The film opens with a first person shot of me walking my dogs. The audio is a speech from Ken Robinson's TED Talk. This goes on for about 5 minutes until I take my iPod out of my pocket and reveal that the audio is from the downloaded video I have been listening to on my walk)
(Scene cuts seamlessly to a small segment of the video synced with no cut in the audio.)
Dog footage to be shot with my Flip camera. TED footage to be ripped from YouTube.
(This video of me walking my dogs will get recycled throughout the film whenever I use my voice as narration. This image will be symbolic of progress and change as the dogs, while I encourage them to go where I want, pull me forward in a not entirely controlled path.)
(Scene cuts to me putting away my coat, walking downstairs and plugging my iPod into my computer.)
Scene in my entry way to be shot with my Flip Camera Scene at my desk to be shot with a webcam
(Audio fades over the webcam image of myself sitting down to my laptop then cuts to a screencast of myself checking my RSS reader, commenting on blogs, checking Twitter updates, and reviewing the feed from my del.icio.us network.) Screencast to be shot with Camstudio
(voice over screencast)
Me: This is part of my daily routine. Each night, after I put my daughters to bed (insert clips of putting my 3year old and infant to bed) and my wife goes to sleep I walk my dogs and listen to podcasts. This is my daily zen moment. It is a time I feel like I can think more clearly. I never set out on my walks with any particular agenda in mind. I often let the voices on the iPod set that for me. This is when I take a step back and try to look at things from an outside or big picture perspective. Then, when I get home and plug my iPod back into the computer I slip into my PLN of education bloggers, teachers who find their voice online and connect with ideas and people. Many of these people are average employees at the schools where they work but online their ideas and thoughts make some celebrities. (slowly fade in the song "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane) This place is the fertile garden that is growing the ideas and momentum for the next wave of change in education. It is a sophisticated flash mob that when unleashed will disrupt everything we have come to understand about schools, learning, teaching, and education. Alice is coming back from the looking glass and is bringing Wonderland with her.
Switch to an Animoto video similar to this one showcasing seminal blog posts about 21st century learning.
Scene Two: (Scene two cuts to me coming home from work. My wife is watching the news and my daughter is playing in the living room.)
Sheri: Did you hear? Macy's is closing 11 stores. Me: Wow! First Daytons sells their stores to Marshal Fields, then Marshal fields goes under and Macy's takes over, now Macy's is in trouble. Sheri: People just can't afford to shop at those fancy stores anymore. Me: Yeah, when was the last time we bought anything there? We go to Walmart and Target every week but I can't recall the last time I shopped at one of those stores. Sheri: Too expensive. They don't sell what we need either.
We often hear of school districts heralding an initiative as promoting 21st Century Learning and we often hear people talk about needing to have 21st Century Classrooms or adopting a 21st Century pedagogy. However, as near as I can tell most of the time "21st Century _____" is used it lacks a concrete definition or consensual understanding of what it means. Instead, it becomes a handy buzz word or phrase that can be used to beef up public relations. While everyone talks about it, no one ever defines it. On close inspection, most of the times it is used one can discern that the party using it to describe or promote something doesn't have a firm grasp of what it means either. I propose that this has reached a point where the nebulous nature of this idea is potentially harmful and potentially corrupting of the major decisions our teachers, school administrators, schools, districts, and universities make. If we are going to continue making important and expensive decisions based on the notion of 21st Century Learning we need to have no more than two or three possible definitions of what it means (preferably one definition).
Back in August Wesley Fryer posted an article to his blog that set off a lively debate about electronic whiteboard use. That topic was recently brought up again on the Learning in Maine blog but put into the context of whether electronic whiteboards support 21st Century Education. I highly recommend both of these articles and the comment streams that follow them as they begin to seriously address this question of defining 21st Century Education.
So, what is 21st Century Education and how does it differ from 20th Century Education? How far from the trees do we need to look to see this forest? In August of 2007 I put together a video called Why We Need to Teach Technology in School which attempts to make people think about how technology might be changing education. The video offers no solution, nor does it offer any definition of what 21st Century Education looks like. In many ways I was not sure I could answer those questions at that time. This blog post is an attempt of mine to take this discussion to the next step and try and work out these big ideas.
21st Century Education is defined by what technologies available to us today make possible and what they render obsolete. The technology that effects education the most is networked digital electronics such as computers, the internet, cell phones, portable media players, digital cameras, digital camcorders, etc. and the software developed to use with them. Daniel Pink says that in our new economy everything that can either be outsourced or automated will be. I don't think this is anything new. We have seen this story again and again throughout history. When photography was invented in the 1800s much of the work previously done by painters was automated by the camera. Nearly every time an invention comes along that can get something done more efficiently an industry suffers. This idea has been well explained and detailed by Clayton Christensen and his theory of disruptive innovation.
When the camera was invented it set the art world into a century long identity crisis known as Modernism. Since painting could not primarily be about creating images it had to be about something else. Modernism was all about defining what art is minus the prior dominant attribute of image rendering. This time was marked by many artistic movements, all with their own philosophies, definitions, and manifestos. Examples of this include Impressionism, Expressionsim, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. All radically different but share the same absence of image rendering being their primary attribute. This is where I think we are with 21st Century Schools.
21st Century Schools are in the middle of an identity crisis. New technologies render unnecessary some major elements of pedagogy that have, since the inception of the industrial revolution, become indoctrinated and so ingrained into what we think of as school that the absence of such pedagogical constructs throws into question whether what we are talking about is school at all. For example, with online digital video and open courseware there is no longer a need for teachers to lecture. In fact, we can take the very best lecturers on a subject, record their presentations, and upload them to YouTube where students can view them at any time. In many ways this is better because if they miss something they can rewind or if they are not ready to watch and listen now they can wait until they are ready. Also, through digital quiz or survey tools students can be pretested to identify what their learning needs are before they take a course. These same digital tools can be used to automate some forms of assessment. So, essentially we can outsource lectures and automate objective assessment. With these learning resources available anytime anywhere there eliminates a need to move all students along at the same pace. There also eliminates the need for all students to learn in the same way or even be physically present with the teacher and other students in the same classroom at the same time.
Online schools have been described by many as being "21st Century." While this is in part true because the school would not be possible without 21st Century technology there are as many learning theories applied to online schools as are applied in traditional classrooms. Many online schools simply take what would have been done in a traditional classroom and put it online so students can attend remotely. I would not use online schools as being the single exemplar of "21st Century Schools." Rather the terms "Online Learning" and "Online Schools" refer to a medium, not a pedagogy. If we use the medium to define 21st Century ______ as most of us have been then that definition will keep changing at a rate that we will not be able to keep up with. An online school can be "21st Century" but not all are.
One thing our pre-digital schools were not very good at was differentiated instruction. Another thing they did not have the proper resources to fully implement was authentic assessment. Research studies done by Caine and Caine (1991), Brooks and Brooks (1993), and many others exploring the effect of constructivist teaching strategies have overwhelmingly illustrated the power constructivist approaches like project-based learning have to promote both achievement and incite intrinsic motivation to learning objectives. Outsourcing and automating things that in the traditional classroom take a lot of time and energy frees the teacher up to be able to facilitate a true project-based, authentic learning, constructivist classroom. It is the pedagogy made possible by 21st century technology that is what defines a 21st Century School or 21st Century Learning. Right now the EdVisions schools like New Country School and Avalon are more pure examples of 21st Century schools.
So, this changes the question to whether 21 Century Education necessitates a replacement of prior models of schooling. I argue no. While Dan Willingham might disagree, I believe there is a kernel of truth behind learning style theories. Most specifically I believe the Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner is important and valid. I believe that students have different learning needs depending upon what subject they are studying. These needs are different for each student. One student may benefit more from a traditional class in Math while learning more in Social Studies by a constructivist approach. Another student may learn Social Studies better in a traditional class and math with project-based learning. It really depends for each individual on what kind of motivation they need and what kind of social environment the individual needs to study a subject.
What I advocate for is blend of the traditional and the 21st Century. I would like to see schools opperate in dual fashion. Think of it as two schools in one (not necessarily a school within a school). Students learning needs and interests can be identified and students can be placed either in a traditional classroom or work indepenedently with the help of an advisor based on whichever learning modality is optimal for each student in each subject.
I am a bit upset this morning. Browsing through my RSS reader I came across this post on Co.mments.com:
co.mments will be shutting down Jan 11, 2009. It’s been a wonderful ride, unfortunately regular upkeep, and our friendly spammers, have turned it into a chore. I need the time and energy to focus on other things, so sadly, I’m going to shutdown the site by the end of this week. Thank you all for your support, Assaf
I have come to rely on this service to track conversations I have been active with. It has been a huge time saver and an integral part of my daily PLN experience. I really hope they reconsider. In any event, does anyone know of an alternative service that helps track comments on blogs?
