Transformation

Transformation of Pervasive Technologies - Curt Leads the response

__Prompt Questions:__ What are key overarching changes faced by school brought by this new pervasive explosion of technology in all sectors of 21st century life?

Sure, they still wrestle with a lot of the same issues they always did and act in familiar ways both endearing and…not so much. But they’re engaged with a parallel digital universe that often has little to do with how they spend most of their day (in school), and they seem to be trying to figure out how to inhabit—and make sense of—both. I don’t know about you, but one universe is plenty for me. Maybe they need us to help them more than we do in reconciling the two worlds, or finding points where they can or should intersect.
 * Kids are different.**

A lot of “school”, especially the parts of it we thought were “ours,” isn’t ours any more—it’s everybody’s. Those of us who approach school from a progressive orientation have always claimed that we wanted kids to take charge of their own learning, and we—and I emphasize WE—worked hard, planned well, and found some success in helping them do that. But now, networked tools empower them in ways we never could, and as kids embrace this new breed of empowerment, adult discomfort abounds.
 * So is learning.**

Teachers, administrators, parents…we all mean well, but I’m not sure we’ve found a way out of our discomfort yet. We either try to put the toothpaste back in the tube, or delude ourselves into believing that a carefully worded policy tweak will thwart the evolution of global technology, or throw up our hands and say “kids will be kids” while we passively accept a seemingly inevitable present or future that serves no one well. Some have been much braver and more purposeful in navigating change, and there are success stories out there - which your NAIS Technology Task Force will be gathering and sharing soon.

Students can share their ideas or encounter others' with pretty much anyone they like with a few keystrokes. They can work together with people they may or may not know anywhere in the world at any time of day or night to create, discuss, critique, joke, write, learn. And yet, for all they can do, I don’t get the sense they really understand what technology means. As Neil Postman once wrote, "The consequences of technological change are always vast, often unpredictable and largely irreversible." Again, maybe a tight-knit cadre of highly trained professional educators is the right group to partner with them in figuring out what’s a problem, what’s an opportunity, and how we can all thrive in any learning community, classroom, campus, community, or global.

Admissions Offices don’t do Admissions anymore. They do data-driven “enrollment management” and require rich demographic data on prospective families and the communities from which applicants may come. I’ve been asked to help find answers to questions like this recently (I’m making this up, but I’m not exaggerating): "How many Asian-American boys from the 60601 zip code needing carpool services can we expect to have enrolled five years from now?”
 * The business of school is different.**

As tuition rises, competition increases, and the economy sags, Development Offices don't only do traditional fundraising any more. They do “relationship management.” We launch branding initiatives to define the value add of an independent school education. Targeted marketing and development projects demand finely tuned data sets for data mining, and robust project management, groupware, social networking, and other communication tools. I heard a Development Director say recently, “There is no data about our students, parents, and alums I am not interested in having.” This is way different.

Parents expect schools to provide and support data and communication services they have become accustomed to in the business world, whether as consumers, employers, or employees. Deploying platform-agnostic tools that meet available calendaring standards, render properly on all browsers, support mobile devices of many kinds, allow for real-time updates – whew.

Teachers using their laptops at home send in support tickets on Sunday mornings at 2 a.m. because they’re working on a grade reporting deadline and the server is acting up. Eyes roll whenever we try to schedule server down time. It turns out that the first five days in August are pretty much the only time we can inconvenience an acceptably low number of people.

In technology, schools are now enterprise level, 24x7x365 operations. That’s different.

Well, we can’t do nothing. Unfortunately, technology is not a game one can sit out. Even the Amish know this, as I witness each summer when I ride my bicycle through Amish country and see what new tools are in play – this summer, it was weed whackers.
 * So What Do We Do?**

So what we do is get busy addressing these challenges, purposefully, intentionally, openly, and maybe even with some new urgency, since the stakes for our kids are high.

One quick, easy step you can take after this session is to visit the Clasroom of the Future installation here at the conference. There are many activities created not by vendors, but by indpendent school ed tech leaders for you to explore, with or without help from docents there, to help you gain some insight about how emerging technologies look and feel to the kids we serve.

Our panel’s goal today is for you to leave here with some concrete tools and strategies that you can use to start addressing transformative issues in three areas: management, professional development, and student learning. (Segue to first up).



__Original Notes Below:__ [jb] one thought is that with the ease of publishing on the internet, now more and more people have a completely global audience. I think about the YouTube video Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us http://youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE [jb] and maybe the idea of meeting the needs of our customers is essential if we want to remain as schools?

(DM) I think the premise here might be about how students and faculty now "create" information as part of their online interactions that are available outside of the traditional school community and as a result of this issues related to who owns the "property" the school, the students, WHO? The issue of intellectual property rights is an underlying tone to this Transformation topic. The classroom has transformed from an enclosed environment to one that reaches far beyond our understanding. How can we address this? {jb} On this note we put in wording to protect our students' rights to copyright for their original works if they were posted on our website and/or in Moodle. There were cases where schools or businesses claimed they 'owned' the copyright to works because they were posted/housed on their equipment. We felt it was important to be explicit that the copyright of all original works resides with the student who created it.

(DM) Just some food for thought, recently one of our college counselors approached me and suggest that maybe the school should have some sense of responsibility for students and/or faculty who post information "publically" (i.e. facebook, myspace, you name it) and it is found by prospective college admissions personnel and is detrimental to the students acceptance at the university of their choice? The question here could be?** What if any is our role in safeguarding our school community from the misuse or access of information about our community of members (faculty, students, administrators)?** This issue was posed by one of our college counselors but could have come from any area of the school as a concern. {jb} This has been an issue for us as well. I don't is this applies to some of the things you are thinking about, but in some of my research on the 'legal' ramifications, earlier case findings show that if any remarks, etc. end up directly impacting the school (i.e. a teacher feeling threatened, a lot of administrative overhead, image of the school that negatively impacts applications, etc.) then there might be legal implications for those involved. I researched this when some students wanted to create an area for their class to collaborate online, and they decided not to after our research, because they could be opening themselves up to a lot of liability if they 'monitor or maintain' the site and someone else does something that later becomes a legal issue. The education and research in this instance was very important for us to do and I think it benefited the school.

{CL} What Denise wrote above is getting toward where I was headed with this. Another question related to the above is to ask "What is your school doing to help students and teachers manage their online presence thoughtfully?" I went to a local K-12 CIO meeting where some seniors were asked what they wished they would have learned in school - one student said, "I wish I'd learned to manage my total online profile better. There are things out there I can't take back and wish I could. Now I have to live with those things." {jb} I (try) to do an 'Internet Safety' assembly with students, created by the students for their particular grade, twice a year. I do think it is part of our job to educate and inform students (and faculty).

{CL}: I offered up some of this language as I was trying to think through some of the implications of Tapscott's book on transparency for schools.I will admit to being somewhat vague at the time - and maybe still - but here's the kind of thread I was working on. Let me know what you think.

Students record teachers and post to YouTube, write blogs/Facebook/MySpace/etc about their school experiences for millions to read. Schools debate the merits of posting student grades online for parents to see. As tuition rises in independent schools while public school "magnet schools" offer stiffer competition for quality students, schools wrestle with how best to define the "value add" of an independent school education by spending lots of $$ to "brand" the school. Lots of academic content - courses from other schools, reference materials, other sources for data you used to be able to get only in schools, or in libraries (in that sense, proprietary), iTunes U., TeacherTube, etc.

It seems that whether they like it or not, or whether they choose to be or not, schools are becoming more transparent than they have ever been (or will be so shortly) but react either by a) pretending they're not, b) reactively dealing with problem-based transparency or working with parents from corporate America who expect more transparency about how schools are using the money they spend there, c) letting consultants drive a kind of corporate-style transparency in these "branding"efforts that may or may not be authentic - but few schools are exploring opportunities for creating an intentional, purposeful approach to acknowledging the inevitability of this transparency and working at the opportunities it presents. Does trying to address this seem important or am I kinda "out there" on this? Can others maybe help encapsulate an ask-able question out of this? {jb} Ok, I am still trying to get my head around this.... but I do think it is important. My initial thought is that 'there is action in inaction'. Meaning, without intentionally looking at this, responding to it and working to 'frame it' we will/might get what we don't intend. What tools can search for instances of our schools being talked about on the Internet so we can be aware of what is out there. For example, we have faculty who are notified every time there is a change to our wikipedia page so if there are thing incorrectly posted it can be corrected. I have searched My Space and found things that alums have posted which are concerning (in an effort to show our students how truly public these statements are). I used it to educate our students, but wonder if the school should be doing this periodically and contacting these folks to let them know our thoughts and feelings about it. This could get tricky.