MISSION:
Preparing today’s learners for the demands of tomorrow.
VISION:
If you’ve ever wondered what the future holds, you’re not alone. The VITA-Learn board met for a day-long visioning session and tried to answer one simple question:
“What will the ideal classroom look like in the year 2012?”
They outlined the attributes of a future classroom, and made lists of the skills that would be important to develop in 21st Century learners. Interestingly, every participant automatically assumed that education in the future would be technology-infused, and in fact, nearly every attribute of a future classroom involved the use of modern digital technology. After a full day of visioning, one thing became abundantly clear:
Technology is no longer a choice; rather, technology is an assumed part of the school workday in every modern classroom.
Vermont is one of the only states in the union that currently allocates zero state dollars for technology funding in schools. As each year passes, the statewide lack of technology funding in education will increasingly impede the way towards our children’s future.
Consider that our current educational system was designed in the late 1800s to accommodate an agricultural society in order to prepare workers for manufacturing jobs. Our school system hasn’t changed substantially in the past 100 years and now less than 1% of Americans are directly employed in agriculture and a mere 12% of the American workforce holds a manufacturing job…and that percentage has been declining annually for over 50 years.
Consider that technology is empowering foreign societies to compete in what was once an American-dominated marketplace. As America loses its competitive edge in the scientific disciplines, countries like China and India are gaining ground at an alarming rate. We’ve already lost the bulk of our manufacturing jobs to foreign markets, and now foreign markets are rapidly gaining market share in the white-collar disciplines.
The same is true for academia. Scholarship is changing as the internet expands and the world flattens. Wikipedia creates new academic arguments on the reliability of informational sources. Collaborative writing tools give rise to new questions on copyright, authorship, and plagiarism. Technical training in US college is affected as an increasing number of India’s and China’s engineers come online. Every year, less Americans train to be engineers because those jobs can be increasingly outsourced for lower pay.
If our educational system is going to prepare students adequately for lifeGandalf, then we need to foster the skills that they will need when they graduate. Consider how new technology and wireless networks are empowering people to work from anywhere. Vermont, a state that values education and is dedicated to supporting small independent business, has an unrivaled opportunity to thrive in the emerging global technological marketplace where more people are working from remote locations.
Vermont’s future has not been written yet, but one thing is clear, if we don’t update our educational systems our children will not get the opportunity they need to thrive.
Our schools must be modernized. Our teachers need training. Our students need a fighting chance. We cannot modernize our educational system without integrating technology with best teaching practices.
Preparation for the Changing Workplace
While technology can solve problems, it also creates new problems that education can solve. Consider this:
Our schools, colleges, and universities need to prepare students for jobs that do not exist yet…using technologies that have not been invented yet…in order to solve problems that haven’t even been identified yet.- Information taken from The Jobs Revolution: Changing How America Works, written by Steve Gunderson (former congressman), Roberts Jones (ex-Assistant Secretary of Labor) and Kathryn Scanland (social researcher)
The students entering first grade this year, will graduate in the year 2020. We’ve already seen how rapidly technology has changed in the past decade; imagine what the workplace will look like when these students graduate. Ask yourself, “What kind of preparation do our students need for life in the future?”
According to U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley quoted in 2004, “None of the top 10 jobs that will exist in 2010, exist today.” The need for skilled labor is on the rise but as yet we are unaware of what the marketable skills will be. As recently as 1991, less than half the jobs in America demanded skilled labor. However, by 2015 more than 75% of American jobs will require skilled labor.
Careers are Shortening
Technology is single-handedly transforming our definition of a “career”. The prospect of lifetime employment is gone. Workers are holding jobs for shorter periods, and even changing occupations, as a normal course of action. According to the Department of Labor, employees ages 45-54 will average more than 7 years at each job they hold over the course of a career. However adults in the younger bracket, ages 25-39 will only stay and average of 2.9 years. More than half of the employees ages 20-24 will stay at a job less than a year.
Job tenure is shortening as American workers change careers to stay gainfully employed. With the rapid pace of technological change switching occupations is commonplace, job descriptions change frequently, and employees are forced into becoming lifelong learners.
Globalization
“Non-native speakers of English now outnumber native speakers 3 to 1, according to English-language expert David Crystal, whose numerous books include English as a Global Language. In Asia alone, the number of English-users has topped 350 million—roughly the combined populations of the United States, Britain and Canada.“– Quote from March 2007 Newsweek article.
It’s not so much that America is going global, but rather the rest of the world is arriving on our doorstep. Foreign students are adopting our native tongue at a staggering rate. According to the British Council, 80% of the information stored electronically is written in English. Worldwide internet usage is causing English to be transformed into the global language for commerce and technology.
As the progression towards a global language marches forward, foreign nationals will be empowered to compete for jobs that were previously considered “American jobs”, participate in American commerce, and compete with American entrepreneurs. Internet-based global communication standards will insure that people will not be constrained by their geography. Because we aren’t preparing our students for the inevitable global environment, the rest of the world is bypassing us. It is happening now.
Most businesses are aware of the changes, and each year more jobs are transformed by collaborations that cross national boundaries. Instant communication across continents and time zones is now possible, and even commonplace. As a result new business models are emerging. Jobs are changing. The preparatory skills a worker needs in order to thrive in this global economy are changing. Our educational system needs to adapt if America wants to remain competitive. Our educational system has a responsibility to respond.
Learning to Learn
Many of the jobs of the future haven’t even been defined yet. Our opinion leaders continuously point out the need for students to develop adaptability skills. According to the book, The Jobs Revolution: Changing How America Works, “The most important thing a student can do today, is learn to be adaptable, and to learn to learn. Rather than focusing on specific technologies or specific problems, we need to equip students with those concepts that are common to all problems, all technologies, and all skills, ranging from workplace engineering to ethics to entrepreneurship.“ According to the Department of Labor, our current school-age children will be likely to have an average of 3 different occupations and as many as 30 different jobs. One of the most useful preparatory skills we can teach them is to
become lifelong learners.
Teaching the Skills Needed for Tomorrow, Today
The Vita-Learn summit yielded a list of skills that our Vermont children will need to develop in order to thrive in an environment of constant change.
Attributes of a Future Classroom
The educational system of the future will not necessarily have square brick and mortar rooms or strict schedules. The following attributes will characterize the future classroom:
Empowerment Technology
“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”-William Gibson
Technology innovations are surfacing at an increasing rate of speed. New technology is getting more “user friendly” and therefore is being adopted and integrated faster than before. Public schools have a responsibility to provide equity of access to technology. To keep up, schools will need to prepare students with the willingness and curiosity to frequently learn new tools. Take a look at this list of recent technological advances.
What does every item on this list have in common?
The common thread with all of these modern technologies is that they allow for both uploading and downloading of information. The internet is now a two-way street. Students of the technological age are becoming regular authors of digital content, and not just consumers of digital products produced by others. Even the internet, which started off as a giant library of sorts, has now evolved into a worldwide conversation. The Internet has been transformed by podcasts, blogs, and wikis, into one giant global portal, and everyone is invited to participate. Anyone can post opinions and reactions in a public forum. The 2-way capacity of Web 2.0 technology is opening up new avenues for educators, and new opportunities to reach visual and auditory learners.
A second common thread is the ease of use of digital information: ease of accessing, ease of sharing, ease of communicating, ease of obtaining software solutions. However even though modern technology has become “easy”, we still need to think to use it. It’s not about the technology. It’s not about the machines. It’s about what we do with them!
Centralized Network Access
It will be critical to have a place to share all information. Whether it’s best practices, curriculum, or teaching strategies, a central portal will provide the place for social networking among teachers, to foster discussion, and could be home to professional development.
Professional Development
“Many times, the students are digital natives of the technology. They understand how it works. But the teachers and adults are digital immigrants. So there’s a cultural shift there.” -Bill Romond, Vermont State Educational Technology Coordinator
GandalfOften our students know more about using technology than our teachers, and when students get bored, they know how to bypass the system. We have to integrate technology into the curriculum if we expect to engage the students, and for students to perceive school as being relevant.
Many teachers are new at technology and they need training to use and integrate technology well. Preparing our teachers will require a readily available training program for our educators including:
Role of Feedback
“More time could be spent on getting students to take more responsibility for their own learning by providing them with the tools necessary to evaluate their own work.” – Carol Teitelman, Director of Keystones Leadership Program for the State of Pennsylvania
Assessment is an important part of learning but we often think only of summative forms; the end of chapter test; the final exam; or the state high-stakes test.~ However ongoing formative assessments of students, and frequent feedback can be important in deciding next steps. Technology is ideal for providing ongoing progression-based feedback on low-level skills that students are willing to accept and work with to improve.
· When student know where they stand, they can ask for help.
GOALS
1. INFORMATION SHARING
Be an information-sharing clearinghouse with a connecting state “portal’ (of sorts). Establish best practices and share.
2. LEADING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Lead and/or foster systems for training.
3. TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS
Create buying consortia. Establish best practice solutions so access doesn’t stand in the way of education. Keep a constant eye on the technology.
4. ADVOCACY AND PARTNERSHIPS
Develop and sustain partnerships and advocate for best practice in technology locally, statewide, and nationally.
5. CONTINUE TO DEVELOP AND PROVIDE HIGH QUALITY TEACHER INSERVICE
Encourage schools to support attendance at VermontFest, Dynamic Landscapes, The Pizza Meeting, and the Security Conference
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