In all of our efforts to teach students safe, appropriate, and responsible technology use, are we forgetting the more important job of teaching our students empowered use?
Adding a digital device to the classroom without a fundamental change in the culture of teaching and learning will not lead to significant improvement. Unless clear goals across the curriculum—such as the use of math to solve real problems—are articulated at the outset, one-to-one computing becomes “spray and pray.”
Let’s drop the phrase “one-to-one” and refer instead to “one-to- world.”
The more important questions revolve around the design of the culture of teaching and learning. For example, how much responsibility of learning can we shift to our students (see Who Owns the Learning by Alan November)? How can we build capacity for all of our teachers to share best practices with colleagues in their school and around the world? How can we engage parents in new ways? (See @livefromroom5 on Twitter.) How can we give students authentic work from around the world to prepare each of them to expand their personal boundaries of what they can accomplish?
Well, the use of a “voucher” system to alter the educational setting for a group of kids is most certainly not the treatment. Voucher is merely the mechanism used here to achieve the treatment. It may be a policy mechanism that is useful under limited circumstances to achieve changes in educational setting. But the “voucher” is NOT the treatment.
For schools to prepare all children for success in life and the workforce, severe disparities in family income, coupled with inadequate education funding and low expectations can no longer be widely accepted causes of inequity in student opportunity.
Lastly, we must all give a damn. The "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" mentality only works if everyone can afford boots. Everyone can contribute a little of their time and resources toward ending inequity in opportunity and expectations.
I've noticed a significant amount of superintendents video blogging lately. From the administrator in Ripon to Howard Suamico, more find it easier to just press record than write a blog. Here's a resource for those of you looking for an entry point.