Last September, I packed up my Prius, left my patient wife, and drove around the United States
for 89 days and 10,000 miles visiting
64 schools of every flavor and size to
find out what they are doing to prepare our students for the challenges
of a rapidly changing world. I asked
questions and recorded learning with
more than 600 teachers, administrators, and students.
In setting up the complex matrix
of this trip, many of my hosts asked,
“What would you like to see when you
are here?” The journeys of discovery
in my life have started with open goals
and few preconceptions, so I left the
agendas as open ended as possible, with
one caveat: I was not interested in seeing a 1: 1 laptop program or talking with
teachers about their tablet rollouts.
As others have said, technology in
learning should be as ubiquitous as
air, and there is nothing innovative
about students and teachers breathing.
I like to put it another way (harkening
back to my first book, The Falconer,
that I started writing more than 15
years ago): I am a lot more interested
in how effective archers are at choosing the right arrows and right targets
than I am in the shape of their bows.
Technology Is Not the Innovation
Nearly every school I visited was do-
ing something dramatically different
than they were just a few years ago.
Some were doing almost everything
differently, and some were innovating
more cautiously. I want to give you a
sense of some of those changes and
discuss how they leverage technology,
or should be driving our uses of tech-
nology more deeply in the future.
But here is a cautionary note of reality from the road: After a morning
debrief with the principals, heads of
school, or senior team, I frequently
asked, “If I walked up and down your
halls and asked all your teachers what
the school is doing that is innovative, how many would talk about new
technology initiatives?” Frequently the
leaders would grimace and admit that
it would be a common response. As
a group, schools are still mired in the
mindset that technology is the innovation, not that it is a tool embedded in
innovation.
What Would Dewey Do?
During my TEDx talk ( bit.ly/15LGQ0K)
in February, I defined innovation as
“preparing students for their futures,
not for our past.” I came to that conclusion on a long drive across west
Texas with 88 days in my rear view
mirror. I immediately realized that
I was quoting educational reformer
John Dewey almost exactly from more
than 100 years ago, and that every
example of marvelous innovation
that I had seen on my journey could
have came straight out of Dewey’s
playbook. At one point, I even threw
out the idea on Twitter that if Dewey
vation!
Innovation shouldn’t look like a tablet or a laptop. It should look like
a learning environment where students—with teachers at their side—
choose their learning targets and aim to hit them.
