it must:

• Be 100 percent reliable
• Be highly intuitive
• Actually improve the efficiency and effectiveness of teaching and learning processes
• Not require cables (wireless please)

In schools, as in a montage each of the separate elements must become blurred so that the net effect of viewing the montage is that you see the big picture and the not the discreet elements. This is not just a pipe dream, it is actually possible. 

Now for another sweeping statement that I will then try to justify: Repeat after me

"The era of the office suite is over; Office is dead!"

Office applications have dominated what many schools have perceived to be the role of technology within education. 

• Word processing skills are worthwhile and have a clear role in facilitating the publication of ideas. 
• Spreadsheet applications are useful to a point.  They are not a matter of life-and-death.
• PowerPoint is useful but people become engrossed in the production process rather than the learning and the presentation/teaching processes.
• Database applications are sophisticated concepts and, while valuable, are not exactly mainstream applications for everyone.

So that leaves us with word processing skills, simple presentations skills and limited spreadsheeting capabilities.  All of these can be done within a web based WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor embedded within an intuitive Learning/Content Management System, or your blogging software.

The problems with office applications are that:

• The native format in which files are saved is proprietary, and if you wish to open these documents you must have the proprietary software loaded on your computer. 
• You also come to grief if you have a range of differently branded computers within your community.  PC files are difficult to read via Apple Macintosh machines and vice versa.
• Files created by proprietary office based systems end up being very large and can take large amounts of time to send over the Internet.
• Office based systems are incredibly complex and 90 percent of people use less than 6 percent of their capability but still pay for 100 percent of the product.

The alternative to office suites is to place material in an online web environment using WYSIWYG editors within sophisticated LSM/CMS environments. The advantages of placing work into an online web based environment include:

• 24/7 access from any Internet enabled computer anywhere
• Interoperability of file formats
• Small file sizes
• The ability to integrate multimedia elements
• The capacity to use hyperlinking
• The ability to search, using recognised search engines for online material
• The capability for editing, sequencing and integrating existing online multimedia content[2].
• Turning resources into re-usable elements by placing them in an online environment under a Creative Commons[3] licence thus avoiding the reinvention of the wheel.
• The Web environment is more consistent with a student’s capacity to deal with information

“Individuals raised with a computer deal with information differently in that "they develop hypertext minds, they leap around".[4] In this group a linear thought process is much less common than bricolage[5], or the ability to piece information together from multiple sources."[6]

In an excellent article entitled "Educating the Net Generation"[7] the research organisation Educause highlights some general trends within each successive generation.  The trends are general only and may not be specific to any one individual but they do highlight particular qualities associated with each generation.

“Few generalizations are entirely correct. However, generalizations—such as those about generations—highlight trends. Today's generations can be described as follows.[8]

Other attributes are also indicative of generational trends (for example, attitude toward changing jobs or locus  community)but one of the most striking is the attitude toward the Internet. For the Net Gen, the Internet is like oxygen; they can't imagine being able to live without it.[9]”

If we look at the stereotyped Net-generation students, their world revolves around instant messaging, (MSN), media player (music), Google, blogging and their i-Pod. An interesting common denominator to all these technologies is that they all contribute to the creation of an individual’s personal world through the sharing of media, ideas and thoughts.  The Net generation keeps in touch, the key themes underpinning their communications being: “what I have learnt” (have you seen the latest song/web site/blog . . .), “social happenings” (Where are you? What are you doing?  Where shall we meet? . . .) and interestingly; “how do you . . .?” (How do I e-mail video, from my phone?  How do you download new ring tones?  What sites did you use for your geography homework?).  Goodness me!

This sounds like an extremely efficient, networked learning organisation!  Could there possibly be some lessons that we as educators could learn from this? The culture that underpins this networked learning organisation differs significantly from both the adult and the school equivalent.

The overall efficiency of the networked student’s learning organisation rates very highly, although the value of the learned content may be questionable in some people's eyes.  The capacity to teach, and learn from each other in a very strong social setting is what sets apart the networked student’s learning organisation in comparison with its adult and school equivalents.  So what are the lessons that we could learn and apply to the school "learning organisation"?

If we look at the student networked learning organisation it conforms perfectly to the statements made earlier in this paper:

·         Make the technology as transparent as possible. [“the technology being wireless, portable, reliable and cost-effective to run.”]

·         Decide on which core competencies we know students will need in their lifetime and provide them with the opportunity to attain them.  [“Give me the skills and teach me how to learn"]
NB: The core competencies that the students require are technical, social and the integration of lifelong learning skills. The OECD DeSeCo[10] (Defining and Selecting Key Competencies, OECD 2003) report identified eight core competency areas.

·         Delete large amounts of irrelevant content. [“Irrelevant content (such as vowels!) is simply not tolerated”.]

·         Be clear about our school’s mission and purpose and set achievable and measurable goals. [“We are connected, keen to learn and teach, in a democratic environment and we want to know what we need to know right now!"]

·         Integrate social elements into the learning process. [“So what are you doing?"] Social elements within the student networked learning organisation are threaded throughout the organisation and underpin the learning and teaching.

There is much we can learn from these "grassroots" learning systems and turning around the Titanic education system before we hit the disengagement iceberg, 9/10 of which is below the education cultural surface is our current and greatest challenge

So, just how difficult is it to apply these principles to the present education system?

This lack of continuity between the creators/managers of the education system and the users/clients of the system is not particularly new but it is becoming an exponentially greater issue for three principal reasons:

·         The introduction of the second education paradigm has seen students begin to realise that if they can spell "Google" then they can find all the knowledge (factual and sometimes right!) they will ever need.  Students are beginning to realise that the teachers’ knowledge, and hence the schools capacity to educate [we are talking about delivering knowledge here, not understanding], is somewhat limited and quite often as redundant as it is out of date.

·         Thanks to wireless, portable and reliable access to the Internet, information and communication technologies have opened up a capability for far cheaper, far more effective informal "education networks" that offer "courses" in almost anything, right now.   More importantly these courses are being taught by their peers, friends of their peers or other external, informal and often free course suppliers in quite an engaging social setting.  After all, if I want to know how to send a text message I am not going to enrol in a University and do a course on it.

·         Those with the technologies described above can create school (learning) systems that provide "knowing" very cheaply, very quickly and in very socially rich environments.  The richness of these communities and the speed with which they work in providing an alternative to traditional "knowing" schools and universities are beginning to challenge historical institutions e.  .

In the past there was only one "education" system and your success in life depended upon jumping through a series of academic hoops and collecting bits of paper which placed you at a particular point in the pecking order in terms of your capability and intelligence in comparison with your peers.  Increasingly it is no longer about pieces of paper defining how capable and intelligent you are but rather what skills, attitudes, values and qualities the individual possesses, how  those skills, attitudes, values and qualities are demonstrated, and a source of verification for those qualifications  . 

This applies to some courses more than others and it especially applies to those courses that have a significant technology input.  Quite often by the time the content has been ratified by the school or university board and the teachers with the skills necessary to deliver the course found, the technology has advanced and the course’s relevancy has diminished considerably before it has even begun. 

In order to be successful in the 21st century, schools and universities are required to be a lot more spontaneous, adapt more quickly to changing community demands and have as their underpinning purpose, the development of essential generic competencies inclusive of appropriate attitudes, values and personal qualities.  For the earlier schooling years (year 0-10) the knowledge base is changing and the balance of teaching students what they should know and providing them with competencies has also shifted significantly.  Increasingly I find myself at conferences saying:

"Only our best, brightest and most passionate must be teachers.  If I could take on the role of the benevolent dictator I would mandate that these people had to spend the first ten years of their working life in the classroom.  Following 10 years in the classroom they would have the skill sets to do anything; to make their millions, to change the world, whatever they wanted to do or even continue to teach!"

As a global teaching fraternity we must make the necessary changes and  in doing so target one attitude in particular: For most of our careers our status as teachers has been centred around a range of qualities and capabilities.  We were perceived, and perceived ourselves as teachers of others and we were somewhat reticent about encouraging others to teach us or admit that we actually didn't know something.  The community reinforced this attitude through their perception that teaching was about "knowing stuff" and teachers knew a lot of "stuff".  The net result is that teachers tend not to be very good learners and are actually quite hard to teach!  This attitude will need to be shifted significantly if we are to adapt to the new teaching and learning environment of which we find ourselves in charge.

As a quick personal test (and yes I know, you hate tests), how many of you can send a text on your mobile phone?  How many of you rely on your children to program the DVD/video recorder?  Who knows how to change the message on your answering machine? Many of you will be quick to respond that you are simply too busy or you don't see that point of sending text messages but quite often these can be excuses, because unfortunately we teachers don't like to admit to others that we don't know something and rather than admit this we often will come up with some quite interesting and wonderfully convoluted excuses for not engaging in new “anythings”.  This may not apply to you but reflect for a moment on those teachers you are working with in your staff room and ask yourself "how teachable are my peers and how quick are they in adopting and applying new ideas?"

This is the greatest limiting factor to our adapting to the very quickly changing learning and teaching environment in which we find ourselves working.  Changing a deeply rooted cultural attitude is very difficult and I recognise the above symptoms and excuses in my own world.  Asking my children how to send a video clip from my mobile phone is a somewhat humbling experience, but for the children, asking how to do something is part of their everyday experience.  They constantly ask each other how to do things, and how to do things better and more efficiently.  This is probably one of the most refreshing aspects of our young people today.  They are quick to admit that they cannot do something (this does not mean they like being told they can't do something), and even quicker to find someone to show them how to do it!  As educators we need to adopt this attitude urgently, no matter how humbling it may be. Once again this just-in-time approach to learning (I need to know something right now), has much to offer the school system, not by replacing it but rather augmenting it.

In essence the Internet used to be inanimate, we used it just like we would use soap.  However the Internet is no longer an object because (as was argued in the earlier in this newsletter), anybody can add content to the Internet now through the use of blogging software, wikkis, WYSIWYG editors, discussion areas, intranets, extranets . . .  The Internet is now personal, it has become a living community.  We are the Web[11] and increasingly the Web reflects us and who we are! Try “Googling” your own name (searching for your own name on the Internet using Google), to discover whether you are already part of this community.

Here are some very interesting statistics from the August 2005 edition of Wired magazine[12].

·         The total number of Web pages, including those that are dynamically created upon request, and document files available through links, exceeds 600 billion. That's 100 pages per person.

·         At any one moment, 50 million auctions (eBay) race through the site.

·         Today, 52 percent of netizens are female

·         In 2005, the average user is a bone-creaking 41 year old.  

·         175,000 books were published and more than 30,000 music albums were released in the US last year. At the same time, 14 million blogs launched worldwide.

An encouraging point for those teachers who are yet to begin their transition to the second education paradigm via the use of information and communication technologies, is that the technology to access the Web is only just maturing to a point where we no longer need to be a geek to have success. The other huge shift is that the averages age for netizens is not 16 but it is actually 41.  The Internet is a tool, a repository and a communication vehicle for anyone who is willing to learn.

The challenges before us are huge, but they are achievable. Professional development in all schools should be focussing on how we can make the transitions[13]      that are required and to develop a strategic plan on the transition process. Unfortunately we simply do not have choice as to whether to do this or to not do this. The result of not making these transitions does not even bear thinking about.  

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