Yesterday, in his keynote address at the EARCOS Administrator’s Conference, Alan November reminded me of a shift that I have been struggling with. He argued that our discussions about teaching and learning need to focus on literacy not technology. And about technology committees, he asked “Do we form paper and pencil committees?”
I am a member of what was the Information Technology Committee at my school last year. This year it transitioned into the Information Literacy Committee. So, it’s no longer about technology. Now it’s about literacy development and technology’s supporting role. That shift sent the committee in a new direction and we eventually found ourselves sitting at the table discussing our purpose and goals. After two meetings, we crafted the following agreement.
Purpose
To design and deliver effective educational technology professional development (ETPD).
Goals
Technical Support To establish a technology infrastructure that allows for the effective use of technologies and digital learning resources.
Ongoing Professional Learning To differentiate our educational technology professional development to meet the goals of individual teachers and address the day-to-day realities of teaching with technology.
Like those you-are-here maps, the clear purpose and goals showed us where we were and where we could go. But I could not yet see how to get to literacy or improved student learning. So, I turned to one of my most trusted resources – the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). I pulled out an article that appeared in the June/July 2008 issue of Learning & Leading with Technology, ISTE’s flagship magazine, and found my answer in the article A Professional Development Menu.
“Technology infusion without professional development (PD) wrapped around it just doesn’t work, and can backfire. If frustration sets it, the digital divide becomes wider between the students who have a teacher who understands how to integrate technology and one who does not.” – Kimberley Ketterer
Our Information Technology Literacy Committee is heading in the right direction. I can drop my concern that this was turning out to be another paper and pencil committee, for now I see how our focus on technical support (we have a lot of shiny new technology this year) and ongoing professional learning (how can we use technology effectively and productively) can narrow the digital divide between students, create a more equitable access to the curriculum, and improve learning for all of our students. Now we have to make it happen.
I live in Tianjin, China with my wife Tatiana and son Gabriel.
I am the NPK-12 IT Coordinator at International School of Tianjin.
I advocate teaching and learning with technology
that supports inquiry and action in otherwise unobtainable ways.
New blog post: Not Another Paper and Pencil Committee http://www.utechtips.com/?p=1046Reply – Quote
At some stage tech thinking will turn into to “Thinking” thinking. While it is a conversation not reserved for tech people, I’ve found that we have been called upon to engage talk on what it means to be a successful learner and what thinking skills you’d need. Things like communication, collaboration, independence, and innovation. And while these have always been valued, they continue to not be emphasized. Technology, as you said, supports this. But you may find that your Literacy committee soon becomes a leader in rethinking what your school values – better start involving your school leaders.
Dennis, you got it right. It’s important to get the right people on the team. Librarians, administrators, IB coordinators, and teachers from both the elementary and secondary schools participate in our committee. It’s a team with the skills, experience, and power to not only engage the school in conversation but take action too.
Cheers,
Tod
I will piggyback on both your comments. We went through this same committee work at a previous school with our goal to develop new technology standards. Just as you are doing Tod, we had instructional technologists, librarians, administrators, teachers and parents on the committee. We missed out in not having students.
We made the jump from the start to drop the term “technology” from the committee name and from our thinking. We moved on to become the “Information & Communication Literacy” (ICL) Committee. Before we knew it, we had moved beyond that to look at the Academic Student Learning Results which should be the ultimate focal point for any school committee (i.e., any actions and time should always come back to how it supports student learning).
As Dennis points out, the tech or any other discussion team needs to look at “what it means to be a successful learner and what thinking skills you’d need” is where we ended our committee work by adopting the Academic Student Learning Result standards as our own. There was obviously no need for a separate set of standards as our goal to support student learning already had a nicely developed learning 2.0 set of standards for us to then design action steps including professional development to support.
So my take away from our experience and now looking at your efforts is for you to possibly be ready to even drop the Information Literacy terminology and as Dennis points out, look at what your school as a whole values and defines as true learning and understanding. Your committee then could become the “Learning Committee”.
By the way, at my current school we were tasked with developing our technology plan. The committee started their work with the 5 Student Learning Outcomes diagramming everything we do as a school that connected to those learning outcomes. It quickly became evident that we were no longer the technology committee but the “how do we support learning committee”.
We could, David, call ourselves the Inquiry and Action Committee because we value an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning that leads to meaningful action. This discussion has prompted me to take a closer look at the standards we are considering to see how well they support our approach to teaching and learning. So, you did not discriminate learning standards and technology standards? If I understand this, you focused on supporting learning goals and then brought in or developed the necessary technology to support those goals. Am I getting this right?
Oooh, I really like the Inquiry and Action committee name. It is much more descriptive than a “technology” or “learning” committee title. And you read our approach right, we focused on the learning goals of the school (very similar to the new NETS) with our actions to use information literacy and technology to reach them. Our main action was for our instructional technologists and librarians to collaborate in curriculum review meetings with other educators to build in the inquiry along with technology to meet the unit enduring understandings which supported our school wide learning goals.