Leadership+Design
"We design experiences for the people who create the future of teaching and learning."
In our work, we build capacity, create conversations, and make connections.
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Plan your professional learning adventures with L+D in 2017.
Leadership+Design Bootcamps
Coast to Coast
March 10+11, 2017
Los Angeles, CA
Philadelphia, PA
Coming this Summer . . .
4D Studio: Design. Dare. Disrupt. Dream.
June 26-29, 2017
The Steward School/Bryan Innovation Lab, Richmond, VA
(Early bird rate through 12/31/16)
Wonder Women!
July 10-13, 2017
Castilleja School, Palo Alto, CA
(Early bird rate through 12/31/16.)
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L+D Board of Directors
Ryan Baum
VP of Strategy
Jump Associates, CA
Lee Burns
Headmaster
McCallie School
, TN
Sandy Drew
Non-profit Consultant, CA
Matt Glendinning
(Secretary)
Head of School
Moses Brown School,
RI
Trudy Hall (Board Chair)
Interim Director of High School
Forest Ridge School, WA
Brett Jacobsen (Vice Chair)
Head of School
Mount Vernon Presbyterian
, GA
Barbara Kraus-Blackney (Treasurer)
Executive Director
Association of Delaware Valley Independent Schools (ADVIS), PA
Karan Merry
Retired Head of School
St. Paul's Episcopal School
Carla Robbins Silver (ex-officio)
Executive Director
Leadership+Design, CA
Mary Stockavas (Treasurer)
Director of Finance
Bosque School,
NM
Matthew Stuart
Head of School
Caedmon School, NY
Brad Weaver
Head of School
Sonoma Country Day School, CA
Paul Wenninger
Retired Head of School
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| Shopping for that special Tech Director in your life? Look no further. |
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Carla Silver, Executive Director, Leadership+Design
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Dear L+D Friends:
Another festive holiday season is upon us. Those of us in schools often share the same nagging question . . . What to get that favorite Technology Director in your life (in my case, Bill Selak, Hillbrook School Tech Director, December Recharge contributor, and L+D conspirator)? It's nearly impossible to find something for that special someone who already has every gadget ever produced - version 7.0 to make matters worse. Drones, Amazon Echoes, wireless headphones, selfie sticks, 3D printers, SMART security systems, instant iPhone printers - Tech Directors have them all. CyberMonday and Tech Insider, thanks for nothing! Bill Selak already has Flosstime, the Hatch Baby Smart Changing Pad and the Kuvee (a Keurig for Wine). What to do?
The December Monthly Recharge offers hope for our  conundrum. Here's the secret. What technology directors really want - and not just this holiday season, but all year round - is the universal acceptance and enthusiastic acknowledgement that advances in edTech are not trying to replace teachers, eviscerate human connections or, in any way, harm young children. Instead, most of the edTech tools introduced in schools are simply meant to further student-centered learning and provide students new opportunities to demonstrate mastery, hone their creativity, apply their learning, and deepen personal passions.
You are welcome. Happy Holidays.
In all seriousness, this month we have three terrific articles from tech leaders that we hope will engage all of our readers, from our earliest adopters to our technology laggards. Each author shares his or her wisdom about the benefits of educational technology in providing students of all ages with experiences and tools that help them be future ready, passionate learners, artists, engineers, musicians, published authors, and real-world problem solvers. Educational technology also has the power to address some of the greatest challeges schools face around equity by more effectively meeting the needs of diverse learners.
As 2016 comes to a close, all of us at Leadership+Design wish you a very restful break and an auspicious beginning to 2017. One gift you might give yourself or a colleague you care about is a professional learning experience with L+D in 2017. Check out all of our professional learning adventures on our website
www.leadershipanddesign.org or look to the sidebar of this newsletter for the short list of what is coming up! We would love to see you there.
Warmly,
Carla Silver
Executive Director and Head L+Doer
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| Using Edtech to Make Students Future Ready |
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Bill Selak, Director of Technology, Hillbrook School
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Immediately after high school, I started two new things that would change my life. I played guitar in a punk rock band, and I went to college. In my 18 year old brain, these two needed to be combined. So, I switched my major from materials engineering (what sort of job could you get with
that!?)
to music, with an emphasis in sound design. With this plan, I could learn how to record songs, I would have access to professional gear, and my band would be catapulted into stardom.
After college I worked in a recording studio so I could record music. Keep in mind, in the late 1990s, people needed to pay (or work at) a fancy studio to record music. Only professionals could do it.
But now, everything has changed.
Now, in the year 2016, my 4-1/2 year old daughter wrote a song,
Opposites.
We recorded her voice on my phone one night using Voice Notes, added instruments and auto-tuned her voice in GarageBand, and uploaded it to my Soundcloud account. In just a couple of hours, we went from silly idea to published song.
There comes a point with all technology when it becomes a commodity. Disposable phones and phone chargers are commonplace. More recently, this has shifted to media: news, books, movies, and songs The tools to create these are now accessible to everyone. It no longer takes years of work in the audio engineering industry to have access to good quality recording tools. You don't even need to play an instrument anymore, and you can record a song in GarageBand. This access reaches far beyond audio. You don't need a publisher to publish your own books. You don't need a movie studio to write, shoot, edit, or publish a movie. We've reached a point in our society where all these creative tools fit into out pocket on a thing we call a phone.
This should have
profound
implications for the classroom. This
should
change everything. If a student has a device in a classroom, that student can make a movie, publish a book, write an article, or write an original song. In schools of the future, students are creators of content, not consumers of it.
This idea of students creating content is easy to implement at home with one kid, but becomes exceedingly complicated when you look at implementation for an entire school or entire nation. Fortunately, there is a big initiative in the United States that's leveraging technology to make classrooms more student-centered:
Future Ready.
Future Ready "helps leaders plan and implement personalized, research-based digital learning strategies so all students can achieve their full potential." Tom Murray, the Director of Innovation for Future Ready Schools, leads summits that "foster a culture of digital learning within our schools." These summits show teachers and administrators how digital tools can personalize learning and help students create amazing, professional quality content that demonstrates learning.
This leads to a fundamental shift in how we use technology for classroom instruction. We've known for a while that the teacher is no longer the keeper of all information. But this shift is more significant. This is a shift towards supporting students as they create content to demonstrate mastery. It's a shift towards connecting our classes and our students with the world beyond the classroom. It's a shift Future Ready believes leads to "engaging student in real-world learning opportunities." It's a classroom with access to every media creation tool. The only limit now is how willing we are as educators to help students create.
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Technology and the Tangible Why of Learning
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Sarah Edson, Dean of Academic Technology and Innovation, The Ethel Walker School
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Comedian Louis C.K. does a bit warning adults not to engage in the game of "Why?" with children. The father of two advises his audience that it's simply an unwinnable endeavor. One "Why?" from a young person inevitably leads to the next "Why?," with no possible chance of an answer ever satisfying the child's curiosity. By the end of his bit, the comedian, fully unraveled, finds himself answering the final series of his daughter's "Why?"s with unintelligible abstract responses, followed by an exasperated, "Dammit, just eat your french fries."
This bit, which many find both entertaining and relatable,  provides food for thought for educators today. Do our students fully and consistently comprehend the real Why? of their learning? Do they grasp the ultimate purpose of the time and energy they invest in their academic pursuits? Furthermore, are they able to articulate that purpose well? Or, have they dared to ask a teacher, "Why are we doing this?," only to hear, "Because we have to." "Because you'll need it for the test." "You'll thank me later." An unfortunate outcome of such responses is students' lack of understanding of the real-world purpose of their learning. And when the Why? of learning is unclear to them, when students do not sense genuine, meaningful purpose or value in their effort, it should be no surprise that engagement decreases, motivation suffers, and any learning that takes place may not last.
In order to make our students' learning matter to them and endure more substantially, we can and ought to do better. The question then is How? There are many possible answers, some of which are complex. Fortunately, for educators and learners, we live in an extraordinary time during which educational technology affords us unprecedented opportunities to design and engage in meaningful learning with clear, real-world connections. We need not restrict teaching to assigning students predefined exercises with predetermined results or singular outcomes. We need not lead students in a rhythm of activities in which they can too easily turn on "auto-pilot." We need not limit the destination of a student's work to the teacher's desk or a bulletin board. With today's technologies, we can do so much more.
With mobile digital devices, learners are now able to connect to information, people, ideas, challenges, and opportunities to an unprecedented degree. Students are a tap or a click away from an ever-expanding global information source and evolving series of human networks. Students are able to identify real problems affecting real people and create solutions that address those issues. The tools at their fingertips enable them to think out loud, research, brainstorm, design, prototype, program, share, gain expert feedback, redesign, test, iterate, and publish. And learners can find the motivation to engage in these processes by knowing they are working to make a difference in the world today, as opposed to waiting for such an opportunity until after they graduate.
In a sense, one of the most powerful aspects of modern technology is its potential to help students discover and demonstrate the Why? of their learning. After all, the very word technology combines techne (art, skill, craft) and logos (reason, logic, expression). While one can interpret the word "technology" differently, one way to understand it is "bringing together making and thinking." And the latter part of that phrase -- the thinking behind the making, the reason, the why -- merits reflection. The "maker movement" that many schools are embracing these days emphasizes creation. And creation is a worthwhile goal, as it includes active learning, as opposed to passive information absorption or rote memorization. Creation also represents the top tier of Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive processes. However, meaningful creation demands careful, purposeful thinking.
Simply put, making without real thinking misses the mark. A maker space's purpose is not so that a school can end up with piles of 3-D printed figurines or LED-lit nametags that sit on a shelf. Certainly, those creations might be stepping stones to other educational goals. However, we need to be careful that such products are not the end game. Students now have the opportunity to use technology to identify real-world problems about which they care, determine the resources they need to create solutions, and then design, implement, test, and share those solutions with an authentic global audience. However many times it takes, let us remind ourselves of those possibilities so that we don't resort to the paths of least resistance through mere repetition of past practices.
It can feel both overwhelming and inspiring to reflect on the possibilities of integrating modern technologies into teaching and learning. However, the more time that I spend listening to students describe what drives them and the more time that I think about the world for which we're preparing them, the more I realize we can't afford not to seize the opportunities we have available.
I will continue to watch, laugh at, and appreciate Louis C.K.'s bit on the exhausting battle of Why?s. I will also still dare myself and fellow educators to engage our students in the thoughtful pursuit of why we learn what we do. And, wherever possible, I will utilize the tools available today that combine thinking and making and that fuel our innate drive to create with purpose. In doing so, our students may surprise themselves and others with the depth of their learning, the power of their engagement, and the valuable impact they are able to make through their efforts.
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| Edtech Can Empower Students as Creators, Entrepreneurs, and Change Agents |
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Cameron White, Associate Partner, NewSchools Venture Fund
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Creativity and entrepreneurship can enable the transformation of ideas into scalable solutions that address society's most pressing challenges. Yet many schools are struggling to provide students with engaging opportunities to develop these skills. Meanwhile, students' learning experiences are increasingly influenced by education technology ("edtech"), which is designed and implemented in large part through the efforts of adults. Educators and technology developers play a critical role in determining how students access and use edtech, as well as the outcomes for which edtech is optimized. In order to go beyond increasing the efficiency of top-down instructional approaches - which inherently reflect and reinforce differences in power - edtech must ultimately support students' participation in real-world decision-making processes, including those that affect their own learning.
The first step toward empowering students is ensuring that they can access devices, networks, and content that support learning. These goals have been made more feasible through the proliferation of mobile technology,
at home
and
at school
. High speed internet is available in much of the country, but ensuring consistent wireless internet coverage (via mobile networks or WiFi) can be resource intensive. Nonetheless, many educators and technology developers are taking steps to ensure that students can access technology-enabled learning opportunities across a range of contexts. These efforts include infrastructural investments and the repurposing of resources (e.g. using libraries as
makerspaces
or school buses as
mobile hotspots
), as well as the development of technologies that work offline or over
low-bandwidth connections
. In addition, organizations like
Black Girls Code
are working to ensure that students from all backgrounds have opportunities to develop in-demand technology and computer programming skills, enabling increased participation in 21st century society.
Once students are able to access knowledge through the internet, it becomes important to consider the extent to which they are given opportunities to respond constructively to the information they encounter. By presenting only a single perspective, media such as advertisements and
news articles
often act as propaganda (i.e. information flowing primarily in one direction). Through the affordances of mobile and social technologies, educators and technology developers can provide students with opportunities to discover their critical voices - discussing content's legitimacy as well as its application to their own lives. In this way, edtech can enable "
cogenerative dialogues"
, which support the development of learning communities that acknowledge and celebrate "varying social perspectives (socio-emotional, socio-economic, socio-cultural)." Organizations like
Hack the Hood
are also supporting these efforts by connecting youth to real-world consulting projects like building websites for local businesses and nonprofits, applying their technology skills to support community-level goals.
Finally, students must be empowered through inclusion in decision-making processes that directly affect their day-to-day experiences. In order to properly value students' creative and entrepreneurial contributions, discourses must go beyond explanations and defenses of the status quo. Instead, they must be intentionally open to new people, ideas, and perspectives. In such environments, students can provide unique input into decisions related to edtech access and use as well as epistemic considerations like curriculum, learning goals, and school culture. By building and applying knowledge through participation in essential processes like
product design
or
budget creation
, students can act as change agents whose insights benefit their peers as well as educators and technology developers. Along these lines, organizations like
Qeyno Labs
organize radically inclusive hackathons that engage high potential youth from low-opportunity settings in the design of technologies that address issues faced by their communities. These same competencies are also transferable outside of school and connected more broadly to the pursuit of
increased equity
, community, and freedom.
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