Powered By Blogger

Tuesday 29 November 2011

Today's Superintendent's meeting

In our meeting today my Administrators are experiencing what learning should look like in a 21st Century classroom using technology in an inquiry based model. Administrators are sitting in Family of Schools groupings and they have come up with an inquiry question that they would like to jointly investigate. They are huddled around a computer and they are sharing ideas and challenging each other.

The group leading the session have set-up flip cameras around the room and we are filming the work. When we are done, we are going to show the Administrators the film so that they can see themselves, first hand, demonstrating a cooperative, collaborative, inquiry based lesson using technology. Groups have also been challenged to create a presentation to share their inquiry question with the group.

As a group of instructional leaders, we keep coming back to our motto; If We Are Going To Lead It, We Need To Do It, and today is a prime example. I wish you could hear the excitement, the focussed talk and the laughter. It is a big accomplishment for a group, many of whom had very little experience with technology 5 months ago, to be beginning to set  a vision for how we want to move forward.

Each group is now presenting their inquiry questions and it is amazing what they have done in 30 minutes. The presentations are diverse and extremely creative.

The group that is on right now did all of their work on a brand new iPad that they just took out of the box this morning. The group is demonstrating what our kids could/would do if we only gave them the opportunity. The room is alive with "aha" moments. It is just so incredible.

Superintendent meetings can be immersed in administrivia but we need to trust the professionalism of our administrators. I will email them the things I need them to know. I trust that they will read the information and forward any questions they may have to me. Instead of putting my administrators to sleep by inundating them with knowledge, my administrators have been immersed in learning and discovering what they want the classrooms in their schools to look like. Talk about a Wow!!

Today is part one and we will be continuing the journey at out next meeting. We will also be working our way through Prensky's book and building our knowledge and understanding of where we want our schools to go and how we can help them get there. Talk about an amazing morning!!

Our Plan to move forward

The work that we have been doing in my superintendency has been very positive but to create real change we realized we needed to connect with a larger group. It is important for me as a Superintendent to think beyond my own collection of schools and to maintain a System view. To that end I have now created a technology committee that has broad base representation and when we meet the next time, the committe will expand to have members from every superintendency in the Board.

Currently the original committee is out in West Vancouver as guests of Chris Kennedy and his administrators. West Vancouver is doing some very innovative things in the areas of instructional technology, programs of choice and assessment. The Peel group is out there to listen, learn, ask questions and bring back ideas and suggestions to help us move forward.

It is important to continually remind people of what this journey is really about. This isn't about technology for technology sake, this is about looking for ways to use technology to help us improve our practice to meet the needs of 12st Century Learners. In his book, Teaching Digital Natives; Partnering for Real Learning, Marc Prensky talks about the huge changes that have taken place in education, but he also laments the fact that the change is happening everywhere but in the classroom. We still assume that children are arriving in our schools as empty vessels and it is our job to fill them up. The reality though, as Prensky points out, is that children are on the internet, watching television, movies, playing games, and are inundated with knowledge and information from a variety of sources. Then they walk in a class room where the sad reality is class rooms look the same as they have for the last 100 years. What is even sadder is what is going on in many of those class rooms hasn't changed much either.

To continue to move our students forward schools need to be meeting the needs of our clientele. The fact that Pensky would identify schools as the least innovative places that kids spend their valuable time is very sad and certainly speaks to the engagement issues that we are having with our children, particularly our boys. When our kids are living in a world where the computer can immediately respond to their passions and interests, it hardly surprising that they fail to find a socratic class room engaging. Among the children that Prensky interviewed for his study, they commented on the fact that they feel teachers do not respect what they bring to the class room. 21st century class rooms need to reflect a partnership between the students and the teacher. The role of the teacher changes from the giver of information to the coach that helps students become critical consumers of information. The children in our class rooms who are the adults of the future will need very sophisticated tools to allow them to navigate and challenge the techno-information age that they will be living in.