*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.

As part of my JHU-ISTE administration program, I am completing an internship with ISTE’s webinar department.  My task for the next couple weeks is to research potential topics for next year’s webinars.  Once we establish the topics, I will then explore potential speakers.  Sounds a bit familiar, I know.
While this certainly won’t prove as exciting a topic as that, I do think this is a good opportunity for you to voice your opinion on what ISTE should pursue next year.  If you look over this year’s offerings, you can get a sense for what topics have been a focus of late.

I certainly have some thoughts on potential topics.  I think a session on school law and teaching practices would be a fascinating topic.  I also believe a general session on social media’s role in learning would be of equal interest.  I’d be interested in hearing about how Linux could be used to save costs and increase student access.  And I’d love to hear how to develop online learning experiences that break from the traditional mold of old educational practices simply being replanted in the online soil.  I’d also love to hear about specific instructional/learning design for students living in a connected world.

I could go on, but I’d prefer this to be research I conduct collectively.  I’d like to know what topics you’d like to hear about.  I will take these suggestions and present them to the webinar project manager for ISTE.  She has agreed to consider the possibility of all requests.

I’d also like to gather any other feedback you might have about the ISTE webinar series.  What has value?  What needs changing?  This part is me going off script, but I’d still like to know.  Because I’m curious.

While I can’t promise you a grand voting experience that everyone will be talking about for the next six months, I can promise that your input will be valued and considered for future webinars.

So, what do you got?

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 am required to write my educational philosophy for the administrative program I am currently enrolled in.  This exercise has proved itself quite a bit more challenging than I anticipated.  I’ve done this before, years ago, when I completed both my undergraduate and first graduate programs.  Things have changed since then.  I’ve changed since then.

What follows is my first iteration of my philosophy as it presently stands.  This will be revisited at the end of my program, and I’d imagine I will, as I have already done, make changes.

Feel free to poke at it, push it around, and outright tear it to pieces as you deem fit.  I know I have.

Educational Philosophy

I believe the purpose of education is learning. It is both that simple and that complex. While there are many ancillary benefits derived from an educational experience, if the process occurs devoid of learning, it is simply not education.

While learning is paramount to education, the process of learning is framed in a myriad of constructs. I believe the most imperative construct is the democratization of information. Learning takes place in a manner that allows all people the right to access and potentially understand all available information. Information is no longer held exclusive for the privileged, but rather, it is available for all who desire it.

This democratization comes at a great price, for the responsibility of understanding can be overwhelming. The enlightenment of understanding that there is more than that which I have, or choices other than that which I choose, or even needs greater than that which I can give, requires a democratic education to teach not only understanding information but also empathy.

If we are to bring the learning and understanding of available information to all, regardless of one’s station in life, we must also teach that each is going to approach and consume the information uniquely. We do not all live identical lives, therefore, we do not all learn and malleate information identically, but rather quite individually. Our individuality causes each of us to bring our own bias, experiences, culture, values, strengths and weaknesses into our learning and understanding of the world, and acknowledging that every other person does not learn, experience and see the world the same as I do helps fight repressive, oppressive assumptions about the way others should behave and act upon information.

If I had but one line to use to build my philosophy of education upon, it would be, education is making learning available to all who desire it; teaching them that through the learning, we can achieve both understanding and empathy that will move every individual who seeks to be moved.

Thanks to aussiegal for the use of the image.