Understanding the Shift

I work with a lot of teachers, which is why I love my job. I can be in the elementary in the morning and be talking IB science in the afternoon. But no matter where I go and who I talk to, trying to help teachers understand the shift that is taking place within our society is a message I continue to try and spread. Our schools need to change, our lives have changed although we don’t think of them as changed because “it’s just what we do” right?

I mean in the International world we use Skype or Vonage to make cheap or free long distance phone calls. We use SlingBox to watch the shows and sporting events we can’t get on satellite TV. Yes, our world has changed because of technology. We have access to all types of information, and we are finding way to bring the information we want to us no matter where we live in the world.

Our schools are slowly changing, adapting, shifting to this new information landscape as well. We’re using more videos in our classes, more audio as well. We allow students to go to the Internet before we take them to the library. Technology is slowly changing the way we communicate, the way we interact with each other and with information, and because of that shift in society our schools continue to struggle to find how to shift with these new ways of living and making education relative to our students.

In 2001 some very smart people got together and decided that information was changing and the way we interact and learn was changing as well. They set out to recreate Bloom’s Taxonomy of Higher Order thinking. Bloom’s Taxonomy is widely known in education and these smart people decided that educators could start to change the way they teach by revisiting something that educators are already familiar with.

Changes in terminology between the two versions are perhaps the most obvious differences and can also cause the most confusion. Basically, Bloom’s six major categories were changed from noun to verb forms. Additionally, the lowest level of the original, knowledge was renamed and became remembering. Finally, comprehension and synthesis were retitled to understanding and creating.

We now view thinking and learning as an action. That it is something we must actively take part in and be a part of.

So how do we shift our schools to understanding that learning is an action not a thing?

That is a question that myself and other educations in the Asia region have started to ask ourselves, and have been working through for some time now. We have come together to create a bi-monthly podcast called Shifting Our Schools where we discuss how and why our schools need to shift in our teaching and learning methods. David Carpenter and myself host the podcast with guests joining us during the show.

We have also embraced the fact that 2008 is being called the year of the “Live Web” where we will continue to see more live shows of both audio and video pop up. The SOS podcast is a live recording that is streamed from the site while we record in real time. At our first broadcast we had 11 people join us from around the world and take part in a live chat as David and I discussed why we feel our schools need to shift. You can download the shows via iTunes to your iPod or listen to the recording from the web site as well.

Each episode is based on an Essential Question (EQ). We encourage listeners to send us links of sites or blog posts around our EQ.

Personally I’m still trying to understand what this shift means and how our education system can shift in the way we help students learn. How are we going to compete with say MIT and their OpenCourseWare site where they are now targeting High School students.

“I first visited OCW merely to consider options for a college major, but soon realized the true depth of the material. Many intro-level classes on OCW are extremely relevant to an advance high school curriculum, and i found the video lectures extremely helpful for Linear Algebra.”

How do we shift our schools in understanding that our students can now take classes online from leading teachers around the world when they want to. How do we shift to an understanding that students want to create content, want to be visible, and want to be connected to each other and to the latest information available to them? Yes, our schools need to continue to shift otherwise our students will shift without us. I encourage you to join us as we continue to talk about how we can shift our schools.

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