Smart schools and districts are finding ways to accelerate the adoption of technology-infused teaching practices that address 21st Century skills.
How do education leaders effectively promote the knowledge, skills and sense of urgency for 21st Century teaching and learning among all the teachers in their schools?
The 21st Century Teacher |
In our two-year pilot project funded by the Microsoft Partners in Learning program, the Alabama Best Practices Center sought to maximize our available resources by adopting a “champion-building” approach to spreading awareness and interest in Web-based teaching strategies.
We asked each principal in our 40 participating schools to select a five-teacher team to join our 21st Century Schools professional development community. Each team agreed to share what they learned with their own faculties, including the rationale behind the urgency for change, and the exciting possibilities of technology-infused learning.
This champion-building approach was most effective when principals followed our suggested guidelines for participant selection and chose teachers who were already comfortable with computers and the Internet. Our goal was not to train teachers to use technology (a massive undertaking far beyond our means) but to create “aha” moments among creative, forward-thinking teachers by introducing them to the concepts of “Classroom 2.0”. We hoped they would be intrigued by – and ultimately be champions for — the potential of blogs, wikis and other social networking tools to engage students in higher order learning experiences.
Did it work? In the majority of schools, it did, to varying degrees. In other schools, few if any effective advocates emerged. Here are some factors that influenced the success of our champions approach:
• Each school’s teacher team needed to include a “critical mass” of curious and comfortable technology users. Some principals made the decision to include reluctant technology users which weakened the model. We were more successful in guiding principal selection in our second year by being more explicit about the reasons behind our selection guidelines.
Video Sharing at TeacherTube |
To see how Web 2.0 can help teachers improve their practice, explore the new “YouTube for educators.” At TeacherTube, you can peruse, rate and add to a mushrooming library of classroom-related media created by teachers. Plus you can network with other educators around interests. We give it 4.5 apples!
http://www.teachertube.com/ |
• In schools particularly vulnerable to the sanctions of high-stakes testing and No Child Left Behind, it is often difficult for teachers to shift their attention to new ways of teaching. Under pressure, we fall back on what we know best. Adopting more student-centered classroom activities, using unfamiliar tools, feels risky. And the short-term payoff, from the point of view of pragmatic school leaders, may seem questionable in the face of standardized tests that are not closely aligned with 21st Century skills. The most successful teams in such high-needs schools had strong principal leaders who supported their experimentation.
• Teachers in districts without clear policies about safe access to the Internet were often frustrated by their inability to make use of websites and web tools introduced during our online professional development sessions. In some cases, the district’s inflexible filtering policies sapped away most of the enthusiasm for Web 2.0 projects. In other districts, IT leaders and other central office staff worked with schools and with our project to find common ground.
• In underfunded schools, reluctant teachers often fall back on the lack of computers and other equipment when arguing against technology integration. Even less-resistant teachers may feel faint of heart when they hear stories about schools where classrooms are filled with hardware and every child has Internet at home. One role of the 21st Century “champion” in these schools is to demonstrate how much can be accomplished with available technologies.
• Some schools had strong 21st Century teacher teams, but enthusiastic team members found it difficult to transfer their own “aha” experiences to other faculty members not involved in our professional development activities. One team, in summarizing their experience, told us:
A challenge has been to get our faculty to buy into the changing student we are facing and the new tools we have available to teach with. Many teachers do not see a need for adding any new technology and even view current use of technology by our students as detrimental to their learning.
In part, this is a principal leadership issue, but it also suggests that our model could be strengthened by adding a more substantive teacher leadership development component. In order to become change agents, visionary teachers need a “toolbox” of leadership skills that can make them more effective in convincing their colleagues that the investment of time and “mental sweat” will make a significant difference in student success.
Breaking down resistance to technology-infused teaching
Teacher reluctance to consider—much less embrace—new ways to teach with technology is common not only in our project’s schools, but in most K-12 schools where we’ve visited or worked in the past two years.
“I have people who have been teaching here 30 years or more,” one rural elementary principal told us. “And some of them will say, ‘I’ll do my grades on computer, I’ll do my attendance on computer, but I just don’t think I can teach with computers.”
“Nobody is openly refusing,” the principal says. “They’re simply afraid. They will promise to try – and in the next breath, you’ll hear, ‘But I just can’t, I just can’t’.”
Even in “cutting edge” districts like Trussville City, where administrators, principals and teacher leaders keep the 21st Century message at a high pitch, teacher resistance is an everyday fact of school life.
“For the most part, teachers are really open to change and open to trying new things,” says Trussville City principal Sunny Williams. “But change is scary, too, and it’s usually happening on top of how you get papers graded, talk to parents, get ready for testing, and deal with kids who don’t do their homework.”
NING: Create Your Own Social Networking Site |
NING is a free web platform where anyone can create a social network and use tools that promote discussion, idea-sharing, project collaboration and more. Educators are using NING’s privacy options to create secure climates where they can take advantage of a social networking environment to promote deeper learning. Explore NING’s “frequently asked questions” pages to learn all the details.
http://www.ning.com/ |
At Hewitt-Trussville Middle School, Williams is working to lessen the stress factor by creating more time to work with new tools and new ways of teaching. In the Fall of 2006, at the suggestion of her teachers, Williams reorganized the HTMS schedule to create an extra planning period in every school day. After some experimentation, Williams and her faculty agreed to use the collaborative time for grade-level and subject area planning tied to the district’s new curriculum maps. Technology integration is a planning priority, supported by the expertise of a district specialist and the middle school’s most 21st Century-minded teachers.
Niki Lincoln, a young second-year social studies teacher at HTMS, frequently uses technology-infused learning strategies in her own classroom and she’s eager to support more experienced professional colleagues who were born long before the “digital generation.”
Last semester, Lincoln worked with other teachers on her seventh grade team to create a cross-curricular unit for the study of Europe. Her idea was to use wikis and other free Internet tools like Skype (which combines live voice and video, instant messaging and file sharing) to collaborate with classrooms of students who actually live in Europe.
One of the reluctant teachers on her team taught Lincoln as a sixth grader. “She was a favorite teacher of mine whose methods were tried and true.” The teacher’s initial reluctance was overcome, Lincoln says, after a presentation during a day-long district technology conference which included a live web-based chat with a teacher in Shanghai.
That got her!” Lincoln says. “Experiencing that conversation broke the barrier for her. Suddenly Web 2.0 wasn’t just something else to learn, something else to do. She immediately realized that our kids could interact and ask questions of their peer group thousands of miles away. When she saw the potential power of it, then she became engaged.”
Sunny Williams believes such stories validate her school’s decision to carve out focused daily collaboration time for teachers. Even so, she says, “the stress level about 21st Century teaching is still high for some teachers. They have a lot to learn. And while we have more time to collaborate than many other schools do, with the extra time comes an increase in responsibility and expectations. The expectation now is that they ARE designing lessons that include those things.”
Think.com: Safe Social Networking Designed with Kids in Mind |
The Oracle Foundation (supported by Adobe Corporation) has created Think.Com as a safe environment for teachers and students to network together online and to reach other to other students and classrooms throughout the world. The free service allows teachers to help students establish safe email addresses and use websites and interactive tools to publish their ideas, collaborate on projects, and build knowledge together. This site comes highly recommended by several schools in ABPC’s 21st Century Schools project. Explore it for yourself!
http://www.think.com/en_us/ |
Patience and persistance combined with lots of teacher sharing – plus recognition and rewards for credible efforts – will eventually overcome any lingering fear, Williams believes. Seeing the principal using Web 2.0 tools doesn’t hurt either. Williams keeps a regular blog herself, where she posts intriguing questions and asks students to comment. Dozens do. “A lot of my attitude about it is that if I learn how to use these tools, then it’s easier for me to expect the teachers to learn to do it, too.”
For teachers who have been teaching a long time, Williams says, the shift to student-centered, digitally-infused teaching “is probably the most significant change in teaching practice they’ve ever been asked to achieve. We’ll get there, but of course there’s going to be some trauma.”
Moving from paper compliance to true integration
In a 2006 document, now part of the Alabama Administrative Code, the State Board of Education described 10 skills that all Alabama teachers “shall learn” in the area of technology integration and use. Here’s a sample:
The teacher shall learn to facilitate students’ individual and collaborative use of technologies (including, but not limited to spreadsheets, web page development, digital video, the Internet, and e-mail) to locate, collect, create, produce, communicate, and present information.
As important as it is for the Board to define these skills in law—and to direct school systems to provide appropriate professional development—these ambitious paper requirements will not become a reality without significant investments in training and resources and smart actions by local district and school leaders.
How can we accelerate the adoption and full integration of 21st Century teaching and learning strategies?
Here, in summary, are some of the “smart actions” already being taken by leading-edge Alabama educators that are worthy of emulation:
• Address the issue of Internet safety and access proactively by creating a district-level policy development committee that includes all stakeholders (top administrators, board members, IT staff, principals, parents, teachers, and students). Make classroom Web use a non-negotiable – the issue is not whether, but how.
• Create time during the school day for teachers to collaborate around 21st Century curriculum and instruction. Partner reluctant teachers with trailblazers. Make technology integration a priority in the professional development budget.
• Help teachers make the connections between best-practice teaching (including project- and problem-based learning) and the potential for web tools and other digital technologies to magnify the effects of teaching strategies that emphasis 21st Century skiklls and “learning by doing.”
• Promote the understanding, schoolwide, that digital equipment (computers, OCD projectors, smartpads and boards, e-clickers, digital cameras and recorders, etc.) should never sit idle. The sharing of equipment, wherever it is located, is necessary to maximize student and teacher learning with technology.
• Single out leading-edge 21st Century teachers both for recognition and for leadership roles. Provide supplements to several teachers in a school who are well-prepared and willing to work with other teachers on technology-infused student projects.
• Develop strategies, based on district and school size, that ensure every teacher has engaged in a deep conversation about the need to prepare students for life and work in the 21st Century. Group study of books and articles (like this TIME magazine piece) provide a good jumping off place for such discussions.
• Establish student clubs and teams, like one school’s SWAT team (Students Working to Assist with Technology), that (1) involve students in growing their own expertise about the use of digital equipment and web-based tools; (2) allow students to help teachers and other students learn and problem-solve, and (3) increase the level and quality of conversation about 21st Century learning among students and teachers across the school.
• Ask each teacher to complete at least one highly engaging technology-infused project with his or her students during a specified time period. Provide support from an enthusiastic teacher-coach. In our experience, teachers who see the “payoff” in student engagement and deeper learning are much more willing to do the hard work that technology integration requires.
• Sponsor a substantive day-long technology conference for teachers at least once a year. Include a blend of thoughtful conversation about the rationale behind 21st Century learning, presentations by real teachers of successful 21st Century projects, and opportunities for hands-on experimentation with at least one collaborative web tool (blog, wiki, social network, podcast, etc.). Build a follow-up plan that helps ensure teachers will go back to their own classrooms and try some of what they’ve learned.
• Publicize noteworthy 21st Century projects throughout the district and in local media. Feature them on school and district websites. Put out the message that the school system places a high value on such work.
High expectations and lots of support
“We’re introducing a lot of technology in our district, but we’re trying not to overwhelm our teachers,” says April Chamberlain, who left her elementary classroom last year to become Trussville City’s evangelist for 21st Century learning.
“It’s a situation for teachers where ‘you don’t know what you don’t know.’ So our approach is not to scold or harangue them, but to do everything we can to raise awareness about the importance of 21st Century learning and skills and the potential of Web 2.0 tools.
“Our teachers know we will support them if they want to try something new. We’ll help them as much as they need to be comfortable. We’ve made the commitment to do that.”
As a result, Chamberlain says, “More teachers are asking questions— they’re less afraid to step out of their box and try new things. I think that’s a big thing for teachers. If they don’t know how to do it, they may not try. Through our district technology conferences and our follow-up, we reduce the risk and we are increasing the buy-in.”
