How can we still say no to tech in classrooms?

  This article is adapted from one written by shaubo, a high school principal in Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada.

Why aren’t all teachers embracing technology?  Why are some jumping in with both feet, some paddling around in the kiddie pool, and some well back of the water?

Come on in! The water's fine!

Is it stubborness? Fear? Intimidation? Perhaps – but it could also be a genuine concern that the embedded use of technolgy doesn’t change anything about the material they are addressing.

Some teachers question why it may be more beneficial to students to use GoogleDocs to write an essay than it is to do it on a word processor at home and submit it?  Why is doing an online slideshow on a project more relevant than a paper poster? How does making a video change what is learned?

Here are my thoughts on why the use of technology and social media is often limited, and why it’s use in the classroom is essential:

1.  I’m concerned many teachers don’t see the true importance of collaboration.  Simply put, collaboration is an essential 21st Century skill; and cannot be limited to the classroom during a set time period.  Using online tools to collaborate and create allows students to combine their best thoughts and ideas, regardless of the time of day or where they are – ultimately creating a deeper learning experience.  I’m reading ‘The Global Achievement Gap” by  Tony Wagner  in which he discusses how corporations and academia are relying on their employees to be strong collaborators and creative, critical thinkers – not just with their colleagues down the hall, but with ones around the world. Learning is a collaborative effort and making peer-editting and/or authentic discussions a part of the assignment increases this skill.

2.  Most teachers are auditory or text-based learners.  This has a lot to do with why we have excelled in school.  Unfortunately students today are visual or visual-kinesthetic learners, and this has developed because of digital bombardment.  We see images as a complement to the text we read. Digital learners see text as a complement to the images they see.  I’ve heard a few teachers use this information as an argument for the need to teach todays learners about the importance of text, and I’ll admit, I believe there is some merit in that idea.  I ask myself however, why would we not modify our style to one that best fits the learner and the world?  If most people under the age of 25 are digital learners, why do we continue to prepare them to learn in a way that most likely will have little to no use within the next generation?  We have no problem altering the way we teach to reach students who need coloured paper to increase their comprehension levels.   We all have strategies to deal with students who have ADD or any other number of learning disabilities.  We differentiate our instruction.  It’s now time for us to develop strategies for our digital learners.  For a thorough and detailed discussion on this, see Ian Jukes’ work.

3.  I believe many educators do not recognize that, rather than schools being at risk of failing our students, we are at risk of becoming obsolete or at the very least, irrelevant to our students.  We force them to reference textbooks that are out-of-date before they are published.  We don’t allow them to use their personal devices in class.  We make them come to us for the information they could just as easily get online, and in a manner perhaps better suited to their learning style.  This worked for us.  We assume it will work for today’s students.  Unfortunately for most, it does not. We must develop our curricula and teaching to a standard that connects with today’s students and is relevant in the world.

4. Although we understand the importance of creativity and critical thinking skills, many teachers believe that these either cannot be taught, or if they can, simply evolve over the years of study.  I believe we can teach students to be creative – often by simply giving them authentic tasks and asking them to solve them, with our support, but without prescriptive guidelines.  Critical thinking comes from asking students to research, weigh the evidence, and make an informed decision that they can defend to the teacher and to their peers.  Think about how many online and social media techniques there are that can support this type of learning.  Take the online experience away, and we severely limit the scope of learning.

Is this just a problem only teachers face? Yes and no. Teachers I know believe they are doing a good job, and they’re right.  Students are engaged, test results are good, graduation rates are high.  Why do they need to change?  Because students are often failing to exhibit deep learning about the subject.  Technology opens up doors for them to ask questions teachers may not know about, to extend their learning, to find an area (perhaps even outside the prescribed curricula) in which they have a true interest.  The default is to limit ourselves to what can easily be measured by the standardized tests.   What we as teachers need to embrace however, is that this deeper learning will in turn support continued (and perhaps increased) success on assessements, regardless of their format.  Why would we not want to enable students to achieve the deepest learning and interest possible?  It’s about more than preparing them for the test – it’s about preparing them for their future the best way we can – we don’t know what that future will look like, but I’m pretty sure we know what it will NOT look like – like today’s classroom.

So, as educational leaders, how do we help to change this?  I believe it starts with supporting and encouraging teachers to step outside of their comfort zone.  This must become an expectation of teaching.  Teachers expect their students to do this every day.  It’s time we expected it of ourselves – both as teachers and administrators.

• Administrators need to model online and digital teaching/learning techniques in our interactions with teachers – our staff meetings must include digital learning and sharing of successes. And yes, that means we have to learn it!
• We must make the effective use of technology something we look for and provide feedback on when we do supervision and evaluation. It’s no longer good enough that they use an interactive whiteboard or post homework online.  We need to look for teaching that uses technology in a way that deepens learning.
• We must insist on collaboration among teachers in this area – and insist this collaboration not be limited to the school or the school division, but a PLN that stretches to a global level.

As principals and leaders, are we ready to do that?  If you want to lead a school or a school division, you need to be.  As I met and discussed this issue with a number of delegates at a conference I was recently at, it donned on me why this may be more difficult than I originally hoped.  This was a national conference for educational leaders, and the majority of delegates were significantly behind in adoption of technological supports in education.   As George Couros discusses in a recent blog post  to push the teachers, we must first push ourselves.

I’m not asking everyone to dive into the deep end right now.  I do however insist you get off the deck chair and at least paddle around the kiddie pool.  Just like every little kid who watches the other swimmers, I think we’ll learn we want to be in the diving tank sooner than later.

Biblical Integration Lite: Telling it Like It Isn’t

Guest Article by Mark Kennedy (ACSI Canada)

When someone tells me that his school’s Christian character “goes without saying” I can’t help thinking, ‘that school may be in trouble’. Too often what goes without saying gradually goes without being, until it is simply and completely gone. It’s so easy for an educational institution to drift from its foundations with hardly anyone noticing. Historically that happened to some of North America’s most prominent universities and independent schools. Although they were once fervently Christian many of them are now completely secular or just superficially religious. They may be wealthy and respected institutions - places like Upper Canada College and Harvard University- but the Christian distinctive that so strongly marked their early years have vanished. A classic example is the entire public school system for the Province of Ontario. Founder Egerton Ryerson once declared that instruction in his public schools would be “but a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal when not founded upon and sanctified by the undefiled and regenerating religion of Jesus Christ.”* How tragically prophetic.

These days the erosion of a school’s Christian character can start when it abandons the quest for authentic biblical integration and settles for ‘integration lite. On the surface ‘integration lite’ looks just fine. The word “Christian” is in the school’s name. The teachers are all born again and they believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. And when it comes to teaching a Christian worldview, well that’s covered by using Christian school textbooks. But there is a lot more to genuine biblical integration than that.

What’s in a name?” says Juliet in Shakespeare’s famous play “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Along the same lines (and with apologies to Shakespeare), giving a skunk cabbage a more complimentary name won’t improve its aroma.

So it can be when ‘Christian’ is spliced into a school’s name. In an ‘integration lite’ type school the word ‘Christian’ in its name doesn’t guarantee moral or educational quality or even ethical standards of operation. On the other hand ‘Christian’ in the name of a school that pursues genuine biblical integration means something. It says that the school is trying to follow scriptural principles in every aspect of its ministry, even if doing so drives away potential students or causes loss of income.

Just having Christian teachers doesn’t help either unless their character is exemplary as per Jesus’ assertion in Luke 6:40 “A student is not above his teacher but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.” And Christian school educators need to have the spiritual gift of teaching. In 27 years as a principal I only had to fire 3 teachers in the middle of the academic year. They were all unquestionably believers and two of the three were among the most highly trained educators I’d ever met. But they didn’t have the gift of teaching and they weren’t particularly outstanding role models. I hired them because they were Christians with impressive academic credentials. I missed the things that matter the most.

When it comes to teaching a Christian worldview ‘born again’ teachers can be counter-productive if they have only been trained in secular educational philosophies and practices. Secular teacher training operates upon the assumption that God is irrelevant in learning about the “real world”. And that’s what some Christian teachers with secular worldviews may inadvertently communicate to their students. The regrettable part isn’t that they failed to meet some kind of subjective and artificial spiritual standard. Biblical integration isn’t about twisting reality to fit into a pseudo-religious mold. It is first and foremost about teaching the whole truth on the clear understanding that all truth is God’s truth. That means a teacher has to learn how to give God back his rightful place in the classroom, in the curriculum and in the overall learning process. ‘Integration lite’ educators don’t do that. They presents pretty well all aspects their program in exactly the same way that secular teachers do – with the occasional Bible class tossed in as a mild christianizer. ‘Integration lite’ doesn’t try to present the whole truth. It is satisfied to ‘tell it like it isn’t’.

In the early years of ACSI, co-founding President Dr. Paul Kienel estimated that it took about three years of in-service training for secularly prepared Christian teachers to develop distinctly Christian educational philosophies and practices. Because our society has drifted farther away from any sort of Christian consensus since then, it probably takes longer now. Ongoing in service teacher training is a key in developing authentic biblical integration in the classroom.

Teaching a Christian worldview through biblical integration used to be a hot topic 30 years ago when the Christian school movement in North America was young and vigorous. Back then we devoted significant time and effort to it. Sometimes we got it wrong, shoe horning Bible verses awkwardly into lesson plans where they really didn’t belong or inappropriately transforming simple science lesson into didactic morality tales. But at least we took a whack at it. And we discovered that the development of effective biblical integration was a major project requiring intentional planning, research and goal setting over significant periods of time. Both then and now, even well established schools that have thoroughly explored the topic and implemented specific integration initiatives re-evaluate their program annually. They ask themselves,

“How can our school become more His school in this upcoming year?”

The ‘integration lite’ approach of depending upon Christian school textbooks to provide a biblically integrated curriculum falls short of the mark too. Aside from the fact that the most effective kind of integration, with the greatest potential blessing for students is carried in the hearts and minds of their teachers, textbooks, even Christian ones, sometimes have flaws. They may occasionally have scientific and historical errors. Some Christian academic series may unwittingly promote the view of one specific denomination or political group as ‘the Christian perspective’ even where there is a divergence of opinion among believers. Good teachers challenge students to think critically about what they read both in secular and Christian publications because they want their students to seek truth and because total inerrancy belongs to the Bible alone. Textbooks can be useful tools but they hardly ever change lives. Good teachers do.

As one pundit put it “A little Christianity can be a dangerous thing, especially for Christian schools.”- and ‘integration lite’ is the epitome of a little Christianity. The problem is that Christianity is not a little faith. It’s not just a church thing, not limited to a system of moral regulations and behaviors or religious exercises or private personal beliefs. Jesus compares his kingdom to a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds that ultimately produces a tree in which birds can perch. His kingdom encompasses all aspects of truth – and it is sometimes much bigger than we present to our students. Consequently our mandate is clear. Paul says,

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Cor 10:5)

For Christian schools, that scripture highlights the importance of genuine biblical integration and repudiates the idea of ‘integration lite’. And that does not go without saying.

* “Egerton Ryerson and His Times” by Neil McDonald, MacMillan Canada, 1978