Horizon Report Notes Key Changing Trends in Education

For the past eight years, the New Media Consortium's Horizon Project has been using research to report annually on the changing landscape of education via the increasing integration of technology.  Here are four key trends noted in the 2010 report that will likely drive education change, especially the way learning and instruction is delivered, over the course of the next five years:

• The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators in sense-making, coaching, and credentialing.
• People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to.
• The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized.
• The work of students is increasingly seen as collaborative by nature, and there is more crosscampus collaboration between departments.

The Report notes one critical challenge that will continue to emphasize a more expanded role for technology in the classroom:

Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.

Students will require an ever-increasing amount of digital literacy as they graduate from high school and college.  This infers that instructional staff and school administrators will need to stay on top of the ever-changing digital landscape to ensure our schools remain relevant.

The Report details a number of technologies that are likely to have a growing impact on education:

• Over the next year:  mobile computing and open content

• Two to three years out:  electronic books and simple augmented reality

• Four to five years away: gesture-based computing and visual data analysis

The immediate concern will be expansion of mobile computing and greater use of open content curriculum, instructional materials, and resources.  As noted in the 2010 report:

Users increasingly expect anytime, anywhere access to data and services that not very long ago were available only while sitting in front of a computer linked to the network via a cable. In addition to the typical software for email, communication, and calendaring, new tools allow users to manage personal information (such as Evernote, Nozbe, Wesabe, and TripIt), collaborate and easily access and share files (Dropbox and CalenGoo are two of many possible examples), or keep abreast of social networks (Limbo, Facebook, Foursquare, Whrrl), and generally make checking and updating work, school, or personal information flows something easily done on the fly. 

Open content has now come to the point that it is rapidly driving change in both the materials we use and the process of education. At its core, the notion of open content is to take advantage of the Internet as a global dissemination platform for collective knowledge and wisdom, and to design learning experiences that maximize the use of it.

Of course, the challenge for the educational community will be staying abreast of these and other technology changes as they occur by shaking the past practice of being late adopters.  Structural changes to budgets, calendars, schedules, staffing, and other resources must be aligned to support these changes.

Michigan's Race to the Top Plan

Having now had the belated opportunity to review a final summary of the state's plan, my concerns remain the same.  The plan is based on a number of unfunded "will develop" tasks at the state level that are not yet determined or spelled out, nor do they adequately describe the potential costs and requirements at the local level.  Therefore, any agreement to the plan is an agreement to do something that hasn't even been decided or developed yet.  That's akin to purchasing an auto that hasn't even been designed, let alone built.

My other concern is the seemingly significant costs to local districts, especially given the state's 31-year history of ignoring the Headlee amendment's prohibition on unfunded mandates to local governments and schools.  A number of those new costs are structurally recurring versus one-time.  This is particularly true for the expansion of CEPI and data collection.  CEPI, which has existed since 12/23/78 is already at the center of significant unfunded mandates for Michigan school districts. The Final Report of the Legislative Commission on Statutory Mandates dated 12/31/09 estimated the center's reporting requirements amounted to an annual unfunded mandate between $50 and $100 million, and this has been going on for over thirty years!  A court case (Adair) is currently pending but moving at a typical slow pace.  RttT definitely intends to increase the amount of time, resources and staffing at the local district due to a new CEPI Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS).

There are other long-term costs associated with on-going professional development, designing and testing new evaluation instruments, adopting, as well as aligning and assessing new college, career, K-12 math and ELA standards that haven't even been completed yet.

The entire concept in the plan (as well as the recently adopted legislation) continues to force a "plain vanilla" state-wide system for operating local school districts, yet the state does not uniformly fund schools.  We saw this with the new graduation requirements and corresponding Michigan Merit Curriculum.  The state wants everyone to be the same and produce the same results but doesn't fund schools equally.  RttT is simply going to exacerbate this problem.

It's evident from the plan's summary that much of this has been throw together in haste merely to satisfy Secretary Duncan's power grab in return for a "few pieces of silver."  Michigan taxpayers need to ask the question, who is going to fund all of these ongoing change initiatives when the federal money runs out?  Districts need to understand the new funding cliff this creates.

At the moment, I cannot recommend that our district sign onto the plan but will wait until I meet with our teacher association leaders and Board of Education tomorrow.  We are trying to determine precisely how much of this plan will effect us anyway due to the recently approved legislation versus what is being added on at potentially greater costs.  If it turns out we have to comply with most of the plan anyway, than why not take the money?

One Hashtag Helps Educators Change Their Schools

Awesome article in the national Converge magazine about our weekly Twitter edchat which has done more to advance professional learning and educational change than any traditional professional development program.

One Hashtag Helps Educators Change Their Schools

Growing Frustration with Politicians

I found this fascinating quote today:

If we ever needed proof that – despite all the promises, platitudes and protestations – no politician gives a damn about students, this is it.educationontheplate.wordpress.com, Education On The Plate, Jan 2010

You should read the whole article.

"3 R's" Not Just for Students

The "00" decade just completed could easily be identified with the latest "3 R's" movement: rigor, relevance and - belatedly - relationships. A number of leading education researchers and consultants have been promoting rigor and relevance since the early 90's, but Bill Daggett and the International Center for Leadership in Education gave them added prominence by underscoring the criticality of relationships when it comes to learning:

If there is not a high level of positive relationships, students will not respond to higher expectations. ~ Willard Daggett, Leadership for Rigor, Relevance and Relationships, International Center for Leadership in Education, 2006.

While the Center's focus has been primarily on student-student and teacher-student relationships in the context of rigor and relevance, I contend that employing the 3 R's can be just as critical for the success of district and school staff.

Rigor in the classroom most often refers to academic rigor but just as easily could imply the rigorous expectations and standards for the adult staff necessary to operate a district, school and classroom successfully. Daggett uses Bloom's Knowledge Taxonomy to describe the levels of rigor in academics - knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation - each of which can readily be applied to our professional work life. As educational professionals, we have an obligation to hold ourselves and our co-workers to the highest possible standards when it comes to being, knowing, and doing on an everyday basis. This equates to professional rigor in which we constantly demonstrate a thorough, in-depth mastery of challenging tasks that expand our cognitive skills through reflective thought, analysis, problem-solving, evaluation, or creativity (Daggett). These can be accomplished through regular inquiry, self-learning, and collaboration, face-to-face in our work settings, attendance at quality professional development opportunities, and by expanding our personal learning networks (PLN) to encompass social networking across the internet.

Relevance for students refers to interdisciplinary and contextual learning situations directly connected to real-world problems ranging from routine to complex. Relevance for teachers and administrators implies establishing a vision and mission, and moving forward on school improvement and change initiatives that have purpose and are focused on the agreed-upon needs of that particular school and student population. Initiative-overload, all too common in many districts and schools, leads to the loss of relevance and lack of common commitment amongst the professional staff. When teachers and principals in particular see the relevance of an initiative or strategy to the desired end-results, they are more likely to be successful. As with students, educational leaders should not confuse staff excitement and activity with relevance. To be relevant, the work must be meaningful (Daggett) and connected to the vision, mission and improvement goals of the school. There must be congruence between the desired end-state and the work being done.

Relationships are critical to completing rigorous work successfully (Daggett). Members of the staff are simply more likely to personally commit to more rigorous expectations when they know the Board of Education, superintendent, and other educational leaders care about them and how well they do. We are willing to go out of our way and make physical, emotional and intellectual investments in our profession when we are encouraged, supported and assisted. Just as students will engage more fully in challenging learning when they have increased levels of support from the people around them, educational professionals are willing to step out of their comfort zones, take greater risks, and go the extra mile to help the organization achieve success when they know someone has our backs. Daggett goes further to identify the four types of relationships that are critical to success, modified here to focus on staff:

• Relationships essential for supporting the teaching and learning process in the classroom.
• Relationships among teachers, administrators and support staff that influence good teaching, support functions, staff development, problem-solving and decision-making.
• Relationships that support and maintain learning and development in the profession, including those that extend beyond the school or district boundary.
• Relationships with parents and the community.

While relationships change over time, the best way to cultivate positive, professional rigor, relevance and relationships is through collaborative behaviors, initiatives and structures within a school system. The old days of isolated "teacher-as-independent-contractor" did not value collaboration as a fundamental tool for school improvement. Staff maintained polite, social relations but each individual teacher and administrator were expected to function independently and solve their own problems. This worked out for they factory-type of school dominant in the 1900's but doesn't work for today's students. They are social, collaborative, and responsive to visual and hands-on learning situations that require the adult members of the school communities to replicate those same characteristics to be successful.

By focusing on building strong staff relationships in a rigorous and relevant professional work environment, we can take a giant leap forward in providing our students with the learning environments they need.

I'd be interested in exploring strategies that have worked or are working to increase and improve the "3 R's" in schools and districts.