Technology: One Of the Intelligences? Or Ubiquitous?

I’ve been reading more than I’ve been typing lately, but as I read an endless sea of blog posts and articles about the need for a future of 1-to-1 computing and ubiquitous technology, I can’t help but ask:

Is technological fluency possibly just one of the many multiple intelligences?

Or perhaps this: Is it possible that the tech-savvy crowd is biased in favor of ubiquitous technology use, at the expense of the other intelligences (such as music or art)?

Or, conversely, is technology truly a game-changer that rightfully deserves to permeate everything we do in school?

More Effectiveness vs. More Effort

Let’s assume for a moment that the rhetoric coming out of Washington, D.C., stating that our public schools are in need of massive improvement, is all true.  Now what?

It seems to me that the solutions being proposed at the national level can be divided into two categories: solutions that focus on increasing the effectiveness of our schools, and solutions that focus on increasing the amount of effort being put forth by administrators, students, and teachers in those schools.

In the effort category, things being proposed include extending the school day, extending the school year, having increased “accountability” for teachers and administrators to succeed as measured by their standardized test scores, and offering merit pay to motivate teachers to work harder.

In the effectiveness category, we see a push to align national standards, to get more technology into the classroom, and to offer more online class opportunities for secondary students.

The effort-based goals assume that students, teachers, and administrators are not currently trying hard enough, and that they will be motivated to succeed if only they are enticed to do so with the right rewards or punishments.

Now, I’ve taught in a couple of pretty good school systems, so maybe my views are biased, but I’ve never actually seen a teacher (or a student, or an administrator) who wanted to fail.  Everyone, in my opinion, is trying to do their best, with varying degrees of success.

There is very little margin for improvement on the effort side of things.

My hope is that the Obama administration will realize this and will focus all of its energies on improving schools from the effectiveness angle instead.  Dollars spent on getting technology in the classroom, lowering class sizes, offering programs for pre-elementary children ages 0-5, and so on, will provide much more bang for their buck than merit pay incentives or bonuses for schools that make AYP.

A Plea for Local Control

Just as academic differentiation for individual students is better than a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching, I believe that local decision-making as to how to run a particular school district is better than one-size-fits-all state or national mandates for all school districts.

That’s what scares me most about the current economic woes many school districts are facing: that in the name of budget reductions, school district decision making may become more and more standardized, made by state and federal officials that are far removed from the students affected by their policies.

Correlation = Causation!

I always used to think that correlation does not imply causation, but apparently I was wrong!  At least according to the latest “research”:

Like this Science Daily article that asserts that students, particularly black students, in lower-level middle school math classes learn less than students in higher-level math classes.  Therefore we should get rid of those lower-level classes to close the “racial academic achievement gap.”  (It couldn’t possibly be that more-talented students are placed in the higher classes…)

Or from yesterday’s New York Times article from Thomas Friedman: “If America had closed the international achievement gap between 1983 and 1998 and had raised its performance to the level of such nations as Finland and South Korea, United States G.D.P. in 2008 would have been between $1.3 trillion and $2.3 trillion higher.” (Because higher multiple-choice one-size-fits-all test scores are guaranteed to predictably raise GDP, of course.)

Or, as a speaker in favor of inclusion recently told me, “We need to get as many students as possible out of special ed and back into the mainstream classroom, because students in special ed have been proven to learn less and have higher dropout rates than students in regular ed.” (Again, it couldn’t be the clientele found in special ed, could it?)

Sigh.  As you read the latest education headlines, I urge everyone to keep the fact that correlation does not equal causation firmly in mind… because the authors of these articles don’t seem to be doing due diligence in that regard.

Are Our Schools “Failing”?

Arne Duncan has come up with some dramatic assertions in his brief tenure as the U.S. Secretary of Education. His latest assertion — that we should switch to 6 days of school per week, 11 months of school per year, and longer school days — raised some eyebrows.

But there’s one assertion that permeates his thinking that virtually no one is challenging: that our schools are failing.

But are they really? If so, what does “failing” mean? Conversely, what would it mean to be a successful school?

Is it really more accurate to say that some of our schools are failing some of our students? Or is it really a societal failure? Or a parental failure? Or even a prenatal failure, in some cases?

In addition to carefully pondering each policy idea coming from Mr. Duncan, I urge teachers everywhere to reconsider their tacit acceptance of the notion that our schools are a complete failure.

Elementary Technology in the News

Great front-page story in today’s Grand Rapids Press:

Forget PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, these kids take high-tech to a new level … the classroom

by Kym Reinstadler | The Grand Rapids Press

Monday March 09, 2009, 11:09 AM

For 20 years, Patti Harju graded “weather reports” that were five neat sentences and a hand-drawn picture. That was then.

Today, the climate for showcasing learning is changing.

Think pupil podcasts, biology blogs and high-tech, video-integrated online reports.

College prep? Hardly. These days, it’s the very young students with access to technology who are leading the charge.

• Second-graders in East Grand Rapids videotape each other reading letters to President Barack Obama in front of a green screen. They superimpose these over photos of the White House to post on their e-newsletter.

• Elementary students in Hudsonville post poetry podcasts on their classroom blog.

• Fifth-graders in Hastings use a Glogster-based presentation to weave digital photographs, video and text into online reports.

“When it comes to creative classroom uses of new technologies, I think we’re seeing most at the elementary (level), not the high schools, like you might expect,” said Ron Houtman, educational technology consultant with the Kent Intermediate School District.

“The state’s new graduation requirements make high school curriculum more prescriptive, lock-step. There seems to be more time for technology in the lower grades.”

…for the rest of the article, click the link above.

My own thoughts: I’m thrilled to see teaching with technology on page A1 of a fairly large city newspaper.  I’m not thrilled to see a local ed tech consultant saying that high schools are marching in such a lock-step, mandated manner that they can’t find time for using technology in the course of the school year.

Still, as more and more articles like this one are printed in newpapers around the country, you can’t help but think that just maybe we are getting somewhere…

Threadless 101

I love helping students to find authentic audiences and purposes for everything they do.  As a result, I think the new promotion from www.threadless.com, entitled “Threadless 101,” is a cool opportunity for students of all ages to gain a genuine audience for their artwork.

In Threadless’ own words:

“Looking for an innovative project to spice up your curriculum? We can help!  We at Threadless would like to introduce you to a unique art and design project developed especially for you and your students: Threadless 101. In Threadless 101, students are assigned to create an original design for a tee shirt. Their designs are critiqued and voted on by the class and the student with the highest scored design will not only be featured in our Threadless newsletter, but also awarded a Threadless Gift Certificate.”

Sounds more interesting that just hanging artwork up in the hallway to me.

Rethinking Student ‘Work’

I hereby propose that we stop referring to what students do in our classrooms as ‘work.’

Words are powerful things.  When we spend all day telling the students to work on their math worksheet, create artwork, complete their homework, or work quietly and independently, what message are we telling the students about school?

Just as important, what message are we telling ourselves?  That the lecture-worksheet-test cycle is somehow good enough?  That students aren’t supposed to find joy or have a genuine interest in what they do in school?  (”Sure, my class hated that unit, but that’s normal!  You know how 6th graders are…”)

And yes, KIPP teachers, you of the “Work Hard. Be Nice.” mantra: this means you, too.

Beyond Portfolios, Part 2

After typing my previous post, Beyond Portfolios, two days ago, imagine my delight today, as I’m reading What Would Google Do? byJeff Jarvis, to realize that he is saying many of the same things:

“Should we be forcing people to go through 18, 16, or even 12 years of school — trying to get them all to think the same way — before they make things?

…We may want to creative a preserve around youth — as Google does around its inventors — to nurture and challenge the young.  What if we told students that, like Google engineers, they should take one day a week or one course a term or one year in college to create something: a company, a book, a song, a sculpture, an invention?  School could act as an incubator, advising, pushing, and nurturing their ideas and effort. What would come of it?  Great things and mediocre things.  But it would force students to take greater responsibility for what they do and to break out of the straitjacket of uniformity.  It would make them ask questions before they are told answers.  It would reveal to them their own talents and needs.  The skeptic will say that not every student is responsible enough or a self-starter.  Perhaps.  But how will we know students’ capabilities unless we put them in the position to try?  And why structure education for everyone around the lowest denominator of the few?” (p. 212)

Obviously, I agree, and I particularly like the ideas found within the two sentences I bolded.

Beyond Portfolios

After 13 years of work getting a K-12 education, why is it that all a student has to show for it is (if things go well) a diploma?

It seems to me like our goals should be so much different, such as:

In writing: students should have a very rich blog with hundreds of quality posts on it, as well as several major self-published pieces and several other items that were genuinely published by outside sources (editorials in the local paper, columns for a trade magazine, etc.)

In science: students should have at least one patent and/or at least one invention that they’ve actually created a prototype for (or, better, that has had copies of which have actually sold)

In math: students should be able to balance a checkbook, understand how to stay out of debt and avoid credit spending, and understand how to interpret biased statistics and advertisements correctly; they should also be able to solve any real-world math problem they may encounter in life (figuring out the reduced cost of having improved gas mileage, determining  the amount of interest that would accrue on various home loans, figuring out which jar of peanut butter costs less per ounce, being able to make two-thirds of a batch of something, etc.).

In social studies: students should be able to read every article in the newspaper and understand (when applicable) the article’s significance and the historical events that have led up to the event being described.  When applicable, students should also understand the geography of the location(s) being discussed, as well as the religious and political backgrounds of the people groups involved

Finally: students should be heading to their post-K-12 life with a plan for the future, rather than just heading to college because everyone is doing it.  They should have an extensive understanding of a significant number of careers in their preferred field(s) of study as well.