Schools are about the future, learning skills and gaining knowledge to broaden our horizons. So you would think that this forward-looking perspective makes educational establishments a perfect place to study sustainability, which is all about protecting our environment for present and future generations.
You may think that schools would have sustainability high on their agenda, but Mark Orlowski found that this isn’t necessarily the case when he started examining how green and socially responsible college and universities are. He’s head of the Sustainable Endowments Institute, which issues an annual College Sustainability Report Card.
Listen to the full interview here which was broadcast on Sea Change Radio.
Co-Host Kelsey Flynn then chats with Josh Stoffel, the new Sustainability Coordinator at the University of Massachusetts, and Monty Archbald, chair of the Green Campus Committee at Greenfield Community College. And finally, Bill talks with Neil Drobny of the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University.
So if schools are preparing our children for the future is enough covered in the curriculum about protecting the future via sustainability? How far does your school/college support sustainability? What do your kids learn about this in their school/college?
Curtis Bonk, professor emeritus at Indiana University, focuses on the idea of technology as a way to have multiple perspectives on international matters and analyze data at a deeper level for school pupils. This short video discusses some ideas for using technology in the classroom to enhance a students understanding of a concept at a deeper and a global level. Transcript below.
Robin Good: I am receiving this idea that those kids and those pioneers among us pushing the envelope will be the models of this emerging revolution, but the resistance from the existing educational system is very strong.
Also what I noticed is that these so-called digital natives are not as schooled as they are painted to be. They are cool because they have those tools as natural tools in front of them, but most of the time they are clueless on the best use of these tools on themselves, out of the very easy superficial social tools that they start to learn right away.
Digital natives do not seem to get what are the possibilities in front of them because they do not really have models inside their educational institutions that help them think critically about the opportunities available to them. The education system also makes them think in ways quite opposite in the way of forming them as humans that can have value inside society, that are kind of opposite to the once being offered by those very technologies. I am having some conflicts with all that. Curtis Bonk: Let’s think about the Flat Classrooms Project.
The Flat Classrooms Project is the only one discussed in my book, Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat book, Don Tapscott’s WIKINOMICS book and Growing Up Digital.
What they do in the flat classrooms, in Digiteen Project, they take a book like mine, or whatever book they might have, my blended book or whatever they have got, and they analyze the book. And in this case, these kids in secondary schools, work with other kids around the world to understand the technologies that make learning open. This semester they are using my book actually, The World is Open book. It is making them aware of what are the technologies for learning. Last year they looked at Growing Up Digital, the book from Don Tapscott, and they analyzed it across the world.
You are right, kids today have pretty savvy skills for their mobile devices, they can use them for chats and all this. But they are not for learning.
How do we transform the mobile devices or these synchronous conferencing tools?
In the Flat Classrooms Project they use Ning to form groups with other kids around the world, wikis to summarize the book across cultures, video conferencing like this to discuss what they have learned and do peer interaction. They use other kinds of tools like Twitter, microblogging and blogs. How can that one-off project become the norm?
How can those synchronous as well as asynchronous collaborative technologies push all through all schools? This is the power of technology I have been talking about since 1987. I think that video conference like this can let kids stand in each others shoes. They can see perspectives. That to me can change the whole teaching and learning arena. We have to pushing the global head, international head for perspective taking.
So I understand people in Italy better, which I do not admittedly, or people in Pakistan or some other places around the world. To me this is the most powerful way to use technology. It is to do cross-cultural collaboration like the ePals projectsand others, there is something called the IEARN Project. That will get kids in K-12 schools thinking about collaboration, teaming, these digital skills that you are talking about to critically analyze data. Not just accept what they see, but to analyze it with their peer groups. When they see a group in Italy critiquing a document that they thought was great, they will see that they really were not thinking about the credibility of the sources, the quality of the resources.
When I have done any international collaboration with my students, with my teachers, they see that once we go to Finland, Peru or Korea, those students are analyzing the data in a different way, and they are opened up to the fact that they are really not going as in-depth as they need to go. I really think that international collaboration pushes us up to ego-centric points of view to multiple perspectives. That is one way of using technology that can help with this digital teen issue.
What a simple concepts for using technology in a way that opens children up to the powerful way in which these technologies can be used for collaborative learning at a global level.
School blogs can transform virtually every aspect of school life. I appreciate that’s a bold claim but I’m going to back it up with some illustrations. I am also going to show you how easy it is to set up a complete school blogging platform with no technical knowledge whatsoever.
Before I go any further though, let me define what I mean by school blogs. Although blogs may have started out rather like online diaries, software such as WordPress (yes, it’s a version of WordPress that I am going to recommend) is quite capable of creating complex websites incorporating multimedia elements. The WordPress platform makes the production of engaging content as simple as using a word processor, allowing users to focus on content. It also allows readers to interact through comments and this is one of the main reasons why school blogs can be so powerful.
So think of a blog as an interactive personal website.
What I am suggesting is not that the school has a blog but rather that everyone IN the school has a blog - teachers, students, administrators - even parents. Here are some examples:
# Lessons - let’s imagine a teacher, Mr Geography. His next few lessons will cover the Amazon jungle. So he transfers an outline of his lesson plan to a blog post and adds in some images, a couple of videos from YouTube showing some Amazonian wildlife and links to the National Geographic website. For homework, the students will visit his post, possibly leave some comments, and then create their own posts answering the questions he set. (Don’t worry, there are many ways to stop plagiarism.)
The students have thus had a much richer and creative experience than simply reading a text book. Their work will remain online for future revision. It can even be made public and form part of a showcase of what students are achieving. Not only can this inspire children, it is a wonderful way for parents and grandparents to share in a student’s progress. This increased involvement can have many dividends in fundraising.
# Sports - the latest results and performances of the school teams can be shared online through reports, photographs and videos. Again, a much broader community can share in the school’s activities.
# Special Interests - this is a broad catch-all category for all the other activities that students may engage in, from dance, drama and music (reviews of theater visits, progress on their own productions etc.) through to IT, photography and debating clubs, The blogs of participant students help their development and publicize what they are doing to a wider audience. The school becomes a much more vibrant place.
# Field Trips and Holidays - parents can be kept informed of what is happening and the whole experience enriched and captured for posterity through blog entries.
I have only hinted at some of the incredible possibilities for using school blogs. I would like to emphasise a few points. Firstly, most of what is produced is almost a by-product of current activities - this is a different way of working rather than extra work. Secondly, much of it is created by the students themselves. Finally, despite the stunning results that can be achieved, this is actually very easy to implement.
I mentioned the WordPress platform earlier. There is a mutli-user version of WordPress, WPMU, that provides the basis for my recommended approach to school blogging. If you are considering how to set up school blogs with maximum effectiveness and ease-of-use, I would suggest an out-of-the box solution incorporating a number of plugins. This will allow you to focus on the benefits the system can bring rather than spending days tweaking settings to achieve an inferior solution.
Paul Taylor, MA(Oxon), MBA, member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and creator of the School Blogs website - a resource outlining the benefits of school blogs and the technology available.
An attention grabbing headline taken from the conclusions in a recent report produced for US Department of Education. The analysis found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.
The study looked at online versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996 to 2008. Some of it was in K-12 yet there were too few studies to warrant statistical significance. However, Picciano and Seaman (2009) estimated that more than a million K–12 students took online courses in school year 2007–2008 and interest in hybrid approaches that blend in-class and online activities is increasing.
Yet although online learning appeared to be well researched as an effective option for undergraduates, graduate students and professionals in a wide range of academic and professional studies, the number of K–12 studies is too small to warrant much confidence in the mean effect estimate for this learner group.
It strikes me as an interesting paradox when demand is increasing that the research which would support the increased use is not available. Online or digital learning can be a great resource to engage learners using a different medium. However, until the research catches up we would be wise to ensure that online learning activities should be an enhancement to more traditional forms of education rather than a replacement.
Many teachers have come to the view that in order for learners to engage with their education in the 21st Century, they need to have greater access to the technology that is now embedded into their every day lives. Our youngest generation are learners born into a world where mobile devices, games consoles, the internet, interactive TV and constant 24-7 multimedia are common place. Children are being exposed to technology from a very early age, yet research has shown that some of these children do not know how to use it effectively because they do not have the support at home. So should our schools be helping them by putting technology at the heart of the curriculum? If we are preparing our youngest generation of learners to be prepared for roles that they will fulfil in the future then technology will, undoubtedly, be at the heart of that.
There is a growing interest in finding ways to use technology in classrooms. Ollie Bray a teacher in Scotland has recently won the Microsoft European Innovative Teachers Forum Awards for his use of Nintendo DS and ‘Guitar Hero’ to engage with his pupils. This may cause a ripple of horror amongst more traditional teachers or parents. But engaged learners are better learners so shouldn’t we be grabbing the opportunity to engage with children with both hands?
So playing games at school maybe shocking but the technology is now there to use to enhance the educational experience and teach children how to use the technology. Win-win – they learn on two levels. Allowing children access to online educational games makes learning fun as well as learning how to navigate the computer even from a very young age. Ebooks have already proved particularly successful with low-ability and reluctant readers. A larger proportion of boys fall into this category than girls. Not only do they reflect the young learner’s world more appropriately than paper books but children still find technology ‘cool’. Therefore, reading on personal electronic devices or laptops individually or together on a whiteboard makes those who are reluctant more interested. A key element in successfully remediating struggling readers is helping them learn to enjoy reading. Even capable readers can enjoy quality content via eBooks and because they are a different medium to paper they can be actively encouraged to read more.
I was shocked when I saw the statistic that one in five children currently leaves UK primary school without reaching the expected level in reading and writing. If we can use the technology to engage them perhaps this statistic would change? Getting children to read more has been proven to increase literacy levels. Does it matter in what medium they increase their exposure to reading?
Children are being prepared for jobs that do not exist yet. The way in which they are educated needs to prepare them for the exponential change they will see in their life time. Technology is one of those changes. We should be doing what we can to equip them with the skills they need to interface effectively with technology. I am not suggesting we throw out traditional methods of teaching but that we embrace the technology that can engage our youngest learners to ensure they are equipped with the skills they will need in their changing lifetime.
I was recently reading a report by Ofsted [an independent education review body in the UK] about literacy trends in schools.
The report is available here.
“The gap between schools in their understanding of the uses of new technology partly reflected the very differing views that schools held about English, the changing nature of communication and pupils’ literacy needs in the 21st century. The most effective schools understood that ‘ICT has fundamentally altered… how we think about reading and writing’. As technology has changed, so the literacy needs of pupils change. This always involves adding new skills rather than simply replacing old ones.”
This is fundamental. We need to view the use of technology as beneficial to engaging students as well as adding to the skill set that they will require in the future. The skills required to read and enjoy a novel are different to those needed to skim emails, or text messages or extract pertinent data from an electronic report. However we cannot forget the basics. Reading and writing are skills, in my view, that need to remain no matter what technological advancements are made.
If the changes in education over the last 100 years had been as dramatic as the changes in medicine or industry over that time, what would our schools look like today?
What a great question and it certainly got me thinking.
The education system hasn’t really changed that much since the 1800’s. Yet advances in knowledge, technology and access to information has seen exponential growth. Our children are growing up in this environment. They are learning to access and use knowledge when and where they need it. Learning is not limited to learning within the boundaries of classrooms and school buildings, it is available 24/7.
Our current model of schooling is to bring the learner to the knowledge contained within the walls of the school building where experts tell and share information. The schools of tomorrow need to bring the knowledge to the learner. And that is not constrained by a location or building.
Do I think that schools will become a thing of the past and children will learn in isolated pods? Absolutely not. The true value of schools is that they support a community of learners, not only in their knowledge but in their social development too. So going to school won’t change, but how we educate our learners should harness the technological advancements available. So teachers can be a guide to learning, supporting enquiring minds, inspiring and working with the children to solve problems. The true beauty of a school community is that young minds can question, challenge and discuss to develop their knowledge further.
We cannot guess at how much the world will change in their lifetimes, as change is an exponential graph, but we can make sure that our education is preparing children for this change.
I bet you watched and heard of children in others countries on infomercials at 3am talking about poverty, education shortfalls, and the bleak future these children face. The shortage of teachers and schools available leaves children who are left by parents searching for work to enter into the service industry, cleaning the homes of the small amount of wealthy, seamstresses, or manufacturing cheap American goods for export making even less than the products are worth. The scariest of trades comes when these children are kidnapped and forced into the sex industry.
Heartbreaking, and hard to imagine considering the luxury we gain from living in America. But companies are starting to take notice of elearning and the benefits that can be obtained from providing courses to children with refurbished computers.
eLearning can provide a fairly cheap and sometimes donated tool to bring students into learning and give them options other than poverty. It is a way to break the cycle of countries that are struggling to provide education.
eLearning can be the link that gives children success in the most unsuccessful countries and even in within the US, states that have large areas of poverty can benefit from programs that provide refurbished computers and software that enhances learning. Tools that could be used in community centers, after school programs and church outreach. eLearning is no longer just about books, it is a whole new opportunity for giving the greatest tool for advancement - knowledge.
