B2tween Creativity & Safety

Inspired by Sandy Speicher’s vision of the designed school day of the future, reader Shelly Blake-Plock shared his own predictions of that ideal day. How close are we to this? The post was written in December 2009, and Blake-Plock says he’s seeing some of these already beginning to come to fruition.

1. DESKS
The 21st century does not fit neatly into rows. Neither should your students. Allow the network-based concepts of flow, collaboration, and dynamism help you rearrange your room for authentic 21st century learning.

2. LANGUAGE LABS
Foreign language acquisition is only a smartphone away. Get rid of those clunky desktops and monitors and do something fun with that room.
3. COMPUTERS
Ok, so this is a trick answer. More precisely this one should read: ‘Our concept of what a computer is’. Because computing is going mobile and over the next decade we’re going to see the full fury of individualized computing via handhelds come to the fore. Can’t wait.
4. HOMEWORK
The 21st century is a 24/7 environment. And the next decade is going to see the traditional temporal boundaries between home and school disappear. And despite whatever Secretary Duncan might say, we don’t need kids to ‘go to school’ more; we need them to ‘learn’ more. And this will be done 24/7 and on the move.

5. THE ROLE OF STANDARDIZED TESTS IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS
The AP Exam is on its last legs. The SAT isn’t far behind. Over the next ten years, we will see Digital Portfolios replace test scores as the #1 factor in college admissions.
6. DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION AS A SIGN OF DISTINGUISHED TEACHER
The 21st century is customizable. In ten years, the teacher who hasn’t yet figured out how to use tech to personalize learning will be the teacher out of a job. Differentiation won’t make you ‘distinguished’; it’ll just be a natural part of your work.
7. FEAR OF WIKIPEDIA
Wikipedia is the greatest democratizing force in the world right now. If you are afraid of letting your students peruse it, it’s time you get over yourself.
8. PAPERBACKS
Books were nice. In ten years’ time, all reading will be via digital means. And yes, I know, you like the ‘feel’ of paper. Well, in ten years’ time you’ll hardly tell the difference as ‘paper’ itself becomes digitized.

9. ATTENDANCE OFFICES
Bio scans. ‘Nuff said.
10. LOCKERS
A coat-check, maybe.
11. I.T. DEPARTMENTS
Ok, so this is another trick answer. More subtly put: IT Departments as we currently know them. Cloud computing and a decade’s worth of increased wifi and satellite access will make some of the traditional roles of IT — software, security, and connectivity — a thing of the past. What will IT professionals do with all their free time? Innovate. Look to tech departments to instigate real change in the function of schools over the next twenty years.
12. CENTRALIZED INSTITUTIONS
School buildings are going to become ‘homebases’ of learning, not the institutions where all learning happens. Buildings will get smaller and greener, student and teacher schedules will change to allow less people on campus at any one time, and more teachers and students will be going out into their communities to engage in experiential learning.
13. ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL SERVICES BY GRADE
Education over the next ten years will become more individualized, leaving the bulk of grade-based learning in the past. Students will form peer groups by interest and these interest groups will petition for specialized learning. The structure of K-12 will be fundamentally altered.
14. EDUCATION SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO INTEGRATE TECHNOLOGY
This is actually one that could occur over the next five years. Education Schools have to realize that if they are to remain relevant, they are going to have to demand that 21st century tech integration be modeled by the very professors who are supposed to be preparing our teachers.
15. PAID/OUTSOURCED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
No one knows your school as well as you. With the power of a PLN (professional learing networks) in their back pockets, teachers will rise up to replace peripatetic professional development gurus as the source of schoolwide professional development programs. This is already happening.
16. CURRENT CURRICULAR NORMS
There is no reason why every student needs to take however many credits in the same course of study as every other student. The root of curricular change will be the shift in middle schools to a role as foundational content providers and high schools as places for specialized learning.
17. PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCE NIGHT
Ongoing parent-teacher relations in virtual reality will make parent-teacher conference nights seem quaint. Over the next ten years, parents and teachers will become closer than ever as a result of virtual communication opportunities. And parents will drive schools to become ever more tech integrated.
18. TYPICAL CAFETERIA FOOD
Nutrition information + handhelds + cost comparison = the end of $3.00 bowls of microwaved mac and cheese. At least, I so hope so.

19. OUTSOURCED GRAPHIC DESIGN AND WEB DESIGN
You need a website/brochure/promo/etc.? Well, for goodness sake just let your kids do it. By the end of the decade — in the best of schools — they will be.
20. HIGH SCHOOL ALGEBRA 1
Within the decade, it will either become the norm to teach this course in middle school or we’ll have finally woken up to the fact that there’s no reason to give algebra weight over statistics and I.T. in high school for non-math majors (and they will have all taken it in middle school anyway).
21. PAPER
In ten years’ time, schools will decrease their paper consumption by no less than 90%. And the printing industry and the copier industry and the paper industry itself will either adjust or perish.

Source: http://www.21stcenturyfluency.com/

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Imagine a web where our browsers connected directly to each other to do voice, video, media sharing and run applications, using P2P and real-time APIs, rather than going through centralized servers that controlled traffic and permissions. That's a potent idea and if implemented properly could future-proof a part of the web from authoritarian crack-downs, disruptions by disasters and more. It could also establish a permanent lawless zone of connected devices with no central place to stop anyone from doing anything in particular.

It just so happens that something like that may now be under development in the most official of venues. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced today the formation of a new Web Real-Time Communications Working Group to define client-side APIs to enable Real-Time Communications in Web browsers, without the need for server-side implementation. The Group is chaired by engineers from Google and Ericsson. It sounds like Opera Unite to me (see video below), but democratized across all browsers. It sounds like it could be a very big deal.

Here's how Opera described its Unite technology at launch two years ago. Opera is always several years ahead of its time.

This explains what decentralized web standard is.

Source: http://is.gd/TQhOGK

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This article is from Dr. Steve Wheeler's Blog.

I want to inspire you to reach farther. Most teachers are limited to their classroom, or to the environment within which they and their students can interact. Some may be fortunate enough to escape from the classroom to lead outdoor education trips, or work within a forest school, spending class time exploring and learning from their surroundings. Some teachers are even lucky enough to conduct a comparative studies trip in a foreign country. Most teachers though, usually find themselves trapped within the four walls of the classroom or lecture hall for much of their working week. And yet with the new social media tools, we can all be worldwide educators. All we need is something important to say, and a tool such as this blog as a vehicle to say it with.  It never ceased to amaze me how many students contact me to say how much they enjoy reading this blog. Some have told me how much it has inspired them to learn more, explore, take risks, and reach further.

This kind of positive affrirmation is very important to me and to other edubloggers. Personally, it's one of the main reasons I continue to blog and invest my time in it. Knowing that what I'm writing, and the richness of the subsequent dialogue are having a such positive impact on someone, is one of the main reasons I blog so regularly.  This morning I happened to stumble upon an interesting Twitter stream hashtag - #qaz11 - which I quickly realised was being generated by a group of students in the care of my old friend Jose Luis Garcia (well worth following him on Twitter: @JL3001, over at the University of Cantabria in Spain. Although the tweets were in Spanish, I was able to translate them using Tweetdeck, and I followed for a little while. The students were discussing the merits of the 10 Teaching with Twitter activities I posted on this blog. It was interesting to see them analyse and evaluate the potential of each of the activities within their own professional context as trainee teachers. Without me actually being there, my thoughts were having an impact on the students' learning - my ideas were helping them to frame their thinking, promote discussion and engage critically with the topic.  The same is happening all over the world, every hour, every day as teachers begin to share their ideas and advice, best practice and top tips across a global platform - the blog. We have become a new breed of teacher Quite literally, we are worldwide educators, with students in every country of the world, who read our blogs, think, argue, learn and then go off to try out some ideas. We don't always see them, and we may never meet them, but they are there, and they are learning.   So don't limit yourself to seeing the four walls of your classroom as the full extent of your world. Reach further - and become a worldwide educator. You have the technology.  Multi-media brought the world into your classroom. Social media will take your classroom into the world.

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