I love this quote: "Look, this is just a part of who we are now," Spoor said of the personal technology. "It's a tidal wave." Maybe that's what we should rename this social bookmark group: The Tidal Wave.
Yes, I did learn that problems of low achievement were intricately connected to what families and students brought with them to schools, what teachers did in their classrooms, how principals worked in their schools, and how boards and superintendents finessed (or fouled up) the intersecting political, social, and economic interests of various stakeholders.
Most of all, my years as superintendent made me allergic to those who offered me fairy tale solutions—kissing a frog to get a prince–to the problem of low-performing schools.
This is the report published by the Wisconsin School Administrators' Alliance in the summer of 2010 (I think). Check out the part on A Visionary Tale on page 9. Hat-tip to Mary Bowen-Eggebraaten for forwarding this piece on to me.
Very nice. AND, as the report indicates, leadership and community need to be included. This means you need the school board to play a role. They are the conduit to the community.
Public education has been down the transformation road before. In some ways we are not inventing anything new here. John Dewey championed experiential learning as the public education system developed a century ago. Progressive educators tried in the 1930s and 1960s to introduce experiential learning into the system.
The grammar of schooling, the deep structure, the notion of "real school" all pull the system back into the status quo. We need to remain cognizant of these dynamics and consider how to address them if we want to see the promise of the ideas contained in this report become a reality.
You have to connect the ideas outlined in this report to the notion of collective impact. I think this idea is key to seeing a different outcome: http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/2197/
I want to be clear: I am a supporter of the ideas contained in the Wisconsin Vision report. I also want to be sure we take a realists view of how to make it happen. I do not want to see this effort and the ideas of CESAs 1 and 6, wind up in the history books like past transformation efforts.
The cost of an Iphone now is very close to the cost of a net book or a solid state computer. I think we should also explore the option of investing in bandwidth and filtering so that students can bring their own computers to school. The cost is not that different from phones now, students can mass personalize their computer, and then there is no issue with personal overlap. It's their computer. With cloud computing, students just have access to their Google accounts through bandwidth, not the network. Food for thought.
You and I see the value in this and many school board members do as well. We have to help our communities understand the value. I worked with a board the other night that totally gets the need for integrating technology into the curriculum. Their concern was the community: "They think paper and pencil is good enough." You cannot ignore this perspective, because if enough people in your community agree with that idea, you will lose the tech supporter board members at election time. This turnover in leadership does not lead to long-term systemic change (which needs to include the integration of technology).
An interesting point-counter point between the Chronicle of Higher Education and Cathy Davidson and Michael Wesch, who are rock stars in #edtech integration.