Robert Martellacci from Mindshare Learning asked me to give a 5 min Skype State of the Union Address about the challenges of innovation in education and how to move beyond pockets of innovation.
I thought about this for a while and had a couple of possible paths. It is interesting that we are currently trying to ponder how school would be different , the electronic devices policy and BYOD. I think that there is common ground here.
It might be useful to look at a case study to learn about some pitfalls. A number of years ago, the UK had a mass adoption of SMARTBoards at considerable expense. Although I applaud their attempt to be innovative, there was no clear vision of how students would learn differently. There was not enough time for the early adopters to figure out best practices before the masses received the new kit. As a result, teachers transferred all their overheads to PowerPoint or Notebook files and felt proud that they entered the digital age. Upon review, the pedagogy had not changed significantly. So much money and little change. They became a TPR – a Traditional Pedagogy Replicator.
Meanwhile, however, K-2 classes had already figured out that classes should be stations with organized student centered chaos. When SMARTBoards came in, they became just another station in the arsenal of stations. They were powerful in the hands of kids and transformational. The key is that they figured out the pedagogy before the kit arrived and had a vision of what could be.
As we look forward to these new technologies moving from innovative to mainstream, we need to present teachers with a vision of what could be different BEFORE the kit is introduced. We want them to reconsider teaching practices first. If we do not, the tendency will be to simply do what we always did with new kit.
“most agree that education needs to change. Some believe that it needs to be better, others think it needs to change”-Dean Shareski.
As tech arrives, it is a safer step to replicate old ways with new tech with the real danger of becoming entrenched. We encourage our students to take risks, but I wonder if our system encourages risk taking in our teachers. We are so worried about ruining kids that perhaps we suffer from analysis paralysis. At some point in time we need to ‘just do it’ with a vision of what could be. The teachers are typically too busy getting from day to day. Wonderful things can happen when a leader with a vision arrives who makes it ok to make responsible mistakes.
Do we have the courage to do more than make education better or consider how education can be different? The role of tech will move from pockets of innovation to mainstream naturally once we figure out the new pedagogy.
