Barriers to 21st Century Tools

As evidenced by the litany of school boards, schools, and individual educators embracing 21^st Century teaching and learning tools, they have the potential to be extremely beneficial in the classroom. That said, implementing 21^st Century Tools does not come without a
few drawbacks, which I will discuss below. 

1) Existing infrastructure: Every school is unique, and has their own systems of technologies that they currently use. The question is – how do you incorporate 21^st Century Tools, which are very free form and constantly evolving with the infrastructure/technologies that already exist in the school? How do they mesh together in a way that can be educationally
beneficial?

2) Resistance: Consider the ‘good old days’ as a student – learning was lectures, notes, and textbooks as our only source of knowledge. For many of us, this is our learning background, and this creates resistance to learning new things. Many teachers do not see these 21^st Century tools as an advantage, find them gimmicky, or view them as distractions, not enhancements to learning.To paraphrase what Sir Ken Robinson says in the video below - they are trying to teach the future by repeating what's been done in the past.

3) Time: With most teachers, time is at a premium. It is difficult to find time in the day to get the ‘regular’ daytime stuff done in our job, let alone teachers with families, teachers who coach, or teachers who hold supplemental jobs. How are we supposed to find the time necessary to learn many of these 21^st Century tools? Now, having said that, it is my personal opinion that we as teachers do not need to be experts in all tools – just that we be accepting that students may
choose to use them when they produce things in school. If this is the mindset we take, it can make the incorporation of 21^st Century tools a bit more smooth. 

Social Networking in Education: A Personal Perspective

I recently read a quotation about social networking in the healthcare field. The writer said “in order to educate and communicate as a professional, you have to go where the audience is.” I found this quote to be incredibly compelling, because I feel as though it applies to the classroom as well. Social media is how students get their news and share their lives – so wouldn’t it make sense that we, as educators, follow suit?

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I work at a school where science, technology, and mathematics are the focus. Students in our STEP program arrive, laptops in hand, to be prepared for their future. While we have not been obligated to use a social networking tool, we have been asked to look at a variety of learning management suites, including but not limited to Edmodo, Schoology, and the eLearning LMS. In essence, we are using these suites as teacher webpages, however each of them has their own social networking component, should teachers happen to want to use them. I find that many of my associates at school have decided that these tools are an effective way to communicate with students and parents, and have chosen to embrace their preferred tool. If we are truly looking to ‘go where the audience is,’ and considering our job is to prepare students to be productive members of society, I believe that it is incredibly important for social networking to become an obligation at many levels of a school infrastructure.

Transparency in education is the ability for parents, universities, community members, peers, and related organizations to see what is happening in the classroom and at your school – I see no reason why leaders should not be transparent.

My school, Lockerby Composite School, has embraced the idea of social networking. We have several Twitter accounts (https://twitter.com/LockerbyNet, https://twitter.com/LCScancerdrive) that we use to keep parents and students aware of the ongoings in our school.

A teacher that I follow who has become very involved in social networking is Kyle Pearce. He is a teacher from Belle River, Ontario who piloted a paperless classroom using iPads, and uses social networking as a way to gather resources, network with other like minded teachers, and communicate great ideas in math! (https://twitter.com/MathletePearce, http://tapintoteenminds.com)

Social Networking in a Leadership Role

From a leadership standpoint, I can see a lot of effective uses of social networking in a school. Social networking is real-time. This means that as educators, we can provide current information on student achievement, meetings, as well as important events and innovative ideas that are happening around the school. As the program leader of mathematics at my school, I sometimes find it difficult to touch base with everybody in my department in a timely manner when I want information to be conveyed. Social networking (be it twitter, schoology, or other) provides me the opportunity to relay any information without having to find face time. In a similar manner, social networking can be used to keep families of our student body aware of school events in an engaging manner. Finally, social networking could be used as a method of offering professional development – an example of which could be hosting a virtual staff meeting. Teachers could watch an informative video on their own timelines, which increases the convenience of these PD opportunities.

Obviously, there are a few caveats when using social networking tools – it is important to plan ahead before embracing social media tools, and it is important to be careful about what exactly is posted online, both for privacy reasons and others.