This post is the third and last on a topic involving a change in the way most schools incorporate technology into the curriculum for the benefit of students and teachers alike. The overall idea was spelled out in Piece of the Pie, and suggested changes on the elementary and secondary levels in our approach to technology integration. A more detailed description of the Elementary piece was explored in An Elementary Idea. In this post I would like to offer a suggestion for an approach on the secondary level.
Many of the obstacles to integrating technology into the curriculum as tools for learning are the same on the secondary level as they are on the elementary level. Insofar as teachers needing to seek professional development the problem remains the same. Too often teachers don’t know what it is that they don’t know when it comes to technology in education. It goes beyond just learning tech. It requires a continual commitment to learning with the ability to provide the time to do so. Beyond that commitment, the idea of comfort is always worked into the discussion. Teachers seem to have a need to be comfortable with technology in order to learn or use it. Little of this helps get technology into the classroom. The time restraints and discomfort of some, deny the access of technology in the curriculum for many. Beyond the teachers however, the other obstacle is a lack of support on the part of the district. This is usually a result of lack of money, or understanding, or leadership. Too often it’s a combination of all of those elements.
The plan for the secondary level is as simple as scheduling a study hall. It will require a model very familiar to special education teachers. It is a resource room with access to technology. The teacher in charge of the room may become a jack of all trades and a master of none. It will require the teacher to be a mentor more than a content expert. The teacher’s expertise will be in knowing where to direct kids to go for an exploration of content. The room will require access to technology or at least the ability for students to use their own personal tools to access the internet.
In this scheduled class students may be directed to any number of tutorial sites like the Kahn Academy. This will enable students to explore subjects in ways that may be different from those presented in the regular class. The idea of open source exploration may also slip the bonds of the textbook of the classroom with the guidance of the tech resource teacher. This will be a place of exploration to teach students the ability to explore subjects independently in an effort to develop independent life-long Learners.
This learning environment will also allow students to understand and develop their own Personal Learning Networks. The idea of responsible digital citizenship will be reinforced on a daily basis. Emphasis can be placed on the positive aspects of social media and social learning. The skills of collaboration and communication will be the focus. Students needing to work on projects or presentations will also benefit in this learning environment. The ability to Skype with experts and authors can take place to benefit all in this collaborative environment.
The age of the students should not matter. Freshmen to seniors mixed in one place can all benefit from this mentoring process. The mission of this environment would be to create a mentoring environment with access to technology to supplement, and enhance that which is being taught in the various classes of the students in this environment. This will remove the classroom barriers as students gain independence in learning outside the classroom. The idea would be to make them participatory learners, directing their own learning. There would also be a need to teach and strengthen critical thinking skills in order to improve the ability to acquire accurate and relevant information. These students will be media literate. The benefits of this learning environment hopefully will spill over to the other classes.
That would be my proposal with some of the benefits spelled out. It will meet certain academic and media literacy needs. It will require a change in thinking on the part of some, but it would be fairly simple to implement. It addresses the 21st century skills that we hear and talk so much about. This proposal however, will also probably never go anywhere but this post for two reasons. One, It cannot be measured by a standardized test. Two, it requires people to think and do things differently from the way they are doing things now. Our need to talk, debate and argue endlessly about reform without change will continue. I will however probably feel compelled to continue making suggestions for reform.
Comments are welcomed.
My Island View 
Tom,
I think your idea, or proposal, is quite inspired. Oftentimes, I agree that teachers aren’t using the most of what web 2.0 has to offer for no reason other than they aren’t familiar with the available resources. This is one reason I started my blog site, Kleinspiration, a free resource sharing blog for educators exploring technology resources.
In our school, we have a small vision of what you’re describing. We are on block scheduling, and every other day our students have a block of 82 minutes devoted to ‘forum.’ This forum, our 8th hour, is similar to that of what some may refer to as study hall. Students report to a homeroom and participate in sustained silent reading for the first twenty minutes of class. Then, they are allowed (with a pass) to transfer classes as needed. Stated differently, if a student needs math support, he or she visits that teacher’s room. However, if a child has a paper to type, they go to one of the three available computer labs (each with a mentor in the room).
Last year, the computer labs weren’t available; however, this year because we’ve placed our instructional aids in these labs during this time, they now have supervision and are able to be opened. I’ve noticed the increase in projects being assigned and an increase in technology resources being utilized within the classroom and during this forum time. It’s been a great ‘experiment.’
How do you see this type of class working itself into the daily schedule?
I’m still thinking – you’ve inspired me… thanks for a provoking post. I always enjoy your work.
Erin Klein
http://www.kleinspiration.com
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tom Whitby, Coopmike48. Coopmike48 said: A Secondary Idea « My Island View – http://goo.gl/wA1YR […]
Tom,
While I understand your proposal, I don’t agree that this is the way to go. Here’s why. High school is a strange creature. You said “many of the obstacles to integrate technology into the curriculum as tools for learning are the same on the secondary level as they are on the elementary level.” Structurally this may be true, but philosophically, elementary and secondary schools are completely different. Ask any elementary teacher what s/he teaches and the answer is something like, “I teach 3rd grade, or I teach 3rd graders.” Ask the same question of any high school teacher at a traditional comprehensive high school and the answer is, “I teach English or I teach Pre-Calculus.” Elementary teachers teach kids. Many high school teachers believe they teach content, not kids. Therein lies the challenge with your idea. When tech integration is a separate and discrete course, most high school teachers don’t feel any need to link it to their course, because they teach a different and discrete content important to them. So students learning about Khan Academy in the tech integration period is only useful if the students can apply their new knowledge in their other courses.
In my experience, there are too few secondary schools that purposefully align what is occurring in one class with what is occurring in another. Content is generally taught as discrete silos of learning. Tech integration taught in this manner is just tech, without the integration part.
A second challenge is secondary teachers’ comfort level with the technology students are learning and using. In my experience, elementary teachers are much more likely to learn something new with their students, than high school teachers are. Many (and certainly not all) high school teachers view themselves as that sage on the stage, and they cannot incorporate technology into their classroom when it exceeds their own content knowledge. Besides, why use tech integration when lecturing is so successful? Elementary know better, because you can’t lecture at 4th graders without the classroom falling apart. Not all high school teachers know this reality of elementary education. So if the teacher struggles with powerpoint, then magically, s/he says their students struggle with powerpoint as well, and meaningful tech integration does not occur.
I’m the Director of Secondary Curriculum in my urban district, and we’ve had the stand-alone tech courses you describe. I’m ending them. Inevitably, these courses are entitled Microsoft Office, or Web Design, and they essentially teach students what they already know. They take what could be dynamic and engaging and make it dull and boring for students. We want and need tech integration to be a vital component in all classes, and not taught as a stand-alone course. So we’re working, albeit slowly, to integrate technology into real-world problem solving embedded in all our courses.
Heidi Hayes Jacobs, in her recent book Curriculum21, and I’m paraphrasing since it’s not in front of me, asks the reader to consider what contemporary professionals are doing in the fields we teach in high school. When professionals “do” history and english, and science as a career, what do they actually do? The answer is they blog, they write for online journals, they connect with colleagues all around the world, they create, they apply knowledge, they create podcasts, and web pages, and the list of tech integrated products goes on and on. It’s in that context that we are trying to teach teachers to integrate technology. If our students are going to produce what contemporary professionals produce, they need to meaningfully integrate technology to do it.
If we have a tech integration course as you propose, but teachers in other classes are still assessing student learning via true/false and matching, what’s the point of having a tech integration course? We can and must do better.
Thanks for the post.
Eric
I just wrote a similar blog. It concerns the development of lessons that incorporate themes, current issues, or seasonal tie-ins. Elementary teachers use this often (good or bad) But even as an adult, I love these fun thematic touches, but I don’t see many secondary teachers using them. Why is this?
http://bit.ly/fzUhLF
I think you are under-estimating the ability of our secondary teachers to quickly adapt and integrate technology into the curriculum. In our case, as a first year 1-to-1 7-12 jh/hs, we are seeing a flipped classroom in calculus, with our first-year teacher recording podcasts for homework; skyping and simulcasting from our social studies classroom; a paperless French teacher with assignments and oral reviews all submitted digitally. We have a long way to go, but we are seeing great things breaking out all over. With the addition of an exciting new tech integrationist/media speicalist to our staff for next year, we feel that the sky’s the limit for our jh/hs students. You refer to special educaton–we use the inclusion model for that as well. Our vision is for our tech integrationist to be in the classroom helping students and teachers alike as they work to utilize technology as an effective tool for teaching and learning.