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I blogged earlier in the summer that the warm (albeiet not so warm this summer) months are where I find the best time to refuel the creative tank and get my own brain thinking and churning in new ways. It’s when I find the time to try new ways of working personally like my recent re-adoption of Evernote, which is fantastic by the way! To spending time reading, researching and engaging with my extended network of colleagues through a variety of social networks online and in person. And as the summer starts to turn the corner, it dawned on me that through all of these conversations, it isn’t that we can’t engage in new models of teaching and learning, and it isn’t even that some of us haven’t, with success. I have come to believe that the issue is that as institutions and living organizations, the reality is that unless the critical mass is ready, we will have but small and modest success in rethinking how our schools should look. By critical mass I mean a majority of the people in our schools must embrace a new way of looking at themselves as teachers and professionals. They need to embrace the notion that their roles have changed. As Wendy Drexler put it in her wonderful video “The Networked Student” are teachers going to start seeing themselves as synthesizers of knowledge, connected learning incubators, modelers and information sherpas? Or will they continue to see themselves as content driven authorities who must cover material in order to reach the “end” of the book?

If you take Howard’s comment that his role is NOT about integrating technology but about leading the use of digital tools and practices that enhance, extend AND support the teaching and learning process, you need to be ready to rethink what technology means in your school. You need to be looking at resources like Creative Commons so that you can reassess how students understand the use and remixing of content. You need to be engaged in the conversation about how your graduates obtain and demonstrate the skills needed for our “new media culture” and the media literacies that will be required to not only be successful in the workplace, but to become thoughtful, creative citizens.  Your curriculum committees need to be reading the work of Henry Jenkins and his work in New Media Literacies and your humanities departments need to see themselves as HUMANITIES departments and not isolated islands. They must engage in a rethinking of what the New Humanties are and explore the work of Richard Miller at Rutgers University.

It is simply not enough for us to sit back and start having conversations about this brave new world. It’s here and we better start doing something, because I for one don’t think we have the luxury to wait around and keep talking about it.

Photo Credit: Pete Ashton

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This is my first time attending EduCon and I must admit that it has on the whole, delivered in every way. As I sit here in a Starbucks trying to catch my breath and enjoying a Vanilla Rooibus Tea latte I am thinking about the depth and breadth of conversations I have been able to have over the last two days. From our arrival on Friday afternoon, our tour of the Science Leadership Academy, the panel discussion at The Franklin Institute, the Saturday sessions, my presentation, the networking gathering and Sunday morning panel, the experience has been superb.

While I am still gathering my collective thoughts and trying to process much of what I have learned and heard over the past few days, I wanted to capture some of the enduring understandings that have left a mark on me.

• Part of the purpose of school should be to foster creativity, collaboration and courage.
• Schools should be a place where students generate ideas rather than just regurgitate them.
• We should strive to create environments where students have the ability to try out new ideas and test creative ideas.
• Working towards fostering new humanities rich environments where teachers can help “capture and harness student energy in order to shape it.”
• Schools should try to provide opportunities for students to convey concepts and original ideas through thoughtful, technology rich collaboration opportunities.
• “Schools should be about communication.”
• “A teacher has not really taught unless the student has learned.”
• If schools looked to the Mars Rover Mission for inspiration, they could see that any decision that they are about to make that does not meet the mission of the school is expendable.
• Schools should serve as the anchor and social hub for young people; they should be “the place to be” and have access to cool creative tools where students can create.
• As school administrators, we should strive to accept and embrace change with courage and confidence to challenge the status quo, and work toward fostering this mindset among all members of our school communities.
• Schools should work hard to become partners in the local economy where they can provide authentic, real-world experiences that allow students to take their original ideas to market.
• Small “schools” can exist within larger school structures. Meaningful relationships where no child falls through the cracks.
• “Transforming schools is not a mystery. What is needed is the moral courage to do what we know is right.”
• Gary Stager “As the richest country in the world we should provide every student with a computer and a cello.”
• Mandating systemic change has failed our schools, at what point will we truly honor diversity by seeing every school as unique?

I am sure that this partial brain dump is only a portion of what I have been able to digest and I hope that it provides you with a flavor what EduCon has done for my thinking around what education can be. I will be sure to process a more formal response once the conference is over.

In the meantime, have I left anything off the list?

Photo Credit: christopherl

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We recently held a professional development day where a portion of the morning program was devoted to the topic of differentiated instruction. Our very talented and capable Center for Learning Director worked with her equally talented and capable staff to design an hour long presentation intended to serve as a follow up to their presentation at our pre-sessional meetings in late August. Differentiated instruction is not a new concept to those of us in education, and its underlying premise is that rather than expecting students to fit their learning to the curriculum, curriculum and instruction are flexible so that they can better meet the individual needs of individual students. Teachers who are practitioners of DI believe that their teaching is shaped by the students they have in their classes.

In the midst of our conversation together on this cold January morning, one teacher asked a very powerful and thoughtful question. “Given that we are a college prep school, how does differentiated instruction fit into the reality that students will face once they reach the university level?” It was a very good, very pragmatic question. How does it fit? Then I came across an article that appeared in the New York Times which highlighted some of the changes happening in colleges and universities around the country. The article “At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard” focuses on how members of the Physics department at M.I.T are rethinking the way they teach the subject to undergraduates. In response to increasing absenteeism rates and failure rates in these traditional lecture based courses reaching 10 to 12% the faculty at M.I.T knew they needed to do something different. Furthermore, the article states that physicists across the country were continuing to push universities to do a better job in preparing young scientists entering the field.

The result is that large lecture halls where students sit in rows with wooden desks where the professor is at the front of the large lecture hall, filling blackboards with copious amounts of information have given way to smaller classes that “that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning.” The article goes on to state that

“M.I.T. is not alone. Other universities are changing their ways, among them Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, North Carolina State University, the University of Maryland, the University of Colorado at Boulder and Harvard. In these institutions, physicists have been pioneering teaching methods drawn from research showing that most students learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning.”

The image we hold in secondary schools as college preparatory institutions is being challenged by the very colleges and universities we claim in our mission statments we are preparing students to attend. M.I.T has given this new approach its own acronym, TEAL, for Technology Enhanced Active Learning. Read that again. Technology Enhanced Active Learning. Say it out loud. Imagine for a moment what that might look like at your own school. Consider the possibility that our view of what it means to prepare our students for “college and beyond” no longer holds true. Will we be putting our 21st century students at a disadvantage by continuing to conduct business as usual? Are we willing to challenge our view that classes should be held for 47 minutes and follow each other throughout the school day only to be capped by several hours of homework every night?

Regardless of what kind of school you teach in, the first step towards embracing the full potential of teaching in the 21st century requires us to abandon our view of what it means to prepare kids for college.

Photo Credit: Night Owl City

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The resource wiki for this presentation is available @ http://antonioviva.pbwiki.com/21st-Century-CIOs

PLEASE NOTE: There are 3 videos that were embedded into the Keynote did not capture in the final video. Here are the links in the order of their appearance.

“A Vision of Students Today”
“The New Media Literacies”
“The Networked Student”

Description: By rethinking what we mean by technology leadership in our schools can we effectively change the landscape in order to harness this powerful new reality to improve teaching and learning? A better understanding that the role of a school CIO includes business partner, classic IT support provider, integrator, strategic thinker and educator, as well as a redefining of attributes and job description are some of the first steps schools can take to help navigate the world of technology 2.0.

21st Century CIOs for 21st Century Schools from Antonio Viva on Vimeo.

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While the research is still out and many studies have confirmed mixed results with regards to gains in student achievement, as a teacher of writing, there is a clear indication that student performance in writing increases and improves when working in a one-to-one laptop program. An example of this could be taken from my Creative Writing class today. Students and I are exploring poetry as a multidimensional form of expression. Today, my budding, young writers were asked to bring in a set of poems that they would share with one another in small groups. The purpose was to reach each other’s poetry and then engage in a conversation on providing one another feedback. I provided the groups with a rubric/outline for the discussion points and feedback areas they could focus on. This happened with paper copies of drafts, circling the tables and students writing in paper notebooks.

Now imagine for a moment, 18 students take out laptops, upload their poems to a blog or wiki. They read through and provide comments, mashup, link, respond using technology like VoiceThread.

The potential is endless, the opportunities countless. We are hoping to take the plunge and move to a one-to-one next year in our Middle School. I will be sure to keep you posted.

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Yet many researchers, educational pundits and bloggers would say that these tools are only being utilized sporadically in schools across the United States. Regardless of the size of your school, its geographic location, limited versus vast resources, the 21st century is squarely upon us, and as highlighted in a number of recent studies on the topic suggest that the potential of recent innovations in technology have gone more or less underutilized. In turn, it is believed that much of the investment our schools have made in recent years will have little systemic impact on teaching and learning. The important question for our schools clearly becomes are we able to measure and substantiate our investments in educational technology and its ability to impact the learning process? As schools face increasing costs and pressure to justify technology fees, 1 to 1 laptop programs and staffing expenses continue to rise, this question will remain squarely in the minds of many school leaders and boards. In order to prepare students adequately for the 21st century, smart, strategic and mission based decisions will be required to leverage the full potential that these rich resources have if they are to truly impact the learning process.

So why is it that when it comes to integrating technology in the classroom, many schools struggle with making the shift into the 21st century? Is it enough to simply be content with the “early adopters” and ignore the overwhelming evidence that college graduates entering the workplace will be expected to function at the highest level of technology proficiency and creative fluency. One strategy that often goes under recognized is that we may need to redefine the role and nature of technology leadership within our schools and administrative structures.

Schools have traditionally looked to technology leaders to maintain and oversee the operating of a school’s information technology systems. This included working printers, making sure that email was up and running, and that attendance could be taken. Often, the role was filled by a tech savvy teacher who found themselves neck deep in issues beyond their ability or control. At times, this created an environment where technology became a scapegoat for a host of school issues. As a result, many schools have transitioned toward the model of hiring a school Chief Information Officer or CIO who possessed an understanding of the “T” in information technology. This approach solved part of the challenge, however, in order to see education truly enter the 21st century, an emphasis on CIOs with a detailed understanding of education and a perspective on institutional strategic goals and mission must give way. Many might be asking, do such technology leaders exist?

Outside of education, IT executives must understand total cost of ownership, security, return on investment, vendors and outsourcing, and while the CIO within a school must also understand these critical issues, we need to recognize that we are in the business of teaching and learning. Our schools have become extremely sophisticated, high tech organizations, running complex relational databases, information web portals, advancement and finance systems and increasingly sophisticated network architectures. At the same time, teachers are asking for SmartBoards, blog hosting, access to Second Life, and wikis. Students and teachers produce multimedia projects, create original films, tackle design projects, evaluate and study scientific data, publish print and digital publications, and program complex robots. It is this distinction in our practice that places an enormous emphasis on the CIO to leverage and manage information technology in order to meet the mission of the school. Furthermore, Business Managers and Advancement and Admission Directors will tell you that information is the lifeblood of a school; teachers and students use it every day, administrators need to cull it in order to make data driven decisions and FIX THIS. CIOs need to embrace and capitalize on that reality, and in doing so we truly put the “I” back in CIO.

A first step should include placing technology leadership squarely at the executive leadership level, reporting within one or two levels of a school’s Superintendent or Head of School. Secondly, Attending professional development opportunities that focus on curriculum, instruction and assessment, and developing a deeper understanding of the academic program of their school is crucial. Technology leaders must work towards building stronger communication and political savvy skills in order to remain squarely at the decision making table. And lastly, they need to increase their fluency in the language of business AND education. Department chairs and curriculum coordinators use a very different vocabulary from CFOs and Business Managers.

10 Key Questions:

• Where does the current IT Director/CIO sit in the management chain?
• Are their frequent opportunities to communicate with other top leadership within the organization?
• Does the CIO sit at the executive cabinet or leadership team level of a school system?
• How and to what degree are top IT leaders in your institution beyond IT?
• Is the technology leadership participating in non-IT decisions?
• Is the CIO connected to the curriculum leaders within your school?
• How often does the CIO work directly with faculty and students?
• Does professional development focus exclusively on IT or does it include pedagogy?
• What other areas does the IT leadership oversee? Does it include communications, library and media services?
• Is the CIO allowed to provide strategies on how technology can meet institutional goals?

A better understanding that the role of CIO included business partner, classic IT support provider, integrator, informaticist, strategic thinker and educator, as well as a redefining of attributes and job description have given way to great strides at my school, and I believe can serve as the missing piece in a school’s strategic, 21st century, educational puzzle.

Photo Credit:kevinthoule

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