*This is a reflection post required for my JHU-ISTE Leadership program.

This post is being completed for the course “Curriculum Theory.” We have been exploring various curricular theories and programs, and this week we are to reflect on the following two questions:

* As a school administrator and instructional leader, what instructional technology would you expect to see in the written, taught, and tested curriculum of a school or school district striving to meet the needs of 21st century learners?
* What instructional technology would you promote to differentiate instruction for all learners?

The first question is certainly something I’ve discussed at length in the past. I don’t believe we should start with the technology first. I believe as a school district, we should first establish our learning goals, and then work to establish an ecology that helps us best meet our goals. I believe we’re past the point of teaching students specific technology competencies. I believe the technology is simply another option we choose to exercise when working to improve the learning experience for our students. I wrote about the way we started on this work in this post.  I still believe this is the approach to take. Establish the institution’s vision for learning, and then find the way to build the resources needed around the vision.

Developing an environment that is rife with opportunity for students to learn and extend beyond the classroom is also growing increasingly important. This discussion about the spaces in which we learn by David Jakes is a way that I see technology moving beyond the focus on tools.  The way the conversation is framed focuses entirely on how digital spaces and physical spaces merge to create an opportunity for students to engage the process of learning. In my opinion, this is the need of students today. Our mandate is to move the focus from teaching to learning, and then from the traditional means of learning to a more dynamic, individualized mode of learning that allows students to learn when and where they want outside of the classroom.

I believe creating such an environment will also provide the opportunity for students to differentiate the way they learn. By using ideas like the recorded lecture becoming the homework, we can then move the individualized transfer of learning in a classroom without taking up so much time with traditional instruction that leaves the collective intelligence of the classroom passively sitting and receiving information from a single source. Utilizing techniques like this with a combination of the physical and online environment means learning can become much more customized for students.

It is my honest belief that too often we approach technology backwards. We look at the tools, get excited, and work to shoehorn them into what is happening in the classroom. We focus more on the instruction rather than the learning. We get caught up in “Web 2.0 Whirlwinds” and “Tool Smackdowns” so that soon we misplace our focus on the tools and not what is taking place with the learning.

I absolutely believe in the power of technology-rich experiences like digital storytelling to engage literacy, wikis to engage collaboration, student-created media to engage creativity, primary sources available online to engage information fluency, and many other such technologies when they are working to engage the process of learning. When our focus is leading students on the journey of learning how to learn, and we choose technologies that help us advance that goal, that is when I think technology is the most meaningful and relevant for our schools and our students.

I have been in education for ten years, and I haven’t thought enough about that question.  I’m now in the second week of the course, “Curriculum Theory” in my JHU-ISTE program, and we’ve started wrestling with some tough questions about curriculum.

The first being the title for this post.  What is curriculum?

It seems the answer can’t be cleaved from many political influences in most cases.  That’s fascinating- that so many will battle so hard over the very definition of something I find could be rather to entirely simple.  The more I delve into the topic, the more I find myself forced to simplicity.  In my opinion, curriculum is…

All the stuff our students learn.

That’s it.  Simple.

Where it gets exponentially complicated starts with the very first step away from the definition.  Who gets to pick the stuff the students learn?  Much more difficult and political.

Some say that the curriculum we choose is broken down into three parts; the written, the taught, and the tested.  Sure that’s part of it, but curriculum is much more than that.  It’s ALL the stuff our students learn.  That means both the intended and unintended.  When we start picking exactly what the stuff is that the students will learn, we begin formulating a construct that students will engage when learning.  Obviously, there will be written curriculum that is to be taught and then tested, but there is much more to it than that.  Because it’s the bigger construct of the scope of the curriculum that will likely have the greatest impact on a student.

What I mean is, if we set up a curriculum that focuses on finite, rote recitation of facts as a major outcome, we will intend to have students complete our institution’s educational scope and sequence with a specific knowledge base we’ve predetermined.  However, what we most likely will not intend for students to learn is how to game our system.  This is happening quite often in educational institutions who most value specific, information-based learning outcomes as students figure out how to work the system, or “Do School” as Denise Clark Pope suggests, and their final proficiency may say much more about how they learned to exploit than how they learned to learn what was intended.

Things continue to grow more complicated when we take another step back and look at some of the umbrella questions surrounding curriculum and its inception.

For example, the question was posed in our class last week, “Whose values should be reflected in the content and processes of curriculum?”  That question, frankly, is kicking my tail.  I’ve thought on it quite a bit, and I still don’t have a good answer for it.  I’d like to say mine, but mine probably isn’t yours, so why do I get to decide it’s mine and not yours?  I might say the learners, but what if collectively, they decide they don’t much value education in general?  Where does that leave us?  I could take the cheap way out and say society, but who in the world can say exactly what the values of society are?  Like I said, it’s kicking my tail.

Another step back.

Look bigger than just the curriculum.  Look at schooling in general.  What exactly is the purpose of school?  I’ve written about this before, and I still believe in what I wrote in that post.  It is all about learning.  That is the purpose.  However, if learning is the goal, what is the conduit?  That, I would have to say, is democracy.

This gets us nowhere easier than previous topics.  As Deborah Meier has stated before, democracy is an incredibly difficult process to understand.  There are fewer more important revolutions in the history of mankind than the information revolution.  That knowledge and learning and information moved from the privileged few to the masses means more for the progress of citizenry than perhaps any other reform.  However, learning in a democracy means dealing with difficult issues.  The tyranny of the majority.  The repression of the minority opinion.  The absolute need for empathy.  These are not always addressed in the democratic learning institutions where our students are learning.

If we teach in a democratic institution, then what exactly should be taught?  What subjects should students learn?  Yet another question to which I don’t have the answer.  I’d like to say students should learn what is of interest to them, but that if rife with complication.  I know if I had been given the opportunity to pick that which I would learn when I was in middle school, none of the subjects would have had any academic value.  I can assure you this, though, they would have been interesting.

Should we continue on with the just in case model; giving students a bit of everything just in case they might need it some day?  Should we move to the just in time model that delivers knowledge and learning right in the time when it is needed?  Do either really offer a true solution?

I can absolutely see the need for students to learn how to communicate dynamically, and it is likely there is a certain level of mathematics and science that is needed to succeed in our world, but other than that, what should we teach?  Citizenship, vocational skill, world languages, finance?  What about specific classes in project management, collaboration (the real kind, not just cooperative learning), critical thinking, etc.?

Obviously the more I write, the less I seem to know.

One last point before I bring this rambling, stumbling wreck of a post to a close.

What about me?  What do I do that makes a difference in the lives of learners today?  That, is a very valid question.  I’m the Instructional Technology Coordinator for a K-12 district in Illinois.  I have held this position for two years now.  I’d like to say that in that time, I’ve managed to facilitate great change in the way students interface with learning through technology.  For a host of reasons, I simply can’t say that with truth.  I face the same challenges many of my colleagues face in this profession.  I try to jump many of the same hurdles.  I’ve found there are reasons why I never went out for track in school.

I do believe we can engage our students in new and emerging ways.  I also believe there’s much we can be doing to better some of the old ways.  I will not stop fighting for what I believe is best for our students.  And that is, simply, learning.  I try to ground the work I do in that bedrock.  Many days I fail.  That doesn’t mean I will give up the trying.  As long as I’m in this position, and as long as I’m affiliated with the work of educating students, I will continue to fight for their learning.

Obviously, this is some kind of fragmented post.  But these are the things I’m wrestling with.  If you have any thoughts on one, a few, or all of the topics raised, I would greatly appreciate your sage wisdom.  Or even more questions.  Those seem to be what I can handle best at present.

Thanks to kevindooley for the use of the image.

I read a great post by a student in my grad class last week that has me thinking again about the idea of a backchannel.  I wrote about this a while ago, but it seems the topic has surfaced again recently about the value of a backchannel.

The past several conferences I have attended have tried to implement a conference-wide backchannel discussion, and most have failed.  Whether due to poor wifi, poor implementation, or simply lack of interest, it seems to me the idea has started fading a bit.  I don’t know if I think that’s good or bad.

Certainly the story that surfaced this week about the backchannel gone bad at the Web 2.0 Expo is evidence of how this idea can be a complicated matter.  This spurred much discussion on Twitter, and the experience leaves many wondering what is the value in having a simultaneous chat running while a person is presenting his or her ideas.  I still believe, if done well, the chat can add a great deal for both the presenter and the conference attendees.  I really do.  However, as some have noted recently on Twitter and in other conversation spaces, it seems that often times the backchannel fails to connect to the message being presented and breaks down into a virtual cafeteria where the kids are all talking about any and all topics other than the ones being presented.

I found the post above by Michael to be most interesting.  It leaves me wondering what the role of this experience could be in the classroom.  Could it be that if we built this the right way, kids could greatly benefit from the chance of moving from passive listeners to active engagers of what is happening around them?  The idea of allowing students to backchannel during a read aloud is fascinating to me.  It takes courage for teachers to try such a thing, but if, like Michael, the end turns out to yield something of value for students, I think we should try it more.  Allow them the chance to mix their ideas with their peers in a nonconventional way to see what the recipe ends up making.

Maybe it won’t work for your students, or your teachers, or your presentation audience, but I still do believe there’s something to this idea.  It just takes some work and effort to keep the connections aligned with your learning goals, and obviously sometimes we fail at that in our endeavors to get students to invest in their learning through technology.  But if our work with technology does indeed increase student investment, then I say turn on the backchannel and see what you can hear, so to speak.

Thanks to tranchis for the use of the Flickr image.

There exists a philosophy of technology that states we should be dedicating specific time in our school day to teach students finite skills of operating computing technology.  That in order to prepare our students properly for the world, we must teach them how to word process and how to operate Power Point and how to keyboard.  The computing instruction is an end goal.  The students should learn these skills because the skills themselves are the important part of technology, and if we don’t stop throughout the day and teach them how to specifically operate the tools or applications within a computer, we will be failing to equip our future.

I’ve had discussions with individuals who say they’d rather see the students learn technology skills in isolation, and it isn’t necessary to embed or even relate this instruction to curricular content or goals.  The important part is that students learn how to operate the computer and properly work the word processing application.

I’ve found this to be a fairly popular philosophy and culture in many circles of public opinion.

So, you are in this conversation with someone.  Someone who believes adamantly that we must focus time and energy and effort on explicitly teaching students how to operate specific technology.  Someone who says we should have a checklist of computer proficiencies for each student so that we will know they can operate a computer successfully.  That if we fail to do so, we will be failing to prepare our students to succeed in the future.

And you respond by saying…

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Thanks to Flickr user wZa HK for the use of the image.