A Vision for New Curriculum and New Technology Integration

Reconsidering the North Carolina Teacher Technology Competencies

A Vision for New Curriculum and New Technology Integration

There is a current and ongoing debate over whether to change the North Carolina teacher technology competencies. Much more can be read at http://www.rcoefmp.appstate.edu:591/ETSI/. The thoughts that I shared on this matter are stated below.

I invite your vigorous response through the "Your Turn" link at the bottom of this page.

What is your role with respect to the competencies? Methods Faculty

How familiar are you with the competencies and how are you currently using them in your work as a NC Educator? I am very familiar with the competencies. They serve as the core of a semester long methods course that I teach on curriculum technology integration. They also guide my supervision work. Further, they have served as targets for various grants.

What do you like best about the Basic and Advanced Technology Competencies I like best the fact that technology benchmarks were set years ago and that we may now be ready to raise the bar through increased clarity and new concepts.

What do you like least, or find most problematic with the Basic and Advanced Technology Competencies? I like least the out of sync nature of the potential of the new tools and dated models of curriculum and classroom practice. More particularly, I dislike the indefinite nature of the advanced competencies and the lack of coordination between the advanced and basic competencies which allows the advanced competencies to be basically completed without simultaneously demonstrating mastery of the basic compentencies. "Fixing the technology competencies" is too narrow a perspective.

What would you do to improve the format or content of the NC Technology Competencies for Educators? Really improving the technology competencies requires more than the reshuffling of skill-chairs on the Titantic. We need to challenge ourselves to articulate new perspectives. Our thinking is too much "in the box" of the legacy educational world, a world still much too beholden to the 19th century, let alone the twentieth. It is a time for new and good theories to emerge. Our state's first effort in defining the computer-integration competencies was a match for the Piagetian concept of assimilation. The new information age knowledge was tacked on to existing educational frames of reference, a practical and useful way to begin. However, this marginalized the competencies as skills that could be addressed with not much more than simple drill and practice exercises. It helped to lessen or negate their long term value and their financial support. It did not sufficiently claim mind-space in the thinking of educators and the political system and its elected officials that fund education. This next stage is the time to challenge the existing system, to think about Piagetian accomodation, the transformation of the system to better adapt to the changed world wrought by these new tools of communication. Large corporations have managed it. It is time for education to try harder.
Three areas need to be tackled to improve the competencies: 1. the "vision" thing; 2. the balance of which application genres are included in the basic competencies; 3. the classroom practice (advanced competencies) issues.
1. The "Vision" Thing
The first part of the vision is to accept that current world culture has similarities to the old and yet is very different. We need the drama of metaphor: the iceberg has flipped; the climbers have entered a new undiscovered plateau; the travelers have entered a new land with a new language. To accept this is to accept that this is no longer a discussion about competencies but a dialog about a new species of curriculum.
The last transition of similar importance to the present would be a time when world culture moved from oral to written language, which occured at different times in different cultures. Within Greek culture, some argue this occurred around 700 B.C. Spend some mental time imagining what those Greeks went through in less than three generations, an event that led grandchildren denying their grandparents the right to vote in some cases if they were not literate. And yet rhetoric and speech did not disappear or become unimportant, they just lost market share.
The case for a "new world" can be made in three significant curriculum areas: calculation, composition and communication. To shorten the length of these thoughts, let's just use the concept of composition and compare it with the Greek transition. Some 3 millennia ago, Greek culture started to move the primary mental structure for the invention, development and social expression of new ideas from speech to text. It is extraordinary to be alive in the time when this is happening again. In just the last few years, the web has shifted the primary mental scaffolding for invention, development and expression from text to a compositional form that allows one web page to simulaneously include text, music, speech, video, animation, still images, virtual reality and remote electronic device management (e.g., live sensors), computer programming (e.g., javascript) and soon scent.
From what we know of the reading and writing of text, the complexity of this new compositional form is as significant and deep as the process of learning to read and write just text. Formerly, just experiencing these different communication forms took an array of different types of technology. Now they appear within one display area. Forms of expression that were once the province of specialized careers and took the better part of the last two centuries to invent are now needing to be synthesized into more encompassing forms of composition that require the kind of mental coordination once reserved for writing an orchestral score. This is a new plateau. This is not your grandmother's classroom.
From such transformed perspective one would expect to find different weighting in educational technology competencies. Programming, for example, a decade ago was a major accent mark in the introduction of computer technology and now has disappeared from standard inventories of important skills at a time in which world culture is short millions of citizens and employees with creative ability in this area. Video has dominated national communication for decades and the technology is cheap in comparison with computer technology and yet its composition is still not standard or required public school fare. Is this not a clear indication of an educational culture not just stuck but "petrified in its box"?
Beyond the new mental tool sets for calculation, composition and communication, a larger social phenomena has assumed tidal wave proportions, an observation well documented as long ago as the 1950's with the publication of Toffler's Future Shock. About the same time, 1956, the educational structures to deal with with this explosion came into existence, Bloom's Taxonomy. Sometimes termed the knowledge explosion, the half-life of a fact during this period of accelerating change continues to decrease. Yet our curriculum emphasis on fact (e.g., see ABCs testing) is so out of rhythm with this situation that much of educational culture would have to be seen as arhythmic if not autistic by comparison.
It is not that answers or facts have become unimportant, but that the curriculum accent must shift to the discovery, evaluation and processing of questions. This questioning emphasis forces a continual evaluation of the currency and the relevance of available facts, an operation essential in dealing with a terrain of constant change, an environment brought on by the knowledge explosion.
2. Application Genres
If our theory about the world changes, our theory about our methods and practices should change. For example, more than the first half of the basic competencies are about text based tools, yet text is but a sixth or seventh of the new tool categories for composition (e.g., still images, animation, audio/music, video, virtual reality and so forth). In addition to the other composition tools, there dozens of new forms of online interactivity beginning with email and extending to the use of audio and video conferencing. Should not these applications be used more heavily?
Though the argument for a new world in calculation was not made, a piece of the case can be merged here. For example, our math, reading and writing models used in schools presume a heavily linear worldview. By contrast, the "new world order" is nonlinear, recursive and circular as reflected by the new mathematics of chaos theory, the biology and social psychology of organic growth, the wide range and flexibility of computer programming algorhythms and languages, and the hypermedia of the publishing medium of the web. In other words, not only is our educational method out of sync with the new mindtools but much of the epistemology of our content is "petrified in the box" as well.
Software applications that support the new worldview are common place. Their classroom presence and relevant expression in the curriculum is not. Our competencies will be improved when they are.
3. Classroom practice - advanced skills
There is much that should be changed about the "advanced compentencies". First, they are not advanced, just new-tools-teaching competencies. Second, their evaluation must measure the degree to which mastery of the "fundamental" competencies is achieved or demonstrated. This coordination needs both invention and clarification. Much more could be said, but let's take one more. New visions are not only currently very marginalized in concept and method, but also edged out in something as basic as classroom architecture.
Is there a computer in the classroom? Where is the computer in the classroom? Hidden from view behind a panel that allow students a place to use the computer as if observation of student use of the computer was not socially acceptable? How ubiquitous is computer use? Present computer usage is more on the scale of a trip to a museum than a trip to the chalkboard, or a grab of a piece of paper.
In fact, the rightful place of a single computer with 17 inch monitor and speakers is in the front and center of class with a teacher who is "new vision" knowledgeable. This is useful for both limited whole class sharing of images and sound and small group usage of its full range of display capabilities including enlarged text. However, functional furniture and even network wiring wall connections conspire to keep this from becoming practical.
But the problem is not just with educational systems. The computer industry needs to heed educational needs as well. The most powerful and inexpensive computer technology does not scale to the size of student classroom desks. If most classrooms were given a powerful desktop system for every child, there is not classroom space to hold it, nor place to hide the wires nor sufficient electrical capacity to drive them. It is doubtful if classroom size will increase. It is more likely that computer technology will shrink. Handheld computers are not the equivalent in function of desktop systems, but the gap is closing rapidly. Developing teachers need to see the wide range of future models of classroom practice, not just classroom models that have been around for twenty years. What teachers can do depends of what student minds and hands can touch. Better funding for more ubiquitous computing will provide the greatest short term gains in improving the content of the technology competencies.
Conclusion
The "new world" vision challenges not only what we call technology standards but curriculum content standards. Real advancement in competencies will not come through maintaining a divorce between 21st century perspectives and tools and 19th century content and methodology. The greatest improvement in teacher technology competencies will come from the discovery, expression and debate of new world perspective. The greatest danger is moving too quickly in pigeon-holing competencies that do not descend from a greater consensus on vision.

General comments
Summary of Critique
http://www.ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/edelcompeduc/vision.html
Online System for Emphasis on Questions
http://www.ceap.wcu.edu/Houghton/Learner/basicidea.html

Your Turn - The Feedback Loop

It is both possible to read the reactions of others so far and to add your contributions to this commentary. Use the link below. It will open a new window with a list of the comments to date and a pull down menu and Submit button by which you can Post your Reply.

Reactions to "A Vision for New Curriculum and New Technology Integration"

Updated: August 23, 2000 - 3 pm. Page author: Houghton

What is your role with respect to the competencies?	Methods Faculty
How familiar are you with the competencies and how are you currently using them in your work as a NC Educator?	I am very familiar with the competencies. They serve as the core of a semester long methods course that I teach on curriculum technology integration. They also guide my supervision work. Further, they have served as targets for various grants.
What do you like best about the Basic and Advanced Technology Competencies	I like best the fact that technology benchmarks were set years ago and that we may now be ready to raise the bar through increased clarity and new concepts.
What do you like least, or find most problematic with the Basic and Advanced Technology Competencies?	I like least the out of sync nature of the potential of the new tools and dated models of curriculum and classroom practice. More particularly, I dislike the indefinite nature of the advanced competencies and the lack of coordination between the advanced and basic competencies which allows the advanced competencies to be basically completed without simultaneously demonstrating mastery of the basic compentencies. "Fixing the technology competencies" is too narrow a perspective.
What would you do to improve the format or content of the NC Technology Competencies for Educators?	Really improving the technology competencies requires more than the reshuffling of skill-chairs on the Titantic. We need to challenge ourselves to articulate new perspectives. Our thinking is too much "in the box" of the legacy educational world, a world still much too beholden to the 19th century, let alone the twentieth. It is a time for new and good theories to emerge. Our state's first effort in defining the computer-integration competencies was a match for the Piagetian concept of assimilation. The new information age knowledge was tacked on to existing educational frames of reference, a practical and useful way to begin. However, this marginalized the competencies as skills that could be addressed with not much more than simple drill and practice exercises. It helped to lessen or negate their long term value and their financial support. It did not sufficiently claim mind-space in the thinking of educators and the political system and its elected officials that fund education. This next stage is the time to challenge the existing system, to think about Piagetian accomodation, the transformation of the system to better adapt to the changed world wrought by these new tools of communication. Large corporations have managed it. It is time for education to try harder. Three areas need to be tackled to improve the competencies: 1. the "vision" thing; 2. the balance of which application genres are included in the basic competencies; 3. the classroom practice (advanced competencies) issues. 1. The "Vision" Thing The first part of the vision is to accept that current world culture has similarities to the old and yet is very different. We need the drama of metaphor: the iceberg has flipped; the climbers have entered a new undiscovered plateau; the travelers have entered a new land with a new language. To accept this is to accept that this is no longer a discussion about competencies but a dialog about a new species of curriculum. The last transition of similar importance to the present would be a time when world culture moved from oral to written language, which occured at different times in different cultures. Within Greek culture, some argue this occurred around 700 B.C. Spend some mental time imagining what those Greeks went through in less than three generations, an event that led grandchildren denying their grandparents the right to vote in some cases if they were not literate. And yet rhetoric and speech did not disappear or become unimportant, they just lost market share. The case for a "new world" can be made in three significant curriculum areas: calculation, composition and communication. To shorten the length of these thoughts, let's just use the concept of composition and compare it with the Greek transition. Some 3 millennia ago, Greek culture started to move the primary mental structure for the invention, development and social expression of new ideas from speech to text. It is extraordinary to be alive in the time when this is happening again. In just the last few years, the web has shifted the primary mental scaffolding for invention, development and expression from text to a compositional form that allows one web page to simulaneously include text, music, speech, video, animation, still images, virtual reality and remote electronic device management (e.g., live sensors), computer programming (e.g., javascript) and soon scent. From what we know of the reading and writing of text, the complexity of this new compositional form is as significant and deep as the process of learning to read and write just text. Formerly, just experiencing these different communication forms took an array of different types of technology. Now they appear within one display area. Forms of expression that were once the province of specialized careers and took the better part of the last two centuries to invent are now needing to be synthesized into more encompassing forms of composition that require the kind of mental coordination once reserved for writing an orchestral score. This is a new plateau. This is not your grandmother's classroom. From such transformed perspective one would expect to find different weighting in educational technology competencies. Programming, for example, a decade ago was a major accent mark in the introduction of computer technology and now has disappeared from standard inventories of important skills at a time in which world culture is short millions of citizens and employees with creative ability in this area. Video has dominated national communication for decades and the technology is cheap in comparison with computer technology and yet its composition is still not standard or required public school fare. Is this not a clear indication of an educational culture not just stuck but "petrified in its box"? Beyond the new mental tool sets for calculation, composition and communication, a larger social phenomena has assumed tidal wave proportions, an observation well documented as long ago as the 1950's with the publication of Toffler's Future Shock. About the same time, 1956, the educational structures to deal with with this explosion came into existence, Bloom's Taxonomy. Sometimes termed the knowledge explosion, the half-life of a fact during this period of accelerating change continues to decrease. Yet our curriculum emphasis on fact (e.g., see ABCs testing) is so out of rhythm with this situation that much of educational culture would have to be seen as arhythmic if not autistic by comparison. It is not that answers or facts have become unimportant, but that the curriculum accent must shift to the discovery, evaluation and processing of questions. This questioning emphasis forces a continual evaluation of the currency and the relevance of available facts, an operation essential in dealing with a terrain of constant change, an environment brought on by the knowledge explosion. 2. Application Genres If our theory about the world changes, our theory about our methods and practices should change. For example, more than the first half of the basic competencies are about text based tools, yet text is but a sixth or seventh of the new tool categories for composition (e.g., still images, animation, audio/music, video, virtual reality and so forth). In addition to the other composition tools, there dozens of new forms of online interactivity beginning with email and extending to the use of audio and video conferencing. Should not these applications be used more heavily? Though the argument for a new world in calculation was not made, a piece of the case can be merged here. For example, our math, reading and writing models used in schools presume a heavily linear worldview. By contrast, the "new world order" is nonlinear, recursive and circular as reflected by the new mathematics of chaos theory, the biology and social psychology of organic growth, the wide range and flexibility of computer programming algorhythms and languages, and the hypermedia of the publishing medium of the web. In other words, not only is our educational method out of sync with the new mindtools but much of the epistemology of our content is "petrified in the box" as well. Software applications that support the new worldview are common place. Their classroom presence and relevant expression in the curriculum is not. Our competencies will be improved when they are. 3. Classroom practice - advanced skills There is much that should be changed about the "advanced compentencies". First, they are not advanced, just new-tools-teaching competencies. Second, their evaluation must measure the degree to which mastery of the "fundamental" competencies is achieved or demonstrated. This coordination needs both invention and clarification. Much more could be said, but let's take one more. New visions are not only currently very marginalized in concept and method, but also edged out in something as basic as classroom architecture. Is there a computer in the classroom? Where is the computer in the classroom? Hidden from view behind a panel that allow students a place to use the computer as if observation of student use of the computer was not socially acceptable? How ubiquitous is computer use? Present computer usage is more on the scale of a trip to a museum than a trip to the chalkboard, or a grab of a piece of paper. In fact, the rightful place of a single computer with 17 inch monitor and speakers is in the front and center of class with a teacher who is "new vision" knowledgeable. This is useful for both limited whole class sharing of images and sound and small group usage of its full range of display capabilities including enlarged text. However, functional furniture and even network wiring wall connections conspire to keep this from becoming practical. But the problem is not just with educational systems. The computer industry needs to heed educational needs as well. The most powerful and inexpensive computer technology does not scale to the size of student classroom desks. If most classrooms were given a powerful desktop system for every child, there is not classroom space to hold it, nor place to hide the wires nor sufficient electrical capacity to drive them. It is doubtful if classroom size will increase. It is more likely that computer technology will shrink. Handheld computers are not the equivalent in function of desktop systems, but the gap is closing rapidly. Developing teachers need to see the wide range of future models of classroom practice, not just classroom models that have been around for twenty years. What teachers can do depends of what student minds and hands can touch. Better funding for more ubiquitous computing will provide the greatest short term gains in improving the content of the technology competencies. Conclusion The "new world" vision challenges not only what we call technology standards but curriculum content standards. Real advancement in competencies will not come through maintaining a divorce between 21st century perspectives and tools and 19th century content and methodology. The greatest improvement in teacher technology competencies will come from the discovery, expression and debate of new world perspective. The greatest danger is moving too quickly in pigeon-holing competencies that do not descend from a greater consensus on vision.
General comments	Summary of Critique http://www.ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/edelcompeduc/vision.html Online System for Emphasis on Questions http://www.ceap.wcu.edu/Houghton/Learner/basicidea.html