Join StoryChasers! StoryChasers - Empowering Responsible Digital Citizenship - Invent the future! Scratch | Home | imagine, program, share - Play Travian online!
6th May 2006

Constructive uses of disruptive-tech are the key

posted in disruptive-technology |

Miguel wrote on Thursday:

It’s irresponsible of me to advocate use of disruptive tech in schools to teachers who are at the bottom of the rung in decision-making. I am demanding, exhorting them to make changes, not in their teaching, but in the very fabric of their society.

I respectfully disagree with some qualifications. We should not be blindly advocating for the use of disruptive technologies of all flavors and at any cost in schools. One of our goals should be advocating for the CONSTRUCTIVE uses of disruptive educational technologies, however. As I’ve written and presented about disruptive technologies, I’ve tried to be careful to always include this word CONSTRUCTIVE. Because if we are seeking constructive uses, we don’t need to worry if we are at the bottom, the top, or outside of the educational food chain.

Of course we want to keep our jobs. But we also should want to make a positive difference in the lives of the students we teach and lead. This is what authentic education is all about: Experiences from which we all walk away changed. Those changes will be different and unique for each person, but ideally we want educational experiences to transform us. Disruptive technologies which permit students and teachers to communicate for and with an authentic audience can help provide the type of educational environment where authentic learning takes place.

We should be embracing CONSTRUCTIVE uses of disruptive technology tools because they are and can make big differences for student engagement and learning. Authentic education, led by a master teacher (as opposed to novices who don’t have the knowledge or experience to experiment much) is always experimental. If you’re not growing and changing as an educator, you’re dead. We don’t need teachers who want to teach the same year 25 times. Novice teachers have not been the ones to figure out (I think) that disruptive technology uses like blogging, podcasting, and digital storytelling can have powerfully positive effects on student learning. Master teachers like Bob Sprankle, Cheryl Oakes, Mark Ahlness, David Warlick, Darren Kuropatwa, Tony Vincent, Ewan McIntosh, Will Richardson, Steve Dembo, and many, many others have taught us and are continuing to teach us this fact. So tools like blogs are really not “experimental” when you consider the body of practitioner “evidence” compiled through the work of innovative educators like these. These tools may seem “experimental” in your district if no one has ever tried them there, but that does not mean they are untried or untested in the broader educational community. This is why it is so important to be tied into the ongoing conversations in the edublogosphere. This is where 21st century educational professional development is taking place at the speed of creativity.

Please note that although I have started my own page on MySpace, I have never advocated that we tell students to do this. (They don’t need our encouragement to do this anyway, they’re already doing it on their own.) What I have repeatedly encouraged (and will continue to) is that school leaders look for ways to effectively leverage AT SCHOOL the motivation which students repeatedly demonstrate to socially communicate. Schools need to be setting up sites with think.com or other groups that let everyone at a school engage in a virtual, moderated and monitored environment. We want young people to make mistakes when we (the adults) are around to help. We don’t want to shoot them (metaphorically) when they mess up, instead we should want to help them learn. This is what authentic education is all about: making decisions, getting feedback, and learning from what took place. This process requires multiple conversations, which can only take place if the environment is safe and open to decision-making by all stakeholders. Decision-making by students should, of course, be limited– the classroom cannot be a true democracy. However, we should acknowledge if kids don’t have any choices, they can’t make any decisions. I contend that type of environment is antithetical to experiences which can be considered truly educative.

As we’ve seen and heard from many in the edublogosphere, schools tend to want to prevent all mistakes by students and teachers, and are therefore banning many of the available tools and sites that are potentially or actually “disruptive.” When it comes to the educational process, I think we need to ask ourselves if we need some disruption? When you consider our myopic and destructive focus on high stakes summative assessment, I think you have to answer this question affirmatively. We absolutely need to change the direction of our state-level and national-level educational policies. If the constructive use of disruptive technologies can facilitate those changes– and I think they can– then viva la revolucion– to quote Ewan. :-)
We don’t need and shouldn’t focus on the “policy level” in all this, however. As I concluded at the end of my TCEA 2006 keynote on “Cultivating Digital Literacy Through Blogging and Podcasting,” I am not telling anyone to “change the system.” My message instead is to change the sphere where you live and work: your classroom, your school, your district. Change the way you invite and engage students in the process of literacy development. It’s only natural that teachers who are seeking to reach all students will explore different options and tools for learning. Disruptive technology tools can be powerful allies. And we sure need all the help we can get to face the challenges of teaching in the 21st century!

On this day..

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 6th, 2006 at 1:15 pm and is filed under disruptive-technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There are currently 5 responses to “Constructive uses of disruptive-tech are the key”

Join the conversation!

  1. 1 On May 7th, 2006, Cheryl Oakes said:

    Aside from my sabbatical this year, which was an incredible experience, you can see evidence of what I accomplished at my school website and at my blog; the new 4.0 THINK.COM has been the most transformational activity I have participated in with 200 of my favorite 3rd and 4th grade students at Wells Elementary School. I’ve been using Think.com for the past 4 years, with great success. However, this year it really took off and has become the culture at our school. First, parents are very interested and through THINK.COM, they are using/sharing their students’ accounts to email and sticky me too, with messages such as, “hello, this is Mary, Becca’s mom, and I was wondering…….” This is NEW, this is the first time parents have joined and used this venue to communicate with me. They understand this is a joint venture. They are monitoring their student use at home while I try to monitor their online communication.
    Second, 3 out of 12 teachers are communicating with their students through THINK.COM, the assistant principal joined a class the other day and created a THINK.COM page. It was just the best experience watching her try to respond to stickys as quickly as 18 students were sending them. The beauty of being in the classroom is that you can watch social networking at its best. Student A sends a message, then walks over to the assistant principal, Ms. Lang, he notices that the message is not on her page, shows her how to refresh, the message appears and this scenario repeats itself about 6 times. By the end of class she is exhausted, the students are energized and we, the blogosphere, have another convert. Our assistant principal is spreading her message that our school is a bully free zone and she is using THINK.COM as another avenue to touch base with students and keep a pulse on what is happening. (We use THINK.COM a free service, however another option that comes with a fee, and a way for parents to have access is ePALS.) When she sends a sticky note to students she incorporates her bully free vocabulary and reinforces that she just sent a “put up”, not a put down. By the end of the class and into that evening students were sending her more “put ups”.
    Thirdly, I noticed this weekend that students internationally are using a poem format that a couple of my students started back at mid-March
    I
    I l
    I li
    I lik
    I like
    I like T
    I like Th
    I like Thi
    I like Thin
    I like Think
    I like Think.
    I like Think.c
    I like Think.co
    I like Think.com

    Now, did all those students have that poetry instruction in their classes, in spite of the fact that this type of poem has showed up in Italy, Australia, California, Texas, student blogs etc???? Or was this simply and transformationally the result of participating in the blogosphere. I know what I believe it to be. The power of the web. The impact of the web and sharing.
    While Wes kindly referred to me as a master teacher I hope this description demonstrates that anyone can register and use think.com with their students or school. There must be some Star Wars metaphor; I’ll leave that for you to come up with, but learn from a master and go forth and use the force with your students you won’t regret it. I’ll conclude by having you look back at the last paragraph of what Wes just wrote and affirm that we are up to the challenge of teaching in the 21st century.

  2. 2 On May 7th, 2006, Mark Ahlness said:

    Wesley, thanks for putting me in such lofty company - there are days when I feel I ought to be in the pile at the other end of the quality teacher continuum.

    I truly agree with your recommendation for constructive means to get the job done, to “change the sphere where you live and work”. Unfortunately, many of us teachers are just too overwhelmed teaching, getting it done - to change much outside our own classrooms. If we had the energy, we might try to change the system, try and advocate for student use of web 2.0 technologies - but we are few, and ultimately, powerless.

    An example. This past week I submitted a list of 12 educational blogs that I wanted unblocked to the network folk in my school district (Seattle). All blogspot.com sites, as Blogger is blocked. Good news, they were all unblocked. Of course, you can’t comment on them, they look fractured (no blogger.com originated images are allowed through), etc… Emboldened with a little success, I repeated my earlier request to have flickr unblocked. No dice. No surprise. Exchanged a few emails on that. Forget it, not gonna budge.

    All this took a fair bit of time, compiling sites, writing emails, responding, etc, etc. I can’t do this very often. My question is this: Why isn’t there somebody else doing this job? I’ve already got one :)

    Now, I’m not giving up, but I’m saying it’s a pretty steep hill up ahead, and I’d like some company, some extra ammo, whatever. Where is THAT help gonna come from? Many thanks for all you are doing!! - Mark

  3. 3 On May 7th, 2006, Wesley Fryer said:

    You are most welcome, Mark, thanks for your continued hard work and for sharing about it online. It really is amazing we can have this type of collaborative relationship completely independent of geography and even time….

    I am not sure what the answer is in terms of changing the system, except what I already wrote and chipping away a little at a time. These are big, systemic changes, so I don’t think we should be surprised that so many folks don’t see the point or get it…. Or see these things just as threats, not opportunities.

    I think your approach of requesting that sites be unblocked is a good one, but you also can consider alternate routes for content access:

    Proxy paths for circumventing Internet filters and blocks
    http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/12/how-to-access-blocked-websites.html

    I think we need to get our adminstrators and school board members blogging. Only through experiences and conversations will people’s perceptions about these things really change.

  4. 4 On May 8th, 2006, Teach42 - Education and Technology, by Steve Dembo » Connecting and Learning in Holland said:

    [...] The second presentation I did was called Going Mobile and focused on using disruptive technologies in the classroom.  Wait, let me rephrase, CONSTRUCTIVELY using disruptive technologies in the classroom (I got yer back, Wes)!  The presentation revolved around two ideas:  1) There’s a heck of alot of educational things you can do with a PSP or Cell phone and 2) Schools could save a whole lot of money if they took advantage of the technology students are currently hiding in their backpacks.  It’s a fun presentation, an extended version of the one I did for EdTech Connect.  I’ve found some incredible resources using mobile technology, and I get the feeling I barely scratched the surface! [...]

  5. 5 On October 8th, 2006, Along the Way » My Weekend PD for May 6-7 said:

    [...] Wes Fryer posted a well written (as always) blog on the CONSTRUCTIVE use of disruptive technologies, and advocates that engaged learning through conversation is not experimental and can be observed in the classrooms of master teachers, easily accessible on the web. The comments (part of the conversation) by master teachers to this post are equally inspiring. [...]