Technology in the Year 2008: It’s Going to be Quite a Ride

Technology in the Year 2008: It’s Going to be
Quite a Ride

TCEA Keynote
#2:

Dr. Williard
Daggett
President, International Center for
Leadership in Education

Author of
many books

I am going to say some
things today to challenge you
– caution: I
may say some politically incorrect
thing

I’ve been in 29 nations around
the globe looking at education: we have the finest education system in America
in our public schools
– I say that not as a
lifetime educator, as a Dad (has 5 kids, all in their
30s)

I look at my 5 kids and look at
what public education has to deal with
–
one that is GT
– one with autism and
epilepsy
– one who was run over by a drunk
driver, 9 month coma, now a college grad but no speech and
hearning
–

there is no nation on earth that
would take all 5 of these kids in
– what we
have to be careful is not let people attack us too much in public
education
– yes we need to change, but that
is not based upon our schools failing but on the fact that world these kids are
growing up in a very different

today
we will talk about that changing world
–
think about your hopes and dreams for a young person in your life less than 7
years old

What year was it when you
were that child’s age?
– what was the
cutting edge technology in the 1950s? (black and white TV with test patterns, no
remote, 1 station why need a remote?)
—
party line phones
— remember carbon paper
on manual typewriters
— no microwaves, how
did you cook?

people then couldn’t
imagine what we are doing today
– as
cutting age as we are today, we can’t imagine how cutting age the world will be
when our 7 year olds

prediction:
there will be more technological change in the next 4 years than since there has
been since the beginning of mankind
– I am
worried that people are so into the latest gadget, that they have lost sight
that all this marvelous techonlogy is really designed to get kids ready for the
world they live in

we shouldn’t be
focused on the latest gadget: they are just a means to an end, not an end in
themselves

What is important: what do
my 5 grandkids need to know, learn, and be able to
do

Last year I headed up a national
commission with the 50 state commissioners, with support from Gates
foundation
– doing this with National
School boards, NEA, NFT, etc etc….
–
taken all the major players, brought them together, tried to find the 30 highest
peforming high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools given their
socioeconomic status
– broke down by wealth
in 3 categories
– studying what these
schools are doing that is different than
others
— some have 98% free and reduced,
scoring at top 1% of all tests

how do
some schools do this?
– tech is part of the
answer but it may be different
– looking at
3 things: rigor, relevance
Why: do we need
to change schools?
What needs to be
done?
How do we do
it?

1983: Nation at
Risk
– since 83 what has happened is every
year or two someone comes up with a new idea, and proposes a ‘new
how’
– some people (one third) always get
excited at everything
– second third say
maybe
– third third say over my dead
body

If you start out with a new idea
every 2 years, then educators say “this too shall
pass”

So this group is not studying
the latest gadget, they are studying the changing world, how we should change,
how technology should drive
this

Today we are going to talk about
the WHY
– you can get the detailed case
studies on these schools
– through this
partnership, we are going to showcase these schools in last week of June at a
national meeting
– these schools are
approaching the use of technology in a fundamentally different way than most
schools

Why do we need to
chaange?
– Apple 1 is in the
smithsonian
– pictures of room size 1964
IBM System
— punchcards, they didn’t begin
in Flordia in the 2000 electons
– mainframe
camea before the PC

1976 first PC was
created: Apple 1

everything in this
picture including tapes you had to run, is 8 megabytes of
capacity
– have a 9 month old iPod, cost
$400, last spring it had 4 gigs of
capacity
– this is 512 times the capacity
of everything in the photo

20 gigs is
2600 x the capacity

Technology is
changing exponentially

you need to
understand what I am going to show you
now
– in last 20 years, how we used
technology has not changed
much

Popular Mechanics magazine
1954
– scientists from the RAND corporation
have created this model to illustrate how a home computer could look int the
year 2004…

This photo has been alll
over the internet in the last few months
–
the photo is actually of the inside of a
submarine

I show it to you because we
have one of the fundamental shifts
– you
can’t believe half of the stuff you see
–
you have to teach different literacy skills and discrimination skills about
data
– for kids, if they see it, they will
believe it

Please google Martin
Luther King, one hit over 720 million times, to the kids that would look like a
good resource
– have you heard of
blogging
– the white supremeist group
figured out how to blog their site to drive it up to
#1
– we have to teach kids how to use
information differently
– as we do this I
caution you…

We think if technology
as INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (this is what we grew up
in)
–
processing
–
communication

my dad grew up thinking
of technology as a dial telephone
–
remember big sunday event: taking a ride in the
car

the technology you are all
excited about is now nothing but a history lesson to our kids and
grandkids

Now, think of bio
technology
– 3 years from today have
sessions on bio tech (as it interrelates to living systems, nano
tech)
– they are building computer chips
1/100,000th the width of a human
hair

now there is great overlap with
bio tech, info tech, and nano tech

my
organization spends a third of the time dealing with tech companies
outside
– say that by 2008, won’t use the
word info tech, they will just use the word
“technology”

Just have time for a few
examples today
– I have a marvelous
research staff, all they do all day long (4 people) that keep me up to date on
the technology
– we require my 4 technology
people to give 6-10 examples of cutting edge techhnology that will profoundly
affect what they think our children will need to know and do in the
future

we now give my staff briefing
memos away to anyone who wants them!
– 1
condition: as long as we can give it away via
email
– it will be sent to you once per
month
– in back of room get a yellow form
or drop in a yellow form

Advice when
you get a staffing memo, put your name on it, send it to your colleges and
tell

SPOT
technology
– smart personal object
technology
– Jan 6, was in Las Vegas in
consumer electronics conference with Bill
Gates
– this year it was
released

a year ago you basically
used palm for calendar and contacts, now you can use it for email and web
access
– if you own one donate it to a
museum, they are being replaced by SPOT
technology

Microsoft: citizen,
fossil, suunco
– this is a watch with a
complete computer in it using
nanotech

within a year they say it
will be on the market
– integrated
projection to a piece of paper
– no more
projectors, we are talking next fall
–
projection keyboard out there by several companies including
palm
– using bio, info, and nano
tech
– my question: who will be the early
adopters?

it is so small that 1 solar
based battery lasts 5 years
– GPS system
will be included, gather the data anywhere in the
world

12 years from now: will kids be
able to wear these when they take your TAKS
test?
– add a new provision to the state
law for no watches

slight problem:
can put it in earrings, necklace, tie
tack
– better pass a state policy, no
jewelry

Levi Strauss says they will
put it in buttons
– so new state policy: no
clothes? take TAKS test naked?

I got
a question: what are you testing?
– we went
from the mainframes to the PCs to the
PDAs
– now to the technology literally
being embedded in everything
– I could go
for hours with more examples

Now,
example is in the area of SEMANTIC WEB
– in
next 2-3 years, the semantic web will replace the web we have
now
– you will nolonger use keywords and
headers
– you will gather data by asking
broad questions
– analyze
documents
– keywords and
headers
– meaning /
concept

we are within 2 years of the
web being able

Book: “Weaving the
Web” by Timothy Berners Lee

this is
going to change how we look at data: not as much in prose, but more in
quantitative and document form, tables,
graphs
– we need to do more analyitical
review, is the data correct, even tho we got it
somewhere

Area of biotech
example
– true today: I can buy a kit to
measure pregnancy fairly cheap and
reliable
– a year ago there would be a
crimescene and it would take a long time to analyze the
DNA
– in next 12-18 months you will be able
to buy, approved at first 2 of 3 levels of
FDA
– you will buy this at the supermarket,
you will spit in it, then we will have your DNA, you’ll slide it into a reader,
and it will read the data, has a screen, it will tell you if you are personally
predisposed to 4000 diseases

do you
want to know?

What is the key to
survival with breast cancer and colon
cancer?
–
early

is this biology or
chemistry?
– can’t be both, we are in a
Texas high school!

Why do you teach
biology and chemistry as separate courses
–
europe and asia stopped doing that years
ago

the keyboard we use know is the
slowest one
– we use it to try and slow
down they keyboard

example: this will
tell her if her baby is predisposed to a 4000 genetically related
diseases

our kids will make daily
decisions that will make star wars look like kids
play

can grow more skin cells, can
build/grow new human bladders
– what does
this mean for organ transplants?
– they can
do every organ except the brain, all are in trials right now, should be able to
do this in 2-3 years

who should pay
for this?
where does the money come
from

there are social, ethical,
economic issues that related

We are
so wrapped up in 2005 technology that we are missing the
boat

10 years ago you wouldn’t have
been here
– you would have said, whose
responsiblity is
technology?

education exists in the
context of broader society
– schools must
change if they want to remain
viable

pictuer of genetically altered
chickents

Melanoma is fastest
growing
– standford univ just altered mouse
to grow a human ear on its
back

cloning
photo…

Bio, nano, info tech are
taking off like shots, and they are coming
together

yes think about technology,
but realize someone in the state of texas has got to take the lead realizing
that technology is so much more than info
tech
– the place to see this is the
workface

employement in 1970s, job
pyramid with low skill at
bottom

1990: shaped like
pentagon

2010: shape is like an
hourglass

if Rip Van Winkle was to
come here tomorrow and
– your schools look
more like the past than the future
– want a
revolution: prop

you are using the
technology to make the old system more effective, rather than fundamentally
changing the schools

first thing they
realized: skill gap
– this is what needs to
be changed

new national level reading
inventory
– entry level reading workers
have higher level requirements than
intermediate
– blue collar workers have
higher reading requirements than white collar: why? they have to read the
technical manuals!

entry level and
blue collar workers need this! This means ALL KIDS need to have these reading
skills

some in our schools who reject
tech would keep VCRs unset forever
– that
is not part of their literacy

you
have got to take something off your plates in the state of
Texas
– you have a terribly overcrowded
curriculum
– what you take off the plate
had better be based on data

Go to
TAKS English Language Arts
– we analyzed
your student expectations
– ever heard of
NY Regents exams
– your state is no
different than any others but let me tell you want we
found

high on this chart means it
will be on the next TAKS test
– got this
from public info available from
TEA

teacher says “I have to cover
everything because it might be on the
test”
– only about 1/3 of your curriculum
is ever tested
– problem with just teaching
those things is you are just teaching to the
test

took a gallup poll to tell us by
expectation if those are essential, nice to know, or not
needed
– if you have soemthing that is not
needed, and not tested, should you be teaching
it?
– about 35% of your student
expectations fit in this category

my
recommendation: get rid of those

only
people who think the priorities should be different are the content area
teachers in terms of the priority they saw versus the general
public

reasons for
this:
1- these teachers know more about
their content area
2- if I am a high school
english teacher, I liked it so much as a student I took all my courses in it

High performing schools in country
are using information systems to set priorities on what should be
taught

Most important: play to a
students interest, style and aptitude they will do
better
– can I teach math to the kids who
love the arts through the arts?
– yes, and
that is what the highest performing schools in the nation are
doing

we cannot find 1 research
project in the country that does (remediation) pulling kids out of courses they
like and doubling them up on courses they don’t like
work

look at Texas Arts
Education

Dark green form will tell
you how you can get this data
– why did we
gather the data? because it is what the highest performing schools in the nation
are
doing

Finally

June
26-29: Nashville, bringing these highest performing schools
together
– not just showing technology,
going to show how they use technology to bring focus to instruction, how they
organize their schools to get there
– is no
magical way, but there are certain similar
characteristics

MODEL SCHOOLS
CONFERENCE

Those schools

– you need to first develop a vision of
WHY you need to change
– you can’t give the
HOW before the
WHY

www.LeaderEd.com

Email:
info@LeaderEd.com

Final word of
advice: what drives me everyday?
– not the
classrooms I served in
– my grandkids: what
is it you are doing right now that gets my grandkids ready for that world they
are going to live in
– we must put a stake
in the ground and build for the future, not just try and reform/tweak the
schools we have now which were built for a different time and a different
purpose
– easiest way to do it: love the
kids first, more than the courses you teach or the collegues you work
with