When I think of Web 2.0, I think of connections. And whether you are visualizing those connections by looking at a representation of a del.icious or Flickr network, it is all about linking to people, and the multiple connections that one can initiate through the click of a mouse.
Linking to people gives you access to conversations, ideas, resources and an enormous potential for personal growth. Anyone involved in this understands that.
If you are an educator, being connected within the world of Web 2.0 puts you in the minority. Teachers and administrators have been slow to embrace the power and potential of Web 2.0, but that’s no surprise, given that the adoption of more traditional technology has been less than optimal.
So where does Web 2.0 fit into education? Does it fit?
When people ask me about the role of technology in education, especially as it relates to integration (a word I wish we wouldn’t use-integral might be a better choice), I often relate my three fundamental beliefs about what makes technology an integral part of teaching and learning. Here is my framework:
First, the technology use should support a fundamental literacy that the school or organization believes in.
Second, the use of that technology must extend the lesson, or learning, to a place that could not be achieved unless the technology had been included. In other words, there must be a value-added component to the inclusion of the technology.
And finally, the use of technology must be framed within a pedagogically sound instructional approach-without that, the first two are meaningless.
So, with those three ideas in mind, I’ve got some questions…
Given that framework, what are the fundamental literacies that we believe in? Are there new literacies? Has school leadership sat down and said “You know, it’s no longer 1974 and the world is changing, and our kids need new skills. What are they, and what is the best way to teach them?” What exactly does it mean to extend the lesson to a new place, given the context of the tools of Web 2.0 and what those tools can bring to a learning landscape? What's the new place these tools can take us to? And given all of this, how must pedagogy change to put learners in the center of learning and not on the periphery? What new approaches are required, what must be discarded and what must now be embraced? The environment of Web 2.0 presents some enormous challenges, and to make that environment a mission-critical part of the education that prepares kids for today and tomorrow will require an enormous rethinking of much of our core beliefs and practices. Is it any wonder why educators have been slow on the uptake?
I believe that the literacies that we’ve always held to be a part of learning are still important, and just as critical. But they’re not enough now, not in today’s world. There has to be more, and we need to closely re-examine what we do, and redefine how we do it. Here are my four essential literacies, within the context of today’s networked information world that Web 2.0 supports, that I believe to be essential for kids today.
Be able to connect. Not just to classmates. Not just to the teacher. To authors, to scientists, politicians, and to other teachers and kids, with the understanding that these individuals are important to personal growth, and that you can be just as important in theirs. Use these connections to understand the world view of others, and learn how to forge and develop mutually beneficial relationships that lead to cooperation rather than competition. Use the same connections to distribute you, your creativity, and what you represent beyond the walls of the school. Understand that learning is no longer, or does not have to be, limited by time and space, by brick and mortar, so go global, go 24-7, go 365.
Be able to create. Not posters, not PowerPoints, not some absolutely silly brochure on the tundra, but some serious digital content for posting on the platforms and networks of Web 2.0. Create content and products by mashing up the work of others into something new, and then have the expectation that others will do the same with your content. Create something and make it available for all-and allow the world to recreate it, amplify it.
Be able to communicate. Not by writing for the teacher, but for the world. Not to give a notecard-driven speech in class, but to develop a podcast, screencast, or vodcast for the world to hear or see. Write in a blog and actively contribute to someone else’s perception and thoughts by commenting in theirs. Communicate not for an audience within four walls, but for an audience without walls.
Be able to collaborate. Not only with classmates, but with “classmates” in other states, other provinces, other countries, other continents. Use the power of wikis to collaboratively create content with individuals who have the same interests. Be a life-long contributor.
Your school may have these as viable expectations for students already. But how many schools have these skills as expectations within the context of Web 2.0, directly supported by Web 2.0 tools? Sure, we ask kids to collaborate and communicate, but is how we do it now reflective of how it can be done, should be done, and needs to be done? How many schools have teachers that can step away from the center, step away from how it’s always been done, and be a connector or catalyst, and help to create a new learning culture with these tools? And how many administrators even understand what the tools are?
Is there absolutely any doubt that the four skills I have identified above will be necessary for success? Is their importance not blatantly obvious? And yet we focus on what has always been….
And that’s sitting in a classroom in a row of fellow students with paper and pencil taking notes while listening to the one source of content currently available and then living within the expectation that the content will be returned to the content provider in a paper, bubble-in format for grading in a machine, with a nice, tidy pink score printed on it.
It doesn't have to be that way....
However, do we realistically believe that schools will embrace the use of these tools, especially in the United States, with its emphasis on its NCLB/AYP/CIPA/NCIPA/DOPA mentality? Do we realistically believe that teachers and administrators believe we need to go in this direction, with an emphasis on these types of skills? Is Web 2.0 a hopelessly square peg in a round educational hole?
It doesn't have to be that way....
I’ll leave you with one question, which I hope to get at least 25 responses to. Please take a few minutes to write several sentences.
What has been the impact of Web 2.0 tools on your school, your teaching or on your kids, at this point in time?
I was asked by a teacher the other day how I continued to find new tools and technologies that can be used for education. She didn't believe me when I told her that I learned about most sites through fortune cookies, so I confessed the truth.
I don't just read educational blogs.
To many people that may sound blasphemous, but its true. In fact, I'll go a step further. Many days, I refrain from reading educational blogs entirely. The main reason for this (besides time constraints) is that I generally agree with what most people have to say on those blogs. I have a vast amount in common with my fellow EduBloggers, and while reading what they have to say is comforting and affirming, it doesn't always challenge my current thinking and ideas.
Now this isn't meant to be a jab at my colleagues, rather a commentary upon where we draw inspiration from. I remember listening to a podcast discussing The Medici Effect. The author discusses how innovation is most likely to occur at the intersection of ideas, fields and cultures. A person who surrounds himself with like minded people and never branches out isn't nearly as likely to come up with an innovative idea as someone who goes out of their way to be exposed to new situations and meet new people as much as possible.
The point is, if you restrict yourself to reading solely like minded people, your field of vision narrows. Yes, you will still learn all sorts of new things to bring to your classroom, and will likely be exposed to new ideas from them, but your opportunities for striking upon your own innovative ideas will be severely restricted.
So while I don't recommend that you unsubscribe to your edublogs, you should take a break periodically and make sure you subscribe to feeds from a variety of sources. Some of my favorites are the Del.icio.us Popular page (recent sites bookmarked by large numbers of people around the world), Viral Video chart (lists the most linked to videos from a variety of categories), and 10x10 (a site that collects the 100 most popular words and pictures in the news).
Those sites alone provide an interesting cross section of some of the newest, most popular, and most significant sites on the internet. From the inane, to informative. But be careful, when you step outside your element, you never quite know where you're going to land. Just make sure you share the journey!
In most classes in most schools, the use of Web 2.0 is not embedded. What does the term "embedded" mean in this context? For me, it means something similar to the working definition adopted, de facto, for "e-maturity", a term that is increasingly used to describe the level of use of educational technology in UK schools. To paraphrase: if a school cannot function effectively, or even at all, without Web 2.0, then Web 2.0 can be said to be embedded.
It seems to me that at the moment there is a polarisation of viewpoints about Web 2.0. There are a few pioneers, experimenting either on a large and public scale, such as Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay, the educators behind the Horizon Project, or a smaller and /or more private scale, such as a number of people I'm aware of who are trying things out, such as Leon Cych, on the one hand. In fact, the ebook I edited, Coming of Age: An Introduction to the NEW Worldwide Web, especially the second edition (which will be published soon) is, in effect, a catalogue of people who are currently experimenting and sharing their findings.
At the other end of the scale, you have the people who are positively against using Web 2.0 tools. They mean well, but their reasoning, which is often based on concerns for children's safety, doesn't quite stand up to scrutiny. After all, you don't protect children from being run over by not allowing them out on the streets, but by holding their hand and teaching them a few survival rules. But that's an argument for another time.
In the middle, you have the vast majority of people who have either not heard of Web 2.0, who have heard of it and know nothing about it, or who know about it but are too bogged down in worrying about grades and inspections and their jobs to want to put their head above the parapet.
In addition, the tools themselves are not yet mature. There are new developments in existing aplications and innovatory new ones all the time -- so much so that it is is very difficult to keep up-to-date and actually use these new tools at the same time. I've recently been involved in a project for Naace, a subject association and interest group for ICT in education in the UK, and of which I am currently the Chair, in which we were amassing links to resources in a number of areas of educational technology, and using a variety of collaborative tools to do so. The team leader for the section of which I was a member, Leon Cych, kept finding new collaborative tools to try out. Whilst this is very exciting, and partly what we were there to do, it doesn't recommend itself to the busy teacher who is more concerned wth the end product (raising the students' grades) than the process of achieving it. It feels, to use another analogy, rather like trying to measure the length of something with a ruler whose dimensions keep changing.
I regard the current state of the technology as "clunky", a term which I use to describe a situation in which things don't naturally fit together but have somehow been made to work. Some of us have been here before. When I started using a word processor, you had to enter codes for attributes like bold, italic, centred text and so on, and you wouldn't really know what it looked like until you printed it out. Later on, I was experimenting with an early form of web pages, a form of teletext, where each page was very text-heavy, graphics were created by making patterns with the text or rectangular blocks, creating pages took ages, and creating links between pages was very labour-intensive -- and which, at the end of the day, would be read by hardly anybody because there were not that many people who could access the system, or who could see the educational value in doing so.
In fact, our hats should go off to all pioneers because they are brave and lonely people. Brave, because they stake their reputations on what is little more than an article of faith; lonely because in a figurative sense so few people understand what they are trying to do, and in a literal sense because there are so few of them.
How do we move from having a few pioneers, to a much larger-scale adoption? Here are my thoughts on this.
Firstly, we need to ignore the people I regard as the Luddites. They may have valid arguments, but I think it's a waste of time and energy engaging with them. The people to concentrate on are the ones who are interested, and not quite sure what to do or where to start (which was the intended audience for Coming of Age).
Secondy, the tools need to become more mature. In the Horizon Project, for example, we use a wiki, YouTube, Airset (for schduling), Elluminate (for live discussion), delicious (for bookmarking), and there may be others as far as I know. My view is this: you would never get any ordinary (and, dare I say it, rational) teacher to embark on such a project if they have to first learn about managing (note that I said "managing", not "using") these tools. If I want to create a table in a word processed document, I click on an icon labelled "Table"; I don't have to go to a special table application, create a table, and then somehow integrate it into the document. I know there is an issue about bloatware, with most products being over-featured for most people most of the time, but when it comes to practical, everyday, usage, people appreciate having the tool they need when and where they need it.
Thirdly, we have an obligation to think about things from the point of view of the ordinary tacher, by which I mean that we need to point out where Web 2.0 tools can deliver their aims and objectives. Much of the time I feel that that aspect is ignored, or somehow dismissed.
Fourthly, we need to stop deluding ourselves that there is a digital divide based on age. The conceptual framework of digital natives and digital immigrants is useful, but only up to a point. Most of the really pioneering people I know are in the 40s and 50s, and a lot of young people I know are pretty conservative. There always will be pioneers and non-pioneers, and thinking that the up-coming generation will adopt Web 2.0 tools and solve the sorts of issues we are currently grappling with, such as locked-down systems, banned resources and so on, just by dint of their age pofile, is an effective way of avoiding these issues altogether.
Finally, we need advocates in all walks of life, and we need to stop being so isolationist. In a sense, the best argument to persuade school authorities that instant messaging is potentially a good thing is the fact that many businesses use it as part of their internal commmunications landscape. Businesses will expect to see schoolchildren leaving school with an ability to use tools like instant messaging. That, for some people, is a good enough reason for schools to not merely allow its use, but to require it.
In conclusion, a challenge for us is to find ways of spreading the use of Web 2.0 tools from the relatively small group of pioneers who have already dipped their toes in the water, to the much larger group of people who are standing on the beach wondering if they should. I hope to develop my thinking on this over the course of the next few months.
Dan, an educator associated with one of the New York BOCES, wrote an important comment on one of my recent 2¢ Worth blog postings, One Obvious Miss. He expressed some logical concerns about recent discussions on new literacies, what I called learning literacies. The vision of these new literacies that he seemed to be coming from were similar to that of many educators, one that is bound to the effective use of emerging technologies. The truth is that this is exactly the notion that I'm trying to get away from. Here's what Dan says, and I am inserting my comments, unindented.
I worry a bit about the notion of new learning literacy. It seems that whenever I turn around, there is a new tool developed that everyone is trying to “figure out” and apply to learning tasks. Each tool seems to morph and change in an eyeblink.
Technology is constantly morphing. But the skills that I am thinking of are far more fundamental and tied not to any specific longstanding or fleeting application of technology, but to the changing nature of information that has resulted from this technology revolution. In a published print information landscape, the fundamental skills were the ability to read the text in front of you, process numbers and concepts logically, and write a coherent paragraph -- the three Rs.
Now that information is increasingly networked, digital, and overwhelming, the three Rs have expanded.
It's not just can you read? -- but can you expose the text's context?
It's not just can you do arithmetic? -- but can you employ information?
And merely being able to write on paper is not nearly enough. Can you express ideas compellingly using not only text, but images, sound, animation, and video?
These skills result in the ability to use the information around you to accomplish goals, regardless of the technology. It's about the information!
Learning skills involve the ability to access information and answers, process them in a value-adding fashion, and express what you know and have learned to others -- within any contemporary information landscape (and today that information is networked, digital, and overwhelming).
Dan continued,
Applying a blog… a wiki.. or a tool being mashed together as we exchange this writing? - is knowing how to do this “literacy” if the tools will disappear?
Knowing how to do it -- is not literacy!
Knowing how to learn to do it -- is literacy!
I saw the K-12 Online Conference RFP and the term “perpetual beta” jumped out at me. I had seen it a few days before too.
I have used at least 4 podcast/audio creation sites this past year. All were labeled as “beta” and all went away. I loved two of them.
I like the tool sites I see like bubbl and picnik.
I understand the group processes and tagging, the power of the Web2.0.
But “learning literacies” for the future may be a slippery fish to latch onto if our ideas and tools are in “perpetual beta.”
I feel your pain, as do most of us (over 50). It's the nature of today's information environment that it is not merely a place to consume, but also a landscape so rich and accessible that any of us can also become producers and even architects of the environment, inventing, building, and improving in a vicious and exhilarating cycle.
Sometimes I am excited and sometimes I think we are creating chaos out of order!
Get use to it. It's all the more reason why we need to factor it all down to fundamental skills -- can you use today's information environment to help yourself learn what you need to know, to do what you need to do?
One of my favorite sources of information and learning are the many conference talks and discussions that are posted to the web. More and more, conference organizers are making available these talks, catching up with enterprising presenters and audience members who have been recording them before official sanctioning. A quick look on iTunes shows that 20 of the talks from NECC 2006 are available for download. All but two of these are just the audio recording. I'm curious as to how many talks from NECC 2007 will be available in not only audio, but also video format. I know from experience that being able to share a talk with my staff, or with my colleagues, helps me convey the ideas and thoughts that I came away with from seeing the talk in person.
Two very good examples of sharing talks, and ones that NECC may want to emulate, are those produced at the PopTech and TED conferences. Both of these events can be described as ongoing conversations about science, design, sustainability, technology and the future of ideas. They make an effort to release the best of the talks over time throughout the year. In addition they both provide tools that allow a user to embed the talk in their own web page. For example, I recently shared with my staff a talk by Sir Kenneth Robinson that took place at the TED conference. It was a great springboard for a staff discussion about creativity and how we do or do not foster it in schools. In addition to sharing the talk at the staff meeting I also posted it on our staff web page using the code that the TED folks provided. It gave us with another forum for discussing the ideas conveyed in the talk.
It will be interesting to see how ISTE incorporates this kind of conference presence and extension at the upcoming NECC/ISTE in Atlanta. I'm hoping that they begin to emulate the methods used by the TED and PopTech organizers to share and disseminate as widely as possible the ideas and discussions that take place in Atlanta next month.
There are certain moments that are turning points. Many of these points are realized from a far, a moment of reflection that shines a light upon the very moment when things changed. However, there are those rare occurrences where in the moment, you can feel a change, you can feel a complete shift. The past 24 hours I bore witness to that rare moment where you literally witness the shift happening in front of you and know things are never going to be the same from this point forward: the inaugural Second Life Best Practices in Education International Conference that will, rumor has it, occur twice a year with mini-conferences occurring between events.
With well over 1,000 attendees, over 30 presentations, and numerous social events, this conference was much bigger than just hearing the insights from the pioneers of Second Life. It painted a clear image of the vision many of us had with Second Life: a community of scholars exploring and evaluating together as one for the betterment of education. Whether new to SL or a long time SLEDer (Second Life Educator), each added to the moment as ideas were challenged, new ideas formed, and networks built. There was little in the way of blind acceptance. There was little in the way of negativity. It was all about critical dialogue in a virtual community that spanned the globe -- okay, okay, it was a whole lot of fun, too!
But that isn't the entire shift; it's just the start! As the conference chair Beth Ritter-Guth proclaimed, "The purpose of the conference was to legitimize the work we do here; the hard work, the long hours, the collaboration - we want our colleagues, our deans, our fundersto see this take form. We want them to understand that this is very real to us as educators and researchers that education is about to take off on a whole other plane, and if we want to prepare students, we have to do that through virtual learning." That is the shift that occurred: the shift from unwarranted criticism and lack of acceptance to an understanding that this is legitimate scholarly work and a willingness to engage in critical dialogue not simply dismiss SL as meaningless.
There was still criticism, there were plenty of questions raised, and even plenty of doubts and concerns. However, these points were coming from a new level of understanding. These were not coming from a point of fear, a point of unwarranted criticism simply because a person was unwilling to recognize SL as legitimate scholarly work.
What the Shift Means
What does this shift mean for Second Life? I venture to say we are about to embark on a roller coaster ride not seen since the advent of the Internet. There will be much debate, even great media coverage, and a very crowed virtual world :-) There will undoubtedly be more and more educators and stakeholders entering Second Life as explorers and scholars. There will undoubtedly be more and more questions and concerns raised as wonderful answers and solutions are discovered. There will undoubtedly be more and more organizations and businesses creating their virtual presence or even creating a virtual world to compete with Second Life. Most importantly, it will be a much richer community of educators coming together for the betterment of education from Kindergarten through Higher Education. While I may not have all the answers, what one of my favorite authors proclaimed in his book, Oh, the Places You'll Go, sums it all up:
Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!
Today is your day educators. The shift has happened and I can't wait to see the Great Places we are all going together. If you haven't joined us, now is the time, so get into Second Life today and join us as we journey together as one!
See you in Second Life!
Ex.
Final Note
This event could never of happened without the support of everyone involved from attendees to sponsors. The Second Life Best Practices in Education International Conference is no ones and everyones. However, I do want to give special thanks to a number of people from my the bottom of my virtual hear. If you see them in Second Life, please thank them for not only making this conference possible but more importantly the shift possible.
First, the Conference Chairs for which none of would have been possible: Marlene Brooks (SL Zana Kohime), Chris Collins (SL Fleep Tuque), Doreen Pugh (SL Veritas Variscan), and Beth Ritter-Guth (SL Desideria Stockton). They had the courage to do something that many would have never thought possible.
Second, and my bias will shine through here :-) My K-12 Conference Team that poured their hearts into this event and sacraficed sleep and family to help create a day for k-12 educators that would help make the shift for them possible. Honestly, I can't thank all of them enough. First my partner in crime and co-chair, Cynthia Alvarado (SL Cyndi Uriza) for being the structure! Second, Maree McKenzie (SL Collan Beck) for the wonderful insights and wicked sounds! Third, Andrea Tejedo (SL Marie Guyot) for the hard work. Last but not least in any way, Lisa Williamnson (SL Isla Masala) for doing anything and everything that it took to makes this the best it could be.
Finally, to the presenters that sent a shockwave throughout education over the last 24hours. We all felt it!
The Horizon project has been fascinating, not only because of the project itself but also because of the intentional involvement of students as young as ten in the peer review process.
Thank you to our 5 peer reviewer classrooms from 5 countries! Sharon Peters did a GREAT job with high school review and having it mid-project really gave the students excellent feedback and fuel to move ahead!
Several peer reviewers have tackled middle school. Graham Wegner from Australia - (who does such great job over at his Teaching Generation Z blog) has been working to formulate his thoughts on the best practices of peer review of this sort of project with middle schoolers.
Graham's Methodology for Horizon Project Peer Review
So, after reviewing four videos on Friday afternoon, I formulated an easy format for gathering the feedback. A common format for getting kids thinking about concepts is P,M,I (plus, minus, interesting). By using that today as the starting point, one student was chosen as the feedback agent for the particular video to be viewed. We watched, and the feedback agent wrote down a point or two for each P,M or I, then recorded the class’s general feedback into their PMI sheet. If every child does that over the space of this week, then each child can type up a paragraph or so of peer review comment that can be pasted into the wiki comments for the video creators. The process seemed to work fine today but it won’t happen in a day because of the need to find time for the video viewing without carving out huge chunks from the rest of the school curriculum. But writing reviews is an important English skill, so doing so for a real and purposeful venture like the Horizon Project is an ideal situation and as I keep telling the students, a real privilege as well.
What this means, even more than the students having a rich environment, that now, Sharon, Chrissy, Kim, Lisa, Graham can now "meet" to discuss the peer review process. What works and what doesn't and the most effective method to conduct such peer review. It was a bit cumbersome and we had to work out the details, but my, just looking at the PMI sheet that Graham has developed will be so very useful!!
To make it even more exciting, Elluminate has extended the Horizon project's time in the virtual room and we can have some "meetings" over the summer to discuss and plan the methods we will use for the project we will conduct in October/ November. So, when we conclude with the awards next week, we will begin the assessment of our ourselves.
The self-assessment and peer assessment from you is perhaps the most difficult for me because we are still learning and have done our very best but if we are going to improve not just as individual teachers, but improve as an educational community, we need to ask hard questions about how to make such a project replicable in other classrooms.
How can we make it manageable? Besides the time zone issues, how can we remove obstacles. Can we run side by side projects with other teachers (perhaps two sets of students on two wikis -- several classes each?) What courses besides ICT / Computer Science should do such projects?
So many questions. But right now, I'm just exhausted! It is hard to consider such deep questions without putting my head down on my desk! OK, back to grading!
It is nearing the end of the school year here in Shanghai. As teachers and students both make the final push to the end, I have been busy looking for evidence of what teaching 2.0 looks like in our school, and I think I found some.
Scott Hossack, a 5th grade teacher, had his students create rubrics for grading blog posts:
My grade 5 class has been Blogging for 6 months. Some of them have developed into really good bloggers and are leaving me far behind with the amount of time and energy they are investing into their Blogs.
We were talking the other day after looking at what makes a good blogger and the question came up about how to assess our blogs. So after much thought, discussion and some arguments we made three assessment rubrics. The students are now looking at other blogs as well as their own and will try to evaluate where they need some work. I thought I would post these rubrics out there so other bloggers, teachers or students may comment on areas that we have forgotten or left out. They also could comment on whether you think the Blogging Rubric was easy to use to assess blogs. I hope these are useful to others and I would love to hear from people out there if they think they are good or bad.
Talk about putting students at the center of learning. Some of Scott’s students have been posting on their blogs questions for me to answer about blogging. Here is just a sample of some of the questions the fifth graders are asking:
1) If you get spam comments on and on by only one person how do you stop that person from making more spam comments?
2) How do you know when a comment is a spam comment if Askimet doesn’t recognize it?
3) If you have uploaded something and then how do you upload something else?
I have talked to Scott about his experience with having the students read, evaluate, and create scoring rubrics for blogs. He plans to do this same lesson at the beginning of next year. He will start the students off by having them create the rubric that will be used to assess them the rest of the school year. As Scott said,
“I’m going to make digital writing just part of what we do from the beginning.”
I encourage you to look at the student created rubrics, and drop Scott and his class a comment on what you think. The next step is to have a class discussion on the three rubrics and have the class decide/vote on what the final rubric will be. I cannot think of a better way to start the school year than to have students take part in creating a rubric.
Students at the center of learning…that is Teaching 2.0
Then there is Jason Welker, a high school social studies teacher who posted this the other day on our utechtips.com blog:
This is amazing, not only is the Wiki a place where kids can come to review content from an entire semester of Economics, but they can also chat with their classmates and their teacher, discuss and ask for clarification on concepts they’re struggling with, go over practice questions and review together from their own homes! This has me thinking I’ll never need to hold another weekend review session in my classroom again. In fact, in a way the Wiki has become not only a complement to, but a substitute for the traditional classroom! Hey, maybe next year I’ll set up a review session in Second Life… then again, maybe not. Here’s what AP Economics sounds like in “chat speak”:
NIckZ: if a dude goes to a bank that’s newly opened and deposited 10,000. RR is 10%. so then 1000 would be required reserve, 9000 is loaned out correct? vivar: k hold on Ash: yeah Mr. W: sure vivar: if the reserve ratio is 10% and the bank voluntarily holds back another 10%, would the money multiplie be 1/20% or 1/10%? Ash: i think 1/10% NIckZ: money multiplier is the same. but u jst minus the loans by how many extra u have as reserves now Ash: because money multiplier is 1/RR right? NIckZ: yeah
gabber795 has joined. gabber795 is now Jacky vivar has left.
NIckZ: so lets say a guy saves 10,000. so 10% is required, 9000 can be loaned out. but he wants to save another 1000, so then loans is only 8000 Jacky: Mr Welker, do we need to know aggregate expenditure? NIckZ: i dont think so. we didn’t really do that Jacky: aite roger: thanks nick. I’m leaving. bye all roger has left. Mr. W: Goodnight, and good luck NIckZ: i was gona watch that movie, but i lost it
Students in control of their own learning…that is Teaching 2.0
Of course, you have to mention the Horizon Project that Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay organized. This project included five classes from around the globe. One of the classes at our high school was involved in the project. This week a group of judges of which I am honored to be a part of, are grading the projects using rubrics created by Vicki, Julie, and a cohort of other volunteers. I encourage you to spend some time on the wiki. The level of learning, of writing, of creation is beyond anything I could have done in high school.
Students creating and contributing to the global body of information…that is teaching 2.0.
Teacher 2.0 puts students at the center of the learning experience; they allow students to control the learning environment and create content that contributes to the global body of information. Teacher 2.0 creates an environment that allows learning to happen. They guide students by engaging in conversations either virtual or face-to-face. Teacher 2.0 understands that learning occurs when every member of the class is both a student and a teacher. That teaching and learning goes beyond the walls of the physical classroom. Teacher 2.0 understands that content is ever changing; therefore focusing on skills that help us understand the changing nature of content is more critical than the content itself. Teacher 2.0 is caring, compassionate, and is willing to take risks.
There are two primary standards documents for school administrators: ISLLC and ELCC. Together they broadly define the parameters of school leaders’ work. They also guide school district position descriptions; administrator evaluations and assessments; state licensure, certification, and accreditation expectations; and the content and coursework of postsecondary leadership preparation programs.
ISLLC
The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium Standards for School Leaders (a.k.a. ISLLC), were created by the Council of Chief State School Officers and are the foundation of nearly every state’s standards for administrator licensure and certification. The ISLLC framework was adopted in 1996 and is organized around six basic standards. The ISLLC standards note that a “school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by…”
facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community;
advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth;
ensuring management of the organization, operations, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment;
collaborating with families and community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources;
acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner; and
understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.
The ISLLC standards only mention technology twice:
the administrator has knowledge and understanding of the role of technology in promoting student learning and professional growth (under Standard 2); and
the administrator facilitates processes and engages in activities ensuring that there is effective use of technology to manage school operations (under Standard 3).
ELCC
The Educational Leadership Constituent Council standards (a.k.a. ELCC) were adopted by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education and are used for accreditation of postsecondary educational leadership programs. The ELCC framework was adopted in 2001 and is organized around seven basic standards. The ELCC standards note that “[c]andidates who complete [educational administration programs] are educational leaders who have the knowledge and ability to promote the success of all students by…”
facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a school or district vision of learning supported by the school community;
promoting a positive school culture, providing an effective instructional program, applying best practice to student learning, and designing comprehensive professional growth plans for staff;
managing the organization, operations, and resources in a way that promotes a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment;
collaborating with families and other community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources;
acting with integrity, fairly, and in an ethical manner; and
understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.
The seventh ELCC standard has to do with preservice administrator internships.
As you can see, the ELCC standards are extremely similar to ISLLC. However, the ELCC standards mention technology a little more than does ISLLC:
candidates demonstrate the ability to use and promote technology and information systems to enrich curriculum and instruction, to monitor instructional practices and provide staff the assistance needed for improvement (under Standard 2);
candidates are able to use qualitative and quantitative data, appropriate research methods, technology, and information systems to develop a long-range plan for a district that assesses the district’s improvement and accountability systems (under Standard 2); and
candidates demonstrate knowledge of adult learning strategies and the ability to apply technology and research to professional development design focusing on authentic problems and tasks, mentoring, coaching, conferencing, and other techniques that promote new knowledge and skills in the workplace (under Standard 2); and
candidates use problem-solving skills and knowledge of strategic, long-range, and operational planning (including applications of technology) in the effective, legal, and equitable use of fiscal, human, and material resource allocation and alignment that focuses on teaching and learning (under Standard 3).
There also is some additional language regarding technology in the narrative sections accompanying Standards 2 and 3.
NETS-A
The International Society for Technology in Education released its National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A) in 2001. The NETS-A are comprised of six broad standards and 31 performance indicators. The NETS-A state that “educational leaders…”
inspire a shared vision for comprehensive integration of technology and foster an environment and culture conducive to the realization of that vision;
ensure that curricular design, instructional strategies, and learning environments integrate appropriate technologies to maximize learning and teaching;
apply technology to enhance their professional practice and to increase their own productivity and that of others;
ensure the integration of technology to support productive systems for learning and administration;
use technology to plan and implement comprehensive systems of effective assessment and evaluation; and
understand the social, legal, and ethical issues related to technology and model responsible decision-making related to these issues.
The NETS-A do not align very well with the two main sets of administrator standards. To date they also have had little impact on most state licensure and accreditation efforts or on most university educational leadership programs.
Discussion
Should there be more mention of technology in either ISLLC or ELCC? Probably.
That said, we also know that technology leadership is just one aspect of principals’ and superintendents’ busy lives. While we might wish that ISLLC and ELCC better recognized the ways that digital technologies are revolutionizing our personal and professional lives, we also must remember that school administrators are responsible for leading instruction, supervising and evaluating employees, budgeting, community relations, management and operations, and a variety of other duties. There’s only so much time in administrators’ days and we have to prioritize their time and energy.
The NETS-A are an ambitious set of standards. While ideally all of the NETS-A capacities exist somewhere in the school organization, it is difficult to argue that a single person should be proficient in every single area the NETS-A cover. There will be some educators, whoever, who want a comprehensive program grounded in the NETS-A. The graduate programs offered by CASTLE, our partner universities, and a few other educational leadership programs are an attempt to meet that need.
The ISLLC and ELCC standards dominate conversations and expectations regarding school administrator competency. The next iterations of both documents probably should more explicitly address the technological changes that are occurring in our society. Until then, anyone got a good NETS-A / ISLLC / ELCC crosswalk?
Other questions
Do you know of any comprehensive, high-quality, district-sponsored staff development efforts based on the NETS-A?
Are the NETS-A too ambitious for principals, superintendents, and/or central office administrators?
Which NETS-A standard is most important for principals? Which is most difficult for them to master?
Does your school organization and/or local university do a good job of preparing administrators to be technology leaders?
