Shift to the Future

There seems to a buzz building around Personalized Learning in British Columbia (BC).  We’ve heard bits and pieces here and there  and that there are “secret” meetings in Victoria about this and the coming education agenda.  Intriguing isn’t it.  I’m looking forward to hearing more and to being a participant. Our Superintendent recently shared a video from New Brunswick at our Welcome Back meeting.  It’s a pretty exciting vision of 21st century education.  Technology is certainly a key lever to these changes. From Wikipedia “ Personalized Learning is the tailoring of pedagogy , curriculum and learning support to meet the needs and aspirations of individual learners”.  The article goes on to suggest that personalized learning gives the learner more choice about what is learned and how and when it is learned.  In other words, it is learner focused, not teacher focused.  Alberta Education has produced an Inspiring Education resource to shar...

I remember the days when we all talked about creating or updating our technology plans.  Those in K12 will remember carefully taking stock and calculating student to computer ratios.  We’d strive to meet targets like 3:1 at the secondary level and 6:1 for elementary and compare and contrast our respective Districts accordingly.  Essentially technology use in schools was mostly focused on computers, mainly in labs, and software, often of the edutainment and “drill and kill” variety.  Such was the way of tech in schools for 20 years… Around 2004-5 our School District started to look more critically at the use of technology.  We observed, especially in elementary schools, use of technology that seemed to be more about entertain or rewarding kids rather than being connected to classroom learning.  I worked with a colleague of mine, @gary_kern who facilitated elementary and middle school educators in a process to develop a technology for learning plan.  ...

“ my43 is a virtual community that transforms the learning and work in our School District to prepare students for the future. ”  In 2004 we began a journey in my School District to define, design, and develop a learning portal.  In 2007 we launched my43!  Now this isn’t really a technology initiative, rather it is an organizational change effort that we expect will take until 2017 to really call complete.  It takes a lot of work to change an organization (people)systemically.  Anyway, my43 (a private and secure technology powered learning environment)  is a number of things: District Intranet to support the business of education for staff only (includes human resources, payroll, financial functions and news, announcements, blogs, documents, presentations, contacts, information bulletins, …) School Intranet for each school to collaborate with staff and students (calendars, announcements, pictures, blogs, documents, forms, …) Virtual Classroo...

I just finished reading 21st Century Skills – Learning for Life in our Times by Bernie Trilling & Charles Fadel.  “The premise of this book is that the world has changed so fundamentally in the last few decades that the roles of learning and education in day-to-day living have also changed forever.” p. xxiii Okay, think about that for a minute.  Now think about “school”.  Has it changed significantly in the last few decades?  Hmm, probably not hey.  But, we have been using computers and progressively more technology since the early 80’s of the 20th century.  Why hasn’t school fundamentally changed, yet? “One of education’s chief roles is to prepare future workers and citizens to deal with the challenges of their times.  Knowledge work – the kind of work that most people will need in the coming decades – can be done anywhere by anyone who has the expertise, a cell phone, a laptop, and an Internet connection.  But to have expert knowledge wor...

I just finished reading Free by Chris Anderson.  He takes you through a historical journey showing how the concept of free (as in product, service, etc.) originated and evolved.  Isn't it amazing how many things that cost quite a bit to create, are now free.  Give away the phone when a plan is purchased, give away the razor when the disposable blades are purchased, give away the software (Googles business plan) and hope people click on ads (works for Google), the list is long.  Think about the evolution of technology...  how power/speed, storage, and bandwidth has increased with a doubling affect every 18-24 months over many years and the cost is similarly halfed and now approaching free (think netbook with a plan).  Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc. have enormous data centres with "unlimited" storage - it's relatively free to give away.  Everyone seems to give away free storage these days - this is a di...