We know that today's learners are very different than they were even a decade ago.
Each year our K-16 schools are being called to serve increasing numbers of students who have lived their entire lives surrounded by and interacting with digital tools to gather and process information. These "Digital Natives" have grown up using computers, video games, MP3 players, and cell phones to gather and process the information that they use to construct their own understanding of the world. They really do think differently. These amazing students actually use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to think with. It seems to me that it would not be a stretch to say that these young people truly are "Cyborgs." And because ICT has become so integral to their lives, they are simply not well served by traditional lecture-based modes of teaching alone.
Our students have changed radically. Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. -Marc Prensky
If given the choice, most of today's students would come to school carrying their own computers or tablets ready to connect to the campus wireless network so they could get about the business of thinking and learning. Unfortunately for all of us, most Digital Natives attend traditionally–structured schools that, for one reason or another, remain locked into a teaching methodology that is largely based on transmitting a precise body of knowledge from instructor to student. A great percentage of our school districts have policies in place that prohibit students from bringing and/ or using their personal computing devices while at school. Our children are not allowed to bring the tools that Seymour Papert calls the primary instruments for today's intellectual work with them to school. It's unthinkable.
Interestingly, it is the continuing influx of Digital Natives into our schools that is providing the impetus for needed educational reform. It's getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that these technologically savvy students are here. Most of our schools are filled with them...and many, many more are on their way. Ready or not, here they come. Thanks to the visionary work of Seymour Papert and other educational pioneers like him who have set the wheels in motion, the old schoolhouse model will eventually give way to new collaborative learning environments where teachers and students, together as members of their learning community, decide what to learn, how to best create new knowledge, and what technologies to use to support the process.
Research in neurobiology, social psychology, and learning science shows that 1-to-1 and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs have the power to provide learning opportunities that vastly improve today's students' achievement, advance digital equity, and enhance teaching and learning across the disciplines. And case studies indicate that when carefully implemented, today's students, and most of their teachers, actually love this stuff. Educational leaders, pressed to find ways to meet the needs and expectations of today's students, want to meet the challenge by implementing ubiquitous computing programs designed to support the creative use of ICT throughout the students' academic preparation.
Okay. So, why aren't there more 1-to-1 programs or BYOD programs in place in our schools today? What I really want to know is: Where is the revolution?!
I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they
can learn.-- Albert Einstein
Many of us have experienced first hand the magic that can happen in these exciting new technology-supported learning environments. Educators and students who are given opportunities to co-discover creative ways to leverage their unique skills, attitudes and interests can maximize the potential that technology brings to the teaching-learning process. Information and Communication Technologies—always accessible but rarely the actual focus of learning—enable each member of the learning community to get connected, construct knowledge in a personally meaningful way, and demonstrate their intellectual competence and creativity using a variety of modalities.
Put simply, ICT provides the essential conditions in which Digital Natives learn. The spread of digital technology into every other sector of society makes it inevitable that it will eventually permeate school. Many students—including pre-school children—already have more computing power than most any professor of computer science had just a couple of decades ago. Indeed, most young people have more information available to them today than did professors just a decade ago. And when children grow up with this much information available to them, it is inconceivable that schools will not need to change very radically, just to keep up.
The choice is not whether we will consider deep changes in school but how many children will be lost before we recognize that we have to do so. -Seymour Papert and Gaston Caperton, 1999
Because Digital Natives think and process information fundamentally differently, we must address the reality that, as Marc Prensky puts it, "our instructors speak a different language than their students (that of the pre-digital age), and our faculty are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language."
The way I see it, educational leaders today are faced with a fundamental choice. They can create, manage and lead innovation from within, or they can be pressured to change by outside economic and societal forces. Those who are fortunate enough to find themselves in positions of influence during this time of unprecedented cultural transition are being called to take on the complex role of vital change agent. Educational leaders are struggling to understand how they will manage to conjure up this new kind of learning community to serve both the digital natives (students) and their "digital immigrant" teachers. Let's face it, this is a daunting job description all on its own, and when added to the many existing responsibilities that educational leaders in K-16 already juggle on any given day, it is understandable that even the most seasoned, conscientious and forward-thinking principal, college dean, school board member and/or district superintendent would be hesitant in the face of launching such a comprehensive, potentially costly and media-attracting change in their school. Failure would be embarrassing, to say the very least.
So this is exactly the point where the Technology Coach comes to the rescue! It seems that it would be a great comfort to any school administrator who is embarking on 1-to-1 implementation for the first time to know that he/she has the ongoing support of a senior education consultant who has been down that road before. An experienced Technology Coach can serve to break the inertia of uncertainty and fear by facilitating and guiding the integration effort on an operational level from the start to help ensure a smooth, efficient and successful 1-to-1 implementation. Knowing that constituents will embrace holistic changes to their established routines and protocols only if they understand the need for the change, the feasibility of successfully making the change happen, and their involvement in the process, the Technology Coach would begin by collaborating with school leaders to craft a vision for the initiative that elicits broad community involvement.
The Technology Coach, drawing upon his/her experience and expertise, can serve as a guide for the implementation team as they plan, organize, and problem-solve the steps to create their new culture and to align people with the new vision. The Technology Coach can provide encouragement and support as the implementation team works together to bring their shared vision to fruition in spite of any obstacles that they may encounter along the way.
With the help of Technology Coaches, I envision increasing numbers of education leaders forging ahead to implement ubiquitous ICT learning programs where all members of the learning community are equipped with the digital tools they need to access and process information and communicate what they have learned with others. Pioneering school leaders are already leveraging ICT to transform the teaching-learning process in this way. Today's pioneering school leaders will become tomorrow's Technology Coaches, and so it goes. Ubiquitous computing programs are providing a platform for the reinvention of formal education to meet the needs of today's learners. Educational leaders, together with their Technology Coaches, can change the very culture of their schools by enabling learning incidents that are not possible without ubiquitous access to information and communication technologies. Over time, step-by-step-by-step, we can transform not only the physical learning environment we now call "school", but also the learning process itself, including the fundamental interaction among students, teachers and all members of the learning community.
Pioneering educational leaders, bolstered by the expertise of their Technology Coaches, can break through whatever bureaucratic inertia that may exist. They can model the transformational leadership required to implement brand new ICT–enabled learning programs that engage and empower today's students in ways that allow them new opportunities to express what they know with passion, and achieve an entirely new standard of educational excellence.
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Melissa LeBoeuf Tothero is a technology consultant who has been devoted to the field of education for over 20 years. She is dedicated to amplifying students' voices so they may express what they know with passion.
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