I thought I'd take a few minutes and reflect a little on the progress made in "flipping" my classroom. I began by following the advice of a fellow Michigan educator, John Sowash. In a presentation he created he suggested by starting with something simple and small -- a lesson you already have materials for. I thought this was good advice and I started organizing my lesson on "Consequences of Industrialization".

My first step past this was to create an introductory video that explained the process, purpose, and expectations. I thought it would be enough to post these videos to my class website, Mr. Bruce's History. However, it became obvious to me that the easiest way to manage these videos would be to upload them and manage them through a blog. So, knowing how functional, simple, and manageable Posterous is, I created a space and called it mrbruceshistory.posterous.com (what else!?). 

Today I assigned the first true Vodcast, "Consequences of Industrialization" and I believe I got all my talking out in it. Students saw the blog for the first time today and found downloading the videos to be crazy easy, and students helped each other out, showing each other how to save them to iTunes and put them on iPods. They seem to to be generally welcoming to the idea of me not talking in class. 

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After three months of painstakingly pushing students to complete assigned readings and other homework assignments prior to coming to class on a given date, I've decided that it is not worth my time to begin an in-class activity to a mixed bag of students. After writing that sentence, I realize that the frustration of getting that out has two effects: 1) I feel better after sharing it and 2) it probably makes little sense to my reader. Let me back up...

For those of you who don't know, I teach 2nd survey (1877-present) U.S. History to 9th grade students in a rural public school in southwest Michigan. It is my passion to provide history instruction that follows the "Thinking Like a Historian" model of historical inquiry to break the traditional view of what history education looks like in the classroom (see my Syllabus for more).

Our district is in its 4th year fully 1:1 with our students running around with MacBooks. Despite our growth, we still have great strides to make. As a district we have yet to make the paradigm shift that should be expected of a laptop program in its 4th year, and many of our teachers maintain old habits and expectations. Why does this matter in this post? Mostly because the issues I and other teachers try to deal with regarding the level of student-centered technology integration come very slowly to students who have not been taught to consider for themselves what the purpose of the tool is in their possession. Rather, they are told what to do, what not to do, and run from class to class learning the nuances of each teachers' system...

Back to U.S. History... I strongly desire to maximize the class time available for "history labs" where students take the content from their reading and apply it to primary and secondary document sets selected around an essential question or dispute. It is their task as an individual (or pair or small group) to analyze the documents following a texting protocol ("Text, Subtext, Context" -- from Bruce Lesh), and develop a conclusion based on what the evidence says to them. This is "doing" history.

However, if a majority (or at best a significant minority) of my class has failed to complete the assigned reading/homework, then my in-class activity -- however cool and authentic it may have been -- is an exercise in futility. It will never produce the intended results, and I'll be bashing my head against the wall shortly following 1st hour bellwork...

Some of you may be thinking that it may work to read in class and take notes as a group so that all students have the same base-line. This way they can complete some primary source analysis at home. Seems good, but any teacher knows that there are some assignments that you want to be present for. Math and science teachers know students who need support, encouragement, prompts, etc... History is no different when facilitated this way. I want to be there with my kids as they struggle to understand a letter, memo, picture, article, cartoon, etc., from an event so that I can put out fires, clear misconceptions, and challenge where necessary. I can't do that if they are at home.

But what if they weren't expected to read? What if it wasn't a worksheet? What if they just had to watch/listen to what they would normally have gotten the day before in class. What if they could watch/listen to me and pause to write notes down? What if I could have all of my class time devoted to the sourcing/texting analysis of my 15 year old historians are expected to do? Flip the classroom... School work at home, homework at school. 

So long story short, reverse instruction, or "flipping" my classroom may serve as a catalyst for the change I expect to see in my students' outcomes. I look forward to sharing how it goes as I will attempt it next week. Wish me luck!

For more on the Flipped Model, see Vodcasting and the Flipped Classroom. For more about historical inquiry and "Thinking Like A Historian" see the Wisconsin Historical Society partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater website at wisconsinhistory.org. Also, see Why Won't You Just Tell Us The Answer? by Bruce Lesh at Amazon.

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So...I created this site and purchased the domain for the purposes of using this as my website and portfolio while I made my way through a PhD program in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology through Michigan State University. I've since made the decision to discontinue my pursuit of the degree program and focus on priorities that I believe fall inherently above that. See the letter I composed explaining withdrawal below. 

Since then -- May 2011 -- I've not done much here. I like the site. I want to blog. I understand the benefits to me personally and professionally. But, the site needs to be retrofitted to accommodate the current me. All my previous posts will be maintained here and archived, but I'm looking for a change. I'm open to suggestions for a site name and for visual remodeling -- comment below. So pardon my dust while I fix it up real good.

Thanks again for visiting. I look forward to getting back into the swing of things. 

Withdrawal.doc Download this file

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Evolution and Technology.doc Download this file

Testing to see what it looks like when I mail a document from the Pages app in my iPhone or iPad to Posterous.

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Just used and browsed the "Open Library", a project of the Internet Archive (www.archive.org). This has been, and will continue to be, an invaluable resource for me as a U.S. History teacher seeking to provide relevant and meaningful primary and secondary sources to encourage and promote historical thinking in my classroom.

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Posting this entirely from my iPhone, I wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to see Carmen's gymnastics recital and "Olympics". It was a great year.

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Yes, Mr. Alter. How could I, a teacher working 40+ hours in school and at least 20 more out of school to provide the absolute best instruction and environment for my students for decreasing appreciation, listen to and respect Diane Ravitch? The real question is, how could I have been so mistaken? You are my new voice, Mr. Alter, I thank you for speaking on my behalf and defending myself and my students tirelessly and being conscious of our needs on a level fundamental to academic success. Your connection to public schools must be close for you to have developed such a solid and intimate understanding of what is best for our schools and education on a national level.

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One of many course requirements for the EPET Hybrid PhD cohort is the following created for CEP 933 - Quantitative Methods in Educational Research II. Student groups were asked to create a clip highlighting, exposing, or empahsizing a course concept or question (or weakness). This is what Team Bernoulli came up with.

Team Bernoulli is comprised of Karen Bedell, Lawrence Bruce, and Jessica Wicks. During units two and three, conversations amongst the team focused on the mysteries of ANOVA and Multiple Comparisons. Of particular concern was the cloudiness with which we understood the complete difference between planned comparisons and post hoc analysis. What made this even more muddy was the similarities between the different test procedures shared between them. 

We shared a comfortable understanding about the reason why multiple comparisons are necessary, as well as the concerns with testing multiple comparisons for Type I and Type II error rates. Thus we used what we did know as a basis for making clear what wasn’t. For us, the distinction between and amongst the several multiple comparison procedures and the appropriate application necessitated a TAC, with it’s foundation on what we do understand.

The resulting TAC is the product of our attempt to make clear multiple comparison using two key figures, A. Priori and Post Hoc. These characters will describe the rationale for multiple comparisons, definitions of statistical power and Type I and II error, and provide an overview of the different scenarios in which certain tests would be appropriate.

Our chosen format for this TAC allows for the leisurely listener to enjoy and appreciate the content within a respectable level of depth of understanding - not too deep so that I’m lost, but still accomplishing the explanatory goals. We believe that this format combined with appropriate and clear visuals offers more than a “how-to” or demonstration video, but rather one that is memorable and can serve as a reference.

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As I find myself back to the grind after a week off, there is some unfinished business that needs some attention. For Spring Break, my family (wife, daughter, and myself) flew out to Mesa, Arizona to spend some time visiting my in-laws and playing some golf. While Arizona promises a great deal of sun and warmth that you just can't get in Michigan, for the history student it also offers countless volumes of oral history due to the significant 70-and-older population that reside there.

Near the end of our stay, it was brought to my attention that the landlord of the condo that my in-laws were renting was a veteran of World War II and that he would love the opportunity to talk with me about his memories from that era. So Friday afternoon I spent about two hours talking with Carl Backes. 

Carl owns several apartments within Casa de Paz, a small complex of old army barracks-turned-condos in Mesa, Arizona. Carl is 98 years old and looks about 70; the only thing slowing him down is the need to use a walker. His memory is sharp, and his wit is still on target.

What was I hoping for from this "interview"? I went with the expectation that Carl would help me greater understand how we remember WWII. This exploration is not my own. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of listening to John Bodnar, an historian from Indiana University and author of The 'Good War' in American Memory. He spoke at a celebratory dinner marking the completion of a Teaching American History grant received and administered by the Battle Creek Schools Consortium. That evening Bodnar described the essence of his book and defined for us how America as a culture has collectively stored one of the greatest eras in our history.

The general idea that he suggests is that there are two general "memories" of WWII. The first originates from the heroic and honorable storytelling of sources such as Tom Brokaw (The Greatest Generation) and Stephen Ambrose (Band of Brothers). The work of these authors promote the view that WWII was necessary, morally justified, and elevated American society above the cruelty of the world. The alternative "memory" is rather different and originates from the veterans themselves and is perpetuated by their families. The consensus among that contingency is that the war was horrifying and the events within could never be justified for any reason. What comes of it is a deep mistrust of authority and a disbelief of what is "sold" to the public. This cynicism is evidenced in novels by Kurt Vonnegut and James Jones, both of whom served during WWII.

John Bodnar suggests that as the generation WWII veterans are becoming fewer and farther between, our collective memory is shifting more heavily toward the first, honorable view that has made successful movies out of Saving Private Ryan and the HBO series Band of Brothers. I intended to frame my conversation with Carl around understanding the existence of these conflicting memories according to Bodnar's assertions.

Carl never saw combat. His initial assignment was as quartermaster because of his experience with management of supplies. However, he was pulled from basic training after the commanding officer of his company learned he could read, write, and speak German. Carl described how his mother was Austrian and came to America with her sister for an education and settled in Chicago. He was ordered to pack up his foot locker and report to Alabama where he would finish basic training as an officer. He would serve as 2nd Lieutenant of Camp Opelika (Opelika, Alabama) and oversee 4,000 prisoners of war, mostly German, from 1942 to the end of the war. His service ended with the war, and he laughingly declares his status as "decommissioned" because as far as he knows he can still be called into service at 98.

His insight into the collective responses and reaction to America's involvement in WWII echoed as brilliantly in Carl's memory as Roosevelt's enunciation of "I hate war...", which Carl says he can still hear. This phrase was spoken as early as 1936, and was repeated several times as FDR promised America that he would work to keep the U.S. out of war, while urging Americans toward the maintenance of a prepared and defensive posture. Carl also recalled listening to the radio address that President Truman offered on August 6, 1945 announcing the use of the first of what would be two atomic bombs against Japan. Carl recalled the following phrase from this address to be rather vulgar and unnecessary: "The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold." He understood then that the comment was an expression of vengeance and it fell upon his ears as unreflective of how most Americans felt. As he recalled WWII and specific items, Carl offered suggestions toward his greater perspective.

Carl made a few comments that provide some insight into the dueling perspectives from our collective recollection of WWII. He shared that while most American's supported the war in actions, behaviors, and sacrifices, most did not want to go to war - even after December 7. Carl alluded to the massive efforts that American's engaged in toward the production and end of the war and the consensus that all Americans felt a sense of duty toward their supportive actions.

What was clear, however, was that Carl did not share in the cynical, distrusting perspective that Bodnar suggests veterans to have from the era. When asked how things changed as a result of the war, he shared that the most remarkable part of the war was its galvanizing effect. He asserted that no one today could ever "fathom the enormity of the situation" and he agreed with Brokaw's retelling of the "greatest generation" and how it took "dedication, and honor, and trust, and feeling to end that darn war." He told me that he has spoken to several veterans and of those who fired weapons or took part in the fighting most refuse to speak about it. He mentioned his conversations with a veteran who was among the 60,000 captured at Bataan during the early losses incurred to the Japanese in the Philippines. This gentleman will tell you everything he did as a navy mop-man after he was rescued, but nothing from before.

After listening to the interview with Carl, and going through parts of the conversation, I'm left to wonder why these persectives exist. Does Carl differ because he never saw combat? Are we at risk of losing a critical mass of our collective memory as silent veterans pass away? Prior to my next visit, I aim to read Bodnar's book, as well as Brokaw, in order to prepare myself for other visits with WWII veterans. There's too much at stake to allow "the greatest generation" to pass without illuminating the WWII era.

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So I was sitting in a session by a few teachers from Onekama (spelling?) on using Movie Maker in English and Social Studies. One of the presenters mentioned background audio tracks paired with video and someone in the audience asked about how that was done. These teachers had students down in the student showcase earlier this afternoon and were in the room for this session. So... the teacher asked the student up to demonstrate. The clip is him explaining the process, which is well received by the audience.

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What is the ideal school? If you could design a school, what would it look like? This past Sunday evening, the CBS "news magazine" 60 Minutes aired a segment by Katie Couric that brought to light a possible response to those questions. It also addressed questions regarding a very contemporary belief about what is wrong with schools. However, it left me questioning if we will ever come to a consensus on what the ideal school really is.

Titled "The $125,000 Question", Couric introduces us to The Equity Project Charter School (http://www.tepcharter.org/), a "New York City charter school founded on the idea of hiring the best teachers by paying them $125,000, while denying them tenure." (from 60 Minutes website) Seems like a good plan, right?

The Equity Project Charter School is based on the notion of paying teachers commensurate of their ability: find the absolute best teachers and pay them well. With a rigorous hiring process complete with an audition, regular evaluations by administration and colleagues, video lesson study, and termination if they fail to meet expectations, the teachers are pushed to pursue perfection. A perfection that is based on one understanding of what good teaching is.

As I sat watching the 60 Minutes segment, I wanted to be supportive of the school's goals. I wanted to see how this school employed cutting edge instructional strategies to transform learning to meet the growing demands expected of 21st century citizens. However, that wasn't what we witnessed. 

What we saw were traditional classrooms where these "best-of-the-best" teachers employed rote-and-drill practices with laser precision in order to achieve one hundred percent compliance from students. We saw students engaged in tasks that are based on what the multitude of Americans recall from their own time in the classroom, back when basic skills and literacy were enough to drive our economy. It looks good on national television to an ignorant public to witness one teacher with that kind of control over a group of students. What it was not was the classroom that reflects the messy nature of constructive learning. Students were not working in cooperative settings with small group tasks.There was no substantive conversation. There was no shred of 21st Century Skills. Teachers and best practice were portrayed as the same old "sage on the stage" that we all remember. 

Unfortunately, I was unable to support this school's practices. I became disappointed at what I witnessed. Giving a revolutionary idea the benefit of a doubt, I probed their website for evidence of instructional practices reflective of the kind of education our 21st century students need. As I thumbed through their website looking for evidence of breakthrough pedagogy, I was unable to identify practices resembling what I've seen from what I would consider "awesome" teaching. It seems as though the broadcast ignores the critical thinking and creative problem-solving that we expect from our students; as though creativity and innovation are unnecessary and that memorization and drilling are what make sound education. It should be noted that this school was unable to outperform their counterparts in NYC... 

And then there's the bit at the end about the problem of teachers' unions and the protection of "bad teaching". The current mood in America is that teachers' unions are stripping America of it's education by promoting the tenure of educators that fail to meet the performance standards that are expected in other sectors of the workforce. This is reflected in the 60 Minutes segment, leading more to believe that the solution to the problem is eliminating the right to protect teachers from dismissal. Additionally, the situation in the legislature in the Midwestern states of Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio over stripping teachers of their collective bargaining rights leaves people questioning the seemingly luxurious benefits packages and the lavish lifestyles of teachers. For a poke at this, I enjoyed a clip from the Daily Show over the national frenzy over Wisconsin, "Angry Curds", that highlights the growing movement against teachers' collective bargaining ability.

While I can agree with the notion that unions have perhaps focused more on the plight of educators rather than on protecting the sanctity of education, blaming unions and teachers for the state of our current educational crisis is an ignorant assessment of the problem. There are issues that we ignore that have a far greater impact on student learning and achievement than teacher quality. Poverty and home life rank as paramount in this list. Please take the time to view a Daily Show Interview with Diane Ravitch. I dare you to read her book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System". 

If you ignore hype and media and allow yourself to see a larger picture, what you'll find is that our educational system has reached its breaking point and the controversy is a response to an upheaval that is yet without direction, a reaction to the collective sense that the system as it exists can no longer function to meet the needs of the 21st century. What the controversy lacks is the collective first step: identifying the PURPOSE of our educational system. Once purpose has been clearly established, defined, and has unanimous support of the civic body, then a clear plan can be designed for the innovative future America has in store. 

Seems simple enough. Why make it any more complex than that?

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I've grown to appreciate Twitter for many things. As a news feed, I am as in touch with world events as I have ever been without visiting any news sites. It eliminates my need for RSS feeds by following individuals and organizations that I would normally have subscribed to. I can also be places that I am not. Events such as #educon that are Tweeted and hash-tagged keep me in conversations about events even though I'm not there. 

One of the most unexpected benefits of Twitter has been it's ability to spark my curiosity and serve as a groundswell of ideas from disconnected tweets. I trust that I share this with many of the people I follow. 

One of the many things that caught my attention as I panned through my Twitter feed recently was a blog post by George Couros (@gcouros). His web site, "The Principal of Change" serves as his outlet for all the things he encounters as a K-12 administrator and his thoughts and reflections from the educational realm. Anyway, he posted "The Ideal Classroom?" on Thursday and essentially pondered whether or not his school's new 1:1 laptop program would facilitate the "ideal classroom" for his students and teachers and provide the personalized, passionate, creative learning that is promoted by educational reformers at all levels.

What is the ideal classroom? If you're an educator this question has crossed your mind. For some, this question has become a pursuit, a drive, a passion. I find myself in that category. Considering my educational pursuits in Educational Technology and Educational Psychology, this should be expected.

Two years ago, I started looking around my classroom, looking at my students, and looking at the resources at our disposal. With every student accessing a laptop whenever the need arises, it became clear that my instructional potential could go further. That last statement seems pretty obvious, I know. However, the overwhelming evidence is that technology and computing fails to produce the transformation in teaching and learning that should be expected. Larry Cuban set forward this argument in Oversold and Underused. His study in a pair of school districts in Silicon Valley, California made it clear that while the availability of computers in the hands of teachers and students has been increasingly available, instruction and pedagogy continues to remain largely unchanged.

So what is it then? What is the ideal classroom? 

As the 2008-2009 school year came to a close, I cultivated several disparate ideas into one seemingly cohesive package and wrote "Mr. Bruce's Teaming Handbook". This was to serve as the basis for procedure, protocol, and convention of my 9th grade U.S. History classes. This was to be my first year in that curriculum after matriculating up with the 8th grade students with whom I was finishing the school year. I've shared it at the bottom of this post.

I hoped for a collaborative setting, where students took history class far beyond the walls of the classroom; a classroom that existed only as needed, sparking the engagement in historical inquiry that would drive student learning and discovery. Student groups would process and produce their learning as though they themselves were the owners of their education. That's the ideal situation.

After a few months into the school year, the enthusiasm began to fizzle. Class activities began to slump, groups started to disintegrate, and engagement waned. I urged students to recall how different this class was from the others they had, and how much more it offered them if they would just stay the course. But I was beginning to tire, as well. This classroom required a great deal of energy from me; much more than I had anticipated. Group blogs and wikis (see handbook) required more direction and instruction than I was expecting. Where did my ideal classroom go?

Since that school year ended, I decided to lay off that concept until I could put my finger on just what went wrong. Unfortunately, It has become clearer that what was wrong had nothing to do with the plan, or my execution of it. In fact, I may not have even been able to work out the bugs and launch my 2.0 version. The problem was rooted in the culture of teaching and learning itself. 

When students left my classroom each day, they experienced a far different learning environment than I had hoped to foster. They left my classroom of digital storytelling to go down the hall to worksheet's and packets. Taking notes in my class was a group expectation, not a graded assignment taken from a slideshow. Students who failed to meet deadlines were subject to group social pressure and were accountable to those with whom they worked, rather than being punished with an arbitrary point value deducted from the overall assigned value of the task. They would leave a place where they determined the value of their work and learning, and found that everywhere else, technology had been superimposed on the classroom and limited their educational opportunities.

Many of my students found the comfort of worksheets and handouts was easiest. Producing a music video for two 19th century songs was hard. Critical thinking is hard. Creative expression based on historical understanding is a challenge. But it's harder to sell the value in that kind of education to 15 year olds who are pushed by an archaic grading system to meet arbitrary deadlines for mindless tasks.

An ideal classroom cannot exist without the ideal school.

I had the pleasure of meeting Jason Ohler at a Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) Conference a few years ago in Detroit. He presented a few sessions that weekend, but his overall message was on the importance of Digital Citizenship. I fear that his sessions and what he had to offer were overlooked and undervalued that weekend. I may have even failed to completely understand the extent to which the following question needs to be addressed in contemporary education: "What does it mean to grow up and learn in the 21st century?"

Ohler recently published a book titled Digital Community, Digital Citizen, and has written articles to support it. His most recent appeared in Educational Leadership. "Character Education for the Digital Age" presents Ohler's "two-lives" perspective; that today's students "should live a traditional, digitally unplugged life at school and a second, digitally infused life outside school." Ohler follows this assertion with a description of why this is bogus and how it can be remedied. I particularly appreciated his perception of the "Ideal School Board". 

The reason why I reference this article was to suggest that the failure of my ideal classroom was a product of this "two-lives" concept. Ohler suggests a character education based on redefining social values and principles such as respect, honesty, and empathy to reflect the changes in our digital communities and practices. This would promote the extension of technology into classrooms by naturally providing students with a greater sense of purpose for technology tools. So far electronic device manufacturers and social networking entrepreneurs have purposed technology for our students' lives, not education. The ideal school must take the lead in educating students in this manner so that the ideal classrooms can exist and thrive.

When George Couros asked about personalized instruction and ownership at the classroom level, the real question must be addressed higher first. While there are shining classrooms in every school building real, sustainable, and transformative education with integrated 21st century tools must begin at a larger degree.

mr_bruce_s_teaming_handbook.pdf Download this file

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Sorry for the title, but I can't help but feel a bit "bound-up", so to speak, in terms of my written voice. If you look at my next most recent post, it's been a few months since I've posted anything. Punya Mishra, my doctoral advisor (see http://epetphd.ning.com/), has suggested on numerous occasions to blog daily for a period of time until you feel that "regularity" that we all desire. His own web site is updated regularly with posts from daily and weekly thoughts and musings, so he serves as a great example for me. What a good advisor.

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As a U.S. History teacher I strive to produce lessons and procure content that stirs my students to feel history as much as possible. Historical empathy is not an easy thing to conjure up. For help I have often turned to Howard Zinn and his “Voices from a People’s History of the United States” and other sources that provide a voice for those whom were cast aside in the history books to make room for presidents and senators. While looking ahead to the consequences of the American Industrial Revolution, I came across a timeless reflection on the social roots of poverty and it got me thinking about the appropriation of technology today.

In 1885 Henry George addressed a crowd in Burlington, Iowa. As a 19^th century human rights activist, George worked to debunk the contention that poverty was the fault of the individual. His poignant message from last century floored me. In “The Crime of Poverty” George proclaimed that with all of the enormous powers of the human brain, people are still subject to toil and work all day, all week, and still fall short of the promise of humanity, or rather, they are being robbed of that promise. He states:

“Think how invention enables us to do with the power of one man what not long ago could not be done by the power of a thousand… We have not yet utilized all that has already been invented and discovered… In every direction as we look new resources seem to open. Man’s ability to produce wealth seems almost infinite -- we can set no bounds to it.”

Now, where George takes this is where paradigms diverge. George’s solution rested in the socialist view of an equal distribution of wealth and resources. However, we all can agree with the utter truth he speaks on the vastness of human potential. And yet there’s a problem. His message is 135 years old. Haven’t we continued to surpass great achievements and redefine society through innovation and technology? Every generation trumps the achievements of their parents. Americans have witnessed the greatest century technologically in human history, and yet we can’t seem to figure out how to proceed in educating our children for our future.

The problems and questions regarding the American educational system is complicated by multiple opposing parties and special interests that all claim to have the highest stake in education. All the while, the voices of those who fall victim to the poverty of education remain silenced. If we as an advanced society have learned anything it is that we can communicate. Students in our classrooms “deviantly” text, email, post and reply to status updates on Facebook, and network through multiple sources for a variety of reasons. They have been appropriating resources toward these ends naturally while academics and policymakers hash out theories of learning in the 21^st century. The ecology of the school system changes some when teachers fear about how they are referred to on Facebook. A student recently told me he advocated on my behalf in response to a Facebook post regarding my class. What surprised me most about this is that the student shared his behavior, not that those conversations exist, because they do more than we know.

The dual reality behind this is that just as poverty is a crime of which the poor are victims, our education system is robbing our students of something that has great potential value. Society has progressed to a point where there should be no need for federal dictates and top-down initiatives, yet that is what we are subjected to. Where the toiling masses a century ago were incapable of rising above their situation, individuals and groups today can. It took a few decades for the working class of the 19th century to secure a better life and provide greater opportunities. I wonder how long it will take for the today’s masses to generate for themselves what no one else can provide.

I’d like to see what would happen if students became “self-aware” like SkyNet from The Terminator. We all know that the tools exist to allow them to launch a coordinated effort, yet this does not happen. What would it take to empower them to take control? 

We all know we are better than what we’ve become, yet we can’t reach a consensus as to exactly what that is or how to proceed from here. As a result, a century later, we are still robbing individuals from the promise of humanity. It seems educating for our future has us all tied up.

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Humans have been projecting into the future forever. Prophecy, fortune-telling, divination, and the like have been staples of every society in human history. Whether it has been divine intervention or simple prognostication, we seem to be enamored with people who claim to have a prediction of future events. Contemporarily, much of what has been expected of our futures have been related to the role technology plays in society.

Consider the innovations throughout recent history that have purported to “revolutionize” aspects of daily life. The automotive industry is ripe with examples of innovations that were way ahead of their time. Electric cars were made and sold as early as 1899 (PBS Nova, http://goo.gl/5Hh6), but never revolutionized automobiles, or travel. These technologies were “contextually constrained”, as coined by Larry Cuban. If we look into why these innovative designs for automobiles failed to make a lasting impact on the industry and our travel, we see factors of preference (speed, reliability, price, weight, function, technology, etc.) dynamically altering the innovation’s ability to establish a foothold in the market. Today, these innovations are making a comeback due to the contextual changes in society that allows for them to exist and be somewhat popular. 

Similar statements of the purported impact of an innovation on a society have been made regarding learning and education. For instance, when motion pictures became mainstream through the 1920’s, documentaries were a fixture of the purposes for this new media. Moving images had a way of powerfully relating content to large audiences. Some claimed that these films would revolutionize education by removing the need for experts in the classrooms and thereby reducing the cost of education, allowing students to learn from a single, standard source. While making sense in theory, it never panned out (no pun intended) in practice. Again, a number of contextual factors disabled this innovation from revolutionizing a system of learning. The dynamic interaction of these forces continue to mar educational progress today.

This is not meant to state that educational film was indeed the best solution for streamlining education. Without it the system has been achieving some of the high marks that America has enjoyed intermittently since the 1920’s. Rather, it is meant to serve as an example that when experts insist a technology will transform education and learning, they have often been wrong. Extending this into the 21^st century, we see this same pattern emerging as a significant abundance of technology in classrooms failing to result in a transformation of teaching and learning.

Over ten years ago, Larry Cuban and a team of “investigators” looked into this issue to identify the impact that computers have had, locally and nationally, on teaching and learning. The thought driving the study was that with the rapid and expensive increase in available technology, education would be transformed through it and would result in deeper learning and higher achievement. The unanticipated finding was that this was not the case. With too few exceptions, technology, even where it was most pervasive (intentional use of the adjective), sustained traditionally held teaching and learning practices.

The outcomes and predictions that Cuban identified (Oversold and Underused, 2000) were in bitter contrast with popular movements then and are even more contrasting today. However, the idea that entrenched historical and contextual factors work to inhibit that which has potential to severely alter education in America is a complex matter. Cuban dismisses technophobia and teacher resistance as reasons why technological innovations don’t result in what is expected. Are we just not convinced that it works? Is it a lack of perception? A shallow near-sightedness? Regardless, technology continues to pour into schools at rates presumably unimaginable to Cuban ten years ago. It is anticipated that spending on educational technologies exceed $65 billion this year (THE Journal, http://goo.gl/33KI). If no marked change in teaching and learning exists through increased resources, what is all this for?

Really, that’s the question that should drive all educational spending. Perhaps it does. When money is spent, don’t you always have a purpose? However, external pressures have led to increases in technology spending, which in turn have reduced the focus of purpose. Public officials, corporate executives, marketing agencies, parents, and media all share in influencing schools to increase spending on technology. Pressures stemming from competitive marketing across districts lead to increased budget items for technology (and better resources in general). These amount to technology being acquired and provided without purpose. Cuban asserted that when considering whether or not to provide technologies, policy makers should ask “to what ends?” 

There is a power in the purpose of a technology. I’ve often stated that it is not the tool that matters, but rather in the leveraging. What this means is that a tool’s effectiveness relies upon the human use of it. Despite our advancements in science technology depends upon the human. In 1968, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke captivated audiences with 2001: A Space Odyssey. The theme that was challenged through the story was that of man’s battle with the technology he created. Similar themes have existed in contemporary film, such as iRobot, where assistive artificial intelligence determines that humans are endangering themselves, and must therefore be controlled, or the Terminator series, a war of man against machine after a defense system called SkyNet becomes self-aware.

Back on track, we can see that these fabrications exist only in imagination. Without the human the tool exists only as an artifact. Bringing this concept back into teaching and learning, technologies have powerful potential. But these can only be executed through the gatekeepers of the classroom: teachers. Reform movements of all kinds fail in large part due to lack of support or “buy-in” by these gatekeepers. This suggests that teachers have to be coerced, manipulated, bribed, or otherwise convinced that something is good for them. In a recent email conversation with Sean Nash, he said “making change by telling folks what to do is rather old and busted.” So true.

When people ask why is education policy at the forefront of national issues today, my response is typically the assertion that schools need to be told what to do, because for too long they have failed to do so on their own. Within a school, faculty often complain about increasing demands on their practice that is imposed by an administrator. Again, my response is that if they had been serving as a professional on their own, such top-down measures would not be needed. Regarding education and technology, a recent assertion from Will Richardson says it best: “We should all be innovating, testing new models, failing, reflecting, trying anew, sharing the learning with others who are working on the edges in their own classrooms and projects.” (http://goo.gl/7Si6) If we do not, we fail to progress.

This extends beyond the classroom, beyond the schools, and into communities. Clayton Christensen, in Disrupting Class (2008) identified his predictions for the future role of technology in learning. The feature element of his work was to prove that “head-on attacks almost never work.” Rather the true power for educational change lies within those whose individual stake is at risk through disruptive innovations that challenge the status quo and provide reasonable alternatives to non-consumption:

“...when disruptive innovators begin forming user networks through which professionals and amateurs -- students, parents, and teachers -- circumvent the existing value chain and instead market their product directly to each other as described above, the balance of power in education will shift.” (p. 142)

When schools fail to provide the learning that students demand, Christensen predicts, it will be a disruptive innovation, a user driven network, afforded by technology that will reform education. Is this already happening? Such networks already exist, such as the Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge (connect.downes.ca/index.html), which organizes Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). These inherently participatory networks are possibly at the forefront of what is yet to come.

Combining these somewhat disparate ideas offers a bit of a complexity. The true link between technology being ineffective in transforming education and technology being a driving force behind education is the idea of purpose. How can purpose be wrestled away from simply social, communicative, entertainment, and gaming devices back into a meaningful path of collective advancement? Can our youth learn to re-purpose innovations that they’ve already purposed for the aforementioned uses toward the ends of collaborative, collective advancement and problem-solving tools? Within these questions lay the foundation for prediction.

Crystal Castles, by Frogman

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