Category Archives: digital evolution

The Traditional Features of Schooling

Posted on by

Graphics by Greg McKay

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

Most schools worldwide today have the same core features as those in the 1960’s, with many the same as schools in the late nineteenth century.

In examining the history of schooling over the last century, and particularly since the shock of Sputnik in 1957, and reflecting on our own sixty years’ plus experience with school change and innovation one must conclude that the core features of schooling have not changed. There is moreover scant suggestion that they are about to, with few if any governments contemplating the kind of digital transformation seen in business and other public-sector organisations. 

It is a reality that needs to be better understood if schooling is to have any hope of evolving at pace with societal change and providing an education relevant to the digitally connected young.

It is appreciated that many visionary and highly committed governments, public benefactors, educators and schools globally have made concerted efforts to innovate and enhance the holistic education of all children in the last century, particularly since Russia put a satellite into orbit.  Many will remember the immense investment in model schools, the Dewey based progressive schools, educational television, reticulated video, computer aided instruction, open plan schools, alternate schools, school based curriculum design, the many national innovation programs, future and lighthouse schools, and more recently all manner of digital technologies and STEM.

History affirms that invariably the dents made in the traditional form of the school have been ‘rectified’ and the school/s returned to the old ways.  

Schooling globally is still conducted within the physical walls of the place called school, within specified times and dates, with solitary teachers teaching class groups, invariably behind closed doors. The teachers still invariably teach the curriculum determined by the authorities, in the manner prescribed, following a structured, linear teacher controlled instructional program, continually measuring, and reporting upon student performance, always comparing the student attainment, from the early childhood years onwards.  The assessment continues be of sole performance, never the ability to work with or to relate to others.

The students still move in a lock step manner through their schooling, moving as age cohorts, from one year to the next over twelve, thirteen years to graduation – the decision makers understanding that a significant part of the age cohort, identified by the academic criteria as of lesser quality, will ‘drop out’ before the final exams.

The schools remain strongly hierarchical, linear Industrial Age organisations, obliged to follow the dictates of government, whether state or independent. The head, often with the support of a small executive continues to decide on the workings of the school. Most teachers and support staff continue to be disempowered, obliged to do as told, closely micromanaged by both the school and government authorities, expected to conform with the national standards and mores. 

In many situations, particularly in the rural areas the students attend the same schools as their parents, the schools often being over a hundred years old.

The students remain at the bottom of the pecking order, invariably distrusted, obliged every minute of the school day to do as every adult instructs, with their every movement controlled and monitored, fearful that any transgression will be punished. They invariably have no say in what is taught or assessed, when, where or how, and as such have little or no influence or control over the in-school education. The experts know what is best. Student alienation with schooling remains high and likely growing globally, particularly among the non- tertiary bound, with recent student Gallup polls revealing in developed nations like the US 50% student disengagement with the schooling (Gallup, 2015).

The contrast with how the young learn with the digital outside the school globally is increasingly marked. Outside the digitally connected young have since the mid 90’s been trusted, empowered, and provided the tools, freedom and support to take charge of their learning with the digital 24/7/365, anywhere, anytime. They, and not the authorities decide what they want to learn, when, how and where (Lee and Broadie, 2018). 

Schooling is still characterised by its constancy, continuity, sameness, paper base and adversity to risk, with schools, year after year, decade after decade following a remarkably similar calendar, running the same events, using the same livery and ceremonies. Heads and teachers move on or retire, replaced by colleagues who invariably continue the routine. 

It is understood most systems structurally have added a year or two to the schooling but the nature of the schooling in the added years remains basically the same.

The increasingly greater monies spent by governments from the 1960s in the supposed quest for school change and enhancement brought no sustained change to the traditional form of schooling – for many good reasons.

Society relies on schools minding the young while the parent/s work, and keeping the unemployment figures down with the older students.  This is ever more so with both parents working, and governments globally having to contend with structural changes in the job market. 

Term dates largely determine the family year everywhere. Any variation to those dates or the school hours is guaranteed to generate all manner of flak and disruption. 

Society expects the schools to manage and control the nation’s young, and ready them to be largely compliant members of society. School exist to inculcate the young on the nation’s ordered ways, with ‘revolutionary’, non-conformist activity invariably repressed and/or criticised by the media.

They are the organisation society has given a monopoly to decide on who will be the future leaders and who the workers, and to ensure that sorting is reflected in the qualifications provided. One will struggle to a find a nation today where the final school exams don’t complete 12/13 years of sorting and sifting, with those in authority and the media lauding the ‘successful’ students, and largely dismissing those who don’t succeed academically.

While that observation might appear harsh success at school is still adjudged, as it has for a hundred plus years by performance in academic, paper based exams.

Tellingly the schools that go digital will not only not markedly improve their ability to meet any of the above-mentioned givens, but will open the doors to on-going digital disruption and evolution, and a shift away from many aspects of traditional schooling.

With its continued existence guaranteed, schooling is one of the rare ‘industries’ today that doesn’t have to worry unduly about productivity, efficiency, continued viability or the workers being ‘restructured’. Indeed, in most situations they currently don’t, unlike business, need to address ‘digital Darwinism’ (Solis and Szymanski, 2016) or the very considerable challenge of digital transformation. Globally political parties still pander to the parent self-interest, and campaign successfully on the promise of spending more on dated, inefficient, inflexible schools and processes, fully aware the extra monies spent on the likes of smaller classes won’t enhance student attainment, educational relevance, school efficiency or productivity.

There is moreover little or no pressure for schools and their heads to change their ways, to accommodate the world going digital. The rewards go to those teachers and aspiring heads that provide a good traditional schooling, who manage the status quo well, meet the government specified outcomes and whose students perform well in the final exams.  All the staff remuneration models are still those of an analogue world. 

Conclusion

Ironically, as we discuss in a later post the greatest pressure is placed on those highly capable educational visionaries who try to educate for a world of accelerating digital evolution and transformation and seek to take advantage of the facility to learn 24/7/365.

Governments seemingly globally do their utmost to control rather than encourage the mavericks.

The continued constancy of schooling globally points to the enormity of the challenge of initiating and sustaining core school change and the imperative of better understanding the constraints to change, and how desired change can be sustained.

  • Gallup Student Poll (2015) Engaged Today: Ready for Tomorrow Fall 2015 Gallup – http://www.gallup.com/services/189926/student-poll-2015-results.aspx
  • Lee, M and Broadie, R (2018) Digitally Connected Families. And the Digital Education of the World’s Young, 1993 – 2016, Armidale, Australia, Douglas and Brown – http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/–  
  • Solis, B and Szymanski, J (2016) Six Stages of Digital Transformation. The Race Against Digital Darwinism April 2016 Altimeter @Prophet – http://www.altimetergroup.com/2016/04/new-research-the-six-stages-of-digital-transformation/

Is Sustained Core School Change Possible?

Posted on by

I

An alert for those wanting to lead a digital school.

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

The historic, universal, unwritten assumptions are that fundamental school change is not only possible, but is desired by those in authority and can be readily sustained.

Underpinning virtually every education plan and staff development program in the last century has likely been the desire to change and enhance schooling. Myriads of books have been published, studies conducted, reports written and likely millions of conferences conducted globally detailing how. 

Daily politicians continue to espouse the changes they are initiating, giving the impression that the governments of the world actively want significant educational innovation and change.

We’d suggest the time has come to seriously question all three assumptions. 

We accept that merely questioning the assumptions is akin to killing Bambi, but if schooling is to educate the young for a rapidly evolving world the validity of these first order premises should be examined, and the reality addressed.

COSN recently released an excellent study on the hurdles constraining Driving K-12 Innovation (COSN, 2019). The problem was that barriers identified were second order and assumed governments and schools wanted to innovate, could do so, and could sustain the changes made.

It is suggested that

  • For most it might be impossible to fundamentally change the traditional mode of schooling in a sustained way. It can in exceptional circumstances happen with individual schools, at least for a time, but as we explore in later posts historically it has been near impossible to sustain across a total system.
  • it is extremely unlikely most schools will evolve as digitally mature organisations (Kane, et al, 2016) being digital (Negroponte, 1995) in the foreseeable future.
  • most governments and educators have no real desire to significantly change the nature of schooling. They want constancy, continuity, sameness and control, free of electoral risk.

School leaders should better understand what is possible to change and is sustainable, be aware of the myriad of constraints to significant school change, and appreciate where transformation is possible, and likely impossible. 

History reveals that sustaining the change is likely as difficult as making the initial change. It also suggests this key facet of organisational change hasn’t been given the attention due. 

It is time to mix vision with pragmatism, to adopt a more reasoned approach to change, to accept there are givens, and to stop tilting at windmills in areas when there is little or no likelihood of marked variation of the current practises. 

In talking about core school change one is addressing fundamental variations in the traditional mode of schooling. New buildings, technologies, curriculum or assessment procedures don’t in themselves mean core change, particularly when they are simply a variant of the old. One is looking at the likes of schools without walls, open plan schools and the move to a 24/7/365 mode of schooling that integrates the networked with the site based learning.

Heads must recognise from their appointment they will lead the school transformation process for a finite time, with very real likelihood that any significant changes they make to the traditional ways being reversed on their departure. Despite the best efforts of likely millions of very capable heads globally history is festooned with examples, particularly within systems, of the laudable efforts being dismantled or abandoned by less able replacements.

For centuries school planners have worked on the assumption they can, with calm rationale thought shape whatever kind of schools they want. They can’t.  There are immense, likely growing constraints and barriers inhibiting core change. 

It is time for all educational decision makers, but particularly principals to better understand, and work with that reality. We now know what can and likely can’t be changed, that which is immutable and that where enhancement is possible. For example, after two hundred plus years of governments in the northern hemisphere basing their school term dates on the agrarian year, and those dates impacting near every facet of life, the economy, and learning there is no way to markedly change the term times. There are like givens those wanting change must work with.

School leaders should also appreciate that most governments and education decision don’t want any significant change.  Most educational administrations are about control and being risk adverse, committed to ‘protecting and promoting the minister’, concerned not to alienate the electorate or media. While politicians and their educational administrators speak of change the difference between the rhetoric and the reality can be vast. Granted some governments have genuinely wanted enhancement, but history reveals most only want controlled change. Twenty-five years on from the world going digital, and the Digital Revolution transforming all manner of organisations worldwide most of the world’s schools have avoided or been sand bagged against any significant digital disruption (Lee and Broadie, 2018a). Most schools use of the digital the same way as they did a quarter of a century ago, albeit with access to the online.

Conclusion

In the coming weeks, we’ll explore through a series of short blogs the realities facing all school leaders, but particularly those wanting to lead a digital school.

If you would like to comment further do write Mal Lee at – mallee@mac.com

Bibliography

  • Kane, G.C, Palmer, D, Phillips, A.N, Kiron, D, Buckley, N (2016) Aligning the Organisation for its Digital Future. MIT Sloan Management Review, July 2016, Massachusetts MIT SMR/Deloitte University Press – http://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/aligning-for-digital-future/
  • Lee, M and Broadie, R (2018) Digitally Connected Families. And the Digital Education of the World’s Young, 1993 – 2016, Armidale, Australia, Douglas and Brown – http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/–  
  • Negroponte, N (1995) Being DigitalSydney Hodder and Stoughton

The Many Strengths of Digitally Connected Families

Posted on by

 

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

It will likely come as a surprise to most teachers and governments but the new reality is that the digitally connected families of the developed world are far better positioned than schools to grow the children’s being digital from birth, and to lead their learning with the digital.

At first glance this might appear an outrageous observation. However unwittingly, and largely unseen, the digitally connected families have over the last twenty plus years naturally and largely unseen developed the many strengths that give them considerable advantage over even excellent teachers working within highly constrained linear, hierarchical Industrial Age schools.

While the strengths of the family are on trend to grow at pace so too are the constraints on teachers, pointing strongly to the schools in their teaching with the digital lagging increasingly behind their families.

The seemingly obvious solution – exemplified in the exceptional schools and classrooms – is for the school to genuinely collaborate with their families in growing the children’s 24/7/365 learning with the digital. But – and it is a very considerable ‘but’ – at this stage in history no government, national or provincial appears to want that collaboration. The authors can find none that have articulated the educational, social, economic and political advantages of doing so.

All appear to want to maintain their unilateral control of schooling, and its traditional form and ways, affording only limited importance to being digital.

That said as a professional educator working within a digital and socially networked society, striving to provide your students an apt education for the contemporary world it is important to appreciate why the digitally connected families are so well positioned, to understand their strengths and why the trend line is pointing to the schools and teachers being only able to complement and add value to the work of the family.

The insight should help explain how teachers can add important value, but also why

the digitally connected families have led, and will continue to lead in growing the young’s being digital, and why schools in a networked society should be pooling the resources and expertise of the families and the school – not trying to compete.

The strengths of the digitally connected family.

  • The parents. They – not the school, nor government, nor the tech industry – have ultimate responsibility for how their children use and learn with the digital technology outside the school walls. In leading a small, highly agile self-regulating family unit, in total control of its operations and budget the parents have both the power and freedom to call the shots the moment desired.

The environment

  • Laissez faire environment.The family unit operates within in a market driven, largely laissez faire economy, free of any government control, with the autonomy and agility to do what it wants, when it wants and to respond instantly to continual accelerating change.

 

  • Learning culture.The digitally connected families have invariably created highly supportive learning cultures, where the digital is central, and the children are trusted and empowered to use the latest technologies largely unfettered, able to largely take charge of their learning with the digital 24/7/365. The contrast with the distrust, disempowerment, and the control exercised by schools over the children’s every action is stark.

 

  • Natural evolution.The family is free to evolve its use of and learning with the digital naturally, able to shape the emerging global megatrends to advantage. As the unplanned, unintended developments occur they can optimise them.

 

The young and their families have in learning with the digital naturally, instinctively and unwittingly adopted a remarkably common approach worldwide, creating the same kind of supportive learning cultures, developing similar capabilities. Nationality, gender and the family’s finances don’t appear to vary the fundamental nature of the learning with the digital all that much (Chaudron, et.al, 2015).

Positive Digital Mindset

  • Importance of the digital.Study after study from the early 90’s onwards has identified the importance most families worldwide attach to their children having the current digital devices (Lee and Broadie, 2018). That research is backed by their buying pattern, with it being the parents – not government – who have funded near two billion (UNICEF, 2017) young people’s technology and digital connectivity.

 

  • Positive outlook.The young and most of their families from the 90’s have been highly positive with the digital and online, grabbing the opportunities opened, exploring all manner of possibilities, trying things, taking risks, with many continually pushing the envelope. Importantly that have addressed the pitfalls that come with marked change in a largely positive manner. In contrast, most schools and governments for twenty plus years have been reactive, often negative, preoccupied with the possible risks, doing what governments have done historically with all new technologies, focussing initially on the dangers.

 

  • Digital and socially networked mindset. Over the last twenty plus years the young and their families have grown an increasingly stronger digital, and socially networked mindset. It is outward looking, continually seeking to take advantage of opportunities opened by the networks and the increasingly interconnected world. Most schools in contrast still employ an insular, inward looking, analogue mindset, and operate as artificial walled communities.

 

  • Common sense and instinct.On reflection, since the 1990s the families have shown eminent common sense, shaped in large by their natural instincts. Their focus has been their kids.

 

  • The young and their families have embraced and enjoyed using and learning with the digital. It is cool and a must have. The challenge has always been to limit the usage.

The learning

  • Control from birth to being digital.The family is in control of the young’s learning with the digital from birth. Children born into digitally connected families will by three be well on their way to being digital, and will have adopted the mode of learning with the digital they will use lifelong. The die is cast before government or teachers come into the play.

 

  • Digitally empowered. The very young enter school digitally empowered. It is a control they will exercise throughout life, relinquishing it reluctantly only when compelled.

 

  • Focus on the individual learner. Educationally the family’s concern has always been the learning of each child, the individuals, understanding the importance of each taking charge, each developing their own set of capabilities. While schools have for years spoken of individualising the learning none have gone close to what the families have achieved. In fairness, it is appreciably easier to do so with a couple of kids than hundreds, but it is a strength of the family unit.

 

  • 24/7/365, just in time, in context.In being digital and using the digital every day the young are free to learn anytime, anywhere they believe apt. They don’t have to wait until the teacher, curriculum and timetable allows.

 

  • Self-directed.From the early in life the children take charge of their learning with the digital, deciding what they want to learn, how, when and with the support of whom and what resources. In having that agency, they, not the education authorities decide what is to be learned, the children quickly individualising their learning, putting them on the path they will follow lifelong.

 

  • Informal, naturally sustained integrated learning– where the children, in taking control of their learning instinctively adopt a highly integrated, invariably non-linear approach, that naturally accommodates the changes brought by the evolving technology. They have no obligation, unlike teachers, to pursue a common, authority prescribed, linear instructional program that is only updated periodically.

 

  • Digital normalisation. Children today born to digitally connected families have invariably normalised the use of the digital well before entering school. The digital is a natural, almost invisible part of their life. While the families globally have rightly chosen to support that normalisation, most schools have not opted to try.

 

  • Learning in a continually evolving digital world. The digitally connected young have naturally developed not only their digital proficiency, but also the art of updating that proficiency in harmony with the evolving technology, full well understanding their learning must evolve lifelong. It is a capability that goes a long way to ensuring they use the current technology and technological practises, and take the opportunities opened by them.

 

  • Natural adaptation. History (Lee and Broadie, 2018) reveals the ease with which the young have been able to adapt their use and learning with the digital, to do their own thing, to use it to assist their school studies, and when obliged to use it compliantly within the classroom. The superseded technologies, the iPods, the Nokia, the CDs, DVDs, the games consoles, the myriad of cables and chargers quietly disappear into the cupboard.

However, history also reveals most schools lack that adaptability, unwilling or unable to change their ways, beholden to the set curriculum, assessment procedures, insisting the young and their families do what the school/authority requires.

Blockage free learning

  • No formal assessment, exams or reports.None of the very considerable constraints associated with student assessment that exist in the schools are found in the digitally connected families. They have never shown any desire or need for continual assessment, formal hand written exams, term reports and the associated stresses, loss of learning time, hassle and administrivia (Lee and Broadie, 2018).

 

  • No sorting and sifting. The family, unlike most schools are not obliged to continually rank the children, to compare performance and to perpetuate the Industrial Age practise of sorting the future ‘managers’ from the ‘factory workers’.

 

  • No accountability. Again, in contrast to the schools where virtually every operation must be justified and accounted for the digitally connected families are free to do what they want, never having to justify their approach – other than to themselves.

 

  • Bureaucracy free. Learning with the digital within the digitally connected family could well be one of the few situations in modern society where government bureaucrats play no part. The family is free to do as it wants, when it wants without operational guidelines, budget committees and government buying and accounting procedures.

 

  • Family set controls. The family, often as a unit, often unconsciously and sometimes with the parents calling the shots, sets the ‘rules’ and controls on the use of and learning with the digital. It can thus readily change the controls as the kids mature, respect the trust shown and the technology evolves.

Learning conditions

  • Trust and empowerment.While the families of the world have long been willing to trust, and empower their children to take charge of their learning, most schools have not.

 

  • Freedom to learn. The same holds here. One of the great plusses of an informal education has always been the opportunity for the young to explore new worlds, to dream, to create, to pursue their interests and passions, and occasionally to break a limb. The digital adds a new dimension to that facility.

 

  • Immediate digital use. The young, outside the school, have immediate use of the desired digital tools, physical and online, not constrained by the myriad of human and technological controls and blocks found in schools.

 

  • Networked learning.One of the great strengths of the young today is that they value, from around the age of six (Chaudron, et.al, 2018) human networking, and naturally, and likely unwittingly use it in their everyday learning.

 

  • Family learning. One of the largely unseen but very powerful features of the young’s learning is how much naturally occurs within the family setting, ranging from the very young mimicking their siblings and parents, the kids knowing more than their parents, the parents providing quiet guidance and the occasional strong nudge, and the nuclear and extended family going about their everyday networking, naturally, unwittingly growing their learning.  All benefit.

The technology

  • Personalised. The young in digitally connected families have ready access to their ‘own’ suite of continually evolving digital technologies, acquiring what they want, free to set them up as they desire to accommodate their learning style and interests. Johannsen (Johanssen, et.al, 2016) noted that 91% of Danish children 0-8 had ready access to tablets, with 42% having their own. In brief the young have agency over both their learning and the tools, in marked contrast to most schools where they have no agency.

 

  • Connectivity. The same is so with the digital connectivity. Within the home and on the move, they are largely free – depending on age – to connect the moment desired. Within the school connectivity, as all will attest, is tightly controlled, and even when permitted is invariably is done through censored networks. Outside the school connectivity is a core part of learning, where within most schools it plays only a peripheral role.

 

  • History highlights (Lee and Broadie, 2018) the continued early adoption and use of a wide array of the emerging personal technologies by the young, they quickly becoming proficient with the new. History also shows them using most of the technologies well before the school, often years before and in many instances using technologies never allowed in schools.

 

  • Family ecosystem.All the out of school learning is – usually unwittingly and unseen – assisted by increasingly powerful family digital ecosystems, aided in turn by the family member’s networking with other ecosystems. Think back a decade and note how the family digital ecosystems have grown, become that much integrated and powerful, the number of devices now in sync and what the future scenario will likely be.

 

  • Using all the desired technologies. One of the oft forgotten strengths is the families use of all manner of digital technologies, the games consoles, PVRs, smart TVs, high end digital cameras, Go Pros, smart watches, fit bits and all manner of mobiles, desktops and apps. In contrast, most schools opt to use only the one ‘appropriate’ device, the specified software and ban all other technologies.

 

  • Willingness to use the technology that can be afforded.In contrast to the schools that seemingly have a thing about using only quality kit the young, particularly those in the less affluent situations are happy to use any that will do the job, be they hand me downs or the lower end Android technology. They are willing think laterally to get what they want. The key variable is the expertise of the user not the gear.

There are undoubtedly other strengths.

Notwithstanding the above are an impressive set of capabilities.

Conclusion

Collectively they go a long way to explaining why most digitally connected families are far better placed than their local school/s to lead the way in learning with the digital and to do so in the years ahead.

They also affirm why astute schools and teachers would do betters to complement and enhance the contribution of the families, and not like now, try and compete.

Bibliography

  • Chaudron, S (2015) Young Children (0-8) and Digital TechnologyLuxembourg, European Commission JRC and Policy Reports 2015 –http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC93239
  • Chaudron S., Di Gioia R. , Gemo M.; Young children (0-8) and digital technology, a qualitative study across Europe; EUR 29070; doi:10.2760/294383
  • Johansen, S.L, Larsen, M.C and Ernst, M.J (2016) Young Children and Digital Technology– Aarhus University, Aalborg University, Danish Media Council for Children and Young People, February, 2016 – http://www.aau.dk/digitalAssets/201/201213_national-report_2015_denmark_proofread-2-.pdf
  • Lee, M and Broadie, R (2018) Digitally Connected Families. And the Digital Education of the World’s Young, 1993 – 2016, Armidale, Australia, Douglas and Brown – http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/–
  • UNICEF (2017)Children in a Digital World. The State of the World’s Children 2017. UNICEF December 2017 – https://www.unicef.org/publications/files/SOWC_2017_ENG_WEB.pdf

 

 

 

 

Digitally Connected Families: And the Digital Education of the World’s Young, 1993 – 2016

Posted on by

 

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

Three years ago, we embarked in researching the history of the digital education of the world’s young between 1993 and 2016, concerned the world’s schools were making little progress in going digital.

The journey took us into unchartered, and largely unseen and yet fascinating territory where the families of the young globally had for the past twenty plus years successfully readied the young worldwide to learn with the digital, from birth.

More than 60% of the world’s young are now digitally connected, and have normalised the 24/7/365 use of the digital – with no financial support from government.

We are delighted to be able to now share our insights into this historic educational development – with the release of Digitally Connected Families: And the Digital Education of the World’s Young, 1993 – 2016.

It is available at – http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/–

At this stage, it is only available as an e-book.

It is – as far as we know – the first historical analysis of the young’s learning with the digital, in and out of schools, in the period 1993 – 2016, from the release of Mosaic and the world going online, through to roughly today.

The desire was to provide a research base upon which the authors’ and others could build.

The chapters:

  1. Introduction
  2. The Digital Revolution and the Changed Nature of Youth, and Youth Education
  3. The Young, and the Evolution of the Personal Mobile Technologies
  4. Schools, Digital Education and Mobile Technologies
  5. The Evolution of the Digitally Connected Family
  6. The Two Models of Digital Education
  7. The Digital Learning Environments
  8. Learning with the Digital
  9. Pre-Primary Digital Education
  10. The Mobile Revolution
  11. On Reflection
  12. Conclusion

BYOT and Digital Normalisation

Posted on by

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

Having all students use in class the suite of digital technologies they use 24/7/365 so naturally as to be near invisible is critical to the on-going digital evolution of the school.

As Lee and Levin elaborate in their freely available (http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/) BYOT and the Digital Evolution of Schooling until schools are willing to distribute their control of teaching, learning and personal technology, to trust, respect and empower their students there is little likelihood of the school normalising the use of the digital and furthering the school’s digital evolution.

Rather the school, even if spending thousands on digital technologies, will remain operating within a paper based, control over operational paradigm unable replicate its client’s normalised use of the digital outside the school walls, and to meet both the client’s and society’s rising digital expectations.

Schools have ultimately to trust and empower all their students.

That is critical if they are to normalise the whole of school community use of the technology, and position the school culturally and technologically to continue its digital evolution.

The point that Lee and Levins make in their book is that BYOT- which is where the school encourages the children to use in class the digital technologies they are already using 24/7/365 – is but a phase, albeit a critical phase, in the digital evolution of the school.

BYOT – contrary to the views expressed by many – is not primarily about the technology but rather is a vital educational development where the school declares its willingness to cede its unilateral control of teaching, learning and technology and to genuinely collaborate with its digitally connected families and to work with them in providing a mode schooling befitting a digital and networked society.

It is a major step in creating a 24/7/364 mode of schooling that actively involves all the ‘teachers’ of the young – not simply the professionals in the school.

When all the students use their own personal technologies naturally in the classroom a new norm is achieved, a norm where the technology recedes into the background and the learner and the desired education takes precedence. With normalisation BYOT as a label very soon disappears from the school’s vernacular.

That said it bears reiterating that in 2017 relatively few schools globally have achieved digital normalisation – for the simple reason that it is very hard to do.

As Lee and Levins (2016) address in depth, and this series of blogs affirms the readying of the school for BYOT and in turn digital normalisation requires astute leaders who over time are willing and able to address the plethora of variables needed to significantly change the culture and thinking of the school, and create an integrated digitally based ecosystem able to continually make best use of the digital.

BYOT and Digital Normalisation

Posted on by

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

Having all students use in class the suite of digital technologies they use 24/7/365 so naturally as to be near invisible is critical to the on-going digital evolution of the school.

As Lee and Levin elaborate in their freely available (http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/) BYOT and the Digital Evolution of Schooling until schools are willing to distribute their control of teaching, learning and personal technology, to trust, respect and empower their students there is little likelihood of the school normalising the use of the digital and furthering the school’s digital evolution.

Rather the school, even if spending thousands on digital technologies, will remain operating within a paper based, control over operational paradigm unable replicate its client’s normalised use of the digital outside the school walls, and to meet both the client’s and society’s rising digital expectations.

Schools have ultimately to trust and empower all their students.

That is critical if they are to normalise the whole of school community use of the technology, and position the school culturally and technologically to continue its digital evolution.

The point that Lee and Levins make in their book is that BYOT- which is where the school encourages the children to use in class the digital technologies they are already using 24/7/365 – is but a phase, albeit a critical phase, in the digital evolution of the school.

BYOT – contrary to the views expressed by many – is not primarily about the technology but rather is a vital educational development where the school declares its willingness to cede its unilateral control of teaching, learning and technology and to genuinely collaborate with its digitally connected families and to work with them in providing a mode schooling befitting a digital and networked society.

It is a major step in creating a 24/7/364 mode of schooling that actively involves all the ‘teachers’ of the young – not simply the professionals in the school.

When all the students use their own personal technologies naturally in the classroom a new norm is achieved, a norm where the technology recedes into the background and the learner and the desired education takes precedence. With normalisation BYOT as a label very soon disappears from the school’s vernacular.

That said it bears reiterating that in 2017 relatively few schools globally have achieved digital normalisation – for the simple reason that it is very hard to do.

As Lee and Levins (2016) address in depth, and this series of blogs affirms the readying of the school for BYOT and in turn digital normalisation requires astute leaders who over time are willing and able to address the plethora of variables needed to significantly change the culture and thinking of the school, and create an integrated digitally based ecosystem able to continually make best use of the digital.

  • Lee, M and Levins, M (2016) BYOT and the Digital Evolution of Schooling Armidale Douglas and Brown – http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/

Collaboration in Learning. Transcending the School Walls

Posted on by

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

Mal Lee and Lorrae Ward published their research on the growing school – home nexus in 2013 in their ACER Press publication Collaboration in Learning: Transcending the School Walls. That work not only examined the nature of the collaboration in case study schools in the UK, US, NZ and Australia and its many benefits, but also the importance of developing a mode of schooling and teaching apposite for an ever evolving digital and increasingly socially networked world.

Lee elaborated upon that work in ‘Digital Technology and Student Learning’ (2014) and fleshed out how schools in their genuine collaboration with their homes could markedly improve the student learning. By

  • improving the home – school collaboration
  • empowering the parents and students and furthering their understanding of what is being learnt outside the classroom
  • making learning more relevant and attractive
  • lifting time in learning
  • adopting more individualised teaching
  • making greater use of peer supported learning
  • teaching more in context and
  • making apt use of increasingly sophisticated technology

the belief was schools should be able to markedly improve each child’s education.

The intention here is not to elaborate upon that work nor is it to repeat the points made in ‘Home – School – Community Collaboration’ (Lee and Broadie, 2016), but rather to comment on the developments that have occurred since writing the earlier works, and to place the developments in context.

What is increasingly apparent is that genuine home – school collaboration and teaching and learning that transcends the classroom walls is primarily a feature of a higher order mode of schooling. It is likely to be found only in those schools that have a digital operational base, recognise the learning happening outside the school walls and which are of a mind and have a culture accepting of genuine collaboration. While as indicated (Lee and Broadie, 2016) educational leaders and governments have for decades extolled the benefits of home – school collaboration and spent vast monies and efforts in the quest, genuine collaboration – except in some niche school settings – doesn’t take hold until schools have gone digital, begun to socially network and are of a mind to nurture the desired collaboration.

What is also clearer is that genuine collaboration between the school, its homes and community is critical to the on-going digital evolution of schools, the shaping of school ecosystems that merge the expertise and resources of all the teacher’s of the young and in time the development of a curriculum for the 24/7/365 mode of schooling. Until schools are ready to collaborate, to listen to their homes and the young, to value the contribution all parties can make to the 24/7/365 teaching of the young and have in place a culture and digital infrastructure that will facilitate the collaboration they have little chance of creating and resourcing the desired ever evolving school ecosystem or of providing an instructional program for a socially networked community, that successfully involves all the teachers of the young. Rather the schools will continue as insular, site fixated teacher controlled organisations, increasingly divorced from the real world.

Genuine collaboration is thus one of the critical steps in the school’s digital evolution.

With the benefit of hindsight and the opportunity to examine the operations of schools that have moved beyond the Digital Normalisation stage it is also clearer that in genuinely collaborating with the student’s homes and the community in improving the education provided the schools will – without any significant extra effort or expense – also simultaneously enhance the school’s

  • social networking
  • ecosystem
  • resourcing
  • administration and communication
  • marketing and promotion, and
  • growth and viability.

Genuine collaboration with the school’s clients in the school’s prime business – the holistic education of its young – will in a digitally based, socially networked school largely naturally fuel the growth of the total school ecosystem.

While the silo like nature of traditional schooling inclines one to consider the teaching and learning – the educational element – in isolation, the situation within increasingly integrated evolving complex adaptive systems obliges all associated with the school, but in particular its leaders to always look at the integrated totality, and how the enhancement of a critical facet of the ecosystem will likely impact all the other parts.

Within an integrated school ecosystem the old division of operational responsibilities largely disappears. The focus is on the desired learning, with the school looking to use whatever it deems appropriate to enhance that learning. It matters not if it makes use of a community organisation, a communications tool, a student team, an online resource or a combination of ‘resources’. What matters, is the desired learning.

Achieve genuine collaboration in the learning and the school will be well positioned to continually grow its total ecosystem and productivity.

  • Lee, M and Ward, L (2013) Collaboration in learning: transcending the classroom walls, Melbourne ACER Press
  • Lee, M (2014) ‘Digital Technology and Student Learning’, Educational Technology Solutions – July 15 2014

 

Making learning addictive

Posted on by

We are increasingly addicted to our computers and phones. This is not an accident. The companies devising those online offerings that grab and hold our attention know precisely what they are doing. It was at a conference back in about 2008 that I first heard people talking about this, so the understanding of how to get people addicted to your website isn’t new. This was all brought back to my attention this week by New Scientist who reviewed a book by Adam Alter “Why we can’t stop checking, scrolling, clicking and watching”.

While we may decry the amount of time young people (and many older) spend glued to their phones, the article did make the point that we can also use technology to motivate good behaviours. In fact it doesn’t need tech at all, though tech can be very powerful in multiplying the impact of what you do to addict people to good behaviours.

What has made me put words into a blog is that the techniques being used to addict us to online systems are identical to the approaches being used by the schools that have gained the Naace Third Millennium Learning Award, which are a good sample of digitally-evolved schools. They have shown us in their videos what they do to increase engagement in learning by their pupils. These schools are essentially addicting young people to learning. I cannot see this as anything other than a good thing to do. The choice of where these young people will direct their attention to fulfil this addiction is entirely theirs. Their teachers and parents will suggest and guide so that they hopefully direct their learning attention to good things, and most young people want to learn the positive things life offers. Addiction to learning is in a completely different category to addiction to things that bring harm or merely absorb time.

Having pupils in your school addicted to learning also creates major spin-off benefits for the school staff and even the school budget. Pupils excited about learning, with an appetite for learning, who practise learning and reinforce the learning of others is what we all want. Teaching becomes a joy, achievement rockets and everyone in the school has the satisfaction of knowing their pupils are well equipped for the learning challenges they will continually face beyond school.

So what are these techniques to addict people. They are things that stimulate our brains to release dopamine, giving intense feelings of pleasure and making us want more. They are:
– Feedback
– Goals, which should be just beyond reach.
– Progress, through a sense of incremental mastery.
– Escalation, via progressively more difficult tasks.
– Cliffhangers, to produce tension that demands resolution.
– Strong social connections.

Anyone familiar with computer games knows how they use these techniques. But you will surely recognise that social networks are also using them to grab our attention.

These are also the defining characteristics of schools that are providing an education that surpasses good traditional learning:

1) Really good feedback, from the teacher, from lots of audiences through in-school celebration of work and collaborative activities, through parental and family engagement, and through involvement of the community.

2) Aspirational targets agreed by pupils, made possible because the schools have installed a growth mindset and made failure the first step to success.

3) A very strong focus on progress, which makes it easier to set agreed aspirational targets as all pupils can see clearly their progress, even if it is from a low base. Mastery is celebrated and rewarded through peer tutoring and many pupils taking leadership roles in the school (one third of the pupils have leadership roles in one school we have looked at).

4) Escalation of the difficulty of the challenges teachers set pupils as soon as they successfully master the original challenge. With ‘stretch and challenge’ resources available for pupils to independently move themselves on to.

5) Cliffhangers introduced by teachers in numerous ways such as timed tasks, deadlines to present work to other pupils, collaborative activities in which pupils challenge each other, performances, competitions and real-life tasks where pupils interact with others outside the school.

6) Strong social connections weaving their way through all of the above, through class discussions, collaboration, peer tutoring, class experts, pupil leaders, numerous audiences in-school and online, and high visibility of pupils’ output to others as a normal part of the work they do in school.

All this is of course possible without use of technology, but immensely more powerful when the school makes the online systems available to underpin all these. Visibility of work, audiences, collaboration and feedback, clarity of progress, availability of escalating challenges, and setting of high expectations can all be immeasurably stronger with effective use of technology. Not to mention the tools and resources for the work challenges that technology brings.

It is time that more schools realised that it is not enough to bemoan that children are becoming addicted to their phones. It is time to make what happens in school and in classes more addictive than the pleasures they get through their phones. And to use the fact that children have smartphones to complement, reinforce and make more addictive what happens in class, making children desire to continue feeding this learning addiction out of class.

This shouldn’t be hard given that schools have trained adults on site and the face-to-face social environment in which teachers can build addiction to learning, as well as what comes to children through their screens – provided of course that the school has not banned the pupils from bringing their mobile devices into school. The school’s online presence, together with real humans for several hours a day, can be much compelling than a cleverly designed algorithm.

Empowering the School Community

Posted on by

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

Tellingly all the schools studied have gradually but very surely empowered their total school community – giving their teachers, professional support staff, students, families and the school’s wider community- a greater voice in the school’s teaching, learning, resourcing and direction setting – markedly expanding the school’s capability and improving its productivity.

Significantly the schools have

  • fully empowered their professional staff
  • accorded all in their community greater respect
  • recognised the part all can play in enhancing the 24/7/365 education provided by the school
  • collaborated with all in lifting their understanding of the macro workings of the school and the school’s shaping vision
  • in the process distributed the control of the teaching, learning and school resourcing.

Yes – in all the distribution of control, the collaboration and the empowerment has added to the load on the school leadership, but paradoxically it has simultaneously provided the school principal considerable untapped support and additional resources. All the principals commented on the time needed to genuinely collaborate and listen, the many frustrations and the seemingly inevitable rectification of well intentioned mistakes, but on the upside the empowerment has added appreciably to the teaching and learning capability of the school, its resourcing, and the support and social capital the principal can call upon in growing the school and its attractiveness.

Schools in the developed world historically are working with their nation’s most educated cohort of parents and grandparents who since their child’s/children’s birth have recognised the importance of a quality education for ‘their’ children and who in their home and hands have a suit of digital resources that markedly exceeds that in most classrooms. All moreover have in their community a sizeable and growing body of retirees with considerable expertise, time on their hand and a desire to be valued.

The above alone is a vast source of expertise and additional resourcing the pathfinder schools in their social networking and empowerment are only beginning to tap.

Within a matter of years the now digitally mature schools in their digital journey have moved culturally from the stage where most within the school’s community were disempowered and had little or no voice in the workings and growth of the school to the point where the total school community is naturally contributing to the daily operations of the school.

It is a historic shift that has been led by the principals – a move that has to be led by the principal.

The move has been graduated, often seeing two steps forward and one back, but inexorably reaching the stage where the empowered expect to be involved in the decision making, if only to be informed of a development that clearly improves the school’s quest to realise its shaping vision. In empowering the school’s community, and vitally by bringing the parents into the 24/7/365 teaching of their children, schooling as we have known it – where the professionals unilaterally controlled the teaching and learning – has likely irrevocably changed.

The digital interface with the school’s community that allows ‘time poor’ members to be consulted and informed about key developments has been – and likely will always be – critical.

That said the empowerment will not be without its moments, particularly as a previously disempowered staff and school community attune their antenna to the extent to which they will be able to express their thoughts and use their new found power. That situation will – as mentioned – be compounded by the ever changing student cohorts and the school leadership having to contend with those new to the school’s culture and ways.

Here again the astute leadership of the principal is critical as she/he works to harness the potential of the empowered while simultaneously maintaining the focus on realising the school’s shaping vision and providing each child an apt education.

It calls for some very skilful balancing but also remembering that in undertaking the digital journey all the adults – teachers and parents – will be experiencing a mode of schooling significantly different to that they knew in their youth.

 

The impact of personal mobile technologies on the 24/7/365 education of the world’s young, 1993 – 2017

Posted on by

 

The digital leadership of the young and their homes

An invitation to reflect

Roger Broadie and Mal Lee are researching a monograph on ‘The impact of personal mobile technologies on the 24/7/365 education of the world’s young, 1993 – 2017’. We hope this will provide a foundation for further work on how government, schools and families can best support children’s learning in a connected world.

It will explore the impact of the evolving personal technologies since the release of Mosaic in 1993 on the young of the world, both in and outside the school walls, the changes in technology and technological practises that influenced usage, and the role played by the young, their families and the school.

Importantly it will address the evolving scene globally, and not simply that in the developed nations.

Moreover it will examine the nature of the digital education acquired in the 80% of annual learning time available to the young outside the school over the last twenty plus years, as well as that acquired within the classroom.

Twenty plus years since the advent of the WWW the world is watching the operation and impact of two distinct digital education modes – the out of school laissez faire mode that has successfully educated the young of the world in the use of the rapidly evolving technology at no cost to government and the formal, in school tightly controlled mode that annually costs governments billions of dollars – with questionable dividends.

We suggest it is time to pause, reflect and decide on the way forward.

Bear in mind around 3.4 billion people globally (ITU, 2016) daily successfully use the networked world, with few having being taught by teachers.

The research will explore these kind of big ideas, that

  • the nature of youth, and youth education changed historically with the advent of the Web and the facility accorded the young to access the information of the networked world directly and not through adult filters

 

  • the young and their families, operating in a laissez faire, seemingly chaotic world – and not formal schooling – have led the 24/7/365 digital education of the young for the past twenty plus years, and are track to play even greater leadership role

 

  • the digitally connected family became the norm in the developed world, around 2007 – 2008, with those families likely increasingly taking charge of their children’s 24/7/365 digital education.

 

  • most children in the developed, and evermore in the developing world will start school having normalised the use of the digital.

 

  • While cell/smartphones are integral to 24/7/365 lives and learning of the world’s teens scant or no use was made of that capability in most schools, with the few that are succeeding being largely ignored by governments in policy setting and the accountability measures for all schools.

To assist our efforts we are planning to interview a cross section of eminent educators globally who have observed, experienced, researched and/or commented upon the digital education of the young in and out of schools over the last two decades.

If you – or your colleagues – would like to reflect on the past twenty plus years with Roger or Mal we would love to hear from you.

Simply email Mal at mallee@mac.com and we’ll set up a Skype interview when convenient.