Is Online Learning Equal to 21st Century Skills?

What a beautiful day to go to a music festival right on the Delaware River with Philadelphia's skyline and blue sky as a backdrop! Sure it was a little hot. But it was nothing water ice and a trip around the carousel couldn't cure.


An online school display piqued my interest so I stopped to by to chat with the very kind teachers manning the booth. From our conversation, I didn't get the sense that 21st century skills were part of their learning experiences. The school did make AYP.

But collaboration, creativity, problem-based learning were not central threads (or so it appeared) to learning. Overall, I just didn't get sense that students would be any more prepared for the 21st century learning through an online environment than in a traditional school. [ Please note: The was conversation was not extensive from a research standpoint and in no way am I try to be overly critical of this school. ]

Interestingly, I just blogged about this concept drawing on the history of educational technology. I go back to the questions from yesterday: Does online learning equate to better learning?

Put another 2 ways: Does the medium for delivering content make the difference? Or is the difference in how the students come to understand the content?

Alright, so maybe I'm still a bit parched.

Culture of Teacher Technology Adoption

Beneath the conscious awareness of everyday life in schools, there is a stream of of thought and activity. This underground flow of feelings and folkways wends its way within schools, dragging people, programs, and ideas towards often-unstated purposes: "This invisible, taken-for-granted flow of beliefs and assumptions gives meaning to what people say and do. It shapes how they interpret hundreds of daily transactions. This deeper structure of life in organizations is reflected and transmitted through symbolic language and expressive action. Culture consists of the stable, underlying social meanings that shape beliefs and behavior over time" (Deal and Peterson, 1990, p.7)

This is a quote from Deal and Peterson's Shaping School Culture describing culture. For me, it underscores how powerful a force culture can be with teacher technology adoption. No matter how great the tool appears, how easy it is to use, or the "oh-wow" factor, if technology is not part of the "underground flow of feelings and folkways" or "beliefs and assumptions" in the school, chances are technology will not see widespread sustained (a la Fullan) adoption. Moreover, if these "unstated purposes" do not include "new literacy" skills or 21st century skills, chances for technology adoption or work strive towards it won't be occurring.

There is an interesting phenomenon or pattern (I'm not sure which) I see with new technology. We focus a great deal of time discussing and convincing others of how effective the tool is for a set of learning activities. At this point we either try to "oh-wow" the audience or we are preaching to the choir so to speak. But I'm not sure how much we spend on looking at the root issues with adopting the technology. Moreover, I'm not sure how much we merge our conversations trying to find relationships between these traditionally non-technical facets with these progressive technologies. The "google it" test doesn't reveal much...

School culture among areas such as teacher beliefs, total perceived pain of adoption, consumerism, teaching style, and policy are layers on this complex onion could seem to appeal to a larger audience. Just with school culture alone, the notion of competent systems, shared vision, professional learning communities, sustainability, capacity, collaboration can also have a large impact on teacher technology adoption.

Here are some questions that I think would interesting to discuss:

1. To what extent are teacher's beliefs and values shaped by their school's culture (values and beliefs) when it comes to teacher technology adoption?
2. Is it just technology as a learning tool that must be valued for teacher technology adoption? Or is part of a larger belief in learning the "new literacy"?
   
3. How can school culture be adapted to value technology adoption?
4. Is it technology (and adoption) that will drive school culture? Is it school culture that drives technology adoption? Or are they symbiotic in nature?
5. In what ways does shared vision interplay with teacher technology adoption?
6. How can professional learning communities leveraging web 2.0 tools affect culture?