Anyone for the internet delivering on moral purpose?

I was inspired by yet another experience on the internet yesterday. I came across an article talking about a remarkable Harvard University political philosopher - Michael Sandel. He has one of the most popular coursed at Harvard called Justice, where he hones students' understanding of moral philosophy. He is also a strong exponent of open learning, and the Justice in moral reasoning web site is has years of his lectures in video and text, for all the world to see. There is another very good example of Sandel in full flight in a TED talk last year, The Lost Art of Democratic Debate  (20 min)


The article that led me to Sandel was one by Tom Friedman in the NY Times which featured the huge following Sandel has in China and Japan, where his lectures are widely translated and viewed. So there is clearly a demand for discussion of moral issues, which is what partly inspired me about this story, but the more important inspiration for me, for this blog, is how the great teaching of this man is so widespread and accessible all around the world at quite modes cost. The internet makes this extraordinary communication reach possible, at a relatively low cost. I think one would need an educational heart of stone not to be moved by this story. Partly because helping young people develop a sense of morality is so important, partly because Professor Sandel involves the a thousand students in a genuine discussion, and partly because I, like anyone else in the world with a computer, could locate and enjoy this experience in a matter of minutes. At the end of the TED talk Professor Sandel was asked what his goal with this technology is, and he said to have American, Chinese and other young people engaging in these discussions simultaneously, no doubt exposing fascinating cultural similarities and differences.

This is at the high end of internet communicating, but it is not different in kind with what we can do with students in school. That's impressive.

Why are we really doing this stuff?

The other day I was talking with a teacher with a leadership role in a large school to implement '21st Century Learning' with the aid of ICT and she is wrestling with the complexity of the issues involved. Learning beliefs, staff training, infrastructure building, student take home policies, parent information, student supervision and safety and a dozen other significant issues. It is easy to be overwhelmed by this elaborate set of interlocking issues. 

My instinct is to identify a few fundamental purposes of the planned change and focus on these, pushing all the topics listed above to a second level of importance. These core issues for me, and my conversational partner, are some variation on this short list: student independence in learning, high level learning, creativity, problem solving and collaborative skills. 

If we identify purposes like this for our school and recognise that ICT plays a big role in achieving these, then all the myriad of issues related to ICT development can be judged in relation to these. The leaders' task is much clearer. If, for example, we are discussing whether students should have admin rights to manage their take-home laptops or iPads, then it is very clear to me that Independence, Creativity and Problem Solving at the very least will be strongly enhanced by students having as much control (and responsibility) as possible. Seems to me, high level goals can make decision making much easier because they can clear away distracting detail by saying, 'This is really why we are doing this stuff.'

Cowboy doctors? Cowboy teachers - surely not!

A delightful and interesting essay in the New Yorker, Cowboys and Pit Crews by Atul Gawende, who is a surgeon and staff member at Harvard among other amazing achievements, says that medicine is practised according to its cowboy roots in the 1930s and now in a much more medically complex environment should work more like a pit crew. A pit crew is a highly coordinated team working on a task rather than the individualistic cowboy approach that he says still exists. Gawende says that in the 1930s a doctor could carry around his patient records in his head and his treatments were quite limited in number and complexity. He says this leads to a cowboy culture, where highly individualistic doctors act according to their own judgements when in fact they depend on a growing team of fellow professions and specialists. In other words he is saying a lack of team work is damaging health delivery. He says, "A structure that prioritizes the independence of all those specialists will have enormous difficulty achieving great care."

Well, isn't this the same criticism that is being made of our traditional school culture, where the classroom teacher is in almost full control of her methods of teaching and the tradition of privacy blocks accountability? It seems that from every quarter there is more evidence that intelligent collaboration works better than

By the way, Gawende points out, in conclusion, that modern cowboys are very sophisticated in their cattle management and work in well coordinated teams!

iPads take off in schools

There can be little doubt at the potential success of iPads as a mainstream device in classrooms given the significant take-up in schools in less than a year from its launch. In Adelaide, for example, half a dozen schools introduced large-scale programs of iPads. St Peters College has one for each Year 11 and 12 student, with a main focus on using them as a text book reader. Rostrevor College for all Yr 11 and 12s, Pulteney Grammar School for all Year 8 and 9s and Mark Olifant College for yearly childhood students. At Adelaide University, all first year Science students were provided with and iPad. In the Northern Territory iPads are being introduced in a number of schools and in particular for indigenous students.

For a new type of device to have such immediate penetration of the very conservative school environment suggest that there is something significant going on. The speed of the take-up has taken many by surprise, not the least being the considerable band of iPad sceptics, most of whom looked at the cut-down nature of tablet capabilities, compared to a laptop, or even a netbook, and said, "Not enough." The shortcomings of an iPad still exist (but are shrinking) but what the critics need to pay attention to are the advantages of a tablet, and the iPad in particular. I think the most relevant of these are:
1. portability
2. compact size,
3. battery life
4. eReader
5. simple operation
6. integration with iTunes and iPhone

No 5, simple operation might be the most significant of these. When an 80 year old relative who has never operated a computer was intuitively scrolling through an image gallery on my iPad, I took notice.

Written on an iPad using Blogpress

School administrators: goodbye netbook, hello tablet

Schools across Australia are buying thousands of netbooks (lower-capacity laptops) under their Digital Education Revolution money. This has been a logical step because the Netbooks do most tasks quite well and they are very cheap and portable. However, a interesting report in the New York Times says that while netbooks have had a rapid rise, it looks as though they will be overtaken in the near future by tablets like the iPad.

A number of schools have already purchased hundreds of iPads for students and I think it very likely that next year there will be large scale take-up in schools of iPads and other tablet computers.

The debut of the second generation tablet, the iPad, has been remarkably. Imagine what will happen when a the competition gets its iPad-like devices into the marketplace this year.

The convenience and portability of tablets will make integration of ICT into the classroom a lot easier.

What to talk about over Christmas: Australian schools doing very well

The highly reputed Pisa tests for 2009 were published this week and despite what you hear in the media, Australia continues to do very well. The overall results for Reading, Mathematics and Science show the pattern. The chart results on the left are just the overall mark for Reading for the top 26 countries, and light blue indicates 'significantly above average performance' of the 60 or so countries and darker blue is 'average'. Australia is clearly in the top league, and well above Britain, USA, France, Germany. For the full summary results, see here. For links to all the reports, see here.

This is what all chalkies should berate their relative with over Christmas. Last time I told some friends that Australia performs well in international terms, I was met with disbelief. After I yelled at them about actual tests, such as Pisa, they thought for a while, and then said, "You education people have clearly done a poor job of promoting school achievements." The press coverage has largely been along the lines of: 'Australia beaten by countries x, y and z, and Australia slips in Reading.'

Pisa is highly respected because it pays due attention to how student use knowledge, and apply it. The common belief that Asian students mainly learn by rote is clearly wrong.

How school systems get better - Minister, please read!

McKinsey have just released a follow up report for the OECD titled How the world's most improved school systems keep get better. Their 2007 report How the World’s Best Performing School Systems Come Out on Top was widely respected. In the new report they they did not just look at school systems at the highest levels, but good performers at each of the stages of development. For example, a school system in West Cape, South Africa is just moving out of basic standards of schooling in a very poor community.

McKinsey found that there are six common interventions that all good systems undertake.
"Our research suggests that six interventions are common to all performance stages across the entire improvement journey:

• building the instructional skills of teachers and management skills of principals,
• assessing students,
  
• improving data systems,
• facilitating improvement through the introduction of policy documents and education laws,
  
• revising standards and curriculum,
• ensuring an appropriate reward and remuneration structure for teachers and principals.

Though these interventions occur at all performance stages, they manifest differently at each stage."

The most interesting thing to me about this report is what they say next; that the in building a basic system, central control with a strictly managed curriculum is appropriate, and when a system is moving from Good to Excellent, this central control should give way to schools and teachers having more autonomy. And this is for a very believable reason, that when a system is at the 'good' level, teachers have the necessary skills to be more autonomous.

Their message for Australia is clear, Minister, that we are at the middle to advanced levels overall, so it is not appropriate for rigid testing and comparisons of schools to be in the forefront. We should have some of that, but be focusing on building the professionalism of teachers.

The also found that spending lots of money is not necessarily a pathway to system improvement.

On the link above there is an executive report and the full report.

By they way, how well have we done the 6 steps in my experience, in SA?

• building the instructional skills of teachers and management skills of principals - not in a systematic way, except for the occasional splurge
  
• assessing students - not in a systematic way in primary schools, until the last few years, and still focused too much on basic skills; rarely in a way that links back to item 1.
  
• improving data systems - improving in recent years, but needs much more work.
  
• facilitating improvement through the introduction of policy documents and education laws - quite a bit of this; got lots of policies
  
• revising standards and curriculum - not much in measurable standards, but the national curriculum is heading there, maybe?
• ensuring an appropriate reward and remuneration structure for teachers and principals - very little reward for teachers and principals based on actual student performance.