The Edge of Tomorrow - Standing on the verge of a technologically educational revolution.

An Important Message

Jan 18

Parental involvement is one of the most important influencing factors for the educational success of students (source).

Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in the creation of the video above. The video was shared during a parental involvement evening at one of our elementary schools.

All of the students in the school were given a half-sheet of paper with the question, “How can your parent/guardian help you with your learning?” The answers in the video were the unguided responses from the students and represent a sampling of the 264 total responses collected.

I believe the essential message from the students was both clear and powerful. Students want the attention, investment, and care of their parents. They want to sit down and simply spend time with the most important people in their lives. You can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices. It’s powerfully evident.

The content of responses themselves are also very interesting. The vast majority of students asked for help with reading, math, or homework.

This year, we significantly increased our students’ access to technology. We are now 1:1 in grades 5-8, and we have grade level carts of computers at each elementary building in grades preK-4. We are also having excellent conversations about how we should be changing the way we are engaging teaching and learning to create well educated students for the 21st century. I know many people don’t care much for the 21st century nomenclature, but I think it sets important context for our district and community as clearly, the world in which we live now is dramatically different than it was 20 years ago. As it will be when our students complete their formal education in the years to come. We are working to let that impact the way we create learning experiences for our students. We are only three months into the full implementation of this change, so I think this video provides us an excellent opportunity to set a baseline with this type of feedback from our students. I believe if we ask the same question one year from now, we will get a variety of different responses.

The video also presents us, as a district, with an excellent opportunity to consider and discuss the student responses. Are their responses what we hope they would be?

What is it that we hope they would ask their parents/guardians? What does what they say tell us about what we’re saying? Or doing?

If you were to ask your students the same question, what would they say? How could that inform your practice? Your district’s direction? Your focus?

Challenging Seconds

Dec 07

It’s been a while since we talked about photography or video work. Let’s fix that.

Tonight I submitted four entries for the MontBlanc one second video contest. I’d recommend you do the same.

But, that’s not the challenge. It can be if you need it to be, but I have a derivative that I’m going to try, and I’ll invite you to do the same. This idea is a direct inspiration from what’s happening on the MontBlanc site, so I’d recommend you take a little time to go check out the cool stuff being posted there.

I’ve talked about living in the seconds before. It’s something I still think a lot about. The MontBlanc contest reminded me that we can do a lot with a second. Yet, often we try to work in minutes, if not hours, if not days. But it’s the individual second that comprises each of those. And too often in video work, we try to use too many consecutive seconds to tell a story that suffers because of it. Watch this to see just how effective a string of one second clips can be.

So, here’s the challenge

Make a video.
The video must be from 30 to 60 seconds long. Anywhere in between, but not outside of either threshold.
The video must be composed of one second clips. The clips can be either photos or video. But each clip must be exactly 1 second.
Make the video tell a story.
Post a link to your work somewhere. Preferably in the comments below so we can all enjoy, but anywhere where others can enjoy it is really the important part.

That’s it.

Go. Be creative. Make something you’re proud of.

Jumping In

Dec 06

Thank you to those of you who read and/or responded to my last post.

We’ve set the groundwork to start the discussion, but now it’s time to actually jump in. Which, I fear, is often the challenge with social media, ed tech, conferences, and the greater majority of exercises in education. It just sits down at discussion. The legs stop moving and only the mouths seem to work.

Let’s get beyond that.

Starting now.

I think this is a good place to begin. It’s only a brainstorming document, but I’m hoping it will lead to good discussion, which will guide where to go from here. I wish we could all find a way to just get together for a week and dig into some meaningful discussion about it all that would yield some output that could help guide the way technology is, and isn’t, being used in learning. Since we don’t have that luxury, I do believe we can make great progress using the means and minds we have available to us.

So, please add to this document. Invite others to add to it. Check back and react to what’s being built.

We can work collectively to decide where to go from here once the discussion starts taking place. We can negotiate the output. We can start to organize it all. Hopefully, we can find common venues to hold face to face discussions about it. Parts and all of it.

But we first have to begin. I’m hoping you’ll help.

There’s no doubt this will be challenging. It will be frustrating. It will take time. But, I believe it will be worth it.

I’m hoping you believe the same.

Time to Change

Dec 02

I’ve had many interesting discussions of late about technology in education. They’ve left me wondering.

About technology.

About education.

About how the one impacts the other. And the other, the other.

I’m very fortunate to have the opportunity to work in a district that is now offering our students incredible access to technology in their learning experience. I’ve long heard about the exciting possibilities afforded students in a 1:1 program, but now having the opportunity to be part of it first hand, I’m rather shaken by just how powerful this all might be. Because this could change everything. That’s not overstating it.

My question now is, what is everything? What is it that will change? What is it that should change?

For so long, the perceived value of an educational institution was the access to knowledge and information that being present in the institution provided. Teachers were the experts of content and poured forth that content upon the minds of the masses seated in desks before them. Whether you believe that to be right or wrong, that was the experience that nearly all of us had going through school. I was taught a chapter of something, completed worksheets about the something, took a test on Friday about the something, and forgot that something shortly thereafter. This perception of the value of education is no longer relevant to the reality of life. Likely, it never was at all.

When I was a kid, I was also beholden to others for the answers to many of my inquiries. If I was at home, and I wondered about something, I typically had to wait until I got to school or went to the library to uncover the answers to my questions. More often than not, that meant the questions went unanswered. Sadly, I was ok with that at the time.

Technology has fundamentally changed our level of access to anything. And, everything.

I’m now wondering how far this change can, will and should go. We’ve been having these conversations in my district. About moving beyond the digitization of old pedagogy.We’re collectively working to figure out what it means to have every student sitting with ubiquitous access to one of the most transformative and disruptive technologies in history at any given moment in the school day. About what that does to the notion of content. About how we can move to work in the lives of our students to create young historians. Eager scientists. Insightful mathematicians. Powerful authors.

That has me wondering.

What should technology change about the way our students engage learning? Truly and unequivocally change.

I think we need to start engaging this question in earnest. Because doing what we’ve been doing for decades, if not centuries, isn’t likely what needs to be done now. The landscape has changed. The tools have changed. The context has changed. We have changed. But in most cases, our approach hasn’t. Attending most conference sessions and professional development workshops on technology will demonstrate that almost immediately.

So, I’m hoping you’ll join me in this thought experiment. I’m also hoping we’ll be able to move it beyond an experiment quickly and put it into practice in a way that makes a difference for our students and their learning.

Give it some thought. I’m hoping, somewhere and somehow, you’ll share your insights.

I’m hoping we can get together, and wrestle with this idea. Collectively engage in the process and do the very difficult work that needs to be done. To reimagine what learning could look like. What it should look like. Because the technology really can, and should, change the way we are approaching learning.

It’s a huge task. But we have to begin somewhere. I believe we can do it.

I believe we have to.