In order to move our classrooms from the traditional teacher led dissemination of information to a more student focused, student centered model that incorporates technology as a critical vehicle there are two major obstacles to overcome. The first is getting students to accept the technology and assimilate it as naturally as those of my generation did pencil and paper. Secondly, teachers need to acknowledge that we need to give students the flexibility and support to find ways to explore both established and non-established methods to show mastery.
We are at a place in our society where technology is changing quicker than any one person can keep up with. A major change for me is being able to accept that if students are exploring, they are likely to find things of which I was unaware. The converse is true where the teacher can and will find new technological avenues for the students to explore. How do we allow this exploration while at the same time leading instruction?
Perhaps the answer is to give the students the time to explore outside of guided instruction. When calculators were first introduced, we (then students) spent a lot of time playing on them just to see what they could and would do in addition (see what I did there?) to discovering what words we could create by turning the device upside down! Granted, we got to a place where play had exhausted pretty quickly compared to what is available today but eventually we used the calculator for the use that it was intended. One of our readings recommends giving free time to explore on the computer. At first, this didn't mesh with my vision of a classroom but then I recalled something from Google. Google gives its employees what is called 20% time. That is they have 20 percent of their work time to devote to their own projects. Some of these projects go nowhere but some (like Gmail) have turned into some of the most successful Google initiatives. Perhaps this method can be adapted to fit into the school setting. 20 percent, or one day a week, might be too much time to give up but 10 percent might work. It would require some parameters be set so that the students are on task. Google requires progress reports and if creators determine the project is going nowhere they are free to terminate and start on another. An initiative like this in a classroom could expand what the students discover while at the same time making both the offerings of the device and the familiarity of using the device a commonplace experience.
Getting teachers to buy into alternative ways of showing mastery is a more complicated issue. On one hand the research is pretty convincing that kids can do innovative and exciting things when given the opportunity. On the other hand teachers are held to predetermined standards and standardized methods of assessment. Frankly, I don't see an obvious answer to this impasse. If students are going to show us what they are capable of then they need to have the latitude to do so. Teachers will need to be flexible enough to create broad rubrics to evaluate and administrators need to be flexible enough (and trusting enough) to acknowledge the difference the teacher being flexible and being lazy. School boards and state legislatures would need to be open enough to allow time for new methods to gain traction in schools. No step in this process is going to be easy or clean.
Maybe the genesis of this kind of paradigm shift will come from those class offerings that aren't currently tested via the state test. While all courses have standards, in Indiana the subjects like math and language arts are the ones that get the scrutiny of standardized testing. If those other courses could begin initiatives as described above AND find some success then it might make the implementation in the "tested" classes a little easier. This is certainly not going to be a cut and dried process and will no doubt be messy. Only school environments where a trust is present among all stakeholders will be able to work through the messiness and get to a place that the achievement can be seen.
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