School Day of the Future

How Do We Prepare Our Children for What’s Next?

Paul Schultz

What kids learn at a young age will determine whether they're prepared for a future full of unknowns.

When most of us were deciding what to major in at college, the word Google was not a verb. It wasn’t anywhere close to being conceived at all. Neither was Wikipedia or the iPhone or YouTube. We made decisions about our future employment based on what we knew existed at the time. We would become educators, journalists, lawyers, marketing reps, engineers.

Fast forward a couple of decades (or more) and we see that the career landscape has changed so drastically that jobs need new definitions. Social media strategist, app developer, mobile web engineer?

Some of us could ask ourselves if we would have embarked upon our current careers had we predicted how the Internet would revolutionize every part of our lives? It’s hard to say, but when it comes to preparing our kids for what’s ahead, Cathy Davidson has a few ideas. The author of Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn (Viking), who’s also a professor at Duke University, believes that, in light of the fact that “65 percent of today’s grade-school kids may end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet,” we should cast aside our fear of technology, and prepare our school-aged kids with important skills, both in technical ways and other less tangible ways.

“We’re 15 years into something so paradigm-changing that we have not yet adjusted our institutions of learning, work, social life, and economic life to account for the massive change.”

“We are right on time to give up techno-phobia and to tackle the problems and opportunities of the digital world with good sense, pragmatics, realism, and purpose,” Davidson said. “Once we absorb the realization that we’ve already changed, and that we’re actually doing pretty well despite major realignments in our lives, then we can think about how we want to take this amazing new tool [the Internet] and use it in a way that better serves our lives. It’s time to survey our lives and figure out what works, what doesn’t, and how we can make real and practical improvements in our schools, our workplace, our every day lives.”

Davidson offers three can-do suggestions for parents:

EXPERIMENT WITH SCRATCH. It’s a brilliant and fun multimedia programming language that allows inventive media mixing almost immediately, without any background. It is creative and fun. Even if your child has no interest in being a programmer when they grow up, familiarity with the building blocks of a programming language will give them some skills and expertise at producing the kind of content they are already consuming. [See "5 Tools to Introduce Programming to Kids."]
EMBARK ON A MEANINGFUL PROJECT.Help your child (at any age, really) by being willing to help out—but emphatically not to lead or rescue—in an extended, risky project that has real impact in the child’s community—school, neighborhood, church, synagogue, community center. But stay out of the way. Let the kids shape the project. Kids should find a project that will probably not succeed in all the ways they hope. Dreaming big, taking risks, and scaling back if and when you have to are fantastic skills. These skills are hardly ever taught in the school room which seems to be organized (as is much American society these days) as if some litigious personal injury lawyer is there ready to pounce at any moment. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Tech Tools, Cathy Davidson, School Day of the Future, Scratch

March 21, 2011 | 4:00 PM | By Tina Barseghian

A Glimpse into Future Schools

Education Next’s report on five schools that exemplify the model of the future school includes the Denver School of Science and Technology and Carpe Diem Collegiate High School. Here’s an excerpt from the comprehensive article written by Jonathan Schorr and Deborah McGriff.

Future Schools: Blending face-to-face and online learning

DSST Public Schools

The constant, real-time stream of student assessment data is a crucial element of the most promising tech-enabled schools, including some high flyers that don’t fit neatly under the blended label. One of the most interesting is charter school network DSST Public Schools, named for its flagship, the Denver School of Science and Technology. DSST enrolls a mostly-minority, 47 percent low-income student population and has achieved national renown for its extraordinary results, including the second-highest longitudinal growth rate in student test scores statewide. Among graduates, 100 percent have been accepted to four-year colleges, where an astonishing 1 percent require remedial courses, in comparison to 56 percent for the Denver district. Technology is everywhere as one strolls through DSST’s Stapleton campus in northeast Denver, just barely within sight of peaks of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. In a 6th-grade social studies class recently, students used collaborative user-made web sites called wikis to access and respond to in-class and homework assignments. The teacher projected a map of Asia and posted prompts on the wiki for students to respond to as they learned about the geography of the region. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Tech Tools, School Day of the Future

March 14, 2011 | 10:27 AM | By Tina Barseghian

A Challenge to Doubters: Do Something Impossible

Flickr:Purpleslog

Make Your Own List. Make Your Own Future.

The article “21 Things That Will be Obsolete in 2020” has elicited a range of responses from readers. One describes a school where much of the predictions are already happening, while others convey serious doubt that any of these will come to fruition — whether it’s due to lack of money or dedication to education, fixation on standardized testing, or just plain jadedness about the possibility for change.

I asked the writer, Shelly Blake-Plock, to respond to the comments. Here’s his thoughtful observation.

By Shelly Blake-Plock

I’ve heard the criticisms regarding how outlandish these predictions seem for low-income schools. And I think a lot of it has to do with the transition period we find our selves in as a society and I think a lot of it has to do with the seemingly endless failures that have shaped the view of many an educator when it comes to the word “reform.”

And so when it comes to digital technology, folks say to themselves: “I’ve heard all that before. I’ve heard about how computers are going to change everything. I heard about how our offices were going to be paperless. Right. I’ve heard about the latest program that’s going to help my kids learn and I’ve seen all the computer games and seen money wasted on computers that are obsolete by the time they are plugged in.”

We’re not talking about computers anymore. We’re talking about the way that we connect to one another as human beings.

And I think, by-and-large, those folks making those complaints have been right to do so for years. But what they perhaps aren’t getting is that we’re not talking about computers anymore. We’re talking about the way that we connect to one another as human beings.

Those connections have changed. We don’t need to be broadcasted at anymore. We don’t need so many of the hierarchies we used to unwittingly depend upon. Just ask any manager of a CD shop in the mall.

We’re in the middle of a transition that extends to every conceivable form of human experience.

Including education.

We’re in the middle of a transition period between analog and digital realities in work, school, and life. That isn’t to say the analog isn’t important — it’s just to recognize that the digital in many ways opens up new opportunities that the analog just can’t offer. Anyone who has been able to immediately share pictures and videos of the kids in real-time with family elsewhere in the country can attest to this.

In schools, however, we often act as though nothing beyond the classroom walls and the strict curriculum taught within them matters. And we act as though digital technology is somehow only auxiliary to the experience our kids have in learning throughout the course of the day. So we have “reading time” and “math time” and “tech time” (maybe), but we often fail to integrate those things in the way they are already integrated in reality. We fail to integrate them, we fail to personalize them, and we let ourselves believe that doing so would just take too much effort and not show anything quantifiable for it in the end.

Many of the folks who’ve criticized my ideas in terms of tech in the classroom have told me it’s not feasible because “we don’t even have books, how are we going to provide computers?”

And I think that’s a fair question. But I’d argue that by-and-large you don’t have to spend a ton of money on computers. Because your students are often carrying more technological capacity in their pockets in the form of cell and smart phones than you could ever have imagined years ago.

Many schools are considering “BYOD” (Bring Your Own Device) as a way to fundamentally alter the playing field. The most important thing is being able to connect; it doesn’t matter so much exactly on the device. So let kids bring what they have and let them work together and share. Improvise. Experiment. Learn to trust one another and teach one another. Supplement what you actually need rather than spending money on 30 or 60 or 1,000 of the same thing. Manage your class in such a way that some kids can be using the available devices while other kids are doing something else. Not everybody in your class has to be doing the same thing at the same time. Mix it up.

The idea of something like Facebook connecting 600 million people seemed pretty extreme four years ago.

As for books: Think about how much those textbooks cost; and think about how often new editions are printed. Think about how much money you waste on paper, toner, and copy machines. I’d suggest reallocating your funds from perishable forms of information to dynamic and ever-updated forms available online — and often for free. All you need is to provide the connection.

Now, yes, some things on my list of things that will be obsolete in schools by 2020 may seem extreme. But the idea of something like Facebook connecting 600 million people seemed pretty extreme four years ago. The idea of social media becoming a force in journalism, protest, and organizing seemed kinda extreme. The idea of a Fortune 500 company hiring someone in charge of Tweeting probably still seems extreme to a lot of folks; but go take a look at the Twitter feeds of every major corporation and organization today. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, School Day of the Future

March 2, 2011 | 10:25 AM | By Tina Barseghian

21 Things That Will Be Obsolete by 2020

Flickr: Corey Leopold

Inspired by Sandy Speicher’s vision of the designed school day of the future, reader Shelly Blake-Plock shared his own predictions of that ideal day. How close are we to this? The post was written in December 2009, and Blake-Plock says he’s seeing some of these already beginning to come to fruition.

[Update: I asked Blake-Plock to respond to comments to this post. Read it here.]

By Shelly Blake-Plock

1. DESKS
The 21st century does not fit neatly into rows. Neither should your students. Allow the network-based concepts of flow, collaboration, and dynamism help you rearrange your room for authentic 21st century learning.

2. LANGUAGE LABS
Foreign language acquisition is only a smartphone away. Get rid of those clunky desktops and monitors and do something fun with that room.

3. COMPUTERS
Ok, so this is a trick answer. More precisely this one should read: ‘Our concept of what a computer is’. Because computing is going mobile and over the next decade we’re going to see the full fury of individualized computing via handhelds come to the fore. Can’t wait.

4. HOMEWORK
The 21st century is a 24/7 environment. And the next decade is going to see the traditional temporal boundaries between home and school disappear. And despite whatever Secretary Duncan might say, we don’t need kids to ‘go to school’ more; we need them to ‘learn’ more. And this will be done 24/7 and on the move (see #3).

5. THE ROLE OF STANDARDIZED TESTS IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS
The AP Exam is on its last legs. The SAT isn’t far behind. Over the next ten years, we will see Digital Portfolios replace test scores as the #1 factor in college admissions.

6. DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION AS A SIGN OF DISTINGUISHED TEACHER
The 21st century is customizable. In ten years, the teacher who hasn’t yet figured out how to use tech to personalize learning will be the teacher out of a job. Differentiation won’t make you ‘distinguished’; it’ll just be a natural part of your work.

7. FEAR OF WIKIPEDIA
Wikipedia is the greatest democratizing force in the world right now. If you are afraid of letting your students peruse it, it’s time you get over yourself.

8. PAPERBACKS
Books were nice. In ten years’ time, all reading will be via digital means. And yes, I know, you like the ‘feel’ of paper. Well, in ten years’ time you’ll hardly tell the difference as ‘paper’ itself becomes digitized.

9. ATTENDANCE OFFICES
Bio scans. ‘Nuff said.

10. LOCKERS
A coat-check, maybe.

11. I.T. DEPARTMENTS
Ok, so this is another trick answer. More subtly put: IT Departments as we currently know them. Cloud computing and a decade’s worth of increased wifi and satellite access will make some of the traditional roles of IT — software, security, and connectivity — a thing of the past. What will IT professionals do with all their free time? Innovate. Look to tech departments to instigate real change in the function of schools over the next twenty years.

12. CENTRALIZED INSTITUTIONS
School buildings are going to become ‘homebases’ of learning, not the institutions where all learning happens. Buildings will get smaller and greener, student and teacher schedules will change to allow less people on campus at any one time, and more teachers and students will be going out into their communities to engage in experiential learning.

13. ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL SERVICES BY GRADE
Education over the next ten years will become more individualized, leaving the bulk of grade-based learning in the past. Students will form peer groups by interest and these interest groups will petition for specialized learning. The structure of K-12 will be fundamentally altered.

14. EDUCATION SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO INTEGRATE TECHNOLOGY
This is actually one that could occur over the next five years. Education Schools have to realize that if they are to remain relevant, they are going to have to demand that 21st century tech integration be modeled by the very professors who are supposed to be preparing our teachers.

15. PAID/OUTSOURCED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
No one knows your school as well as you. With the power of a PLN (professional learing networks) in their back pockets, teachers will rise up to replace peripatetic professional development gurus as the source of schoolwide professional development programs. This is already happening.

16. CURRENT CURRICULAR NORMS
There is no reason why every student needs to take however many credits in the same course of study as every other student. The root of curricular change will be the shift in middle schools to a role as foundational content providers and high schools as places for specialized learning.

17. PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCE NIGHT
Ongoing parent-teacher relations in virtual reality will make parent-teacher conference nights seem quaint. Over the next ten years, parents and teachers will become closer than ever as a result of virtual communication opportunities. And parents will drive schools to become ever more tech integrated.

18. TYPICAL CAFETERIA FOOD
Nutrition information + handhelds + cost comparison = the end of $3.00 bowls of microwaved mac and cheese. At least, I so hope so.

19. OUTSOURCED GRAPHIC DESIGN AND WEB DESIGN
You need a website/brochure/promo/etc.? Well, for goodness sake just let your kids do it. By the end of the decade — in the best of schools — they will be.

20. HIGH SCHOOL ALGEBRA 1
Within the decade, it will either become the norm to teach this course in middle school or we’ll have finally woken up to the fact that there’s no reason to give algebra weight over statistics and I.T. in high school for non-math majors (and they will have all taken it in middle school anyway).

21. PAPER
In ten years’ time, schools will decrease their paper consumption by no less than 90%. And the printing industry and the copier industry and the paper industry itself will either adjust or perish.

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Tech Tools, School Day of the Future

February 22, 2011 | 11:11 AM | By Tina Barseghian

SCHOOL DAY OF THE FUTURE

The School Day of the Future is DESIGNED

IDEO
Stoking a child's imagination: a 12-year-old's vision of a medieval war.

Unpredictable, inconsistent, and designed to be wildly relevant for learners, their engagement, and their development.

Sandy Speicher leads IDEO’s Design for Learning domain, which brings human-centered thinking to systemic challenges in education. Her work helps educators use design tools and methods to work in new ways, to prepare for future challenges, and to transform their organizations and communities.

By Sandy Speicher

Some children will be reading in comfortable chairs. Some will be digging into a scientific research question by conducting readings on a nearby pond. Some will be working on computers refining their skills in math while others are sequencing DNA. Some will be collaborating around a design challenge with new friends across the globe. One group will reenact a battle from medieval times, while others are learning on site, at jobs. Building, making, imagining, interacting, investigating, reflecting, connecting, shaping, participating. There will be challenge. There will be high expectations. And there will be tons of variation. With all of its possibility, the school day of the future will be one thing: it will be designed.

Elliot Eisner, one of my favorite education professors, often asked the question, “If aliens landed on our planet and walked into our schools, what would they think the school is meant for?” We’d brainstorm: Learning to sit in rows? Learning to get up and move en masse at the sound of a bell? Learning to stay in place for 40-minute increments? Learning to override your bodily functions? Learning to answer the questions that the person standing in front of the room already knows the answer to? It’s hard not to realize that a school, upon pure observation, looks like a training ground for behavioral management.

Designing the day around discovery of information, connections to real world challenges, discussions digging into our experiences with the world.

In the end, it’s not that much different than the design of most of our industrial work environments – time, constraints, structures, tasks, a consistent and organized system. It’s what we adults tend to design without really thinking.

But when you watch children – undeniable natural learners – they create different solutions: play, discovery, interaction. They observe the world, they stick things in their mouth, they touch things. They connect with the world to learn it. They experience it through their senses. And in discussions with the people around them, they create language and meaning and amazing new ideas and interpretations that the rest of us get the benefit of learning from.

It’s not too big of a leap to want the school day designed around these notions of how we naturally, and individually, learn. Designing the day around discovery of information, connections to real world challenges, discussions digging into our experiences with the world.

One thing to keep in mind, of course, is that not every child is starting in the same place, and not every child is headed toward the same place. Some need freedom in order to learn. Some need structure. Some need a mix. But all need respect for their individuality, trust in their abilities to succeed, and adults who have the foresight to design experience to bring out individual greatness.

IDEO

A 10-year-old illustrates "genetical engineering."

The School of One in New York City, for instance, is creating an exciting model of individualized learning that integrates technology and personal attention. Their school day revolves around formative assessments which technology helps capture, so that the teachers can look at the data at the end of the day. The teachers discuss – together – how each student is doing, and develop a strategy for the following day which can include any number of formats for what the student needs – teacher-led instruction, one-on-one tutoring, self-learning, or virtual tutoring. They’ve broken the model of one class with one teacher and created a network of learning toward specific goals.

Then there are Leadership Public Schools, whose students have unique needs of their own. The majority of their students are performing at an elementary level when they enter in the ninth grade. They have created a portfolio of adaptive learning technologies which allow students to access ninth-grade content while learning basic skills. It’s not “Drill and Kill” — they’ve integrated technology into the daily experience by helping students learn to create with it. This is putting them on the track not just for incredible academic gains, but also for immediate relevance in the job market – an important need for their students.

Students at schools in the New Tech Network are learning in related ways, but with a different design. They use projects to inspire new understandings. They’re also using technology to capture learnings – building videos and slideshow presentations – and they’re most often working in teams, learning different subject-matter content through real world challenges.

Teachers at Ormondale Elementary School in California build their curriculum from student passions. They have a range of approaches – inspiring children through teacher-defined projects, allowing them to define the end goals of any given exploration, capturing a student’s passion toward a particular topic and using that as the vehicle for exploration through teacher- or student-defined assignments. Their school day allows for this range of experience, and the “investigations” happening throughout the day vary greatly class by class, child by child.

All of these innovative models are showing us that incredible results, and experiences are possible when we design the school day with the needs of the student in mind. The historic “one-size-fits-all” model of set periods of time with groups of somewhere between 20-30 kids lined up in rows and one teacher in the front of the room orchestrating the conversation…. well, Sage on Stage, Chalk and Talk, and Spray and Pray might just have met their match.

The school day of the future will be unpredictable, inconsistent, and designed to be wildly relevant for the learner, their engagement, and their development.

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, design thinking, individualized learning, School Day of the Future

February 14, 2011 | 12:01 PM | By Tina Barseghian

Learning Plan Travels With Student in the Future School Day

In the ideal future school day, learning will happen wherever the student happens to be. And with the benefit of a device that carries each student’s learning plan, that place might not necessarily be school, says Michael Hatcher assistant principal of West Oakland Middle School in Oakland, Calif.

Hatcher spoke to me at the Big Ideas Fest in December, while his co-horts in education collaborated on a design thinking project.

“We can make education a natural right,” Hatcher says. “You were born, you get an education. You don’t have to come to us, it can come to you.”

He also addresses the need for qualitative rather than quantitative assessments .

[Filmed by Ifanyi Bell]

Read more in the School Day of the Future series.