I have always been inspired by how Audrey Watters will publish the entire script of her keynotes. Here’s my first attempt! Many thanks to Austin ISD for inviting me to kick off their annual Blended Learning Summit this weekend.
Good Morning! Thank you so much for having me join you today. Since it’s a Saturday, we’re going to ease-in to things. Here’s what I would like for you to do. Please take out something that will allow you to make your thinking concrete. It could be pen and paper, a laptop, your phone. Whatever makes you comfortable. When you are ready, give me a wave.
OK. So, I would like for you to think across your entire life and try to remember your most coveted, most valued learning experience, and make it concrete on your paper or screen. Try to remember how you felt during that learning process as well as what you learned from it. Ready? We are going to work through a quick reflection exercise. Think about that learning experience and then reflect on these three questions:
- What did you learn?
- How did you learn it?
- Why do you think that you learned the way that you did?
Once you have your thoughts, I would like for you to pair up, or make a small group, and share your experience as well as your reflection. In a few minutes, we’ll share back as a whole group. Let’s reflect a bit on what you were willing to share. Think about what made those learning experiences stick. You told me about the opportunity to act as both teacher and student – that you had an opportunity to learn outside the walls of the classroom.
About a year ago, right here in Austin, I ran into one of my first mentors – Ray Rose. He asked me to join him for a meeting with a woman from the Department of Education. It was one of those situations where Ray invited me so that I could sit on the sideline, watch, listen, and learn. However, part way through the conversation, he turned to me and said, “what do we know about great learning?”
Without missing a beat, I explained that great learning is active, social, and meaningful to the learner. I could give you a list of citations to support this statement including folks like Piaget, Vygotsky, and Jerome Bruner. But the short version is this: we have known what great learning looks like for over a century! So that brings me to a huge question: what happened?
The real issue has absolutely nothing to do with students or teachers or technology and everything to do with the institution of school. You see, learning and school have become relatively disjointed from each other. In fact, the philosophers of the early 20th century did not refer to schools as places of learning but those of schooling. Those are two different verbs.
Let me give you an example. Last year, I did a Google Hangout with a group of middle school students in Louisiana. Their teacher wanted me to speak with them about annotated bibliographies. Seriously! I was deep into my dissertation at the time, and she wanted her students to understand that annotating sources was actually a skill that they might need again in the future.
Anyways, our conversation drifted all over the place, when I decided to have a little fun with them. “Why do you come to school,” I asked? At first, the students looked at me like I was even more crazy than they originally suspected when I told them I that I actually liked annotated bibliographies.
“To learn things!” One student shouted.
“To see our friends.” Another interjected.
“Because we like Miss Margaret!” A third added – which made the teacher extremely happy.
However, instead of validating or pushing on their responses, I asked, “do you ever learn anything outside of schools?” With that, the class lit up! They started telling me what they learned about football and gaming and how to make things.
Ok, I said, so you learn outside of school. How?
“YouTube!”
A few of them shouted at once. Another group agreed and several started telling me what they had learned about everything from Minecraft to sewing.
So, here’s the thing that I want you to realize. Schooling, in a traditional sense, may not yet support the idea of blended learning, but our students are already blended. They are already learning online from digital resources and offline from their peers. The challenge is how we will get school to catch up with our students’ lives.
My professor said this in a lecture over a year ago, so I assume that it must be true! Our imaginations can only stretch as far as our culture and our history will allow us. Think about it this way, how many of you ever went to school? How many of your students’ parents went to school at some point in their lives? See, everyone knows what school “looks like” which makes it really hard to change. Larry Cuban and David Tyack refer to this as the grammar of school [1]. We don’t know how to imagine anything different because we all think we know what a “real school” is.
Here’s another example, remember the Jetsons? They could imagine an entire colony in outer space – BTW, the story was set in the year 2030. I’m still waiting for my flying car that folds into a briefcase… So, the Jetsons could have talking toasters and moving sidewalks and even cars that could fly but look what they envisioned when they thought about school: a robot with chalk!
So where did this vision of school come from?
Harvard professor Joseph Featherstone said in 1991 that “Educators often exist within a “United States of Amnesia,” unaware of the history that proceeds them and ignorant of past endeavors that closely mirrors what they hope to achieve in the present.”[2]
Stanford professor Larry Cuban has further warned that those who do look to history often either view that legacy with nostalgia or disdain. There’s often an oversimplified creation myth about the origins of school. Over and over again, we hear of it referred to as the “factory model,” but it’s actually way more complex.
The first schools were actually established in the 1600s – no factories back then if I remember my history correctly. If a colony or town had more than 50 people, then most local governments required that they create a school. For the most part, these schools served the specific needs of the community – they helped to teach basic literacy and numeracy as well as the local culture. However, in the 1840s, a group of reformers led by Horace Mann decided that there needed to be a Common School to prepare a more diverse learning population. They felt as though schooling should become more standardized to ensure that all children could build a shared domain of knowledge. Particularly as more immigrants came into the country, the people in power wanted to ensure that there was a common domain of knowledge and a shared set of cultural norms and beliefs.
At the start of the 20th century, in parallel with the rise of urbanization and industrialization, secondary schools or high schools formed to meet the needs of a growing adolescent class that was no longer required for the workplace. Around this same time, the large land-grant universities argued that the secondary curriculum should become more efficient and designed to meet their admissions requirements. As a result of these forces, certain aspects of schooling became institutionalized: age-based groupings, the need to earn a series of credits to proceed from one grade to another, teacher-directed learning versus the social learning communities of the one-room schoolhouses, and the beginnings of the idea of “batch processing” students with a focus on completing tasks and consuming standardized content to move from one grade to the next. This last part is where the factory metaphor originates.
Policy makers thought that they could apply their thinking about industrialization to the system of education to make it more efficient and easier to mass produce. Most of these ideas did not come from the students or the parents or even the teachers. They were forced down from policy elites in universities who wanted to make it easier to create qualified candidates to fill their halls as well as successful businessmen who needed skilled labor for the economy. In this way, schools started to shape society instead of society benefitting from the learning that could come from schools.
High schools and the institution of education proceeded quite nicely in the post WWII era and even up through the end of the 20th century, but then, along came a threat that education has tried to ignore for decades: digital technology. As professors Allan Collins and David Halverson [3] explain, nothing undermines the tenets and structures of schools as much as digital tools. You see, technology has always had a place in education (think about chalkboards and textbooks) but those tools reinforced existing norms and beliefs: age-graded classes, teacher as expert, a finite amount of knowledge.
In fact, Collins and Halverson explain that we are actually going through a third education revolution. The first created the one-room schools and idea of apprenticeships. The second resulted in what we know of school today – mass production, standardization, efficiency, and accountability. However, digital technology is bringing in a new revolution and a need for a new education.
But here’s the thing, the kids are already in this new education. They are already trying to learn… So, as educators – and even as a researcher – we start trying to figure out some new type of reform. Or really, as I’m sure you’ve heard repeatedly, a new way to transform and innovate and disrupt and somehow break the system that has a stranglehold on us and prevents us from taking advantage of all of this great technology, right?
In 1979, Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner wrote that we engage in “label libel.” [4] We start putting names on to things to try to make a semblance of change. But here’s the thing, it can be a really dangerous practice. Naming things can either oversimplify or overcomplicate the situation.
Here’s a perfect example. Let’s think of all the labels we’ve been hearing lately besides just Blended.
- Personalized
- Authentic
- Networked
- Inquiry-Based
- C – Creativity, Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Communication, Citizenship, Character Development, Computational Thinking, Coding, Cultural Awareness…
We have to personalize and make learning more authentic. We need to take advantage of networks and social networks and the capacity to learn outside the walls of the school. Oh, and we need to make sure that we’re inquiry-based or project based. And then there are all of the Cs! So many Cs. But look what happens with all of this. What we’re left with is label libel – and PANIC.
Alright, so all of this theory and history is fine and dandy. So how do we get out of this pickle? As a district, you’ve decided on blended learning as a way to make all of these new ideas more concrete. While it’s great to have a direction, it can also feel totally confusing. Again, we haven’t experienced this as learners so how can we know what it looks like in practice – especially with so many other things going on already.
You have great aspirations, or you wouldn’t be here on a Saturday. You want kids to see themselves as learners, to have some agency in the process of school, and to own their learning. Instead of feeling like school is something that is being done to them, you want them to feel like they are the purpose of the experience, that they are the reason for learning. So, we have a challenge. We know what we know, and now we need to imagine a new culture of learning beyond our imaginations. In other words, we need to come up with something better than a robot teacher with chalk!
What if I told you that we already have the answers? Remember, we know what makes for great learning. It’s active; it’s social; and it’s meaningful. We’ve also seen this kind of learning happen before – we just might have forgotten. So, I want to take you on a journey. Hopefully, most of you get the reference and I’m not dating myself too much, but we’re going to go back to the future.
We’re going to begin our journey in the small town of Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy in the 1940s. You see, after the Germans surrendered, they left behind a war tank, three trucks, and six horses that Loris Malaguzzi and the town sold to finance their first school. The atrocities of WWII were still fresh in their minds, and the community vowed that a future generation would never fall victim to fascism. The adults in the community wanted a new type of schooling. One that would help children become active members of a new society.
Reggio was founded on the ideal that children and their questions were beautiful and should be revered, that all children can be creative, curious, competent learners. They viewed students as researchers, as active constructors of their own understanding, and as social creatures who learn from more knowledgeable peers. Teachers in Reggio schools deeply care so much about student interest, identity, and agency, that they view themselves as creators and curators of an environment that can respond to the questions of the children and allow them to explore their passions. Teachers design the physical space to allow for exploration while still guiding students towards developing the desired knowledge, skills, and practices through the completion of meaningful projects that connect to students’ personal lives and experiences, provide authentic goals and problem-based learning experiences, and let learning happen with support from the broader community. To this day, the Reggio Emilia approach is revered throughout the world as one of the most innovative models of school.
Now, hold on a second. Let’s do a quick reality check. Reggio built their school system from scratch. Malaguzzi and the community did not already have a pre-existing institution like here in the U.S. Let’s take a look at another example: Tuskegee, Alabama.
Most people don’t realize that Booker T. Washington was a high school principal as well as one of the most innovative and progressive educational philosophers of the 20th century. During the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War, Washington emerged as an educational pioneer and not just for the Black schools. He believed in fostering independent thought, wanted students to apply their learning to their immediate concerns – both personal and social, and argued that students’ lived experiences should serve the foundation for their educational ones.
Almost a decade ahead of more well-known progressive educators like John Dewey, Washington built his school around projects tied directly to daily life so that students experienced learning in authentic contexts while simultaneously developing real-world skills.
In one example that I read in a journal article [5], the students realized that the school needed a new cement walkway between buildings, so they set out to construct it. Immediately, the students tackled an array of problems from measuring length and width to calculating the cost of materials to determining the proportions of sand and rock. The students identified the problem, sought out the solution, and then built the final project, combining both vocational and academic skills. In another example, a teacher took her grammar class to observe a blacksmith’s shop. By making the connections between abstract concepts such as subject and predicate with the physical motions of the blacksmith, the teacher found that her students learned the content more quickly and became more excited about the process of developing language skills. Instead of giving orations – a standard assessment at the time – about Lincoln or the Battle of Gettysburg, Washington’s students might present on topics such as farm work. They developed higher order thinking skills through intellectually demanding tasks combined with personal lived experience.
Washington believed that students needed both intellectualism and pragmatism. His goal was for teachers to connect the academic curriculum to the needs of the learner, because only with that meaningful connection would learning truly happen.
I mentioned that Booker T Washington pre-dates many of the progressives, so why don’t we remember him? One reason is because he spent his time working instead of writing. On the contrary, John Dewey and his band of progressives did some of both. As the United States came out of WWI and then entered into the Great Depression, Dewey and his colleagues spoke about organizing school not around individual subjects and content but around broader ideas and student questions. In 1916, Dewey argued in his book Democracy in Education, that as technology adds increasing complexity into society, education should prepare students not for learning in school but for learning in life.
Further, the 1918 Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education argued that students must learn to cope with problems of community life, state and national governments, as well as international relationships. However, these democratic ideals contrasted with an already entrenched vision of school: one that relied on grades, separate curriculum, and – most importantly – standardized assessments.
Now, all of this came to a head around 1931 when a group of progressives pretty much staged a revolt at their annual meeting. School leaders and educators screamed that they couldn’t meet the needs of their students if they were forced to just teach to some arbitrary test designed by the Universities. They wanted freedom to experiment, to address the democratic ideals that people like Dewey and Washington espoused. In other words, they wanted school to be about life and not an external test.
Out of that meeting, the 8-year study was born. The 8-year study actually lasted a lot longer than 8 years and was originally called the 30 school study. Guess that didn’t have much of a ring to it. The 30 schools (14 private and 16 public from both rural and urban areas across the country) – and a whole bunch of commissions – petitioned about 300 colleges and universities to agree to accept their students based solely on the recommendation of the principal. Additionally, the study secured over $1million in funding – an insane amount of money at the time – to support the teachers with professional development as well as to pay the researchers to measure the results. With college admissions off the table, plus plenty of resources, the 30 schools could now be free from external constraints so that they could experiment with their vision of school.
Admittedly, not every school really bought into the idea of throwing out the curriculum and starting over. Some changed a class or two and introduced surface ideas such as creating a guidance department or building more vocational courses. However, others completely embraced the idea. One school in Ohio reorganized itself so that students engaged in meaningful, interdisciplinary projects designed around community need and an academic core . In one example, they recognized a challenge with water quality in their town, interviewed community members, discovered the issue, and then created a movie to advocate for an industrial solution. I have visions of how they created a movie in the 1930s with a hand crank!
As students moved from high school into college, the researchers ran a matched comparison assessment to see how they performed academically and socially with university classmates who did not have the same secondary education. Across the 30 schools, there was almost NO difference in performance. Sure, the students did a little bit better, but it wasn’t considered statistically significant. For this reason, lots of people then consider the study to be a failure. All of that time and money for barely any improvement!
Even more depressing, 10 years after completion of the study, most of the schools had gone right back to doing what they were doing before the study began.
Wait a second! I want to back up to a fact for a moment – and so did some of the researchers in the study. You see, in addition to looking at how the students from the 30 schools compared to their college counterparts, they also ran a study inside of a study. The researchers took the most progressive schools – like the one in Ohio – and compared them to the least progressive. See the broader study just took an average.
With the Study in a Study, an amazing result emerged. Students from the MOST progressive schools far outperformed their counterparts. In addition to just academic achievement, the students were more civic minded, participated in more extracurricular activities, and engaged in more community service. Take all of these results together, and you get a pretty amazing finding. No matter what the schools decided to do, no matter how much or how little they experimented, the students succeeded. You see, the 8-year study is the largest empirical study every conducted in American education and it gave us a profound insight: it’s ok to experiment!
If we are trying to make meaningful connections for our students, if we are trying to engage them in creative, curious, authentic learning, if we are working to meet all of their needs, then we really cannot fail.
Here’s another way to look at it. In 1968, Rosenthal and Jacobson conducted a study on schoolchildren in San Francisco to examine what they called the Pygmalion Effect – if a teacher had high expectations for their students, then the children would meet those expectations. In this experiment, they gave all of the students in a school an IQ test and then – without revealing the scores – told teachers in the first and second grade classes that a random sample of 20% of their students would be “intellectual bloomers.” At the end of the year, they gave all of the students the same test again.
Though all of the students made some gains over the course of the year as expected, the students in the classes with the “bloomers” scored significantly higher. Over time, this experiment has been examined in different contexts. Consistently, when teachers believed in the capabilities of their students, then the students rose to meet those expectations.
Now all of this sounds great, but why aren’t all schools embracing the progressive ideals of democracy and civic engagement? How come every elementary school isn’t a Reggio school? You see, the Progressives had a counter part – sort of like the Jedis and the Empire. On the “dark side,” not only did you have the policy elites who wanted a standardized and efficient way to sort and process students to figure out who could go to college and who could get a job, but you also had Thorndike and the behaviorists – the psychologists who preached that learning occurs as a correct response to a given stimulus. They felt that the only thing worth learning in school is that which can be objectively measured. It’s hard to measure a community movie.
Educational historian Ellen Condliffe Lagemann wrote in 1980, “One cannot understand the history of education in the United States during the twentieth [or twenty-first] century unless one realizes that Edward L. Thorndike won and John Dewey lost.” [6]
But here’s the thing: there’s data to support the Progressives. From 1997-1999, a team of researchers [7] conducted a three-year study in 400 classrooms from 19 elementary schools in Chicago and then analyzed intellectual demands of over 2,000 assignments for 5,000 students . At the time, it was the largest single body of evidence ever collected in underserved urban schools.
Classrooms where students completed high-quality intellectual work consistently, and significantly, outperformed those with less demanding assignments regardless of demographics. In fact, the researchers found greater gains in schools with the most disadvantaged students. Well, that’s just elementary school you may say. In 2014, the American Institute for Research conducted an experiment where they matched students from 10 Deeper Learning networks with similar public schools and then compared results on the state assessments as well as the PISA exam [8].
Students from the network high schools scored higher on all tests and reported higher levels of academic engagement, motivation, and self-efficacy. Additionally, students who attended deeper learning schools had a higher educational attainment, with more students moving on to four-year colleges and selective universities.
If we know what great learning looks like; we know that experimentation doesn’t hurt; we know that setting high expectations for our students will only help them rise to meet those challenges; and we know that giving students more intellectually demanding and authentic learning experiences could actually improve test scores. What’s stopping us?
In 2010, two researchers [9] tried to figure out why some teachers embraced technology and new practices while others didn’t . They interviewed 12 award winning teachers to understand what made them different. Though these teachers all reported feeling constrained by testing, curriculum, and technology issues, they also stated that those external constraints did not affect their ability to create meaningful learning experiences for their classrooms. However, when asked what they felt held their colleagues back, every one of them stated that it came down to beliefs. If teachers believed that they could embrace technology. If they believed that they could create new types of learning experiences. If they believed in their students, then they could do whatever they hoped to achieve.
So that brings me to my new-found appreciation of boxes. I think that we all feel like we’re put into boxes. The question becomes what we choose to do about it.
In the past month, I’ve started two new jobs and promptly been placed into two boxes. The people who I report to have both said – in their own ways – here is your box. You have absolute control over your box but stay in the box.
Now, maybe I’ve actually matured, but instead of fighting the box and screaming that I will not be contained, I have embraced my box. I love my boxes. I have absolute, total control over my box.
Every single one of you controls your box.
It was in thinking about this idea of control that caused me to flash-back to my freshman college social psychology textbook. I remember sitting in the basement of the library at one of the study tables, opening up the book, and turning to the first page where I read (I think). You can control your own thoughts, feelings, and actions better than you can control those of others. I remember initially shutting the book and wondering why I had paid a fortune to read the obvious, but looking back on it now, it’s brilliant! You can control your own thoughts, feelings, and actions!
Outside of science fiction (and maybe Facebook), mind control does not exist – not really… so what do we really think?
Do we think that our students can be curious? Numerous studies – none of which I can remember to cite right now – have shown that students come into schools full of questions, but over time, they lose their curiosity because traditional learning values that quest for a single right answer. Particularly in the middle grades, we tend to suck the life out of them.
Think about what we learned from Reggio. We need to believe that our students can be researchers. We need to value and appreciate their inquiries, interests, and passions, and we need to consider how we can create and curate learning environments that stoke their curiosity. In the 1940s, teachers were limited to physical materials, spaces, and places. We’re now in a blended world with unlimited potential. Digital technology can create entire new worlds for curious learners.
Deep down, do we really believe that all students can be creative? Now, there’s often a misconception that creativity is all about the arts. But in a 2005 article [10], neuroscientist Ulrich Kraft explained that creativity could be nurtured or “unleashed.” Where intelligence is considered to be an innate and finite trait, creativity describes a person’s ability to seek out novel problems and solutions.
Think about what we learned from Booker T. Washington. He found creativity in concrete and horse shoes. He encouraged his students and teachers to think of the world as vocational, industrial, theoretical, and academic all in one. Washington also understood that different students would make different types of connections to content so he empowered them to share their learning in a way that was meaningful to them.
According to recent projections, by the year 2020, over 50% of public school students will be of a different ethnicity, and yet, as history has shown, we still have an education system designed around a single narrative. If we really think that every student has a voice, then we will not only consider the ways in which we might be able to draw it out but also the voices that we empower through our curriculum choices.
Particularly in a blended environment, we do not have to provide the same narrative and the same content to every student. We can encourage them to explore new ideas through multiple lenses and multiple platforms as well as from multiple perspectives. Thanks to digital technology, we are not limited to asking students to only share their learning through oration, recitation, and paper.
Deep down, this all comes back to a single fundamental belief. Do we really believe that every student has the potential to learn? Think about what we discovered from Rosenthal and Jacobson. If we believe that every student has the potential to become an intellectual bloomer. If we set those high expectations. Then we are creating the conditions for all of our students to succeed.
Despite everyone’s best efforts, no one can control how you feel.
You can decide whether or not you will let yourself try something new. We learned from the Eight-Year Study that it is ok to experiment, to try more progressive ideas in the classroom. From the study of teacher beliefs, we also learned that despite external pressures – mandated curriculum, state assessments, lack of resources, time constraints – those who can create meaningful learning experiences for their students do so because they are willing to experiment. They believe that it’s important to try.
We can feel dissatisfied with the status quo as well as with our own comfort zones. That’s not to say that we can’t feel the PANIC either. However, we can control it.
I was recently thinking about this in a spin class. In fact, I have a lot of really profound thoughts while I’m on a bike. It’s either the endorphins or the oxygen deprivation. I’m not sure. But I think that a spin class is a great example of a personalized learning environment.
- You configure the environment to meet your needs
- Everyone works at their own pace
- The role of the instructor is to motivate each student individually and to model both skill and mindset
I’m not advocating for biometric feedback on every student, I don’t think, but it’s sort of amazing what you can see from a heart rate monitor.
On Wednesday morning, I decided to do a 6:00am class. Now normally, I’m a reasonable, mid-morning kind of person. As we started the ride, our instructor assured us that not every workout would be our best. I appreciated that since I’d only had one cup of coffee but found myself pushing along anyways.
We spent a fair bit of time riding up and down imaginary hills. Make it challenging but not impossible, she told us. Get comfortable with the resistance and then push through it, she said. And my favorite, if you aren’t feeling good, just fake it!
An hour is a long time to ride a bike. I kept thinking about it as I watched my heart rate monitor. It’s not about trying to kill yourself the entire time. It’s ok to ease up and recover. I think the same thing happens when we think about our classrooms. We don’t have to be pushing the limits of using technology or creating these high intensity, creative environments all the time. In fact, even our students need a recovery after a while.
A few years ago, while working in a district that had recently gone 1:1, some teachers came to me and said that their students were tired of creating. They wanted to know why they couldn’t just be told the answer. Especially for middle and high school students, they’ve learned to play the game of school. You’re going to be changing the rules on them, and it feels uncomfortable. Don’t be afraid to push on them, and to push yourselves, but remember that it’s ok to ease up from time to time in order to recover. The real question is whether you allow the fear and discomfort to control you – and your students – or if you can embrace it and push through it.
I started getting really tired towards the end of the ride – seriously, only ONE cup of coffee. And then, the instructor told us that we would end with sprints. After the first one, I thought I might die, but the instructor kept encouraging us. As we began the last sprint I started wondering if I might seriously have a heart attack when the instructor appeared right in front of my bike. “You’ve got this.” She said directly to me. There may have been 15 other people in the room, but she individualized her instruction to motivate me directly. Not only did she feel responsible for motivating me, but she also felt as though I could surpass even my own expectations. I did. I didn’t die. And I got two more cups of coffee.
What can we all actually DO?! When conducting my dissertation research, a teacher said, “I can’t do anything until my principal tells me what to do.” It took every ounce of control not to shot, YES YOU CAN! You can control your box! You can control your own thoughts, feelings, and actions!
You can model your learning. If the ultimate goal is for our students to learn how to learn, we need to show them that we are learners too. We can model how we allow ourselves to try, and struggle, and try some more. We can let our students know that learning is HARD, but that it’s possible. In Reggio Emilia, every teacher and administrator first considers themselves a learners.
At the same time, we can also be a Media Mentor. Lisa Guernsey at New America – a policy group in DC – and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center – the think-tank behind Sesame Street – have been exploring the idea of media mentors. If we go back to the one-room schoolhouses, students had mentors in older students and teachers. Not only did these more knowledgeable others teach them skills and help them to master content, but they also helped them understand the social norms and behaviors of the day. One of the challenges with digital technology – and especially social media – is that kids are on their own.
Students need adults who sit with them and help them deeply understand, question, and interact with media and technology. Since the dawn of time, children have needed adults to help them develop an understanding of their sense of self. Today’s kids also have to navigate the complexity of an online and an in-person identity. They need mentors – especially our students who may not have access to digital media at home.
As educators, you all have the capacity to become media mentors. Think about how you model your use of devices, your interactions online, your analysis of information, and the ways in which you build community with technology. Even if you don’t feel as though you know everything about the tools, students can learn from how you wonder, learn, and figure things out.
If you believe that your students can be curious, creative learners, and you are willing to experiment, think about what might become possible. You can create a culture of learning. Think about what it tells our students if we model our own learning and assume the role of media mentor. Consider what might happen if we ensure that our students know that we believe every one of them could be an intellectual bloomer, and a creative, curious learner. Imagine the possibilities if we take advantage of every possible technology to give our students choices in how they demonstrate their learning, allow them to have agency over their learning process, and provide them with meaningful, social learning experiences.
You have all of the control! You can control your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. You can create the conditions for your students to develop all of the future skills that they will need to be successful. You have the power to prepare your students for their future.
Let’s face it. Today’s world does not look like the one that most of us grew up in. Things change faster and travel farther. Technology comes and goes and alters everything that we know about ourselves and our communities. Our students are living in a world filled with uncertainty and yet they have access to more information than at any other time in history.
A new world needs a new kind of school. In his 1970 book, Future Shock, futurist Alvin Toffler cites psychologist Dr. Herbert Gerjouy as saying, “The new education must teach the individual how to classify and reclassify information, how to evaluate its veracity, how to change categories when necessary, how to move from the concrete to the abstract and back, how to look at problems from a new direction – how to teach himself. Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.” [11]
Sometimes, it may feel lonely just trying to perfect your own box. Moving to blended learning is a daunting task to take on by yourself, so remember that you are not alone. Not only do you have examples from history, but you also have the community in this room as well as in your district. Imagine what might happen if everyone in your school and in your district starts to add their boxes together. You could have a pretty spectacular box city!
In all of this, you have a new purpose: to create learning experiences that are active, social, and meaningful. You know blended learning because you know what great learning can be. You have the tools to design the most amazing new vision of school that the world has ever seen, and you have each other.
As Harvard professor David Weinberger said in his book Too Big to Know: “the smartest person in the room is the room.” [12] Today is the day to start making the most extraordinary rooms. Thank you for having me. I hope you have a great rest of your day.
References
[1] Tyack, D. B., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[2] Featherstone, J. (1991). Forward. In K. Jervis & C. Montag (eds.), Progressive education for the 1990s (ix-xii). New York: Teachers College Press
[3] Collins, A. & Halverson, R. “The Second Educational Revolution: Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology,” Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 26, no. 1 (January 12, 2010): 18–27, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2729.2009.00339.x.
[4] Postman, N., & Weingartner, C. (1979). Teaching as a subversive activity.
[5] Donald Generals, “Booker T. Washington and Progressive Education: an Experimentalist Approach to Curriculum Development and Reform,” The Journal of Negro Education 69, no. 3 (2000): 215–34, doi:10.2307/2696233.
[6] Lagemann, E. C. (1989). The Plural Worlds of Educational Research. History of Education Quarterly, 29(2), 185–214. doi:10.2307/368309
[7] Newmann, F. M., Bryk, A. S., & Nagaoka, J. (2001). Authentic Intellectual Work and Standardized Tests: Conflict or Coexistence? Improving Chicago’s Schools.
[8] Zeiser, K. L., Taylor, J., Rickles, J., & Garet, M. S. (2014). Evidence of Deeper Learning Outcomes (pp. 1–38). Retrieved from http://www.air.org/resource/evidence-deeper-learning-outcomes
[9] Ertmer, P. A., & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. T. (2010). Teacher technology change: How knowledge, confidence, beliefs, and culture intersect. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 42(3), 255–284. dos: 10.1080/15391523.2010.10782551
[10] Kraft, U. (2005). Unleashing creativity. Scientific American Mind, 16(1), 16-23.
[11] Alvin, T. (1970). Future shock. Random House.
[12] Weinberger, D. (2011). Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren T the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room. Basic Books.