ICTEDU: A Space for Education in Irish Society

Throughout Ireland, north and south, throughout the “English-speaking” world, throughout most of industrialized nations, debates about the future of education are raging. In most nations the dominant narrative of this debate focuses on concepts such as “rigour,” and “privatization,” “higher standards” and “testing,” “teacher accountability” and “efficiency.”

Bernie Goldbach circles the myth

Though Ireland has avoided the worst, the most reductive, of these conversations, unlike Britain, the United States, and Australia, they remain significant. In April Ruairi Quinn told the Independent that “teachers are not overpaid, but certainly said they are nowhere near productive enough,” and continued, "We've reduced entry teachers pay by 15 per cent plus – they're not overpaid. But still, they could be more productive, we could get greater outcomes from them." In other words, if there is a problem with Irish education, the problem lies with inefficient teachers. This is just as the Tories in Britain and the Republicans in the US claim – German evidence notwithstanding – that the problem with those nations’ economies lies entirely with lazy, overpaid union workers.

No wonder this month’s Organisational Review Programme (ORP) of the Department of Education found Quinn’s organization “too focused on the management of short-term issues,” which has, “crowded out the development of strategic, longer-term thinking.”

Ireland is wasting time and energy worrying about “efficiency,” “saving money,” “teacher pay,” and battles over the Junior and Leaving Certs, instead of investing in imagining, and moving towards, a lifespan educational structure which will carry Ireland into the future. In this, this nation is hardly alone, but perhaps the stakes are much higher for a small island nation which knows the ability of education to transform a society, which saw the changes of the 1970s and 1980s, in all levels of schooling, lead a societal and socio-economic revolution.

So, on 19 May, in Thurles, County Tipperary, a group of Irish educators, students, technology leaders, and other stakeholders, will gather for a different conversation. This year’s ICT in Education Conference | Comhdháil ICT san Oideachas (ICTEDU) is devoting its day to the broadest possible definitions of technology and education, with “technology” defined as it was by the ancient Greeks who developed the term, as “the art of manipulating the world,” and education defined as individual and social models of learning which we engage in all of our lives.

Taking the Leaving Cert

To begin those conversations, we will not focus on “rigour” – the making of things difficult for the sake of difficulty, nor on “efficiency,” an odd concept to embrace as we discuss the raising of our children, nor on “standards,” which involve statistical tests originally designed to ensure the consistency of barrels of Guinness. Instead we will begin with the idea of creating “learning space,” real, virtual, even imagined, where every student, at every age, has the opportunity to not just succeed, but to thrive.

I am coming to Ireland from the United States to help in this conversation with an American local schools superintendent (Dr. Pamela R. Moran) from Virginia. Though we come from a nation which, we believe, is doing almost everything wrong educationally from the perspective of government policy, we come with real experience in changing those conversations, and, in many of the educators of Ireland, we have found kindred spirits.

Dr. Moran and I have worked in our schools to create a sense of learning space which transcends classroom walls both physically and technologically, which helps students learn how to conjure their own learning environments anywhere, which develops creativity as well as skill and a knowledge base through human communication tools both ancient and brand new. We call this idea “The Iridescent Classroom,” a learning environment which glows transparently with contagious creativity and contagious excitement for knowledge, a learning environment which embraces this century’s primary learning and growth model, search, connect, communicate. Search for information and expertise, connect with that knowledge wherever it can be found, communicate what you have learned, what you are learning, and how your thinking is changing.

We do not, however, bring something for Ireland to copy. We do not even “copy” within the 26 schools which Dr. Moran administers or the various schools I work with, nor even from classroom to classroom down a school corridor. Instead we offer seeds, which we hope will take root in the rich, scholar embedded soil of Ireland, and will grow here in new ways which may enlighten all of us. As Seán Cottrell, director of the Irish Primary Principals Network, argued in an opinion piece this month, this is not the time to worry about comparing Ireland to the often fraudulent test results from nations like China, but to instead rely on Ireland’s rich expertise and rich, unique history to continue to move toward something new and powerful for Ireland’s future.

Please join us, if possible, in Thurles on 19 May. This will hopefully be an important addition to Ireland’s conversation about what education must be, and how this society invests in this essential creation of the future. You may register at http://www.lit.ie/ictedu as well view a video describing the beginning of this discussion.

- Ira Socol

If learning is to be constant, Space, Time, Technology, Pedagogy, Curriculum Must be the Variables

Join us, if you can, for a deep dive into these concepts at ICT in Education Conference (Comhdháil ICT san Oideachas) in Thurles, County Tipperary, in the Republic of Ireland - 18/19May 2012

If we insist on teaching Algebra in our schools, not once but twice, the least we can do is to actually use it when we think about education. And here's the equation: If (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) are constant, x will always be the variable. In order to make x the constant, (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) must be variable. In all circumstances where x = student achievement and (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) represent Time, Space, Technology, Pedagogy, and Curriculum.
 
In simpler terms, if all students are to succeed, everything else in and about the school must be flexible.

This is the easy-to-understand, mathematical way Hamilton, Michigan Superintendent Dave Tebo re-worked my thoughts a couple of nights ago on Twitter.

I have written (and talked) a lot about the history of education, and why it "looks" the way it does, but without repeating all of that, let's just say that the linear, time-constructed, subject-divided, age-organized, one method at a time, system of education does not really match with the way most humans learn. It never has, and it certainly does not in this century.

The Guardian demonstrates how learning can happen in this century

Technologies define "the school" and can either separate it from, or connect it to, education. The first technology of "school" is time. We separate "learning time" from "non-learning time." The second technology of "school" is the division of students and subjects. Boxes are created separating eight-year-olds from ten-year-olds, thirteen-year-olds from fifteen-year-olds, and then separating "language" from "history" from "maths" from "arts." The third technology of "school" is the built environment, the walls, furniture, floors, ceilings, lighting, surfaces, et al, of the place. The fourth technology of "school" lies in the information and communication system options in place, from chalkboard and paper and pencils to mobiles and blogs and cameras.

And if we are going to change "teaching places" into "learning spaces" all of these technologies must be re-imagined in wholly new ways, because the only way to make learning available to all is to re-create "school" as a constantly variable space - physical space, temporal space, virtual space, imagined space - which constantly flexes to the needs of the learners and the learning community.

Time, Space, the pedagogy of "Attention," all flex in this sixth grade language classroom

The physical spaces where students spend their time must be comfortable, adaptable, and offer a world of options. Sit in a chair or on the floor, on a pillow or on the windowsill, touching friends or consciously alone, standing at a table or sprawled across the floor, in bright light or dim, with noise surrounding, or headphones creating one's own aural place, or with the rain splashing your window view. The information and communication technology must offer the same, with information flowing via video or audio, print on paper or print on screens, through tablets and mobiles and laptops and larger touchscreens, via pens or pencils, on paper or whiteboards or washable floors or the glass of windows.

The Boeing 787, reconceiving the airliner meant
missing deadlines.

Time must change as well. We need many fewer deadlines and many more commitments to deep learning. My sister could read - and read well (as in both decoding and comprehension) - at age two. I haven't yet caught up in decoding to where she was then. Turns out, it doesn't matter in terms of what we know, or what we can do. Einstein - famously - struggled in school. Steve Wozniak couldn't handle computer science or math courses. Norman Maclean published his first book when he was 73-years-old. People have their own timelines and schedules, and we can either respect that fact, or we can do a great deal of damage. In addition, here are some projects which have arrived long after their deadlines, aircraft from the B-29 to the 787-Dreamliner, spacecraft from Freedom 7 to Apollo 11, vehicles from the Ford Model T to everything from Tesla, and a whole lot of other groundbreaking efforts. If you want your students to copy from Wikipedia set deadlines, if you want original thinking - well, that's a lot less time-predictable.

We also need many fewer "schedules." Can kids work at their desks or at studio tables with a team like adults do? Can kids work on something even when you want to move on? Can kids take breaks when they need them?

Choice in space, inputs, ICT...

Of course subject division must end. Watching that Guardian video (above) we can see how all of the artificial lines we draw are absurd. In every situation, in every analysis, in every bit of learning, the wider the context the more "entry paths" exist, and the deeper the resultant understanding. Can you read Dickens or Fitzgerald without studying capitalism? History? Can you enter either of those realms without knowledge of maths and sciences? Can you even begin to operate arithmetic without knowing culture? You can only separate these things if your goal is the shallow, "testable," understanding so prized by national educational leaders.

If all students are to succeed, everything else in and about the school must be flexible. And perhaps the place to start is with this question... if it's "only in school" you might need to get rid of it. Forty years ago a German educator said, "Only in school would you find thirty people working on the same thing not allowed to speak to each other," a classic observation. Here are some others: Only in school will you find people sitting in traditional school furniture. Only in school will you find people working on computers without food and drink. Only in schools will you find absolute scheduling which consistently interrupts work... Go on, make your own list...

From gum chewing to seating, lighting to time, eating to work schedule, school is the most regimented place in our societies, training people for something which, if it ever existed, lies deep in our past, and failing to either offer all students a chance, or to help our children learn how to manage their own lives.

So the challenge is to recreate - to turn those 19th Century "Teaching Places" into contemporary "Learning Spaces" which cross the entire realm of the educational experience. Our children, our world, need us to do that.

- Ira Socol