Mavens, Connectors, or Anti-Social: How Should Our Schools Look?

Denis Hancock wrote this interesting piece on the blog Wikinomics:

As I’ve navigated this remarkably inter-connected little world I’ve probably read several thousand blog posts on the topic, and most of these – predictably – seem to focus on the people Malcolm Gladwell would call the “mavens” and “connectors”.

For the six of you that may not have read his book, “mavens” are the intense gatherers of information and impressions that are most likely to pick up on new trends, and “connectors” are people with a broad network of acquaintances that trust their opinion. Whether the actual term used is “trend setter”, “nfluencer”, “bzzagent”, or any of the many of the others you are likely to come across in the social media blogosphere, the focus seems to primarily be on how these two types of people are using new social media tools.

Seeing this led me to ponder a simple question – what about everyone else? What about that staggeringly large group of people that are neither mavens nor connectors (and particularly those one might call anti–social) - are their social media appetites distinctly different, and if so what are the implications for companies pursuing a social media strategy? More pointedly, will this great mass of people slowly get in line with the adoption curve that mavens and connectors are setting in social media, or might they do something totally different – something that would put some of the prevailing theories regarding cohort behavior into question? To begin looking into this issue, I wanted to start with a particular application where I sense line is being drawn in the sand – Twitter.

In an educational/school context, here are some questions that I came up with:

1. Assuming teachers are part of a larger world and culture as humans, where do they fit?
2. Who should teachers be?
3. How is technology adoption affected by being a maven, connector, or anti-social?
4. Are teaching/pedagogical beliefs and values tied to being a maven, connector, or anti-social?
5. Do all teachers need to be mavens or connectors?
6. Can teachers be anti-social and still be effective by the above definition?
7. How does this apply to school leaders?
8. How does this apply to other school stakeholders (students, parents, and community members)?
9. Will anti-social people (school stakeholders in our context) as Denis asks in the closing of the blog post, avoid it, doing something different, or come around?
   
10. How does this/should this impact our thoughts on professional development?
11. Because we are a maven or connector, can we/do we expect our colleagues to be the same as we are?
12. How do we teach students to be mavens and connectors?
13. Do we expect all students (who are part of a larger world and community) to be mavens and connectors?
14. Who would students rather be?
    
15. Is either a maven or connector inherently better from an school/learning standpoint?
16. Are beliefs and values of learning impacted by a teacher's role as either a maven, connector, or anti-social?
    
17. Does the Lake Wobegon Effect apply to this?
18. How does this correlate to the Pew/Internet study that suggest similar usage/adoption patterns?
19. How can we use the blend of this framework and the Pew/Internet providing user patterns to develop our professional development?
    

Please feel free to add your own questions or thoughts.

Interesting stuff to think about!

Who's Rip Van Winkle? Higher Ed, K-12, Both, or None of The Above

Here's what got me thinking: One of my chores this summer is to organize our basement, garage, and virtually every other surface, closet, and room in the house (guess who's on summer break?). In my cleaning, I've been coming across some articles, research, notes, and binders from my undergraduate days at Penn State.

I've enjoyed reminiscing about my classes, friends, and the incredible ways my thinking was transformed about learning and teaching using technology circa the early 90's. One of the gems was this: "Constructing Community and Intertextuality in Electronic Mail" a chapter in a book written by Dr. Jamie Myers my former professor based on his research in 1991. In the chapter, Dr. Myers talks about conversations, intertextuality, and community that 38 of his preservice student teachers had during a semester in his class.

Here's a snippet from the article:

In addition to connecting personal and shared experiences, seeking responses to questions and ideas, and suggesting shared meanings and values for the community, students (g) shared quotes and paraphrased ideas from the professional literature they chose to read, (h) justified ideas through statements of belief, and (i) challenged each other's meanings, and (j) elaborated group meanings. (Myers, 1993).

After re-reading this article, I couldn't help but to think about the time frame in which these student participated. It was 1991! After they left college and went into the classrooms, did they have email, computers, and a culture conducive to technology adoption? And I wonder how many other students who were exposed to technology but were able to use it in their classrooms as practicing teachers?

But I also got thinking how that same excerpt could be written in an article describing social networking, blogging, or wikis now in 2008. I do know for some this may not seem like much of a revelation since educational technology and technology discussions certainly predated this article by numerous years. Have things really changed?

Walking Up Hill Both Ways in the Snow
From pretty much from day one in my Language and Literacy Education classes (English teaching methods) technology was part of it: email, world wide web, MOOs/MUDs, multimedia, list-servs, and discussion boards. Not only did we learn about critical literacy but we used technology as part of our own learning as teachers. We discussed the literary canon over email with preservice teachers at Bowling Green University, discussed textbooks, and teaching literature through email and the TELL feature on the VM system. Those courses were led by Dr. Myers.

Back in the Day
If you were a geek (but far, far from the smartest guy in the program like me) you could take elective Instructional Systems courses taught by Dr. Ali Carr-Chelman which pushed our thinking about the relationship between technology and education. We also had to create an interdisciplinary thematic unit using technology. And if you were a super-geek you could take a Instructional Design Course (in Hypercard) based on constructivism led by Dr. Kyle Peck and Dr. Dave Jonassen. But wait there's more. If you were an uber-geek as an undergrad you could take the hypertext multimedia software developed in Dr. Peck and Dr. Jonassen's class and present with Dr. Jamie Myers at an English teachers' conference in 1995.

When I graduated (with way more credits than I needed and loans to show for it) in 1996 technology, social construction of meaning, designing web pages, multimedia were just another way of talking about writing, literacy, Morrison, Naylor, Dickens, Thoreau, Angelou, or Shakespeare. While the technology was neat and promising, critical literacy and response-response were the frames to have students interpret their values and beliefs making thematic connections between texts and their lives, values, and beliefs. Pretty cool stuff but in some ways sounds eerily like 2008!

Changes
So what has changed since those days with my Macintosh Quadra 610 (you've got to love Wikipedia!) affectionately known as Mac Daddy (my roommate's laptop was Daddy Mac and we would network them using AppleTalk)? It's much easier to publish content now. Technology is much more prolific and lots faster. And adoption rates for basic tasks (email, web usage, etc.) have gone through the roof. Learning is changing. We are getting content at faster rates and from much varied sources. Finally, the skills needed for success in our world are changing.

What hasn't changed? The resonating idea of bring together communities of people through technology. Human nature is still at version 1.0 I believe. Many of the great principles of teaching haven't changed.

What is most striking to me? As others have pointed out before, many of the educational issues we talk about are extensions of what's been said before a long time ago. In the context of the sample article I mention, the tools may have changed but the learning hasn't.

Now
I love to see the excitement and traction that technology has been getting in K-12. The flattening of the world is awesome. And I'm loving the conversations about learning, teaching, and education that are on-going right now especially in the edublogosphere (which is a great point to ponder). Keep 'em coming!

But from my tiny vantage point, I'm not so sure higher ed, or at least the higher ed that I was very fortunate to be a part of, was asleep all these years as I'm hearing rumblings of recently. There were conversations and discussions about this stuff long before we in K-12 started having these broad conversations about it. Was it just falling on deaf K-12 ears all those years? Is it a sustainability or endurance issue of a small echo chamber in the academic community? I don't know but interesting food for thought!

Reference
Myers, J. (1993). Constructing Community and Intertextuality in Electronic Mail. In C.K. Kinzer & D.J. Leu (Eds.), Forty-second Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (1993). Chicago: National Reading Conference. p 251-262

Photo Credit
Rip Van Winkle photo is from Wikipedia's article about Rip Van Winkle.

Is History Predicting Us or Are We Predicting The Future?

As an eager twenty-something with some technical skills and a degree in Secondary Education-English/Communications I was naive enough to march into New York for a job interview. It was with a start-up network consultancy in midtown Manhattan that serviced mostly financial institutions throughout the US.

The subway series was underway and so was the dot-com boom. Harry, the HR recruiter, projected that our company's stock would open at $45 during the IPO on the NASDAQ within a year. I left that morning with a job, good salary, inflated ego, and 4000 shares of stock as a signing bonus. Life was good. All I had to do so far was manage to get cross town in rush hour traffic.

I soon would hear stories of grandeur of how life would be in the future. In the present, I saw excess and lots of it. In the words of Alan Greenspan, I saw the "irrational exuberance". We know the rest of the story.

Maybe the phrase "once bitten, twice shy" is to blame but seeing Epic 2015 pointed out in Gary Stager's post reminds me somewhat of this "irrational exuberance". No doubt our world is seeing a cultural transformation never seen before that is shaking up how we do business, communicate, understand/learn, and collaborate thanks to technology. And no doubt our students are learning differently as members of this world. It's all very exciting!! But 7 year predictions to me seem like a crap shoot at best and somewhat misleading.

In the opening of school this year, I have two choices in the context of Epic2015:

1. I could show this video in my opening year conference. I could also talk to my teachers about the future of technology in hopes to teach students.
2. Or as Gary points out, I could talk about the things we can do now to help our students learn better to have a brighter future. A focus on teaching and learning behind the tools seems like a great place to start.

The question of balance seems to be in whose future do we want to talk about? Is it the future of our students or the future of technology and tools? And if it's our students, doesn't the future start now with teaching, learning, and technology? Should that be our starting point?

I know there are folks that are very adept at making projections and we need those people. From my tiny vantage point, though, it seems like we need to keep more focused on latter choice above. If our beliefs and values of teaching and learning haven't quite caught up with 2008 we are just going to be applying a tired paradigm to a concept that we're projecting in 2015. Already out of the gate, our perspective is murky. Trying to figure out our students, learning, and teaching in the 2008-2009 school year first seems like a good starting point for me.

Before I get into trouble, I'm not implying that we don't need to forecast and look at trends inside and outside of education. Nor I am trying to say that folks shouldn't do it or aren't capable. We need to plan by looking ahead without a doubt. But these types of videos-Orwell-like or Bradbury-like-make for fun "what-if" games but shouldn't be used at the expense of focusing on figuring out our current world of education. Trying to conceptualize these specifics into the future when we're still trying to figure out the present seems like the "irrational exuberance" we saw during those halcyon days of the dot-com boom.

My bonus shares and 4000 more that I was "awarded" throughout my tenure, by the way, never did open at $45 a share....they never materialized.

Leadership Day 2008::Connecting the Dots::

Scott McLeod asked this of bloggers through his blog Dangerously Irrelevant:

On July 4, 2008, blog about whatever you like related to effective school technology leadership: successes, challenges, reflections, needs. Write a letter to the administrators in your area. Post a top ten list. Make a podcast or a video. Highlight a local success or challenge. Recommend some readings. Do an interview of a successful technology leader. Respond to some of the questions below or make up your own. Whatever strikes you.

School leaders have a lot on their plates. And then there's technology. When it comes to technology, I think of it as a game of connect the dots without always numbers and a definable shape. Where to start and where to finish (if there's such a thing) are often murky. Everyone usually has their own dots to add or order in which to connect them. That adds complexity. Finally, the reasons for connecting the dots surely can throw the monkey wrench into the spokes. Come to think of it - it's much like the act of understanding or knowing in our classrooms (but more on that later). Here's an attempt to connect at least some dots to define a possible shape of technology leadership.

[ I hope the sophomoric Sketchcast I made to map out this blog post isn't making you feel that you've lost 3 minutes 41 seconds of your life that you'll never get back. I included it to help visualize this concept. ]

1st Dot - Vision Vision may seem too M.Ed. 101-ish for some but I think it deserves the opening dot when talking about educational technology. Thompson and McKelvey (2007) described vision in schools as a "guidepost for decisions". This is a perspective that resonates with me for a number of reasons. It implies the vision is living and commonly embraced to be referred to on an regular basis. If it's commonly embraced, I have to assume that folks at all levels of the school have hopefully help set the vision or at least buy into it.

Vision is hard stuff. It's even a tougher question to answer when we throw technology into the mix. I think the one central question that a vision of technology should answer is: "what is technology's role in learning and teaching?" This question could help us answer, "what and how do we want students to understand?" which I think is the overarching question.

But one person - even the school leader - can't answer these questions by him/herself. They've got to be answered by everyone. It's all stakeholders' responsibility. We can't expect leaders to come up with them on their own. It's up to everyone to help craft the answers. The good news is that there really are no right answers. When it comes wrong answers, excuse the cliche, the only one is not answering them at all.

A lot can be written about vision but since I'm already 3:41 in the hole with you, I'll move on.

2nd Dot - Culture

Beneath the conscious awareness of everyday life in schools, there is a stream 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)

Like vision, I don't know if we always talk about culture in the same breath as technology. But we can't overlook it as it's such a quiet gale wind force in our schools. I'm sure we've all seen the whole gamut of school cultures: brilliant, mediocre, and toxic; student-focused, teacher-focused, curriculum focused, cynical, energetic, and flat. And since vision is on our minds, I believe a vision is as only strong as the culture of a school. Jerald (2007) notes a school’s strength of culture is about alignment between vision and actions. If the vision's spirit is to enhance teaching through technology, the culture has to be amiable to it. The "beliefs and assumptions" that Deal and Peterson talk about have to be grounded in things such as: learning can be enhanced using technology, the professional development is worth it, and personal time investment will be fruitful.

No matter how cool the technology tools, culture, I believe, will win the tug-of-war. There still may be a few trailblazers but systemic buy-in is likely to be minimal. I believe culture ensures the sustainability that Michael Fullan talks about. It's the culture to paraphrase Deal and Peterson that impacts everyday. The President of Southwest Airlines Colleen Barrett writes a similar sentiment about culture in the airline's magazine Spirit, "Their experiences confirm what I have always believed: Lip service can be a great danger. It’s easy to write columns like this bragging about our Culture; the hard work is living up to it every day." How does your school's culture live up to learning and using technology everyday?

3rd Dot - Ethnography - We all need to put on our ethnography hats and do a little listening to what kids are saying, thinking, and doing inside and outside of the classroom. Listen the same to teachers, parents, community members, practitioners, and experts on modern student learning/understanding, pedagogy, and educational technology. Listen for the patterns and stories that Daniel Pink talks about. Not to taint your research, but we do know our students are reading and writing ferociously. How does that impact our instructional decisions? The spirit of these enthnography questions asked about literacy by my former professor Dr. Jamie Myers can serve as a starting point:

How often have we focused our inquiry on what is going on inside students’ heads? Why do they read and write? What do they do with literacy to marginalize or expand consciousness? What do they want to know more about and how could literacy facilitate that learning? How do the lessons and literacy practices we sponsor serve the construction of their identities, relationships and values in their lives within and beyond our classroom community? (Myers, 2001)

4th Dot - Teaching - Teaching is a huge one to talk about with technology for 3 reasons: (1) technology use, I believe, is really about the learning and teaching, (2) teaching encompasses so much, and (3) there's a fine line between tools and teaching. So in trying to recoup the time you've lost watching the Sketchcast, I'll keep this simple and present 2 tools a la cart (I'd go with Chris Lehmann's talk personally).

Tool 1: What Research Says About Teachers and Technology Adoption
Teachers choices and beliefs about technology fascinates me. Maybe it's because it seems like a binary yes/no decision. Maybe it's a control issue. In either case, here are 7 themes that I found through my research looking at research about teachers and technology adoption that I think are important for school leaders to consider:

1. Teacher's beliefs of teaching (pedagogy) and student learning (epistemology) affect teacher technology adoption.
2. Teachers who engage in more teacher-led pedagogy adopt less technology.
3. Teachers who leverage constructivist-centric pedagogy have a tendency to use more technology.
4. Teacher's beliefs and values are not hardened systems; however, they are complex and prone to revision.
5. The richness of an environment (technology, support, quality, quantity) can change a teacher's beliefs and values in learners and pedagogy.
6. The manner in which technology is presented-teacher-centered or student-centered-impacts those teachers holding differing views.
7. Web 2.0 and 21st century skills are collaborative in nature; thus they are constructivist. This collaborative and constructivist nature of the technologies require teachers to adopt their beliefs which brings us back to theme #1.

Tool 2: Chris Lehmann's (Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia) NECC Presentation: Schools 2.0: Combining Progressive Pedagogy and 21st Century Tools. Listening to this presentation recorded by Wesley Fryer via Ustream could very well be the best 44 or so minutes you spend all summer.

5th Dot - Learning - This is another biggie not just in importance but in scope. In fact, it's the core of every school and educator's mission. There's a lot that can be said about how students learn, what they should be learning, how learning should take place, teacher's role in learning, and technology's role in learning.

Despite this being the star of the show, I'm not sure if we spend enough time on it especially when we talk about technology. Back on the 3rd dot, I mentioned ethnography because it's a great tool for us to see really what's going with our students, to try to better understand them. A lot has changed since we were undergrads learning about learning theories, if they were even discussed. Even more has changed since our K-12 days. We all did well for ourselves learning the way we did. But that was then. Our students are here in the now. We need keep this our focus and connect it outward to the other aspects of our schools: teaching, technology, culture, vision, and assessment. That's my elevator pitch.

Now for the dim sum cart. First, here are some ways to experience 21st century learning outside of dot 3's ethnography (compare these references to what you find in your ethnography-how do they compare?). Secondly, are two diagrams I created to help present some of these concepts.

Dot 5 Books

1. Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat
2. Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind
3. Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams' Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
4. Partnership for 21st Century Skills
5. Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay's Flat World Project
6. Connectivism - A compelling new learning theory from George Siemens
   

Dot 5 Diagrams
The first diagram shows the sources of understanding in a "traditional" classroom. The second is in a "21st century classroom". I use standards since we are familiar with them as topic of understanding. The objective of including these is to help visual these sources of understanding and show how they can be used in learning.

Traditional Classroom

21st Century Classroom

6th Dot - Professional Development/Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) Professional Development has never been so easy and so hard at the same time. We can learn, connect, ask, talk, communicate, collaborate, share, teach, or just plain lurk 24 hours a days, 7 days a week, 365 days a year all without leaving the glow of our monitors. The hard part is: making it stick, sustaining it through vision and culture, and connecting it to learning and teaching. Welcome to Personal Learning Networks...and they're not just for teachers.

Personal Learning Networks are sources of conversations, information, experiences, thought, and guides that an educators can leverage thanks to technology. Specifically, they include blogs, wikis, social networking sites such as Classroom 2.0, Twitter, and Skype. Through the networks that are developed, other networks emerge since you and everyone else likely has 2 different networks. Through these networks the world is at your fingertips. Have a question? Twitter it or post it to Classroom 2.0. Want to explore something or reflect on a experience? Blog it yourself. Interested in some thoughts of colleagues (who are likely in similar situations as you), read a blog.

One of most enticing things of personal learning networks to me is that they're personalized. Most teachers from my experiences come into workshops with a range of expectations and needs. Trying to effectively meet them all is hard and really, really tough especially when managing different subject areas, grade levels, and experience levels. Using personal learning networks takes the N/A out of how does apply to my classroom column on evaluation sheets. It makes learning relevant, meaningful, and real. Just when we think we're islands with unique problems, we find that there's a bunch of folks around the world going through the same thing with the same thoughts. PLNs take a very isolated profession and turn it into a very connected one.

Here's a great resource from Lisa Nielson on developing your own Personal Learning Network.

7th Dot - Support/Access This is a subject near and dear to my heart and SEDTA's heart too. I wrote an article a couple of years ago on this topic. More recently I blogged about it. Since you most likely don't want to hear stories: I'll be direct: without support and adequate access, technology will not see appreciable rates of adoption. The technologies may be complex but the logic is simple: frustration with technology stinks for most people. And most users don't want to know, care to know, or even know how (that's not a criticism just an observation...how many people can replace their car's brakes?) to fix slow network connections, sluggish computers, or errant applications. And when things break or get slow, which they do, someone needs to help out quickly. Support and adequate access are the keystone to a 21st century school and something leaders need to keep in mind.

8th Dot - You/Your Dot! I reserved this one for you (us) school leaders since I think there's a lot of leaders and potential leaders in our schools. I really never feel comfortable with writing prescriptive lists. There's always something that's left out or doesn't apply. (These statement are in no way an admission of omission of not coming up with an 8th dot for U in the Sketchcast.). Seriously, every person brings to leadership experience, insight, and wisdom. And there's usually a nuance to every school. The challenge is to put something there about you or your school to complete the picture of leadership.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

References
Deal, T, & Peterson, K (1999). Shaping School Culture: The Heart of Leadership.San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Jerald, C.D (2006, December). School Culture:"The Hidden Curriculum". Retrieved March 1, 2008, from The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement Web site: http://www.centerforcsri.org/files/Center_IB_Dec06_C.pdf

Myers, J (2001, March 3). University of Pennsylvania Ethnography Forum: Quotes shared by Jamie Myers (jmm12@psu.edu). Retrieved July 6, 2008, from Various Quotations on Literacy and Inquiry Web site: http://www.ed.psu.edu/englishpds/inquiry/excerpts.htm

Thompson, S, & McKelvy, E (2007). Shared Vision, Team Learning and Professional Learning Communities. Middle Ground. 10, 12-14.

Photo Credits Connecting the Dots photo is from user mlsj from Flickr

From Brute Thing to Organic Learning: Time to Unplug Professional Development?

We won’t learn a great deal of new material. My hope is for you to become more perceptive of every day school matters many of us take for granted but that can change our schools and the world for the better. A professor used this sentiment as the opening of one of my school leadership courses. I sometimes feel like that after spending time putting together a blog post like this one which doesn't feel especially earth shattering.

In Understanding by Design, Wiggins and McTighe cite a timeless John Dewey quote from How We Think *:

To grasp the meanings of a thing, an event, or a situation is to see it in its relations to other things: to see how it operates or function, what consequences follow from it, what causes it, what uses it can be put to. In contrast, what we have the called the brute thing, the thing without meaning to us, is something whose relations are not grasped...The relation of means-consequences is the center and heart of all understanding (pp. 137, 146) (p. 38)

Dewey's timelessness really shines in this quote. "The brute thing", which I bolded in the text, is a beautiful descriptor of how technology can be viewed in education even for those who use it. I've juxtaposed brute with organic since brute's definitions range from inhumane to crude to irrational. Organic for me anyway connotes something that is grown from within and the only word I could really come up with. In this case, technology need/adoption/selection is grown from within the need to use it.

This all comes as I reflect at this past year's success with professional development and take a look at next year's professional development within my school.

The Brute Thing Approach

Description: We provide training “Day 1” on technology tools (the brute things). You name it we show it, model it, and let teachers play with it. “Day 2” training is typically in the classroom environment. That’s when the onus is placed on teachers to make the “relations” between the technology and student learning often without immediate assistance or any connections to student learning. The classroom, as we teachers know, is a pretty isolated environment. (As a sidebar, the diagram mentions Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) here as a awesome tool to use to help make connections and further reduce the isolation.)

Organic Learning Approach

Description: In this model (please click for a larger version), the technologies are grown out of quite simply student learning. No matter what your beliefs, values, convictions, or politics of education, I think we can agree that schools are about learning. Shouldn't our training and conversations about technology be centered around this singular facet or at least someone connect to it? In fact, curriculum, instruction/pedagogy, standards, assessment, community, leadership, culture, vision, student voice are all about learning. As such, tools and subsequently our training models should grow from learning.

Hardly a novel concept, I know, but one that seems to be at the crux at technology adoption, change, providing better opportunities for our students and ultimately improving our schools. As an example of teacher technology adoption, please see my post about Teachers Beliefs of Technology. And I've discovered other research since then that supports these themes.

The core mission of our schools and education haven't changed: learning. I think the fuzziness comes from the fact that learning itself is changing. What needs to be learned and how we learn are changing. Since technology (as a whole) is one of those drivers behind that change, the technology itself become the focus of learning sometimes at the detriment the core mission of learning in our schools. Yes, tools in and of themselves need to be taught but I think a greater connection needs to be made.

That's what I love about standards: state standards, 21st century standards, and ISTE's NETS. When all is said and done, standards are at least one constant that we can keep us grounded in learning. And even more, I'm becoming more and more indifferent to the high-stakes testing environment (I'm not saying it's perfect and can't be improved). Why? Because tests are about the standards and standards aren't that much of an obstacle to new learning and new skills that must be learned. Why can't we achieve standards about main characters, plot, setting using blogs, wikis, Twitter, Second Life, or any other tool and still have learning and understanding that is deep, reflective, collaborative, and meaningful to students and yet meet standards?

In the realm of professional development, a learning approach just may make "The Brute Thing" and make it more meaningful with greater sustainability and resonance. When was the last time we held a professional development series on just student learning and all of the new great research available on student learning? Is it time to unplug our professional development offerings at least a little bit?

Reference:

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD

*Interestingly, the quote referenced in UbD is from Dewey's 1933 edition of How to Think. I wasn't able to find it in the 1910 edition which I own.

Technology Plans: A Parallel Conversation?

In reviewing a technology plan recently, two things stuck out:

1. A great deal of work goes into creating a technology plan.
2. The benchmarks were really interesting.

The benchmarks listed teacher adoption rates by application, percentage, and time frame.

For example, one of the goals in the plan was:

80% of teachers by 2008-09 will integrate multimedia projects into lessons.

I like standards and goals since I think they give us a framework and something to strive towards. They, in a sense, give us a vision. And I realize we need to satisfy requirements through writing goals into technology plans. Ultimately, technology plans can be powerful, amazing tools especially when created by all school stakeholders.

As I mentioned, a great deal of time and work goes into creating these goals but I have to ask in the context of this specific plan:

• Is there a plan to connect multimedia to curriculum and student learning?
• Should the focus be on student learning rather than teacher utilization?
• Are there plans for teacher learning networks (personal and professional)?
• Are these goals part of the school's vision?
• Do these goals mesh with the school's culture?
• Is there a link to 21st century skills?
• Are these goals collectively developed?
  
• Is there a plan/conversation about teacher technology adoption?
• Should our goals be learner (student focused)? An example: 80% of students will engage in projects where multimedia is used a tool for better content understanding.
  

I'll return to a theme that I've discussed before: parallel conversations. Sometimes, I think good things get lost through parallel conversations especially thinking technology is a separate entity from everything else. Sometimes, I think this "parallel-ness" gives rise to technology being someone else's problem. And inadvertently, I think teacher technology adoption is adversely affected. Teachers don't see a culture of merging technology with learning, teaching, and students.

Should we be thinking about a Student Learning Plan of sorts that is a combination of a technology plan, instruction plan, and improvement plan? Technology can be planned, discussed, and prioritized but it would be in the context of student learning - the focus of our schools. There could be even a section dedicated to the technical details but connecting the technology to the overall culture, mission, and vision of the school can only help ensure the common ground between learning and instruction is forged.

"Now, Please": Expectations of Teacher Technology Adoption

I was just reading something that made me think of this.

The comment was to effect that students and teachers both were given hardware at the same time...and it took a couple of years to really get teachers moving beyond just word processing, to truly move to adopt the technology. The comment wasn't in a negative tone.

The comment got me questioning whether our expectations of teacher technology adoption especially in the context of web 2.0 (or other emerging technologies) sometimes maybe too focused on immediacy? That is, do we expect instant technology adoption? Can that do more harm than good? Is it necessarily bad or unnatural for technology adoption to take time?

In education, we typically plan an inservice, deliver the inservice, and then expect teachers to adopt the technology on a pretty short time frame.

From my experiences working on projects as a network engineer in corporate online banking, products were methodically implemented in sequential stages:

1. the development environment/testing
2. the testing environment/testing
3. the customer acceptable testing environment/testing
4. the beta environment/testing

All of the stages were designed to fix problems and enhance services. It was expected that there would be problems to resolve and features to enhance. Each stage was usually a carefully orchestrated series of steps many different specialities coming together to make the product work and offer the customer a valued service. Production, as it was called, wasn't instantaneous.

This is in stark contrast to us in education where when a new technology is delivered we want it operational and used the next day. The only time something was really rushed in the "corporate side", save meeting a deadline, was when it was broken and impacting users...then it was really was a situation to drop everything and fix the problem.

Getting our heads around a new tool takes time. The replacement cell phone I just got had a learning curve. Twitter that I'm using now takes a bit of time to shake out. Even the relative simplicity of web 2.0 tools takes some time to investigate and feel comfortable using.

Anytime, something new is used, operationally (technically) it has to be figured out before adoption occurs. And sometimes, we discover features that may be absent that don't make a certain tool useful now. So we go back to the drawing board putting the tool on the shelf.

For me, technology adoption doesn't happen in a linear fashion. I may download and check out a new tool or view it online very briefly. During my brief visit I begin learning about it and thinking of its usefulness as a learning tool. But I may not revisit that tool for quite some time. The 2nd visit may be as quick as the first or I might dive into it. I may go back to it a 3rd or 4th time. Or it may take seeing it modeled from an awesome social network like Classroom 2.0 that spurs on my adoption. It depends. But I usually need to have some thinking and tinkering time before I adopt technology.

Here's a general flow of technology adoption as I see it and experience it:

1. Introduction to Tool
2. Tool Orientation (buttons, features, mouse/keyboard inputs)
3. Getting the Tool to work and produce results - 1st time
4. Getting the Tool to work again - 2nd and subsequent times
5. Thinking about how to use the tool in the classroom
6. Having an idea of how to use the tool in the classroom
7. Trying to get the tool to achieve instructional/learning goal
8. Readjusting expectations of the tool
9. Try the tool out in the classroom

So I return to my original question, "Do we expect too much immediacy when it comes to technology adoption?"

Merging Conversations for 21st Century Learning

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

This quote is delivered by John Keating (Robin Williams) in Dead Poet's Society, one my favorite films. When it comes to educational technology I feel the same way but for a different reason. We don't use educational technology and strive for 21st century learning because its cute. We use educational technology and strive for 21st century learning because of the mounting dialog and evidence that learning traditional reading, writing, and math skills have to include - at the core - new literacy skills and 21st century learning.

While I believe in not using technology for technology's sake, I am intrigued at the latest edition (November 2007) of ASCD's Educational Leadership. There are 13 articles about math in this issue. There are three mentions of technology: (1) a reference to a spreadsheet in which testing companies can provide containing test data, (2) a resource website for teachers, (3) suggestion of a gaming technology club. Interestingly, 21st century skills and Thomas Friedman are mentioned but not in relation to technology. What makes me so curious?

These well-written and thought-provoking articles, that are clearly the result of hard work, are void of educational technology and 21st century skills. I'm not mentioning this because my field of study isn't included or the mathematical content or ideas presented aren't important. They are! The topics are crucial. Furthermore, the articles, such as the ones focusing on the achievement gap and minorities, provide some really important data that needs to be discussed. In fact, I'd say we need more of these articles.

What really fascinates me is that we have multiple engaging, parallel conversations that aren't intersecting. We have dialog about math, digital natives, educational technology, 21st century skills/learning but there is no confluence among them. Some where, some way, some how there is a symbiotic misfire that keeps these conversations apart.

When we talk about the economy, we can't just focus on one market or sector. Interest rates have an impact on stock markets, housing, and the job market. Housing can have an effect on the stock market and the job market. And the job market can have an effect on the stock and housing markets. We have to consider the parts that comprise the whole of the sum. Preparing students for life, citizenry, democracy, and work after compulsory school needs to be the result of a unifying these conversations; not a set of competing priorities with the prevailing one a result of winning the public relations battle.

When there is some merging of these conversations, layering on top of the current situation is likely the approach. When what really should be happening is an organic cultivation of 21st century learning and some form of technology (since by all indications it is essential for the new literacy). These things, I believe, have to come from within, from inside out - not an outside imposition in...at least not for sustainability.

Let's talk specifics. Blogs and wikis are great tools that can enhance reflection, real-world writing, and collaboration of problems. Google Earth can be a great tool for measuring lines and geometrical shapes in a tangible, practical way. Sketchcasting can be used to capture solving problems that can be later viewed and listened too (they make also great anticipatory sets for the next lesson). Spreadsheets, notably Google's, are great tools for working with graphs, even collaboratively. Online surveys can be conducted to understand percentages and proportions. At the onset these tools may seem cute but looking deeper yields their importance in preparing our students for our "flat world".

I think that it's important to point out that these tools aren't proposed to replace instructional techniques but to enhance them and the learning experiences for our students. They needn't take center stage. In fact, the real value is in their transparency as a tool just as calculators are now in our classrooms. But for this to happen the conversations have to come together.

Teacher Beliefs of Technology

When doing some research while writing an article and for a series of graduate school papers, the following themes seemed to jump out at me:

1. Teacher's beliefs of teaching (pedagogy) and student learning (epistemology) affect teacher technology adoption.
2. Teachers who engage in more teacher-led pedagogy adopt less technology.
3. Teachers who leverage constructivist-centric pedagogy have a tendency to use more technology.
4. Teacher's beliefs and values are not hardened systems; however, they are complex and prone to revision.
5. The richness of an environment (technology, support, quality, quantity) can change a teacher's beliefs and values in learners and pedagogy.
6. The manner in which technology is presented-teacher-centered or student-centered-impacts those teachers holding differing views.
7. Web 2.0 and 21st century skills are collaborative in nature; thus they are constructivist. This collaborative and constructivist nature of the technologies require teachers to adopt their beliefs which brings us back to theme #1.

The focus of my research has been on teacher technology adoption, its influencers, and detractors. This is fascinating to me since as I have remarked in much of my other writing, this research can shed light on why there can be such differences in technology adoption just in the same hallway of a school. Secondly, this for me is the "root issue" at hand with 21st century skills and web 2.0. We can show the coolest tools, in the coolest ways, to teachers espousing the need for students to learn these skills but it takes a teacher to believe that the technology they are using is better than the way they are using to teach the content.

In the 12 years I have been giving and around technology inservicing, the "oh, wows" are common when showing a new tool. But I don't think we can judge the effectiveness of our training on that response alone. While it gives me optimism and excitement, to this day, to hear these responses, day-two adoption doesn't always correspond.

What surprises me is that our dialogs don't involve teacher's beliefs or the human nature surrounding technology adoption. And when it does, it involves a great deal of negativity - teacher apathy, not willing to do the work, or not smart enough to get the technicalities. This isn't to say there aren't many dedicated people doing many great things; there are! Just look at sites like Classroom 2.0 where dedication, dialog, and creativity abound among in this amazing community.

Literacy today as defined web 2.0:new tools, new schools by Solomon and Schrum is

"acquiring new skills, including those using technology, understanding science, having global awareness, and most important, having the ability to keep learning, which involves gathering, analyzing, synthesizing, and presenting information as well as communication and collaborating"

The mechanics of implementing such literacy is approaching teachers as technology consumers with choices and complex, fluid beliefs that drive their technology adoption. Also, key to this discussion is the fact that for many teachers, including me, comprehension in web 2.0, collaboration, and constructivism requires participation in web 2.0, collaboration, and constructivism.

A new way of learning, teaching takes time to get our heads around and that doesn't even include learning the technology that is instrumental in this new way of learning and teaching.

Learning the Tool and Using the Tool: Driven by a Teacher's Belief

After spending a lot of time the last few weeks researching influencing factors of teacher technology adoption for a grad school course, I've come across lots of fascinating research. Also, I've tried to synthesis the major research themes (teacher beliefs of teaching, learning, inservicing, major influencers) into web 2.0 tools and 21st century skills.

It occurred to me after reading scores of research that highlight how powerful teacher's beliefs of teaching and learning are on technology adoption, that we can't just dump web 2.0 and 21st century skills on the laps of teachers. Why? Most web 2.0 tools and 21st century skills are constructivist in nature. The research is quite convincing in my opinion that teachers who use a teacher-led format of instruction generally stay away from technology while those who already gravitate towards student-centered/created classrooms adopt technology more readily.

As promising, needed, and powerful web 2.0 tools and the 21st century skills framework are, they virtually command a non-teacher led approach. While web 2.0 tools can be presented in a teacher-led format, their inherent collaborative (and thus constructivist) nature is squelched. They are almost cancelled out not living to their full potential.

Saying to our teachers, you need to use a web 2.0 tool, or dropping a bunch of tools during an inservice may help learn the technicalities of the software. But the belief in learning and pedagogical will decide whether it gets used in the classroom no matter how cool the tool or important the 21st century skill. Wikis are a great example. They're quite easy to get setup and going. Teachers can be taught the technical skills in a little bit a time. The difficult part is utilizing the wiki to take advantage of it's collaborative, problem-solving, and constructivist knowledge presentation/creation potential. That is because beliefs of learning and teaching ultimately need to change commensurate with this tool to include collaboration, problem-solving, and constructivist knowledge presentation/creation potential.