ICT Fluency and High Schools A Workshop Summary (2006) / Chapter Skim
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5 What Are High School Students Learning? Where and How Are They Learning It?
5 What Are High School Students Learning? Where and How Are They Learning It?
Pages 35-44
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From page 35... ...
This session explored specific strategies and programs for cultivating ICT fluency among high school students. Speakers detailed many of the essential elements of success for gaining access to ICT and using it creatively and effectively in learning.
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From page 36... ...
Respondents were Joyce Malyn-Smith, director of strategic initiatives at the Education Development Center and Philip Sumida, a physics instructor at the Maine Township High School West (Des Plaines, Illinois) and a former member of the National Research Council's Teacher Advisory Council.
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From page 37... ...
"I thought `That's what we should have had in education.' So now I'm building a school-of-the-future competency wheel." Cullinane said that the project team is now working with educators from around the world to help them identify what those competencies should be for high school students and the resources and tools that need to be in place to support the competencies' development. CHANGING THE ENVIRONMENT Bette Manchester described a project, now in its sixth year, "about putting tools in the hands of teachers and students throughout Maine with the vision of economic and workforce development." As a result, all middle school students and teachers now have laptops, software, e-mail, and other resources for collaboration, she reported, and the project has moved into one-third of the state's high schools.
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From page 38... ...
Regarding students' all-important ability to learn, "assessment has been a huge piece for us in how we have them use these tools and show evidence of their learning," Manchester said. "Assessment informs teachers and students about the next learning that needs to be taking place in the classroom." Moreover, the project intends that the intellectual capabilities comprising ICT fluency be taught in all classes, not just the high-level ones, "so that all students are actually getting high-level content, rigorous context, and integration of fluency skills." The project intends that much of this work be based on student projects, some of which occur outside the schools and are therefore informal.
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From page 39... ...
It included an example of coders who, as they go through their programming exercises, have established norms within their group that require them to share insights -- typically, by blogging on a regular basis -- about the code that they are writing. Therefore, instead of talking about producing lifelong independent learners, she suggested, we should emphasize becoming lifelong interdependent learners -- often, in informal environments.
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From page 40... ...
They orient themselves to what other people's capabilities and knowledge are, and they do this seamlessly." Such "embedded interactional assessment," she added, "doesn't just help learning. It also helps people organize their goals as they get together; and it helps them regulate participation in activities, based on who knows how to do what." Ultimately, Michalchik concluded, "it's about teaching as well, because good teachers are always paying attention, in very subtle interactional ways, to what their students know and know how to do." MAJOR THEMES Joyce Malyn-Smith enumerated three of the workshop contributors' major points so far, made both through oral presentations and papers: (1)
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From page 41... ...
"The end goal of being fluent," she said, "is not just to use the tools but to use them to help you learn English or help you learn science." Philip Sumida observed that embeddedness cuts both ways. Citing another workshop participant, he said that "the question becomes how we identify the characteristics in institutions that will make them change their focus from `I'm teaching Chaucer' to `I'm teaching ambiguity and change.'" He also emphasized that with respect to teaching skills such as networking, teachers are not the critical link.
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From page 42... ...
"We still have way too many administrators abdicating their role as educational leader to the tech people, who decide, for example, whether a school will have e-mail." Compounding the problem is that information from national programs tends to get sent to the tech people, not to school principals. State by state, she observed, we need to turn such situations around.
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From page 43... ...
If they need remediation on the topic, they will be directed to digital materials that support the remediation. If they can go further, they will be pointed toward resources that serve that purpose." Asked about useful analogs for helping educators effect the kind of broad organizational changes that such innovations imply, Cullinane referred to a seemingly universal characteristic of successful organizations.
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From page 44... ...
"If we can talk about the environment that needs to be created so that we can improve student achievement, as well as student preparation for what will lie beyond, we don't even have to mention the word `technology.' But if we keep going back to hardware or machines or software or typing skills in our conversation with parents, we are going to get bogged down in the weeds." Of course, she acknowledged, we cannot get where we want to go without technology. "But if we talk about an involved and interconnected learning community, we don't have to argue the value of technology because the end goal is understood." Manchester agreed that while dropping reference to technology is desirable in theory, it is not always possible in practice, especially when state legislators and local boards must make decisions about funding new technology for the schools or staying with textbooks -- that is, whether to move ahead or risk falling behind.
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