Reflection on Malcolm Gladwell keynote at NECC 2009
one of the key ideas that Gladwell explored in his keynote was the significant evidence that both supports the idea of perseverance over talent and its implications for education. There is a very nice summary of his keynote here:
http://www.isteconnects.org/2009/06/28/face-to-face-with-malcolm-gladwell-at-necc-2009/
at one point, he talks about the success of KIPP schools (http://kipp.org) and their formula for success being more contact time, therefore more “time in the trenches”. If you look at the MET school, their idea of rigour comes not from curriculum that is hammered into kids, but from rich authentic projects that develop rigour.
In particular, Dennis Littky quotes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi … rigour is “the opportunity for young people to experience intense concentration in any activity that requires skill and discipline, regardless of content”
the key idea here, is that two very different schools accomplish the same goal by lengthy hands-on hard cognitive work on the part of learners. In one school that is driven by the teachers, and the other is driven by the direction of a student who is passionate about a topic they have chosen. For our HAIS/HCF schools of the future initiative, we have left the approach that each school takes to themselves. Transformation for each institution will be different, and the good news is that Gladwell’s tenet would seem to imply (and I agree) that the paths that each school takes can be different as long as rigour is a significant part of student work on a day-to-day basis.
He said himself during his keynote that it is probably not so much what schools do as it is how they do it.
These are my notes form the sessions I attended today:
Charting a Course For the future of education
Sunday Morning 830 am – 1130 am
Doug Levin – national boards of (NASB) and Dave Moore from knowledgeworks and the foundation
came from cable in the classroom – planning for strategy for futures of ed
created a roadmap – 2020 map for future of education
website: http://www.futureofed.org/
This is a really deep website has lots of resources that support their future trends and give him some votes of data and examples as well as interesting scenarios and pieces to reflect on
we started with a question to group – what will school be like in 2020?
we talked about a range of issues/thoughts
what will drive change?
they have developed six forces that they have identified as shapers of the future of education.
In order: altered bodies,, platforms for resilience, a new civil discourse, the maker economy, pattern recognition
the bottom line is that each of these developments will affect in some way how schools can or must change.
marks thoughts – which of will succeed in leading our schools to change in ways that will help children into their future?
gotta think about clay’s book about disruptive innovation – how will this affect school’s development? All of these forces have disruptive majors in them — some positive, some negative
#1 altered bodies
thought of the day – if you could take a drug that would improve your intellectual performance without side effect would you?
this brings up an issue I think about – dichotomy – there will be 2 societies – those that have gets…will some technologies level the playing field or increase the divide? clearly given our past history, many of the technologies and forces we are talking about will act as dividers, not unifier’s. This is a shame, but reality.
do we teach kids ways of focusing – things like mediattion/focus strategies?
We know there is lots of research (stress/cortisol levels for instance) and yet we do very little in a formal way to help students understand how to create the best conditions psychologically and physically for learning — this is a shame.
interesting observation (me) – he mentioned harvard study about coping mechanism – mark’s thought – prayer is one example of this – the power of church may be drawing on this …
community of schools (think MET) – if stronger connections, better dealing with stress
As we move from elementary to middle to high school, we typically move further and further away from community, and this seems a shame as that sense of community that supports the stress on them During the day students deal with.
#2 amplified orgs
clay shirky – ted lecture – groabnies example
he used a TED video about Josh Grobin and how a community formed both around supporting his career, and a nonprofit to raise money for needy causes. Technology was an enabler that allowed these groups to form.
in our sotf – how to take our amplified organization and make it do more…
is rapid beta testing in ed going to be possible
one of the big ideas – if we can change the isolation of teaching through these amplified networks – then education might be transformed – internet access is pretty ubiquitous, so the ability for teachers to connect pretty much anywhere has become a nonissue
we really need to redefine rigor – need to memorize littky’s definition of this…all of us need to take on the domains we can change and take ownership of them…
littky – “ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – rigour is “the opportunity for young people to experience intense concentration in any activity that requires skill and discipline, regardless of content
#3 platforms for resilience
showed a video of Jamais Cascio talking about autoimmune responses in education
we had a bit of a discussion here about schools reaction to banning devices to limit what students can do. The subject came up about the analogy of schools being devoid of tools that students feel comfortable with and therefore becoming less relevant.
discussion around internet access and the reaction little relevance to a world where kids will have their own always on access in the next few years
need to blog on: if most students soon will have data access through their own devices and schools can’t filter, how will schools react
research – grunwald and associates – gap between admin and student perception of tech use and appropriate use. Whereas administrators look at worst-case scenario, the self reporting by teenagers indicated much lower levels of inappropriate technology use than adults assume.
#4 new civil discourse
example of melboune wiki – the city of Melbourne has created a wiki for city planning that allows all members of its community, even from outside their community, to help in urban planning.
and curriwiki – what happens when a community can build knowledge
involvement of parents in school another example — we have a true opportunity here to use technology to create transparency that hasn’t existed in schools before.
#5 Maker economy
see notes – instructables, etc
He gave examples here — plenty on their website — of services and trends that indicate moving away from mass merchandising, and tailoring to individual design, localize products, and green technologies
#6 pattern recognition
how to sift, filter
this is reminiscent of shirky’s filter failure comment on web20 conference
how to make meaning of data
is web 3.0 going to help? mark’s a comment here — the promise and potential of Web 3.0 (symantic) is one of the future trends of the think is a powerfully understood well enough yet. As meta-data and personal information merge in the cloud, the common experience of the web will be a personalized pattern experience that will take into account our preferences, tendencies, and needs. This won’t address all the problems with making meaning, but it should help.
the future is
local
digital
personalized
stressed
vibrant
collaborative
Arthur Levin oped in edweek feb 20 2009 – the change of schools and learning… Although Arthur has been a fairly conservative voice in education, Dave’s point was that this piece even from a conservative voice indicated both the recognition and need for schools to do more than they are old mission of preparing standardized assembly line workers.
SIGTC – The 21St Tech Leader
Sunday afternoon 1-4pm
(mark left at 3 pm)
background context – ms tech person, moved to writing book for tc fr dissertation
goal – past work
goal – he is an incrementalist
video of doug skinner – day in the life of a tech coordinator (for google teacher academy)
21st tech coordinator – leader in the middle
refers to David Morusund – his 87 book on tech go To coord is the first
dm: need for long term commitment… tough to look at volatile tech
pd
budget
curriculum analysis
transitional period – think long haul (reminiscent of Jukes Digital Diet)
research – even though we look typically at yr1&2 , the substantive work happens into yr 3&4 and beyond…
interesting point here — one of the things in our schools of the future grant was a recognition that the transformation process for schools is a multiyear effort to need support from more than just the first year or two and he agrees with this.
things mark needs to work into his sphere of influence: phones, data, security..others?
slide of Edward De Bono – hats worn by execs
frazier – same idea 0- hats worn by tech coord
teaching & learning
desktop support
administrative computing
network issues
budgeting and planning
new themes for 21st century tech leaders
digital citizenship
convergence
connectivity
data
the data crunch is a reality – how do you manage the amount we deal with
his question – either you need to be a transformational leader (take the early adopters and move on) or a progress leader – incremental change…
here’s a big question (my dissertation)_ what style of leadership will schools use and what success?
give the early adopters resources and go, or support incremental change as an institution… I believe most of us support both of these groups — I suspect how we decide where we put our energies is our higher yield activity. Here’s the big question — if we use the Moretti rule we know that 20% of our effort would give us 80% of our yield – which group is our high-heeled group?
two questions
what is the most pressing issue for us?
what advice to a friend about to become a tech coord?
topics that came up – cell phones, funding and control, data management (forced externally) – getting things to talk to each other (ex email – the way people share information)
amplifying of issues over the internet (cyber bullying, posting inappropriate)
not always control over own money, access to real time data that teacher can use,
gap between admin lack of tech use and need for better understanding, filtering issues…infrastructure and budget during crunch times
digital media – old school texts trying to bring new media
organizational structure and impact on edtech and security concerns (filter, etc)
what does success really mean? target/scapegoat of decisions.
So today, after getting situated in the hotel it was about 2:30 PM and I decided to take a walk through the city post to get situated, find the convention center, get lunch and see a few sites. Inspired by the splendid table on NPR, I looked up Jane and Michael Stern’s food finds and chose Ben’s chili bowl which is about half a mile from Howard University. From there I walked through sites like the White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Smithsonian air and space Museum, the Capitol building and then walked back. I knew it’d been a long hike, and Google mapped it. To my surprise the distance with even greater than expected — 8.7 miles:
At the Honolulu Board of realtors meeting on June 5, we had the chance to hear Payton Dobbs, who leads Googles effort in e-commerce. he shared seven key ideas emerging for anyone involved in thinking about technology overlays with their development. There is nothing here that is terribly groundbreaking, but what is significant is someone as high up in Google really identifying the importance of these things — they are all relevant to our mission education and are worth taking to heart:
mobile Internet will explode — gave lots of relevant examples of how cell phones and smart phones are becoming the primary way by which people use and learn with the Internet. Good example — Apple iPhone 60% of the phone use is for not making phone calls. Lots of other examples of 3G growth, preponderance of mobile phones in populated areas like India, China, Japan, etc. Japanese teens spend two hours a day on their mobile phones — not talking. Examples of people authoring books entirely in the cell phone.
Maps are a key interface — again, give examples of how tools like Google Earth have changed the way people view the world. This is not a huge surprise to me (Mark) since my interest in tools like GIS have been around for a decade. What is interesting to me, is that we’ve skipped over GIFs as a tool and gone straight to rich intuitive tools like maps on the iPhone, Google Earth on the Internet to understand the world. A good example of this is the number of students we see in the Weinberg Tech Plaza that spend part of the day using Google Earth to look for surf spots, find their friends, and take tours of places they have not been. The new features in iPhoto for geo-tagging are another example of this becoming more prevalent.
The divide between the web and desktops will this appear. This is essentially the argument for cloud computing and there is no doubt that we are seeing the emergence of tools like smart phones and networks. He made the case that within a few years most people will ask that their data to be in the cloud, so they have access to contacts, documents, information matter where they are. Is the fact that our teachers cannot access their files from home another example of how we are disconnected from this movement?
Everything will connect — previously inanimate objects will now be connected. He gave us his example the significance of RFID as a technology. The fact that devices will become smart enough to know what they are how they are connected to other objects around them is an example of the way technology drives innovation. If our refrigerator knows that milk is spoiling, if our car knows conditions are unsafe, if objects in the supermarket know our likes and dislikes, it will greatly change the way you interact with the objects around us — and how they will interact with us!
The web will be more personal and social — his observation was that people were less and less distinguishing between online and face-to-face interaction. We are already seeing this with the school age generation who see talking to and using tools like text, avatars, as real conversation and relationship. Another example of this is using online interfaces for medical advice — something which used to be the purview of the doctor’s office has become a much more online experience and moving more that way. He advocated for all businesses (and schools?) To have a social area of this site to build a community that will bring conversation, creation, and commitment to those focused around that organization.
Internet will be the primary platform for media — we see lots of examples of this recently with releases of Hulu, YouTube, and Flickr, Picasa, etc. For me, personally, this begs the question of platform independence — when we are reaching the point that media including tools like Voicethread now, and potential video editing sites are just n the horizon, is the fact that right now the Macintosh is the weapon of choice for media development for most schools, a long-term reality for a short-term phenomena?
Going green is here to stay — he gave lots of examples of Google’s own efforts to be green — solar generation test projects that are fully online, electric car hybrids being developed, and just the nature of the need for us to all live within their means that the earth gives us. I think the example of Hawaii preparatory Academy’s new energy lab as a model in this venue — I am excited for what it will mean when it will become a model for schools to consider how to best utilize the resources around them.
he finished with the quote below — recognizing that for many in businesses and schools that these changes will not be easy or comfortable. They are however, the reality we are looking into and we disregard any of these to our own peril.
. Catherine the great –
“there is a great wind blowing and will either cause imagination or a headache “
