Power to Lead, Teach, and Learn
This past Wednesday, I attended a GECA E-Learning workgroup meeting. My good friend, Jim Flowers, extended the invite. We listened to a presentation by Mary Boehm, President of BellSouth Foundation and Kim Mulkey, Director of the Technology Program. Kim discused the findings of the Foundation’s report ot the edu.pwr^3 initiative. This initiative consisted of three components:
- Power to Lead: Seminars and grants to support school superintendents with technology deployment strategies
- Power to Teach: Teacher professional development grants for school districts
- Power to Learn: Deeper exploration of four schools’ efforts to integrate technology schoolwide and the effects on learning over a two-year period.
Kim gave an excellent presentation and she gave us an excellent overview of what they have learned from this initiative. Kim is the kind of speaker who packs a lot of information into her talk while at the same time throws in enough relevant pieces to really get you thinking. She talked about how transformation happens when innovation begins in the reshaping of education. They used the book, “How People Learn” published by the National Research Council, to measure the learning. One of the relevant pieces that was of particular interest to me was when she started talking about student voices. They sought the student voice. The students had plenty to say. They had a wealth of ideas to share about how to use technology to reshape their learning, both inside and outside the classrooms. Plus, they had thoughts about how to make it more relevant to their lives.
Kim talked about the questions they asked the students and about the whole process of creating a dialogue to change the conversation. That really got me thinking about the questions they were asking the students. The questions we ask are really important. I think we need to tie in the way we are evaluating students to this whole equation. Ask those questions of students and educators. See if it helps or hurts. See if it is relevant to what they need to focus on day in and day out in our schools. Educators need help to have the time to be risk-takers, to be innovative, to make a difference. Every good educator wants accountability but the way we evaluate really doesn’t cut it when we’re talking about using technology as an agent of change for student learning. Plus, in my opinion, the focus we have to put on testing is counter productive to real change in schools. Evaluation should be based on more than just one instrument.
There was lots more and I can’t do it justice in this one post. I’m going to share some links below if any of you are interested in reading further about this BellSouth initiative.
As for me, I’m back to the “thinking board” and I have some ideas on how to get some more student and educator voices heard through weblogs. Another weblog for J.H. House is taking form. This is exciting. I’m going to think about good questions to ask. My experience has been that students give us dynamite answers if we can pose the right questions and really listen to the answers.
Got some thoughts??? What questions do we need to ask?
Additional links:
The Growing Technology Gap Between Schools and Students
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