I had heard this statement before. The first time was at the JMU’s Content Teaching Academy where I had the opportunity to learn from some really wonderful fellow educators and technologists. I’ve read about it, or versions of it, in many of the Edublogs I follow. I heard it again today, during David Warlick’s session at the District’s Closing the Gap Summit. Every time I hear or read about it, it really hits home for me. This is the reason why educators do what we do — we strive to prepare our students for the today’s world and the future that lies ahead of them. However, it is more important than ever before in the history of education that we prepare our students for their tomorrows without resorting to yesterday’s methods.

So, what was so wrong with our yesterdays? Absolutely nothing, really.

I can still remember Monday nights when my family gathered around the TV to watch one of the four channels available, physically getting up to change the channels. Luckily, we all liked MASH so there wasn’t much arguing over what to watch, although we did argue over who would do the channel changing.

But for our students today, this scenario is completely foreign. It is not their reality nor is it their future.

Why is this a problem? It’s a problem because all too often we find ourselves teaching the way we were taught. It’s what we know and understand best. But yesterday’s teaching does not match our students’ reality any more than the scenario above does.

Let’s imagine we have mastered teaching in today’s world, employing current methodologies that are relevant and meaningful for our students. Even given that, how can we possibly prepare our students to succeed in a world that is changing so rapidly? In his presentation Warlick stated, “For the first time in history our job as educators is to prepare our children for a future we cannot clearly describe.”

OK….so we are supposed to teach using new methodologies to prepare our students for a future about which we have absolutely no clue….feeling overwhelmed, yet?

While this is a totally understandable feeling (and one that isn’t all that unfamiliar to most of us in education), I hope that at the same time you are also feeling excitement regarding the potential there is in today’s classrooms for some truly amazing learning experiences. The Flat Classroom Project, where students from different parts of the globe collaborated on projects together, is a great example of 21st Century learning. More than ever before, learning is no longer restricted to what happens within the classroom’s four walls. Teachers today have the opportunity to increasingly become facilitators of learning rather than distributors of knowledge. In the 21st century classroom, our students have the opportunity to become active participants in the learning process rather than passive consumers.

So while feeling overwhelmed is understandable, please don’t let it extinguish the excitement you may feel about the wonderful possibilities there are in today’s classrooms.

For those of you who were unable to attend Warlick’s session, it was awesome! Here are some his resource links.

http://davidwarlick.com/wordpress/?p=254

http://davidwarlick.com/wiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OSOWSessionOutline

http://davidwarlick.com/wiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurStudentsOurWorlds

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project which keeps track of online trends and usage, almost 90% of all teens are online. Of them, 64% are creating their own online content.

That means that about half of the students in your classes are posting pictures and videos as well as writing for fun on the Internet.

Given our district’s initiative to raise our SAT scores, I can’t help but wonder how we could use Web 2.0 tools to help us in that endeavor. If kids are already online writing on their own, and writing helps improve literacy, what can we do to harness this for school?

There are lots of Web 2.0 tools that incorporate writing and blogging is one such tool. Blogs are very easy to set up and use. Here is a video from Commoncraft that explains blogging “in plain English”.

If you are interested in setting up a class blog, contact your friendly ITRT!

Download Video: Posted by cputnam809 at TeacherTube.com.

This week’s featured website is Students 2.0. It is an edublog (blogs that only deal with topics relating to education) written and published entirely by students from all around the globe where they express their views about education today. It’s pretty impressive and thought-provoking. Some of what they say may make you squirm in your seat a bit, but the posts are thoughtful and well-written. Be sure to check out the information under the About tab to learn more about their mission.

You are teaching class. You are incredibly excited because your lesson utilizes some very neat Web 2.0 technology. Your ITRT is very proud.

You set the stage for you lesson by introducing the blog (or wiki, or podcast, or any other Web 2.0 teaching tool) that you’ve integrated into the day’s lesson. You look out into the their eyes, expecting to see looks of appreciation for your awesome lesson planning creativity. Instead, you get nothing but blank stares–nada, nothing, zip. Where is the excitement for technology that your ITRT and the experts have promised will be there?

Yes, it does happen. In spite of the studies that tell us that our students know more about and are more comfortable with techology than any of us born before 1990 could ever hope to be, the fact is that we do have kids who are still wading in the shallows rather than riding the technology tidal wave. And that’s OK.

David Warlick wrote about this recently in his post, Such a Quiet Revolution. In it he wrote, ”Today’s change is fast. I suspect, aside from great cataclysms, faster than any at time before. But it’s not so fast that it really stirs up the wind.” And that’s what we have–a technology revolution that’s moving rapidly, but the winds of change are more like a whispering breeze rather than a hurricane gale.

Does that mean we should give up on technology? Of course not. Just because some of our students are still waders, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t learn to swim. According to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, technology needs to be an integral part in our students’ education if we hope for them to be able to compete in today’s global economy.

So what does this mean for teachers? It means that in spite of the occasional blank stares, don’t feel disheartened. Like virtually everything we do in teaching, we just have to keep trying. It’s hard to imagine, but just a few years ago “surfing” meant something totally different and “googling” and “blogging” were gibberish. Things are changing. Our kids WILL “get it”.

They have to.

I had a very nice conversation last week with one of our Language Arts teachers, Jennifer C. We were talking about our Learning Management System, SchoolFusion, and she mentioned that she’d been getting some really wonderful responses using the Discussion Board feature. She said that her students’ online writing was generally more thoughtful than what she received from them in class. We talked a little bit about the reasons why and theorized that it may be because our students today are Digital Natives and the online world is very much a part of their “comfort zone.” More so, perhaps, than even the “real world”.

Given this conversation, those of you not currently using the Discussion Board feature might want to give it a try. If you are interested, here’s how to enable and use it:

To enable:

1. Log in to SchoolFusion and go the your class webpage.
2. Click Update Class/Section Configuration.
3. On the right under Class/Section Settings, click the pencil next to Message Board.
4. Adjust your message board settings as desired and click Click here to edit the Message Board Setting.

To use:

1. Return to your class/section webpage. You should now see a section called Discussion Board on the right side.
2. In the Discussion Board section, click start a discussion.

I showed Karl Fisch’s original Did You Know video at the start of the year. Scott McLeod later re-did the video with new music and graphics. Here is the updated version.

Download Video: Posted by ksblues at TeacherTube.com.

What is a Digital Native? Marc Presky was the first to use the term in his 2001 article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. According to Presky, a Digital Native is someone who grew up in the digital world, surrounded by and immersed in technology. Alternatively, a Digital Immigrant is someone who came to computers later in life. Presky and many others in the educational community argue that because our students today grew up in the digital age they learn and process information differently and that it’s important for educators to understand and address those differences.

Here are some additional resources:

• The Digital Natives Research Project
• Portrait of a Digital Native - From TechLearning
• What Causes the Disconnect - From Apple Education

I have mixed feelings about this classification. What generation HASN’T argued that “adults just don’t understand” for one reason or another? I DO believe students today are able to multi-task much more efficiently than the students I had in class when I first started teaching 16 years ago, which is probably a product of their growing up in the digital age. Afterall, it takes skill to send a text message, change the MP3 on an iPod, read email, and work on homework all at the same time!

Where I question the Digital Native/Digital Immigrants argument is where it says that a Digital Immigrant will forever speak with an “accent” when in comes to technology. I have come across many “immigrants” who were very technologically proficient. Additionally, we should remember that it was Digital Immigrants who invented the technology to begin with!

Whatever your point of view on the subject, it’s a very interesting idea. If you find yourself wondering about and not understanding just what our students are thinking, maybe it IS because they think differently today.

Here’s a video on it. Thoughts?

Download Video: Posted by jsdt4 at TeacherTube.com.

I was reading Karl Fisch’s post, Is It OK To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher? (caution - even he admits he was grumpy when he wrote it), when something he wrote in response to a comment by a Language Arts teacher really stood out to me. He wrote:

“You see, I don’t think it’s your job to teach literature, that not why you “exist” as a teacher. Literature is just a means to an end. We don’t teach Macbeth in order for kids to understand Macbeth, we use Macbeth so that kids can understand good and evil and trust and betrayal. Our goal is not for kids to be experts on Macbeth and know who Malcolm is, our goal is to explore some of the universal themes of humankind and help make those themes meaningful and relevant to our students’ lives. To help our students better understand those big ideas so that they can apply them to their own lives and to the lives of those around them. And it doesn’t matter whether we use Macbeth, or some other piece of literature, or no literature at all.”

He goes on to say:

“… it’s not about what you teach, it’s about what students learn. And what students need.”

This one was a tough one for me. When I was teaching Social Studies, it was the subject that I loved. I used to tell my students that history was filled with everything that you could find in the best movies–the difference was that movies weren’t real, but our history was.

I knew, though, that leading them to the mastery of the content was not enough. They had to be able to DO something with that knowledge. The greatest “highs” I had in the classroom were when the “lightbulbs” would go on and you could tangibly see when students made important connections, applied critical analysis, and truly understood the relevance of the content in relation to today’s world. Admittedly, those moments were few and far between for me.

David Warlick has written that in today’s changing world one of the most important things we need to teach our students is how to learn. If we concentrate primarily on the subjects that we teach, on the content, are we doing them a disservice? They will know enough to pass the SOLs, sure, but will they know enough to live in this digital age where what is true in one instant is no longer true in the next?  How do we teach them to adapt, to learn, to live in today’s world?

And with all of our other responsibilities, where on earth do we find the time to even try to do more?

Thoughts?

What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? Is it about giving students books and providing them with time for silent, sustained, reading? Sure. Is it about teaching them the parts of speech and having them diagram sentences? Certainly.

But if that’s where we stop, then we’re missing the boat on what being literate in the 21st century truly encompasses.

David Warlick (blog, wiki) made a presentation on this subject at our PWCS Technology Conference in August. He writes, “Being literate in the future will certainly involve the ability to read, write, and do basic math. However, the concept of literacy in the 21st century will be far richer and more comprehensive than the 3 Rs of the one room school house, a legacy that still strongly influences today’s education environment.”

And he asks the following questions:

• What do you need to know, when most of recorded knowledge is a mouse-click away?
• How do you distinguish between good knowledge and bad knowledge?
• What does it do to the value of information, when everyone is a producer?
• How do we address ethics, when we are empowering our students with such prevailing skills?

His slideshow on the subject:

[slideshare id=31186&doc=literacy-learning-in-the-21st-century-14085&w=425]

And on a final note…
Download Video: Posted by mjohnson at TeacherTube.com.