Cognitive Interfund Transfer

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?

The iPad is a consumption device. Sure, you can use it for Web browsing, video-watching, or note-taking, but the laptop affords a much greater range of expressive possibilities. Apple’s embrace of digital textbooks reinforces a quaint view of education that transfers agency from learners to publishers. The tools for creating e-books, such as iBooks Author, require Macs, but the laptop cannot read the books it creates, forcing schools to choose between textbooks and computing. Apple has made it clear that education is about content delivery and testing, no longer about the power to be your best.

Tablets could have all the functionality of a laptop, but they don’t. Until they do, I recommend that schools invest in laptops for student use.

A Tool for Collaboration

Flexibility

Virtual Classroom Visits

Stage 1: Planning – “Listen to Learn”

Stage 2: Presence – “Stake Our Claim”

Stage 3: Engagement – “Dialog Deepens Relationships”

Student self-assessment/self-grading* Response to intervention* Teacher credibility* Providing formative assessments* Classroom discussion* Teacher clarity* Feedback* Reciprocal teaching* Teacher-student relationships fostered* Spaced vs. mass practice* Meta-cognitive strategies taught and used Acceleration Classroom behavioral techniques Vocabulary programs Repeated reading programs Creativity programs Student prior achievement Self-questioning by students Study skills Problem-solving teaching Not labeling students Concept mapping Cooperative vs individualistic learning Direct instruction Tactile stimulation programs Mastery learning Worked examples Visual-perception programs Peer tutoring Cooperative vs competitive learning Phonics instruction Student-centered teaching Classroom cohesion Pre-term birth weight Peer influences Classroom management techniques Outdoor-adventure programs

Secretary Duncan said, U.S. educational reform policy is motivated by a belief that the U.S. educational system is particularly failing disadvantaged children. Yet an analysis of international test score levels and trends shows that in important ways disadvantaged U.S. children perform better, relative to children in comparable nations, than do middle-class and advantaged children. More careful analysis of these levels and trends may lead policymakers to reconsider their assumption that almost all improvement efforts should be directed to the education of disadvantaged children and few such efforts to the education of middle-class and advantaged children

A re-estimated U.S. average PISA score that adjusted for a student population in the United States that is more disadvantaged than populations in otherwise similar post-industrial countries, and for the over-sampling of students from the most-disadvantaged schools in a recent U.S. international assessment sample, finds that the U.S. average score in both reading and mathematics would be higher than official reports indicate (in the case of mathematics, substantially higher).

Disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform better (and in most cases, substantially better) than comparable students in similar post-industrial countries in reading. In math, disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform about the same as comparable students in similar post-industrial countries.

But it's not about the tools. It's not about layering expensive technology on top of the traditional curriculum. Instead, it's about addressing the new needs of modern learners in entirely new ways. And once we understand that it's about learning, our questions reframe themselves in terms of the ecological shifts we need to make: What do we mean by learning? What does it mean to be literate in a networked, connected world? What does it mean to be educated? What do students need to know and be able to do to be successful in their futures? Educators must lead inclusive conversations in their communities around such questions to better inform decisions about technology and change.

Right now, the web requires us to reconsider the ecology of schools, not just the technologies we use in them. We must start long-term, broad, inclusive conversations about what teaching, learning, and being educated mean in light of the new technologies we now have available to us. Just like business, politics, journalism, music, and a host of other long-standing institutions that the web has rocked at their foundations, education will be and is being changed. To understand the implications fully, we need to start with the questions that focus on our students—and not just on the stuff.

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?

the overall strategy for technology in the home is the same from birth to high school graduation: match their developmental level, and make sure they understand whatever medium they are using from the inside out: who made this, how does it work, and what does it want from me?

Teacher Leaders must be compensated adequately for the additional time they spend fulfilling their leadership duties.