http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon bruceadixon's Blog in XML! http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=834 For many years now, the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation has provided thought leadership, advocacy, and a range of resources and information to educators and school leaders across the globe in support of their 1:1 initiatives. Most recently, Susan wrote to tell you of a White Paper that we had published which sought to give policy makers a deeper understanding of the issues and challenges that have faced some of the more prominent 1:1 initiatives around the world. This reflects the growth and maturity of this sector, and the inevitable acceptance by educational leaders worldwide of the opportunities afforded to young people when they have ubiquitous access to technology. We continue to look for ways to support the extraordinary work of people such as yourself, and much of our work of recent times has been in seeking ways to enhance the critical role coaching can play in supporting a shift in teaching practice. As you would expect, the AALF website will continue to be a growing library of resources, research, and stories from educators around the world, and we will continue to develop White Papers and other material to support educators and leadership. Additionally we have recently sought to give you increased access to more articles by a broader cross-section of well-respected writers, by partnering with Modern Learner Media, a company I founded with Will Richardson nearly a year ago. This partnership will provide you with more than 40 articles a year, focused on topics that are impacting education leadership and transformation, commissioned independently of any commercial sponsorship or advertising. This will replace our less frequent AALF newsletter, and you will now have access to the articles through the bi-weekly newsletter Educating Modern Learners, edited by Audrey Watters; in turn this will allow Susan, Justina, and the AALF team to focus on the development of other resources such as the coaching material. For those who want to dig deeper, there is an option to upgrade to a premium subscription to EML, however, there is absolutely no obligation to do so; though this has also proven popular, particularly for school leaders. If for any reason you do not want to receive Educating Modern Learners each week, please let us know. I hope you will find real benefit in the regular articles and links you\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'ll find in Educating Modern Learners, and in turn continue to support the work of the Foundation around the world. Regards, Bruce Tue, 16 Sep 2014 12:56:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=796 As many of you are aware from previous columns, over the past two and half years, much of our time has been invested in scaling a support network for 1 to 1 initiatives across the globe. This came as a result of the success of the original 21 Steps for 21st Century Learning leader’s workshops, which we originally developed in partnership with the Ministry of Education in Queensland, Australia around 2003-4. In the decade since we have successfully run workshops for thousands of schools leaders across more than 40 countries. However about four years ago we realized the growth of 1 to 1 was out scoping the reach of the Foundation, and so we had discussions with a number of potential partners with an eye to scale well beyond the reach of our own resources. This ultimately resulted in another partnership, this time with Microsoft, who subsequently funded the extensive development and deployment of a revised series of workshop resources for both school leadership, and workshop leaders ‘white labelled’, Design & Deployment. This has been a most successful initiative, which saw 17 workshops conducted in 7 countries for hundreds of school leaders from more than 20 countries over the past 18 months. Most importantly it also allowed us to run the workshops as Master Classes for 36 workshop leaders from around the world, who are now in turn able to scale the workshops across a much broader network of schools in their own countries and beyond. The last of these was held in Tampa, Florida in late May this year, and subsequently a number of additional workshops have already been hosted by our new network of workshop leaders. Ultimately as you might expect, our goal with this initiative, was to provide school and policy leaders across the globe with the best possible resources and knowledge from the experience of AALF members, and to lay down the foundations for a successful deployment and development of a technology-rich learning environment for their students. As we move forward we continue to seek ways for your Foundation to have the most impact within the scope of our humble resources. Accordingly we believe with the reach the 21 Steps program has had over the past 10 years, we are finally able to focus our energies on what this ubiquitous access now makes possible, and in coming months we are hoping to roll out a new series of workshops focused on Coaching. These workshops offer schools an affordable, flexible and innovative range of strategies to support teachers in the shift in practice that technology-richness makes possible. We’ll keep you advised of the workshops’ development, but if any of you would like to know more, or be involved, please contact Susan at seinhorn@aalf.org . And while we will always seek to be pushing boundaries through the thought leadership and advocacy we seek to maintain through various articles, press releases, forum responses, and speaking engagements, we are also looking to increase the benefit you’ll receive through a new partnership with Modern Learner Media. This is an emerging US East Coast publisher which I am involved with, together with Will Richardson, and from next month it will allow AALF to provide members with a more frequent source of news and information addressing topics that I’m sure you will find of real interest. Topics covered recently include: • Understanding the Role of Technology in Learning With Young Children • The Science of the Mind in the Classroom of the Future • Who “Gets” to be a Self-directed Learner? • Assessment and Efficacy- what’s the difference? • What Should School Leaders know about Adaptive Learning • What the Maker Movement offers Learners • Hacking the Textbook. The newsletter, Educating Modern Learners, will now be provided free of charge to AALF members on a weekly basis, and is edited by well-known hackeducation writer, Audrey Watters. The newsletter contains no sponsorship or advertising, and will carry, on a weekly basis, independently commissioned articles by respected commentators and experts from around the world. Additionally members will have access to a premium subscription for other resources such as white papers and books if they wish to subscribe to them. We feel this will be a valuable partnership as it will again allow us to extend the range of resources for our members, at no extra cost to the Foundation, while freeing up internal staff who previously did an exceptional job publishing the bimonthly AALF newsletter. From time to time you will, of course, continue to see news of the work of AALF in the EML, and, most importantly, have access to a much wider range of articles and information that will support your work. As time passes, and the emphasis of our work, finally… finally moves from technology provision, to the ‘stuff that really matters’… unlocking the possibilities for our young people…we’ll continue to look for the best ways AALF can partner and leverage the best resources and support for our members. Regards, Bruce Tue, 17 Jun 2014 14:02:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=767 Last time I said I would share some of the experiences of my recent travels. It seems only right to start with vision; right because, well, that’s where all good personal technology initiatives should start…but rarely do. No matter how often you run workshops for educational leaders emphasizing the importance of developing a well articulated shared vision, the importance too often escapes too many. As you are no doubt aware, as part of AALF’s long-term objective of providing support for schools, states and countries undertaking 1 to 1 initiatives, we developed what has become known as the 21Steps for 21st Century Learning workshop, originally in partnership with the Ministry of Education in Queensland, Australia. Nearly 10 years later, I’m pleased to say that not only have we run these two day workshops for school and policy leaders who represent more than 7,500 schools across 25 countries, but we are now combining that with Master training to extend our reach even further. By June we will have trained a further 20+ trainers, who we expect will in turn train many more in their respective countries. This has been a most significant achievement for the Foundation, as we seek to share expertise and best practice to preparatory initiatives around the world, and give their young people the best possible opportunities for their futures. At another time, I will share some stories from the wide range of cultures, and contexts in which we have run those workshops. But to get back to my comments about vision. To emphasize the importance of a clear, shared vision, we always include an activity in the 21 Steps workshops which asks them to choose one of the following statements best represents the vision they have for their school/state/province/District/country’s 1 to 1 initiative. So here is the quiz. From the recent workshops we have run, which statement do you think was selected by the most educational leaders in Mexico, and which one by educational leaders in the US? 1. We are going to address inequity in our education system and ensure every child has access to personal technology. The Digital Divide. 2. We want a school system that lays down a foundation for future economic growth. 3. We want to provide our students with unprecedented opportunities for 21st Century Learning. 4. We want to unlock the possibility of personalized learning for all our young people. 5. We think it’s time to extend the place of learning beyond school walls to better embrace informal learning opportunities. 6. Research now shows 1 to 1 improves academic outcomes, and consequently we want that for all of our students. 7. Providing 1 to 1 access to personal portable computers will extend and improve our assessment alternatives. 8. 1 to 1 will allow us to replace physical textbooks and provide expanded resources for our students. 9. Providing students with their own personal portable computer, gives our students the ‘learning medium of their time’. 10. By implementing 1 to 1 we will expand pedagogical opportunities for our students and in turn allow us to have higher expectations. 11. 1to1 will allow students to be better informed and make better decisions about what they do and learn in the classroom, becoming true self-directed learners. I really like the exercise, as it always tells me something about the people and their countries’ priorities. Obviously there are some statements that would appear to be popular, no. 3, 21st Century Learning for example, and also obviously some overlap. But the choice for Mexico was no.11....for very interesting reasons. The current Mexican government is very committed to improving their education system, and to do that they are looking to initiate a 1 to 1 program that will potentially reach more than 11 million students. They have had the foresight to start in the elementary grades, at Grade 5 level, and their academic and technology leadership is committed to overcoming what to many would appear to be very challenging circumstances. One of those is teacher quality, particularly in remote areas, where the level of teacher preparation can be extremely limited. Accordingly there are boldly exploring the ways in which a child with their own personal, portable, fully-functional computer might be able to compliment and extend their teacher’s expertise if it allows them to be better informed and make better decisions about their learning. Ambitious, but I think something to be applauded for its intent, and potential impact. On the other hand...and yes, you know where this is going...some recent workshops across the States would suggest that one of the main levers for 1 to 1 in the US is no.7..to drive online assessment. A sad reality, associated with the obsession with common core. When we developed the list and included that vision statement, our optimistic view was that people might see 1 to 1 offering more creative formative assessment options…but unfortunately online testing is currently winning out in the States. If this is of course simply a means to an end, and ultimately it does enable millions of American students to get access to a laptop when they otherwise would not have, then maybe there will be a hidden benefit...but...as I said at the outset, it just depends on how whether the assessment vision continues to dominate, or a more enlightened perspective evolves. As I said, the vision exercise tells us a lot about intent and commitment, so we would really value hearing from you as an AALF member, as to the vision statement that drives your initiative within your school, District, region or State. I’m really interested in your thoughts. Tue, 15 Apr 2014 12:52:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=743 January is best known as BETT month, in most countries with the ironical exception of the US. First run in 1985 as the British Education Training and Teaching exhibition, this year it attracted more than 40,000 attendees from more than 100 countries. I actually attended the first three in the early 80’s and since then it has grown from a simple education technology show to what has become a week of conferences starting with the Education World Forum attracting more than 70 Ministers of Education. All in all, it is now an exceptional opportunity to network with people from across the globe, and learn what is happening in schools around the world. So what is happening? Well given the scale of the week’s events, and the sheer numbers and positions of people attending, this is a unique opportunity to get a snapshot of policy priorities and technology trends around education across diverse cultures. Well I’d love to report that with such a unique gathering, I saw amazing possibilities; I’d love to report that after nearly 30 years BETT week has become a showcase of the sort of transformations that we hope for each year at ISTE, but never see; but I can’t. You see, as we wander well into the clichéd 21st century, we are letting opportunities slip through our fingers. As I wander through this year’s BETT Show, I wondered just how much we are spending, have spent, on technology for education, for what? Am I having nightmares when I see masses of non-brand trivial sub $100 tablets that are poor substitutes for what you can do with even a pen and paper, and ask, is this the best we can do? Am I seeing things when I wander through masses of software on display that mimics much of the worst of the ‘80’s CML-ware, and am not impressed just because we now call them ‘apps’?...and am I delusionary if I end up walking out of the biggest education technology exhibition on the planet and ask why can’t we do better? What I’ve learnt is that none of this really matters; and in 2014 it’s time we faced up to the reality, that for all the tens of billions we have spent on technology in education, for all the years of investment millions have made of their time, we have only just begun to realize the possibilities. You see, what I did see during BETT week this year, were glimmers of hope. People in countries that we often pay too little attention to, showing courage that is too often lacking in countries such as the US, Australia and the United Kingdom. These are countries we should learn more about, because there is much to learn from them. In my next column I’ll share a little more about some of the countries that I think are showing the way about what might now be possible. As always, I’m interested in your thoughts. Tue, 11 Feb 2014 11:27:00 EST Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=675 As I fly back home from Brazil, after working in nine countries over the past eight weeks, life is frankly a bit of a blur. Just when you thought it was safe to chill back for a while, it can all catch up with you. I’ll make sure I take time over the next few issues to share my thoughts about what I am seeing, but for this time I thought the old Western film title summed it up. As we come to year’s end, I’ll indulge your time if I may, to talk a little longer with you. Let’s start with what I’m inspired by. I’m inspired by the work that is now exploding out of the Maker movement, and in particular the impact that Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez’s book, Invent to Learn is having. Most of you know of their work, but this really is ‘an idea whose time has come’ for them, and the depth of understanding and experience they bring is unmatched anywhere. Next steps are the rethinking that it is causing as it reverberates through policy and curriculum leadership, who are finally questioning why they ever decided computing in our schools, should be secretarial, rather than computational. While on that topic, Susan and I were heartened by the first steps we saw in New York last month, at the Conrad Wolfram Computer-based Math Conference. Here we have the embryonic signs of a respected cohort of mathematicians who are leading the thinking about what mathematics should look like in our schools in a technology-rich world; and it doesn’t involve ‘hand-calculating’. Conrad’s TED talk was obviously the big kick-off a couple of years ago, but slowly a globally group of leading mathematicians are challenging the insaneness of continuing to teach “hand-calculated mathematics” in a world where such functions are completely irrelevant. On the other side, the bad continues to be the political opportunism around the shift to ubiquity in our schools, that I have written about before. Sadly it is, if anything gaining momentum, for the moment at least, so we are seeing poorly informed policy advisors, partnering with politicians whose goals are simply defined by the election cycle, reaching out for votes. While I don’t believe it’s my place or the Foundation’s to publicly list those places of concern, (although I did break the rule last month in light of the down-right stupidity of the LA decision) I am still in awe of the shallowness of some of what is happening. As most of you would, I’m sure, agree, the shift to large-scale personal technology initiatives should be a cause for celebration. But when it is reduced to ‘tablets for votes’ we should all call it out. Readers of this column know the move to ubiquity is way too important to be trivialized by short-term political opportunism, so we must be diligent in keeping focus on the ‘main game’. While there is little we can do to intervene in this madness, (though not from a lack of trying on my part☺)… we should nonetheless always be looking for how we might collectively, as a community, be able to re-direct the energy, and funds, for more fruitful outcomes. I know it’s hard when the best point of intervention is often even before it becomes public knowledge, which leads me to the ugly part. There has, for more than two decades, been an interesting, and at times a synergistic relationship, between the education community and technology industry around ubiquitous initiatives. At the outset the concept was met with straight out derision by the corporate technology sector, with the rare exception of innovative leaders such as David Henderson at Toshiba Australia, and Tammy Savage at Microsoft in the mid-90’s, who stuck their necks out and literally put their jobs on the line in fighting for corporate engagement around the emergence and vision of 1-to-1. Others have followed; corporate leaders who have recognized the vision we share, and have sought to do their best to support it in many ways. But, of course, that is not always the case. I speak of the Tablet Vermin, and yet more opportunism coming this time from unfortunately too many technology companies who believe a circuit board with any size screen at the lowest price will fulfill every student’s dream…or at least every politician’s. The ugliest piece is the reflection it has on the worst side of capitalism; taking advantage of those often most in need. This is NOT a time to dumb down the technology to suit a budget, or poorly informed policy makers and politicians. This is NOT a time to forget the ‘basics’ of exactly why we believe so strongly, that every child should have access to their fully functional, personal, portable computer; and it is surely NOT a time to forget what that makes possible for young people, rich and poor, for their futures. So let’s commit to 2014 as the year in which we all ‘come out of our shells’ ☺ and celebrate publicly just how far we have come, just what this ubiquitous access is making possible, to squash, once and for all, this trivialization of the capacity of what young people are capable of. All the very wishes of the season; think of what we’ll be able to achieve in 2014, given just how far we have come this year. ….as always, I’m interested in your thoughts… Best regards Wed, 11 Dec 2013 13:20:00 EST Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=635 Sometimes when I read articles about ubiquitous access these days, I find myself feeling a little tentative. You know, you want to believe it’s all good, and everyone is embracing the sorts of things we have all worked so hard to achieve…but sadly, there is no Santa Claus..and they are not all what you hope they might be. Such was the stunning realization I had from a very recent New York Times Article, with the pithy headline, No Child Left Untableted. Now the title has to provoke interest, credit to the sub-editor, but as you reach deeper into the piece by Carlo Rotella the warning signals come in loud and clear. You see this is a story of one of Amplify’s latest conquests, in Greensboro, N.C., where more than 15,000 students now have tablets from Rupert Murdoch’s latest adventure into education. And as if Rupert wasn’t enough, the mastermind behind Amplify is the former Chancellor of NY Schools, one Joel Klein. Need I say more? But this is not an isolated example of what is emerging, sadly it is becoming a trend. The Corporate sector has found the Education Treasure Chest, and it’s called “ubiquitous access to technology for all students”. Now as hypocritical as this all might sound, coming from someone who has devoted a number of decades driving Papert’s 1 to 1 vision , there is more to be told. You see, what is happening has very little, in fact in most cases, nothing, in common with that original vision. This is all about control, and, you guessed it, money. This story, in the Times, does give some insight into where Murdoch’s cronies want to take ubiquitous access, but there is more you should know about how he uses his considerable, if not unprecedented influence. In recent weeks my own little humble island continent had a national election, and Rupert, a former citizen, and not for the first time, wanted a change of government. He wasn’t subtle about it….you don’t have to be when you own nearly 70% of the country’s major newspapers ( yes, I do mean 70%)…but if you want a snap shot of how he uses that monopolistic power, have look at this...and yes, he got his change of government. Is this the sort of person, or company you would want anywhere near your child’s school? But sadly, that is not the most disappointing part of this explosion of corporate interest in 1 to 1, because the good folk at Apple, with their iPads, have seemingly opened a veritable ‘Pandora’s box of triviality’ that is undermining much of the extraordinary work of the past 15 to 20 years. It didn’t have to be this way; but they just couldn’t resist the temptation, so instead of developing a genuinely fully functional personal portable computer, they gave us a ‘dumbed-down engagement device.’..and they’ve sold tens of millions of them….too many of them to students. Fortunately a number of their competitors have seen their error of Apple’s ways and are showing more respect for young learners needs with fully functional devices. Maybe I’m just a purist, or maybe I am starting at the wrong end, but I thought we all agreed, many, many years ago this was meant to be first and foremost about learning. I thought we agreed the only place to start was with a clearly articulated vision of how kids learn, and then from that we could build out extraordinary possibilities for a child having 24/7 access to their own computer… to use as Gary Stager says as “ an intellectual laboratory and a vehicle for self-expression.”..or as Alan Kay expressed so many years ago as “an instrument whose music is ideas’. I saw none of that in the shallow examples outlined in the Times article, nor in the many similar stories I have come across recently about the “tabletization’ of learning. Our priorities are not the priorities of companies like Amplify and others who are seeking to leverage the momentum to 1 to 1 for their own commercial gain. There’s nothing wrong with profit, in fact in most cases it’s a very good thing. But why can’t companies that set their profit sights on education, and that are massively over endowed with funding and influence focus on the things that really matter...like how kids learn; like effective pedagogy; like the possibilities of the future and not the traditional practices of the past? You don’t use technology to control kids, it’s meant to be about liberating learners. That means new thinking about trust, new roles for new contexts, and new models for learning, for schooling and …for doing business with schools. This is not a time for ‘oh, well, we tried’…it’s a time to standup and speak out. It’s the time for educators across the globe to take the lead in the public debate around education and the unprecedented opportunities technology offers our young learners, to ensure they reach the bold and ambitious heights we’ve aspired to for them for so long. ….as always, I’m interested in your thoughts. Thu, 03 Oct 2013 11:09:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=632 Ok. Enough is Enough. I want to qualify what I am about to say, because I frankly think now something needs to be said. Firstly I do not normally, publically at least, comment on individual 1 to 1 rollouts. Anywhere. Our role at the Foundation has been to provide support, thought leadership and advocacy in whatever form that takes. No matter how often we have seen hiccups, or mistakes or oversights; to date I have simply tried to be Mr Half-full, and we have celebrated the hard work and energy that is always invested in implementing a 1 to 1 program. Secondly, I obviously only have news reports to go on, and so I am just hoping that what I have read in recent days regarding the first stage roll-out of iPads in LA School District has been incorrectly reported. But for those of you who haven\\\'t caught up with the reports, here is an excerpt from the LA Times report, and here is a summary from a recent issue of EdSurge: \\\"LA UNIFIED\\\'S SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS: Last week, the Los Angeles Times regaled us with reports on LA Unified\\\'s $1 billion iPad troubles. First, students circumvented security measures and visited \\\"unauthorized\\\" websites such as YouTube and Facebook. (Using the word \\\"hacking\\\" would be giving kids too much credit; Ars Technica explains the simple steps they took.) Then 71 iPads went missing, and \\\"senior district officials acknowledged that they haven\\\'t decided on consequences if the $700 iPads are lost or broken.\\\" So school officials took the devices back from students--but only two-thirds have been returned. \\\"You can\\\'t do nothing with them...you just carry them around,\\\" one student said.\\\" As I said at the top of this article, enough is enough. This is simply unacceptable. These sorts of issues, and the reporting of them give computers in schools a bad name, a very bad name…and most notably undoes much of the good work that has gone before them. Did you hear that?…gone BEFORE!!..yes, surprise, surprise…. this has been done before, thousands of times..in more than 30 countries around the world; across tens of thousands of schools across the globe; providing and supporting more than 20 million kids across those countries with the learning medium of their time..access to their own fully functional, portable, personal computer..a laptop. To all of you, who, as loyal supporters of the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation, are, I’m sure as frustrated as I am. We just don’t need this sort of stumble from a high…possibly, the highest…profile 1 to 1 deployment at least in the US..since Maine..and yes, look how well they managed their initiative..and as pioneers! I’m sorry, but this sort of ‘policy clumsiness’ just has to stop. This is our young people’s future you\\\'re playing with, and so in future, wherever the next large deployment is scheduled ..(and there are at least a dozen that we know of for more than a million students each within the next 12 months)…could you please start showing some 21st Century Policy Leadership, and follow some very simple, easy to follow, tips: 1. Reach out beyond simple Literature searches and learn from what others have done. 2. Look for Frameworks or Deployment schedules that have been developed from the experience and knowledge of schools and schools systems who have successfully deployed 1 to 1 programs previously. Without playing favourites, AALF’s 21 Steps to 21st Century Learning, is a 2 day workshop developed from the experiences of hundreds of schools effectively rolling out 1 to 1. It has in turn been directly and indirectly used as the bible for 1 to 1 deployments to millions of students across the globe for more than 12 years. There are obviously others. 3. 1 to 1 initiatives are NOT, I repeat NOT a technology program; never was, never has been…despite how they are often reported. This is about providing exceptional, and unprecedented opportunities for deeper, more complex, more creative learning for our young people through the provision of their own fully functional, portable, personal computer. Providing the laptop is just a very simple first step on a long, hard and incredibly exciting journey. 4. Finally it is therefore on THIS basis, and this basis alone, that you must make all your decisions….. Not what is the cheapest; not what is the coolest new piece of shiny technology…but rather what will provide your young people with the most powerful choices, the most profound opportunities, to engage in learning that is relevant, worthwhile, and meaningful within the context of the technology-rich world they are growing up in. Good luck...I sincerely hope the lessons are learned and my suggestions are helpful. Bruce Dixon Thu, 03 Oct 2013 11:07:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=551 “Just when we thought it was safe to go….” Funny isn’t it, but in 2010, AALF and the State of Maine hosted a Summit at Point Lookout in that state, which in many ways was a celebration for how far we had all come. No longer did we have to spend endless workshop days or keynotes building the compelling case for ubiquitous access; no longer did we need to be wary of the detractors and naysayers who were pushing back to the legacy of past education practices..and no longer was it necessary to argue that what we stood for was not ubiquitous access to technology, but rather what it now made possible...or so we thought. ...then along came the iPad...and we hit a wall. Funnily enough, it’s not the ‘device’ that is the problem…or what it makes possible…but rather what it does NOT make possible that is the real worry; and of more concern, the manner in which it has seemed to fill a void for those people who have always wanted to believe that incrementalism is the real platform that technology should enable. Incrementalism in taking us back to some of the saddest examples of ‘educational applications’ from the computer-managed learning (CML) days of the ‘80’s; incrementalism which simply allows kids to continue to do the things they have always done, but a little better, through their \\\\\\\'judicious\\\\\\\' use of their iPads...and incrementalism which means rather than being disruptive, they can be accommodated within a traditional school environment. Is this really the best we can do? Is this really what we have been working for these past few decades? Not for mine. You see what really fired me up for these few words were conversations I heard on several occasions at two recent US conferences. They usually started with something like... \\\\\\\"We now a policy where every child has an iPad\\\\\\\" Why?...What for?... I thought that 20 or 30 years ago we all agreed that we first needed to be clear on what we wanted our students to DO with a computer, and what software that would require, BEFORE we selected the hardware...or has that now changed, just because iPads are so cool, cheap (sic) and start-up quickly? This was sadly reinforced when I was recently at a forum of some of America\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s top Math teachers, many of who had iPads, and at the start, the forum leader said: \\\\\\\"Name the Math software that your students have previously been using that they can no longer use on their iPads\\\\\\\" \\\\\\\"Fathom, MathType, GeoGebra,\\\\\\\" the list just went on. So my question is obvious... WHY, then oh why, did they have their students buy them? The one standout Math application, FluidMath they came up with that could be used on an iPad, required the use of a pen, which of course is ironical, because Steve Jobs swore they should NEVER be used with iPads (but of course are now made by 3rd party manufacturers). To quote Gary Stager, who together with Sylvia Martinez is taking the opposite tack and reigniting teachers and kids’ enthusiasm for serious learning around powerful ideas with their ‘Maker Bible’, Invent to Learn (www.inventtolearn.com)... \\\\\\\"Apps do simple things reliably. Learning requires more complexity, flexibility and room to grow. iPads are a tool of compliance, not a tool of empowerment\\\\\\\" Don’t misunderstand me, iPads are great technology, when used fit for purpose. But I really do wonder…is our long lamented, but continuing fascination with shiny new objects still getting in the way of commonsense? We should expect more. Not just from our kids, but also from ourselves. As always, I’m interested in your thoughts. Tue, 30 Jul 2013 13:27:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=508 With all the energy that many of us have focused on a child’s right to be able to reach their full potential through access to their own personal portable computer, our biggest challenge has surely been providing access to those in the most extreme learning environments. These are the young people in extremely poor circumstances in developed countries and the vast numbers in emerging countries. Surely the most dramatic impact comes from those who are able to overcome those challenges in extreme environments, and the role of technology in addressing many of the Millennium goal challenges cannot be understated. Certainly the precedent comes from the manner in which millions in developing countries have been able to leapfrog the communications barriers in their communities through the introduction of mobile phones. No longer do they have to replicate the pain, cost and time to construct telegraph poles and wires for the landlines that were so prominent in developed communities. Instead they have the opportunity to ‘catch up’ and in some cases, pass, (Kenya’s mobile phone reach a case in point) developed countries communications networks and dramatically improve their economic outcomes. This leads us to look at the technology access strategies that are being promoted in the developing world. As readers would know only too well, AALF mission is focused on 1 to 1 access for ALL young people, as part of their right to an education that offers them the best chance to reach their potential, which in a modern world, means they are technology-enabled. There is no doubt that OLPC have lead this mission proudly over the past 5 years, and initiatives like Intel’s Classmate and Millennium project have also made universal access a reality for millions of students across the developing world. So it comes as somewhat of a shock to find that there are still significant initiatives being driven by a range of NGO’s, corporations and funding agencies for what is euphemistically called ‘increased access’ to computers for students in developing countries. I’m of course talking here of thin client labs, shared server programs and variations on Lab themes, which simply deny a child 24/7 access to their own personal portable computer. Have the past 3 decades not taught us anything? Do we really think that young people in developing countries must first go through the pain students in the developed world suffered through decades of shared lab access? Did we really not learn anything from the years of research showing the limited educational outcomes from the billions that was spent on the ill-conceived SHARED access model of labs? Do we so underrate those young people in challenged environments that we would rather have them head butt the possibilities that technology access can offer through the compromise strategy of shared labs, rather than leapfrog to greater education outcomes through personal 1 to 1 access? Ah, but that’s just not possible, I hear those driving these legacy program advocates say. Well, tell that to the millions of young people in developing countries around the world whose educational opportunities have already been profoundly impacted through 1 to 1 universal access. It IS now time we stopped hanging on to failed programs and legacy strategies that compromise the chances for these young people in the most extreme of circumstances. Surely it is time we put all of our energy into expanding those universal access initiatives that have been proven to have a real impact on the lives of young people in all countries across the globe. ...As always, I’m interested in your thoughts. Wed, 29 May 2013 14:10:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=472 We are indeed living in interesting times. Never before have we seen such widespread agreement across countries around the globe that the key lever for their economic futures is education; just not the type of education we currently have. Such a paradox must surely challenge our long held beliefs in upholding the status quo. Indeed it would seem the question is no longer should we change the education our young people are currently receiving, to rather, by how much should the change happen. To date it’s fair to suggest incremental would be the most optimistic way of describing the change that has taken place in a limited number of schools to date, rather than anything fundamental, radical or disruptive. Yet as we let the years go by, debating the nature of change, its virtue and the possibilities, legions of young people continue to march their way through our schools, tolerating traditions that have long lost both their meaning and purpose. So now we see a new entry point to the dilemma, called Innovation. While it is largely semantics to review to what extent change, innovation, reimagining, rethinking et al are targeting similar end points, though taking different journeys, it’s seem that innovation is the most palatable to educators and educational leaders. I recently asked a global audience of teachers, ‘when was your last failure?’, and was met with largely blank stares. At the recent New York Maker Faire, Seth Godin referred to the value of ‘learning by doing things wrong’…which after all is the way that most of us learn, most of the time? Not just in an academic sense but even more so in physical sports or crafts, cooking or trades we are continually learning by doing things wrong, because…we take risks; we try something out to see if it works; to see if we can do it well…. yet how often do we see that practice encouraged within our schools? In such presentations I like to talk about one of our best known ‘failers ’, James Dyson. While vacuuming his home, he became frustrated with the lousy suction of his vacuum cleaner. The bag and filter clogged too quickly, reducing the suction to the point where it didn\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'t work. Over 15 years, he built 5126 prototypes before he found the one that worked. 15 years and 5126 failures. How did he find the solution? \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"Wrong doing.\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\" His mantra...Fail fast, and iterate to another possibility; be agile, don’t spend all your time planning something that might be based on wrong design assumptions; develop a Minimum Viable Product and try it out. Do we ever think that way about innovation in our schools?.... because that is the way large companies today develop new ideas, new products and new services. I wonder if Dyson had reflected on his school experience as being lousy, would he have innovated for a better solution 5000+ times until he found one ‘that worked’? No he wouldn’t, and none of us ever do…not 5000 times, but sadly for most, not even once. ..and yet we generally agree too much of what we offer is lousy. If you work at Valve, one of the largest online gaming companies in the world, they state very clearly in their New Employees Manual...\\\\\\\"No-one has ever been fired at Valve for making mistakes. It wouldn’t make sense for us to operate that way. Providing the freedom to fail is an important trait within the company. We couldn’t expect so much of our individuals if we penalised people for errors.\\\\\\\" Could it be that our loathing of failure within schools results not so much in high standards, but rather low ones? You see, I think any discussion around innovation in our schools, across any dimension, within the projects, pedagogy, or whole school reform, but first embrace the concept of learning from failure, from doing things wrong. Building a culture that supports risk-taking..an anathema to many school leaders. Until we can do that, we will continue to be limited to marginal instrumentalism which will aggravate the problem rather than solve it. As always, interested in your thoughts! Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:20:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=416 How often do you find yourself driving along the same road, and sometimes you get to your destination and not even remember the journey? It comes from habit, or familiarity, and we all feel comfortable taking that journey down the same road. But what if on our journey we come across a fork? What if we see a road, we have not yet travelled, which has signs telling us it will allow us to go even further than we have before…much further? Will you take it? You can see where I’m going; after years of taking the same road in our schools, integrating technology on top of existing practice, I feel we are reaching a fork. I feel that finally the weight of the world our modern learners are growing up in outside school is forcing us to finally think seriously about taking that fork. If you can stick with me while I stretch the metaphor a little further, I think our travels down “the road so familiar” has only allowed ubiquitous technology to have a minimal impact on the learning lives of our young people; it has allowed us to maybe click into 2nd gear, go just a little bit faster, but basically take the same route...and get the same outcomes…with marginal, or incremental improvement; is that really the best we think ubiquitous access offers? What if we consider the fork? What might be down that road…’less travelled’? Is it possible that it might allow us to go much further than we did before? Is it possible we might be able to do things on that road that we never dreamed were possible? Maybe it is time for us to get serious about taking that fork. When you are investing, as we all are, in a long-term transformation, there comes a time when we must now seriously consider taking that road less travelled…whether that means challenging the very foundations on which we have based much of our teaching to date; whether that means asking serious questions about the relevance of the security blanket we call curriculum; whether it means radically rethinking the way we teach subjects like science and mathematics, or whether it simply means looking more closely at the world our modern learners are growing up in, and learning from what we see there, it is time to change direction. We’ve passed down some rather interesting roads on this journey, and who would have thought that we would have come across the small ‘unmade’ tracks like tablets and e-books that have started many going back to where we came from; that’s what happens when you don’t make it clear to people just what lies for us at the end of this journey! However, we must also embolden our efforts in support of those who have started down the fork; support those who have taken the first tentative steps towards genuine transformation of the experiences their students can now have. These are the teachers who are not relying on the journeys they have taken in the past, but realize there is SO much more to be gained by looking ahead instead. These are teachers who realize that by looking ahead and trying new ideas and taking new directions, they will empower their students to go so much further in their own life’s journey. There is so much to be gained for our young people if we look forward, and take that fork in the road. ….as always, I’m interested in your thoughts. Tue, 27 Nov 2012 11:06:00 EST Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=413 Interested in hearing your thoughts on a quote from Richard Elmore, the Gregory R. Anrig Professor of Educational Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which is taken from \"What Would Happen if We Let Them Go?\" \"As I read the collected entries in the Futures of School Reform Blog, they seem bright, energetic, combative, and optimistic about the future of the enterprise of American public schooling. I wonder, as I read them, whether the writers are aware of what classrooms in American secondary schools actually look like--the dismal, glacial, adult-centered, congenially authoritarian, mindless soup in which our children spend the bulk of their days. I wonder whether people are aware of how robust the old \"bargain\" is in the face of so-called \"high stakes accountability;\" how little the monolithic beast of American secondary education has been affected by the bright, high-minded optimism of professional reformers; how little the exemplars that professional reformers use to justify their role in society have actually affected the lives of adolescents. I wonder, finally, what would happen if we simply opened the doors and let the students go; if we let them walk out of the dim light of the overhead projector into the sunlight; if we let them decide how, or whether, to engage this monolith? Would it be so terrible? Could it be worse than what they are currently experiencing? Would adults look at young people differently if they had to confront their children on the street, rather than locking them away in institutions? Would it force us to say more explicitly what a humane and healthy learning environment might look like? Should discussions of the future of school reform be less about the pet ideas of professional reformers and more about what we\'re doing to young people in the institution called school?\" What do you think? Are American high schools so dismal? Are professional reformers oblivious to the real needs of students? Are our expectations - for high schools, for students - too low? We want to hear from you! Tue, 27 Nov 2012 10:46:00 EST Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=345 How clearly can you articulate your expectations for what a technology-rich environment makes possible for learners? Do you remember the early days of computers in schools? When the pure novelty of a new software application caused excitement and ‘engagement’ from students? Many of us had little idea of the real implications, but we were all starting to understand that an unprecedented shift in our thinking about how young people might learn was taking place. These were the times of occasional access to computers in labs, when restricted access to ‘computer time’ heightened enthusiasm for whatever latest program the school had been able to afford. These were times when, with each new generation of software, we learnt a little more about what could be done…and it all added to our expectations of what this might make possible for learners….but few were articulating it very clearly. But it was a slow process. Many, for too long, were distracted by the increasingly sophisticated animation, by alluring sounds, rather than the pedagogical possibilities. It wasn’t so much a case of right or wrong products, but rather poor or powerful…Maths Blaster sold millions and drilled the living daylights out of young minds, Microworlds sold hundreds of thousands and empowered them. But it was a learning curve for all of us. It was a time when we all learnt what mattered, and what was really worth doing; an ultimately it helped define our expectations of what technology might make possible for young learners. While Alan Kay and Seymour Papert had, in 1968, a crystal clear picture of powerful computing for young people, for most of us that took some time, and exploring those early programs was part of that process. But not all have been that fortunate. Not everyone has that background, and not everyone learnt from it; in fact one of the greatest ironies we face in our use of computers in schools today, is that so many have such little knowledge about just how much is possible. While we are now in a time when we can genuinely believe ubiquitous access will be a reality for most young people in the near future, our ambition for what that will make possible for them is sadly lacking. It isn’t that all teachers or school leaders should intuitively know just how powerful those possibilities are, but rather that so many have either not been through the learning journey of earlier days, or are not experienced users themselves. This quite simply leads to low expectations; too often very low expectations, where the digital medium simply becomes a substitute for pen and paper and students browsing, word processing, and dabbling in simple applications can dominate classroom computer use. To some extent the rapid take-up of 1 to 1 over recent years does explain the situation, but if allowed to continue it will set back a lot that has been achieved in recent years. The public and politicians will very quickly start questioning the value of public monies that have been spent if we are not able to lift expectations about what ubiquitous access can make possible for young learners. Sadly, the problem has been exacerbated over the past two years with the introduction of slates/tablets and the like, and while Apple may well wish to celebrate the explosion of sales for iPads in schools, its growth in part can be put down to the fertile sales environment that low expectations made prevalent in too many schools. This is NOT to say that there isn’t a role for such technologies as companion devices; I think iPads and their ilk can be the ideal complement for teachers in the classroom, and for many teachers and students, the move from 1 to 1, to many to 1 will be a rapid shift. However for too many students the use of these devices is focused around substitutive, trivial applications that lower, rather than raise the bar for what they can do. This is compounded by people confusing their price, and potential to be the medium for textbook substitutes, with their role as the prime and most appropriate medium for learning. They also fit very nicely into students as consumers, continuing to do much of the same things they always did, without allowing the technology to in any way be disruptive. Let’s hope that what we are seeing is a passing phase like the early software applications were; that the shiny new ‘cool’ technologies, are just taking time to find their rightful place, and that we focus our energies on being able to better articulate the possibilities 1 to 1, many to 1 offer young learners, and in turn help everyone significantly raise their expectations. ….as always, I’m interested in your thoughts… Bruce. Thu, 27 Sep 2012 12:04:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=163 There is much to celebrate about what is happening in classrooms around the globe. There is less to celebrate in schools. My point? We’ve known for years that there are many innovative teachers out there, doing extraordinary things with their students, but why does it continue to be so hard to scale that innovation across whole schools? I would suggest the answer lies with benefit and culture. When was the last time you walked into a bank?..that is, into a bank. Chances are you’ve used bank services within the past 7 days, but there’s a very good chance you haven’t been into a bank for several months. There are countless sectors of our lives that have been impacted by technology, but few have been as comprehensively transformed as banking. Indeed revolutionized might be more appropriate. Not only do we rarely now go into a bank to get cash, as was a very regular habit, but in fact we are using less of it, given the plethora of ways in which we can now purchase goods and services. Not only is every minute detail of banking services managed by sophisticated computing services, but one only has to reflect on the chaos that happens on the rare occasions that a banking website goes down, to understand that complex technology services are a mandatory prerequisite for contemporary banking to exist. Indeed for a sector of society that 30 or 40 years ago was viewed as one of our most conservative, and least likely to embrace change, radical transformation is now a reality. But banks still exist. So what has this got to do with schools? To help us better understand the ways in which technology is impacting on education, it always helps to look at other sectors to gain insights on how we are doing. I will not spend any time debating the virtue or otherwise of selecting banking, suffice to say that while other useful examples do exist, I think there are some interesting observations we can make from looking at the way in which technology has been embraced in both sectors. Every banking employee is required to be a competent user of technology. In fact each and every one of them in a modern bank has on-demand access to a computer at anytime. There is no longer a debate about whether technology is impacting on the daily lives of banking employees or users, but rather it is simply by how much. So why do we so often look forlornly at the state of computer use in our schools? Why is it that by comparison the impact computers have had in most of our schools is negligible, and in fact there are still some wanting to debate whether young people should even be using computers at school? Surely it cannot simply be that in banking we have clear accountability that is measured through profit, while in education we too often continue to debate what accountabilities we should be responding to? I think the answer is quite simple; we have failed to show benefit. In banking, at every level, it is obvious to every employee that technology allows them to do things they could not do before; it allows them to do things at a greater level of complexity that was not previously accessible to them. Is that the case in our schools? We‘ve spent far too much time focusing on strategic implementation plans, digital literacy program, policyfests and research, and little or none on better articulating the benefit universal access offers for teachers..and their students. Additionally our use of computers has, for the most part, been so incremental that even in cases where there has been innovation, it is often not sustained …and barely anyone notices!. Even a core school application such as attendance, which can be so readily implemented through technology is hardly seen at scale across schools systems around the world. What is missing are the big steps. The changes that we can’t do without. Those innovations, like not going to the bank for cash, where the benefit is so profound, that there is no going back; and where its success breeds a culture of innovation that feeds on itself, and in turn genuinely transforms the learning experiences of our young people. ...as always, I’m interested in your thoughts... Best regards, Bruce. Wed, 16 May 2012 11:51:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=126 I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I genuinely believe that our introduction of computers into schools over the past 30+ years would in fact make an excellent case study on how not to diffuse innovation. Let’s buy computers for schools and lock them away in a room so that only ‘computing royalty’ can manage their use; let’s tell teachers that they need to ‘ be computer literate’, but fail to give them access; and let’s spend hundreds of millions of dollars training teachers on how to use software applications, but fail to convey the real benefits of what the purpose of it all is. In light of all this, I applaud the timidity that many, indeed most teachers have shown towards technology. In the context I have outlined we deserve no better response. What about if we took a different approach? What about if for a start we actually thought that providing both teacher and student access to their own personal portable computer was a necessary pre-condition to any sort of computer use in schools? Stop playing at computing, and start doing it seriously; not just because every single employment opportunity our students will have, will require technology familiarity and competence, but most significantly because of what it makes possible for our learners and their teachers! We didn’t tell our bank employees they could go to a computer room when a customer wanted account details; we didn’t for one minute suspect that every bank employee should be ‘digitally literate’ and then send them back to counter without computer access…so why was that OK for teachers? At a time when we all should be falling over ourselves to show just what ubiquitous access to computers does make possible, we are still debating funding issues, policy priorities and most disappointingly of all, hardware decisions. Such is the magnitude of these distracting discussions, that the core driver of benefit is continually lost..and hence creates doubt in teacher’s minds as to why they should invest their valuable time in exploring the undefined, and unprecedented new boundaries that technology presents. It’s about time we grew up. It’s about time we focused on the core driver of benefit; and it’s about time we threw off the shackles of past practice, and seriously re-imagined what is now possible. Let’s start by exploring some fundamental questions such as…. How does technology change inquiry-based learning? How does technology change our thinking around self-directedness and collaboration? …and more specifically how should technology change the way we think about subjects like mathematics?...and most profoundly how we teach it? It’s time we stopped tinkering at the edges and started talking in terms of “mathematics you can only do with a computer’; history research that is only possible when students have computer access. Then and only then, might we truly start to see what might be called transformation. For far too long we have allowed compromised access to computers to compromise the possibilities, and most importantly the opportunities, for our teachers and students. In thinking about this topic, I was amused by an article I came across that was prepared by BECTA in the UK in 2004. This was a report on the Barriers to the Uptake of ICT by Teachers. They in turn quoted many venerable researchers who had also investigated the topic in their literature review. This sort of research is not the way to address the problem; in fact it is the problem. Over the past 30+ years, while the banking industry has been part of a revolution, we have been researching. While banking has been building benefit, we have been avoiding it through meaningless and trivial uses of technology within our schools, that have been a function of absurdly limited access. It’s time to change. How much more redundant, irrelevant and repetitious research must we spend critical funds on before we have the backbone to drive the radical changes that must become part of schooling in the very near future. This 29 page BECTA report suggested that barriers to the uptake of ICT by teachers included lack of technical support, lack of time, impact of examinations, age, lack of skills etc, all of which might sound interesting, but, as is the case with way too much educational ICT research, pointless; except of course a lack of access to computers, which seems so obvious as to not even warrant comment, let alone any so-called substantive research. Far too much research around technology use in education lacks context. As in the case above, which despite the time and money invested in it,identified the symptoms, and completely missed the cause. The simple secret is that if you can show a teacher genuine benefit from using technology; relevant, worthwhile ways in which technology can allow them to be a better teacher; ideas and possibilities that will enable more of their students to engage and understand more difficult and complex concepts, more often….they will do so. The so-called barriers become irrelevant; and yet how often, and how well do we do that? So let’s start by working on the simple assumption that good teachers want the best for their young people. The moral purpose of teaching underpins that. Let’s leverage this as our driver for technology use across our schools, and invest our time in better defining the ways in which technology impacts on teaching and learning, to show undeniable benefit and move the conversation around contemporary learning and teaching onto to new level. ….as always, I’m interested in your thoughts… Best regards, Bruce. Btw… we have been working on developing a language and pedagogical models that better allow us to talk about benefit and the possibilities for contemporary teaching and learning at ideasLAB (www.ideaslab.edu.au) You can join our conversation on the topic there also, or download several papers our Associate Director Richard Olsen has been developing in coming months. Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:20:00 EST Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=116 I enjoy research. I spend much of my time reading it. I also often find myself in sustained and vigorous conversations with colleagues from some of the leading research institutions from around the world...and it\'s time that I value very much. Indeed, the Foundation maintains a register of some of the leading research around 1-to-1 on our site....however, I am also sick and tried of the unrelenting practice of political leaders and educational policy makers who continually seek to justify inaction and limit the scope for innovation in the name of research. One only has to review the mountains of literature around the most effective ways to teach reading and the efficacy of small classes to conclude that too much educational research is based on loose assumptions, inappropriate methodologies, a blatant lack of rigor and ideological bias. Too often the funding base for educational research creates preconceptions about the outcomes, real or perceived, and the volume of research that swamps the education market seems to be more related to tenure or the attraction for doctoral topics, than a genuine need. It really is about time we took stock of the situation. For more than three decades we have seen an increasing stream of research that has targeted our use of technology in schools. What purpose has much of it served, other than to often significantly distract educators from continuing to develop innovative practice, and seek new ways to engage young learners. How can we support innovative teachers taking risks, if every move is covered by a researcher measuring outcomes? Where was the research to back so many of our current, dubious, practices in education? How indeed did all the mountains of research around computer use in schools in the 80\'s and 90\'s not condemn the grossly ineffective use of computer labs, instead of working on the assumption they were inevitable? Where is the parallel to our leading corporations, where good ideas, are keenly sought, encouraged, incubated, and then reviewed for their effectiveness and impact? When we are in midst of a time of potentially enormous transformation in our schools, not least through the integration of technology, it is time that we reflected more closely on the purpose, effectiveness and impact of much of the research that is being carried out. Why don\'t we start by working on the culture of our schools, and encourage those that are seeking to create a culture of innovation. Why don\'t we start thinking carefully about what it really means to support risk-taking in our schools; it seems the only risks people are interested in are about the evils of the net and beyond...how about we support our educational leaders who are creating new agendas for learning within their schools and seeking to genuinely leverage technology within an immersive environment to truly create worthwhile, authentic learning opportunities. To do this, they must make mistakes, and we don\'t need research to identify every single one of them. What we need is a dynamic, constructive culture in our schools that builds reflective practice into innovation; that sets action research that is embedded into daily practice, and that seeks to continually improve the opportunities offered to young people. With that sort of confidence in the teaching profession, with the sort of freedom that truly reflects the professional teacher, the research that will follow will at last be of real value to the lives of the students in our classrooms. Interested in your thoughts...regards. Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:57:00 EST Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=110 After having the luxury of spending several days attending sessions at three recent conferences in three countries, I am overcome by how little time is being spent on the real issues I feel we should be addressing. Despite all protestations, most of the sessions that I attend are perennially focused on either the ‘technology’; to wit… the ‘pocket-electronic-whiteboards’,or ‘ipad religious fervor’, or the ‘tools’… and I know this is also hallowed ground, but goodness how many times do we have to schedule sessions to “teach” someone how to blog? When do we get to focus our best thinking on what it all makes possible for young people? When will we see some seriously bold and ambitious examples of what universal technology access can enable for learners? We’ve had the baby steps, the incrementalism, the ‘two steps forward, one step back’…now is the time surely for the revolution…or at least a glimmer of genuine transformation. In talking about revolutions, I’m most mindful of the $2 billion spent in my home country, Australia, under the banner of what is called the “Digital Education Revolution”. It was spent with the aim of meeting an election promise to provide one million students across the country with access to a computer while they were at school. Yes, you heard right. Not universal 24/7 access for learning within a contemporary context, but rather a narrowly based election promise around hardware….and no vision. Fortunately in Australia however, much was restored through the energy and focus of State Education jurisdictions, most notably in Victoria and Queensland, along with some great work at the systemic level in the Catholic sector. So has there been a revolution? Well if there has, I’ve missed it. But I can report there has been some exceptional work at the individual school and classroom level, and who knows-- even a Federal education bureaucracy as conservative and limited as Australia’s hasn’t been able to stifle great innovators or their students once the technology rabbit gets out of the hat! So what does this mean? Well it gives hope that great change is coming, despite every effort being made to hold it back; it means we must not ever believe a lack of political vision will stop the inevitable fundamental change that is looming for our schools, and it reinforces my earlier thoughts about the critical importance of us engaging in conversations around what really matters…and what is truly worth doing. This was the important learning we reflected on in our recent ‘Right to Learn’ paper, and it is now even more important as we see exponentially growing numbers of young people around the world getting universal access to their own personal portable computer. Viva la Revolution…a revolution not of technology, but of ideas!! ….as always, I’m interested in your thoughts… Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:56:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=103 At several recent conferences at which I have been speaking, there has been a lot of interest in the concept of students bringing their own computers, laptops, technology or devices…depending on how you like your acronym. I think it warrants further discussion. On the surface it would seem natural that this is something AALF would fully support, and, in broad principle, of course we do. Our vision is for every child to have access to his or her own ‘personal portable computer’ to enable more powerful learning experiences..and, in part this is what is driving the current fascination with BYO. However, I fear there is much more to this than meets the eye. First, there is motivation. There is no question that much of this discussion has been led by the dramatic increase in some demographics, with students buying their own various pieces of technology. The obvious question becomes why should it remain as something about which the school makes the decision? The second driver that is motivating this idea is the significant cut in funding to schools that as happening in some countries, most notably the US. A number of school districts and states that have previously funded their 1:1 initiatives through state grants or district funding are now challenged on finding sustainable funding. So then the question becomes, what will students bring? As always, there are a few people always looking for the ‘next big idea”, so currently we are being overwhelmed by the pocket electronic whiteboards or iPads, but discussions usually include phones and any sort of gadget with a screen. Seems the last thing anyone wants to ask is, ‘What will they want to do with it?’ For one, I’m happy if at least there is some agreement that you want them to be able to do basic computing functions, such as easily construct ideas, knowledge, share thinking and at all times be creative. Then there is the issue of implementation. Currently very few corporations allow their staff to ‘bring their own’ laptops…and they usually have 4 to 5 times the technical support; how will schools manage this? …aha, I hear you say…virtualization...well yes...and no. Costs are currently a serious issue and managing such an environment is still a challenge for most schools…however, yes, over time this may underpin an option; but I doubt it is viable at this time. Other ‘small’ issues like low cost software licensing, dependable onsite 12 hour turnaround servicing, loaner machines, security, and the classroom management benefits of a homogenous operating environment also need to be addressed in real detail. The principles on which AALF was founded and on which we have given advice for nearly 15 years still apply. At all times, our priority must be to ensure any 1:1 program provides for ALL students and can be sustained in the long-term and not just dependent on the whims and fancies of political, technological and policy leadership. This has always been at the core of our recommendation for the co-funded and Shared Cost Model of funding. Our early experiences taught us, and many schools, that given that one of the benefits from an effective 1:1 program would be to provide 24/7 access, there is a reasonable expectation that parents should make some contribution for the 80% of the time their son or daughter could now use a laptop for personal use outside school. However, I’m not sure why we can now suddenly expect parents to pick up 100% of the cost...by bringing their own! Given the challenges many school leaders often raise about asking parents to make a small contribution to a co-funded model, it seems a little incongruous that simply relabeling the program with a three letter acronym will erase these concerns and address all the core principles that have to date underpinned the success of 1:1 worldwide. Finally, there is the core issue of equity. You don’t solve a lack of funding by passing 100% of the cost to parents, and expect that to be a viable option for ALL parents. We currently DON’T have any problems with viability, sustainability or scalability with the thousands of 1 to 1 programs currently operating around the world...but I suspect we certainly will have with many of the BYO programs being considered. We are most likely going to see a gradual shift of the responsibility for the provision of a personal portable computer for our students from schools to families, as costs come down further, and computers are commoditized even more. But it will take time for the most effective funding, implementation and management models to be developed, and I expect they will, for the most part, be blended models that provide for all the challenges I have outlined above. Above all we must continually remind ourselves to not be distracted from our core purpose. ….and as always, I’m most interested in your thoughts… Best regards, Bruce. Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:36:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=93 After spending a good part of the past 18 months talking with teachers, and visiting schools across many countries, I’m challenged by the incremental nature of any change that has come as a result of the significant increase in student access to technology. It’s not that we shouldn’t celebrate any shift, even if it is small, nor that the rate of any transformation is as important as the long-term impact, but…why so little?...and before the technology skeptics jump in with their standard shrill cries, I would hope that by now, most of us agree that the challenge lies clearly in how we more effectively execute the vision around technology use in schools, rather than the vision itself. Take the teaching of science as an example. Given the extent to which technology is today embedded at every level of scientific endeavor, why is there so little embedded in our teaching of science? Yes we do have the extraordinary examples such as the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, among others, but surely it is not too ambitious to expect that increased access to technology would be fundamental to inspiring young people about the magic of scientific discovery? What about all that talk about 24/7 learning and learning beyond the school walls? To date what we are seeing often is the use of electronic pigeonholes in the form of portals, which is essentially a virtual document exchange, but little else. Is it possible that in reality we maybe think of pedagogy as a static idea? That like many crafts, there is one, best way, to develop a concept or teaching idea...and that therefore we are not open to new ideas about how we might do it better? In this context we might appropriate modern language used to describe the challenges of staying current and adaptive, particularly in development, and better describe the demands of contemporary teaching as requiring agile pedagogy? In this context a teacher would no longer see pedagogy as something that is frozen in stone, for others to unlock, but rather a as a truer reflection of the art and science of teaching and learning in a contemporary setting. This might then change how we see how our teaching tasks. About first and foremost being relevant, adaptive, and, by implication, always curious about how we might use emerging ideas and technologies to create more exciting worthwhile learning experiences for our young people. In turn, this might also change our attitudes to how we source some of these ideas…away from a traditional model of whole-day withdrawal workshops to just-in-time, on-the-job access to online ideaslabs; from set courses and content, to coaching and mentoring…and from a static, carved-in-stone notion of teaching to a fresh, dynamic concept around agility, adaptability and vibrancy. ….as always, I’m interested in your thoughts… Wed, 11 May 2011 13:01:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=89 It seems not so long ago when our discussions around 1:1 were focused on individual schools that were seeking to pioneer the possibilities technology-richness might provide for our young people. We were looking for individual teachers possessed by a passion for the possibilities; individual hero leaders driven to explore new boundaries, and individual educational leaders who had seen a glimpse of what universal access could mean for their young people. It was as far from scale as anyone could imagine, with the focus firstly on sustainability, supporting the champions, driven by the impact of what others saw happening in these isolated classrooms and schools. But it worked. What started in one school, became two then ten, then states, countries and soon scale became a real possibility. Maine crossed new boundaries as a whole state bought in, and before long we saw Portugal, Uruguay and many more whole countries catch the contagion of 1:1. It now seems almost surreal, while at the same time very real; that forty years after the idea, twenty years after the seed was planted, we are at a point that at one time was simply a dream. Current best estimates from educational and industry leaders I spoke with during the BETT week in the UK suggest that by the end of 2011 we will see more than ten million young people in K-12 with their own personal portable computers in 1:1 initiatives across more than 30 countries around the world. So it’s time to celebrate….or is it? When so many people measure success in numbers we can also easily be mislead into thinking that big numbers matter, and in one sense they do. Finally after all this time, and through the efforts of so many, the notion of universal access is accepted as inevitable, an obligation and, in the words of the President of Uruguay, the Right of every child. But now, the time when all seems ‘won’ is the very time for us to focus, focus, focus. Over coming months you will hear and see a lot more talk around young people, laptops and 1:1, but listen carefully, because now is the time when we have to drive the focus of everyone’s conversations beyond very big numbers like ten million. The next challenge we will face, inevitably, will be the backlash from a failure to meet expectations, because for many of the emerging large scale 1 :1 initiatives, there has been an alarming failure to define reasonable and achievable expectations. While I’ve always been one to champion universal access in the most trying of circumstances, it’s only been successful when expectations have been set accordingly, and most importantly there is a realistic program to develop the necessary support structures that will create success. What does it mean if a country decides to commit to a 1:1 program for its 1.5 million young people so they can develop 21st Century skills?...I know it sounds good, and I think many AALF colleagues are fully aware of the implications of such thinking…but what about everyone else?...what about the broader mass of parents and the wider community…and dare I say it, journalists who are left to make their own interpretation of how giving a child a laptop will enable them to be ‘21st Century Literate’? An even bigger problem is time; most countries think in election cycles, and no matter how committed your educational leaders may be, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and all the young Romans won’t become 21st century learners between elections- so let’s start people thinking more realistically about the time for the impact to become seriously effective, and most importantly, identifiable. Additionally in the rush to announce big numbers, too many have failed to put in place some of the fundamentals that respected colleagues within the AALF community have come to know only too well. We’ve tried to provide a basic framework with our 21 Steps program which we developed with Education Queensland, which takes care of the essentials that are too often overlooked in the rush to fulfill political promises. But many of the large scale initiatives that are being announced as election promise pay lip service to such process; the ‘drop laptops from helicopters” approach is becoming increasingly common; sadly. So we are at a critical point and we cannot afford to loose either our nerve or our focus; we talk of educational transformation being a marathon not a sprint, well now we will be tested. Just because we hear of the big numbers we all once dreamed of, don’t believe we have won; this is a much longer event than 20, or even 40 years, and we need to be both resilient and focused if we are to see the outcome our young people truly deserve. ….as always, I’m very interested in your thoughts… Best regards, Bruce. Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:04:00 EST Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=45 One of the topics that heads many professional conversations around 1-to-1 relates to workforce capacity. We\'ve spent years creating the notion of Professional Development, which I feel too often becomes something someone does to you, rather than it being something for which you take responsibility. Hence the rise of professional learning and learning communities, which is rapidly becoming the more normal or natural means of teachers building ongoing knowledge. So this presents a continuum of learning opportunities for teachers, which provide a diverse and continuous forum for their developments as professionals. At one extreme we have the intense experiences of a multi-day residential Institute; a practice-changing experience which has both maximum impact but is at the same time expensive and not easily scalable. At the other end we have the most common form of professional learning which is found across all sectors of business and beyond...turning to a colleague, and asking \"how do I do this?\"...the one-on-one short tutoring experience that is the basis on which most people build their basic skills. The teacher as the \"lonely artisan\" in their classroom longs for more of these opportunities, but as we see teaching becoming more and more de-privatised the use of this format will increase. So moving back from this one-on-one, we are seeing extra tutoring sources coming from things such as on-line forums and simple questions into Google...\"how do I do..\"; and of course the continuum includes traditional conferences, inservice workshops and a complete spectrum of choices. However there are three resources that are emerging as the most influential in providing the most effective professional learning opportunities for teachers, and will become foundation ideas that support the concept of the many also referred to as continuous professional development (CPD). The first is the growing use of coaches to provide incidental, as-required, just-in-time, not just-in-case support and advice for teachers within the context of their class, their school, their school day. Coaching per se is nothing new, but its role in dramatically improving the impact of learning opportunities for teachers, most notably by its ability to provide effective support in context, is becoming very significant. It can be provided regionally or within a District, but is most effective when site-based either across a sub-school, grade level or discipline. The second, webcasting/online courses, is rapidly becoming a more common format for teachers as it usually allows for the thing teachers most strive for, time flexibility. These learning opportunities are run live or synchronously, but are usually recorded to allow others who could not attend time to review or reflect over the content at a time suitable to them. A number of Higher Ed institutions such as Pepperdine have been running Masters courses in this format, while companies such as SchoolKit.com have had significant impact reaching large numbers of teachers in both West Virginia and West Australia. One of the early adopters in the field, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson, has been very successful with their PLP courses which are built around a blend of face-to-face supported by Elluminate and Ning sessions. The third has been a sleeper, but will, I\'m sure, become a very important professional resource for teachers. Imagine if you had access, to a complete array of short 2-4 minute videos online that covered a whole range of areas that you could access easily, at anytime. They would cover all manner of subjects and topics and would be a forum of great ideas that teachers have found useful. It would have better indexing and sequencing than anything like You/TeacherTube; would have as engaging an interface as TED.org, and would be the ultimate resource for anytime anywhere professional learning for teachers. The essence of such a site would not be the content, but rather the ease with which teachers could access information that was of value to them, and was relevant in their own context. All three forms are already popular in some countries, and will become an everyday part of all teachers\' professional learning repertoire in the very near future, and will ensure they have access to ideas and expertise at their fingertips, anytime, anywhere. As always, I\'m very interested in your thoughts and ideas around the topic... Regards, Bruce. Thu, 20 Jan 2011 09:05:00 EST Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=78 As someone who spends way too much time on planes, I have probably been most remiss in not sharing with you more of my observations from the many countries and people I have been fortunate enough to work with. Susan is often saying to me that a blog or two wouldn’t go astray, but at the very least, that I should take the time to let others know just what’s going on in places that I’m fortunate enough to visit and work with. My most recent travels over the past three months have been most illuminating, and accordingly, I’ll share three stories. Firstly Canada, where I was pleased to be invited back again to the third and final Emerge Conference in August which was the culmination of three years of exploring what 1:1 might offer Albertian students. It involved 2,502 students, 173 teachers, and 47 administrators within 50 schools in the 20 jurisdictions, and each of the three years’ reports from the Metiri Group’s reports plot an interesting growth in thinking about what it might make possible. I only hope with all the excellent groundwork that has now been laid, the next phase of a provincial-wide roll-out might be high on the agenda of priorities. Disappointingly, the New Brunswick initiative, for which there had been an extraordinary amount of preparation has been postponed due to the change of provincial government. Deputy Education Minister John Kershaw lead a great team up there, and had also instituted a very rigorous process to ensure the program they were planning to roll-out across the province had everything in place for maximum impact. We are reassured the incoming government wishes to continue, but they wanted to postpone the Conference I was due to speak at to give them time to review the overall planning. My session in Brussels to address senior policy makers and ministry leaders from eight Western European countries was well received, despite my briefing beforehand suggesting that \\\"1:1 was something for developing countries-because, well, they really need it!” Given that we spent the best part of the late ‘90’s convincing people around the world that the idea that every child could have their own laptop, was not just something for wealthy kids in wealthy schools, I found the comment amusing, but also just a little sad. If any educational leader in 2010 still wants to question this powerful idea, they should be honest and just say they can’t be bothered. Such legacy thinking is now being overrun by comments from Ministers, Secretaries of Education and Heads of State who more reasonably describe the idea that every child should have their own personal, portable computer as inevitable, an obligation…and every child’s right! And finally, last week I had the pleasure of working in Singapore where once again I learnt much, and took away some wonderful insights. The workshops I was running were supporting a country-wide initiative by Crescent Girls School and Microsoft to share the extraordinary experience of Crescent over the six years of their tablet 1:1 journey with other Singaporean schools. This is an extraordinary school, with exceptional leadership, and when you have a Minister of Education, Dr Ng Eng Hen, who suggests their schools should...strengthen competencies for self-directed learning; tailor learning experiences according to the way that each student learns best; encourage students to go deeper and advance their learning, and of course, learn anywhere….it’s no wonder they are moving along so strongly. As we head towards the end of the year, let’s celebrate the exceptional growth of a powerful idea, that started with just a few 10 year old girls nearly twenty years ago, and today, we now believe touches more than FIVE million K-12 students world-wide. More stories from other places, next time... as always, I’m very interested in your thoughts... Best regards, Bruce. Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:45:00 EST Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=75 As we gathered for what was an extraordinary gathering in June at Point Lookout in Maine, for the Big Ideas Global 1 to 1 Summit, I was struck by both the enthusiasm and energy of those who attended, but even more so by our diversity. We came from many different countries, cultures and communities, and yet now, in 2010 we were realizing what for many has been a dream; that there were now millions of young people in K-12 all around the world who now had an unprecedented freedom to learn. But while we were celebrating achievements and sharing experiences, and (some) Big Ideas, I was also struck by the irony of the situation. Here after now more than 20 years, we had reached that “tipping point” where now people spoke about the inevitability of students having 1 to 1, yet we were faced with a set of unintended consequences that are rather paradoxical. It’s one thing for us to believe in the possibilities of what 1 to 1 might enable, it’s another for that potential to be realized; for it is simply the case that for too many, providing every student within a system, state, district or school with their own personal portable computer has been the single goal-an end in itself, rather than that simply being seen as a strategy, or means to a greater goal-i.e. the learning it could make possible. Such an outcome has always been possible, given an almost natural predisposition to be distracted by technology, however in the case of ubiquitous computing we simply cannot afford to let such a shallow interpretation of the goal of universal access to become the predominant model. Despite many years of protestation about the challenges of 1 to 1, when it comes down to it, providing the personal portable computer to each child is actually the easy part; the real challenge is what happens next? Who is going to build the necessary supports and processes to ensure we don’t just see “more of the same” but with a screen instead of pencil and paper? Who is going to provide the leadership and provocation to ensure this “freedom to learn” provided by the laptop, is not manacled and limited by a lack of leadership and vision about what it makes possible? …and who is going to have the courage to “let go” of redundant practices of the past to embrace the re-conceptualization that is necessary for us to maximize the benefits for our students? Our tipping point therefore, must reflect the scale of the transformation in learning experiences our young people are experiencing as a result of ubiquitous access, NOT the access itself. We must be looking for this “transformation tipping point” as the only real sign that 1 to 1 has been worth the journey, and that our focus, energy..and BIG ideas are making it possible. Thanks again to everyone who gave up their time to share their thinking and ideas with us in June; we look forward to building on your wisdom and insights in the coming months. As always, I’m very interested in your thoughts… Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:30:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=66 Let us reflect for a moment. When we talk about transforming learning, what are we trying to say? Put simply, technology gives students the power to transform both how they learn and what they learn. And by transform we are not talking just about changing the appearance or form of the how or what of learning, but changing the very nature of what makes up learning. We\'ve only seen a tiny glimpse of what is possible. We can find a number of stories from exceptional teachers who have taken up the challenge of proving what can be achieved. But, what has been the exception must now become the norm. Our students, all of them, deserve no less. So, we\'ve really only just begun. That beginning meant we had to give everyone access to technology - kids and teachers alike. When we do that we find man exceptional, courageous teachers to show us what is now possible with learning in technology-rich classrooms. And what happens in classrooms around the world is guided by what we describe as curriculum, and it is curriculum that is now the real source of our dilemma. To illustrate, I\'m reminded of a story from Seymour Papert that gives us a context....he calls it the Parable of the Jet-Powered Stage Coach. \".....imagine an early nineteenth century engineer concerned with the improvement of cross-continental transportation. Someone comes to him with a design for a jet engine. \'Great,\' the engineer says \'we\'ll attach this to stagecoaches to assist the horses.\' When they try they soon see that there is a danger that the engine would shake the vehicle to pieces. So they make sure that the power of the engine is kept down to a level at which it would not do any harm. (It is not on record whether it did any good.)\" Seymour Papert. Technology in the Schools: to support the system or render it obsolete, Milken Exchange on Education, July 1998. Papert uses this parable in the context of schools. I think it is even more appropriate in the context of curriculum. For too long we have ensured that the power of the engine - technology - was kept down to a level at which it would not do any harm - to curriculum. We can no longer \'bolt on\' to our existing notions of curriculum. We have to rethink curriculum, reconstruct it. We need to re-engineer curriculum. Put simply, our \'smokestack\' curriculum is no longer appropriate for a knowledge world. When we give students access to laptops as a natural part of their learning, the door is opened for us to do something significant. Let us not allow this opportunity to pass. Re-engineering does not just mean doing different things, or doing things differently. It means completely rethinking our notion or our understanding of what curriculum is or what it should be. We are way too precious about curriculum as it is provided today; the way we interpret it, the way we defer to it, and the perception we build of the role of curriculum in the broader public eye. If we are to seize the opportunity offered to us at this time, we should start by trying to establish some basic principles that can guide our thinking forward more clearly. Let us first acknowledge that we are not trying to throw out the concept of a reference or guiding framework. What we have to develop are the basic principles for establishing a curriculum of knowledge. Let us examine these basic principles: Curriculum must be built around core values: love of learning, lifelong learning, learning how to learn, working collaboratively. They are already out there and being valued in so many classrooms. We just have not taken them seriously in the context of what is now possible. Curriculum should be simple. Curriculum is supposed to be the guiding light. If we are supposed to be following it, then let us start by making it less complex. We have compartmentalized \'school learning\' so much that we have created a repertoire, an industry of assessment grids and rubrics that have become ends in themselves. Let us get back to our founding objectives, our real purpose for it all. We are trying to develop active learners who love learning, who know how to learn and adapt rapidly, and who can build their own knowledge from information they discover. Simple. Curriculum should be relevant and authentic. As Drucker so succinctly defines it, \'Knowledge is simply information endowed with relevance and purpose.\' There\'s not a lot of relevance in much of our curriculum today, and certainly too little purpose. So let us think of learning just-in-time....not always just-in-case. Curriculum should be a living framework, built around thinking. If we keep it simple and focused around our core values, we can do what we like in terms of the strategies we use to deliver it, without losing sight of those things we stand for, our values. Curriculum should be leverage-able. Why do we think that so much of what we learn under the guise of curriculum is an end in itself? It is sad indeed to think that we do not seek to use curriculum more often as a springboard to great teachable moments, to create wonderful tensions of thought, rather than stay within the safe confines it can be seen to offer. In some ways we may have developed a curriculum of the scared. Now is the time for the curriculum of the courageous. Curriculum should be transparent. What is the real objective of curriculum? To provide a purpose, a reason for learning. Too often it does just the opposite. We must engage, excite and enthuse our students about what opportunities learning offers, and we cannot do that if we continue to cloak our curriculum in shrouds of \'you need to know this\'. Is there not so much out there that can be learned that our focus should now be on making it accessible, desirable and useful? Curriculum should be rigorous. The minute we start tinkering with curriculum, we are accused of softening it. Why? Are we scared that if we make the wrong investment in the early years of schooling, it will take many years to become evident, by which time the damage may be done and be irreparable? Let us never take that responsibility for granted, but let us also not deny the bigger responsibility we have to all young students who enters our classrooms to give them learning that is relevant, useful, and appropriate for the world they will enter when they leave our classrooms....and in the process it will be more rigorous and demanding than the habits we have delivered in the past. Let us dare to step into the future and stop teaching from our past. Edited and reprinted with the author\'s permission. The full article appears in Transforming Learning: An anthology of miracles in technology-rich classrooms. Edited by Jenny Little and Bruce Dixon, Kids Technology Foundation, 2000. Thu, 27 May 2010 10:18:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=60 2010 is unquestionably a time that has given me cause for reflection. Who would have thought when we all embarked on this adventure that we would have achieved so much over two decades?...or maybe you’re thinking the opposite…why has it taken so long! I agree with both thoughts; at times I’m almost overwhelmed when I look back over what has transpired over the past 20 years, at the scale and reach of what has evolved from those early, pioneering days of the early ‘90’s, while I’m also constantly challenging myself and others I work with and for, to do better. In reality of course, it is not 20 years we are celebrating, but rather the vision, or rather sketch, of Papert and Kay from 1968 which was of course, the very first seed any of us had of the possibility that our generation might possess the potential to genuinely revolutionize the place, time, nature and form of learning that young people could experience through access to their own personal portable computer. At that time I was ironically cutting Cobol code on an NCR Century mainframe, dreading its inhumanity, and oblivious to the seed of an idea that has inspired millions since. I reflect on the so many who have been a part of the journey; individual leaders from across education and beyond, inspired students, but most notably those truly visionary early adopting grade teachers, whose foresight and courage to push the boundaries of what this might make possible truly set a path for others to follow. …and yet at times I lament our lapses, in the distractions of so much trivial emerging technology, of language around powerful notions such as transformation, which quickly become appropriated by those at the fringes of incrementalism, and of concepts such as repositories, rubrics and portals, which are in reality too often simply pompous titles to tired old ideas camouflaged to disguise their subversive conservatism. We can do so much better than that..but more about that next time. If you’ve been part of that journey of the past twenty years, take time out to celebrate what you’ve been part of achieving. This is not once in a decade or generation stuff, this is far more than that. This is really about true believers; this is about people who cared enough about what they could and should do for all young people’s education that they sweated, and risked and argued and collaborated in extraordinary ways; they broke the rules about what was possible, they swam against the tide…and in the end they have won. I’ve always believed we don’t celebrate enough about what we achieve in education, and in doing so, we too often fail to acknowledge progress, spirit and valor. Well I’ll save you any thought of caution; to all of you who have made this possible for so many young people around the world, I raise my glass to you...oh, but btw, don’t stop now, the fun’s only just begun! As always, I’m very interested in your thoughts… Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:28:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=57 Great to see our list of pre-conference readings is steadily growing. Hope you\'ve all had time to look over them. If you have any other articles or links that you think might be relevant background reading for our workshop next week at ASB Unplugged, please add them to our resource/reading list. Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:21:00 EST Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=55 One of the first questions I\'ve always been asked by schools considering, or just implementing 1-to-1 initiatives, is around research. \"What research is there to support 1-to-1?\" Currently on aalf.org we have links to more than seventy research papers around 1-to-1. Is that enough to start with? Well evidently not, given my recent observations. It appears that despite the volume of work that has already been completed, there is a need for almost every initiative to commission their own research around 1-to-1.Now in itself that might have some virtue, if each was exploring new aspects of ubiquitous access and its impact on teaching and learning, but that is sadly, rarely the case. Save for a serious literature review to precede any new research, we might actually move our thinking forward. No, every school is not different; despite the fact that every child is. From nearly two decades of experience in more than forty countries; from the experiences of now more than two million young people who have their own personal portable computer, and from much of the thorough research that has already been completed, we do actually know that... - Without the fundamentals of strong leadership, shared vision and effective implementation strategies schools will be distracted from the real task at hand, the impact on learning, and will struggle to sustain or scale an effective long-term 1-to-1 initiative. -While there are many easily identifiable areas of learning that are impacted through ubiquitous access, the really significant, transformational ones only become obvious over the longer-term when there is alignment between the opportunities provided by this new powerful learning medium and teaching practice. -Setting a low, and slow, bar for this transformation of practice is pointless. It challenges no-one. Be bold and ambitious, and your students will be the real beneficiaries. -1-to-1 initiatives are both complex and now relatively straight forward to implement. From all that we have now learnt about successful 1-to-1 initiatives, programs like AALF’s \"21Steps\" provides a reliable framework that takes away the unpredictability that has caused concern in the past. -We do not need pilot programs. If you aren\'t sure about whether you should give your students access to the learning medium of their time, then don\'t, until you are. -While we are well past the need to repeat basic research around 1-to-1, from the outset you should institute an ongoing evaluation and review program that looks for ways to continually improve all aspects of what you are doing. -It should now be taken as given, that ... 1-to-1 means students have 24/7 access; ie they take their laptops home...that is quite simply fundamental to any notion around 21st Century learning 24/7 teacher access is also an important pre-requisite, not the least because it shows professional respect, but also to support learning beyond the boundaries of the classroom. What age or grade you start is not as important as the fact you do start. Targeting younger students has shown significant benefits, and the challenges of traditional assessment are still just temporary barriers to optimizing what older students are capable of achieving. Traditional ideas around \"professional development\" are no longer adequate or appropriate. These initiatives require a reassessment of what is required for professional learning in the 21st century. To be effective it must be continuous, diverse and focus on the learning professional; that is, what does ubiquitous access now make possible for teachers? How does it allow them to improve their craft, to provide more options for learning, to explore complex concepts with their students, in ways they could not do before. Beyond the very fundamentals, it is not, and never has been, about skills development. It\'s about exploring new, powerful ideas..and that is what will engage the learning professional more than anything else. I\'m amused by the seemingly endless amount of what I would call \"reassurance research\". Can we please focus on breaking new ground. Research that is exploring new ideas and new thinking around what this now makes possible. Can we also have the courage of our convictions and beliefs, that what we are doing we know is fundamentally right. Right in that we are simply providing our young people with the learning medium that was not previously available to them; and that if we stumble, make mistakes, that is an essential part of the true practice of research and development. So we learn from it, share what we have learnt, and get on with the job of really exploring what this will make possible for young people. As always, I\'m very interested in your thoughts... Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:10:00 EST Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=49 In recent months I\'ve become more convinced we are finally backing up the discussion around the role of teachers from one of trade to one of craft; from one that is a job, to one that is truly a profession...with some serious action. I know we all work on the assumption that we are all professionals, but to those who honestly reflect on past performance, behavior and attitudes that might at best be an optimistic view. I like Richard Elmore\'s thinking in his comments that \"education is a profession without a practice\"...there is absence of a clear body of knowledge and a clear body of practice. The foundation for any profession must therefore be its core knowledge, learnings and wisdom. Our challenge has always been not just how we can agree on that as a body of knowledge, as Elmore outlines, but more significantly, how that can be best shared across the diversity of people who wish to learn apply it to their practice. If a doctor can now perform an appendectomy through keyhole surgery rather than opening up someone\'s abdomen, then there is a willingness, almost an urgency to share that knowledge; if a dentist can now insert implants rather than provide false teeth, the same applies. However if we improve the process of young people learning to read, a very different approach is taken. ..and to be sure, being literate impacts far more significantly on life\'s chances than having your own teeth! Now not for one minute am I suggesting both the cause and solution to this dilemma is simple, but fundamental to addressing it is the shift to a culture across the teaching community that sees the need to continually reflect on our practice as embedded into our role as a professional. This underpins the very notion of the de-privatisation of our practice; its suggests that we have a professional responsibility to always be asking, \"how can I improve my teaching?\", and it implies that we will do so collegially, with the support of others, including the pedagogical leaders who will become the agents of wisdom sharing. These are an emerging new breed of school Principals who, freed from the burdens of administration through the increasing effective use of technology, are see that they will have an increasingly important role overseeing the quality of the actual learning experiences of their students, through the coaching and mentorship of a team of high quality teachers. Yes, of course there are, sadly, some industrial issues to be overcome in many places, but from what I have seen in places like Victoria, Australia through what their State Ministry of Ed call their Performance and Development culture we are heading in the right direction. They have also just introduced a common instructional framework and language that has been adopted across 1700+ schools, and I have witnessed a fresh enthusiasm among teachers in many of their schools for the notion of Triads, or regular teacher observations as a mechanism to improve their practice. ..oh, and by the way, yes, that does all imply that this emerging pedagogical leadership will see technology embedded practice as offering significant learning advantages to students across all aspects of the school experience. It also suggests that the knowledge required to leverage it will not come from one or two courses we sign up for every year, but rather from the continuous, iterative, and diverse learning experiences we will seek daily as professionals. As always, I\'m very interested in your thoughts... Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:02:00 EST Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=34 Please allow me a few words of “distraction” around technology. While the vast majority of our 1-to-1 conversations around AALF focus on a broad range of topics, most focused on pedagogy and transformation, I think it is timely to share a few thoughts with you around the emergence of new “form factors” of laptops, most notably what are currently known as netbooks. I must firstly say I am somewhat bemused by the breadth of reactions to the emergence of this new category of laptop; on the one hand we have an Australian State Government, New South Wales buying 250,000+ of them for their Year 9 to 12 students, and on the other hand I read the comments of some, who see these netbooks as a “companion” device, and of being “underpowered”. Let’s try and review the situation rationally. First and foremost I would reflect that we seem to still after all these years, be besotted by power. Remember it was a small group of 10 and 11 year old girls who kicked this whole thing off in the early ‘90’s by using a hard-diskless, 8.4” mono screened Toshiba 1000 laptop, that hardly connected to anything…but who managed to build ideas, construct LogoWriter games, develop some robotic applications…and oh and yes, write...more, more often and better. They didn’t realize they didn’t have a very powerful computer in their hands, but they sure had some powerful ideas about what the laptop they had allowed them to do. I would also reflect on the five and half year old tablet I just parted with, which, I’m told had about the equivalent power and capacity of many of these new netbooks. …and somehow it managed to serve me rather well. The only point to note is that the current generation of netbooks have limited multi-tasking capacities, meaning you would not normally want to have more than 2 or at the most 3 applications open at once. My final reflection is that I do note that many, though certainly not all, of the Tier One manufacturers who have released netbooks are finally starting to focus on the need for robustness in their design. Certainly OLPC and Intel’s Classmate set the benchmark with their “one meter drop” test, and hopefully that will become a minimum standard before long also. So above all, the emergence of just one new form factor of “fully functional personal portable computer”,(and btw you will soon see a whole array of various others)…at a very reasonable price, is to be celebrated…certainly a whole lot more useful for students that those overpriced PDA’s that so much money was wasted on! I’m not for one moment saying they’re perfect; I for one would think that they certainly need a 10+” screen as a preference, and I have misgivings about the size of the keyboard for older students and adults on the smaller screened machines… BUT…just hold your breath for another 12 months, and they’ll be running dual-core chips to give the graphics a lift, they’ll have solid state hard-drives which will significantly reduce mechanical failure, they’ll run comfortably for 5-6 hours…and then we’ll have a really affordable Smartbook, or more accurately in Papert’s words, Children’s Machine. And as we move to a position where the Children’s Machine is being bought in the millions, not the hundreds, a thousand more opportunities and ideas are going to emerge for learners, both inside and outside school. The other side-stories will be to see how Apple responds, given their success with the iphone screen technologies and whether the other manufacturers follow Intel’s lead with their great little Convertible tablet which seems to have now brought tablets within most students’ reach. I’ve always been a fan of the tablet form, as it gives students and teachers great versatility, but it’s only recently we are starting to see some really exciting learning applications that genuinely leverage its usability. There. I’ve got it off my chest, now I can go back to the stuff that really matters! As always, I’m very interested in your thoughts… regards, Bruce. Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:52:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=33 When I\'m speaking publicly, I often start by reflecting on the good fortune I have in being exposed to the enormous range of experiences, expertise and wisdom that comes from working across the diverse range of cultures that I\'m exposed to in my travels. Having now worked with government and policy leaders, and educators across more than 40 countries over the past 10 years, I\'m taken not only by those distinct things that separate one culture from the other, but even more so by those things we share. Of all those common ideas and ideals, one that I find most interesting is the widely spread mythology and misunderstandings around teachers\' enthusiasm for using computers, and their readiness to adopt new practice to do so. Let me share my observations. In the past, in many countries, at differing times, following the regular announcement by politicians of the annual \"Ratio Hunt\" (you know, \"we\'ll increase our computer:student ratio to x\" )... there was a commitment to increase teachers\' digital competency. This was then followed by programs that saw teachers attending some form of digital literacy course..and then back to their classroom..too often without access to their own computer, and with little impact. While I will acknowledge that in more recent times we have seen a dramatic increase in the commitment by many visionary governments to either provide or assist in providing teachers with their own laptops, we still have a long way to go. Surely by now they should simply be a \"tool of the trade\" and should be expensed as such. Sometime later comes the move to student 1-to-1, too often without first addressing the most important question in teacher\'s minds...\"What does this ubiquitous access to a laptop make possible for students?\" Yes, we can have teachers using email, and Powerpoint etc etc...but what about a clear articulation of the impact it will have on the learning experiences of their students? What does it mean for a Grade 9 teacher of mathematics, or history? How can it impact on our ability to create better learning experiences for students in physics, in literature, in music? How can this access improve the learning experiences and outcomes for students?..in other words.. \"Show me the Art of the Possible\". Without it, why should any teacher show real enthusiasm for using a computer in their classroom? Why have we been so besotted with digital literacy and \"applications\" and \"integration\", when we have failed to focus on the main game... What does this make possible for young people? Imagine any other industry that tried to introduce technology to its workforce without focusing on the core benefit in the same way; and yet many are still surprised that some teachers might be understandably cautious about moving to 1-to-1. Let\'s from now on, focus on this as our main game. Let\'s stop hiding secrets, and start proclaiming successes. Let\'s stop creating barriers to the answers and start showcasing the extraordinary experiences that to date too few have seen...and then every teacher who is granted the opportunity to explore this new territory will grab it with both hands. Yes, there are some teachers who are cautious and hesitant, but they are not blockers, but rather simply less able to intuitively see what\'s possible. It\'s now our job to show them. There is not a teacher who calls themselves a professional, in any culture, or any country, who after being shown what learning 1-to-1 can make possible-- who after being shown how more students are able to access more difficult concepts, more deeply, across a diverse range of subjects-- will not embrace the technology with both hands...and make that learning possible for their students. Forget File, Print, Edit, and focus our resources and attention on how immersive access allows students to be historians, to explore science as a scientist would, to build their own understandings in mathematics and across disciplines with the medium of their time, a computer. That is the real secret of the uptake and impact of technology in our schools, and that is where we now must now be focused. I\'m interested in your thoughts...regards Fri, 29 May 2009 13:04:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=32 I had an experience recently that I do not think was uncommon. I attended a national conference at which several teachers were running classes displaying what was ostensibly \"best practice\"..but it wasn\'t. Now I know that some now use the term Next Practice, but can I say in either case the problem is the same--its Old Practice, and dare I say it, in too many cases, Bad Practice. I always remember a similar occasion in the \'90\'s, being taken proudly by two different Principals, in two different prominent schools, to their science classrooms to be shown a example of \"best practice\" in a 1-to-1 classroom in which the students were using a Paint program to draw a tripod sitting over a Bunsen burner. Like I said, just bad practice. And yet no-one can be critical of the teachers in either of the above cases; they were simply teaching in the best way they knew how--and there lies the problem, and the solution. In this often discussed world of Open systems, Open content and the like, I look to the concept of Open Practice as an answer. If we reflect back for a moment on my last comment: \"teaching in the best way they knew how\". Here are classic examples of the challenge our profession must urgently face up to if we are to re-imagine what appropriate teaching practice looks like in a 21st Century classroom. If we continue to permit teachers to be seen as the \"lonely artisans\", as my good friend Chris Gerry refers to them, then such artisans will never see the craft as it is performed by others; many of whom may well serve as examples of \"better\" practice. This sometimes described de-privatization of teaching, or Open Practice, underpins what is possibly the single most significant reform we can offer policy makers and educational leaders seeking to bring about a revitalization of the classroom experience for young people in the future. Open Practice however must bring with it much more than that which created the woes of the \'70\'s; bigger classrooms, more noise and students bewildered by old practice in new surrounds. The new view of Open Practice must be built around professional learning communities that are diverse and many; that allow teachers to observe, reflect and most importantly learn from each other, as a life-long career behavior, rather than the current college-based notion of when learning takes place. It must be built on professional trust and respect, rather than skepticism and doubt, and with it a notion of accountability that far exceeds any external high-stakes test. And above all it will reflect a new professionalism for teachers, who will see ongoing and continuous improvement in not only what they teach, but how they teach, and with what mediums they use to develop truly authentic, relevant learning opportunities appropriate for 21st learners. Fri, 29 May 2009 13:02:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=28 We must continually challenge ourselves to explore the impact 1-to-1 classes have on student learning. We, as educators, must continually be asking whether we are doing enough to engage our students in authentic and relevant learning experiences. We must ask ourselves: What steps can we take to support those who are looking to create more powerful and worthwhile learning experiences for their students? What ideas do you have for educators, often in leadership positions, who are looking for strategies to build such commitment in all their staff, not just the one or two highly innovative faculty who in effect might be more the exception than the rule? One suggestion is to provide support through a Technology Coach. The idea of employing peer coaches is not new; however, it is essential that we develop a clear definition of exactly what this role is. *What do you think the role of a Technology Coach should be? *How should it be classified? *What skills are required to be effective in this role? *How might we develop and prepare people for this role? We envision a world in which our students develop creative powerful ideas around exciting projects that have an authenticity and relevance to them that has not been previously possible. That\'s the world to which we are all aspiring. The question is: how do we get there? Fri, 29 May 2009 13:00:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=31 Sustainability is an interesting topic that seems to be getting a lot of airplay at the moment. I have commented on this previously, but the recent One-to-One Computing Conference in Pennsylvania in April highlighted some of the real issues of which we need to be mindful. Sustainability has several dimensions, the first and most obvious being, what is it that you are trying to sustain and why? Sadly, some might answer \"our existing program\" without questioning the value of the learning experience being delivered to students, i.e. 1-to-1 versus anytime, anywhere learning. As the vision of every child having access to his or her own personal portable computer becomes more real, and common, not enough questions are being asked about the vision for learning that should underpin any initiative. Answers to the following questions might be a good starting point to determine the impact such an initiative is really having on your students\' learning, and whether it is truly worth sustaining. Are current learning activities simply replicas of those done before, but done now with technology? I\'d love to hear your thoughts on the questions below, as well as any additional topics you might like to add: * Is it something different, rather than innovative? * Is it genuinely improving the learning experiences for students? If so how? Can you very clearly articulate that improvement? * How is it impacting the lives of your students? * How is immersive access increasing the learning opportunities for your students? * What is the scale of improved experience (ie how often, across which classes, and over what period of time)? Seems to me that too often some might actually be trying to sustain legacy practice, under the guise of a technology initiative, without challenging the fundamentals of what is really going on. So first and foremost, I would plead for a close examination of the impact on the learning experiences of your students. Then, and only then, would I start exploring the other dimensions such as funding sustainability and the options you might consider there. You see, without exception, if the impact in the classroom is significant, enough people will want to sustain the initiative. They will find the necessary funding to make it happen rather than the other way around. Too often people see the funding stream coming to an end, and that becomes the focus of their energies. Get the experience for your students right, and the rest will eventually fall into place. Fri, 29 May 2009 13:00:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=30 It\'s certainly going to be a big year for 1-to-1. I have written previously of my view that there is now incredible momentum around the world towards 1-to-1 learning, and in the words of Malcolm Gladwell, it could be said we are indeed at the \"tipping point\", but tipping \"to what\" is the question that we must address. For most, it is the reality that very soon, many children will have their own personal portable computer; and this in itself could be called extraordinary. But is it? I lament our naivety around this. I\'m saddened by our ability to say one thing and do another, for it seems as much as our political and educational leaders talk of the move to a revolutionary, or at least transformational, digital world of learning, the reality is quite the opposite. It seems as much as we have public acknowledgment of the need to invest in professional development to encourage teachers to adopt \"bold\" practice, the private reality is an insignificant investment in this support. And as much as we build excitement around transforming the learning experience for our young people, nothing or little changes. Too often it comes back to being a simple case of technology distraction, rather than disruption! So let\'s kick off \'08 with a combined will to do something to change all that. Let\'s take this emerging era of \"affordable computing\", and start setting more ambitious goals for what might be possible. We talk about anytime, anywhere learning, but even at its simplest level, too many 1-to-1 schools are still trying to contain the learning inside their walls. We all know that we are still too often looking at subjects like math and even science through \"pen and paper\" eyes. Well now the world of learning for our students can move beyond that. Students preferred learning medium is digital, and many more will have access in the very near future. No longer do we have to waste time drilling students on concepts that have no place in a digital classroom. We now have a very real opportunity to introduce some genuine rigor into those classes and focus their learning around the higher order tasks that 1-to-1 access makes possible. This doesn\'t sound too hard, right? Well to date and for many it has been. We as a global community must set ourselves as leaders to share our experience and expertise and look to guide other decisions too so that \"beyond-technology\" items will be seen as the priority. Then we might indeed \"tip\" towards a real transformation of learning for students which creates new and powerful opportunities for everyone! Fri, 29 May 2009 12:58:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=29 Over the past couple of months, I have been interested to see just how many people I have come across who are reading, or have read Clayton Christensen\'s new book Disrupting Class, How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns(co-authored with Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson). Rarely has a book provoked such breadth, and dare I say it, depth of conversation around educational futures. While I do not want to use this commentary to review the book, I do find the major thesis worthy of some reflection. In short, they suggest that there is a convergence of new technologies that will better address the needs of a group of learners they call non-consumers, who include a large number of students whose needs are currently not being met by the existing services of most schools. These include school refusers, students requiring subjects not currently offered within their schools, students in remote communities, and home schooled students, amongst others. Seems there are already millions of students in these groups, who are looking to use well-crafted on-line, web 2.0 supported courses that provide learning opportunities that would not normally be available to them. Now the precedent for such groups to provide a platform on which these \"disruptive technologies\" could significantly impact mainstream education is clearly outlined, and if their thesis is correct, it adds a real urgency to the steps we are taking to better embrace technology within our schools. This is not book that sets out make unfounded predictions about the impact of technology on education, but rather it seeks to draw our attention to the potential for a collection of emerging technologies to disrupt the role of the institution of school in learning. For whatever parts you may or may not agree with, it grants us a very different perspective on the nature and possibility of fundamental, truly transformative school reform. While I constantly refer to Papert\'s challenge that we do not have enough discussion around the extent and depth of educational change, be it incremental or fundamental, Christensen et al, add a threat to current array of imperatives that are forcing us to rethink \"what school could be\". It is both an challenging and thought-provoking perspective which also puts in context the small steps that providing 1 to 1 access can add to the process. Hopefully, it will greatly expand the necessary conversations around serious school reform that have so far been sadly lacking. Fri, 29 May 2009 12:57:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=27 I enjoy research. I spend much of my time reading it. I also often find myself in sustained and vigorous conversations with colleagues from some of the leading research institutions from around the world...and it\'s time that I value very much. Indeed, the Foundation maintains a register of some of the leading research around 1-to-1 on our site....however, I am also sick and tried of the unrelenting practice of political leaders and educational policy makers who continually seek to justify inaction and limit the scope for innovation in the name of research. One only has to review the mountains of literature around the most effective ways to teach reading and the efficacy of small classes to conclude that too much educational research is based on loose assumptions, inappropriate methodologies, a blatant lack of rigor and ideological bias. Too often the funding base for educational research creates preconceptions about the outcomes, real or perceived, and the volume of research that swamps the education market seems to be more related to tenure or the attraction for doctoral topics, than a genuine need. It really is about time we took stock of the situation. For more than three decades we have seen an increasing stream of research that has targeted our use of technology in schools. What purpose has much of it served, other than to often significantly distract educators from continuing to develop innovative practice, and seek new ways to engage young learners. How can we support innovative teachers taking risks, if every move is covered by a researcher measuring outcomes? Where was the research to back so many of our current, dubious, practices in education? How indeed did all the mountains of research around computer use in schools in the 80\'s and 90\'s not condemn the grossly ineffective use of computer labs, instead of working on the assumption they were inevitable? Where is the parallel to our leading corporations, where good ideas, are keenly sought, encouraged, incubated, and then reviewed for their effectiveness and impact? When we are in midst of a time of potentially enormous transformation in our schools, not least through the integration of technology, it is time that we reflected more closely on the purpose, effectiveness and impact of much of the research that is being carried out. Why don\'t we start by working on the culture of our schools, and encourage those that are seeking to create a culture of innovation. Why don\'t we start thinking carefully about what it really means to support risk-taking in our schools; it seems the only risks people are interested in are about the evils of the net and beyond...how about we support our educational leaders who are creating new agendas for learning within their schools, and seeking to genuinely leverage technology within an immersive environment to truly create worthwhile, authentic learning opportunities. To do this, they must make mistakes, and we don\'t need research to identify every single one of them. What we need is a dynamic, constructive culture in our schools that builds reflective practice into innovation; that sets action research that is embedded into daily practice, and that seeks to continually improve the opportunities offered to young people. With that sort of confidence in the teaching profession, with the sort of freedom that truly reflects the professional teacher, the research that will follow will at last be of real value to the lives of the students in our classrooms. Interested in your thoughts, please add your comments below. Fri, 29 May 2009 12:53:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/bruceadixon/view?PostID=26 I\'m not sure whether you realized it, but there has been a decided change in the conversation around schools of late. It may have been a case of the frog in hot water with the change happening so slowly we weren\'t aware of it, but either way we are now in a very different space to where we were even five years ago, and particularly where we were around the start of this decade. Everybody is talking transformation, and like it or not, some of the issues and ideas that were once the province of a small number of so-called progressives, or dare I say, radicals are now part of the mainstream conversation. This is, for the most part something to be celebrated. I mean we now have a very wide audience including everyone from Michael Barber to Bill Gates challenging the effectiveness of our schools and their ability to meet contemporary needs, and, for the most part, doing so in a constructive way to assist in seeking solutions. I was taken aback by the topics of informal and formal conversation at BETT in London in January, where there was continual discussion around the broad topic of \'what schools should/could be\'; and given these BETT and the events surrounding it were attended by 30,000 educators from across the globe, including more than 50 Ministers of Education, and you start to get the idea that the conversation has indeed changed. So what does this mean? Well in the first instance it should be a very hopeful sign. Finally we are getting some level of broad consensus that we need to rethink or re-imagine the nature of schooling, and the places where learning both on a formal and informal level should take place. That is extremely encouraging, and hopefully the breadth of the audience now engaged in it will contribute to some higher levels of conversation beyond the traditional trivialization of \'schools are failing so let\'s just test more.\' Most importantly, and somewhat contradictory to the gentleman quoted earlier, we MUST ensure that it is informed educators who lead the public debate around these ideas, and not just the norm of journalists and politicians. However, without wishing to put a damper on these developments, we do have significant problems looming, around language and definition. It\'s not a new problem for educational conversations, but with so much at stake, we need to urgently build a shared understanding of exactly what we are talking about when we start to use words like transformation. We\'ve seen the continuous debates around terms like Schools of Tomorrow, Schools of the Future etc., but if we are at a stage where we are seriously wanting to re-envision what school could be, then let\'s get our understandings clear of what might be possible, and most importantly, what are the implications for all the constituents. We are in the most fertile place, certainly in my lifetime, for us to challenge many of the norms that many of us didn\'t think would ever be challenged, and there is an eagerness for powerful ideas coupled with a courage to deliver on those in ways that I believe is unprecedented. At the extreme ends you only have to look at the ambition and boldness of so many emerging countries that are literally betting the bank on improving educational outcomes for their young people, and leveraging technology in an endeavor to make it possible. In developed countries the microscope has highlighted what amounts to systemic failure in too many places, particularly in the ways in which under-privilege has been too readily accepted as an excuse for underachievement; and again much of the conversation is highlighting how 1-to-1 access for young people might be one key part of the solution. How we might best seize this opportunity is our biggest challenge; for one thing is sure, if we don\'t there is a real possibility the conversation will be hijacked and all the legacies and ghosts of the past will re-emerge. Let\'s make sure that doesn\'t happen. Interested in your thoughts. Fri, 29 May 2009 12:51:00 EDT Bruce Dixon (bruceadixon)