Leadership and 1-to-1: Brainstorming

Brainstorming ideas on 1-to-1 and leadership:

• Is leadership always leadership - does a good leader of a traditional school without committment to technology automatically become a good leader of 1-to1? (Likely it depends on philosophy, committment to learning, openness, personal beliefs about technology and whether it has the potential to transform teaching and learning)
• Where does management fit. (Sometimes there are great leaders who are poor managers, sometimes great managers who fall short on leadership. What about 1-to-1 when there are logistical, technologicial, financial issues which must be addressed.)
• Modeling and leadership - can the leader who personally eschews technology lead 1-to-1 (probably not)
• Nurturing teachers - does the leader understand that everyone is coming at 1-to-1 from a different level and starting point - and needs then to move from that point - what is movement and how does the leadership nuture while challenging, support without enabling.
• Change management - is it essential? One book we read at a school actually said change management was uneccessary for leaders. How can this be - or is this my prejudice?
  
• Vision - built by consensus with others - or initiated by the leader?
• Sharing and communicated vision - how?

A short list but will post again after the chapter on leadership is done.

Comments welcome!

Technology and Students: The Neighborhood, the Culture

This was one of our discussion during the course I teach at Chestnut Hill College one more Saturday in May and 3 Saturdays in June: what is the main (self-chosen) purpose of computers for students? We agreed it was - for fun. Our students view computers as fun, as how to communicate, as how to share.

What was our purpose as educators for computers? Mostly to do work, with some elements for fun and communicating.

The question then becomes how do we consider the social aspect of computers when we are integrating into our classes. And how to consider more deeply that our students are immersed in the culture of technology/computers, which means it's all around them, they are conversant and accepting of the culture, they are part of the culture, but oftentimes they do not question the culture. How then to relate their culture to what and how we're teaching, while keeping the bar high for rigor in content and expectations -- and how to challenge our students around technology. The challenging them part is important because of how accepting many students are of this digital culture, which is also their neighborhood.

Many adults of my age experienced a neighborhood of homes or apartments close together - and had a lot of free time. We weren't scheduled and structured so much so we used our feet or maybe our bicycles to go see who was around. We had the perception of "safety" and so long as we came home for dinner, we could spend a lot of time socially interacting with our peers. But students now are structured and scheduled and our neighborhoods are different. There is the perception of less safety.

The neighborhood today is all around IM, texting, Facebook, Myspace - and probably interactions happen later at night when all the homework and activities are done. And as students will tell you, email is old people's technology. Their neighborhood is just as important as ours was, and like ours was is also is an adaptation to their physical environment and the time available. (Knowing the term "our neighborhood" is loose and doesn't apply to all educators of course.)

Not new questions or conversations of course, all related to Vygotsky, Dewey, Seeley-Brown, others. But relevant to educators teaching those immersed in the digital culture.

Wondering what others are thinking ...

Multimedia and the Brain

This article from eSchoolNews this week is most intriguing - it's about a meta review of studies (kind of a research mash-up) from the Metiri Group commissioned by Cisco on how "multimodal learning" using various strategies including multimedia, works better for learning than unimodal, more traditional learning. It talks about sensory, working and long-term memory, and includes references to Bransford's How People Learn among other works. The Bransford work was the basis of Chapter 8 in my book written by Dr. Donna DeGennaro synthesizing a lot of Bransford's ideas.

One thing I really like if you read the entire study "Multimodal Learning Through Media: What the Research Says," is the specifity of the recommendations. Every instructional designer ought to be reading this because it says where text and graphics should be placed on a page for maximum understanding, for instance. Maybe designers already are reading it, I don't know. But there still are plenty of applications that haven't really taken how the brain is stimulated into consideration when creating their interfaces. It's also a great answer to the critics of "edutainment" - motivation, engagement, multimodal learning and brain research all point to interactivity and visual appeal as integral to effectiveness. Of course lots of good teachers pretty much knew this viscerally anyway. But good that it's all pulled together in an accessible and well-written way.

Parallel Computing

So this announcement about parallel computing and Microsoft and money to step up the research is intriguing. I should be finishing an article for Technology & Learning right now, which is on a fascinating topic - the state of distance learning today (and it really is different than in the 90's) (will be in the May 2008 issue) but parallel computing as a tangent is pretty compelling.

A quote from the article above:

"if researchers can use programming to harness the capabilities of multi-core machines, it will give mobile devices the computing performance that today comes only from supercomputers."

So if parallel computing becomes a major factor in the future, and I think it will, and if computers can truly process multiple strands of complex code simultaneously, how much more will be possible in our day-to-day lives that we don't have right now. For instance, could I be compiling lots of relevant research on distance learning at the same time while writing this and while also researching parallel computing and maybe also getting my taxes filed and of course as always having Twitter running in the background ... and all on my cell phone. Is this different than multitasking windows and widgets? Is the real limit the human brain? Even though we use the term multitasking in reality what we're doing is just fast task switching because we only can do one thing at a time. How can we maximize parallel processing if we have to be the triggers for the processing and we can only start one thing at a time because we can't truly multitask?

I have to say I don't get it yet. But I do sense this is going to be big. What would the late Mark Weiser, who coined the term "ubiquitous computing" and his vision of the future with "tabs" and calm technology everywhere, think of parallel computing.

This feels like the Next Big Thing.

No Digital DNA

Conversation today with a colleague about Digital Natives/Digital Immigrants (did Prensky ever realize he would get this kind of continuing traction from his article?) and ranting just a bit that some seem to almost believe that their students have Digital DNA - that on the magic date of January 1, 1980 suddenly all babies were born with an extra deoxyribonucleic acid strand just for technology. The day before, and an hour before, those other babies, even though they may have physical proximity in the nursery ward - just missed the 1/1/80 digital DNA creation, so they are going to have to be analog all their lives.

Okay, an exaggeration, but the dichotimizing that occurs between "digital natives" and "non natives" isn't helpful or healthy or positive. Creating these labels when it comes to something as important as teaching and learning, and when this digital immigrant/digital native concept is not backed up by research, and when being "just a digital immigrant" gives an "out" to those who fear technology and don't want to use it (and unfortunately that does mean some teachers), well then it's time to find some new ideas.

And here's the other thing this colleague and I discussed: research takes persistence and is part of what we need to teach students. That the instant gratification of Google is not deep, thoughtful research - although it's often a start. We need to have students not just take the easy answer or the first "hit" on Google instead of going deeper, broader and further - instead of taking the time to do thorough research.

1-to-1 Leadership, Vision, Support, Sustainability

This is my current rumination - how does leadership envision, support, and sustain 1-to-1 in particular and technology in general. Lately I've been reading and editing things for various purposes and organizations and am struck how often technology is an add-on. Something to include, it seems, if the teacher has time, or maybe as a "supplement" - showing some Web sites to kids, let's say.

But now we have Web 2.0 and now we have 1-to-1 and now we have the opportunities and the vehicles for technology to truly be ubiquitous in classrooms in terms of not just hardware, but in terms of creating content that is potentially seen by nearly anyone. We should be thinking of technology in broader strokes now because the means and the possibilities exist to take our classrooms so much further than before in terms of technology infusion and fluency.

That does mean leadership needs to step up to the plate in terms of the vision, the support, and the means and resources to sustain technology. But what does this vision look like, what are its attributes, how then to lead when teachers are at different starting points, are teaching different disciplines, and when expectations and the technology itself seem to continually shift.

The statistics say that students are learning about technology at home and not in school and colleges are finding their incoming freshmen are less prepared than they expected, so are assigning them to remedial technology classes.

Visionary, supportive leadership is vitally important to the success of educational technology everywhere so that this generation of children can step up to the plate when it's their turn at bat.

1-to-1 book, 2nd edition

Having many friends and colleagues contribute to the 2nd edition of my book "1-to-1 Learning, Laptop Programs That Work" targetted for Fall, 2008 publication. It will have new chapters on Web 2.0, Tablet PC's, and 1-to-1 Leadership and a rewritten introduction.

It pays to know people and to have a strong personal learning network (read: Twitter, Classroom2.0, EdTech listserv, edACCESS, ISED-L, ISTE, Wizards, NYCIST, AALF) of smart educational technologists who understand the pulse of what is happening. Because of these networks, I have been fortunate enough to have contributing articles or interviews for the book from Will Richardson, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Dave Berque, Gwen Solomon, Alice Owen, Leslie Wilson, Steve Hargadon, Milt Dougherty, and possibly a few others. All by just asking. Amazing, powerful, much bigger and smarter and broader than any other way - enriching and deepening and extending the continual discourse around 1-to-1 learning. W00t and double w00t!