Magnet Musings

Change is Coming

I’m feeling really optimistic for education’s sake right now. I’m not just talking about politics though – although I agree that an election year (or two) at least get people talking about education.

In my view, there seems to be a watershed effect that is happening that involves the future of China and India and how they will very soon shift world economics in a large way. Seeing these creative, intelligent, folks fill in the gaps after the Internet infrastructure was set down has gotten our collective attention. I think that the competition with China and India will cause our leaders (the next ones at least) to realize that they are going to have to send down a message that will have the same affect as Kennedy’s pre-space race . . . education will be pumped up, technological proficiency will become a norm, and our population will have to meet the challenge through intelligence and creativity.

Another shift – Time’s Person of the Year issue was “you”. The media realizes that the Read-Write Web and Regular-Joe’s creativity has put the media on alert. Blogging has changed how news and advertising is received and it is no longer a one-way street. Media is paying close attention to what is happening in schools where the Read-Write web is being used in instruction and learning. Have you noticed more media attention on tech-integrated schools? I have, and not only to do with MySpace stories either. The next Time issue was regarding bringing schools into the 21st century and spoke mostly about technology integration.

Maybe it’s because I’m on-alert for these stories, but I would love to have the statistics on laptop initiatives (1-to-1 and others) across this country. Every time I turn around I read about a school district that is rolling out laptops. Two schools in Central Oregon are doing a 1-to-1 with PCs, all middle-schoolers in Maine, k-12 in Shoreline, and on and on.       The time is right for us to do this right!

I heard rumblings about this a couple months ago and yesterday it showed up in my mailbox . . . Learning and Leading with Technology   has an article this month about the shift that technology is suggesting in regards to Bloom’s Taxonomy. The tagline from the article says,  An updated version of the classic Bloom’s Taxonomy emphasizes learners’ cognitive processes and points toward technology-enhanced activities.    In a nut-shell, here is the new taxonomy as suggested by Anderson and Krathwohl::   remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create.   Creating is of course the most challenging, but is the one that lends itself most to teaching     contemporary literacy.

With the One Laptop Per Child program and Microsoft getting on the international laptops/curriculum for kids bandwagon, the international playing field is being leveled at a speed that is mind-boggling compared how long it has taken we Americans to get computers in our schools.

This is such an exciting time for technology in education – we are lucky to have the opportunity to create a site of excellence here at Juniper! Let’s do it!

Laurie

December/January issue of Learning and Leading has free download-able articles – there’s a great one called : Helpful Hints for Successful 1-to-1 Computing . Here’s the link: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Publications/LL/Current_Issue/LandL_December-January_2006-2007.htm