Clint Hamada's List: Tech Integration Curriculum Review

• Locating, organizing, evaluating and analyzing, creating and communicating information,  - does that sound like something we do in IT?  Absolutely!  The new ICT in the PYP document has 6 strands:  investigate, organize, create, collaborate, communicate, be responsible digital citizens.  It seems we are talking about the same thing.
• Teachers often teach digital literacy skills to students who use computers for research. Such skills include verifying credible sources online and how to cite web sites. Educators are often required to be certified in digital literacy to teach certain software and, more prevalently, to prevent plagiarism amongst students.

•  Doug recently put together a presentation for the 2011 Association of Independent Schools IT Manager's Conference about the essential elements of digital literacies
• • Information literacy is an umbrella term that covers many literacies (media literacy, digital literacy etc)
   
  • Digital literacy is the ability to participate in a range of critical and creative practices that involve understanding, sharing and creating meaning with different kinds of technology and media (Futurelab 2010).
   
  • Terms vary across countries:  for example media literacy in the UK, digital media literacy in the EU and in Australia, Info Comm in Singapore, digital kompetanse in Norway,  and information literacy in the USA.
• Clearly we have about a 70% overlap which in a practical sense we realised last year led to inefficiencies, with both departments covering the same things but with conflicting messages
• other times led to gaps as each department thought something was being covered by the other when in fact it wasn't being covered at all.

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• When teachers are ready to redesign and transform tasks (not automate) to create learning opportunities that previously  would not have been possible, the facilitator becomes the co-planner, collaborator, co-teacher, connector and coach.

• There’s a light shining brightly on technology right now. This is a very exciting time to be alive and to be involved in technology and in education. But I have some concern that technology could get us into trouble in ways that we might not imagine.
• I didn’t realize until recently that it’s also the case that for a significant group of kids, if it’s not on the Internet it’s not true
• s. We usually want to know whether they have the technical skill to do something like getting on the Internet, but in my view, the technical skill is trivial compared to the critical thinking skills that are needed.
• Every educator really needs to understand the dark side of the Internet in order to have a balanced conversation about it, and The Hate Directory will give you a very quick introduction to how bad it can be.
• In every subject there ought to be a standard exercise of presenting students with different versions of the truth and asking them if they know how to discriminate among them
• So don’t teach children to use the Internet unless you’re willing to teach them to think and discriminate.

  • Are we willing to teach them this? Where do we do it? Who is responsible for it and how do we know that it is happening?
• Why not introduce the family to the book report experience in live real time? Through the technology the parent can listen and see the kid.
• What’s happening is the parent is validating the kid’s work as the kid is presenting. I asked the teacher what the kids say about it, and the teacher reports that the kids are elated. How often do you have kids doing book reports who are elated about it?
• we have the loneliest, most isolated professional culture in America, a culture where the primary work of the adult happens with no other adult in the room. In fact, this is the only profession in America where the professionals got computers before they had telephones! Think about why that is true.
• So one of the things we absolutely need to do if we are really going to support standards is build capacity so there is a collective knowledge and wisdom.
• I want to plan, but I want to write an information communication plan because if you focus on the quality of the information and the quality of the relationships, then you can include all teachers
• “What information do you want? What relationships do you want?” then every teacher can participate.
• The cover story was called “The Computer Delusion” by Todd Oppenheimer. He says, “There is no good evidence that most uses of computers significantly improve teaching and learning.”
• t. Unfortunately schools and technology planning tend to focus on automating. This means that you bolt technology on top of what you’re already doing.
• The trick in planning as we move forward is to think about information systems, whole systems of the flow of information and communication.
• If we do not invest and move technologies and capacities to the home, I fear that unwittingly, unconsciously, schools will actually be contributing to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
• Now I think that the impact of technology is that it’s an amplifier of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
• We can reconfigure our business from teaching children in isolated boxes called classrooms to building capacity in the community for learning. We need to promote this type of home schooling.
• I believe that every high school should require every student to take an entire course online because that’s where higher education is going.
• The number one skill that teachers will need is to be team-based, collegial, sharing their knowledge and wisdom
• Staff developers, please don’t train teachers to use technology without kids. Ask every teacher to bring two or three students.
• r. If you train teachers in technology, they tend to go back and do what they always did — they will automate
• Tell the teachers, “This is not about technology. It’s about understanding the impact of technology on how students learn.”
• I would first ask teachers, “What relationships do you want to have?” Then I would ask, “What technology do you want to have?” And the irony is that we’ll end up with more technology, not less.

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• I also felt that that the stages coincided with how (21st century) teaching and learning was seen. We used to see it as a:

   

  Tools Set:
• Then we started to understand that it was never about the tools, but about the skills teachers and students would acquire when using these tools

• Now, it seems that teaching and learning will not necessarily move from the “enhancement” to the “transformation” stage with a tool set and the necessary skills alone. In order for teaching and learning to become transformative there also needs to be a

   

  Mind Set:

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• “We're doing them a disservice if we don't start at this age teaching them how to handle that, whether it's school, college or a real-world job,” Robinson said.
• Teachers e-mail students and parents. They give out assignments on laptops. It's become so common it all seems mundane now."
• Technology is only good if it's being used, he said. If the teacher isn't comfortable with technology, the laptops become glorified word processors
• “I remember saying 10 years ago, 'I want this device to be an extension of their arm, a routine way to learn,'” he said. How the Mt. Ararat students used their laptops was exactly what he had in mind.

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• Describe the core technology expectations you have for every teacher and team in your building-
• Prove that the choices made when spending your technology budget are supporting your school's mission?