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“If you’re not feeling uncomfortable about the state of education right now, then you’re not paying attention to the pressures and challenges of technology,” said Will Richardson, a veteran educator author and consultant, at a talk at ISTE 2012. “We need to acknowledge that this is a very interesting moment, and even though in a lot of ways this isn’t what we signed up for when we went into teaching… as educators, it’s our job to figure it out.”

Seeing the balance move from a place of scarcity of information to over-abundance on the web — and the ability to “carry around the sum of human knowledge on our phones” — Richardson said educators must start thinking of schooling differently. “This abundance has the potential to be amazing, but it’s not amazing if we don’t do anything with it,” he said. “What is access to all this stuff if you don’t know what to do with it?”

To that end, Richardson proposed a challenge to educators to unlearn three important things that have been taken for granted as immovable, unchangeable ideas.

1.   DELIVERY: The notion of delivering knowledge and information from teacher to student has already been upended. “Kids will not put up with delivery too much longer. They’ll expect something much different,” Richardson said. Rather, educators must hand over control of learning to kids, and understand that there are lots of ways to learn what they need to and want to learn.

“We have to stop being in charge of the curriculum and allow kids to create their own education,” he said. Educators should ask themselves: how am I helping kids develop important skills, dispositions, and literacies they need to create their own curriculum, to find their own teachers, to create their own artifacts that will more closely align with ways they’ll work when they leave school? “The delivery method we use in most schools, what we own and deliver to kids, that will have to change,” he said. “We have to relearn in a way that allows kids to own and drive it.”

2.   COMPETITION: Rather than comparing test scores and grades of schools and of teachers, we should drive education forward on the basis of cooperation. We should use the best ideas of what

others are doing, other classrooms and other schools. “Do we fear someone else is going to take what we’re doing? But isn’t that a good thing, if it’s good practice?” Richardson asked. There’s a larger gain by being transparent. “We can’t fight the greater world problems as well through competition as we will through cooperation.

3.   ASSESSMENT.  Richardson, an outspoken critic of standardized testing, pressed the point that current assessments measure fact memorization, not students’ skills. And with automated essay scoring being used, the range of knowledge is becoming more and more narrow, he said. “If we don’t assess what we value, we will end up valuing what we assess,” he said. “As a system, we’re not assessing what we value.” Richardson does not even favor “open book” or “open Internet” testing, asking the simple but unsettling question: “Why are we asking them questions they can easily find?”

As educators grapple with the shift — in their roles within the classroom, and in the larger context of what’s changing in education — Richardson said they may experience a series of feelings. “You might feel anger, grief, or excitement that kids will learn in a lot of different ways,” he said. “But you have to look at your own learning practice and innovate.”

Try assessing one thing differently, he suggested. Ask students to tap into all the sources they have, then bring other teachers into the classroom and let them influence the discussions. And, of course, engage others in these discussions.

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Amidst a sea of tech devices, and at a gathering of more than 18,000 educators interested in technology, a surprisingly human message rose above the noise at this week’s International Society for Technology in Education.

Kicking off the big event, where crowds overflowed from one packed room to another, Sir Ken Robinson, renowned author and international education adviser, proposed the idea that technology is not the only driver for learning.

“The problem now is resisting the notion that technology is the answer to everything — it’s clearly not,” Robinson said. “But what part of the equation does technology best speak to?”

Robinson, who’s been outspoken about the need to change the education paradigm, emphasized that educators shouldn’t be pushing (or be pushed toward) the gratuitous use of technology. He posed thought-provoking questions that got to the heart of what every stakeholder in education wants: what does it take to engage students — not just within a standardized curriculum, but in their own learning? What are the roles of technology in doing this? And what are the implications when it comes to implementing practices and policies?

In the hunt to find the next Holy Grail in education technology, Robinson said we may be losing sight of what teachers are best at.

“We should get rid of the words ‘curriculum delivery,’” he said, referring to the multitudes of tech platforms. “It’s an art form to teach, the judgement of what might work today may not work tomorrow.”

Teachers are the connective tissue in helping kids find not just subjects at which they test well, but what they’re passionate about, he said. “You often don’t know what you’re passionate about because you haven’t been introduced to it in the right way,” he said. “Teachers provide that stewardship we need,” he said.

For teachers, helping kids find their passion outside the confines of standardized curriculum and testing can be a messy endeavor, but worth the challenge. Marc Prensky, author of the book BRAIN GAIN: Technology and the Quest for Digital Wisdom, added that, rather than finding different ways for everyone to do the same curriculum, we need to find a way to allow individual students to create their own pathways to learning.

Though technology could help in this realm, the value that great teachers bring to the equation is immeasurable against what software can do, Prensky said: providing empathy and helping students find their passion by providing a wider place to look.

“Helping students find their passion will lead them to achievement,” he said.

Ever the pithy presenter, Prensky proposed to the audience four ways teachers can do this.

1. LISTEN. It’s impossible to encourage students when we don’t know what their passions are, so above all, teachers must listen to their students. “Or else what we get is ‘cellophane kids,’ when a teacher looks right through them to the curriculum and test scores and kids become invisible,” he said.
2. RESPECT. Adults and kids don’t respect each other as much as they should, Prensky said. “The war between digital natives and immigrants is over, and the natives have won! So let’s move forward to mutual respect and wisdom,” he said. We need both technology and strong pedagogy, but we need to include kids’ voices in how we make decisions about learning. “All education decisions come top down right now,” he said. “The next century is about changing that.”
3. OVER-EXPECT FROM STUDENTS. Today’s kids have far greater capabilities than ever been before, not less. “What’s making them better is connecting their brains to technology wisely,” he said. Let’s step up our expectations of them in that regard.
4. DO WHAT YOU KNOW IS RIGHT. “Teachers know what kids need, but someone has convinced them to just cover the curriculum,” he said. A teacher’s job is to help equip kids  with skills to function and thrive in the digital future, and though that could be challenging because of conflicting policies in place, that’s the definition of courage.