Archive for March 2011

Punya Mishra

March 30, 2011 Nick Sauers One comment

Yes­ter­day I spent the day with a group of edu­ca­tors in a work­shop led by Punya Mishra.  My notes from the day can be found at this link and you can also view notes from Matt Towns­ley.

Through­out the day par­tic­i­pants were engaged  in con­ver­sa­tions about teach­ing and learn­ing.  Dr. Mishra also spent a fair amount of time dis­cussing and mod­el­ing Tech­no­log­i­cal Ped­a­gog­i­cal Con­tent Knowl­edge (TPACK).  His mes­sage cen­tered on how learn­ing can be enhanced when edu­ca­tors are able to  lever­age tech­nol­ogy, effec­tive ped­a­gogy, and con­tent knowl­edge.  The TPACK model also high­lights that point.

Dr. Mishra stressed that there can­not be a struc­tured way to “do” TPACK because it would min­i­mize cre­ativ­ity & con­text.  One take away for me was about how impor­tant it is for schools and edu­ca­tional teams to have rich mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions about this struc­ture.  Is tech­nol­ogy being used sim­ply for the sake of using tech­nol­ogy?  When tour­ing tech­nol­ogy rich class­rooms, it becomes appar­ent very quickly which class­rooms fall in the cen­ter of this model and which ones only align with one of the pieces.  As a one-to-one school, a real chal­lenge and focus should be around using tech­nol­ogy along with a focus on con­tent and pedagogy!
Nick Sauers

1-to-1: The Next Generation (Part 1)

March 29, 2011 Pam Livingston No comments

1-to-1 is no longer a term that requires an expla­na­tion, at least to nearly any­one in a school.  You might even say it’s “tipped” in the Mal­colm Glad­well sense of become ubiq­ui­tous in soci­ety if you call “soci­ety” edu­ca­tion.  Nearly any edu­ca­tor can point to their own school or another as an exam­ple of pro­vid­ing lap­tops or tablets to stu­dents and teach­ers and describe at least some of what has hap­pened because of this.

If you have been on this planet long enough to remem­ber or to even have seen reruns, you know that the TV series Star Trek was once inno­v­a­tive, unusual and unique.  Then it was can­celled and went off the air.  After a while along came Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion and Patrick Stew­art, Whoopi Gold­berg and oth­ers took the idea even fur­ther.  A new set, fur­ther inno­va­tion, dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters and entirely new species, drama and deci­sions ensued.  At some point Patrick Stew­art usu­ally said, “make it so” to a direct report who described a seem­ingly impos­si­ble series of tasks to undo the lat­est fiasco.

1-to-1 as a fac­tor in schools has moved from the orig­i­nal Star Trek (Any­time Any­where Learn­ing) to a a big­ger bud­get and wider cast over a num­ber of years and to larger and larger instal­la­tions (OneLap­top­Per­Child; Maine: 2002; Syd­ney: 2008-present) to now The Next Gen­er­a­tion where pub­lic, pri­vate (inde­pen­dent), parochial and char­ter schools have con­sid­ered and adopted 1-to-1 in many fla­vors and iter­a­tions.  I’m not sure who said “make it so” at all these schools but it is so, now, and there are many 1-to-1 schools, dis­tricts, states and even countries.

I will be writ­ing a longer blog post here, at my per­sonal blog, and for the Any­time Any­where Learn­ing Foun­da­tion all about how 1-to-1 has evolved. But first I’m hop­ing to get a bet­ter pic­ture of what The Next Gen­er­a­tion means, and what mor­ph­ing has occurred since the very first lap­top school at Methodist Ladies’ Col­lege Mel­bourne (1990).  So I’m hop­ing if you are at a 1-to-1 school, dis­trict or state that you will con­sider respond­ing to the 1-to-1:The Next Gen­er­a­tion sur­vey.  I’m going to leave it live for about a week or two and may inter­view a few peo­ple as well.

Thanks very much,
Pamela Livingston

Tech savvy superintendent interview

March 24, 2011 Nick Sauers 2 comments

Yes­ter­day I had the oppor­tu­nity to inter­view Jan Har­ris of Cull­man City Schools in our series of inter­views with super­in­ten­dents selected as eSchool News Tech Savvy super­in­ten­dents.  The entire inter­view can be found on the right side of this page under blog talk radio.

Jan’s inter­view may be of spe­cial inter­est to some of you because she has led a one-to-one lap­top pro­gram for five years.  She is also cur­rently exper­i­ment­ing with a bring your own tech­nol­ogy ini­tia­tive at the high school.

The inter­view is full of use­ful advice for any leader or school that is seek­ing to enhance learn­ing through tech­nol­ogy, but two things in par­tic­u­lar were very powerful.

First, Jan talked about the process of chang­ing and grow­ing as a jour­ney.  She actu­ally used the anal­ogy of the Lewis and Clark Jour­ney.  This is essen­tial for schools to remem­ber as they change.  Very sel­dom is a one-to-one ini­tia­tive imple­mented with­out bumps in the road and the entire map can­not be planned before­hand.  Suc­cess­ful one-to-one schools acknowl­edge those prob­lems and work together to solve them so that their school keeps chang­ing in a pos­i­tive way.

The sec­ond point that I found extremely pow­er­ful was about the role that teach­ers played in the school.  Jan referred to her teach­ers as lead­ers which I believe is essen­tial.  She made it clear that teach­ers were part of the pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment plan­ning.  Although we didn’t focus on her  design too much, it brought Schmoker’s Results Now to mind.  More specif­i­cally, sec­tion three of his book focuses on the power of the pro­fes­sional learn­ing com­mu­nity.  Through­out the inter­view it became clear that empow­er­ing teach­ers had sub­stan­tially helped improve the school.

The inter­view made it clear that Jan along with the help of other stake­hold­ers are doing the “right things” at her school.  Those actions have paid off with some amaz­ing results.  At the end of the inter­view Jan high­lights some of those achievements.

  • Test scores moved from 11th in the state to 3rd in the state
  • Dis­ci­pli­nary refer­rals decreased by over 40%
  • Increased honor roll stu­dents by 12%
  • Writ­ing assess­ments improved by 14%
  • Math scores at the mid­dle school increased by 19% on the statewide tests in the last 3 years

These results high­light how true change can hap­pen when a vision­ary leader works with all stake­hold­ers to design a sys­tem to gen­uinely trans­form a school.

Nick Sauers

Reflecting on Maine’s laptop initiative

March 22, 2011 Nick Sauers 2 comments

On March 20, The Sun Jour­nal pub­lished an arti­cle reflect­ing on the 10 years since Maine leg­is­la­tors approved a plan to give every 7th grade stu­dent a lap­top.  The arti­cle is insight­ful because of the com­ments from those who have been involved with a lap­top pro­gram for such a long time.  It is worth tak­ing the time to read the arti­cle, and see the quotes from those involved with the program.

One of those indi­vid­u­als is Peter Robin­son who is in charge of tech­nol­ogy for the school depart­ment in Auburn, Maine.  One com­mon fear of schools that are new to one-to-one or con­sid­er­ing the move to one-to-one is about fil­ter­ing.  They also have fears about their stu­dents being dis­tracted once they are “con­nected”.  Robin, who is cer­tainly one of the more vet­eran one-to-one edu­ca­tors in this coun­try, makes some very good points about this topic.

“We tried fil­ter­ing. It’s a los­ing bat­tle,” Robin­son said. “There’s always a way around it. Now our approach is teach­ing responsibility.”

Any adult attend­ing a meet­ing might check e-mail every now and then or send a text, but he or she is still pay­ing atten­tion, Robin­son said. Auburn’s approach is to teach stu­dents that their job is school.

In class, teach­ers set bound­aries, he said. “Some say, ‘It’s OK to check your Face­book if you’re done with your work, but you have to let me know you’re doing it.’”

Besides, he said, the lap­tops go home, where kids have access to all sites. And stu­dents are going to grow up, go out into the world where there is all kinds of social networking.

“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.

It is excit­ing to see that his school has embraced teach­ing respon­si­bil­ity as opposed to avoid­ing the issues sur­round­ing appro­pri­ate tech­nol­ogy use.  His school’s approach cer­tainly has the poten­tial to give his stu­dents an advan­tage when the enter the “real world”.

Nick Sauers

5 Strategies For 1 to 1 Classroom Management

March 18, 2011 Nick Sauers 15 comments
The fol­low­ing post was writ­ten by Rich Kiker who I was for­tu­nate to meet while in Philadel­phia for EduCon.

You may have heard already that dig­i­tal lit­er­acy and increased tech­ni­cal capac­ity are crit­i­cal com­po­nents of the K-12 edu­ca­tion.  I hap­pen to agree.  The prob­lem is that pub­lic edu­ca­tion hasn’t had suf­fi­cient means to put enough com­put­ing devices in the hands of stu­dents.  Com­put­ers have been expen­sive and if you have had a com­puter lab that you could visit with your class once a week then you had more than most.  Now with the evo­lu­tion of mobile plat­forms, net­books, tablets, and “Bring Your Own Tech­nol­ogy” pro­grams (like this one explained my @micwalker) there is a warm feel­ing in the edu­ca­tion com­mu­nity that mean­ing­ful 1 to 1 access in the class­room is pos­si­ble every­where. Teach­ers are excited, stu­dents are stoked, and tech­nol­ogy direc­tors are pet­ri­fied.  The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less includ­ing live streams from our class­rooms, social media at the hands of every learner, and every stu­dent becom­ing the smartest kid in school because she can search Google on her iPad. I am ener­gized that the promise of edu­ca­tional tech­nol­ogy — a world of con­nected learn­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and cre­ative design to engage and impact stu­dent achieve­ment — may finally be mature enough to imple­ment in all classrooms.

But before we start the parade let’s take a step back. Not every teacher, in fact, most teach­ers are not ready and will need sig­nif­i­cant train­ing to pre­pare for this world.  Fur­ther­more, let’s be real­is­tic in that this tech­nol­ogy can cause sig­nif­i­cant dis­trac­tions in the class­room if we do not craft a man­age­ment plan that ensures appro­pri­ate use.  I have man­aged 1 to 1 depart­ments and class­rooms for seven years and I would like to share 5 ideas I have for cre­at­ing a suc­cess­ful, con­nected envi­ron­ment for learning.

1. Use a LMS
Learn­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tems are basi­cally online class­rooms.  They allow teach­ers to cre­ate a class­room web pres­ence and will greatly enhance acces­si­bil­ity to the cur­ricu­lum.  1 to 1 is not just about what hap­pens in the class­room but cre­at­ing a mobile envi­ron­ment to enhance learn­ing with 24/7 access. A LMS will improve class­room orga­ni­za­tion, help stu­dents when they miss class, inher­ently build dig­i­tal lit­er­acy, and add many more ben­e­fits. There are the big play­ers like Moo­dle that are incred­i­bly pow­er­ful but can be a chal­lenge to admin­is­ter. If that is not your fla­vor, look into some free and sta­ble web options.  I used Edmodo for years and the more I used it the more dynamic my class became — not  to men­tion that other teach­ers saw how easy it was to use and began using it them­selves. Score.

2. Have a Class­room AUP
Step one: Make sure your school has a strong Accept­able Use Pol­icy.  A good AUP is crit­i­cal because it will sup­port you with behav­ior con­se­quences in the event that a stu­dent inap­pro­pri­ately uses her access.  I‘m a real­ist and stu­dents will mis­be­have with tech­nol­ogy.  The AUP, with clear expec­ta­tions, pro­vides fair guide­lines that can help ensure tech­nol­ogy is being used for edu­ca­tional pur­poses and keep a safe learn­ing envi­ron­ment for every­one.   If your school does not have one or you think it is weak, talk to your prin­ci­pal and ramp it up.  See these tips on AUPs from EdWeek and the Uni­ver­sity of San Diego.  The AUP will be incred­i­bly impor­tant dur­ing the roll­out of a 1 to 1 pro­gram.  That being said, the AUP may still not address all the pieces you need in your class­room.  Set up your per­sonal class­room rules to sup­ple­ment the efforts of the AUP.  Con­sider includ­ing pieces like “no tech­nol­ogy dur­ing dis­cus­sions” or “no more than 5 min­utes on email per class period”.  Keep your class­room dynamic but still man­age it the best way that works for you while pro­mot­ing stu­dent success.

3. Move to the Cloud
Again, the goal should be to use mobile devices and cre­ate mobile plat­forms for learn­ing. The LMS will get you started but it also becomes frus­trat­ing if the pro­duc­tiv­ity suite that you use needs to be installed, needs ver­sions coor­di­nated, and is unaf­ford­able to stu­dents.  Sure, access to these tools is avail­able at school but how would that be mobile?  My rec­om­men­da­tion would be to con­nect with Google Apps for Edu. This free suite con­tin­ues to expand in fea­tures and has been adopted by sev­eral state depart­ments of edu­ca­tion.  It meets the needs of file man­age­ment, sched­ul­ing, data stor­age, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and many more in a we-based option.  Learn more from the Google Apps and Apps Cer­ti­fied Trainer YouTube channels.

4. Be a Stew­ard of Tech­nol­ogy
The prin­ci­ples of good teach­ing do not change and mod­el­ing is one of those basic tech­niques that can effec­tively impact a stu­dent.  As edu­ca­tors we are charged with the respon­si­bil­ity of being change agents.  If we are going to ensure the adop­tion of pos­i­tive neti­quette by our stu­dents, then we need to dis­play these actions for them.  I am not say­ing that teach­ers should “friend” their stu­dents or post to social net­works a hun­dred times a day. In fact, I would dis­cour­age this prac­tice, when would you find time to teach? I am say­ing that teach­ers need to be hon­est.  Say some­thing like this to your students:

“This stuff is new to me and I don’t know it all.  But I am excited to learn it and I know that it empow­ers you as learn­ers.  There­fore, I am will­ing to embrace tech­nol­ogy because I know it will make your edu­ca­tion more valuable.”

Yup, tell them that a teacher doesn’t know every­thing, put your­self in a vul­ner­a­ble posi­tion.  At the same time you will build a cul­ture of hon­esty, a value for life-long learn­ing, and dis­play a trans­par­ent and vested inter­est in the suc­cess of your stu­dents. Try new web tools from Go2Web20, join a Ning, and if you are really brave go to a edu­ca­tional tweetup. If it fails mis­er­ably then stand up, dust your­self off and be proud of your­self for try­ing some­thing and tak­ing a risk for your stu­dents. That is the worst that can hap­pen. But what if it is a huge success?

5. Weekly Dig­i­tal Cit­i­zen­ship
Lastly, make the endur­ing under­stand­ing of dig­i­tal cit­i­zen­ship a reg­u­lar com­po­nent in your class­room.  No mat­ter what your sub­ject, there is an oppor­tu­nity to pro­mote proper and mean­ing­ful use.  Our roles as edu­ca­tors will not be fully real­ized unless we are able to guide stu­dents toward becom­ing skilled and capa­ble cit­i­zens with an appre­ci­a­tion for knowl­edge. Lever­age resources that we know well like TED Talks and The Do Lec­tures. Per­haps you can pull the RSS feed from Mashable’s Social Good or Big Think and have stu­dents fol­low them. There are plenty of options for you to choose from.  I can tell you that as I made more efforts to increase my own capac­ity it was evi­dent that my stu­dents were ener­gized from it. Pulling con­tent and resources from all of these great sites helped me learn and engaged my audi­ence.  It kept my class­room vibrant and fresh and I hope you have the same experience.


Rich Kiker is an Instruc­tional Tech­nol­ogy & Design Con­sul­tant and Google Apps Cer­ti­fied Trainer spe­cial­iz­ing in  pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment for new media, web appli­ca­tions, 1:1 com­put­ing, online learn­ing, and tech­nol­ogy path­ways. For­merly a Media Tech­nol­ogy Chair and Tech­nol­ogy Coor­di­na­tor, he is now a con­sul­tant for sev­eral edu­ca­tional agen­cies, school dis­tricts, and a pro­fes­sor of instruc­tional tech­nol­ogy.  For more infor­ma­tion or to fol­low up please visit www.kikerlearning.com or he is also on Twit­ter with the user­name @rkiker.

Education Nation

March 17, 2011 Nick Sauers One comment

A while back I started a Google Doc with books that I have been read­ing.  That doc­u­ment included a short sum­mary of the books, and it placed each book in a cat­e­gory.   The cat­e­gories included lead­er­ship, edu­ca­tion reform, one-to-one, and “the world is chang­ing” type books.  My inten­tion was to have col­leagues add to the doc­u­ment so that it would become a place oth­ers could go to when search­ing for appro­pri­ate books for their schools.

Like many ideas, this one has been put on my back burner for some time, and my ini­tial list is very weak.  Although my Google Doc idea may never truly get off the ground, I have decided to post about some of these books as I read them, or as I reflect back on them.

One of those books that I would strongly rec­om­mend for schools that are truly try­ing to trans­form is Edu­ca­tion Nation by Mil­ton Chen.  The book’s sub­ti­tle, Six Lead­ing Edges of Inno­va­tion in our Schools, cer­tainly gives the reader a glimpse into the book’s con­tent.  Chen’s six lead­ing edges of inno­va­tion are:

  1. The Think­ing Edge: Get­ting Smarter About Learning
  2. The Cur­ricu­lum Edge: Real Learn­ing and Authen­tic Assessment
  3. The Tech­nol­ogy Edge: Putting Mod­ern Tools in Young Hands
  4. The Time/Place Edge: Learn­ing Any Time, Anywhere
  5. The Co-Teaching Edge: Teach­ers, Experts, and Par­ents as Co-educators
  6. The Youth Edge: Dig­i­tal Learn­ers Car­ry­ing Change in Their Pockets

The book pushes the reader to think about the future of edu­ca­tion.  The author brings a valu­able per­spec­tive because of his work as an inno­v­a­tive researcher and one who has par­tic­i­pated in some of these cut­ting edge pro­grams.  Chen is also a con­trib­u­tor to Edu­topia which many of you may recognize.

If you are truly try­ing to rethink your schools design, this book would be a great way to start and guide some of those conversations.

Nick Sauers

Adapting your school to our new environment

March 15, 2011 Nick Sauers 5 comments

The Music Industry

Photo credit: gcouros from flickr  http://bit.ly/eLapcZ

With all of the dras­tic changes in our soci­ety in the past 15 years attrib­uted to tech­nol­ogy, it is amaz­ing to see how some schools are deal­ing with that change.  I have the oppor­tu­nity to work with many very for­ward think­ing schools that are using tech­nol­ogy to change their sys­tem.  A real­ity check tells me that in truth there are very few schools nation­wide that I would con­sider tech­nol­ogy rich.  The num­ber of one-to-one schools is cer­tainly under 50% of schools, and although the num­ber varies by report, the per­cent of our stu­dents with one-to-one access is likely much lower.  Across the coun­try, most of our stu­dents have much bet­ter access to tech­nol­ogy once they have left school.

Most of you who read this blog, are in that small minor­ity of tech­nol­ogy rich schools.  If not, you are most likely try­ing to get there.  So how do we ensure that we don’t “lose” some­thing or fail because we do not change?

As I looked at this image and read the words posted by George Couros, it struck me in a unique way.  Just like art can be inter­preted in many ways, this image had a mes­sage for me that is prob­a­bly  unusual.

The word “adapt” that was used really got my wheels spin­ning.  I couldn’t help but think of how fre­quently tech­nol­ogy is sim­ply used in adap­tive ways.  Schools spend thou­sands, or even mil­lions, of dol­lars on tech­nol­ogy that enables edu­ca­tors to basi­cally do the same things they have always done.  An online work­sheet at a one-to-one school would be one of the most obvi­ous exam­ples of this.  This type of adapt­ing is sim­ply align­ing our old meth­ods with the new technology.

The sec­ond, and cer­tainly more pow­er­ful, way to adapt is to embrace a new envi­ron­ment and change with that envi­ron­ment.  This is much harder in edu­ca­tion.  This type of adapt­ing means actu­ally chang­ing old meth­ods in order to move edu­ca­tion for­ward through the use of new tools.  As your school con­tin­ues to change and progress, it is impor­tant to think about what type of adapt­ing you are doing.

Nick Sauers

Building relationships through technology

March 11, 2011 Nick Sauers No comments

Johnathan Martin’s recent post on Con­nected Prin­ci­pals really got me think­ing about the impact tech­nol­ogy can have on rela­tion­ships.  Very often we hear peo­ple talk about how tech­nol­ogy is harm­ing rela­tion­ships.  Johnathan’s post ref­er­enced his expe­ri­ence lis­ten­ing to Salman Kahn, and he sum­ma­rized Kahn’s mes­sage with the fol­low­ing phrases.

if we use tech­nol­ogy effec­tively, we don’t dimin­ish the inter­per­sonal and rela­tional qual­i­ties of edu­ca­tion, we enhance it.

tech­nol­ogy used well makes our learn­ing spaces more human and humane, more inter­per­sonal and rela­tional, than they have been for the past two centuries.

As Johnathan went on to say, tech­nol­ogy used appro­pri­ately can help embrace the “best of both worlds”.  Stu­dents can and should still make face-to-face con­nec­tions, but tech­nol­ogy allows stu­dents to make those rela­tion­ships even richer.  It also allows stu­dents and edu­ca­tors to con­nect with oth­ers which wouldn’t be pos­si­ble with­out technology.

Many edu­ca­tors, board mem­bers, and par­ents worry about teach­ers using tech­nol­ogy to con­nect with stu­dents.  Unfor­tu­nately, they don’t see the oppor­tu­ni­ties that tech­nol­ogy can pro­vide to enhance the rela­tion­ships that teach­ers have with their students.

I believe that as edu­ca­tors one of our major jobs is to build rela­tion­ships and get to know our stu­dents.  If tech­nol­ogy helps us do that, we need to embrace that!

The video below is Van Meter, IA stu­dents talk­ing about how they have used tech­nol­ogy to con­nect with others.


Nick Sauers

Building consensus in education

March 10, 2011 Nick Sauers No comments

On Tues­day night, I had the oppor­tu­nity to hear John Avalon speak at Iowa State Uni­ver­sity.  John is the author of Wingnuts, How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijack­ing Amer­ica.  Although his mes­sage, doesn’t have a direct rel­e­vance to what I usu­ally write about, I feel com­pelled to build off of his message.

John’s book focuses on how the extrem­ists on both sides in pol­i­tics “came to dom­i­nate the country’s polit­i­cal dia­logue” and his book  along with his No Labels orga­ni­za­tion aim to show the way back to a smarter national con­ver­sa­tion.  The hope in his mes­sage cen­ters around the fact that there are many more peo­ple in the mid­dle than at either extreme in pol­i­tics.  Build­ing con­cen­sus and devel­op­ing a voice for that large group in the mid­dle is truly what he is push­ing for.

It seems that more and more, the hos­tile envi­ron­ment that exists in pol­i­tics is begin­ning to be seen in edu­ca­tion.  Many states are cur­rently in the mid­dle of fierce bat­tles over edu­ca­tion bud­gets and unions.  My state of Iowa has also been debat­ing uni­ver­sal preschool, and I’m guess­ing we’ll soon be mov­ing into a debate about merit pay for educators.

Those of us involved with using tech­nol­ogy to trans­form edu­ca­tion have also cer­tainly been involved in con­ver­sa­tions with the “non-believers”.  Those indi­vid­u­als who don’t seem to believe that tech­nol­ogy can have a pos­i­tive impact on schools or stu­dents.  The chal­lenge for us, and them, is to build con­sen­sus.  Rather than focus­ing on how tech­nol­ogy can enhance so many things, maybe our con­ver­sa­tion needs to start with what things we want our schools to teach.  If we can first agree that we need to teach col­lab­o­ra­tion, research, pre­sen­ta­tion, inquiry, etc., we at least have devel­oped a com­mon goal.  The chal­lenge is then show­ing how tech­nol­ogy can help bet­ter teach each of those skills.  If it doesn’t, then we need to con­sider if it is the right tool.

Nick Sauers

Innovation in schools

March 8, 2011 Nick Sauers 2 comments

There was a post today in the Wash­ing­ton Post enti­tled Why schools should try things not ‘research-based’.  The arti­cle wasn’t meant to under­value research in edu­ca­tion, but rather as a cat­a­lyst for schools to become more inno­v­a­tive.  The fol­low­ing two quotes truly reflect the idea that schools need to embrace change.

But if we want to see real change in our schools and move the nee­dle on clos­ing the achieve­ment gap, we need to try some things that aren’t “proven.” We need to exper­i­ment with prac­tices we intu­itively think are good ideas and can deliver results but haven’t been sub­ject to exhaus­tive research yet.

But if the cur­rent sys­tem isn’t work­ing, then we should do what inno­va­tors and entre­pre­neurs have done since the dawn of human­ity — try some­thing dif­fer­ent. Any edu­ca­tor knows that some of the lat­est research-based best prac­tices come out of a 20th cen­tury class­room. Most of them are text­book dri­ven, class­room dri­ven, and teacher directed. That type of class­room is not a reflec­tion of the future, so we have to break away from some of the research-based best practices.…

It seems that so often in edu­ca­tion, we are afraid to be inno­v­a­tive and try new things.  Many school lead­ers stomp out these new ideas before they have a chance to blos­som.  Instead, schools should gen­uinely seek out and eval­u­ate inno­v­a­tive ideas put for­ward by teach­ers, stu­dents, par­ents, and com­mu­nity mem­bers.  That cer­tainly doesn’t mean that all will be embraced, or that the entire school will shift to one of these inno­v­a­tive prac­tices.  Exper­i­ment­ing with a class­room or grade level are great ways to pilot a change.

I’m cer­tainly not call­ing for an end to research, or for schools to ignore edu­ca­tional research.  I am actu­ally very involved with research in my work and cer­tainly value research. High level pol­icy mak­ers need research as they con­sider major changes in the edu­ca­tion system.

In the most basic sense, school lead­ers need to decide if they truly believe that their sys­tem is work­ing.  Are stu­dents being pre­pared for today’s world?  If the answer to that ques­tion is no, their next step should be clear.  They have an oblig­a­tion to our stu­dents to make a thought­ful change in that sys­tem.  Those changes will most likely embrace research-based meth­ods, but they also should seek out inno­v­a­tive ideas that have great poten­tial.  Numer­ous great ideas that have led to remark­able steps for­ward in many fields are often seen as impos­si­ble or crazy when they are first imag­ined.  Like lead­ers in other fields, schools need to seek out those inno­v­a­tive ideas that will truly trans­form their schools.

Nick Sauers

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