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What’s the impact of messages related to classwork when they’re part of a large stream of messages students receive from friends, family, horoscope advice, sports scores and so on? What sort of learning happens best (or is reinforced best, perhaps) via SMS? How can these sorts of messages be adapted to students’ progress and how can they be sequenced and scaffolded over time? How many students are able and willing to participate in these sorts of educational activities via their mobile phone? Can students afford the texting fees? Do they want to use their text-messaging allocations for this purpose? Can we subsidize this sort of SMS traffic for student populations? If these sorts of messages between home and school become more common, will there be a way to include parents and parents’ phones in the loop? Can these quizzes be sent to parents’ phones so that they can have the opportunity to pose a question to their children? “This would, in a very small, modest way, alert parents to what students are supposed to be learning,” suggests Trucano. “If students don’t know the answer, this may trigger parents to push their kids more, and/or to question whether the school is doing a good job in this area (including whether or not the official curriculum is being followed at all!).”

At TeachThought, we tend towards the tech-infused model, but do spend time exploring the limits and challenges of technology, the impact of rapid technology change, and carefully considering important questions before diving in head-first.

Critics counter that, absent clear proof, schools are being motivated by a blind faith in technology and an overemphasis on digital skills — like using PowerPoint and multimedia tools — at the expense of math, reading and writing fundamentals. They say the technology advocates have it backward when they press to upgrade first and ask questions later.

1. Learning Centered - Everyone (adults, children) is a learner; learners have agency; emphasis on becoming a learner over becoming learned.

2. Questioning - Inquiry based; questions over answers

3. Authentic - School is real life; students and teachers do real work for real purposes.

Many people would feel comfortable using different platforms such as Kidblog because they may be easier or they may be apt to use, but we are trying to build a vision where the platform is secondary to the learning.  If we all use the same platform to create these portfolios, we can then get into truly deep and transformative learning.

Do we as schools have a long term vision that will help transcend what we do past “year chunks” and into lifelong learning?  Do we have the patience to see projects through that go far beyond any single year?  Do we build capacity within our schools so that no matter what leadership is in place, that long term vision can be achieved?