Grassroots Change for Social Learning in Inner City Schools

I know it's lame to cross-post discussion board submissions from masters courses, but I've been so tied up with school that I haven't been able to write much else, let alone contribute anything to the resource discussion.

Here's my post in my class for this week about technology and instruction:

My use of technology has been posted in another place on this board, so for my own post I want to make the case that we move away from seeing technology as "tools we don't have" or "tools we do have" and towards a reconceptualization of how humans interact with connected and real-time knowledge. This means we have to see past computers, and see into the brain and the spaces we inhabit while we engage it.

Technology has shifted and will continue to shift sharply in coming years. If you think that a wide use of the internet through search engines is only 20 years young, and the internet itself is only 40, we have quite a tail on this innovation. However, our schools (especially in exploited communities) look similar to what they looked like at the dawn of the industrial revolution (hyperbole...but seriously).

Although these are fairly outdated by now, the partnership for 21st century skills established a Framework for what students should know and be able to do for the life required of them in the 21st century.

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/route21/

While the skills haven't really been updated since their inception, they give a compelling vision for what my students would encounter if they were afforded the same educational opportunities as their counterparts in schools with 21st century vision. It's a veritable curricular apartheid that will lead to even more distinct labor segregation between service sector jobs and highly creative and strategic ones. The jobs that I know my students deserve will not be available to applicants lacking skills similar to these. Therefore, I think we are actually harming our kids while trying to help them perform, and we're "closing the achievement gap" on an education that existed 40 years ago. That's hard.

My school looks nothing like this vision, even though we have more access to technology than other public schools in the city. Technology is used to take and input data from standardized tests, present information to kids, or to play games. Any real time connection with other learners from around the world or creation of texts tat provide an authentic assessments of learning by students is completely (not surprisingly) absent. I'm in the middle of helping plan for the 10 year technology vision at my school. You bet that we'll heavily consider the innovations of the last 2 years, as well as the projected future, in our discussion.

I want to make the case then, much as Prensky does in his "doing new things in new ways", that we think of learning far more than we do about technology. If our focus was on learning, especially with 21st centuty skills, we might be more likely to leverage the technologies our students already have: cell phones (some with cameras and voice capabilities), nintendo dsis and sony psps, game consoles with internet browsers, bebo, myspace or facebook accounts, etc. Because our focus oftentimes isn't how we can engage our students in deeper learning experiences, we often focus on what we don't have instead of what we do have. Same goes for teachers, have a twitter or facebook account? Create another one for your teacher persona (mine is @mrsenorhill) You'll be amazed how rich your own learning will be once you connect to other teachers articulating similar or different thoughts as you do about learning. Have a blog? Create a teacher blog too (mine is elparquenuez.com). You'll impress yourself with how reflection and discourse will help your work with kids. Most teachers don't see the value in this constant "professional development" (also known as a professional learning network or PLN), even though they use the social internet to connect with families and friends everyday. Even for "digital immigrants" (a term I hate), this isn't a huge jump.

Therefore, since the methodological shift I speak of doesn't not require the actual tools we complain are so out of reach, we need to also start doing "new things in old ways" (absent in Prensky's thesis) in districts that haven't assigned resources to new technologies. This way, we could prove to the apparatus, little by little as we acquire necessary tools piece by piece on our own, that it's not a luxury to be connected via technologies, but rather a necessity and a right. That way, we make a priority on customization and innovation, and not efficiency or making what we do now more effective. In other words, we need to take risks. This is a grassroots effort led by teachers, not a small cadre of geeks or folks who "get technology".

Lastly, I want to recommend a blog titled "teach paperless" that ruminates on the cutting edge of the intersections of 21st (and beyond) century skills, engaging learning, and technology via the social internet. You can find it at http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/.

Photo posted by rick via flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/spine/263214639/