Implementing 21st century skills in my school

It´s a foregone conclusion that schools need to have up-to-date technology in place if our students are to be successful. I hardly think one would find disagreement. Nor do I think any parent or educator would disagree that students need to know how to use the latest technology. How is the issue.

Funding is an obvious problem, but not one I want to address here. We have to assume that someone will wise up and provide the funds needed to make the necessary changes. We must spend our time and resources planning what needs to change, and how we will implement the changes.

First, schools must motivate teachers to learn and use technology. I don’t think this will be successful if it is forced. Naturally some teachers will be better at it than others, some more intrinsically motivated than others, but that is the nature of teaching: not all teachers are good teachers. A combination of incentives and professional development offerings would be a good start. Saturday sessions, with incentives to attend, could be offered to bring the techno-immigrants up to speed with such basics as the Office package, Windows, e-mail, basic internet use, etc. Ample training on technologies used by the school should be offered as well – how to post to the school website, use the electronic gradebook, etc. After a couple of years this kind of thing must be mandatory, possibly requiring teachers to demonstrate proficiency at various technologies before being promoted to a new salary scale.

Once the majority of teachers are fluent in the basics, move on to more advanced technologies. Begin with things they can use right now in their classrooms. Digital cameras and photo software, creating websites, things that will enhance what they´re currently doing. This will warm them more to the idea of increasing their use of technology. Once they like it and get comfortable with it, they´ll wonder how they ever lived without it and hopefully want more of it. Administration can encourage the use of technology by circulating memos electronically – accountability and follow-through are important to ensure all staff members are checking e-mail regularly.

Simultaneous with this training, a task force should be convened to plan and strategize what new technologies should be implemented at the school, along what time frame this should occur, and how they should be implemented. This team should include in their plans a design for implementing 21st century skills, not just adapting new hardware and software. This would be the trickiest part, as it would require faculty training or retraining, not just installing hardware. As stated before, incentives and positive motivation would be the best way to get faculty buy-in. Sending key leaders within the school to conferences or devoting professional development time to raising awareness and building momentum would be good ideas. At any rate, you have to convince the faculty that this needs to happen, and they need to see that the leadership is committed ideologically, logistically, and financially to making it happen.

One the 1-10 scale we are a school hovering between 4 and 5. I think most students fall in that area, as do most teachers. I don´t think this is because we as a school are working towards the goal of being a 10, I think it is just a fact of who we are and who our students are. We could just as easily be a 1 or a 10. We have no direction in this area.

For us, getting faculty buy-in will be the hardest part. We have a young, fairly untrained staff. They feel overwhelmed by our current curriculum writing processes. We have a director that seems to have little sense of direction in this area (to be fair she inherited this position, along with its problems, a year ago). Morale is low or negative. Talk of change raises hackles. Getting them on board is key, and will be our biggest challenge.

We are most advanced in our use of 21st century tools. Since most of our staff is young, most of us are comfortable in techno world. We use web services to post grades, lessons, and homework, to communicate with parents. This is not a barrier for us. Also, our technology is pretty up-to-date, and we have opportunities to partner with businesses in the community to bring in more advanced technologies. Budget is a challenge, but if the need were presented, I believe we could find donors. So obtaining equipment isn´t a huge deal.

For me to lead by example I need to become more fluent in the technologies that enable collaboration: wikis, google documents, video conferencing. I have a facebook site and I have used instant messaging quite a lot, but I am not fluent in them and don´t find them useful for what I need to do or who I am in life.