John Hunter puts all the problems of the world on a 4′x5′ plywood board and lets his 4th-graders solve them. In this TED Talk, Hunter, who’s been named one of Time Magazine’s education activists for 2012, explains how his World Peace Game engages schoolkids, and why the complex lessons it teaches — spontaneous, and always surprising — go further than classroom lectures can.

Students must deconstruct a 13-page crisis document with interlocking problems like ethnic and minority tensions, chemical and nuclear spills, oil spills, environmental disasters, water rights disputes, breakaway republics, famine, endangered species and global warming.

In the process of solving these problems in class, Hunter says he hands over the reigns to students.

“It’s a serious question: who is really in charge? I’ve learned to cede control of the classroom over to the students over time. There’s a trust and an understanding and a dedication to an ideal that I simply don’t have to do what I thought I had to do as a beginning teacher: control every conversation and response in the classroom. It’s impossible. Their collective wisdom is much greater than mine, and I admit it to them openly,” he says.

A documentary, World Peace and Other Fourth-Grade Achievements, offers a look into how the game is played in class, and how it influences the dynamic of teachers and students.

Flickr:Katerha

Educators are thought of as parental figures in school. We trust them to nurture our kids, to impart important ideas about the world and how to negotiate it — at least during school hours.

The division of labor is expected from both sides. Educators want parents to be active participants in their children’s learning, and parents expect teachers to engage and challenge their kids in class. When they’re both involved, the setting is ripe for the best kind of learning for kids.

But these boundaries blur. Where does a parent’s participation end and an educator’s begin? Add to this the unmitigated power of the Internet, allowing kids to take charge of their own learning and define their own passions, and the control shift becomes even more amorphous.

Two educators’ blogs address this idea from their own perspectives.

New York-based teacher Lisa Nielson writes in The Innovative Educator, as one of her 20 ideas for parent participation:

Whether you want your child to have a particular learning opportunity or you don’t want your child subjected to meaningless test prep, parents can push schools to stop with the one-size-fits all learning and become partners at tailoring their learning to children as individuals.

If a teacher had to come up with an individual learning plan for every student for every subject, it might seem overwhelming. But what if we didn’t require teachers to own the learning and instead, let students and parents own the learning.

Teacher Lisa Cooley takes it further. In her comment on “What Students Need from Teachers,” she writes:

I don’t want to take issue with any of the points, above, but it is all based on the need we have as adults to decide what kids learn. I help students find their passions, and I provide the means and the guidance to help them pursue and develop them.

I’m especially fascinated with her view on authority on her blog The Minds of Kids.

What it is that bestows it on one person or a group of people, and how it is used. Adults have a position of natural authority over children, and that is appropriate. Adults are the guides and protectors of children. But why does authority sometimes morph to authoritarianism? What is the difference? We as adults come by our authority over children through our age and experience, and also through the love we have for them. Why turn that into the baseball bat of authoritarianism?

Allowing children to pursue their passions, exposing them to new things, providing a wonderful candy store of ideas and places and people and giving them everything they need to select what makes them happy: how is that giving up our authority? You don’t lose anything when you respect the wishes and needs of children. You gain their returned respect.

These ideas combined make learning a three-way endeavor, divided equally between parent, educator, and learner. Boundaries fully blurred, but eyes wide open.

Flickr:DaehyunPark

To Will Richardson, the word “reform” is inadequate in describing what needs to happen in education. “Transformation” is more accurate, and for years, he’s been actively proselytizing the need for a complete restructuring of the public education system. Richardson is now galvanizing his educator peers to send a loud — and just as importantly, clear — message to parents about “the new faces of learning and change in schools.”

His challenge to his peers: “Can we leverage the networks that we currently have to bring 10,000 (or more) parents together across the country next fall to hold a real conversation about education and change?”

I spoke to Richardson, the author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms about his views as an educator, about information control: adults (teachers and parents) figuring out their changing roles in children’s lives, and what it will take to move the needle. (Part of the conversation is in last week’s post “The Control Shift: A Grassroots Education Revolution Takes Shape.”)

Q. Being an educator yourself and spending so much time with educators, what do you think their perception is of this issue of control?

I talk about this a lot, and I help at least start conversations around why things are changing. The biggest shift that educators have to make is away from content expertise, and it’s a tough one for people to make. At the end of the day, we have to examine what we’re doing in terms of content in the classroom. It should be more about learning, helping kids get content on their own.

The control piece is really big because, if it’s acknowledged, it really leaves teachers and educators with this empty hole. “Well, if we’re not doing that, then what are we doing?” That’s where the conversation needs to be. And that’s not where a lot of people want to go. It’s a hard conversation to have. It’s very difficult for people to see themselves in a decidedly different role in the classroom.

But the interesting thing is that all of them will acknowledge that it’s happening. I don’t think there’s anyone fighting really hard for the idea that schools should be the places where we’re the ones who should mete out content, or that because content online is unfiltered and unedited, you can’t trust it. But it’s hard to take that next step, and say, “Okay, so we really do have to change the whole concept of what we do  at school, and away from content delivery to learning, and we really do have to change our roles as teachers to co-learners and supporters and mentors?”

And the parent part interests me too.

I don’t think parents really have a clue, in general. I think parents understand that schools need to do something different – but “different” doesn’t equate to anything really different at the end of the day because they want their kids to pass tests, get to college, do all the things that we define as traditionally successful. It’s less on the minds of parents in terms of real change in schools.

[Parents say]: “There are places that are experimenting on that stuff, but don’t experiment on my kid. I want those grades. I want those scores, that diploma.”

Q. That’s what they know as their own experience.

Absolutely.

Q. It sounds like a pretty high mountain to climb, to make that shift.

It is a pretty high mountain to climb, but I think it’s going to happen. I don’t mean this in the literal sense, but I don’t think there’s a peaceful path to this, in terms of everyone sitting down and agreeing that we have to do things differently. It’s going to come in fairly typically slow, three-steps-forward, two-steps-back kinds of change that happens in schools. The only problem is that things seem to be changing so fast right now, and with the typical pace of change in schools, I don’t know how it’s going to keep up.

One of the books that’s influenced me a lot is Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology by Allen Collins and Richard Halverson.

I think they’re right. They leave it with this idea: If we don’t figure this out, there will be lots of opportunities for the kids who have access to opt out and do things in a much more customized,  personalized way that will eventually find accreditation and find acceptance in the larger conversations around education. Whereas there are going to be a lot of kids stuck in schools, and those schools won’t be able to make the shift.

Q. Having spoken to Department of Education’s Director of Technology Karen Cator, it’s hard to see where policy can make a difference. It seems much more like something in the zeitgeist has to change.

I agree. The rhetoric in the DOE’s Education Technology plan is spot on. But I never get the sense there’s a path to implementation. And I don’t know if she has articulated one. “You’re saying all the right things, but how are you going to get there?”

Q. One of my questions to her was, can you mandate any of this? And the answer is no, it has to go district by district, state by state.

District by district, state by state, and yet schools are being seduced to doing what the administration wants them to do, or they’re not going to get anything. There’s no consistency in that message that I can find. I’m not optimistic about it. It’s nice to hold out there — “Things are changing and here’s how we have to change” — but at the end of the day, the impetus isn’t there.

Q. When it comes to schools, your comfort level with the wild west of the Web isn’t typical. Most people are scared, and want to see and abide by what they think is “official.”

Because we can control it. It is at the end of the day, all about control. The conversations we need to have are too hairy for most people to think about. If you think about the way education is going… I love the idea of the unbundling of education – that all the stuff we used to do in schools is being unbundled, that we can find everything we need all over the place.

There’s a piece of me that thinks the big step backwards we’re taking right now is this response to this challenge that the Web is posing right now. People don’t know how to respond to it, so they’re just battening down the hatches, trying to keep doing what they’re doing, just better. But I’m hoping that it will fail miserably – but without hurting kids. I don’t see how that happens. That’s the horrible part of this. The next decade or so will be hugely disruptive and there will be a lot of kids who will be lost in this. Kids who are stuck in systems that will require them to pass the same old tests who aren’t going to have options that some people will have.

I know a lot of people who are in public schools who are thinking about what they’re going to do with their kids. I don’t think I have any answers at all. If anything, I hope I’m asking the right questions.

Q. I guess it’s a matter of getting people to think about it in those terms.

The media is not giving us any column inches. Look at all the attention around “Waiting for Superman,” the media narrative is all around the party line.

I’m not sure how much scale these conversations are having. They’re not taking place outside the networks we have, and I’m not sure our networks are that big. I go places all the time, and people look at me and say, “What are you talking about?” They don’t have a clue as to what is going on… And I’m talking about people who are going to school, saying, “We have to get our test scores up, because that’s what school’s about.”

And I want to say to them, “No, there’s a really different narrative that’s beginning to be put together outside of schools,” and they say, “What do you mean?”

Q. What’s the definition of success for you? When do you think the school transformation piece will start to form, when you start to see something happening?

That’s the burning questions. How does that begin to happen? A lot of us who voted for Obama thought that was going be the impetus. That there would be a different vision of what schools are about and could do and it would be articulated on a different scale that we could work toward, and it obviously didn’t happen.

One of the big indicators will be when we get rid of these stupid tests that we make kids take. At some point, when we can finally begin to assess kids based on how well they do learning instead of how well they do knowing, that might be the first indicator that we might be moving needle somewhere. That’s a huge what-if, too. That’s a huge mountain too. It’s so ingrained.

I love being in this conversation in this moment about the way things are changing. I find it fascinating and interesting, but it is frustrating. There are no clear answers to this. No clear pathways. We struggle with this all the time. Chris Lehmann wants to build more schools, and I want to get to parents, and other people want to do something else. What is the way?

Q. Maybe it’s the collaboration of all these efforts.

Yes, I’m sure it is.

Q. But nobody has the blueprint.

And no one has the new story. We can kind of tell what the new story is, but to really make it where people say, “Oh yeah, let’s do that!” — it’s still really difficult to get to that point. It’s going to take a whole bunch of people doing it differently, and there will be a tipping point of some type where people realize this old system doesn’t work anymore. We really have to change it. But it’s going to be a very long and very difficult few years of trying to do that. There’s no easy way to do it.

Tina Barseghian

For as long as anyone can remember, adults have played the role of information owners, meting out what they believe kids should know. Whether it’s the classroom teacher imparting expertise in American history, or a parent explaining the birds and the bees, adults have always tried to control what children learn.

Now, with open access to every imaginable kind of information found online, kids are happily seeking and finding it on their own — and on their own terms. The balance of power has shifted irrevocably.

So what does this mean for educators who are trying to figure out their role in this age of kids’ self-guided discovery?

“The control piece is really big, because if it’s acknowledged, it leaves educators with this empty hole,” says veteran teacher Will Richardson, the author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. “‘Well, if we’re not doing that, then what are we doing?’ That’s where the conversation needs to be. But it’s a hard one to have. It’s very difficult for people to see themselves in a decidedly different role. But at the end of the day, we have to examine what we’re doing in terms of content in classroom. It should be more about learning, giving kids power to get content on their own.”

This power shift is at the crux of an education revolution that’s been gaining momentum online. But it’s not about the show-stealing headlines of “Waiting for Superman,” or Michelle Rhee’s vision of school reform that are dominating most of the education-related media.

This revolution is orchestrated by frustrated educators who believe the current school system must be torn down to the studs and rebuilt in order to keep up with the enormous cultural shift wrought by technology and the Internet. And though their own Twitter universe is ablaze with new ideas and practices – check out all the blogs, Tweets and voices on #edchat – it’s happening piecemeal, and under the radar of most teachers.

Pockets of Innovation

In spots across the country, innovative programs are leveraging the vast power of technology and the Internet. This Sunday night (February 13), PBS will air Digital Media – New Learners Of The 21st Century, featuring a few examples of these programs. The Digital Youth Network, for example, focuses on teaching kids to record music, create podcasts and videos; New Youth City Network structures the school day around rich sources of information, like the American Natural History Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and New York Hall of Science, among others. Like an extended field trip, students spend time learning about the neighborhoods, the city’s ecology, and practice skills like data visualization and collaboration.

There are dozens of other programs like these across the country, but they’re few and far between. Even basic access to the Internet is spotty in many schools, which block major websites like YouTube because of the federal Children’s Internet Protection Act in order to protect kids from unsafe sites. Those pushing for change complain that schools are throwing out the baby with the bathwater – blocking large swaths of rich, useful information online. While some educators push the boundaries by allowing their students to use cell phones in the class to get instant assessment, to take notes, look up information online, and so on, schools across the country still ban the use of cell phones in class.

“Learning through technology will not replace the need for teachers,” said Diana Rhoten, director of the Knowledge Institutions program and the Digital Media and Learning project at the Social Science Research Council. “It will change teachers’ jobs. They become more like coaches or mentors. But I think it will make their job more exciting and give them the opportunity to be pedagogues, which is ultimately more rewarding.”

Where to Start?

But the next step in this revolution is still undefined. Richardson, who travels the country spreading the gospel about harnessing the power of technology to teachers, superintendents and school districts, says that educators are confused about how to proceed.

“The interesting thing is that they will acknowledge that this shift is happening,” Richardson said. “But it’s hard to take that next step, and say, ‘Okay, so we really do have to change the way we do things at school, and away from content delivery to learning, and we really do have to change our roles as teachers to co-learners and supporters and mentors?’ It’s a big shift to make.”

Although Richardson and his peers have been pushing for the movement for as long as a decade or more, it’s still very much in its infancy. “We have to stop thinking that when one thing goes wrong, that we don’t have all the answers,” says Christopher Lehmann, of the museum-based school Science Leadership Academy in the PBS documentary. “What do we want our schools to be? What’s the most important thing we want our kids to learn?”

Depends on who you ask. Authors Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown might say it’s the ability to learn on their own, to create and be part of a community, to iterate and continue refining their own and others’ projects, to learn from their peers, to create their own learning patterns. All this happens when the teacher creates space and opportunity, and gives students control, they say in their recently published book A New Culture of Learning, Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change.

So what will propel the movement to burst out of the Twitterverse into reality? First and foremost, the vision needs to be clarified. There are plenty of pilot programs and school experiments to look to, but there’s no agreement yet on how to apply those best practices within the monolithic, rigid public education system. Especially given the enormous cultural emphasis, government funds, and schools’ and teachers’ successes attached to test scores.

“I think parents understand that schools need to do something different – but the ‘different’ doesn’t equate to anything really different at the end of the day because they want their kids to pass tests, get to college, do all the things that we define as traditionally successful,” Richardson says. “Parents say, ‘There are places that are experimenting on that stuff, but don’t experiment on my kid. I want those grades, I want those scores.’”

As for what’s next, here’s what some of these thinkers predict: The experiments will continue to proliferate and take shape around the edges, and eventually, if proven to be successful, there will come a tipping point that will drive the change in the public education system.

“Traditional approaches to learning are no longer capable of coping with a constantly changing world. They have yet to find a balance between the structure that educational institutions provide and the freedom afforded by the new media’s almost unlimited resources, without losing a sense of purpose and direction,” Thomas and Brown write. “The challenge is to find a way to marry structure and freedom to create something altogether new.”