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ESD 114

Some Random Thoughts by Donn Ring on Attending the 24th Annual Conference of the ASEA – December 2-5, 2009, Austin, Texas

Getting There: On a beautiful sunny morning, our delegation of Jean Wasson, Katie Proteau, Karen Sorger, Donn & Lynn Ring, and Walt Bigby (arranged by descending age, except for Lynn) met at SeaTac Airport. Our Alaska Airline flight was uneventful until we approached Austin where lowering clouds gave us a bumpy landing. We were a tough-weathered team from the Northwest looking for southern sunshine, but were welcomed instead by raw blustery rain – so much like home in January. In a couple of days the weather cleared, but the temperature dipped in the morning to 17 degrees. There was a weather forecast of possibly 1 or 2 inches of snow in two days, which alarmed a lot of Austin folk who had not seen snow since 1983, but the storm dipped further south and slammed into Houston.

“ESAs: Creating Tomorrow’s Possibilities Today:” This was the theme of the conference. The introduction to the conference program said: We are educational leaders who bring 21st century strategies and philosophies to 21st century classrooms.
I’m not sure what this means. Sounds good. I always get a kick out of the adventuresome or futuristic themes each year with which we are propelled into the conference, as if we might plant terra-formed satellite learning modules on Mars in which all the students through digitized telepathic projection achieve maximum test scores in math and science, or something like that. But as I looked across the plenary session it seemed there was a preponderance of gray heads that looked more like the aging children of the 30s, 40s, and 50s trying to figure out what the 21st century was all about.

I have an ear-worm of Patty Page singing Tra-la-la twiddle-de de-de there’s peace and good will, to wake up in the morning on the Mockingbird Hill in 2-3 waltz time. How can I be a leader who brings 21st century strategies and philosophies to the 21st century classroom? And what the heck are “tomorrow’s possibilities?” -- especially when I can’t figure out today the prescription drug rules that go along with my Medicare. But I determined to bravely plunge into the future with this conference in the hope of engaging philosophies and strategies that would arm me for my leadership role in creating tomorrow’s possibilities today.

Plunging into the 21st Century: I looked for all those sessions that would speed up my education and equip me to grasp the future for today. I stayed away from subjects like governance policies, financial planning services, purchasing co-operatives, self-auditing, Federal relationships, data driven decision making, superintendent evaluation, etc. Now, I have no doubt that these practical processes are essential skills necessary to maintain institutional sustainability and smooth the process of bringing the future possibilities back home to today’s students. No one can even entertain an imminently realized distant destination if the vehicle to get you there and back is broken. This is really important stuff. We need such tool-kit sessions. But I wanted something cutting edge, adventurous, romantic, that would time-travel the future possibilities back to me.

Wandering through the Ed-Tech Maze: So I decided to follow a technology theme through the whole conference. And, boy, was there a lot of Ed-tech related sessions. I was thrilled. I remember making a simple crystal radio with my dad, and even though, by that time, New York City had powerful 50,000 watt radio stations, how thrilled I was to hear a thin crackle of a program from WOR on my tiny 25 cent speaker. This was my field! Bring it on!
I will not comment individually on the 5 Ed-tech related sessions I attended, since there was considerable overlap. I’ll just make some general observations by mashing them all together.

The Reality of Age Specific Sedimentation: We were informed that young people under 25 years of age are digital-world natives, over 25 we are digital-world immigrants. If we could remember black and white TV we are from the dark ages; and if we could remember when AM radio dominated we are from the near stone age-world of electronic technology. Well! I thought I’d go back to the hotel room and use a hand towel for a loin cloth, rent a didgeridoo – since Austin is the music capital of the South – and squat in front of the presenters. (Since I’m the youngest board member in Olympic ESD, perhaps we should create an aboriginal didgeridoo band, or for want of authentic instruments, we could use Jews-harps or hair combs wrapped in tissue paper. I wouldn’t mind renting the film One Million B.C. featuring Raquel Welch in the prime of her youthful development to see how we’re supposed to act.

It was quite evident that the presenters were mostly 30>40 years younger than me, right in that transition zone between “native” and “immigrant.” Could I catch up as an educational leader wanting to bring the future possibilities back to today’s students? Or am I a passive decision maker overwhelmed by the techno-babble of a new digital world in which I have little working knowledge or part?
The presenters were competent and interesting as a whole. But one problem I found was that there were a number of Ed-tech professionals attending each session, and the Q&A sessions afterwards were filled with specialized language that left some stone age board members wanting to pull their loin cloths over their heads. Now that’s a frightful thought. Perhaps we need a session or two to which Ed-tech professionals are committed to silence, with the intent of bringing some of us stone age people up to the present possibilities, no less the future. Maybe then we can put on our pants.

The WEB 2.0 Bonanza: Webinars, Podcasts, Vodcasts, Skype, Wikis, Wii games, Vidyo, asynchronous and synchronous distant learning, Apex learning, OdysseyWare, Metacafe, YouTube, Myspace, Digg, Furl, Twitter, iPods, Del.icio.us, Blogger, RSS, Social Bookmarking, etc., etc., etc. What is all this? The list goes on and on. It seems that with the dot.com bust happening in the 1990s all the unemployed geeks went out to create programs for the WEB 2.0. There are dozens, some of them targeted to a specific user group, others globalized for general use. But what in heaven’s name is WEB 2.0?

Generally in the past, the WWW (World-Wide-Web) has been used for gathering information or sending email while sitting calmly with a cup of coffee in front of a screen. Many of us are passive viewers. But the boom in WEB 2.0 technologies and software is driving new collaborative interactions, changing the way we share opinions, information, and ideas. It is highly interactive, creating communities of knowledge, learning and action over distances. It can be in real-time streaming or delayed packages to be responded to in a timely fashion. There seems to be fad software that comes and goes, others take root and spread, yet others die still-born. But this interactive phenomenon is growing exponentially like a pandemic plague. In 2008, around our planet, an average of 40 thousand people was signing up to the WEB every hour. It is as if the whole world will be eventually connected in some fashion.

President Obama’s political campaign recognized this. It is playing havoc in China and Iran and Belarus and Somalia with influence among the digital-native youths tempted by libertarian ideas in Western post-modern culture. It is also used quite effectively by acquisitive commercial interests targeting the peer fads of youth. Similarly, nefarious radical movements scheming to avenge their anger at modernity are tapping into the emotional needs of disenfranchised youths in poverty searching to find purpose in life. But in a positive vein, we heard that kids in the declining mono-economy of auto-based Michigan are now taking Chinese lessons directly from China so they can be career-marketable in a global economy. The dramatic examples of the power of the WEB are growing with each conference.

Could this WEB 2.0 networking phenomena be a budding revolution that has some likenesses to the Gutenberg revolution in the 15th century? Could it be that the worlds of cultural and political hierarchies are being threatened, the sacred boundaries of isolated tribal identities, mores and beliefs being messed up, and unfamiliar syncretic associations being negotiated and formed? Could this be threatening to the little red schoolhouse culture geared to perpetuate the tradition of preparing kids for the industrial revolution of the 19th century that stays within our national interests? Or is something pulsating in our educational cocoons, ready to burst out into a fledging global civilization? Or are these temporary toys soon to be forgotten with the emergence of new toys soon to be forgotten, but we stone-agers wistfully wanting to return to education more or less the way it was just after World War II? Interesting questions.
But, in the mean time, among the many WEB 2.0 programs out there, what programs work with stability, efficacy and ease for public schools? Is there a kind of “Consumer’s Report” for school districts that evaluate these? Is it left up to the hobby interests of local Ed-technophiles? Or to commissioned guys with underground connections to corporate pushers? Is there an expanded place for ESDs to be centers of evaluation? And what about us digital stone-agers shuffling around in our loin clothes trying to figure out our fiduciary responsibility in all this techno-mayhem?

Are Digitally-Migrating Teachers caught with their Pants Down? This was one of the questions brought up in several sessions, of course stated differently. Who prepares teachers to select, integrate and use efficiently this plethora of software? And can they use the technology well that runs the software? What if the mechanics break down? Can they still teach without the crutches of all the whiz-bang programming?

I attended an amazing session sponsored by the Promethean Corporation. With great speed and dexterity the presenter (who appeared to have done this demonstration many time before) showed us a digital lesson by using a touch sensitive “white board” and classroom voting system that linked formative assessment to Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning domains: a) knowledge, b) comprehension, c) application, d) analysis, e) synthesis, and f) evaluation. It was breath-taking – sort of like an evangelistic meeting where after being exposed to the poverty of one’s former life and the riches of the new way, you rushed to the altar, flopped down on your knees and confessed, “The old ways are gone! I believe, I believe! The White Board is what I need. Sell it to me, please!”
I’m sure my old tough 9th grade English teacher who was 5’2” in literary muscle in all directions and believed that young minds should learn to diagram sentences and read the Great Books to cram a bit of literary nobility into their empty minds would have been impressed. Wouldn’t Richard III’s desperate cry “My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse” make so much more impact with a “white board” voting analysis then hearing old Miss Dow, sweating like a possessed Margaret Rutherford staggering around the front of the room in mesmeric absorption and identity with the old bard, bellowing the desperate cry of the pitiful Shakespearean King soon to be ruthlessly dispatched. Of course the Promethean presenter would retort that the good teacher could still do that, even with the “white board.” But I can still hauntingly hear Miss Dow’s bellow.

Now I’m not against “white boards.” It looks like fun. I think they’re good. I was impressed with Bloom’s Taxonomy and the ability of technology to clarify that progression. The journey from knowledge to performance to critical evaluation is so important in quality education. But there appears to be a climate of fear, reluctance and ignorance among many “dark age” teachers to such innovative tools. Who can nurse them to adequacy, if not proficiency with these new teaching tools? It seems to me this requires not a one-shot workshop any more than a football coach teaching his offense the new Wildcat formation can do it in one sitting seminar lecture. Do ESDs have an increasing role to play here beyond what they already do?

What’s Missing in the Quest to Bring Home to Today’s Students the Reality of Future Possibilities? When I see a theme like this at our conference, I ask what kind of future possibilities are we trying to create in the present for the student? Is it an apocalyptic End Game? An ideological utopian fantasy? A plain, nice world where everybody gets along and can shop all they want at a local mall, even in Haiti and Yemen and Bangladesh and Tibet, no less Peoria Illinois, and do so without reference to the non-renewable resource carrying capacity of this tiny planet? Do we have some nostalgic quasi-religious view of the American Dream that does not take into account global realities – a bizarre belief in the invisible hand of capitalism for Americans that exempts us from life-style self examination and global citizenship?

What do we mean by tomorrow’s possibilities? Coming home from Austin I read that we are on the cusp of 3D flat-panel TV’s in our homes where we can see the awesome threat of a 350 pound lineman charging a quarterback, or the topographical relief of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders bouncing their way in front of us. But the author went on to say that after that will come the holographic home theater where we will not be watching “Dancing with the Stars.” They will be dancing around us. And what potential does this have for video games and cell phones and iPods to which many youths are committed hours every day? Are these tomorrow’s possibilities for which we want to prepare our students today?

It sounds like I’m a Luddite, anti-progress, anti-technology. Absolutely not! But I’ve rarely, if ever, been to an educational conference where we talk about penultimate teleological issues. What is life all about on this tiny planet? It seems that the history of the philosophy of education, going back as far as the axial age of the 5th century B.C.E., grappled with these challenging questions. Do the interdependent systems of nature that make life possible have no advocates? Where are the rigors of bio-ethics, social ethics, philosophy, history, anthropology, political science, literature, and all the arts? Where are the sacrificial investments in the super teachers and coaches in these areas, other than math and science? Are there no deep life-lessons to be gained from the liberal arts (excuse that naughty “L” word) and the humanities?

Of course we can retreat by saying we don’t want to steal from the ultimate sacred provinces of parenting and religion. We’ve been through the pain of being viciously attacked for “values based education.” But I contend that a quality, well rounded education in the great humanities (without fancy red herring labels or euphemisms) is the last bulwark against the heartless commodification of our youth into becoming breathless automatons in the sad last dance of a mind-weakened consumer society educated to technological literacy without mind and soul.

Can the new Ed-technologies become effective tools for a broad and liberating education? I think so. But I sure need to learn more. As a digital stone-age immigrant in a loin cloth I now see the theme of my personal conference in Austin as: Creating the Lost Possibilities of Yesterday Today.