Learning to Change - Changing to Learn

Learning to Change - Changing to Learn, the first in this series of three five-minute videos from the Pearson Foundation and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), shares the views of an international panel of "educators and thought leaders". It aims to document the need for educational stakeholders to develop contemporary classroom practices that incorporate technology to individualise and maximise student learning.

The presenters state that connectivity via social networks is the ambiance of the recent generation of learners. Yet, many educational institutions ban social networking sites. One educator states that these spaces allow for non-adversarial learning practices such as reflection, statements and retraction of statements, and repetition. Educators speak about learning environments and tools outside of school, including the online environment and cellphone short message service access (texting), characterised as a form of data collection. School is envisioned as a place to do face-to-face networking, while the community is envisioned as the space for learning. It is suggested that students connect to online laboratories, specifically the National Aeronautics and space Administration (NASA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to shift their academic experience of information resources and learning opportunities from classrooms to online sources. Administrators interviewed suggest starting by connecting teachers with global and national resources, including other teachers. The strategy for teachers to "swap" curricular materials and the evidence of their effectiveness is, as yet, not supported by a platform for networking of this kind, according to a source in the film.

Another speaker criticises the testing approach as the "right-answer vending machine" approach, while another suggests the need for a new narrative on learning. Other speakers state that learners ' future abilities to work effectively will be based on: their abilities to synthesise, their artistic abilities, their abilities to understand context, and their teamwork, multilingual, multicultural, and multidisciplinary abilities. Information skills will not centre on memorisation, but on synthesis, leveraging, communication, locating, collaborating, and problem solving. One speaker characterises this era as the "death of education but the dawn of learning".

The second video, entitled Empowering the 21st Century Superintendent, consists of interviews with school superintendents on technology uses. They discuss technology use by students and how teachers might incorporate it in learning through blogs, videos, online instructional modalities, texting and mobile communication, and other technological possibilities. They suggest that teacher frustration when technology doesn't function can be turned into a learning experience, particularly using student knowledge resources.

The video highlights five themes for technology leadership. These themes build on the results of CoSN’s 2004 United States nationwide survey of 455 technology decision makers - findings subsequently published in CoSN’s report Digital Leadership Divide. According to the Pearson Foundation website: "Empowering the 21st Century Superintendent underscores the great degree to which visionary technology leadership - and the community support fostered by district leaders - makes the difference in districts able to bolster their technology plans, budgets and implementation. The report encourages district leaders to:

• Strengthen District Leadership and Communications, specifically by modeling innovative uses of technology and by empowering educators, parents, students, and the community with technology solutions.
  
• Raise the Bar with 21st Century Skills, by understanding the kind of education that students need today to be prepared for workplace demands, citizenship challenges, and personal success in an internationally competitive environment.
• Transform Pedagogy with Compelling Learning Environments, by understanding that reaching all students today requires new methods of teaching and different kinds of learning environments.
  
• Support Professional Development and Communities of Practice by understanding that all educators, including administrators, need sustained, job-embedded opportunities to improve their knowledge and skills, collaborate with their peers, and build collective wisdom.
• Create Balanced Assessments, by staying on top of emerging issues and trends in education and technology, such as balanced assessments, and create ways to develop expertise in these issues within their districts."
  

This 5-minute Student Voices video from the series interviews adolescents and younger students on the benefits of their technology use. Young people talk honestly and enthusiastically about mobile phones, iPods, gaming, laptops, Facebook, and other technological devices and platforms that have become central to how they work, how they learn, and who they are.