Project Tomorrow Report

Project Tomorrow is a national K-12 education research group whose mission is to "ensure that today’s students are well prepared to be tomorrow’s innovators, leaders and engaged citizens of the world," which they hope to achive by encouraging innovative uses of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) to help students "develop the critical thinking, problem solving and creativity skills needed to compete and thrive in the 21st century".

Each fall they survey hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, administrators, and parents about the uses of and hopes for educational technology in the "Speak Up National Research Project". From the data released in 2011 (full report here: http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/pdfs/SU10_3EofEducation(Students).pdf), they identified 3 key trends:

• Mobile Learning: Educational experiences that are enabled by mobile devices and applications provide a multitude of untethered opportunities for students to be more engaged in learning and extend the learning process beyond the classroom
• Online / Blended Learning: Online and blended learning enables a greater personalization of the learning process and facilitates opportunities for students to collaborate with peers and experts, thus empowering a new sense of personal ownership of the learning process by the student.
• e-Textbooks / Digital Content: The use of e-textbooks and other digitally rich content engages students by providing a real world context for the learning process and allowing learning to extend beyond the classroom walls.

Lawrenceville is doing a number of things which are in line with these: our pilot programs with iPads and Androids are a perfect fit for the first two, and our association with the 8 Schools in a blended learning project addresses the second.

Elon University / Pew Internet Project report on Millennial's Cognition

A new 36 page report from Elon University and the Pew Internet and American Life Project (http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/expertsurveys/2012survey/) states that the Millennial Generation (born between 1982 and 2002) will both "benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives".
The groups surveyed over 1,000 thought leaders (and critics) from industry, government, and education, and asked them to consider how exposure to the Internet and digital media are changing the cognitive functioning of today's students. The results showed a fairly even split between positive and negative opinions.
Earlier work by Pew had shown that 95% of teens ages 12-17 are online, as are 96% of those ages 18-29. Given that level of penetration, the participants were asked to consider possible scenarios for 2020 based on the statement "In 2020, the brains of multitasking teens and young adults are 'wired' differently from those over age 35". Two major themes surfaced:

• constantly connected teens and young adults will thirst for instant gratification and often make quick, shallow choices
• major education reform is required to emphasize new skills and literacies to better prepare students for the world they will live in

Some of major skills needed for future success were determined to be:

• public problem-solving through cooperative work (crowd-sourcing);
• the ability to search effectively for information online and to be able to discern the quality and veracity of that information, and then communicate these findings well (digital literacy); 
• being able to bring together details from many sources (synthesizing); 
• ability to concentrate; 
• the ability to distinguish between the "noise" and the message in the ever-growing sea of information

One of the most telling quotes comes from Microsoft researcher and teen expert danah boyd (yes, no caps) about what may be the next social divide:

"Concentrated focus takes discipline, but it's not something everyone needs to do," she wrote, "unfortunately, it is what is expected of much of the working-class labor force. I suspect we're going to see an increased class division around labor and skills and attention."

The web introduction to the report echos that concern:

"There is a palpable concern among these experts that new social and economic divisions will emerge as those who are motivated and well-schooled reap rewards that are not matched by those who fail to master new media and tech literacies. 

Re-Imagining Learning in the 21st Century - MacArthur Foundation

The MacArthur Foundation has gathered some great research on how learning needs to change to adapt to the 21st Century, based around these three questions:

• How are young people changing as a result of constant exposure to digital media?
• How should learning institutions change?
• How should learning environments change?

In the Director's message (http://goo.gl/963bO), Connie Yowell explains how the foundation shifted their focus from " traditional school reform" to "learning," and lays out the results from over 106 studies they funded:

Through our work to date, we understand that at least three key shifts must occur if the educational system is to transform from the current 19th-century paradigm (based largely on paper-and-pencil tests) to a 21st-century vision:

• A shift from education to learning. Education is what institutions do, learning is what people do. Digital media enable learning anywhere, anytime; formal learning must also be mobile and just in time.
• A shift from consumption of information to participatory learning. A new system of learning must be peer-based and organized around learners' interests, enabling them to create as well as consume information.
• A shift from institutions to networks. In the digital age, the fundamental operating and delivery systems are networks, not institutions such as schools, which are a node on a young person's network of learning opportunities. People learn across institutions, so an entire learning network must be supported.
  . . .

Connected learning is not about technology. The principles of connected learning weren't born in the digital age, but they are extraordinarily well-suited to it.
Connected learning is not about turning our backs on teachers and schools. Thousands of teachers and educators across the U.S. are working hard, often in the face of adversity, to reimagine learning for the next generation.
Connected learning is also not about throwing out traditional literacy skills. The importance of reading, writing and critical thinking are as important as ever. But so are new literacies like advanced problem-solving and collaboration that will be critical in the increasingly interconnected world we dwell in.
Connected learning also is tuned to the reality that technology and the networked era is threatening to stretch the already-wide equity gap in education unless there is decisive intervention and a strong public agenda. In a world so full of knowledge and an abundance of learning possibilities, isn't it our responsibility to work as hard as we can to see that every child has a chance to unlock his or her potential? (from http://goo.gl/efdyN)

The main Re-Imagining Learning page is here: http://goo.gl/EdNd2

They have set up two other sites which describe the connected learning principles, the emerging community, and ongoing research:

• http://connectedlearning.tv/
• http://clrn.dmlhub.net/

New Media Consortium's Top 10 'Metatrends' Shaping Educational Technology

The New Media Consortium is well known for their annual Horizon Report which looks at "emerging technologies for teaching, learning, research, creative inquiry, and information management": http://www.nmc.org/horizon-project

At the end of January, 2012, they gathered 100 educational thought leaders to mark the tenth anniversary of the Horizon Project, and asked the question "what will be the role of technology in the next decade?"
 http://www.nmc.org/news/download-communique-horizon-project-retreat

The top 10 items were:

1. The world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative. As more and more companies move to the global marketplace, it is common for work teams to span continents and time zones. Not only are teams geographically diverse, they are also culturally diverse.
2. People expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want to.Increasingly, people own more than one device, using a computer, smartphone, tablet, and ereader. People now expect a seamless experience across all their devices. 
3. The Internet is becoming a global mobile network — and already is at its edges. Mobithinking reports there are now more than 6 billion active cell phone accounts. 1.2 billion have mobile broadband as well, and 85% of new devices can access the mobile web. 
4. The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based and delivered over utility networks, facilitating the rapid growth of online videos and rich media. Our current expectation is that the network has almost infinite capacity and is nearly free of cost. One hour of video footage is uploaded every second to YouTube; over 250 million photos are sent to Facebook every day.
5. Openness — concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information — is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world. As authoritative sources lose their importance, there is need for more curation and other forms of validation to generate meaning in information and media. 
6. Legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society. In an age where so much of our information, records, and digital content are in the cloud, and often clouds in other legal jurisdictions, the very concept of ownership is blurry. 
7. Real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success. Access to learning in any form is a challenge in too many parts of the world, and efficiency in learning systems and institutions is increasingly an expectation of governments —but the need for solutions that scale often trumps them both. Innovations in these areas are increasingly coming from unexpected parts of the world, including India, China, and central Africa. 
8. The Internet is constantly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while refining our notion of literacy. Institutions must consider the unique value that each adds to a world in which information is everywhere. In such a world, sense-making and the ability to assess the credibility of information and media are paramount. 
9. There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training. Traditional authority is increasingly being challenged, not only politically and socially, but also in academia — and worldwide. As a result, credibility, validity, and control are all notions that are no longer givens when so much learning takes place outside school systems.
10. Business models across the education ecosystem are changing. Libraries are deeply reimagining their missions; colleges and universities are struggling to reduce costs across the board. The educational ecosystem is shifting, and nowhere more so than in the world of publishing, where efforts to reimagine the book are having profound success, with implications that will touch every aspect of the learning enterprise.

The Future of Technology?

Microsoft released a video earlier this month entitled Productivity Future Vision - it is 6 minutes long but worth watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0

Placed 5-10 years in the future, much of the video looks quite fanciful. However, many have pointed out that 10 years ago there was no YouTube, no Gmail, Google Maps, or Google Docs, no Skype, Facebook or MySpace, and certainly no iPhone, iPad, or Android tablets. Think how we might have viewed a video chat on a wifi tablet to an iPhone in 2001 - conducted by two Form II students.

An earlier "vision" video from 2009 begins with some interesting ideas about international collaboration in the classroom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5X2PxtvMsU

Wireless, always connected, built for collaboration, and touch surface interfaces both large and small dominate these visions of the future.

Five characteristics of an effective 21st-century educator

Just in time for the start of the new school year, eSchoolNews has a list, generated by their readers, of the five most important characteristic for 21st Century educators: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/09/09/five-characteristics-of-an-effective-21st-century-educator/

1. Anticipates the future.
2. Is a lifelong learner.
3. Fosters relationships.
4. Can teach and assess all levels of learners.
5. Is able to discern effective vs. non-effective technology.

It's good that there are no software-specific goals here: laundry lists of "Knows PowerPoint"- or "Knows Twitter"-type of goals are extremely short sighted.

Perhaps it's related to #2, but I would add something about the ability to find, assess, and use information. As the role of the classroom teacher includes more and more individualized instruction, and as the world's knowledge-base continues to grow at a rapid pace, this will become more important. One of our teachers recently described guiding a student through an independent study, and how the student was finding and referencing the latest research and publications in the subject area. Much of this information did not exist when the teacher was completing his PhD, so this was really a new area for both the student and the teacher.

Dean of Faculty Kevin Mattingly places emphasis on making Lawrenceville a place where teachers can learn. This may be the most important characteristic for a 21st Century educator.

Report has good blended learning advice

An August, 2011 report from the management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group titled Unleashing the Potential of Technology in Education calls for the creation of a "closed loop instructional system" to best employ technology in education.
The report focuses a great deal on the economics of edtech, but also offers these steps:

• Establish educational objectives focused on twenty-first century skills
• Develop relevant curriculum offerings by using opensource content (provided by higher education institutions, among others)
• Deliver [some] instruction virtually
• Embed frequent [formative] assessments with real-time, continuous feedback
• Provide appropriate intervention with immediacy and customization (based on the assessments)
• Track outcomes through data-management systems

The full report can be read here: http://www.bcg.com/expertise_impact/PublicationDetails.aspx?id=tcm:12-81207

New report questions students' grasp of technology

We've mentioned the concept of a "digital native" before - a student who has grown up immersed in technology in all different forms. For many, there is a tendency to think that because they are "natives," our students really understand technology and put it to good use.
A new report that questions this assumption was released this week by the Education Development Center (http://www.edc.org/) and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation (http://www.edviewpoints.org/). The report, titled Integrating Technology with Student-Centered Learning, covers a number of topics, including the use of technology to individualize education (a theme in the book Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen), but also draws the conclusion that many students are underprepared to utilize technology in their post-high school experience. One telling statistic: 43 percent of the surveyed students felt unprepared to use technology in their college and work lives.
Better used, the report concludes, there are three very important roles for educational technology in today's schools:

• Help diagnose and address individual learning needs.
• Develop the skills essential for life in a 21st century global society.
• Provide a more active learning experience, including transferring some responsibility for learning to the student.

The full report is available here: http://www.nmefdn.org/uploads/Integrating%20Tech%20with%20SCL.pdf

State Educational Technology Directors Report Released

The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) in the professional group for public school technology leaders in all 50 states. Earlier this month they released their 8th annual report on educational technology trends, subtitled State Leaders Leveraging Technology to Transform Teaching and Learning. A quick synopsis is here: http://www.setda.org/c/document_library/get_file?folderId=6&name=DLFE-1313.pdf

They have 4 primary areas of focus in the report, with links to examples of innovative programs around the country:

• Preparing All Students for College and 21st Century Careers
• Developing and Scaling Innovative Learning Models (including online and blended learning)
• Supporting Educator Effectiveness (including Professional Learning Communities/Communities of Practice and Technology Coaches/Mentors)
• Building a 21st Century Infrastructure for Equity, Innovation, and Improvement (including data system interoperability)

The full report is here: http://www.setda.org/web/guest/2011nationaltrends

Thoughts About Tomorrow's Tech & Today's Skills

After Saturday's session at Alumni Weekend, an alum sent me this post from Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired Magazine (I've been a subscriber since issue 1.03) and author of the New Rules for the New Economy: http://www.kk.org/kk/

Some great ideas here about considering technological skills as a continuum, and not a specific program or device to be mastered. But in particular his statement that "You will be newbie forever" speaks to the need for life-long learning skills. Some of his points:

If you are in school today the technologies you will use as an adult tomorrow have not been invented yet. Therefore, the life skill you need most is not the mastery of specific technologies, but mastery of the technium as a whole -- how technology in general works. I like to think of this ability to deal with any type of new technology as techno-literacy. To be at ease with the flux of technology in modern-day life you'll need to speak the language of the technium, and to master the the following principles:

• Anything you buy, you must maintain. Each tool you use requires time to learn how to use, to install, to upgrade, or to fix. A purchase is just the beginning. You can expect to devote as much energy/money/time in maintaining a technology as you did in acquiring it.
• Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything until 5 minutes before you need it. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete. Therefore acquire at the last possible moment. 
• You will be newbie forever. Get good at the beginner mode, learning new programs, asking dumb questions, making stupid mistakes, soliticting help, and helping others with what you learn (the best way to learn yourself).
• Often learning a new tool requires unlearning the old one. The habits of using a land line phone don't work in email or cell phone. The habits of email don't work in twitter. The habits of twitter won't work in what is next.
• Take sabbaticals. Once a week let go of your tools. Once a year leave it behind. Once in your life step back completely. You'll return with renewed enthusiasm and perspective.
• Tools are metaphors that shape how you think. What embedded assumptions does the new tool make? Does it assume right-handedness, or literacy, or a password, or a place to throw it away? Where the defaults are set can reflect a tool's bias.
• What do you give up? This one has taken me a long time to learn. The only way to take up a new technology is to reduce an old one in my life already. Twitter must come at the expense of something else I was doing -- even if it just daydreaming.
• Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.
• The risks of a new technology must be compared to the risks of the old technology, or no technology. The risks of a new dental MRI must be compared to the risks of an x-ray, and the risks of dental x-rays must be compared to the risks of no x-ray and cavities. 
• The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one yourself, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea.
• Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. To evaluate don't think, try.
• The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful.