School ended on Saturday(a makeup ice day)though I am working for a couple more weeks, teaching workshops, etc.    So I’ve been a bit quiet due to the rush of end of school, library, and family events, but also just needing some time to back off and reflect.

There’s a lot to process about the last year, and about my own exploration and sharing of web 2.0 tools.  As Christian Long depicts it, (thanks for the image!) we’ve gotten on the School 2.0 flight.  Only thing is, we are embarking into uncharted territory.

In a  post at Dare to Dream, Barbara, a K-8 administrator, describes her introduction to a Life Science model of education.    The tenets of it are:

• Equilibrium is a precursor to death
• Living systems move to the edge of chaos
• Self organization and emergence take place
• Systems can not be directed along a linear path

She comments: “Being comfortable with living on the edge of chaos is a real challenge for our educational system ( and myself as a type A personality) but I believe those of us who are embracing all things 2.0 see this as a reality.”

This year has felt that way.  Some days or moments you can see the “emergence” happening, a thread starting to develop, real change happening, and it is very exciting.  You can feel the “living system.”

Other days, it just seems like chaos, not organizable, and overwhelming.   

But it also strikes me that we have to think about what happens when equilibrium and the status quo are disrupted.   It can be uncomfortable, frustrating, and even make people feel angry.   For those who love change, it can be very energizing, but also frustrating when not everyone ‘gets” what the change is about.

One of the reasons I think educational reform is so difficult is that we try to find “top down” models that can be applied anywhere, but as this theory points out, “systems” cannot be directed along a linear path.   Every system, at every school, even within the same school district is different.   There has to be a fundamental respect and understanding for, and celebration of that.  We also have to respect and anticipate some of that discomfort, and work with staff on it.

 

Web 2.0 tools and new technologies have introduced that chaos into our systems in a major way.   Knowledge is a more flexible entity than the way it traditionally is presented in schools, textbooks, or on standardized tests—it is ever changing, and growing.   

As Barbara points out, citing another blog, Konrad’s Notes:

“We use blogs, wikis, podcasts, and many other Web 2.0 tools to help students understand that knowledge is an active process of construction and not something that arrives in a textbook, neatly compartmentalized into chapters or units.

How can we possibly help our students be co-contributors and researchers if we ourselves don’t engage as learners and experience what it means to construct knowledge?”

We cannot help our students understand the flexible nature of knowledge unless we ourselves are life long learners—be we librarians, teachers, administrators, or parents.   We have to model what we are asking our students to do and treat information as a dynamic and changing thing, not a static set of beliefs.  

And I honestly believe that life-long learners learn from everything.   We have to believe that knowledge and wisdom can be found everywhere, in many different fields, mediums, etc.  And we should encourage our students to seek connections everywhere.   That is one of the core benefits of utilizing web 2.0 tools in schools.  We can’t cordon off a certain zone of knowledge and tell students it isn’t valid or available to them and remain credible as learners ourselves.

But also as educators, we also have to acknowledge, I would add, that everyone learns differently.  Just as we expect students to have many different learning modalities and preferences, we have to expect that teachers/librarians/administrators will as well. 

I was struck by Barbara’s description of how her faculty worked on 21^st century skills during inservice meetings.  She commented on their end of year discussion that in discussing technology literacy, “much of the discussion was about pedagogy not the tools.” As Patrick Higgins also commented at Dare to Dream, “The conversations I have been having with my staff lately center less on technology, but more on the thinking we will need to keep pace with its capabilities.”

This was a good reminder to me as we move forward as a campus on this uncharted “flight” to keep the discussion focused on the teaching and learning and “the thinking we will need.”  As I teach workshops this summer, I want to make that focus clear.   

Fundamentally, the key to adapting to all of this change is flexibility and openness—openness to the chaos, so to speak.  And that is where I see the struggle in schools.  Schools are often built on “tradition,” a core set of knowledge, and creating a sense of stability for students.   So for schools to both embrace that sense of permanence, while also embracing a sense of constant change, is an interesting paradox.      

As we take this uncharted flight, we’ll have all of our baggage with us.  The difference is, we won’t entirely know where we are going until we get there.  But this trip isn’t about the destination, because as the cliché goes, it’s about the journey. 

As we end this school year, I enter the summer with a sense of adventure and hope.  Let’s see where we go.  

Photo Credits: 
http://thinklab.typepad.com/think_lab/2007/05/no_limits_only_.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/troybthompson/333548881/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidereal/248660387/