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I like John Connell’s blog because he is someone who keeps me up-to-date with news from different parts of the world related to my line of work. Also, I get an occasional glimpse into happenings in Scotland, something I wouldn’t get otherwise.

Today I read in my feed reader just one example of John Connell’s blog keeping me informed. It was of an interesting set of survey results from the United States, which suggest that parents believe schools there do not prepare students for working in the modern world.

The results suggest that parents do believe there is a place for “basic skills”, but unfortunately (in their opinion), 21st Century skills necessary for competing in a contemporary global market are being neglected; to the detriment of students. I must say that I agree with them. Not in their assessment of the US Education System per se (overseas education systems are not my field of expertise), but their assessment of education and schooling in general at this time.

Of course, teachers and school administrators have their part to play in this.  Yet, behind this, there is also a political cloud that looms.  “Basic Skills” are apparently what the electorate want taught in schools.  Now, when the electorate has a conservative tendency (as is typical here in Australia, for example), that’s hardly surprising.  Yet, if all we’re going to teach are “basic skills”, then I can only imagine we’re preparing our children to work in a particular working world.  The problem is, the jobs they’ll be prepared for won’t exist here in Australia (or the US or UK for that matter), because as Thomas Friedman makes clear in The World is Flat, they’re far cheaper to do elsewhere.

Read the media release about the survey.  Make sure you scroll down to view the results summary and key messages in the .doc and .ppt files.

I told one of my students today that their book was at the front of the room.

“Where’s the front of the room?” was the immediate reply.

I had to say “Go and look near the board.”  Of course, I see the whiteboard as the front of my room.  But if that’s the front, then my computers and my desk are at the back, and the desks are all arragned in groups so you face one of the two sides of the room.  No one’s desk is actually positioned so they are facing “the front”.  Yesterday I spent most times I spoke to the children sitting at the bench on one of the “sides”.  The learning’s taking place all over the room, so I suppose there is less of a “front” to our learning space.  All in all, that’s got to be good.

The K12 Online Conference has started.  I downloaded the pre-conference keynote without any problems (maybe it was because us Australians have own daytime when many other participants are sleeping), and now, almost a week since said keynote was uploaded, am finally getting around to reflecting on it.

I’m pleased another Australian, Graham Wegner, alluded to the hype surrounding this keynote.  I was a little caught up in the hype myself.  Then I was a little scared that I might have been the only person watching it (during my holidays, even) thinking, “huh?  What’s the deal here?”  It’s not that David Warlick didn’t make some good points.  I did, however, have to watch it a second time and trudge through it, scrawling down notes as I went, in order to get the most out of it.

So what were key things that struck me that I had to write down?  Here are some:

• The borders that define education as we know it have turned soft… or they’ve turned transparent… or they’ve gone away altogether
• I was probably the last generation who could look at his father and see his future
• We are preparing our children for a future which we cannot clearly describe
• Our classrooms are flattening
• The best thing we can teach children today is how to teach themselves.

As I wrote these down, I really felt my own thoughts were being affirmed - especially about preparing children for unpredictable futures and teaching children how to teach themselves.  I’ve been engaging in discussions at our school for quite some time about teaching skills and that children need to know how to learn, because once they leave school, no one will do the learning for them.

Yet teaching children how to learn simply isn’t enough.  It has to be about teaching them how to learn within the world they live in.  It isn’t good enough (to borrow one image from Warlick) to show children how to gather the hard-copy data from the old encyclopedia.  Information today is far more overwhelming, multimodal, fluid and dynamic than the old set of books on the shelf.

This is where Warlick’s discussion around the digital native proves useful.  Don’t think for a second that the digital natives simply have new tools and, consequently, a new vocabulary that surrounds them.  These new tools have completely reshaped the world as we know it.  It is not a stable world.  The Viet Nam war was the first time many people have the theatre of war brought into their living rooms each night during the news.  Now the theatre of war appears on YouTube.  For Warlick, those who are the digital immigrants need to work on losing their accent.  I found a perfect example of the accent on a Facebook group for Australian Prime Ministerial candidate, Kevin Rudd:

Facebook is such a terrific vehicle for communicating with people and listening to what you have to say that I’ve decided to start a group to do just this. Please take this opportunity to contact my team and me by writing on this “wall.”  (emphasis added)

Take note, digital immigrants: the digital native would never have put the word wall in inverted commas; they are unnecessary for the digital native.  The wall is a common Facebook feature, and in facebook, everyone knows what you mean when you say wall.  We know that Kevin Rudd doesn’t want us to find a nice clean piece of masonry and graffiti it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not seeking to make a judgement on a politician one way or another, it was just a good example that I found on the net yesterday.  I don’t want to dampen his spirits, either - he’s making a good effort.  But we as teachers need to make an exceptional effort to ensure that our classrooms are the social, connected, networked places that the rest of the world is to these children.  I think David Warlick is right when he suggests that the future “haves” and “have nots” will be those who are connected and networked, and those who aren’t.

There’s more to this than comptuers and technical hardware.  There’s more to this than new classroom spaces.  What it requires is a complete reformation of the way we learn.  We truly and brutally need to ask and answer:

• Who is learning?

• What are they learning?

• When are they learning?

• Where are they learning?

• Why are they learning that?

• How are they learning?

Old strategy being used in answering a contemporary challenge.  If we’re serious about it as well, our answers will reach beyond the four walls of classroom and the hours of 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Tags: k12online07, k12online07pc