We are all digital educators

With a large nod to JFK’s 1963 Berlin address and a small nod to the end of the Oktoberfest season,

Wir sind alle digitalen Erzieher.*

We are all digital educators (and educational leaders.)**

I recall visiting East Berlin in 1988. Coming from the progressive, colorful and hyper-modern West Berlin, stepping onto the Unter den Linden boulevard and into the East seemed like entering a scene from a black and white movie. By crossing a street (which had become a border), my access to services, conveniences, freedoms, and information changed in a moment.

You are leaving the American sector

At the risk of appearing overly histrionic, I sense a wall is emerging between schools and systems which have engaged in the digital transformation of teaching, learning and leadership and those which resist the reality that like our culture, our schools must embrace digital tools, resources and ways of working. As a result of decisions by educational leaders, students who live on a different street or in a different state have vastly different opportunities that impact not only their success in school, but their effective preparation for college, career and life.

Whether we like it or not, our schools and our students are digital. We are way past “this too shall pass.” Likewise, educational leaders who say “this is your department” and pass anything with digital in the name to the IT geeks are denying the reality that our schools, educational systems and students are already pervasively (and permanently) digital.

As someone who now has digital in their job description, this might just be my hang-up. But a cursory glance around the educational landscape reminds us of the ways in which digital is no longer simply a department, a job or initiative.

• Long a bastion of testing booklets and bubble sheets, assessment has shifted quickly from the #2 pencil. From statewide standardized tests to formative and interim assessments, measurements of student learning increasingly begin and end on a screen.
• Despite the persistence of print textbooks, the encroachment of digital educational resources is inexorable. Whether OER or proprietary, online learning resources include everything from flat pdfs to whizzing interactive games.
• In 1:1 districts, technology has shifted from a class or teacher in a computer lab to a classroom full of devices in which every educator is necessarily the ‘technology teacher.’

Even if schools and districts are slow to acknowledge this shift, our students come to our schools natively digital. Recent articles have even cast the current denizens of our classrooms as unique from the first wave of digital natives, often referred to as millennials. Unlike the generation before them who were party to the emergence of streaming media, touchscreens, social media, and smartphones, most of those in Generation Z know nothing else. And we’re giving them printed textbooks.

Tear down this wall….

So what’s to be done? First, educators need to to shift their thinking away from when or if their practice will undergo a digital transformation toward asking how they will work, teach, interact and lead differently. In the classroom, this means teachers must adopt a growth mindset and acknowledge the stark reality I face in my daily work–whatever I’m doing today will be different tomorrow. For educators used to doing the same thing each year, this will be deeply disruptive. Educators will need to think iteratively about their instruction as new tools, resources and services emerge. Teachers will necessarily become designers, guides, and facilitators. Those who support teachers at the district level must provide access to digital resources and services, not to mention the training and technical support to ensure that both teachers and students have success. Based on my experience, districts should spend at least 30% of their digital investment on professional development and support. And few do.

More critically, educational leaders from the principal’s office to the board room must resist conceiving anything educationally digital as somehow exceptional. That requires all educational leaders to assume the responsibility of being digital leaders. For many, this will be as disruptive as it is for classroom teachers, if not more so. As building leaders, principals need to be visible advocates for digital ways of working, ideally modeling them in their own practice. Principals and district leaders need to inspire teachers to cultivate and sustain innovation and risk-taking.

In turn, educational leaders need to give principals and teachers not only the permission, but the resources and support to allow change to happen in classrooms…even when the potential outcomes are unknown. As guides on the side, district leaders can help schools by identifying and curating promising practices and tools not as one-size-fits-all solutions, but as diverse means for differentiation and personalization. And some of these solutions may well stray from convention, tradition and familiarity. Given the pace of change and iteration, it is absurd to think that educational systems will be able to adapt to and leverage innovations with rigid hierarchies and central control. In a perfect world, innovation should begin in the classroom and then inform systems and decision-making at the district level.

Finally, educational leaders cannot hide behind inertia, time constraints, resources and/or lack of vision to delay their digital transformations. The digital revolution is over. The only choice is which side of the divide your students will learn.

*My apologies to German speakers for any grammatical errors. Google translate is way too easy. And fun.

**And if you think Erzieher is a mouthful, try Google translating ‘digital leader.’ Let’s not go there.

Originally published October 25, 2015 on another personal blog