Tuesday, April 19, 2016

One Small Step for Students, One Giant Leap for our School. (Part 3/3)

In a recent tweet world-renowned educational researcher, Dr. Michael Fullan, warned against the allure of technology and emphasized to conference goers that "pedagogy is harder and deeper". He went on to say that the "the big change is mobilizing students and teachers". This post will show that our teachers not only have a high moral compass, but have found digital north in the classroom. 

Digital North
The influential Bill and Melinda Gates addressed their Annual Letter to teens this year because of their belief that this generation will need to solve the pressing issues of our time. We agree. We also affirm that for students to dynamically impact their world, they'll need to master technology as an essential tool. Tech, however, is not a panacea or cure-all. These talks by Derek MullerJohn Hattie and Matthew Stoltzfus shaped some of our thinking in developing our own app-edagogy only to discover that there's nothing new under the sun, but we might have coined a new term. :-) I've had the privilege to present on this framework on at least three occasions (EARCOS Leadership Conference and Google Summit Events) and feel satisfied that we have done the deep and hard work of pedagogy. 

While it is an honor to be trusted with leadership, partnering with parents is by far the most strategic action a school can undertake. In January of this year (2016) we surveyed our K8 parent community to understand how we can better partner on digital citizenship. Participants clearly valued this topic and expressed a desire that we protect students' online learning experience. I'm confident that the school's supervision is not only adequate and sufficient, but also technically sophisticated (open DNS tracking, Barracuda web filters, enabled safety mode, etc.). Our school culture is not a permissive one. In addition to the above-mentioned preventative measures, a reasonable technology contract based on privileges and consequences has been set up to guide students toward maturity. We consistently employ teaching, mentoring, counseling and advisory as we do our part to populate cyberspace with students who are careful to pin digital citizenship in every footprint they leave on the web.    

2020 and Beyond
The World Economic Forum (WEF) recently compared the top ten skills of 2015 with the 10 skills you need to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Complex problem-solving remains at the top of the list while critical thinking climbed from position 4 to number 2 and creativity charged in from 10 to 3. This should not escape the attention of educational institutions worth their salt. The real work of schools is to help students discover what they're passionate about, ignite their imagination, encourage divergent thinking, pursue solutions outside the box and teach them to critique the world around them. The aforementioned activities all align very well with our 2020 goal of creating a climate of innovation in our school. It is also encouraging to note that emotional intelligence and service orientation are among the WEF's top ten skills, especially in light of the fact that mentoring and service learning projects are an integral part of our culture. 

Being set on fulfilling our task, then, we recognize that technology is a tool that can no longer be ignored, especially after the Internet became the 21st century's Gutenberg press.  




Sunday, April 17, 2016

One Small Step for Students, One Giant Leap for our School (Part 2/3)

In my previous post I reflected on our changing world and shared an expert's take on exponential change in the next decade. In this post I want to review our schools' journey over the last four years in preparing students for the future. It's hard to believe, but we're now closer to 2040 than 1990. 

The Next Frontier
During the early years of my principalship I attended an EARCOS Leadership Conference where Greg Whitby (Australia's 2012 Innovative Educator) challenged school leaders to rethink education in a world immersed in technology, especially with the arrival of ubiquitous devices like SmartPhones. As superintendent of 80 Catholic schools his main concern was to not lose the God-given mandate to educate young people. His was a warning to stay relevant and to keep schools from becoming museum-like. Equally important was his pledge to never experiment with students' schooling in the quest to modernize the classroom. This resonated deeply with me and resulted in a resolve to always stay research-based in my approach.

2013-14
Soon after our faculty started to use a brain-friendly lesson/unit plan template based on how students learn best. The four components below not only gave us a common language, but also promoted effective teaching and laid the groundwork for future integration of educational technology
  • Prepare learners with a captivating hook to engage students
  • Pick instructional strategies carefully to accommodate learning needs
  • Practice new learning through the use of regular assessments 
  • 'Ply (apply) student feedback to consolidate long term memory. 

2014-15
Teachers then started to enhance the brain-friendly lesson/unit plan template through the use of educational apps. This led to the creation of our Instructional Tech site, which not only enabled teachers to benefit from each other's discoveries, but also served as an educational technology resource to other schools in Taiwan. Leaders in countries as far away as India have expressed appreciation for the work of our teachers. 

In February 2015 staff also participated in a professional learning event, an in-house mini-conference of sorts, to ponder the realities of our changing world. One of our new teachers who had returned to the teaching profession after a hiatus of fifteen years compared her adjustment to the classroom to that of Rip Van Winkle! 

We concluded that educational technology was here to stay. We made a set of iPad Minis available for teachers to apply technology more frequently to their brain-friendly lesson plans. This pilot was overwhelmingly successful in that it declared our independence from the traditional computer lab and demonstrated our teachers' comfort level with the use of educational technology. One middle school teacher commented that "the iPad Minis allowed students to share their work with the class more quickly. For example, my students were able to clearly share a concept map they made with the entire class through AirPlay versus something that was smaller and harder to read on chart paper." Our integration of educational technology was now clearly rooted in sound pedagogy and we recognized that we were no longer at risk of merely placing a $1,000 pencil in front of our students. 


2015-16
This year our strategy involved a much narrower and more practical focus as we seek to modernize our classrooms. Teachers formed collaborative action research groups to make recommendations on how to: 
Students posting a blog on Chomebooks
  • facilitate classroom management in a 1:1 environment where each student has access to a device
  • equip students/teachers with essential tech skills
  • proactively teach digital citizenship 
In May 2016 we'll be compiling a list of agreed-upon recommendations from teachers' end-of-year presentations and hope to communicate these guidelines and expectations to all our stakeholders (teachers, students and parents). This will give us a common language to reinforce the same message. I am confident that our teachers have been equipped to find and maintain digital north in the classroom. More about that in the next post. 

    

Friday, April 15, 2016

One Small Step for Students, One Giant Leap for our School! (Part 1/3)

Walk with me down memory lane, just for a few paragraphs before we talk about the future of schooling. My anecdotes will no doubt trigger a few of your own gems from the not-too-distant past. (Feel free to share in the comment section!)

Back to the Paper-on-Earth '80s

During all my years at school I never worked on a computer. The closest I came to using technology was learning how to type ... and use correction tape. I managed 165 words/minute, strewn with errors! As students at teachers college we were given a once-off opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the basic components (mouse, keyboard, monitor, floppy disk, etc.), but I do not recall mastering any software or programs. I did learn how to make copies using a Gestetner duplicator though! And I have vague memories of worrying over my parents regarding how they were going to keep up with all the new technology. :-)

In the Dial-up-to-the-Cloud '90s

During the first few years of my professional life, computers started appearing in school libraries where one could access information through CD-ROMS. Most of us thought our elderly 7th grade LA teacher was an alien from cyberspace (the term wasn't coined back then) when she one day proudly announced that her students had successfully emailed their peers in England. We thought she was weird. We obviously understood very little of what was happening in the world. In the mid-nineties I purchased my first black and white DOS-operating computer and replaced it a few years later for one with an amazing color monitor! Transitioning from Coral WordPerfect to Microsoft Word was very hard! The Internet was a luxury few of us could afford in South Africa and when I finally hooked up via a dial-up modem, I did so sparingly and only stayed on long enough to download content to read offline. 

Through Y2K, to Cyberspace ... and Beyond!

When we came to Taiwan in the early 2000s I was amazed at the ease of Internet access. Our family purchased a brand new CRT computer and even used it to watch DVDs! I would not own a laptop until much, much later, let alone a SmartPhone. Other new gimmicks included burning CDs and storing data on a 256 megabyte thumb drive for which I paid about US$100. I cannot help but chuckle when I reflect on these experiences. The world has changed so much over the last thirty years, but we're told that we ain't seen nothing yet. Professor Klaus Schwab's recent book The Fourth Industrial Revolution seeks to prepare society for deep technological shifts that are bound to happen over the next decade. As a father and an educator, I believe we have a moral obligation to equip our children and students to not only engage with this new world, but to dynamically impact it. With the next post I want to show how our school has gone about this task.