Paradigm Shift

Nine months ago I got my first really smart phone.  Six months ago I read my first book on that phone with the Kindle application for Android from Amazon.  Since then, I’ve read 18 books–on my phone.  This sounds awful to most people, and probably to you too.  But you should see the pages glide by, see how easy it is to highlight, add notes, follow links, and look up words.

Gaming has always been an area of personal interest and professional fascination for me. Over the past few years the public and business interest in gaming has grown. This morning I read a post in Mashable on Gamification. The author of the post defined gamification as “the use of game thinking and game mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems. In other words, it means taking the best lessons from games like FarmVille, World of Warcraft and Angry Birds, and using them in business. Whether targeted at customers or employees, across industries as diverse as technology, health care, education, consumer products, entertainment and travel, gamification’s impact can already be felt.” He goes on to share seven gamified innovations. The post ends with a forecasting statement — “Gartner Group estimates that by 2015, 70% of the Forbes Global 2000 will be using gamified apps, and M2 Research forecasts that U.S. companies alone will spend $1.6 billion on gamification products and services by that same year.”

Jane McGonigal was a speaker at the February 2010 TED event. Jane directs game R&D at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit forecasting firm. She developed Superstruct, a massively multiplayer game in which players organize society to solve issues that will confront the world in 2019. Her philosophy – “Instead of providing gamers with better and more immersive alternatives to reality, I want all of us to become responsible for providing the world with a better and more immersive reality.” In her TED talk, she makes a case for harnessing the power of gaming to solve real-world problems.

In February this year PBS released a new program titled Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century. It shared five examples of 21st Century learning and featured thought leaders, innovators and practitioners in the field. One of the schools featured was Quest to Learn where design thinking and complex problem-solving are the school’s two big ideas. The school is the outcome of a collaboration between New Visions for Public Schools, the Institute of Play, and the MacArthur Foundation and uses ‘game-like learning’ as a way to teach kids. Quest to Learn opened in 2009 and its website states that Q2L “supports a dynamic curriculum that uses the underlying design principles of games to create academically challenging, immersive, game-like learning experiences for students.”

A wide and growing range of articles and blog posts make a case for integrating gaming and the principles of gaming in learning environments – e.g. Five Reasons Why Video Games Power Up Learning, How to Plan Instruction Using the Video Game Model, Teaching the Physics Behind Angry Birds, Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom, Students Design Games and Software Tools to Tackle Real-World Problems. . . Another TED speaker, John Hunter, shares how his World Peace Game engages his 4th graders through complex problem solving and deep engagement. . .

There are obvious reasons for the interest in using gaming to support learning. The human mind does not follow rules; it isn’t a calculator. It learns from experience and we know that well-designed learning experiences are very effective. A well-designed learning experience motivates (through emotional engagement), has clear goals, provides copious and immediate feedback, manages attention, provides practice, and has opportunities for debriefing and reflection. Some features in games that make them good for learning:

• Motivation (creates an emotional attachment)
• Clear goals
• Well-ordered problems
• Problem solving
• Performance before competence (like first-language acquisition)
• Cycle of expertise (give the person a problem, let them practice the problem until it’s automatic, give them a new problem where their automatic expertise doesn’t work)
• Copious feedback
• Mentoring within the game
• Failure is low-cost
• Meta-game (expressing learning in community settings; interest groups that talk about the games that are being playing)

As games are designed in totality, they are well-designed and complete learning experiences. AND they are social and fun! Talking of fun, I just finished reading a book by Tom Chatfield titled Fun Inc: Why Games are the 21st Century’s Most Serious Business. It provides valuable research and insights into the history of gaming and the business of gaming. Makes me wonder: Is Gaming the future of learning?

I’ve been busy over the past couple of months making several shifts. One of these was a shift in how a graduate course could be taught.

For two months I spent considerable time reflecting on changing the way adult students should learn. I was scheduled to teach a new course for a Masters program that is currently being offered to our faculty at ASB. The cohort had completed two thirds of the program before taking my course. The course is titled ’21st Century Learning’ and focuses on building an understanding of 21st century skills and the elements of a 21st Century learning environment.

ASB has a unique culture of exploring innovative practices and integrating technology deeply and seamlessly. However like other schools, we often have to fit into a 20th century mold. The mold consists of division and discipline silos, alignment of standards, assessments, lessons and schedules, limited planning time, and sometimes school-directed professional learning opportunities. Given the limitations of this mold, our teachers innovate and lead daily in amazing ways. (Several folks witness these practices when they visit our school during our biennial ASB Un-Plugged conference.) But this new course was not a technology course or one on tech integration.

I played with the idea of using the course to break the mold and ’cause widespread change.’ It seemed like a great opportunity to create a movement, the kind that Seth Godin describes in his blog

‘A movement has an emotional heart. A movement might use an organization, but it can replace systems and people if they disappear. Movements are more likely to cause widespread change, and they require leaders, not managers.’

In order to do this I had to redesign several aspects of teaching and learning in this course. The course was scheduled to be an intense learning experience, offered at the start of the summer break. It would run over seven days – 9:00 am to 4:00 pm daily including a weekend with a mid-way break. It was going to be an immersive learning experience. In order for the students to understand 21st century skills and teaching and learning, they had to experience it. So I set up the class as a exploratory constructivist learning lab – where the learners had to construct their own knowledge and create their own understanding. This amazing cohort of 25 professionals embraced the stance of active learners, and read, reflected and discussed aspects of 21st century learning. There is really nothing new about 21st century skills. (These skills have always been important but we now need to intentionally and purposefully ensure that all our students have these skills.) The learners participated in various types of learning activities and reflected on these experiences and the application for their practices. They identified and discussed the urgency of changes that are needed in the structure and organization of schooling including scheduling, learning spaces (both physical and virtual), teacher and student roles, the concept of grade levels to support learning, etc. They designed new learning environments for the future. . . Throughout the course they questioned their own and each others’ thinking and practices, nudged each other to think outside the box and envision and redesign learning. The pictures they painted with their new learning designs highlighted ‘the death of education and the dawn of learning’ (Stephen Heppell, Learning to Change, Changing to Learn). . . They arrived on the first day of the course with a lot of questions; they left on the last day with some answers and a lot more questions . . . They left empowered, their emotions stirred and with an eagerness to step out of their comfort zones, and be the change and lead it.

I’ve had a few days now to reflect on my own learning at the end of the course. Some of my early takeaways:

• Social constructivists – The experience reinforced my belief that humans are social constructivists and that in order to make sense of new information, we need to interact socially, contributing to each others’ understanding, reflecting upon the understanding, and generating and testing hypothesis collaboratively. This is what the learners in this course did. This has implications for professional development and professional learning.

• Authentic Activities – We all know about the research on the importance of creating authentic problem-based projects. The final project for this course was to design new learning environments. The project was not just another assignment to be turned in. The work done by the learners will be used next year to continue to study ways in which we can superstruct teaching and learning. This raises a question in my mind – What are the kinds of professional learning experiences we can design that can support school improvement or school transformation efforts?

• Empowering teachers to be leaders – Too often we leave the task of leading change with administrators. We know they should be thinking beyond the core subject areas and asking questions like ‘What skills should students master by the time they graduate from high school? Do they need to be effective communicators and collaborators and critical thinkers?’ If they are not asking these questions or cannot answer them, they should not be the ones to decide what the ideal learning environments need to be. Consider the possibilities if teachers are allowed to expand their thinking about learning environments beyond the traditional classroom. Once teachers are empowered to lead, the changes can be more visionary and far-reaching. Distributed leadership models are necessary for the creation of learning designs for our students.

• One size does not fit all – The reflections shared by the learners in the course reinforced my belief that each school needs to consider questions about 21st century learning and start their own conversations. The responses to the questions will be unique to each school.

I am searching for ways in which we can continue to empower this cohort while engaging other educators and members of the community in conversations about new learning designs. Any suggestions?

The past couple of months have been busy with travel to some schools and planning/giving presentations at conferences. While organizing the presentations I had a lot of time to think and had lots of random ideas and thoughts (that I will share in future posts). However there’s one thing that I did spend a lot of time thinking about — about independent schools, where we are, where we should be, and the challenges and opportunities. The opportunities for independent schools to evolve are amazing – there has never been a better time in the history of education when several forces have come together to transform the teaching/learning process. Over the past couple of years I’ve observed a change in independent schools — there is now a greater acknowledgment of the urgency to move forward and embrace the changes. The schools that will be front-runners will be those whose leadership has the gumption to think differently and “lead” change at their schools. Which brings me to the question that school leaders and leadership teams need to ask themselves – do we individually and collectively have the guts to think big and lead change? Thinking big is not tinkering around the edges, but creating a different mold and facilitating transition to the new mold. There are many different designs to support the creation of experimental spaces, new roles, etc. However these require each of us thinking and acting like “leaders”, and not managers. Each school leader has “management” type responsibilities that are an important part of their work. We need to pause and think if this is all schools do – if all we do is “manage” our divisions and departments, then who is doing the “leading”?

I enjoy learning new things and new ideas, and understanding global changes. And I learned a lot in 2010 – more than previous years. That was because I learned to build a “river of information” into my brain. I became more intentional and deliberate about my learning.

I follow several blogs by education and ed tech leaders. I also enjoy reading reports from the world of business, news and articles from the Economist, New York Times, etc., and McKinsey, BCG, SoL reports on organizational research and leadership. All of these and several colleagues and professionals are part of my PLN. Each week I would visit different sites to catch up on news and info, use RSS feeds in my Google Reader to stay updated on trends, and read the messages in my listservs to stay current and connected.

In February Scott Klososky shared the concept of “Building a River of Information” at our ASB Un-Plugged conference.

It’s similar to creating a PLN but uses tools to collate and organize information from multiple sources in one place. And it uses a more interesting metaphor

“We all have a river today – it might just be a small little creek. The outcome of building a powerful river of information is that you will have a much better command of the thoughts, ideas, and events circulating on the web in your areas of interest. You will have real time information instead of learning about things weeks after they might happen. There are two kinds of knowledge that are valuable – one is a robust inventory of knowledge on any one topic. The other is a timely set of knowledge about the events that have happened in the last 36 hours as it were.” (Klososky, Technology Story, March 2010)

I created a powerful River of Information to support my learning. This has helped tremendously in organizing my different channels of information – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, Daily News, podcasts . . . I use Netvibes to create an organized, selected digital flow of information using tools like RSS feeds, eNewsletters, blogs, Twitter feeds, Diigo groups and tags, and other social media sites.

I invest approximately 45 minutes to an hour daily studying my river. I am able to tap into ideas from experts and smart people in education and a range of fields, share thoughts and ideas, construct my beliefs, and build my knowledge. I learn a lot from my river. Occasionally my river gets flooded But most times it stays within its banks.

How do you organize your information and your learning?

Today I read a very interesting paper on the process of creating adaptive organizations in a knowledge-based society. The paper comes from Toffler Associates – this is Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s company. They wrote Future Shock about 40 years ago. The book noted ideas that are being promoted today by trend-watchers, and the Tofflers identified these trends long back. I read the book a couple of decades back and was blown away by their predictions; most of them seemed unreal and didn’t make any sense at that time. Of course today it’s all becoming reality or close to real.

The paper I read is titled The Adaptive Organization: Fostering Change in Five Areas. It is a fascinating read and has implications for organizations and institutions engaged in strategic planning. It discusses how to create organizations that are able to sense the need for and undertake change. It outlines five areas in which an organization must adapt simultaneously to remain relevant and effective and to ensure that it is “aligned internally and with the present and future external environments- people, process, strategy, technology and structure. . . . Highly specific to the organization undertaking it, alignment may require significant reform or investment of resources. The organization that does not align, however, can’t adapt effectively to the opportunities and challenges they face and will not survive the Information Age.”

While reflecting on the paper, I read several related reports, papers, and articles that are worth a read for institutions or organizations planning for the future.

40 for the Next 40 (A Sampling of the Drivers of Change that will Shape our World Between Now and 2050)

This report gives a 30K ft overview of global drivers of change in several key areas.

Future Shock Forum
This is a summary report of the discussions at the 2007 Future Shock Forum. It focuses on three areas: Encouraging and Developing Human Talent, Innovating across the ‘Non-Money’ and ‘Money’ Economies, and ‘Desynchronization’ of Innovation in the Public and Private Sectors.

One of the interesting pieces have implications for recruitment – they identify the attributes of people that are key to fostering innovation in an organization:

“to innovate, they agreed, we need in our workforce individuals who are self-confident; who are not afraid to take risks; peoplewho are “horizontal integrators” (adept at connecting the knowledge and resources from different parts of the organization and from outside); people who are collaborative by nature, and who are generalists rather than narrow specialists (since generalists “do not know any better, they tend to innovate more”); people who have a history of creative problem-solving in their personal lives and can apply that creativity in diverse work-related contexts; people who are intellectually curious and critical thinkers and able communicators.”

The report states that innovation is a learned attribute, is becoming increasingly difficult to inculcate, and highlights the role of educational institutions and leadership in empowering employee innovation. It has implications for strategic planning for the future as well as for school leadership teams in their role as leaders who are developing talent (‘development-focused leadership’).

Connecting the Dots: Becoming a Knowledge Age Innovator

This article has suggestions on how organizations can become ‘innovative’. It highlights the structural shifts that are needed for this to happen.

Technology and Innovation 2025

If you like reading about future trends and forces of change in society, this is one of the must-read reports.

One of the concluding statements in the report:

“The convergences of bio, nano, cyber, sensors and wild card technologies are causing even greater acceleration of change. But at the same time, knowledge is being created at such a rate that much of what we know about these technologies and their application rapidly becomes obsolete as it is overtaken by newer discoveries. Our institutions will be challenged to respond to the combination of these technological changes and the many other drivers of change simultaneously. We expect many systems and institutions to be desynchronized by these changes and efforts to resynchronize them will add to the sense of disruption that many people feel.”

What are the implications for education and its institutions? Societal changes are accelerating and our structures need urgent attention to remain “synchronized”.

We all know that several global, technological, and human shifts have been taking place over the last couple of decades. These have changed the way people, society, and organizations need to work. I’ve been reading several reports published by forecasting organizations that further clarify these shifts and highlight key forces of change that will re-shape the education landscape over the next decade. Here’s a list compiled from the Horizon Report published by New Media Consortium, the 2020 Forecast by KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Institute for the Future.

Self – Altered Bodies

• Advances in neuroscience — will lead to new adaptive learning designs for special learners
• Greater threats to human and environmental health from climate change, pollution, war, extreme urbanization, and other man-made and natural disasters will place new pressures on minds and bodies
• Impact on Schools
  • Adaptive learning for all
  • Increase in Service Learning and instilling in students a sense of stewardship for self and environment

• Trends
  • Bio-Distress — Threats to our biological, ecological, and built environments drain resources and demand coordinated responses.
  • Cognitive Modification — The brain becomes a site for alteration and maintenance
  • Enabled Innovation — Neurodiversity, physical enhancements, and disability communities converge, turning marginalized populations into mainstream innovators
  • Eco-Schools — become a nexus for health, environment, community, and learning
• Examples or early indicators of the changes
  • Sharp Brains – www.sharpbrains.com
  • Center for Eco Literacy – www.ecoliteracy.org
  • Green Schools Initiative – www.greenschools.net

Organizations – Amplified Organization

• Digital natives and social collaborative technologies are creating a generation of amplified individuals.
• The social, collaborative practices and augmented capacities will trigger the creation of improvised organizational models.
• Technology is increasingly a means for empowerment, a method for communication and socializing, and a ubiquitous, transparent part of our lives.
• Increase in creation of information and transparency in a world of social networks.
• Impact on schools
  • Digital natives and amplified educators and students will challenge traditional ways of organizing learning.
  • Change in the role of the school
  • When considering instructional technology, focus will be on how it can support connected, continuous, relevant, and adaptive learning
• Trends
  • Multiple Literacies — Effective communication requires reading, writing, and interacting across multiple media and social platforms:  Broadcast, Virtual worlds, Wikis, Blogs, Digital video, Microblogs, Social networking
  • Open Leadership And Sociability — Open collaborative platforms enable networked teams to self-organize and support ad hoc leaders
  • Beta Building — A beta culture is created that displays open critique and reflective practice
  • Collective Sensemaking — Diverse and abundant data streams increase the need for organizations to tap collective intelligence
• Examples or early indicators of the changes
  • The Institute Of Creative Technologies — Pioneering research on transliteracy, www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk
  • Plazes – Ad hoc collaboration through microblogs, www.plazes.com
  • Flat Classrooms — Web 2.0 amplifies the fl at classroom, www.flatclassroomproject.wikispaces.com
  • Digg — Platform for collective input on what is hot on the Internet, www.digg.com

Systems — Platforms for Resilience

• System disruptions in the areas of energy, finance, climate, and healthcare will be key forces of destabilization.
• Strategies that resist the disruption and try to maintain the status quo will not enough and will be unsuccessful.
• Institutions can meet the system failures through innovation, adaptation, and openness. The platforms for resilience will be responsive flexibility, distributed collaboration, and transparency.
• There is increasing interest in just-in-time, alternate, or non-formal avenues of education, such as online learning, mentoring, and independent study.
• Impact on Schools
  • Need to develop strategies for building resilience into their systems and for creating lightweight, modular infrastructures to support the health and wellbeing of students, staff, and families.
  • Partnerships and networks will be essential and critical for building resilient school communities
  • Educator-business partnerships to develop learning content
  • Growth in alternate forms of learning.
• Trends
  • Smart Localism — Smart networking, data transparency, and bottom-up monitoring enable responsive, open decision-making
  • Learning Grids — Smart-networked resource providers and learning agents create lightweight, modular learning infrastructures
  • Autoimmune Responses — Brittle hierarchies continue to act in ways that seem institutionally rational but which further destabilize weak, inflexible systems
  • Shadow “Schools” — Super-empowered, networked learning agents leverage the growing learning economy to enable provisional learning systems
• Examples or early indicators of the changes
  • Transition Towns — Community wikis for adaptive strategies, www.transitiontowns.org
  • Online School For Girls – http://onlineschoolforgirls.org/
  • School Of One – http://schools.nyc.gov/community/innovation/SchoolofOne/default.htm
  • New Tech High School – http://www.newtechnetwork.org/

Societies — A New Civic Discourse

• Rearticulation of identity and community in a global society — This is triggered by the convergence of online participatory media culture, diverse diasporic movements (the formation of dispersed populations that share common roots and identity), and new ways of managing shared resources or commons
• Free and universal access to information is increasing for all citizens, whose informed opinions are in turn shaping policy and fostering greater global democracy.
• Impact on Schools
  • Educational discourse will take place in online public forums and spaces as “educitizens” share the status of schools and educational decision-making, resources, and activities in their communities.
  • School administrators and teachers will need to learn how to communicate and interact in this new world.
• Trends
  • New Civic Literacies — Participatory media and digital natives bring transparency and collective action to the civic sphere
  • Learning Commons – Educational stakeholders grow collective learning resources, creating an alternative to public and private
  • Diasporas As New Markets — Diverse movements of people create new identities and flows of learners
  • Personal Learning Ecologies — Families look outside the traditional “system” to create ecologies of learning experiences
  • Educitizens — Students and families affiliate around educational needs and claim rights as learners
• Examples or early indicators of the changes
  • Futuremelbourne — The city plan that anyone can edit, www.futuremelbourne.com.au/wiki/view/FMPlan/WebHome
  • DC Voice — Community school audits help manage the learning commons, www.dcvoice.org
  • Meetup For Youth Rights — Using Meetup to discuss youth rights, www.nyra.meetup.com
  • Taking It Global – http://www.tigweb.org/

Economy — Maker Economy

• Personal fabrication technologies and open-source principles democratize production and design
• New forms of bottom-up social networking and economic coordination, along with advances in small-scale, community-based fabrication and design, transform local economies in the next decade, enabling productive flexibility that will help cushion against economic instability.
• Technology tools will enable local communities to innovate, customize, design and create their own economic futures to meet their needs. E.g. 3D Printers, computer controlled machine tools (such as laser cutters), online networking communities for designers, consumers, artisans to share blueprints, solutions, and how-to knowledge.
• Impact on Schools
  • Innovation is valued at the highest levels of business and must be embraced in schools.
  • Schools will become important hubs of design knowledge, rapid prototyping, and problem-solving skills
  • Increased interdependence with the local community and businesses
  • New skills required for the maker economy
• Trends
  • Personal Fabrication And Design — 3D printers, and digital machinery democratize the machine shop
  • Lightweight Community-Based Manufacturing — Ad hoc factories and job shops enable flexible, fast, and customized production, unlike fabrication by assembly lines and dedicated factories
  • Networked Artisans — Solo inventors, tinkerers, and craftsmen form networks to collaborate and celebrate their creations
  • Citizen R&D — Makers reach out to their markets and communities to ideate, iterate, and solicit feedback
• Examples or early indicators of the changes
  • Ponoko — Share, sell, and fabricate your designs, www.ponoko.com
  • Techshop -  Open-access, public workshop, www.techshop.ws
  • 3D Printer — Print three-dimensional objects, www.fabathome.org
  • MIT’s Fab Lab — Get access to modern means for invention, www.ssbxfab.org/about
  • Instructables — Post your own how-to guide, www.instructables.com
  • The Open Prosthetics Project — Affordable prosthetics through open design and production, www.openprosthetics.org

Knowledge — Pattern Recognition

• Information will continue to burgeon and will force new ways of making sense of vast amounts of data
• Data visualization will require new skills in discerning meaningful patterns
• Social media and collaborative tools will leave “data trails” of online interactions
• Visible data picture of our lives as citizens, workers, and learners will be available anytime and online. Location-based information will be gathered by GPSs in cell phones and car navigation systems. Health and environmental data will also be gathered.
• Impact on Schools
  • Students, teachers, and parents will need to become sophisticated at pattern recognition in order to create effective and differentiated learning experiences.
  • New skills in collective sense making will redefine forms of knowledge, knowing, and assessment. (e.g. Building “Rivers of Information”)
• Trends
  • Personal Metrics — Personal data trails about preferences, attributes, and performance shape an evidence-based culture
  • Data Visualization And Visual Literacy — Vast data streams require visual tools to discern underlying stories
  • Open-Source Assessment — Data trails, participatory media, and visual tools create new bases for reputation, mastery, and recognition
  • Games As Practice — Gaming platforms become critical training areas for work, problem-solving, and learning
  • Metaverse – Blended digital-physical realities create new learning geographies
• Examples or early indicators of the changes
  • The Quantified Self — Blog tracking personal sensors and metrics, www.kk.org/quantifiedself
  • Gapminder –Making statistics beautiful, www.gapminder.org
  • Rate My Teachers — Students and parents rate teachers and schools, www.ratemyteachers.com
  • World Without Oil — Massively multiplayer alternate reality game, www.worldwithoutoil.org
  • Metaverse Roadmap — Pathways to the 3D Web, www.metaverseroadmap.org
  • Superstruct – Game designed by Jane McGonigal

Prophecies in the 1980s predicted a move to a paperless office where paper files would be replaced by digital files and documents that would be easy to index and find. Two decades later those predictions are close to becoming a reality. Gone are physical paper trails of our communications (well, almost! I still occasionally come across printouts of emails). Word processors, PDF formats, HTML — all these and more have ensured that paper has become redundant. The user generated content of Web 2.0 technologies furthers the paperless dynamic. Newspapers, books, magazines — all have electronic versions. Those not available in an online format are likely to perish.

Hardware evolution has allowed information to become portable — documents, email, notes, etc can now be carried on laptops, tablets, and mobiles. The move to the “cloud” has made it easier to place documents online, searchable, and easy to manage. The most transformative move is in the area of books. Amazon reports more eBook sales than print book sales. While the eBook market is still small compared to the print publishing market, the rate of growth continues to accelerate. It will come close to reaching a tipping point in the next few years as e-readers proliferate. Other factors like wifi penetration and cross-platform availability of books across different readers, including cellphones and laptops, have the potential to disrupt our reading habits and our access to the printed word.

It’s the beginning of the end of printing. Consider the staggering cost savings – in paper, ink, and printers. Consider the space savings – the de-cluttering of space and storage for filing paper documents. Consider the time savings and increase in efficiency — frustration of finding paper documents. . . And of course the biggest benefit – the ecological impact. Did you know . . . it takes approx 325 litres of water to produce 1 kg of paper; paper production accounts for about 35 percent of all trees felled in the world; a ton of paper uses up 17 trees, 2 barrels of oil, and 4100 kilowatt-hours of electricity; 42% of the industrial wood harvest is used to make paper.

As the hardware and software shifts continue to accelerate, the final shift has to happen in our minds, especially in the minds of those of us who grew up using paper and continue to rely on it. New generations will push us to move to new tools even as we refuse to let go of the paper. That’s the nature of change, and change is inevitable. SMS, IM, and social networking are part of today’s generation’s communication toolkit; 15 years ago they didn’t exist. Email is outdated. . . The next generation will bring more changes and newer tools. Get ready for the change or prepare to become disconnected.

A few weeks back ASB‘s Parent Tech Rep, Debbie Grieve, and I made a presentation titled Passive to Active: Building Successful Home-School Partnerships in a 21st Century School at the European Laptop Institute.

Involving parents in school improvement is an ongoing challenge for schools. Research shows that successful parent involvement improves student behavior and positively impacts student achievement. However schools continue to struggle with defining meaningful parent involvement. The definition of successful parent involvement should be active and ongoing (not occasional) participation in their child’s education. At ASB we’ve built a very strong culture of parent engagement. Presenting this workshop at the European Laptop Institute gave me an opportunity to reflect on this culture, especially in our specific context of a 1-to-1 learning environment.

All our communications and school information are online. This ranges from weekly messages to homework assignments and grades to ordering lunch for primary school students to paperless board meetings . . . Our challenge is ensuring our parent community reads and responds to the online school communications and stays updated. We linked this challenge to the growing disconnect between a parent community’s digital fluency and our students’ native digital literacy. We have broadened our definition of parent involvement to include becoming digitally proficient. Both the transient nature of our international school and the digital nature of all our communications makes it critically important for parents to be digitally fluent. It is also essential for parents to learn about new technologies so they can continue to remain connected and engaged with their children. Enhancing their own digital fluency also supports their child’s learning to become responsible digital citizens.

Barriers to Parent Involvement

Often there is a perception in schools that parents don’t want to be involved. We don’t agree with this perception. Why would a parent not want to be engaged in their child’s learning? In fact they may not know HOW to be involved. The challenge for schools is to create deep meaningful opportunities and sustain them. In our 1-to-1 environment, it is essential for our parents to demonstrate a relatively high level of technological fluency. Some of the barriers to learning about technology are cultural and require a level of sensitivity in overcoming them. Others may be lack of time, language barriers, lack of opportunities that go beyond bake-sales, transient population. Often there is a lack of understanding of the importance of improving their digital literacy. Answering the ‘Why’ question (‘Why should I become proficient in the use of technology?’) is important for building the emotional link to the learning.

Ways To Engage Parents

Generally successful parent involvement takes many forms – reading with children, helping with homework, attending and participating in school events, volunteering at school. . . a range of activities to involve parents in the learning process. In a 1-to-1 learning environment this takes some new forms. We start with a belief that student success is a shared interest of both school and home. We envision parents as partners in the learning process, and identify and implement concrete ways that this partnership can be activated.

• Parent Tech Rep

This year we created a role called Parent Tech Rep. It’s a volunteer position that requires a few hours of work each week. The parent in this role needs to understand how adults learn, facilitate requests for parent tech support, plan and organize the parent tech tutorials, teach some of the tutorials, and recruit, manage and guide the volunteer cadre of parent tech tutors.

• ASB Community Network or Ning

This is an ideal way for parents to participate in a closed online parent network. It facilitates their transition and integration into the school and the city of Mumbai, and supports the building of a real network of connections with the school community. On the technology front, it demystifies social networking for everyone. It provides adults a hands-on opportunity to learn about digital etiquette and communication — i.e. How to communicate online on discussions, implications for posting messages, the permanent nature of online postings . . .

• Parent Tech Tutors Program

We run an extensive program of hands-on technology trainings for parents on a range of applications and tools that would be useful in their personal/professional lives. Tutorials include – Managing your Desktop, Facebook, Diigo, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs & Forms, LinkedIn, Flickr, Photoshop, building Personal Learning Networks. . . Between four to seven hands-on tutorials are offered on campus each week. What is unique about these tutorials is that they are taught by parents who have volunteered to become a Parent Tech Tutor!

• Parent Tech Skills Continuum

Our Parent Tech Rep, Debbie Grieve, created a Parent Tech Skills Continuum. This lists four phases of learning and skills that parents at our school need to acquire in order to become proficient in their use of technology, be able to communicate, and stay updated within this community. This includes building an understanding of digital citizenship and learning how to raise digital kids.

Parent involvement requires a paradigm shift in thinking about home-school relationships. It requires a shift towards viewing this important relationship as a partnership, a partnership that is crucial for the education of our children.

What are the ways in which you are building and renewing this partnership at your school?