The school year is drawing to a close. As the end approaches, people tend to get a little grumpy. That was my reaction to a recent post by Wes Fryer. Frustration seems to be setting in. This post complains about the proposed cuts to EETT. The post goes on from there to claim that President Obama supports a continuation of NCLB. As is typically the case, I expect that the situation is more complex than EETT and NCLB. For example, I anticipate that stimulus money will potentially influence school opportunities to modify infrastructure and invest in technology if decisions at the local level move in that direction. I am guessing many districts in many states are simply attempting to hold on to as many teachers as possible.
Changing minds is important – confrontation is unlikely to convince the majority. The position that drastic reform is necessary only plays well with those who are convinced. The idea is to escape from the echo chamber and influence moderates. I fear some who fancy themselves as visionaries and leaders may find themselves with few voluntary followers.
In my opinion, change will come when advocates:
- Do something cool that offers the opportunity to inspire learners and convince parents and colleagues on the local level. We need more visible examples. I think we may be getting to the point we have too many visionaries for hire and too few teachers known at the local level with impressive student work to share.
- Support research. How else will we really know what makes a difference? I am not convinced that we have important answers in hand. Complaining that standardized tests miss important skills is fine. If you are an advocate support research using some other dependent variables.
- Answer the question of why new teachers are no more innovative in their use of technology. Why is it that supposed digital natives teach like those of us of more advanced age? What about present opportunities fails to translate into classroom practice?
BTW – I have read the Texas “immersion” research as well (the 2009 summary (a pdf) is available) and the results are mixed and in some cases negative. To claim this research warrants a general commitment to a 1:1 model is simply wrong. In fact, the report indicates that following the period of support some schools decided to back away from a traditional one-to-one model. The report (according to my interpretation) also seemed to imply that teacher and administrator beliefs about how students learn influenced how technology is used. This sounds a lot like Windschitl & Sahl (2002) and other older research.
