Slap in the Face

I had my sister-in-law over for pizza and coke on Friday night. She too is an educator. Our conversation turned to work. She told me about two things that happened during the week.

She took a group of 14 year olds on an excursion to the Beef Expo (Southerns imagine: a cross between provincial city show and agricultural field days with steroids) She gave them permission to take mobiles. As the kids got off the bus one student said their mobile was useless as they had no credit. Another student chimed in and said it wasn't a problem they would send them credit...and using their mobile with a few numeric entires apparently one sent the other $1 credit... What?... How?... Can you do that? (OMG I am sooo old!)...Take that for problem solving!

She also explained her senior business students in conversation with her happened to mention that the night before their exam they set up their web cameras, go online and chat over questions and solutions in prep for the exam. What is that? We joked about virtual study groups and laughed together about how in no uncertain terms would you refer to it as a "study group" to them. (So NOT cool!)

OK so what does this mean. First understand these kids live in a community that tops the lists for all the wrong things (high unemployment, low socio-economic, crime rates, domestic violence and the rest) In fact I heard it was in the top 5 for one of these categories and what strikes me is that these kids have access and are so well connected. Though my S-I-L did make comment that the 'haves' and 'have nots' is getting further and further apart.

The other thing I got to thinking about (and this is where the slap in the face comes)...I realised that for the first time in the history of education (ever) our kids have the ability and means to access more information than what their teachers do (read also "parents"). This is hugely significant. About 5 years ago I was talking about teachers no longer being the gate keepers of knowledge. These examples just hit me head on and reinforce that. I don't have a clue how to do either of the above tasks. How kids are getting information, learning skills, communicating, understand the world...just leaves us old foggies standing in their wake (scratching our heads saying "What?...How?...Can you do that?)

When I say the "history of education" I got to thinking about learning of the past..
- teaching kids research/library skills,
- libraries and encyclopedias being the place to get info,
- teachers preparing lesson plans and deciding what to teach, what facts to cover and therefore what to test.

The world really has exploded with information and IT that enables access to it.
The changes really are profound. I think this major shift (explosion) has happened in the last five years (I say that thinking about primary aged students, perhaps secondary teachers may argue a slightly longer timeline, I'm not sure) It certainly screams at me that some significant clunking or "explosions" need to happen with teaching approaches for these kids. And as an educational leader I'm left with the question..."how to make it happen?"