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.

This is a world in which comfort with ideas and abstractions is the passport to a good job, in which creativity and innovation are the key to a good life, in which high levels of education–a very different kind of education than most of us have had–are going to be the only security there is. Too often, our testing system rewards students who will be good at routine work, while not providing opportunities for students to display creative and innovative thinking and analysis.
Source: New Commission on the Skills of American Workforce - Read Executive Summary
Via Weblogg-ed

These kinds of assertions regarding creativity and innovation as the "new" keys to a good life are supported by Dan Pinks' book, A Whole New Mind, which is a perfect response and companion book to Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. Specifically, Pink writes that:

High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas in a novel invention. High touch involves the ability to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian, in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

Join a book study of Dan Pink's book, A Whole New Mind, starting in January. The book study will be done entirely online.

The new Texas Long Range Plan for Technology seeks to transform K-12 education. To accomplish this, the following points are made in the introduction to the Key Area: Teaching and Learning:

Use information and communication technologies to collaborate, construct knowledge and provide solutions to real world problems and situations that are encountered

Now, it would be easy to view this statement through the lens of current practices. That is, a traditional model of schooling where the district scope and sequence, the teacher decides what is to be learned and then serves as the source of knowledge as the student acts as the receiver of that knowledge and is measured periodically on master of that knowledge.

This is NOT the intended approach by the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology, and instead, the suggested approach is as follows:

Texas students must become active participants...it is vitally important that students gain skills for collaboratively constructing, using and communicating the knowledge they need for a chosen task, project, or other learning project.

This is critical when you consider that one of the flatteners Friedman shares is Outsourcing. It is very easy to send routine tasks--like preparing powerpoint presentations--around the world to people who will produce it for a fraction of what it would cost American workers. So, the changing nature of jobs is to move from productivity to creativity.

This shift from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age--the age of high concept, high touch--highlights the importance of enabling our students to synchronize outsourcing efforts. Pink calls this essential sense "Symphony," or the ability to add "invention and big picture thinking (not just detail focus)."

If students are focused on productivity while "using information and communication technology, constructing knowledge and providing solutions to real world problems," what they have to produce will not be in demand in a flat world. In fact, the abundance of information and cheap high tech labor will result in unemployment. Instead, our students must learn how to conduct a symphony of productivity work, a way of organizing the routine work that is done in other locations outside the classroom.

This is emphasized by the Commission's executive summary, that shares that leadership...

...does not depend on technology alone. It depends on a deep vein of creativity that is constantly renewing itself, and on a myriad of people who can imagine how people can use things that have never been available before, create ingenious marketing and sales campaigns, write books, build furniture, make movies, and imagine new kinds of software that will capture people's imaginations and become indispensable to millions.

You can't do this WITHOUT technology. It's indispensable, indivisible from what we are learning in schools. If it isn't, then maybe what is being taught shouldn't be.

Due to the lack of technology available in schools (check the LOTI survey for support of this assertion), information literacy may not be taught. In fact, information literacy is seldom taught explicitly as we seek to prepare students. Information literacy instruction WITHOUT the Internet is like asking students to learn how to swim without jumping into the water of a pool.

Consider this research excerpt:

When researchers in the Neag School of Education asked 25 seventh-graders from middle schools across the state to review a web site devoted to a fictitious endangered species, the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, the results troubled them:

-All 25 students fell for the Internet hoax;

-All but one of the 25 rated the site as “very credible;”

-Most struggled when asked to produce proof – or even clues – that the web site was false, even after the UConn researchers told them it was; and

-Some of the students still insisted vehemently that the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus really exists.
The students – identified as their schools' most proficient online readers – are taking part in a federal research project, funded by a $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
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Information literacy is a core component of the required Technology Applications Curriculum. Review the expectations at...

Grades K-2: Students are expected to...

• TA:TEKS 6(B) determine the usefulness and appropriateness of digital information.
  

Grades 3-5: Students are expected to...

• (A) Apply critical analysis to resolve information conflicts and validate information

Grades 6-8: Students are expected to...

• (A) Determine and employ methods to evaluate the electronic information for accuracy and validity;
• (B) Resolve information conflicts and validate information through accessing, researching, and comparing data; and
• (C) Demonstrate the ability to identify the source, location, media type, relevancy, and content validity of available information.

One useful information problem-solving strategy to use is the Big6. Find out more.

Classroom teachers, and their school districts, are facing big changes. Are you ready? Before you answer that, consider your student population as represented by this Texas-specific survey:

• In grades K-3, 79% of respondents have a computer at home that they use and 85% use a computer for schoolwork. When designing a new school, these students prefer a laptop for every student and a new computer for every teacher.
• In grades 3-6, students report that--though they are tech-savvy--online activities for school include using the Internet and school web site, creating a presentation and taking a test online. They also share that they don't have enough computer time, computers that don't always work, and that lack of computer access prevents using technology at school. Yet, when technology is used, learning is more fun, best information is found online, and students learn more quickly.
• In grades 6-12, students identified essential 21st Century classroom devices such as digital cameras, smart boards, and DVD/CD burners. 50% indicated they have a personal website, 68% use email, and 58% use Instant Messenger DAILY.

The most interesting subject--if it uses technology--is Mathematics. Per the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology, there is a clear message that additional efforts are needed to ensure all Math teachers are well-trained to use technology effectively in this content area and maximize the interest students have in learning with technology.

The Educational Testing Service (ETS) released initial results for the tech literacy test they launched a year ago. The basic finding is that while high school and college students are quite adept at entertainment and communication technologies, their literacy skills, which require critical thinking, are woefully lacking. For example: “…only 52% of test takers could correctly judge the objectivity of a Web site, and only 65% could correctly judge the site’s authoritativeness. In a Web search task, only 40% entered multiple search terms to narrow the results. And when selecting a research statement for a class assignment, only 44% identified a statement that captured the demands of the assignment.” See the press release for additional information and links to a summary of findings and a demo.