Ramblings of a “Digital Immigrant” Board Member

Let’s face it: Most of us on the Northfield School Board are immigrants to this land, yet our students are digital natives.

The signs of our status are multitude:
* We are drowning every week in a load of paper, posted through snail mail.
* We print out and edit things on paper. Heck, we even print out important emails just for the sake of having a copy.
* We think of encyclopedias as a static bound series of books, filling a single library shelf, with “yearbooks” to fill in the gap since publishing.
* We consider textbooks an important part of the capital budget.

I worry a lot about how much we might miss the mark on many things technological, just because we are adapting to a whole new language, the digital language the natives speak. I suspect we will, in the next generation, need to redefine how we look at classrooms, buildings and materials.

If you are up to reading a whack on the side of the head article, try “Ths Future of Schooling: Educating America in 2014.” You’ll find it at http://www.mcrel.org/5052IR_Future of Schooling.pdf (Note that you’ll have to ask for this by title)

After you explore those scenarios, let’s talk. I’m worried about a lot of things that are on the horizon. The paper above concentrates on projecting what will happen between now and 2014. Some things are obvious. Some are not. Below I list just some of my worries.

I worry that our school libraries may not change rapidly enough to keep kids coming in. In the last year, 5 exabites of written content were created….. enough to fill 37,000 Libraries of Congress. And the Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia, created by the folks who use it) would weigh a ton if it were printed out, not the hundred plus pounds of static Brittanica. Wikipedia expands daily, is edited daily, and studies show it is no more prone to mistakes than the staid Brittanica.

I worry that we still think of textbooks as the biggest investment for curriculum. Wow. I am not sure our grandchildren will even know what a textbook is.

I worry that we are being stingy with technology resources. If our kids don’t learn about the expanding world of information at school, we are not providing a world class educational opportunity. And let’s face it.. we have been stingy. The State of Minnesota declares that we will be “On-line by ‘09″ for science testing. I sure hope so, but have an uneasy feeling that the resources to make it possible for schools to participate are lagging far behind.

I worry that our general attitude about technology, especially as board members, may be as bad as learning a foreign language at our age. In 2007, the small country of Slovenia will pass the United States in the percentage of people who have broadband internet access in their homes!!! We have rested on our laurels as a country, and it has not served us very well.

Do I have answers? No, I don’t. But I am uneasy. I want us to integrate technology literacy, not integrate technology. There is a difference. Our students are going to have more than ten job changes in their lifetimes. Are we sensitive to the fact that information for them is a different commodity? Are the teachers in Northfield keeping pace with the demands of the “Digital Natives”

I leave you on this reading with a quote from David Warlick:

“I’m getting tired of hearing people continue to ask for the evidence that technology helps students learn. It doesn’t matter. We know — that good teachers help students learn. We need technology in every classroom and in every student and teacher’s hand, because it is the pen and paper of our time, and it is the lens through which we experience much of our world.”

More about David Warlick at http://landmark-project.com/index.php