I have begun drafting some theses regarding educational reform for your consideration. You might notice they have somewhat of a Cluetrainian flavor, and they do. These theses serve as topic sentences that will be further articulated in the coming months. You can also visit Steve Hargadon's School 2.0 site to review and comment on entries made by Steve, Will Richardson, Bill Fitzgerald, Christian Long, Chris Lehmann, David Warlick and others.
Please do not be afraid to share your views. Tell me I'm right, wrong, on target, and/or out of my mind. Your input is critical to a bottom-up, socially emergent voice of change. Remember, we're in this together.
- Learning is a social activity. It is built upon conversations.
- Schools are people.
- Every child can learn and grow socially, cognitively, and spiritually.
- Teaching and learning should be a transparent process.
- The Internet is people. Educational technology is about people.
- People have opinions and perspectives; this is how we distinguish each other.
- The Internet is enabling conversations around the globe.
- Social software enables a new type of teaching and learning that subverts conventional forms of teaching and learning.
- When learners have questions, shouldn’t they be allowed to ask for help from each other?
- People have the power to educate themselves.
- People can gather more information more quickly then they could before the Internet existed.
- The Internet is about emergence.
- The Internet permits new forms of knowledge management.
- The Internet encourages multiple forms of participation.
- Internet security is more about stemming conversations rather than encouraging them.
- When rules of usage are top-down and policy driven they disenfranchise users. Rules that regulate usage should be decided by users themselves who then self-manage their activity.
- The need for control is inevitable, however it must include checks and balances that support all stakeholders.
- Communities of practice can support students and teachers personally and professionally.
- School is a metaphysical construct. It provides a means for people to interact.
- Schools can change lives of individuals for better or worse.
- Students and teachers are knowledge creators. They are more than mere passive receivers of knowledge and information.
- Schools have turned into bureaucratic hegemonies. Policies drive curriculum, not authentic learning.
- As such, schools are in crisis. They no longer serve learners.
- Learning is a political activity. Learning involves social relationships that relate directly and indirectly with issues of authority and power.
- Learning that involves building on social capital is powerful. Learning that taps into the opportunities afforded by social networking technologies will be smarter.
- Learners can communicate with each other directly across the globe. Time, space, and distance thus take on a new meaning.
- Schools must share the concerns of their community.
- A school must belong to their community.
- Schools (administrators, teachers, staff) need to be more involved with the people they hope to create relationships with.
- Learning is about examination of our selves, our individual and collective thoughts, our values, our societies, and the roles assumed by each.
- To succeed, schools need to examine the conditions within the communities in which they operate and address the needs of that community directly with active participation from community members.
- No Child Left Behind is not a position. It is a bombastic, under funded mandate cast in a pejorative rhetoric.
- Many schools operate out of fear of their constituencies and stakeholders. Many schools are afraid what the public would say if they knew what was going on inside.
- Changing schools requires experimentation, trying things differently.
- Schools need to be picky in terms of who is allowed to manage the infrastructure and who is responsible for working with students.
- Schools must openly examine their assumptions and hidden curriculums and communicate their findings their stakeholders.
- When schools cannot examine and share their goals and assumptions openly with community members, they will die.
- School policies can be poisonous and generate distrust if they are not negotiated with stakeholders.
- Emergence happens. Schools need to let it happen.
- Stakeholders (parents, teachers, students, administrators, community members, local businesses and government) want to be involved in planning and curricular decisions.
- Jargon kills conversations.
- Standardized tests should be diagnostic tools, not school grades.
- High stakes tests should never be tied to teacher or school evaluations or merit pay.
- If schools are broken and broke, who designed it?
- Who needs school?
- The prosumer has power. If schools fail to recognize this, then learners should go elsewhere.
- Schools can be a part of something special. They can promote social justice, confront issues of poverty and disenfranchisement, and set the stage for a brighter future.
Photo credits: People Power, Power to the People, Harmony, Community, Sprout.
Keywords: action, Bill Fitzgerald, bloggers, change, Chris Lehman, Christian Long, Cluetrain Manifesto, collaboration, community, David Warlick, edubloggers, education, educational reform, emergence, future, Internet, learning, politics, read/write web, School 2.0, school reform, social capital, social justice, social networking, Steve Hargadon, teaching, Will Richardson
Comments
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/
Great!
Not my words but worth adding here:
Schools aren't about covering the curriculum, but 'uncovering' the curriculum.
Not the Knowing, but the Process of Inquiry.
Looks good can I ask for clarification on what you mean by
"Schools need to be picky in terms of who is allowed to manage the infrastructure and who is responsible for working with students."
May I suggest you ban word teachers or administrators,or what ever and instead just use simple word staff as education is everyone responsibility.
In fact that imho should be a rule
"Defining staff as teacher, non-teacher or support staff makes us and them culture and at all times we should just be called staff" or something along those lines
Regards
Russell
How the heck have I missed reading you since I started in July? Wow! I need my school to be all of the above and more. Thankfully, I have you and all the others to ignite my thinking. You are now officially on my daily list of feeds.
Great ideas! You might consider adding some of these (just off the top of my head):
- All people need to continue learning and thus are learners, regardless of official position in an educational institution.
- All people are individuals with different needs and preferences.
- Individuality should be taken into account when considering what, when, where, and how to learn.
- Individuality does not mean segregation of people into various special classes.
- Teaching is one of the best ways of learning.
- Allowing students to teach each other should be supported.
- Mixing various age and proficiency levels together improves possibilities of peer teaching and learning.
- Teachers do not need to know everything.
- Teachers are needed as experts on learning, as coaches to the learners.
- Using the Internet will not magically improve pedagogy.
- New tools are always a challenge. So is the Internet.
Should someone put up a wiki for this manifesto at some point?Great ideas! You might consider adding some of these (just off the top of my head):
- All people need to continue learning and thus are learners, regardless of official position in an educational institution.
- All people are individuals with different needs and preferences.
- Individuality should be taken into account when considering what, when, where, and how to learn.
- Individuality does not mean segregation of people into various special classes.
- Teaching is one of the best ways of learning.
- Allowing students to teach each other should be supported.
- Mixing various age and proficiency levels together improves possibilities of peer teaching and learning.
- Teachers do not need to know everything.
- Teachers are needed as experts on learning, as coaches to the learners.
- Using the Internet will not magically improve pedagogy.
- New tools are always a challenge. So is the Internet.
Should someone put up a wiki for this manifesto at some point?All the points in an ideal world, but ...
"Schools have turned into bureaucratic hegemonies. Policies drive curriculum, not authentic learning."
More and more resources and authority have moved into the centre of an educational bureaucracy and away from teachers. Many people who do not like teaching move into the educational bureaucracy and create requirements and policies that distract from student-centered teaching/learning time. My hope is that the web with its heirarchy-flattening power will provide a different (better) structure.
Thank you all for your reactions/responses. I will be adding these to the School 2.0 site soon.
-cs
[quote]Every child can learn and grow socially, cognitively, and spiritually.[/quote]
Not to forget emotional growth/learning!
Thank you for this inspiring post. I have been working like a dog getting ready for a new school2.0 year. As I plead for more computers and bandwidth and competent IT professionals, I sometimes wonder if I am doing the right thing. Then I read something like this that keeps me charging forward.
Thank you
Wow ! Very interesting. Something is going on... One sentence in your manifesto is specially talking to me... "Emergence happens...and schools need to let it happens..."
Thank you !
http://www.taskbuilderonline.com/TBOL21teacher.html
NCLB is essentially a no excuse model that causes educators and stakeholders to recognize differences among students and create the match-ups between teaching strategies and student needs, interests, and preferences to ensure success. NCLB identifies students who were masked in the past by norm-referenced testing.
The tension over "teaching to the test" is unnecessary because state and classroom tests are developed from content standards valued by parents, teachers, and other stakeholders. In reality, teachers teach to standards and classroom and NCLB assessment data guide professionals toward the valued standards. NCLB does not preclude innovative, creative teaching to help all students. It causes teachers to reach deeply into their repertoire of knowledge, experiences, and skills to find strategies that work for all students. Moreover, if you look carefully in the law, it calls for the application of all we know and all research confirms about good teaching to help all students. It's simply grandma's law in motion: If you want your pie ($), you must do your chores (teach so students learn). Sounds like a good return for our tax dollars.
The next decade of teaching will generate a pool of unprecedented strategies for helping all students to read, write, compute, and think effectively about any topic. Isn't it great to be part of the process that is building the new delivery system for teaching and learning?