I was reading a post from Aldon Hynes on Connecticut School’s Three Year Technology Plans. Aldon lives in a town next door to me, and we share a regional high school. It made me reflect on just how effective a group of teachers would be in creating and implementing such a plan. I worry about schools that are not integrating technology coming up with a plan on how to integrate technology into the day-to-day life of students all on their own. If they knew how, wouldn’t they already be doing it? Would they need a committee? Wouldn’t teachers seeking the very best for their students have already slowly been integrating technology into their curriculum? The results might be a school that uses more technology, but just in place of notebooks and pencils. A school that invests in stuff–hardware, software, but has no idea how to use it effectively. I think the lack of tech in classrooms is indicative of the fact that units are not built around real world problems that get the kids to collaborate, create, and communicate. If we were building real-world units we would have to be using technology to create, collaborate, and communicate in our schools. With this push to use technology, we also need to push teachers to use it to make their units more focused on creativity, collaboration, communicating, and all those other 21st Century survival skills.
Can the current teachers really create change in schools? I would bet that if you took a survey of all teachers, the majority would see no problems with what is being done in classrooms today. They might dislike administration, cleanliness of their building, or the age of their textbooks.
But if they saw the need for change, if they saw how today’s system is not preparing kids for tomorrow, wouldn’t they already be doing something about it?
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I find this question really difficult to answer either way, “Can the current teachers really create change in schools?”
While there are many who woud simply place the problems of education on societal change and the like, there are just as many who are seeing problems, just can’t navigate the darkness to solve them. I am starting to believe that we need to stop spending for quantity and more for quality. Meaning, lets have a 2-1 or even 3-1 laptop program that comes with professional development over something like a three-year period which involves actually being present during the school day to provide those same “real-world situations” for teachers, instead of putting everything into one PD surplus day out of context.
I always have brilliant ideas for my classes at home and on the road, but once I take them to my class and really start trying them, they simply don’t work.
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Ahhh Steve…try all those brilliant ideas again after they don’t work. I spent about 8 years in frustration thinking all of my ideas were not working until I realized that I had to unschool my kids first and then introduce the great ideas. They are so used to doing the cut and paste, read and answer, follow the directions sort of assignments that it wasn’t that my ideas were bad, I just had to figure out how to introduce non-traditional activities to traditionally schooled kids.
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I want to thank you for posting about my blog post. Every school district in Connecticut is supposed to be working on its three year plan. Do you know what is going on with the three year plan in Wallingford? How about at Amity? I may know people working on the Amity plan and I’d love to get you to add your thoughts to their discussions.
I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts over the coming days.
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@Aldon
I don’t know what the Amity plan is. The plan for Wallingford is here:
http://www.wallingford.k12.ct.us/page.cfm?p=72
Still think there is too much emphasis on using technology as fancy pencils, paper, and encyclopedias. I can’t ever remember it being talked about in school. I found it on our website. I think the key to any plan is that it should blow out the four walls of each classroom to connect kids with others to create, collaborate and communicate. Also these plans are ridiculously long and complicated. They become bogged down with so many words and steps that they just seem impractical to follow. I think one reason is because each school has to fill on a template provided to them from the state.
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Paul,
A few comments about the Wallingford Technology Plan. First, I will note that it is for 2006-2009. They should be working on a new plan as we speak. Do you know if Randall Backus is still there? He would probably be heading up the drafting of the 2009-2012 plan.
I also notice that like so many of the other plans I’ve read, it is written by a committee of fifteen people, including one parent and one representative of the ‘business community’. I would love to see the technology committees have more visionaries on them.
I don’t mean to be too critical of the work of that committee. It was for the three years just ending, and things have changed a lot over the past three years, but when I read the vision statement, I have to ask, where is the vision?
“Wallingford Public Schools believes that in order to be a life long learner in today’s changing world every student must develop and use technological skills efficiently, effectively and ethically. We will ensure that our learners will be able to interact successfully in a technological environment to achieve their personal, educational, and professional goals.”
Now if there was a vision more like “to connect kids with others to create, collaborate and communicate”, independent of what happens to the school walls, then, it would seem, there would be a little more vision.
Meanwhile, I don’t know where the Amity Technology Plan is either. I suspect that if I dug around, I could find a copy of the 2006-2009 plan somewhere online. I suspect it wouldn’t be much more inspiring than the Wallingford plan. Yet like Wallingford, Amity is currently in the process of drafting a 2009-2012 plan. Part of my goal is to get people interested in what is going on in their schools and to bring a little vision from the outside in.
So, if you know any visionaries that would like to bring a little to the Amity planning process, let me know. I would love to try and make some connections. Perhaps, like the kids in our schools, we parents, teachers and other stakeholders need to create, collaborate and communicate a little more ourselves.
Aldon
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