So you go 1 to 1. You give the teachers a laptop; you tell the students they have to bring one too. And that's it. Well, you bring in a LMS but you don't mandate it's use. You make Google Drive available, but again, you send contradictory messages about it (maybe OneDrive would be a better fit). You bring in a couple of tech-focused gurus for workshops. Light the blue touchpaper and stand well back! And...
Well, no, nothing like that.
And that's probably for the best. Most people are not revolutionaries, they do not want to live through interesting times. But, on the other hand, if you ask your teachers to make a change (and potentially a big one), you don't want everything to be as it was, or what was the point?
Beforehand, I had encouraged people to think of it as a soft launch, or maybe not even a launch at all, but more like a milestone on the long road to 1 to 1: neither at the beginning nor the end of the journey. There was a couple of reasons for this. Many staff were fearful of the change, so it might settle their nerves to know that there would not be an expectation immediately to be functioning at a high level of technical expertise. Secondly, we were badly prepared: LMS, online storage, PD, the infrastructure are all sort-of present, but practically, each is insufficient in one way or another. Let's not point fingers (I'm sure I am implicated too), rather I am interested in how a school can up its game and become a good learning environment once the physical fact of 1 to 1 is established.
Our teaching staff are experienced educators and many have been at this place for a long time. They knew what they were doing before 1 to 1 came along. They have not been asked to do anything very different. Furthermore, there is an existing content-rich curriculum many elements of which have been in place for a long time and are not showing any moves towards retirement. So putting a layer of mobile devices on top will not, in itself, change anything. Not many of the teachers has worked elsewhere in a 1 to 1 environment, so there is not a lot of pressure from that direction, and those who have worked in 1 to 1 tend to operate in their own little isolated pockets (generally, when they try to inject some new ideas into the system this is not well-received; hence the pockets).
It's the job of the Facilitator to make a difference - and that's me and my colleague.
No-one will change the way they do things unless they see a reason to do it. So what could motivate our teachers to make the effort and go through a process of change? The problem, in my view, is that they do not know what the goal looks like. The world of educational technology is full of high-flown notions:
And if you can't even do that, then you really have done nothing more than just put some computers into some rooms.
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| Picture credit: pixabay |
And that's probably for the best. Most people are not revolutionaries, they do not want to live through interesting times. But, on the other hand, if you ask your teachers to make a change (and potentially a big one), you don't want everything to be as it was, or what was the point?
Beforehand, I had encouraged people to think of it as a soft launch, or maybe not even a launch at all, but more like a milestone on the long road to 1 to 1: neither at the beginning nor the end of the journey. There was a couple of reasons for this. Many staff were fearful of the change, so it might settle their nerves to know that there would not be an expectation immediately to be functioning at a high level of technical expertise. Secondly, we were badly prepared: LMS, online storage, PD, the infrastructure are all sort-of present, but practically, each is insufficient in one way or another. Let's not point fingers (I'm sure I am implicated too), rather I am interested in how a school can up its game and become a good learning environment once the physical fact of 1 to 1 is established.
Our teaching staff are experienced educators and many have been at this place for a long time. They knew what they were doing before 1 to 1 came along. They have not been asked to do anything very different. Furthermore, there is an existing content-rich curriculum many elements of which have been in place for a long time and are not showing any moves towards retirement. So putting a layer of mobile devices on top will not, in itself, change anything. Not many of the teachers has worked elsewhere in a 1 to 1 environment, so there is not a lot of pressure from that direction, and those who have worked in 1 to 1 tend to operate in their own little isolated pockets (generally, when they try to inject some new ideas into the system this is not well-received; hence the pockets).
It's the job of the Facilitator to make a difference - and that's me and my colleague.
No-one will change the way they do things unless they see a reason to do it. So what could motivate our teachers to make the effort and go through a process of change? The problem, in my view, is that they do not know what the goal looks like. The world of educational technology is full of high-flown notions:
"Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments.
a. Promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness."
(ISTE Standards for Teachers, 2008)Hard to disagree, but what does that mean in practice? So I started looking for something which described more concretely than the ISTE Standards what it is we think we are doing? And I can't find it! At the other end of the spectrum are accounts of what people are doing in their individual classrooms. Great, but also not what I'm looking for. Nor do we need any more lists of '10 tools you can't possibly live without'. No, what I am working towards is a way to give some teachers who have never seen one a big and detailed picture of what a 1 to 1 classroom can be.
And if you can't even do that, then you really have done nothing more than just put some computers into some rooms.
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