Shift to the Future

I have been out visiting a lot of schools over the past few months learning about culture, demographics, economic status of neighbourhoods, existing and historical use of and interest in technology, and capacity to weave technology into common practice.  My District has a fascinating array of schools.  I was in a 105 year old secondary school last week in a highly urban area with a rather low socio economic status.  The school is quite oddly designed and has an institutional feel and look, but I suppose 100 years ago architects and District officials thought differently about school.  I also visited one of our newest elementary schools which replaced a very old school but retained part of it for heritage reasons.  This new school is a 21st century design with open aggregation spaces, learning communities for grade pairs with varied sizes of learning studios (aka classrooms).  It is designed for collaboration and public display.  They have a “tech loft”...

Do you remember the days of film projectors in schools when the teacher would roll this complicated device in, fumble around with the reels of movie tape trying to load it up.  There was only one such device in the school and it was shared amongst all the teachers, well at least the ones that could figure out how to use it.  Or, how about calculator labs?  Calculators used to be “sophisticated” computers that cost hundreds if not a thousand dollars.  Kids couldn’t afford to buy and bring these to school.  Even if they could, they might lose or damage their calculator, or someone might steal it.  So, schools provided it.  Today, for $20 kids can buy a really good one or install a full scientific app on their smart phone.  For years now, schools have provided computer labs as places to learn about computing, digital information use, etc.  Some schools also moved to providing laptops to some, or all their students.  But now this is changing...

I just read an article “ The web shatters focus, rewires brains ” in the latest Wired magazine (yes, the paper-based version, not on an ipad).  One writer, Nicholas Carr, makes the case that the barrage of information and interruptions in our lives “shatters our focus and rewires our brain”.  The article ( Wired June 2010 pp. 112-118 ) is adapted from his new book, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”, to be published in June 2010.  He shares examples of research done to compare heavy to low Internet users where they fMRI’d their brain activity.  Heavy Internet users did have higher brain activity and that the brains of the low users after spending an hour a day online for a week then showed very similar brain use patterns.  Their brains were rewired!  This might sound promising whereby Internet use reroutes neural pathways but Carr argues that this is actually turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our b...

I remember when I was growing up sneakily watching TV shows or listening to music my parents didn’t approve of - good thing my mom doesn’t use the Internet, she won’t see this, I’m safe :-).  That’s about as complicated “digital tools” were back in the day.  Fast forward to today and it’s a whole different world with the Internet, devices of all shapes, sizes, and capabilities, in the hands of most kids.  The opportunity for kids to misuse digital tools is huge.  Who’s going to guide them? I wrote a post back in March, Digital Natives Need Infrastructure , where I talked about one of our schools’ (Riverside Secondary) experiences with students using digital tools and the impact on the network.  When kids are bringing their personally owned devices (PODs) and you have a philosophy of openness (no blocking), things get interesting.  My post Learning with a class set of ipod touches tries to contemplate possible learning benefits and difficulties.  Dav...

Five years ago our School District embarked on a project to provide a class set of laptops to a students in each of four K-5 (elementary) schools and the year after expanded to include five 6-8 (middle) schools.  Our focus was on improving the writing process. I know, this is nothing new now as many schools around the world have run similar initiatives.  But we wanted to learn for ourselves how providing this technology in a one 2 one format to students could impact their learning, specifically writing.  We did not undertake a formal research project but rather through anecdotal feedback from teachers, parents, and students we now believe that all students can benefit from this type of access. At the beginning of each school year we require parents and their students who are in a one2one classroom to come to a one hour evening meeting to learn about this program.  2009 10 one 2 one fall startup meetings View more presentations from Brian Kuhn . A key message ...