Transforming education
Transforming education is not about implementing technology and then continuing teaching and learning in the same way. Actually, it is not about the technology, it is about changing how we look at schools today. Are we willing to engage in the difficult discussions about what needs to change and what is working? Like Will Richardson says on his blog:
“Do we do the things we do because they’re better for kids or because they are easier for us? For instance: separating kids by age in school. Is that something we do because kids learn better that way? Or do we do it because it’s just an easier way organizing our work?” Do kids learn better in 50 or 90 minute blocks, or is it just easier for us? Read the article here.
I can answer the last question, no! Our school’s block scheduling, all day same subject, is appreciated both by the teachers and the students. Yes, it was controversial at first, but the obstacles were mostly in our heads. I think the same goes for technology. This is what’s happened to computers in schools. They’re being used in ways that have nothing to do with the potential of the computer to allow the possibility of a radically different way of learning…”
We should all know that technology can transform what we do in class and how we do it. Otherwise, we are just reproducing the typewriter class in the illustration!
These are the questions we should be asking ourselves every day:
- To what extent are our students using technology as a constructive medium to do things that no child could do before, to do things at a level of complexity that was not previously accessible to them? Bruce Dixon
- Does your school have a vision of educational technology use that allows students and teachers to inquire more deeply, research more broadly, connect more intensely, share more widely, and create more powerfully? Chris Lehman, Building School 2.0
Please share examples with me if you have!