November 22-24, 2009
The Good Stuff
I don't know where you get your "good stuff" but I've got a bunch sitting in my Google Reader RSS feeds that provide me with lots of thinking and tinkering to do. One of those is Sylvia Martinez, president of GenYES, who writes the GenYES Blog. Two recent posts by Sylvia provide information of considerable worth to educators.
The first is in regards to ASCD's Whole Child Education initiative, where they have released (for a limited time) a FREE ebook titled Educating the Whole Child which includes articles from it's valuable publication Educational Leadership.
The second comes by way of Dr. Gary Stager in Raising Our Standards which is a follow up of What Makes A Good Project for The Creative Educator. Dr. Stager provides a great discussion point when he writes:
All too often, we are enchanted by the technical merit of a project and forget the importance of relevance, meaning, and sufficient evidence of understanding. Adults are often quick to celebrate students’ success with technology and neglect to consider the overall impact of student project work.
We can all pop open our web browser of choice, type in a few terms in a search engine (of choice) and find a bazillion new tech tools to do stuff in and out of the classroom. But is it good stuff? Discuss.
Good Stuff
I think we have all been guilty of letting the "geek effect" dictate a little too much the level and quality of student thinking. I think this is partly due to the notion that using tools is so much easier than orchestrating powerful teaching and learning opportunities. Also, for those teachers who are new to these tools, they are often excited about their own newfound technology prowess and get distracted from keeping "good stuff" in focus. Finally, there is also the issue that too often there is a lack of "good stuff". Period. Adding new tools into a mix that was lacking "good stuff" to begin with will not transform poor or mediocre "stuff".
Excellent teaching certainly is rocket science!
One of my pet peeves is that
One of my pet peeves is that more often than not, educators will adopt something new in their classroom and use it for very surface level experiences. For example, let's say an educator starts a class blog. She posts a few prompts and leads students in the process of commenting. Students comment out of a requirement, not out of an organic interest in what's being discussed. To boot, the blog (insert other tool here) is not an integral part of the learning environment/community of the class or course of study.
Because of such an example, I'm concerned with the lack of learning by educators and the pressures from districts that deny educators the time to do so. What is it that those with "good stuff" have that most others don't?
The Golden Egg
Wow... you have hit the wall and dare to enter the nebulous black hole of teacher change, growth, and powerful uses of tools. Volumes have been written on these topics, but too often we ignore them or look for easier "solutions". There have been a number of stages of levels of technology adoption that have been proposed which I think would somewhat address what you see out there. (see http://education.ed.pacificu.edu/bcis/workshop/adoption.html, for example)
There is the "Diffusion of Innovations" model, the "Concerns-based Adoption Model" [CBAM], the "Individual Innovativeness Theory", and the "Level of Technology Implementation" [LoTI] framework, and more. They all suggest that teachers need systematic support (mentoring, coaching,...) to help them move along a normal continuum of non-use to powerful uses of teaching and learning tools. In reality, we don't do this well at all in any discipline. We tend to plan around one-hour "in-services" that do little at moving teachers along an effective growth continuum.
And to attempt to answer your final question, I think there are always some folks out there with a burning passion to learn more and to be better, regardless of the structures out there to support them and the obstacles in their path. For others, there are just too many obstacles across many domains that seem to get in the way. Administrators must make every effort to remove those obstacles within their own control and facilitate effective teacher-growth structures and processes in their own buildings. And, of course, lead by example.
This is no small order to accomplish by any means. It's huge. But too often we go about the daily business of "doing school" while ignoring some very critical components that make doing school a powerful, meaningful, and relevant experience for all involved.