Stephen Covey talks about the importance of having a vision about what lies ahead, about what is coming. A clear vision is critical to understanding change and growth. As we move ahead we need to pause once in a while to look at those burrs that might threaten the health of our system.
A number of nagging questions keep lingering in the back of my head as we vault ourselves forward in the digital world. A lot of my critical questions centre around one question: what we are giving up?
Early on we are focusing a lot of our energy into promoting Google Apps. GAPPs is such a powerful tool for teachers and students and allows so many possibilities for collaboration, learning, and (for a few of us) it seems to be that last piece of the "paperless" puzzle. The applications with GAPPs are also very intuitive, easy to use and hopefully easy to apply in and out of the classroom. Its a great starting point to increase staff comfort with our impending new devices.
Yet, today I heard my first complaint about GAPPs from a student. "I have a doc for everything now, its just a giant mess. All my teachers seem to want to use it now, definitely lost its lustre". I was also starting to hit that early adopters wall where I felt like Big Brother overseeing a mountain of group and individual docs along with the hundreds of other docs that I manage in my department, my life and my work.
Coupled with GAPPs overload I have consciously been observing the changes in students (and myself) when they get that brand new shiny laptop or tablet. Along with that constantly buzzing smartphone, that shiny device quickly becomes the centre of the universe. They carve out new mass chunks of time in their lives almost immediately and with little questioning or consideration of what they are giving up. I asked a student how much time she spends on her two week old laptop and her response was: "outside of school? About 6 hours. I used to come home and watch some TV with my brother and then my Mom would usually tell me to do some homework at the kitchen table or I would not be able to watch a movie later on our tv. Now I have 4 tabs open on my browser for social media, two tabs for emails, one tab for an online tv show, music humming, and in the background is my school work. Whenever anyone asks I usually tell them I am doing homework. Out of that 6 hours, less than 3 are homework".
It is also interesting to observe students working on their devices. You can tell by their body language and expressions what they are doing. A smile is usually social media, a dazed look is usually YouTube or Tumblr, excitement and urgency is searching for a Prom dress, and leaning in and focused is sometimes that precious "work".
Modern educators, psychologists and technology guru's talk a lot about how students brains today are wired differently. Are they wired differently or are we just replacing huge chunks of our lives with a tunnel into the surreal? It was ironic because just after I finished this discussion a student handed me a survey about teen depression. Is a contributing factor to teen depression the rapid change that teens undergo in the digital world? That time where my student used to play with her brother is replaced by her laptop. The accountability of sitting down to do homework is replaced with more time "working" on her laptop. Instead of having a conversation with a person she is text messaging, on gmail chat and rapidly slipping between the keys and pixels in front of her. I am left wondering if we really know what we are doing to ourselves. It often makes me wonder if the genius of Steve Jobs will one day be viewed as the end of society. That laptop or tablet is not giving much love in return. Again, what are we giving up?
I am not necessarily advocating a return to the "good ole days". Remember when we all used to play outside until sundown with all our friends? Wait we used to fill out endless handouts, copy off overheads in the dark and there were still fights in the schoolyard. We had our issues too. I guess I am pausing to reflect on what all this means. I was in a meeting today where someone was commenting on how our 1:1 pilot could be a model for the whole board. The person said "There is great interest in what our school is doing and it will become the model for how classrooms and schools will look in the very near future". The certainty made me nervous, mainly because it seemed like our "pilot" was going to become the model before we even did the pilot. I was also left wondering what this persons credentials were to make such sweeping and massive statements.
I am starting to ask more questions now because I am not convinced that we have talked enough about what has worked and what has not worked in "pilots" in other schools in our board and outside of our board. With the massive amount of money that is about to be spent in our building I am not sure that staff are going to be ready or if they want to be ready. Are teachers going to be expected to be exemplary teachers with technology? If they choose not to use these new devices will they be called dinosaurs? Are those of us leading the charge making time to do that tough research about how to best implement and design around technology? Are we going to support each other in the road ahead when many of us are mired in the minutiae of our daily lessons, tasks, smartphones and digital everything holed up in our four walls? Where does that leave people without a solid background in teaching, let alone teaching with technology?
That is not to say that everyone needs to be fully ready, and we are definitely learning as we go. But a nagging fear I have is that we will invest all this time, money and energy into this "pilot" only to have us looking back a few years down the road (as many schools have) wondering if it could have been better. Have we really explored what we are giving up? Where do we start? When?
These reflections started with Covey and will end with Covey. He speaks about setting goals and having players and coaches on the same page to allow for real, positive action to take place. Lets keep being fuelled by the energy of the positive adapters, but let us not forget about the silent majority that will in great part determine the success of this venture. Lets try to see the "improved" system we are creating before we make it by pausing now and again to ask ourselves some tough questions and what we are giving up.