New technologies are changing how people interact with one another, facilitating speedy communications and collaborations at a distance. Traditional organizations--like K-12 schools--find themselves struggling with how to deal with the influx of personal technologies. These technologies come into our schools with our children, our teachers, community members, administrators, and visitors in the form of mobile phones, PDAs, iPods and more.

The simple answer is to ban them all. In my daughter's school--another large school district in San Antonio--mobile phone bans are in effect. Yet, every child carries one, as do the teachers. We have all watched too much Star Trek; our personal communicators give us an unprecedented freedom. Personal technologies are often perceived as distractions to what happens in the classroom, a way of deviating from the established route, scope and sequence that must be followed. Why? And, how can these technologies be used to enhance classroom activities?

Level 5 of the Levels of Technology Implementation focuses on the following:

Technology access is extended beyond the classroom. Classroom teachers actively elicit technology applications and networking from other schools, business enterprises, governmental agencies (e.g., contacting NASA to establish a link to an orbiting space shuttle via internet), research institutions, and universities to expand student experiences directed at problem-solving, issues resolution, and student activism surrounding a major theme/concept.

The complexity and sophistication of the technology-based tools used in the learning environment are now commensurate with (1) the diversity, inventiveness, and spontaneity of the teacher's experiential-based approach to teaching and learning and
(2) the students' level of complex thinking (e.g., analysis, synthesis, evaluation, creation) and in-depth understanding of the content experienced in the classroom.

In this kind of environment, technology access makes communication and collaboration BEYOND the classroom a reality. The challenge schools face today isn't how to STOP students from bringing personal communication devices to schools, but how to best adapt and absorb these technologies into what they do...those will be the schools that get it done.

Consider this adaptation of a quote from Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat:

The school that most quickly absorbs and adopts the latest technology dominates...[it becomes] a hub of connectivity for the many to work with the many, creating networks of young learners to identify problems, solve them and get behind solutions who are ready to mobilize the other students and the community in the right direction.

This is easily a vision for the future school. It's not dis-similar to community-based schools, except that now, the process is moved online. However, so long as we persist in focusing on achieving current curricular goals in old-fashioned learning that is bound by 4-walls, we prepare children to be dominated...Level 5 technology use that our children need in college--in support of our SAISD mission--isn't drill-n-kill.

Economically disadvantaged students, who often use the computer for remediation and basic skills, learn to do what the computer tells them, while more affluent students, who use it to learn programming and tool applications, learn to tell the computer what to do.

Those who cannot claim computers as their own tool for exploring the world never grasp the power of technology...They are controlled by technology as adults--just as drill-and-practice routines controlled them as students.
Source: Toward Digital Equity: Bridging the Divide in Education

Who can argue that our children need to control the technologies around them, or, be controlled by them? We have to work towards LEVEL 5 Technology Use in our schools.