While there are many ways in which change occurs in quick bursts that may advance or even retrograde civilization, in the moments of our daily lives we often think of change as a slow drift. The pencil I used as a child, as did my mother, and my mother’s mother and perhaps even hers before her was invented in 1564 and has mostly been constructed in the same way ever since. The pencil once was an essential tool in my elementary book bag, the college lab, my teacher’s desk, and in my office. Then the need for a pencil changed for me and the rest of the world, too.
Today, I reach for my phone to record lists, make notes, or compose letters. The 1:1 pencil device of my childhood has been replaced by my smart phone “pencil”, circa 2007. My one remaining #2 graphite now resides in my childhood pencil box, a royal yellow artifact of the past seldom used except when I have pulled it out to share at New Teacher Academy.
My pencil is a relic from just past Gutenberg’s era. His printing press fueled a 1450’s early version of connectivity, a revolution that emerged from writers’ final drafts turned into books, broadsheets, pamphets, newspapers, and magazines by print shops. Over time, writing tools changed. Quill pens, pencils, rubber erasers, fountain pens, ballpoint pens, typewriters, whiteout tape and liquid emerged, evolving technologies that advanced the capability of writers to record at a faster and faster pace.
Just a little over 500 years after Gutenberg, the microprocessor was invented, an innovation as disruptive as the printing press. In 2014, we live in a time of exponential post-Gutenberg change, a historical turning point equal to the Renaissance. Humans today search, connect, communicate, and make, linking the world through rapid-fire use of contemporary technologies. Change does not drift along incrementally in our time. Not in today’s careers, businesses, hospitals, homes or schools.
Our kids don’t pull encyclopedias or non-fiction text off the shelf to research, they search the globe for accessible expertise, experts, and others with similar learning interests. The idea of a card catalog doesn’t exist for them. The thought that paper books have appendices for citations versus hyperlinks in a digital document doesn’t even make sense to them.
Our kids don’t limit connectivity to peers in their class, grade level, school, or even their local community. Their tools move with them, allowing them to connect anywhere they can catch a wireless signal. They feel isolated in homes, cafes, cars, and streets when those signals are absent. They understand the language of connectivity — mobile, cellular, fiber, satellite up and downlinks, broadband, bandwidth, gigs, virtual, GPS/GIS, portals. — words that didn’t have any context or meaning for me until after my 5th decade had almost passed.
Our kids don’t define communication as writing on paper, creating a snail- or e-mail, making a phone call or watching a television show, movie, or listening to a CD. Communiciation for them is about instant connectivity with peers, teachers, family everywhere — for them community exists all over the world and print in another language isn’t a barrier thanks to Google’s translator. They aren’t limited by devices that allow them to simply write. They dictate tweets, listen to text messages, “OTT” chat and share images profusely, download music, books, and other media of interest. And they produce everything in any format in which they desire to communicate and upload at astonishing rates. They are the global exploration and file sharing network that is changing the world. They are the most connected communicators in the world’s history.
Finally, our kids don’t define learning as limited to what’s on the board, in a lecture, or between the pages of a textbook. As humans have since the beginning of time, they yearn to “make” as a pathway to learning. Schools too often power down the creativity and critical reasoning associated with a maker mindset. We can reverse that. Kids are intrigued with what they can do whether with older and more contemporary technologies from lathes and sewing machines to programming languages and music beat production tools. Give a first grader some cardboard and you’ll end up with a robot or a house. Give a middle schooler a 3-D printer and you’ll end up with a prosthetic hand to donate to a handicapped child or a “Dr. Who sonic screwdriver flashlight.” Give a high schooler time to create and you’ll end up with a choreographed dance or a phone app.
We educators used to think that making was a learning pathway for all kids and we created hands-on learning for elementary children, exploratories for middle school kids, and experiential learning for high schoolers. Then we decided that these experiences were wasting time that could be put to better use through more lectures, more worksheets, more text-based homework, more tests, and more standards to cover. We thought that “more” academics would raise the bar, close achievement gaps, make our kids competitive with the world, and increase the numbers of kids entering the middle class. We thought kids would be better prepared for college and the workforce. We cut out opportunities for kids to create, design, build, engineer, and produce.
Now educators, parents, business executives, and politicians realize the “more of sameness” built through mass standardization of schooling has resulted in a generation of young people who have had to find their own pathways to active learning. They may be bored in school but they aren’t bored outside of it. Many of our younger generations spend time in post-Gutenberg “search, connect, communicate, and make” opportunities. While taking tests, listening to lectures, or doing worksheets they think about what they are going to do next. Unlike their teachers, they aren’t waiting until after state tests are complete to go on field trips, pursue projects, or engage in fierce debates in class about global issues. They are doing all that now but mostly not with us or because of us. Instead, they make learning happen in spite of us and they do that because they are connected.
How might we take the time every day we are with young people to support them to “search, connect, communicate and make?” How might we stop waiting around for “more of the same” state tests to end before we do interesting work with young people? How might we push not just beyond our own learning horizons but challenge those of people who fear relinquishing the power and control inherent in Gutenberg-driven teaching?
So, I end with a challenge. Do something tomorrow to realize your own potential to use our connected resources, no matter how modest, to. power up learners in our care. If we do so, I believe we will unleash young people and a passion for learning unlike anything we’ve seen in the test prep classrooms of the last two decades.
That’s well worth it IMO.
