A Snapshot of Your School System (with an eye towards 'readiness' or essential conditions to effectively leverage technology for learning)

By bringing together many educators from around the globe and understanding that CONTEXT plays in important role in successful technology integration projects, it is incumbent upon team members to share a bit about their own school systems - either (or both) the ones they are teaching in or, if different, the one they were schooled in. The following questions are suggested as guides for this conversation.

1. How long is a typical school day for a student? Primary / Middle School / Secondary. Do the students ever come early or stay late for extra-curricular activities? If so, what types of activities would be involved? During the school day do the students have any scheduled snacks, meals, or recess breaks included – how long are these? Who supervises the students during these periods? How long is a typical school day for a teacher?
2. How do most of your students get to school? How do most of the teachers get to school?
3. What are the typical class sizes? Are there subject specific teachers throughout the school grades? How does your system deal with 'special' students?
4. What type of school work do students do outside of school? Do the parents have a role in school activities outside of regular school time? Do students congregate in public places, homes or use any electronic means to work jointly on projects or assigned homework?
5. Are the students engaged in projects that last longer than three class periods? How are these projects assessed? Are they individual projects or group projects? How many students are typically allowed to work in a group? How often are longer projects assigned as a learning activity in any given subject?
6. How many periods of art, music and phys-ed do students in primary and middle school get? Are students 'streamed' in high school and if so, how is this decided?
7. How often do students get access to computers or other technology? What is the typical student to computer ratio when they access a computer? What types of things do students use computers or other technologies for? When the student uses technology is it typically with a special technology teacher or the subject teacher? What other technologies are used besides computers?
8. What is a typical salary of a beginner teacher? seasoned teacher? Principal? How does a teacher's wage compare to a university or college professor in your system? To put things in perspective, how much does a restaurant worker make in your culture? What about a policeman or Nurse?
9. What qualifications does a typical teacher need to be hired by a school? Do teachers teach without these qualifications? How long does it take to get these qualifications? How many unqualified teachers would be teaching at a school, on average. How is a new teacher’s abilities assessed? Who does this assessment? How often? Are teachers part of a union? Do the teachers receive any professional development during the school year? Are their days set aside where there is no school but teachers have PD - how many? Can teachers attend professional development sessions and have a supply-teacher take their class? Is there a staff lounge in your school and do teachers use it as a professional learning environment? What is the general feeling about teacher PD in your system? Are teachers encouraged to complete action research, teacher inquiries, lesson-studies, learning circles or any other forms of meta-cognitive and reflective practice?
   
10. Where do teachers get their lessons from? What support mechanisms do they have to create good lessons in their subject? Are there any cross-curricular learning activities that occur in your school system? What about across-grade projects? Who are the skilled personnel in the system that teachers have access to? How is information and support disseminated by those individuals?
    
11. Is a textbook used in most courses? Does a publisher provide the text book or is it developed by the Ministry of Education? What % of an assigned text book is used for a subject? How is curriculum developed and how often is it reviewed and changed?
    
12. What is a typical assessment scheme for a course – identify the course and then the assessment scheme you want to share? In a test or quiz what types of questions are most common? Are there state-wide tests? IF so, at in what grade/subject do these occur? What is the purpose of these state-wide assessments? How are students assessed in your grades - do they receive a "Satisfactory/Needs Improvement" rating, A grade based on a % or letter grade? Can students fail a grade or skip a grade? What happens to students who can't make the 'grade' are they moved along anyway but given some kind of support?
    
13. How old are children when they start school? Is there a compulsory pre-school program? How old are they when they complete the final grade before going to a post-secondary institution?
14. What is the predominant belief about how a student learns in your system? Please give an example of the best way, for instance, a student would learn math or science or history in your system? How often are students involved in collaborative or cooperative activities - are they part of assessment for learning?
    
15. How are parents involved in the school? Do you have parent/teacher conferences - how often? Are students allowed to participate in these? How often do report cards go home? In what ways is the school is involved in the community and vice-versa?
16. Which of the following typical elementary classrooms comes closest to the average classrooms in your school?

(A) Photo by: S. Lister	(B) Photo by: Red Collander	(C) Photo by:Inx
(D) Photo by: Ian Koh	(E) Photo by: ACS Amman	(F) Photo by: ¡anna]
(G) Photo by: Ryan Greenburg	(H) photo by Patrick Q	(I) Photo by: Blackbodypie

Next steps:

1. We will use the above questions to gather a 'snap shot view' of the various school and learning cultures our team members come from. We will gather the information through a voice thread a as well as an email posting and a more formal survey.
2. Organize the above questions to fit under the headings of the following contexts:

• The People in the System (students, teachers, principals, superintendents, Ministry officials, parents, community people)
• Curriculum and Content of Learning including the media used
• Assessment
• Support (Technical, Learning supports for students & teachers)
• Physical Space and Equipment (bricks, mortar, hardware/software)
• Nature and space of learning (collaborative, teacher-directed, project-based, independent, system mandates, etc.)
• Policies, Administration and Mandates (political arm of education)

Perhaps a simpler approach to insight into another's school system might be appropriate:
We could use the following questions provided from Design Share:

* Describe a typical classroom?
* What does it look like?
* What are the students doing?
* What are the teachers doing?

Or a more open-ended approach... we could just ask team members to talk about their school systems using the following graphic as a guide:


Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/listerspot/2627044819/

Our Sample Classroom

Since many of our discussions will revolve around devising 21st Century Skills learning activities but recognizing the team members will come from diverse backgrounds and teaching experiences,we will first define a "sample classroom" to focus our discussions. This sample classroom will be used as the starting point mindset for solutions - we will than branch out to specific and more contextualized solutions.

Our sample classroom has the following characteristics:

• no computers available in the classroom, the only technology available is a calculator the teacher might use
• there is an under-serviced computer lab in the school that is not connected to the internet. The children share the computers 2 students to 1 computer. The teacher must book the lab at the beginning of the week. The lab is usually only used for the computer science classes.
• the school makes an overhead projector available, a television and ???? to any teacher who books it one day in advance.
• the students are in single desks that are movable but usually in rows.
• Most of the students time is spent listening to the teacher and doing worksheet-like activities.
• Tests that use multiple choice and short answer are the most common assessments - there are relatively few assessments throughout the school year.

Investigating Teaching 21st Century Skills in LT/C Classrooms

What are the constraints teachers in LT/C Classrooms face when focusing on 21st Century Skills
How can these be overcome?
Ideas for applying 21st Century Skills in traditional subjects

Classroom 2.0 meets our Sample Classroom

Take any of the following activities that are common in a “classroom 2.0” setting and provide an alternative but equally as stimulating and learning-rich for our sample classroom situation.
Digital Storytelling
Podcasting
A Global Project such as ????, ????
A math lesson using a Interactive White Board
A geography class in a lab that starts off with a video from Teacher Tube, applies a few exercises using Google Earth and finishes off with an applied activity using powerpoint or word.
When tackling any of the above, please use the following template to guide your answer.

Classroom 2.0 meets LT/C Answer Guide

When providing your answer to the question about transforming Classroom 2.0 activities to suit our sample classroom please consider the following:
Provide a short description of how you would organize the activity in your HT/C classroom. Include the amount of class time you would take on such an activity, the types of work students might do out of class on the activity, the % of time the activity would take against the entire course.
List all the pedagogical reasons you might use such an activity or teaching methodologies.
Identify the assessment methods you would use for the activity. Include the specifics assessment areas for the activity as well as the weight this activity might carry for the entire course.
Provide a description of how the activity would look in our sample classroom.

A Typical Exercise for the Project Team

Here are 9 Reasons to Use Technology (as provided by Steve Haragon, here)

Expansion of Time and Place
Depth of Understanding
Learning vs. Teaching
New Media for Self-Expression
Collaboration
Going Global
Individual Pacing and Sequencing
Weight
Personal Productivity

(Digital) Storytelling in our Sample Classroom

Audio Projects for our Sample Classroom

What would your Information Literacy Curriculum look like in our Sample Classroom?

What would your Media Literacy Curriculum look like in our Sample Classroom?

Which 21st Century Skills Do Not Require Technology?

Here is a list of 21st Century Skills (from ????)

Add a number 1, 2, and 3 to the top 3 skills
ls you feel could be learned in a classroom with limited connectivity and technology?

What are the big goals that a government may have for supporting ICT in Education?

• Innovation becomes a driving fourse in the economy
• Lifelong learning prominent in society
• ICT integrated throughout education curriculum to ensure Technology skill development among all students
• Workers apply knowledge skills and lead industries and government
• Increased access to information
• Enhanced communication and collaboration skills

whereas a school board may be interested in:

• better scores on state-wide, national and international tests

parents may desire:

• leading edge technology accessed by their children to gain access to better jobs in the future
• allow access to technologies a parent cannot afford at home

and teachers may be most interested in:

• using technology to provide differential learning
• improving students' motivation to learn
• enhancing the learning environment and thereby increasing the skill, knowledge and attitudes of their students
  
• improving their own technology skills for advancement or recognition purposes

Why Focus on ‘soft-skills’?
Why not more technology, more effectively?

In this article, there is much talk about ‘mind share’ being re-routed off the important focus of getting technology to developing countries.
Focusing on effective learning cultures in the classroom could be classified as another attempt of derailment.
It’s time that pedagogy be placed prominently alongside any discussion of classroom technologies and connectivity since it is well known that without the ‘mind share’ on pedagogy, the gains from technology is mostly in the pockets of those selling the equipment.
In this article, there is talk about how elearning can answer much of Africa’s educational access problems. Where will the online content come from? The best place is from within but how do content developers who have been taught very traditionally develop dynamic content to meet 21st workers needs?
Some developing countries are starting to realize that if in-class learning culture does not change to focus on soft-skills such as ??????, neither the learners nor content-developers will be ready when the technology/connectivity becomes available.

Reality Check #1

Reality Check #2
Let’s not paint the west too rosy….
These comments:
This video
We can all use a dose of “creating good learning environments”

Scenario #1

If a teacher believes in student-centred learning, incorporates a project-based teaching approach and encourages collaborative learning in their classroom – what will happen when this teacher is provided with a computer and Data projector for their room? What types of activities would this teacher have their students doing in a brand new school computer lab? The likelihood that the teacher employ teacher-directed powerpoint presentations as a mainstay should be reduced if they truly believe in a student-centred constructivist approach.

Will this teacher employ teacher-directed powerpoint lessons? Certainly not!
A focus on the soft skills required by the 21st Century worker will put a school/district in a position to truly leverage the technology once it comes.

What are the needs of teachers and students in our sample classroom?

A westerners view…I have met many keen teachers in limited connectivity and technology classrooms… I believe they need:
A voice
Support and a little direction (if they have come out of a traditional teacher-directed learning environment)
YES… TECHNOLOGY
But what do the teachers and students doing their lessons in our classrooms like our sample, say?