Shift to the Future

I can’t remember what event or forum I was at where I heard this but the facilitator asked the group “what do you teach?” and each teacher shared what they teach… “I teach English”, “I teach Math”, “I teach PE”, “I teach grade 5”, etc.  The facilitator than asked “Don’t you teach students?”.  Profoundly, teaching isn’t the goal, learning is.  I think we lose focus of this at times.  Teaching does not guarantee that learning is happening.  Learning is not necessarily dependent on teaching.  I know there will be those that disagree with me but I think we’re on a trajectory in time where learning will be dependent on technology.  However, today I suspect most of us would agree that technology is still seen as optional in schools, just a tool. In my travels through Vancouver schools, I hear a lot about the barriers to using technology: networks are slow and unreliable, no wireless access, not nearly enough access to useful digital learning tools (comput...

I visited a grade 6 classroom this past week where every student had a personally owned laptop.  The students were learning about basic geometric shapes such as triangles, squares, and others with more sides which I forget the names for (I could Google them if I needed to).  The teacher ask them to create a program using Scratch to prompt for the number of sides, the length of a side, and to calculate the angle between any two sides, and finally to generate and display the shape.  While I was there, the kids were able to complete, to varying degrees, the pieces to prompt and calculate an angle (not necessarily correctly, but).  Some had a display “algorithm” programmed and were generating all sorts of spiral graph type shapes (not the shape intended mind you).  It was exciting to see their engagement, actually total being absorbed, in the learning activity.  For homework, they were to at least have a correctly running program that calculates and displays t...

I know, it’s not about the technology.  We all say it.  But, I think we may be kidding ourselves.  Look around and you’ll see technology changing and challenging almost everything.  It makes things possible that weren’t necessarily even a thought before.  Think about the iPhone – did the millions upon millions of people “know” they needed it before it was?  Our modern tools, conveniences, and inventions today would not be possible to design, engineer, or produce without sophisticated technology. For schools and classrooms there is often a debate about technology as a tool, technology as a skill, or even that there is no need for it.  We often suggest that technology is a nice to have but real teaching and learning can continue on without it as it always has.  In light of all the writing and discussion about 21st century learning, personalized learning, etc., is this really still the case? “Technology can provide new options for assessment a...

I was out shopping with my wife Shelley on Monday.  It was our 25th anniversary – wow, time flies.  Anyway, while she disappeared into the Coquitlam Centre mall, I decided to check out 3D TV ’s in Future Shop .  I am totally impressed with the 1st generation products, especially the amazingly thin LED versions.  Apparently you can hang them on the wall like a picture frame! So, I was wondering…  how might this technology evolve?  Where might it show up next?  And how can teachers and students use it for the enhancement, or transformation, of learning?  I wrote a post a few weeks back Welcome to your life in 2020 where I speculated about a learning holodeck / virtual reality experience and another Technology, People, and Learning where I wondered about applying Disney Imagineer’s magic to learning design.  Perhaps both posts are a little “out there” but I suggest that 3D TV technology will become mainstream within laptops, netbooks, tab...

I don’t know about you but I often try to imagine what the world might look like in the future and what I might be doing in it.  2020 is a particularly interesting year for me.  It is the year of my retirement, I hope. “Retirement: entering a period in life where I don’t have to work to live but will choose to work at something, just because…” I wonder what changes I will experience, initiate, or resist… over the next 10 years?  Warning, wild (or mild?) speculation follows… Mobile communications devices : all landline phones are relics now – mobile devices are very small, thin, and foldable but are able to take on a rigid form when necessary.  They have a holographic image capability to project a 3D color image of live video calls, video media, virtual worlds, digital information, online applications, etc.  Multiparty communications present each party in the holographic image as if they were there.  Interactions and input with this digital world involve g...

I was having lunch with @gary_kern recently and we talked about the difference between innovation for and adoption of technology in education.  Innovation involves creating something new, a method, a model, a thing while adoption is the implementation or use of a method, model, or thing.  Gary and I talked about what to call an innovation involving the educational use of technology.  Is it a model, a program, a project, or something else?  The question is, “what will help us take an innovation to full adoption within schools?”  Does it matter what we call it?  Will calling it something like “a program” help people more easily connect with and adopt it? When talking about an innovation, we often talk about it being transformative or causing a transformation.  For example in our School District we often refer to laptops for students in a one laptop per student configuration (embedded use of technology) as transformative to their learning.  Anot...