What do we want kids to do with technology?

The above picture was shared with my classmates in Leading with Instructional Technology this morning. When I initially read the list, I immediately connected with the "right answers", but realize the reality in most educational settings is technology is often used as something to be taught, an outcome, but not a tool students can use to learn, present and create. I wrote in an earlier post related to maker spaces in ELA and social studies classrooms that I believe the reason we don't have students using these tools is the reluctance of educators to put them in their hands. Instructors feel they need to  be an expert or at least knowledgable about the tool. Our students are natives and most instructors are not. I understand the feeling of not wanting to hand technology to our students without some knowledge, but I believe we need to in order to engage them and assess what they are truly capable of doing we must. What do you think?

Billions in Change

Billions in Change: Manoj Bhargava

Billions in Change Official Film - YouTube

My goal this morning was to read an article for the Instructional Technology for Leaders course I'm currently enrolled in at Lewis & Clark College. I found myself distracted by a video my engineering instructor has been encouraging me to watch. His email with the link has been taunting me. Like many students, I chose to watch the video instead of addressing my homework. Hopefully my instructor will forgive me. One of our hopes for the students at the Clackamas Academy of Industrial Sciences is to develop graduates like Manoj and his colleagues. Graduates who are innovative in a way that serves and solves the huge problems our world is facing. I'm attracted to stories like Manoj's because it gives us hints on how to prepare the innovators of tomorrow. As educators, we are often listening to the experts, people Manoj describes as people who know everything about the past, to learn about best practices and better a system that is outdated. Our preparation lends itself to getting students into college. To preparing them in the way we have in the past… only more effectively. We are not often looking ahead for "next practices"that push us to prepare students to solve the problems of their future. I believe we need to know yesterday's best practices about how people learn, but spend much more energy searching out and finding tomorrow's next practices. Watch the video. Comment on what hints you think Manoj is providing us in how to prepare tomorrow's innovators. 

Future Ready Summit: Transforming ELA & Social Studies Classes into Maker Spaces

I attended two breakout sessions during the Future Ready Summit at Sunset High School this morning. The first session was focused on transforming Language Arts and Social Studies classrooms into maker spaces. The second on different digital learning spaces. The basic idea of the first session was allowing students to access different maker space activities as tools for presenting their learning. Multiple examples were given and educators in the room were given the task of picking a learning goal and trying to figure out how to use the different activities to present their learning. The most significant part of my experience was listening to teachers communicate that they didn't feel comfortable having students access the different activities (Fakebook, MakeyMakey, 3D printing, Papercraft, Google Cardboard, etc) without having knowledge of how to use them. This same belief came out in the next session I attended focused on digital learning spaces. Teachers were worried they wouldn't be able to teach the students how to use the apps or tools. I felt our group missed the point of stepping away and allowing the students to figure out how to use the options and then how to communicate what they learned. To me, it just showed how scared we often are of moving away from feeding students knowledge instead of letting them use their own wonder, curiosity and creativity to create their learning experience. I found myself referring back to Sugata's self-teaching TED Talk. Would this session have gone differently if we had watched that video as a warm-up? Are we squashing the full potential of our students to learn while they are with us by always directing their learning?

Sugata Mitra's New Experiments in Self-Teaching

Day One Video: Sugata Mitra's new experiments in self-teaching - YouTube

Day Three Video: Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud - YouTube

After viewing Sugata Mitra's TED Talk on day one, there was a particular line stood out to me as the vital ingredient to his research and our work as educators. In referencing a conversation with Arthur C Clarke, he shares his statement that "if children have interest, then education happens". Whenever observing classrooms or student projects, the factor that always plays in their engagement is their interest. Their interest in the subject, project or activity. In working with students who are struggling, I often find they aren't interested. Imagine that. Their education lacks relevance to them, either because it has no relevance to their goals and interests or no one has helped them make the connection.

At the same time, I realize we can't make those connections all the time in every class and activity. I believe Sugata's research shows us another avenue to creating interest. We can make subjects that aren't relevant to them interesting. All of us as humans has a curiosity that showed in Sugata's work. Technology and teamwork gives us the ability to send students off with a task they know nothing about and learn. The unknown in itself can create interest for students. Students can self-teach and be motivated learners when we provide enough freedom for them to discover and uncover in a social way.

Do you think its possible we stifle student motivation and interest by not giving them enough freedom to learn on their own?

I would be interested to hear from anyone who watches the second TED talk and is not struck by the girl in the pictures response. I believe this is what our students are asking and waiting for us as a community to do. We need to put the tools needed to prepare for their future in their hands. It is time of the system of education we've had for centuries to lay down and make way for new forms of education that motivate and prepare our students for their future. Whether it is Sugata's SOLE or another form of innovative education, we need to find what motivates and prepares and stop trying to do it from the framework we've been working in for what seems like ever... how do we create enough freedom in our public schools systems to become innovative and relevant to our student's futures?