The 21st Century Textbook

Don Tapscott’s latest book is not actually a book but an iPad app New Solutions for a Connected Planet.  It was created in partnership with Thinkers50 and sponsored by the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

What makes this app innovative is that it is an evolving ‘book’ full of real-time, rich media content that allows readers (users) to navigate and interact in a way that a hardcopy or even eReader book couldn’t accommodate.

This is the start of a new breed of reference books that shows what you can do to take digital content to the next level. Think of the potential for learning and teaching… a 21^st century textbook that allows the learner to navigate, press, wipe, slide, watch, listen and share all in the one place. It’s served up in a highly interactive and engaging way for a digital savvy generation.

The app itself is well worth a look offering Don’s latest thinking on how we can rebuild 10 institutions, including education, for the networked age.

In his Ted Talk, Four principles for the open world Don talks about the notion of sharing IP (intellectual property) to provide the rising tide in order to ‘lift everyone’s boats’. He sees the potential of the digital, global ecomony as a ‘turning point in human history’ requiring organisations and businesses to become more open, porous and fluid. It’s likely this thinking is the reason why he has made his new book free via iTunes.

There are some tools already available like iBooks Author app for users to create something similar with text enriched by multimedia and the ability to publish/share the book via iTunes and other channels.

I’m sure we can expect to see even more sophisticated ‘books’ like this in the future. I would love to hear your thoughts on the 21^st century textbook?

It’s a small ‘virtual’ world

I’m not sure if you have had this experience, but the last thing I expected while travelling in Greece on a pilgrimage with Catholic Education colleagues was to be approached by two fellow Australians who recognised me from my Twitter profile.

A 21st century encounter with my colleagues developed through social networking.

It was a powerful moment to connect ‘face to face’ with people who had become my professional colleagues in a very 21st century kind of way. Social media is a phenomenon that’s here to stay and one that has made it possible to connect with people outside your physical sphere on a daily basis to share thinking, learning and ideas. This chance encounter helped me realise that the professional learning community we are a part of via Twitter or other online tools might feel mostly ‘virtual’ but it is real. It’s not just a world of ideas, it is a community of educators who share a common interest to improve learning and teaching. What we share online has the potential to encourage, inspire and stretch us to improve the work we do and the way we go about it.

Recently George Couros (@gcouros) wrote about the importance of using Twitter to not only share information, but to listen and to engage. He made the point that it’s not good enough for schools, organisations and businesses to just ‘be online’ and share information alone. They must listen to those they serve. If we don’t use the tools effectively to engage, to collaborate and participate in the conversation, we risk using a ‘Web 2.0 tool in a Web 1.0 way’ and never take full advantage of its capabilities. Online tools shouldn’t be used as a monologue stream, because the technology is designed for dialogue.

For myself, tools like Twitter and Bluyonder allow me to be part of a global professional learning community and is an opportunity to share my own ideas and engage with the ideas of others for my own professional improvement in the work I do as a system leader.

Bumping into my colleagues in Greece demonstrates the power of this online community and is a good reminder that what we share and do in the virtual world does have an impact in the physical world.

Learning without a licence

It never ceases to amaze me how when confronted with challenging issues we tend to default to our past experiences. Perhaps it’s because hindsight provides 20/20 vision or because it gives us a sense of security to cling to what we know. But in a knowledge age, when it comes to solving today’s problems and anticipating tomorrow’s challenges, we have to talk about a new paradigm, and look to change our habits. No time like the present, let’s start today.

I was recently asked to comment on an idea floated by Australia’s leading child and adolescent psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg who suggested bringing in licences for young people to use mobile phones and tablets at school; giving students access to use the devices only once they’d been taught what was safe and responsible and agreed to abide by a set of rules and conditions.

Licensing use of itself does nothing to change practice or encourage innovation and creativity. In fact it can do just the opposite. The retreat to regulation raises more issues than it solves. I can understand why there would be some fears for students’ safety but the suggestion to license students doesn’t make any sense; once students get outside the school yard and classroom, they freely use their personal devices in all other areas of life, just as freely as they can draw water from a tap.

I recently came across this blog post highlighting an interesting list of quotes from Collins and Halverson’s (2009) ‘Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology’  showing that this fear for new technology in education is not a new phenomenon.

•    From a principal’s publication in 1815: “Students today depend on paper too much.  They don’t know how to write on a slate without getting chalk dust all over themselves. They can’t clean a slate properly. What will they do when they run out of paper?”
•    From the journal of the National Association of Teachers, 1907: “Students today depend too much upon ink.  They don’t know how to use a pen knife to sharpen a pencil. Pen and ink will never replace the pencil.”
•    From Rural American Teacher, 1928: “Students today depend upon store bought ink.  They don’t know how to make their own.  When they run out of ink they will be unable to write words or ciphers until their next trip to the settlement. This is a sad commentary on modern education.”
•    From Federal Teachers, 1950: “Ballpoint pens will be the ruin of education in our country. Students use these devices and then throw them away.  The American values of thrift and frugality are being discarded. Businesses and banks will never allow such expensive luxuries.”
•    From a science fair judge in Apple Classroom of Tomorrow chronicles, 1988: “Computers give students an unfair advantage.  Therefore, students who used computers to analyze data or create displays will be eliminated from the science fair.”

It doesn’t surprise me then that the knee-jerk reaction to technology in schools is to want to restrict students.

What will schooling look like in the future? I often think about this question and I have come to realise that we won’t find the answer in the past. We’ll find the answer in the very work we do today; work that is based on good theory and good practice. Learning and teaching has to be driven by innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity. We need to have a willingness to look outward rather than inward, a willingness to look forward rather than backward, especially in Education where learning means constantly being open to discovering new ideas and information, wisdom and understanding.

Shaun Parker says students were learning dance moves from videos on YouTube.

I believe that to limit students’ use of technology is to limit their possibilities. For the last four years, our schools in greater western Sydney have been working in collaboration with Shaun Parker – a well-known talent in professional contemporary dance. The result of our collaboration in 2012 was The Yard, a 60-minute performance exploring school yard issues using contemporary dance forms.

In this STUDIO Art Break video, Shaun makes a few interesting points about how the students constantly watch videos on YouTube to work on their moves. ‘They teach it to themselves, they learn in the schoolyard,’ he said. ‘They think and move very quickly with ideas because they access that many ideas when they click on YouTube or when they chat to their friends’. He said while he has utilised that, he has also tried to crystallise and channel it ‘so it isn’t just a series of fast ideas’ – this proves how pervasive and essential technology is to students’ learning.

When new technology is faced with fear of the unknown and from a ‘that’s the way things have always been done’ framework, we miss out the creativity and innovation that springs forth. Sure, we need to learn from the past, but we also need to seek answers to the future in the present work we do. If we base all our work on past experience, we are never going to move forward.

We know what makes a difference. We know that from birth, today’s students live in a Web 2.0 world, a world which is only going to get increasingly more complex as the technology matures. Rather than default to a ‘limit and control’ mentality, we’ve got to ask the question: how do we deal with these issues?

The cornerstone of success in the information age comes from understanding how to learn and a willingness to continue to learn. It’s about being responsive and adaptive to change and having a sense of openness towards the future. We need to learn how to take advantage of the new tools for learning as they fast become available and make the most of these learning opportunities.

Are we trend setters or chasers?

The New Media Consortium will release its 2012 K-12 Edition of the Horizon Report next month. I’ve read this with great interest over past years as it identifies and describes emerging technologies which will impact on education over the next 1-5 years.

If you’re interested, you can read through the Horizon Project preview – it predicts that mobiles and apps as well as tablet computing be adopted in a year or less. Within two to three years, game based learning and personal learning environments should be adopted across K-12.  And within four to five years augmented reality and natural user interfaces will be the tools of choice for students and teachers.

For many educators, the use of technology is a significant leap in practice but for others, the future is already here. The emerging trends raises an interesting question for me: do we need to institute core competencies for teachers around use of technologies in the learning space?  The answer to this is probably dependent on your worldview of schooling, its purpose and processes.  If you see schools in an industrial model, you’ll have a certain response.  If you are pushing the boundaries and exposing students to emerging technology, you’ll have a different response.  Too often however, we take the default position of limit and control.

This question has been at the front of my mind this week ahead of my keynote and participation in a debate on BYOD at the Technology in K-12 Education National Congress 2012. I find it interesting that in light of the Horizon Report, we are still debating the pros and cons of BYOD in schools. Technology is only going to stretch us as educators as we look for ways of ensuring the tools can adequately support personalised learning.

I’m not sure if any of the local readers have seen a series of stamps released by Australia Post  titled ‘Now and Then’.  These stamps depict how the ‘technological revolution has touched the daily lives of most Australians’ from phone boxes to mobiles  from record players to iPods.  What I noticed when I saw these stamps was the relatively seamless transition of technology into our daily lives – yet it hasn’t occured in every school environment.

If you think back to the seventies, there was little difference between home and school ‘technology’.  For example, if you had a colour TV at home and a cassette player, you would probably find these in most classrooms.  Enter the digital revolution and the gap begins to widen between home and school.  Most households today have multiple devices, we’re connected to the web and we can access learning anytime, anywhere on any device yet in many schools the devices are limited or they are not being used to deepen student learning and thinking.  We’re hesitant about building connections or embracing the opportunities of online learning.

This is Prof Stephen Heppell talking four years ago about the role of emerging technologies.  Will we still be having the same conversation in four years time or will game based learning and augmented reality be the norm?  To quote Heppell ‘if you’re an eleven year old today, you’ve only ever experienced life in the 21st century and you’re probably hearing this debate around technology and 21st century learning and thinking get on with it already – an eighth of the century is already gone!’

In the not too distant future, we have become trend setters not trend chasers.

Crossing the social media divide

The listing of Facebook on the stock exchange (now valued at $100 billion) highlights how social media has become serious business.  As we conceptualise organisations differently as dynamic, porous and self-learning, we must recognise that social media has be part of the expanded tool kit of leaders. This is no where more pressing than for school leaders and I don’t think we can be observers anymore, we must be participants and contributers to the educational narrative.

In a news article last week, principals in South Australian public schools will be encouraged to ‘blog, tweet and use a school Facebook page to communicate with parents and the local community.’  It’s part of a broader strategy developed by the SA Education Department to improve leadership in public education.  While the initiative is timely, it does leave out a critical aspect of social media – the opportunity to collaborate and connect with peers.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to address our newly appointed leaders and explained that if leaders are not socially aware and social media literate, then it’s difficult to understand the context in which we are learning and teaching.  Social media such as blogs and tweets are powerful tools to enable and empower school leaders.  When you are continuously sharing, reflecting and engaging with people, it stretches your thinking. You learn by sharing, you learn by learning, you learn by connecting with others.

It’s this ability to connect that gives leaders the confidence to draw from the wisdom of the crowd in order to share and solve problems.  When leaders are networked into other, more expanded, learning communities (physical and virtual), you see best practice being shared freely and connections develop so that there is an ever expanding understanding of what is achievable.

Michael Fullan in Change Leader has a chapter on collaboration.  Fullan cites a study of Stanford business graduates which found  the ‘most creative individuals had broad social networks that extend outside their organisations and involved people from diverse fields of expertise..were three times more innovative than uniform vertical networks.’(p99).

I have never proclaimed to be a tech guru but I do use social media and have benefitted enormously from the depth of professional conversation and feedback on twitter and bluyonder.  Despite trying to engage and encourage my colleagues, the response has been luke warm. I believe this is reflective of a growing gap between those who are connected and those who aren’t; leaders who are taking responsibility for their own learning and growth and those who are happy to continue along the same path.

Mary Beth Hertz wrote an insightful post recently about the social media divide in education. Reflecting on her experience at a recent teaching conference, Hertz noted that she was part of a ‘small group of educators who were tweeting and blogging about the sessions’ and how her virtual colleagues had developed a common language, drawing from a common canon of books, articles, blog posts and thought leaders.

In recognising the growing gap between teachers, Hertz says:

We are part of a community of learners that knows no walls, that our learning has no boundaries. We can meet someone face to face for the first time, draw from the same knowledge base and even continue a conversation that may have spanned thousands of miles.  These conversations are also based on current research, and on articles written by leaders in the education world.  We take these conversations and this knowledge back to our classrooms and our schools, impacting our students and our colleagues.  Teachers who learn together grow together. And teachers who grow together teach children in powerful ways.  This silent gap, should it remain unclosed, will only widen the existing, perceptible gap in our schools.

Leaders have a responsibility to look for ways of  closing the gap.  As Fullan says in Change Leaders effective leaders in whatever field walk into the future through examining their own and others’ best practice, looking for insights they had not previously noticed.  Social media is one way of allowing leaders to do this.  How many of your colleagues have crossed the social media divide?

Another revolution?

The Third Industrial Revolution is underway – manufacturing is going digital.  A few weeks ago, I read an interesting article in The Economist revealing manufacturers of the future will focus on mass customisation – tailoring products to our individual needs and specifications.   The revolution will not only affect how things are made – but where, and, importantly – the skills set required to deliver products to the hands of the consumer. This is yet another example of how our future workforce will be required to constantly shift to meet the needs of an ever-evolving economy.

As The Economist’s Paul Markillie reflects, with the revolution firmly underway it is timely for us to consider how we will capitalise on the opportunities this digital revolution presents in order to prepare all students for work in today’s world.  As educators, how do we ensure schooling remains relevant and reflective of the changes happening in the world?  More importantly, how can we respond to trends that have not yet evolved? And how do we deliver ‘mass education’ in order to meet individual needs?

The demand for tools that enable mass personalisation of education is evident in the success of researchers like Ramona Pierson who have made it their core focus to provide educators across the globe with tools to tailor instruction to meet the needs of students and teachers.  It evolves the traditional, one-size-fits-all approach to teaching into a differentiated approach that adjusts content and instruction to ensure every student’s voice is heard through tools which focus on the elements of:

-    Real-time assessment;
-    Simplifying lesson planning;
-    Connecting with diverse learners – supporting visual, auditory and kinaesthetic instruction in individual, group and whole-class learning environments;
-    Encouraging participation via an interactive environment;
-    Providing the structure, tools and resources the whole class needs for success while providing individual guidance to students and small groups as they work to overcome challenges

I believe that combining this approach with a focus on refining online teaching access, open content, real time web delivery, independent course-wear provision and virtual learning environments will provide schools with great opportunities to ensure learning not only meets the needs of every student but is in sync with what is happening in today’s world.

These avenues by their nature exponentially build on accessibility. Students who may be based in remote and regional locations now have the greatest level of access to information and support that they have ever had. Retention of students in the education system who are geographically challenged will vastly improve over coming decades as we integrate these tools into all elements of our lives – and also enables the broader population to embrace life-long learning.

Delivery of content using today’s tools also enables niche course delivery – none of us are confined to 9-3pm learning. The opportunity to deliver a course relevant to hundreds of students across Australia that may have only been sought by a handful of students within an individual school means students are better able to ensure their schooling experience is customised to meet their future goals. It also provides a tailored support and like-minded network for each student to tap into – broadening horizons and perspectives beyond local geography.

I came across a relevant quote by Seymour Papert in his essay Education’s 19th Century Thinking in a 21st Century world:

The skills that you can learn when you’re at school will not be applicable. They will be obsolete by the time you get into the workplace and need them, except for one skill – the one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn. It is the skill of being able not to give the right answer to questions about what you were taught in school, but to make the right response to situations that are outside the scope of what you were taught in school.  We need to produce people who know how to act when they’re faced with situations for which they were not specifically prepared.

How will instruction adapt to this “megachange” if we’re not using all the available things that the technology hands out? Demonstrating that education is now as much about partnerships, innovation and engagement as about the traditional training grounds, the New York Times has enjoyed significant success with its New York Times Knowledge Network. The network offers a wide range of distinctive adult and continuing education opportunities, including online courses, programs and Webcasts.  Also tapping into the revolution are Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The universities have announced a new non-profit partnership – known as edX – to offer free online courses from both universities.

Technology for online education, with video lesson segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback and student-paced learning, is evolving so quickly that those in the new ventures say the offerings are still experimental. The new platforms present dual opportunities – to build a global community of online learners and to research teaching methods and technologies. Additionally, the barriers to education which define people’s ability to mould their futures will be broken down.

How will educational leaders become active drivers and leaders of this ever-shifting environment to ensure our students enjoy the greatest of these opportunities?

Alan November

Last week we had one of the world’s ed tech experts, Alan November make a whirlwind visit to Parramatta. I had an opportunity to take Alan to  one of our primary schools to see how students and teachers were working in an agile space. He then spent a few hours sharing his insights and expertise with a group of leaders and teachers, many of whom have been following Alan’s blog and podcasts for years.  We’re certainly grateful that Alan could make some time in his hectic schedule to challenging our thinking.

The point that Alan made which I think is beginning to take root is that while you need technology to facilitate change, it isn’t in itself the change agent. If we use technology to do the same thing we’ve always been doing, only more efficiently, then we miss the mark. We need to change what we teach, how we teach and why we teach it.

Alan believes the greatest challenge we face is teaching students to become ‘researchers’ and critical users of the internet (Alan’s website has more information on digital literacy). I was surprised that Alan hadn’t met one student in Australia that understands how to do detailed Google searches. You don’t know what you don’t know and there is still a lot I am learning about technology and the web but it’s incumbent on teachers to understand the architecture of information and to ensure students have the skills to analyse information not just search for it.

Google cannot do it but teachers can in the way they ask the question – this is the value add of teachers in today’s world. Alan believes we need to teach by questioning not by teaching. The focus shouldn’t be on the technology but on the problem.  How many schools are using technology as a $1000 pencil?  If we want to see real change in student learning, then the essential question for school leaders is – what is the process change and what will we do differently (pedagogically) with the technology? In effect we have to re-engineer the whole back end of teaching, to modernise it and refine it as we reflect on student learning. This should not frighten nor over burden teaschers. It should energise them since it gives the profession greater control ove rthis critical process.

I came across a vodcast this week of film executive Peter Guber talking about ‘state of the heart’ not state of the art technology.  It resonates with Alan’s argument – technology isn’t the answer but the enabler.  How do we build those connections between learner and content, between teacher and student, between family and school?

I think it was the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire who said the question was the foundation of human existence – it’s also the foundation of 21st century schooling.

Can technology change teacher practice?

I asked my colleague John Connell if he would consider writing a post in response to the question “can technology change teacher practice?” I  had the opportunity to visit Scotland in 2010 and caught up with John and his colleagues to talk about how systems can build teacher capacity supported by technology.  John writes a thought provoking blog drawing from his experience as a teacher, leader, policy analyst and now consultant for Cisco.  He was instrumental in the development of the Scottish Schools Digital Network.  

John’s reflections below provide food for thought as we embark on another school year. I thank him for his generosity in contributing to bluyonder. 

“I started university in 2005 and had a completely different expectation of technology to that which I have today. Many applications are now so user-friendly, and I use many technologies on a daily basis….I have changed from using technology for social use to using it for study too.”

The remarkable thing about these words from a young Students Union official at the University of Brighton, quoted in a JISC paper entitled ‘Emerging Practice in a Digital Age’ , is the timescale she alludes to. For someone like me, who has seen the world move from resolutely analogue to pervasively digital through the four decades of my teenage and adult years, the idea that a young person today can experience such tangible change in the space of just 5 or 6 years gives me pause for thought. And it ought to give every teacher pause for thought too.

The rapid technological transformation happening right now is only one reason for stopping to think; the other is that learners themselves are changing their own study practices in response to the developing technologies. And if students are changing their behaviour, then it is surely incumbent upon teachers to look closely too at how those changes might cause them to re-think their own teaching practices.

Teachers, I feel, need to think very carefully about how the technology itself can affect their pedagogy. I groan each time a see a trite phrase such as “It’s the teach, not the tech” or “Teaching first, technology second” or any of the seemingly infinite variants. I groan because it takes only a few seconds of logical thought and a modicum of historical perspective to see that they are quite meaningless, and no more meaningful than the converse (“It’s the tech, not the teach”).

You do not have to be a technological determinist to see that there is a necessary dialectical relationship between technology and pedagogy: if we succumb to the trite phrase, we will always start with what we want to teach and how, and then think of the technology that might help us achieve that. We might do something better, faster, more productively, but we will not do it differently, at least not in any fundamental way.

The digital and networking technologies carry with them a range of affordances that can have a profound effect on the way we teach, on the way we expect our students to learn, on the very nature of the relationships that operate between teacher and student, and the overall ‘lie of the land’ for teaching and learning.

The fundamental landscape for learning is shifting. John Seely-Brown would define the learning landscape as:

“…an environment that is consistent with (not antagonistic to) how learners learn…an open system, dynamic, interdependent, diverse, partially self-organizing, adaptive, and fragile…”

How many teachers today would even recognize this description as a desirable goal? Not many as yet, I guess. But teachers do need to understand that learners, of all ages, are increasingly able to create or find their own learning pathways, learning what, when, how and with whom they choose. Learning is opening up, and teaching has to extend itself by keeping the best of what teaching has always been but augmenting it with the skills, knowledge, wisdom and understanding needed to empower and free the learner to learn most effectively in the connected learning landscape they find themselves in today.

The next big thing

I think many people over forty have a problem with technology and the older you are the more technology seems difficult to understand. We always seem to be playing catch up as the NBT ( next big thing) hits the market. New and converging technologies appear and we often feel powerless in the face of the tsunami of technological innovation. We look at the shiny new device and note immediately that  it is smaller and much faster than its predecessors; does more things or claims; looks sexier and is relatively cheap. How can any of us keep up with this relentless innovation and development cycle?

Spare a thought then for schools.  They face an enormous challenge in providing the most appropriate technologies for students and teachers. The struggle to stay current is taxing and exhausting and the probability of poor decision making is high. For the past twenty years school leaders have struggled with the challenges of providing a range of ICT tools for their learning communities.

But is this where we should be focussing all of our energies?

Over the Christmas break, I read Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson. This is a warts and all account of his life and achievements and well worth the read. One thing really struck me though as I read the book and it was something that Jobs himself came to understand in the early part of this century. He had spent his entire life pushing the boundaries of technologies – the relentless quest to build a better computer and a successful company – Apple.

In early 2000 Jobs decided to delete the word “computers” from the company name because he realized that Apple was not in fact, a technology company, it was a “lifestyle” company. Apple technologies had begun to revolutionise the way people live work and play. iTunes, iPhoto. iMovie and most importantly iTunes were reshaping the music, movie and the publishing industries. The old ways were gone and vanished quickly. All the technology did was to enable this change to take place.

If you want further evidence of this seismic shift pay attention to car advertisements. You can now personalise your car, it can match your moods or the “other you” as one car company claims. The car is incidental, it is the lifestyle that is more important. Notice how other tech companies like Apple and ACER are dropping the direct reference to computers in their names. The technology has become invisible – it’s how you use it that is significant.

And the ones who really understand the shift that has taken place are young people. Technology has allowed them to live their lives very differently to previous generations.  Technology allows them to express who they are, how they learn and how they communicate.

Before the arrival of Facebook, Twitter and IM, school was the place to socialise while learning.  What is school to young people today, does it offer the same level of opportunities and engagement for self-expression and independent learning?  Do young people see school as an integral part of their lives or is there an alternative? And is school just another aspect of their lifestyle?

As we prepare for another school year, perhaps we need to be thinking about making schooling the next big thing for today’s learners.

The change gap

Last week I attended a “learning and leading conversations” workshop at Ravenswood School for Girls with Canadian educator George Couros. George and his brother Alec have developed a significant professional learning network on Twitter and it was good to see the physical and virtual connections converging.  The more this happens, the greater the drive for principals and teachers to become a part of it and learn from it.  George shared this open letter to educators – very Bueller-esque.

We spent the day working in groups on some of the big questions such as what would we change about schools/classrooms? There wouldn’t have been anyone in the room who wasn’t convinced that schooling needs to change.  But in my experience, it often falls over in the next stage when people go back as lone change agents.

This is the change gap. Too often the “change gap” terrifies people and they respond with inertia or take the first up solution.  I see the change gap as a great opportunity to focus discussion and collaboration. I think this is why Twitter and other social networking tools are becoming a critical part of teachers’ learning. The change gap could become our wikipedia experience.  A place where we invite the wisdom of the community to help us work through the complex processes of schooling. It will also help build a culture that says we’ll find ways forward when we listen to the voices around the education table be it here or around the world.