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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.

Lenny Gonzalez

Last month, the Department of Education released its 124-page, information-packed National Education Technology Plan. I spoke with Karen Cator, the Director of the Office of Educational Technology, about the reality of implementing some of these guidlines into the existing public education system.

Her answers were direct, forthright, and sensible. It’s apparent that the authors spent a great deal of time finding forward-thinking examples that educators and administrators can use as guides.

Here’s part one of our conversation.

- The National Education Technology Plan has been out for a month now. What’s been the reaction so far from the education community?

It’s been predominantly positive. In general, some have said it’s too visionary or too far out, and some have said it hasn’t gone far enough, so I think probably we struck a balance in the middle.

The plan put out a high-level vision and tied it to the ground with research and sidebars, with goals and recommendations, and even a “getting started now section.”

- What advice do you have for states and districts that may want to provide unfiltered broadband access in schools (to allow YouTube, Facebook, etc.) as teaching tools, but must comply with Children’s Internet Protection Act?

The bottom line is that we do need to figure out how kids can be safe and out of harm’s way and not exposed to inappropriate materials online.

DOE

Karen Cator

But the filtering programs we have are fairly rudimentary. We need more intelligent filtering programs, safer search environments, smarter technologies so that people aren’t just shutting down large swaths of the Internet. There’s a lot on YouTube, for example, that could be safe and really instructive, but since it’s just in one bucket, a lot of schools just shut down YouTube.

The other thing we need are rules that keep up with the times. And that’s hard to know, for example, whether we should we allow teachers to be friends online with students in a social network. It depends on what the purpose is, is it homework assignment, are they purposely engaged in appropriate roles of teacher and students. So we need better rules.

But overall, we need an ever-better education framework for teachers and students to understand these technologies. When new technology comes out, students may be the first to understand how it’s used. And in schools we tend towards being risk averse — for very good reasons — but we tend to shut them down.

What we’re finding now is that social networking in particular, poses pretty significant problems with cyberbullying. So the question is, can we create closed social networks so students in a safe environment can learn how to collaborate online, be social online, how to behave well online, and understand that their voices are amplified.

The School at Columbia University in New York City, for example, has their own internal social network that they’re all a part of that’s not open to the outside world. It’s an environment for elementary school students to learn how to work with each other online.

Our students are going to grow up in a globally networked society and we want to teach them the rules of the road, to stay safe, to keep their information secure, how to maintain privacy, and how to behave appropriately online. And how these closed social networks manage themselves might be an interesting place to do this.

- The NETP specifically points out schools that use cell phones as teaching tools. How do you respond to those who view cell phones as distractions?

We need to basically admit that we live in a world of distractions. The ability to engage students becomes maybe more difficult, but also more important. Getting students involved in interesting learning projects, things that will keep their attention, their engagement, those are the kinds of things that need to be developed still.

Cell phones have some of those tools that can be helpful during the course of the day. They have the whole Internet (or some do), they do have calculators, and a variety of tools and resources that could be helpful throughout the school day. So we’re balancing the question of, if we let cell phones into class, are they going to be so distracted texting and doing other things rather than doing what teachers want them to do. That’s a classroom management issue that we have to continue to stay on top of.

- Just like any other classroom management issue.

Right, it really is. A lot of this is the same behavior and a new opportunity to do it.

[More from our conversation tomorrow.]

Fickr:LotyLoty

I’m looking forward to speaking tomorrow with Karen Cator, Director of the Office of Technology at the Department of Education.

I have a slew of questions for her about the National Education Technology Plan released last month. To recap, the DOE’s goal is to raise the proportion of college graduates from 41 to 60 percent in the U.S. and close the achievement gap to prepare all students equally to start college or careers.

The DOE advocates for letting go of archaic practices and embracing technology to engage students, connect educators and learners, invest and build the crumbling infrastructure, and be fearless in redesigning traditional school models.

Some highlights below.

On student engagement:

The challenge for our education system is to leverage the learning sciences and modern technology to create engaging, relevant, and personalized learning experiences for all learners that mirror students’ daily lives and the reality of their futures. In contrast to traditional classroom instruction, this requires that we put students at the center and empower them to take control of their own learning by providing flexibility on several dimensions.

Professionals routinely use the Web and tools, such as wikis, blogs, and digital content for the research, collaboration, and communication demanded in their jobs. They gather data and analyze the data using inquiry and visualization tools. They use graphical and 3D modeling tools for design. For students, using these real-world tools creates learning opportunities that allow them to grapple with real-world problems—opportunities that prepare them to be more productive members of a globally competitive workforce.

And to meet this goal:

- States should continue to revise, create, and implement standards and learning objectives using technology for all content areas that reflect 21st-century expertise and the power of technology to improve learning.

- States, districts, and others should develop and implement learning resources that exploit the flexibility and power of technology to reach all learners anytime and anywhere.

On testing what matters:

Technology-based assessments can provide data to drive decisions on the basis of what is best for each and every student and that, in aggregate, will lead to continuous improvement across our entire education system.

Technology-based assessments can be used formatively to diagnose and modify the conditions of learning and instructional practices while at the same time determining what students have learned for grading and accountability purposes.

And to meet this goal:

- Design, develop, and implement assessments that give students, educators, and other stakeholders timely and actionable feedback about student learning to improve achievement and instructional practices. [Note: Some teachers are already on the case.]

- Conduct research and development that explores how embedded assessment technologies, such as simulations, collaboration environments, virtual worlds, games, and cognitive tutors, can be used to engage and motivate learners while assessing complex skills.

On connecting teachers to each other and to students:

Teams of connected educators replace solo practitioners, classrooms are fully connected to provide educators with 24/7 access to data and analytic tools, and educators have access to resources that help them act on the insights the data provide.

Individual educators build online learning communities consisting of their students and their students’ peers; fellow educators in their schools, libraries, and after-school programs; professional experts in various disciplines around the world; members of community organizations that serve students in the hours they are not in school; and parents who desire greater participation in their children’s education.

And how to meet this goal:

- Expand opportunities for educators to have access to technology-based content, resources, and tools where and when they need them.

- Leverage social networking technologies and platforms to create communities of practice that provide career-long personal learning opportunities for educators within and across schools, preservice preparation and in-service education institutions, and professional organizations.

- Use technology to provide all learners with online access to effective teaching and better learning opportunities and options especially in places where they are not otherwise available.

- Develop a teaching force skilled in online instruction.

On developing infrastructure:

Infrastructure includes people, processes, learning resources, policies, and sustainable models for continuous improvement in addition to broadband connectivity, servers, software, management systems, and administration tools.

And to meet this goal:

- Ensure students and educators have broadband access to the Internet and adequate wireless connectivity both in and out of school.

- Ensure that every student and educator has at least one Internet access device and appropriate software and resources for research, communication, multimedia content creation, and collaboration for use in and out of school.

- Support the development and use of open educational resources to promote innovative and creative opportunities for all learners and accelerate the development and adoption of new open technology-based learning tools and courses. [Take, for example, what they're doing in Alaska.]

On redesigning and transforming productivity: [This one deserves a post of its own, but I'll quote it here.]

One of the most basic assumptions in our education system is time-based or “seat-time” measures of educational attainment. These measures were created in the late 1800s and early 1900s to smooth transitions from K–12 into higher education…Another basic assumption is the way we organize students into age-determined groups, structure separate academic disciplines, organize learning into classes of roughly equal size with all the students in a particular class receiving the same content at the same pace, and keep these groups in place all year.

The last decade has seen the emergence of some radically redesigned schools, demonstrating the range of possibilities for structuring education. These include schools that organize around competence rather than seat time and others that enable more flexible scheduling that fits students’ individual needs rather than traditional academic periods and lockstep curriculum pacing. In addition, schools are beginning to incorporate online learning, which gives us the opportunity to extend the learning day, week, or year.

And to meet this goal:

- Rethink basic assumptions in our education system that inhibit leveraging technology to improve learning, starting with our current practice of organizing student and educator learning around seat time instead of the demonstration of competencies.

- Design, implement, and evaluate technology-powered programs and interventions to ensure that students progress seamlessly through our P–16 education system and emerge prepared for college and careers.

And here’s the best part: the document goes into how the DOE can instigate these changes step by step. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s vision writ large — and in small print too.Kar

Getty Images

“To achieve our goal of transforming American education, we must rethink basic assumptions and redesign our education system.”

It’s a bold and broad statement, but it’s backed up with specifics in the Department of Education’s National Education Technology Plan.

With the goal of raising the proportion of college graduates from 41 to 60 percent in the U.S. and closing the achievement gap to prepare all students equally to start college or careers, the DOE today laid out its master plan on how to pull the American education system — by hook or by crook — to the 21st century.

I haven’t been able to scour the entire 124-page document yet, but just from reading the executive summary, it looks very promising. The DOE advocates for letting go of archaic practices and embracing technology to engage students, connect educators and learners, invest and build the crumbling infrastructure, and be fearless in redesigning traditional school models.

Some highlights below.

On student engagement:

The challenge for our education system is to leverage the learning sciences and modern technology to create engaging, relevant, and personalized learning experiences for all learners that mirror students’ daily lives and the reality of their futures. In contrast to traditional classroom instruction, this requires that we put students at the center and empower them to take control of their own learning by providing flexibility on several dimensions.

Professionals routinely use the Web and tools, such as wikis, blogs, and digital content for the research, collaboration, and communication demanded in their jobs. They gather data and analyze the data using inquiry and visualization tools. They use graphical and 3D modeling tools for design. For students, using these real-world tools creates learning opportunities that allow them to grapple with real-world problems—opportunities that prepare them to be more productive members of a globally competitive workforce.

And to meet this goal:

- States should continue to revise, create, and implement standards and learning objectives using technology for all content areas that reflect 21st-century expertise and the power of technology to improve learning.

- States, districts, and others should develop and implement learning resources that exploit the flexibility and power of technology to reach all learners anytime and anywhere.

On testing what matters:

Technology-based assessments can provide data to drive decisions on the basis of what is best for each and every student and that, in aggregate, will lead to continuous improvement across our entire education system.

Technology-based assessments can be used formatively to diagnose and modify the conditions of learning and instructional practices while at the same time determining what students have learned for grading and accountability purposes.

And to meet this goal:

- Design, develop, and implement assessments that give students, educators, and other stakeholders timely and actionable feedback about student learning to improve achievement and instructional practices. [Note: Some teachers are already on the case.]

- Conduct research and development that explores how embedded assessment technologies, such as simulations, collaboration environments, virtual worlds, games, and cognitive tutors, can be used to engage and motivate learners while assessing complex skills.

On connecting teachers to each other and to students:

Teams of connected educators replace solo practitioners, classrooms are fully connected to provide educators with 24/7 access to data and analytic tools, and educators have access to resources that help them act on the insights the data provide.

Individual educators build online learning communities consisting of their students and their students’ peers; fellow educators in their schools, libraries, and after-school programs; professional experts in various disciplines around the world; members of community organizations that serve students in the hours they are not in school; and parents who desire greater participation in their children’s education.

And how to meet this goal:

- Expand opportunities for educators to have access to technology-based content, resources, and tools where and when they need them.

- Leverage social networking technologies and platforms to create communities of practice that provide career-long personal learning opportunities for educators within and across schools, preservice preparation and in-service education institutions, and professional organizations.

- Use technology to provide all learners with online access to effective teaching and better learning opportunities and options especially in places where they are not otherwise available.

- Develop a teaching force skilled in online instruction.

On developing infrastructure:

Infrastructure includes people, processes, learning resources, policies, and sustainable models for continuous improvement in addition to broadband connectivity, servers, software, management systems, and administration tools.

And to meet this goal:

- Ensure students and educators have broadband access to the Internet and adequate wireless connectivity both in and out of school.

- Ensure that every student and educator has at least one Internet access device and appropriate software and resources for research, communication, multimedia content creation, and collaboration for use in and out of school.

- Support the development and use of open educational resources to promote innovative and creative opportunities for all learners and accelerate the development and adoption of new open technology-based learning tools and courses. [Take, for example, what they're doing in Alaska.]

On redesigning and transforming productivity: [This one deserves a post of its own, but I'll quote it here.]

One of the most basic assumptions in our education system is time-based or “seat-time” measures of educational attainment. These measures were created in the late 1800s and early 1900s to smooth transitions from K–12 into higher education…Another basic assumption is the way we organize students into age-determined groups, structure separate academic disciplines, organize learning into classes of roughly equal size with all the students in a particular class receiving the same content at the same pace, and keep these groups in place all year.

The last decade has seen the emergence of some radically redesigned schools, demonstrating the range of possibilities for structuring education. These include schools that organize around competence rather than seat time and others that enable more flexible scheduling that fits students’ individual needs rather than traditional academic periods and lockstep curriculum pacing. In addition, schools are beginning to incorporate online learning, which gives us the opportunity to extend the learning day, week, or year.

And to meet this goal:

- Rethink basic assumptions in our education system that inhibit leveraging technology to improve learning, starting with our current practice of organizing student and educator learning around seat time instead of the demonstration of competencies.

- Design, implement, and evaluate technology-powered programs and interventions to ensure that students progress seamlessly through our P–16 education system and emerge prepared for college and careers.

And here’s the best part: the document goes into how the DOE can instigate these changes step by step. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s vision writ large — and in small print too.