Jane Gilbert and Rachel Bol­stad (amongst many oth­ers) ques­tioned the tra­di­tional con­cept of cur­ricu­lum devel­op­ment in their 2008 book Dis­ci­plin­ing and Draft­ing, or 21st-Century Learn­ing? Rethink­ing the New Zealand Senior Sec­ondary Curriculum for the Future. Their words are quoted in a new white paper–spon­sored by Promethean Planet’s Jim Wynn and authored by Gavin Dykes, Michael Fur­dyk, Sara Has­san, and Jen­nifer Cor­riero for Edu­ca­tion Fast For­ward (EFF)–enti­tled “From Learner Voice to Emerg­ing Lead­ers.”

The authors agree with Gilbert and Bol­stad and state their posi­tion clearly:

…This model of cur­ricu­lum devel­op­ment is dif­fi­cult to main­tain given that it is no longer pos­si­ble to accu­rately predict the type of knowl­edge youth may need as they move through life, the rapid pace at which tech­nol­ogy is chang­ing and new knowl­edge is devel­op­ing, the rate at which career pos­si­bil­i­ties are pro­lif­er­at­ing (ones with which we are famil­iar and ones we have yet to imag­ine), and social, eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges are becom­ing increas­ingly complex.

They ask the question:
“How can learner voice help address these uncertainties?”

And the seem­ingly sim­ple answer?
“By giv­ing learn­ers an authen­tic say in what and how they want to learn.”

This white paper will under­pin dis­cus­sion at the next EFF Debate, EFF6, to take place as part of the Education World Forum (EWF) in Lon­don at the end of January 2013. The paper–which will be presented by Sara Has­san of TakingITGlobal, join­ing the debate from Toronto–is an excel­lent sum­mary of the issues sur­round­ing this crit­i­cal ques­tion, and the authors have been able to offer a com­bi­na­tion of sound think­ing, prac­ti­cal advice, and a way for­ward for those in edu­ca­tion (still too few, I would say) who believe that cur­ricu­lum design, ped­a­gogy, the role of tech­nol­ogy, and national edu­ca­tion policy making all should be influ­enced and shaped by the voice of the learner.

The event will com­bine a live pres­ence at EWF and a global pres­ence via the magic of TelePresence.An artic­u­late group of young edu­ca­tion lead­ers will debate the issues around “From Learner Voice to Emerg­ing Leaders.” The primary aim is twofold:

• To bring the voice of youth to the policy makers’ table, to let the young peo­ple hear some views on the big issues, and to let them debate them openly and fully

• To bring the policy makers (kick­ing and scream­ing if nec­es­sary) to the learn­ers’ table so that they have to face up to the issues that are crit­i­cal to the learn­ers before they make their pol­icy decisions

And it will all take place across a truly inter­na­tional matrix of con­nec­tions, cross­ing coun­tries, cul­tures, and communities.

The event itself takes place on Mon­day, 28 Jan­u­ary, at 11 am, and you will find the link to the live video broad­cast on the day itself on the EFF page on Promethean Planet. Promethean’s CEO Jim Wynn will open the EFF6 debate, which will once again be mod­er­ated by inde­pen­dent edu­ca­tion con­sul­tant Gavin Dykes. Discussion will be led by Sara Hassan and three student presenters. Clos­ing the debate will be Michelle Selinger, Direc­tor of Edu­ca­tion at Cisco.

Twit­ter users can fol­low the debate itself using the hash­tag #eff6, while there will be some inter­est­ing discussion around many of the key issues in the debate using the hash­tag #learn­ing­mat­ters. Finally, a reminder that you can down­load the white paper

But even those who might wish to take issue with that philosophy–and I know there are many–will surely agree that we are now very much in the age of self-directed learning. Learning by and for yourself, whether that is carefully planned and executed learning or gloriously chaotic serendipitous learning, has never been easier than it is today. With information and content so freely available on a truly immense scale across the web; with a multiplicity of platforms and tools out there that we can use to access, manipulate, publish, and display information of all kinds; and with increasing access to authority, expertise, and knowledge from sources other than that of the teacher in front of the class or the book in our hand; the locus of control of learning has shifted irrevocably from teacher to learner

You would not know that, however, to look at so much of what goes on still in formal educational settings.

One group that ought to be embracing the shift wholeheartedly is, of course, the teaching profession itself. If the relationship of the learner to information and content has shifted, then so too, as I have argued in the past, has the relationship between teacher and learner. The best teachers have always known that teaching is so much more than mere information transfer and have shaped their pedagogy to reflect that reality. Nonetheless, in practice, most teaching today, I believe, is still predicated on a pedagogical model that simply no longer stands up to close attention, even for those who would not accept the core premise of “I Am Learner” in the first paragraph above.

That age-old draw for teachers of being the centre of attention, the fount of all wisdom, in the classroom or the lecture hall; the appeal of the performance aspects of teaching; the sense that they already know everything that the student needs to learn, and so all they need to do is to somehow transfer that knowledge to the learners–such components of the role continue to trump any real appreciation of a model of learning that is vastly more complex than that which reduces learning to the simple absorption of data delivered by the teacher and received by the student. Many teachers seem unwilling, or unable, to see themselves in anything other than the traditional role at the centre of instruction. In a similar vein, outside the classroom, those who administer and manage our education systems are too often not even aware that we are now in the age of self-directed learning; for too many education administrators, the concept of school and the structures built around that concept in practice are all still predicated on the reproduction and continuance of the traditional classroom relationship between teacher and student.

One critical causal element in the persistence of such simplistic–and anachronistic–models of teaching and learning is to be found in the deep-rooted reality of the way that teachers are taught to teach, both in their preservice training and in much of what passes for professional development beyond initial training. For too long, teachers have been trained not to be able to do for themselves what, by any logic you care to use, they should be able to do better than anyone else: to teach themselves! How many times have we heard teachers say, “We are willing to change our practice, but you can’t expect us to do so without training”?

Teachers today, in this age of self-directed learning, need to take control of their own learning, their own professional development. They need to tell those who would, and who do, tell them what is best for them to take a hike! Only when teachers begin to learn for themselves–only when they begin to appreciate the wealth of learning opportunities that now exist, the abundance of information they can access and make sense of and use, and the cornucopia of means by which they can direct their own learning–will they begin to see that their own practice in the classroom also needs to change.

When that starts to happen on a large scale, then perhaps we will begin to see recognition in the formal educational settings that we are now in the age of self-directed learning!

Early in the report, Brown states that “No education system anywhere in the world is better than its teachers.” Later, he goes on to say:

Teachers are the backbone of any education system. Ultimately, learning is the produce of what happens in classrooms through a relationship between pupils and teachers. That is why no education system is better than the availability, accessibility, and quality of the teachers it provides, and the level of support that it delivers to those on the front line of education in the classroom.

This begs many more questions than it answers (especially if you agree with the philosophy of I Am Learner), but it would be foolish in the extreme not to accept the core point being made:  that good-quality teaching should be central to good educational provision, and most especially for the education of young children.

It is a dismal and unassailable fact that there is a massive shortage of good-quality teachers across the developing world, especially but by no means exclusively across the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. According to Gordon Brown’s report, the world’s poorest countries need something like 1.8 million additional teachers over the next three years alone to provide even basic primary education to their children, as well as around four million more classrooms and all of the most basic items of equipment we might expect to find in those classrooms. Brown is absolutely right therefore to state that:

The world is today facing an education emergency. That emergency does not make media headlines. But it has disastrous human, social, and economic consequences. It is consigning millions of children to lives of poverty and diminished prospects for economic growth. And it is destroying on an epic scale the most valuable asset of the world’s poorest nations–the creativity, talent, and potential of the young generation.

An education emergency indeed, and one on a vast and massively consequential scale for humanity worldwide. It requires equally vast and prolonged global investment to put right.

Elsewhere in the report, Gordon Brown enthuses over the potential for harnessing technology to improve educational provision. However, he believes that “New technologies do not offer a quick fix for systemic problems in education systems. What they do offer is a vehicle for improving access to opportunities for education and the quality of service provision.”

The last thing this global emer­gency needs is any kind of quick fix. But I do believe that there is a poten­tially pow­er­ful appli­ca­tion of dig­i­tal and net­work­ing tech­nolo­gies that could play a sig­nif­i­cant role, along­side all the other big investements needed, in con­tribut­ing to a much-bet­ter-qual­ity edu­ca­tion for many mil­lions of the poor­est chil­dren in the poor­est coun­tries around the world. 

From Mas­sive Open Online Course to Mas­sive Open Online Class­room (MOOCl)

Any­one with even the remotest inter­est in higher edu­ca­tion of late will be aware of the MOOC. The basic con­cept of the Mas­sive Open Online Course (a term devised by Dave Cormier) is a sim­ple one, but the impli­ca­tions of the MOOC for the future of higher edu­ca­tion in par­tic­u­lar are the stuff of a debate that is wash­ing around global edu­ca­tion at the present time.

I will trust that any­one read­ing this already knows what a MOOC is, although I will not nec­es­sar­ily trust that every­one knows that there are MOOCs and there are MOOCs. If your knowl­edge of the con­cept of the MOOC is restricted to those “deliv­ered” by the likes of Cours­era or Udac­ity, then I would urge you to go back to grass roots and read some of what you might find, for instance, in MOOC.ca, set up by Stephen Downes to host news, infor­ma­tion, and discussion around the con­cept, in the writ­ings of George Siemens, Dave Cormier, already men­tioned, and oth­ers. Open, exper­i­men­tal, and con­nec­tivist in nature, the MOOC is an explicit and con­scious attempt to use the incred­i­ble affor­dances offered by the Inter­net to change the nature of education.

The massive-ness, open­ness, and online-ness of the MOOC all are givens, of course, and all are crit­i­cal to the effect that the devel­op­ment is hav­ing at the present time. But I, for one, am less sure that the course-ness of the con­cept has to be a given too. I would recog­nise that the fact that the MOOC is built around the course is prob­a­bly what is keep­ing the con­cept fairly firmly within the broad arms of higher edu­ca­tion, for the moment at least. As Martin Weller, Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University in the U.K., has written, “After a decade of OERs [open educational resources], it’s inter­est­ing that we’re com­ing back to edu­ca­tor con­structed courses.…”

Think Class­room instead of Course?

When I look at the sit­u­a­tion faced by those mil­lions of chil­dren world­wide, in a con­text of poten­tial mas­sive global connectedness, and yet in cir­cum­stances where so many of them have no access to good teach­ing, I can’t but help won­der how the MOOC might be taken, reshaped, and made into some­thing that could begin to ame­lio­rate some of the worst effects of that gen­er­ally awful situation.

I recog­nise, of course that such a sim­ply stated change is, in fact, any­thing but sim­ple. The course is a gen­er­ally uncom­pli­cated thing, usu­ally (although by no means nec­es­sar­ily) a lin­ear, struc­tured, com­pre­hen­si­ble process in which ideas or con­cepts or infor­ma­tion are intro­duced, dis­cussed, dis­sected, reshaped, com­bined, under­stood; it can be a sin­gle unit of “instruc­tion” or a whole pro­gramme of learn­ing, or some­thing in between; and it can be delivered or pre­sented (taught) by a sin­gle teacher or in some senses by every­one on the course (as the orig­i­nal conception of the MOOC seeks to achieve).

The class­room–even the vir­tual, con­cep­tual class­room–is a quite dif­fer­ent beast. It is a “place,” a plat­form; it is the site where courses can hap­pen, where teach­ers can offer lessons across all dis­ci­plines, where learn­ers can go to access learn­ing, debate, insight, exper­tise, author­ity; it is a meet­ing place in which edu­ca­tion can hap­pen; it is the locus for teach­ing and learn­ing activ­i­ties of all kinds.

I believe we have many, per­haps most, of the ele­ments already that would have to be brought together to cre­ate the MOOCl. Instinc­tively, how­ever, I feel that a MOOCl would not be nearly as sim­ple as a MOOC to start up and sus­tain. It would require an oper­a­tional core of a kind and scale that is prob­a­bly not true of the MOOC, although that oper­a­tional core, I would sug­gest, need not be a sin­gle orga­niz­ing unit: it could be an open, dis­trib­uted affair, sym­pa­thetic to the ori­gins of the MOOC. It should offer access to masses of great teach­ing and learn­ing resources. The Khan Academy is an obvi­ous exam­ple of what could be utilised, but so too could the thou­sands of other high-qual­ity, freely avail­able teach­ing and learn­ing resources that increas­ingly throng the web, and across so many of the world’s major, and not-so-major, languages.

So Far, So What?

All of these resources are avail­able today. But the MOOCl would have to incor­po­rate some kind of orga­niz­ing layer, a sim­ple inter­face that would allow any indi­vid­ual any­where in the world not only to access the resources as such but also to access courses, com­mu­ni­ties, teach­ers (who can be, and prob­a­bly will be, other learn­ers), exper­tise, and guid­ance. The MOOCl might also be a device for those teach­ers who already are on the ground, so to speak, in the poor­est coun­tries, to grab hold of and use as a means of enhanc­ing their own teach­ing exper­tise. The MOOCl would be the teacher’s global men­tor, guide, teach­ing assis­tant, just as much as it would be the learner’s teacher too.

Again, you might say, this sounds like a descrip­tion of the World Wide Web. But the MOOCl would have to be more than sim­ply “avail­able”:  It would have to be set up in a way that would allow it reach out in a proac­tive way, to find its way into those places in the world where we know there are young chil­dren who cur­rently have few or no teach­ers to help them learn, where there are few or no teach­ing and learn­ing resources. This will require much thought, huge orga­ni­za­tion, and of course invest­ment. Is there a role here for the big phil­an­thropic foun­da­tions as well as governments? I believe so.

But what of access to the net­work, access to con­nected devices? Of course, the MOOCl would have to be capa­ble of being used across the world’s mobile net­works and acces­si­ble on mobile devices. Gor­don Brown’s report tells us that mobile cel­lu­lar pen­e­tra­tion has reached 50% in the devel­op­ing world and is still increas­ing fast. The cell phone is the default access device for many mil­lions of peo­ple in the world’s poor­est coun­tries, and that is likely to be the case for many years to come.

How much of this can be done in the same spirit as the orig­i­nal MOOC? I don’t know. I sus­pect not much, but I would love to be proved wrong. I know I am merely scratch­ing the sur­face with an unde­vel­oped and poten­tially still­born idea–but if the acute minds of thought­ful and cre­ative peo­ple can come up with the MOOC, I would like to think those same  and other minds could be applied to how we can turn the Mas­sive Open Online Course into the Mas­sive Open Online Class­room to serve the des­per­ate, des­per­ate needs of so many mil­lions of chil­dren in dire eco­nomic and edu­ca­tional poverty across the world.

Generational diversity is often cited by instructors as a significant challenge when implementing emerging technologies.  While younger students aren’t always “savvy” in technology, as trends like to generalize, older students have more fear and skepticism about technology and that can create additional obstacles for success and challenges for facilitators.  How can these be remedied?  Or can they?  What concerns can an instructor mitigate and what accountability falls squarely on the students?  And what is to be gained from having our older students overcome their technological bias or disinterest?  Will they acquire skills that will make them more employable in our digital, mobile society? 

Learning from Diane

This January, as I prepare for my spring semester, I reflect on one student from my previous fall semester class.  Her name is Diane.  While I don’t know how old Diane is exactly, she is older than the traditional, 18-24 year old college student. Before enrolling in my online class, she had successfully completed many online classes before mine.  These other online classes were designed in a traditional course management system and used the built-in discussion board as the nexus of interactivity between students.  By the end of week one, I had secretly tagged Diane as a “high risk” student and I was seriously concerned that she might drop the class.

My online class is not exactly traditional. I use the course management system but only as a place for students to authenticate, access their list of course assignments and due dates, and review their scores and my private feedback.  The core of the students’ learning occurs in two external, web-based tools called VoiceThread and Ning. In VoiceThread, students engage in personalized voice and video conversations as they respond to videos and prompts I have arranged about the course content. I am present here too and leave personalized video feedback to my students, providing me with extra opportunities to expand my teaching time with them and take their learning out into spontaneous and relevant niche areas of our content, just as we would in a classroom conversation. Ning is a closed (or private) social network in which each student continuously develops his or her own blog throughout a course.  The blog, like the VoiceThread comments, are shared with their peers and commented on by others, creating learning community.

Most of my online students say, “I’ve never had a class like this one.” That comment almost always transforms into a very positive response by the end of the class, but in the first week, students are often unsure.  I work hard to support those who are nervous about these new learning methods. 

Identifying and Supporting Student Reluctance

Through many years of online teaching, I’ve learned the importance of designing a high-touch approach in the early weeks of my class so I can understand the needs and challenges of my learners.  As a teacher, I refer to these early weeks as the “red zone.”  One of the simple mechanisms I have in place for week one is an online survey that students complete after reading the syllabus and reviewing some essential resources shared in the course site.  The content they review before completing the survey introduces them to many important things about the class, including my policies and philosophy about teaching, grading information, the fact that they will be participating in voice or video conversations using VoiceThread, and also creating their own blog in a closed social network referred to as Ning.  
Diane, and the rest of my students, completed the online survey and I reviewed the responses.  In the survey, there is one question that I always hone in on quite emphatically.  Toward the end of the survey, I asked students, “In one word, how are you feeling about the class?”  This single-word answer was a golden nugget for me.  Nearly all students responded with a word that was either positive or neutral, like “excited, “good,” “fine,” “curious.”  But there are usually two or three students (out of 35) who reply with something more concerning like “overwhelmed,” “scared,” “nervous.”  These are the students I reach out to.  And this is the group that Diane fell into.

I reached out to Diane after week one and mentioned, in an e-mail, that I had read her survey response and I wanted to assure her that I’d be here to support her through any questions she might have.  I asked her to elaborate on her response and to help me understand her reasons for being “nervous” about the class.  She wrote back and explained to me that she had taken many online classes before and she had been successful in those classes too.  But none of those classes had been like this one.  She was not comfortable with the idea of speaking in the VoiceThreads and also shared at one point that listening to her own voice was like “nails on a chalkboard.” She was not familiar with VoiceThread or Ning (by the way, I do not expect any of my students to be familiar with these tools) and she was skeptical about the value they would bring to her experience.

Fading Out

I soon also began to learn that Diane also was a very busy woman.  She worked more than one job and these extra technologies were intrusions into the flow of her life, intrusions that weren’t planned and weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms.  I candidly shared with Diane why I use VoiceThread and Ning and just how valuable they are to my online learners in creating community and motivating students to learn in relevant contexts.  I asked her to keep an open mind and wait three weeks.  By week three, I assured her, things would settle in.

Well, by week three, Diane was blossoming and I could begin to scale back my high-touch support.  In her VoiceThread group, she was quickly becoming a leader to her peers.  And on our voluntary “check in slides,” she was candidly reflecting on how surprised she was to be enjoying the VoiceThreads so much (sigh of relief!).  On Diane’s blog, not only did I observe thorough, critical writing in response to my prompts, but she was actively enhancing her blog with non-required posts that were “inspired” (her word) by our readings and other course content.  She was reaching out and engaging her peers in dialogue by leaving valuable comments in their blogs that both engaged them in critical conversation and encouraged them for jobs well done.  Diane was emerging as a community leader in the class, a role that is filled to some degree each semester by one, two or three students and she was really flying to new heights.

Reluctant Student Transforms Into Newspaper Blogger

Diane had been faced with a risk. Rather than running away from it, she tackled it head on.  As a result, she grew in new and unexpected ways. And one more unexpected outcome would arrive soon too.  Diane, apparently, was a budding freelance writer.  After conquering her unfamiliarity and fear of technology, she acquired the skills and the confidence to be hired by a major newspaper as a blogger.  Wow! My class — an online, History of Photography Class at a community college — resulted in a reluctant, older student securing a 21st-century journalist position.  Quite an unexpected outcome, I’d say?

As Diane completed her journey in our 17-week class, I invited her and all my students to record a comment on my Wisdom Wall, a special VoiceThread in which I invited departing students to share advice with incoming students.  This tradition is a great way to end a class and provides a beautiful, warm entrance experience for my next group of nervous, reluctant learners.  Please take two minutes to listen to Diane’s reflection by clicking on the video below. (Shared with permission.)

The Golden Rule: “If you do not believe your students can do it, you are right.”

Teaching with the right technologies is essential when you are teaching online.  As an online educator, you are always limited to to quality of the learning environment that your toolkit enables you to create.  For example, if you are teaching a visual discipline like art history and your environment is text dominated, you have a problem.

Beyond that, when you’ve adopted emerging technologies into the design of your class, you are the key to your students’ success.  Technology, no matter how powerful it may seem to be, will never replace the emotional value of a human mentor in a learning experience.  When you have students who are reluctant, overwhelmed, and nervous, only a person will be able to shepherd them through that experience successfully.

Thus, the success of these “reluctant learners” comes down to you. If you do not believe your students can do it, you are right.  If you are skeptical about whether or not your students will succeed, they will smell your reluctance and they will not perform.  You must be a strong, motivational, inspirational, leader.  Look within yourself.  If you don’t believe that your students can and will succeed, you need to adjust something in your class.  If you exude confidence in your online students and do so through warm, video communications so they can know who you are (something that can’t be obtained through text), they will be more likely to be motivated to want to make you proud.  

For more teaching tips and strategies from Michelle, visit the resource site for her book, Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies.

In the industrial era, organizations became more powerful by being bigger; in the Social Era, companies can also be powerful by working with others. While the industrial era was about making a lot of stuff and convincing enough buyers to consume it, the Social Era is about the power of communities, of collaboration and co-creation. In the industrial era, power was from holding what we valued closed and separate; in the Social Era, there is another framework for how we engage one another — an open one.  - Nilofer Merchant

The social era is underway and educational leaders should be examining its relevance to the future survival of our colleges, universities, and schools.  Just what is the social era? How do we define the core elements that distinguish it from our past, shall we say, digital era?  Most of us today in the educational technology space comprehend what social media is, and that’s a great place to start to begin to deconstruct the “social era.” Nilofer Merchant, author of 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era, points out how difficult it is for us today to use the world “social” without attaching “media” to the end of it; yet how critical it is to understand the core essence of “social.”  I found that point to be quite stunning.  Go ahead and try it.  After awhile, you’ll grasp her point more clearly.  You will start to observe essence of “the social era” around you in more things than just “social media.”  And when you comprehend social to be a complete overhaul of how we create value, make decisions, and define worth, you will see how sharply it contrasts with the structure, communications, and systems of our schools and colleges.

According to Merchant,  in the social era, value is created through connections; power lies in community; collaboration supersedes top-down, hierarchical control.  These are all types of interactions we expect when participating with social media, but the point that Merchant makes is that the successful, agile, innovative companies that will succeed in the future are based on a social model from head to toe.  Can you think of examples flourishing in education today?  Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, Khan Academy. 

We must begin to imagine colleges, universities, elementary, and secondary schools as social institutions and recraft our processes, our relationships, how we communicate, how we value what we do.  Why?  Because there’s so much to gain and nothing to lose! It’s time to stop cutting classes, increasing student tuition, and reducing the number of full-time faculty we hire in a tireless race to balance our budgets as public funding for education dwindles.  Taking a page from Merchant, it’s time to stop losing weight in an effort to make ourselves more nimble and time to start reinventing ourselves.

But what would a social educational institution look like?  What would your new title be? What would replace that email system that you still rely on for everything? And how would decisions be made without committees and, dare I say it, how would unions evolve? How different would your institution be if each person contributed and each person’s contributions played a role in starting conversations and evoking critical dialogue? When you really get immersed in the theory of leadership in the social era, what you see is that we are amidst a social learning revolution.  The social era is an an era of learning.  Top down leadership, hierarchy, decision-making, lecture — these are all models to be memorialized.  Moving our institutional models into the social era means we move our organizations into a rich, interconnected, participatory, community based model of learning.  Now doesn’t that make good sense for a learning institution?

Reinventing Faculty Development in the Social Era

All things within an institution can be social.  So let’s focus on a specific example, something you will find in one shape or another at most colleges or universities: faculty development programs. Faculty development programs are under stress, as teaching and learning continues to transform at a rapid pace and budgets at many, especially pubic institutions, dwindle.  In recent years, institutions of higher education in the U.S. have increased the number of online classes they offer.  These statistics can be tracked through the annual Sloan-C survey reports. In 2010, one in three college students in the U.S. was enrolled in at least one online class, up from one in five students in 2006.  Online classes have increased access to college for more non-traditional learners and invented new and excited forms of pedagogy.  

However, teaching online have creased new challenges for faculty and obstacles for faculty development programs.  Faculty often now teach face to face and online simultaneously, sometimes also hybrid.  These multiple methods of course design created intense challenges for maintaining effective course technologies, being present in online and face-to-face classes consistently, responding to student inquiries, grading, providing feedback, developing future content, revising old content, and, of course, staying current on technology which is a continually moving target. Sadly, few institutions have augmented faculty support services in parallel with these increased challenges.

A consistent campus-wide technological event that effects campuses far and wide is the decision to change course management systems (CMS).  A CMS is a technology used to deliver online and hybrid classes and can also be used to supplement face-to-face instruction, as well.  It provides faculty with a toolkit to use to manage and organize their content, as well as basic tools that begin to introduce the concept of constructivist learning — most typical is the discussion board.  CMS technologies are changing quickly, and it’s common to see campuses change their mind about which one they want to adopt.  Changing isn’t bad, but when change is consistently managed through our “traditional strategy” rather than the strategy of “the social era,” things are nowhere near as efficient as they could be.

Changing to a new course management system is a retraining effort for the entire faculty that places extreme burden on the faculty themselves, as well as the support staff that delivers the training and either customizes it or develops it from the ground up.  Some colleges create online training resources for faculty, while other require the trainings to be completed in person, creating hardships for faculty with complex schedules, or for those who teach part time and at multiple institutions or who live remotely from campus. I just spoke with a faculty member at a college that is changing CMSs over the winter break. She attended a two-hour in-person training session, and that was the only resource her institution was providing.  Over break there would be no support staff available to assist faculty with the migration of their courses.

Moreover, currently I am aware of five colleges or universities that are in the midst of transitioning or considering transitioning to Canvas, a new LMS that has caught quite a bit of attention (which I’ll mention again later).  Each of these institutions is likely developing its own training resources and programs for faculty (using the old model) rather than shifting to the values of the social era and creating a model that might be more adaptable, more fluid, and much more efficient.

Now, for a moment, what if colleges and universities took a crowd-sourced approach to faculty training?  If all institutions are training faculty on the same tool, why aren’t we pooling our resources and sharing them together in one place where we all can learn from them, share, and converse together?

Does it make sense particularly for public institutions of higher education that have found their budgets more and more limited in recent years to continue to turn internally and spend that money on developing content for its own employees to consume? Or does it make more sense to foster a culture that values cocreation and sharing?  This would then lead to faculty sharing their own teaching practices, tips, and strategies, creating a more robust community based upon the contributions of individuals with varied and unique skills.  

Imagine the robust reinvention of teaching and learning that would begin to take place if faculty-development programs were transported from the walls of the conference rooms on your campus and into the open web.  Imagine the connections that could be fostered between faculty across the state, region, nation, world.  Imagine how learning activities could be discussed involving collaborations between students from opposites sides of a country or opposite sides of the globe.  

This begins with empowering faculty to be driven intrinsically to share their brilliant ideas and seek out new ones. There’s plenty of evidence that this shift is underway with the volume of bloggers and Tweets and GooglePlus users engaged in active dialogue about teaching and learning.  Jump on Twitter and search for #edchat or #edtech  or #flipclass to check out conversations between teachers (all levels of teachers!) around the world conversing about how they are integrating technology into the classroom effectively.  This is evidence of the social era reshaping our pedagogy and our classrooms … now it’s time for our institutions to shift.

Teach & Share: A Social Strategy 

I have begun to experiment with using GooglePlus Hangouts as faculty learning spaces that put a new spin on a face-to-face roundtable discussion.  With a Hangout, we aren’t limited to hearing from the same voices on campus, and those with access to the physical campus are not privileged over those who live far away or work part time and multiple campuses and can’t attend a traditional face-to-face event.  The GooglePlus Hangout does have a max seat limit of 10 active participants (who engage through video conversation), but if the Hangout is launched as a “Hangout On Air” (which is an option, not a requirement), then the event is streamed live online and an unlimited number of viewers can follow along. Additionally, the conversation is automatically recorded and archived to the YouTube Channel of the GooglePlus user who launched the Hangout on Air.  Got all that?  I know it, it sounds confusing … but it’s not that bad.

I have titled my series Teach & Share, and the premise is quite simple.  A Teach & Share has a topic and is a “group” event that I promote openly on my GooglePlus profile.  Anyone who has added me to their Circles sees the announcements for the Teach & Share (and I also promote them on my blog).  Individuals who are interested in attending may RSVP “yes” to the event notification, and those who do will receive an invitation when the Hangout begins on the scheduled day/time.  Those who wish to view the Teach & Share episode are welcome to view it on GooglePlus or on the special page I have created on my blog titled “Hangouts,” where I always embed the live stream of a Hangout On Air I have launched.  Here is an archive of my first group Teach & Share, which was a conversation between a group of faculty about Canvas: The Hot, New LMS on the Block.  I had been contacted by a variety of faculty who had expressed an interest in learning more about Canvas.  This Teach & Share was my effort to facilitate a group conversation around a “hot topic.”

I  coordinate individual, one-on-one Teach & Shares with faculty members who are willing to share their teaching tips and strategies.  These are archived, creating a repository of searchable ideas.  I recently sat down with Deborah Lemon, who shared with me how she uses Facebook, rather than a traditional learning management system, to teach her online Spanish classes.  Amazing!  What this did was not only create an archive of our conversation but also record Deborah’s tour of her class (with student permission given ahead of time).  My hope is that these Teach & Share archives will continue to fill a void for more teaching samples that so many faculty need and offer a space for faculty across the nation (and beyond?) to come together to share their great ideas and lean on each other for support.

Learn more! 

Want to read more about my Teach & Shares? Check out Jennifer Funk’s blog post on Edcetera! 

Join in!

Want to join in on a Teach & Share!?  My next one is scheduled for Tuesday, Dec 11, 2012, at 3 pm PST / 6pm EST.  The topic is Online Learning: The Good, the Bad & the Awesome!  Add me to your Circles in GooglePlus to receive the event notification.

Michelle Pacansky-Brock is the author of Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies, an online community college instructor, a faculty-development specialist, and a doctoral student in Educational Leadership and Management.

Image Credit

Image courteousy of Oana Roxana Birtea, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net.

A Generation of Personalized Learners  

The data from the 2011 Speak Up survey  demonstrates that by very young ages, students are using digital and, more increasingly, mobile technologies to collaborate with their peers. Nearly half (46%) of high school students have collaborated on homework assignments using Facebook outside of class time, and one in ten have tweeted about an academic topic.  And the percentage of kids owning smartphones has sky rocketed.  In fact, half of 9th-12th graders are now smartphone owners.

Perhaps of more significance, however, is the fact that high school students are beginning to take online classes outside of school, without being required to do so, to explore topics that pique their interests and engage in online discussions with strangers to learn.  It’s becoming more and more clear that this generation does not necessarily correlate school with learning.  Fascinatingly, about 66% of students noted that they measure their academic success by the goals they achieve through their personal successes, not what they do at school or through earning pride from their parents.  This is a compelling shift and not the portrait of an apathetic, complacent generation of Internet addicted consumers so frequently painted by older generations.

What is Personalized Learning?

A personalized learning environment is one that puts a learner in control of her pathway. She becomes empowered to make choices about how she learns, what she learns, and how she demonstrates her proficiencies. She is empowered to use the tools that are relevant to her and to express her findings through a variety of media. She is encouraged to share her work and to leverage the feedback of her community, of which she views herself a part, to improve her knowledge.  She views learning as a lifelong journey and sees the value in connecting what is produces today with where she will be five or twenty years from now.

The Rules of Personalized Learning

#1: The Learner Is in Control

The cultivation of personalized learning isn’t a surprise when we examine what the underlying rule of a Google-ized society is.  According to Jarvis, the essential yet unspoken clause that is baked into each and every Google experience is “the user is in control.”  That does seem to be at the heart of personalized learning, doesn’t it?  But now let’s take a moment and compare that rule with the rules in place at school or college.

Today, academic institutions are invested in the control of students, and this is perhaps one of the greatest lessons educational leaders must to grasp to create visions for future schools, colleges, and universities.  Academic institutions control what classes students can take, when they can take them, when students must show up, and when they can leave (even most online classes oddly adhere to face-to-face seasonal start/end times), and they control how the students achieve success for what they’ve learned.  Furthermore, there are rigid boundaries between “collaborating” and “cheating” that too frequently are obscure and nonsensical to students who view themselves as community members who learn from everything and anything they can find online, and who share back openly without hesitation. 

#2: Trust Is Mutual and Transparent

The underlying problem here is explained in a theory that combines the ideas of Jarvis and David Weinberger.  They jointly observe that in a our digital society, control has an “inverse relationship” with trust.  “The more you control, the less you will be trusted; the more you hand over control, the more trust you will earn” (Jarvis, p. 146).

Viewing academia in this light reveals a pervasive problem.  If our schools, colleges, and universities control every nook and cranny of our students’ learning, then we must deduce that our students don’t trust the institutions from which they are learning!

To many of us, that might seem preposterous.  And if it does, “trust” probably means something very different to you than it does to our younger generation of students.  Trust, in our digital, Google-ized society, according to Jarvis, “is an act of opening up; it’s a mutual relationship of transparency and sharing.  The more ways you find to reveal yourself and listen to others, the more you will build trust, which is your brand.”  This typically doesn’t describe a relationship between a school/college/university and a community, a teacher and her students, a professor and his students.  And I would argue that the further a student advances in his academic career, the less likely he is to experience this type of trust.  Power and control is even more severe and pervasive in higher education than in K-12. 

Why It’s Worth the Risk

Fostering trust through a “mutual relationship of transparency and sharing” is key to the successful implementation of personalized learning.  And it will support faculty who feel timid about the idea of giving students control.  I’ve seen this work in my classes where I set up a social network.  The first semester I tried it, I was scared to death.  It was a fully online community college class, and I can remember thinking, “What am I thinking?  They’re going to post all kinds of crazy pictures.  I’m going to get in so much trouble!”  But that’s not what happened at all.  It was actually quite the opposite.  Students were more engaged, more thoughtful, and more responsive to class than they had ever been previously.  I quickly saw the value and importance of developing what I refer to as “Community Groundrules,” which I implement in every class now, and while I’ve never had to actually enforce them, there is a clause that tells students what to do if a rule is violated and how it will be taken care of.  So, there is an element of control here but I view it more as a safety measure for my students who are nervous about participating in the network (these are typically my older, return students).
Implementing more personalized learning into your classes involves letting go of control, and this can be a harrowing thought to a teacher or professor.  But it can lead to dazzling changes!   

A Few Tips for Preparing for Personalized Learning in Your Class

• Prepare – Mentally frame your journey as an experiment, rather than a change that will lead to success or failure.  

• Develop Groundrules – Here is a sample.

• Participate – Be a community member and model your groundrules.

• Inquire – Provide opportunities for students to give feedback, and ask them for ideas about how to improve the class (surveys, reflection blog posts, polls, VoiceThreads).

• Listen – Pay close attention to what your students have to say about how their experience is going.

• Take Notes – Use voice recordings or take written notes about particular weeks/units that are strong or need to be reworked.

• Be a Learner – Don’t take things personally. View yourself as a learner trying to improve your class. Your goal isn’t making all your students happy.  Your goal is to create a relevant, engaging learning experience.  So focus on their feedback and be careful to hone in on the ideas that correlate with your objectives.

• Be a Model – Participate in social media. Share your Twitter handle or blog with your students so they see how social media can play a role in shaping their professional future.  

• Empower Your Students – Point them to digital portfolio tools (like Pathbrite), and encourage them to start building a showcase of their brilliant work now!  If they’re in college, encourage them to start building a LinkedIn profile and building their network.

The medium of video has been through a revolution in the past decade.  How we create it, how we share it, how we access it, and how experiencing it affects our lives has transformed multiple levels of our society, as well as reshaped the values and learning patterns of younger generations.  Yet the way college professors use video to foster learning in their classes has changed much less significantly during the same time period. There are many opportunities here for improving learning, particularly at a distance.

When my first child was born in 2000, I was thrilled to spend about $700 on a digital cassette recorder that allowed me to capture his coos and gurgles on small tapes that had to be inserted into larger cassettes to play in our full-size VCR. These family artifacts, of course, were completely replaced by digital recording devices a few short years later when my next child was born.  And today, I record their silly antics with the video camera on my iPhone and have the instant option to share them (publicly or privately) with relatives by clicking “Share to YouTube” (three hours of video is uploaded per minute from mobile devices to YouTube).

Further, the rapid increase in the spread of smartphone ownership continues to shift the playing field of how users access video.  In 2011, video accounted for 50% of mobile traffic according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, and it is expected to increase twenty five fold by 2017.  YouTube reports that videos viewed on mobile devices tripled in 2011.

Today, my son, who is now 12, has a Go Pro camera that he straps to his head while riding his bike, skateboarding, or just performing skits with his friends.  It’s a rare day when he doesn’t create a video.  After recording a file, he connects the camera to our iMac, adds cool flashes and explosions in vibrant colors to the raw video clips in Adobe After Effects, uploads the enhanced files into his YouTube account, and then merges the clips together online in a Web browser using the new built-in YouTube editor (complete with titles, transitions, and Creative Commons music to drop in).  Then he publishes the video (with a “public” setting because, to him, anything else is “pointless”) and anxiously waits to see how many views the video receives, who subscribes to his channel, and whether anyone leaves a comment.  

To my digital-native son, it is the quality of the socialization that surrounds the sharing of his video that validates the quality of his work.  This is a tremendous disconnect between today’s youth and academia. If more college professors would participate in social media and begin to comprehend what it feels like to share your work and have it be commented on by the world, we would be taking one huge step forward to reflect and evaluate how the social era could be leveraged to craft relevant college learning experiences.

In addition to participation in social media, institutional leaders should also be encouraging faculty to adopt free to low-cost Web-based video tools that are not only cheaper and more accessible than enterprise solutions but also come along with a much more shallow learning curve.  Today, most college faculty are part-time and many work at multiple institutions.  Easy-to-use, free, cloud-based applications align nicely with the working realities of 21st-century faculty.  While it’s true most free to low-cost video recording and hosting tools come with time limits, I think that’s a good thing!  A 10-15 minute video limit is a terrific way to hone one’s instruction skills.  If you can’t say it in 15 minutes, break it into two lessons.

Michelle’s Video Teaching Toolkit

Want more great ideas?
Check out my new book, Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies!

• Jing - I use this free screencasting and screencapture tool to respond to questions I receive from students via email.  I just record a quick video for them using what’s on my computer (I demonstrate how to do something, rather than explain it in text!) and send them the link that Jing instantly creates for me (no need to email a bulky video!).

• YouTube – Most college instructors know how to use YouTube to find videos and share those videos with their students.  But educators need to start curating their own YouTube Channels.  Yes, creating and sharing your own videos. I use YouTube to host the brief, concise videos I create for my classes, some of which I create using the “Upload from Web Cam” feature which enables me to create instantly using nothing more than the tools built into my computer.  When it’s appropriate, I set the videos to Public and share them with the world. When it’s not, I set them to “Unlisted” and embed them in my class so only my students can view them. When I’m using videos permanently in my class, I use the Captions feature to add closed captions for students who require or prefer to read the captions. Fast. Simple. Accessible. Free.

• Screencast-o-matic – For those of you who don’t have access to a premium screencasting application (like Camtastia or Screenflow) or for those of you who do but want something easier to use, check out Screencast-o-matic.  It’s a fabulous tool that is free to use and runs right in your browser (it uses a Java applet that you will need to “Allow” upon launching the program).  With a free account, record anything on your screen for up to 15-minutes and then either download the file to your computer as an .mp4 file or upload it directly to your YouTube account (nice option!).  For $15/a year you have the option to upgrade to a premium account, which eliminates the small watermark that appears on the videos you create with the free account and adds some super-cool features like the ability to draw on the screen with your mouse and zoom in/out as you record!

• VoiceThread – I use this multipurpose, Web-based tool to upload videos, presentation slides, and documents.  I record my comments on each slide and then share the VoiceThread, which is like a multimedia slideshow, with my students through a secure Group. My students leave their comments on each slide in either voice, video, or text.  The flexibility of VoiceThread allows me to use it as an online teaching space in which I can return and comment back to students in the form of personalized video feedback.  Previous students who have used VoiceThread have reported that they feel more motivated throughout a class and experience fewer hurt feelings because they can sense when their peers are being genuine or are concerned, subtle cues that are frequently misread in text-based discussions.  Lots of ideas, tips, and resources for VoiceThread are here on my blog!

• Google+ Hangouts – These are sycnronous video chats that are “baked in” to Google+.  They are free and accommodate up to 10 people. Hangouts come in two flavors: standard and “On Air,” which means your session will be broadcast simultaneously to a live stream via your YouTube Channel (and anywhere else you choose to insert the customized embed code provided when the Hangout is launched).  The “On Air” function expands the 10-seats to an unlimited audience and it also archives the live stream to your YouTube Channel.  Start to imagine the applications here in teaching and learning: student-led study groups, instructor led office hours or group tutor sessions, interviews, and debates — and how about just connecting with faculty at other campuses to learn about what’s happening there and discuss problems/obstacles/issues more openly and collaboratively?  In August I began using Hangouts on Air for my monthly VoiceThread “office hour.”  Learn more and view samples here.

• Scribblar – This interactive whiteboard tool supports live-time online collaboration around images and your own annotations. Text chat is built in an audio is also an option.  If you want to get creative, use Screencast-o-matic to record your Scribblar sessions.  Then upload the videos to YouTube or into a VoiceThread for an interactive, asynchronous office hour (as I explain in this blog post).

What’s Your Vision?

Video holds many possibilities for 21st-century learning — from humanizing the online classroom, to supporting diverse learners, to building stronger community ties between students, and providing authentic methods of assessment.  Share your great ideas for using video in a comment below!

What is quickly emerging is the definition of space — not as the action of what will occur in it, and not for just the academic subject.  I recently read an article describing the redefining of library spaces as “collaboratories” in New York around the theme that tools, teaming, and physical layout would create a zone of innovative, higher-order thinking and learning with others — physically or virtually present in the space. 

Years ago when I attended the Microsoft Innovative Teachers forum, a guest speaker from the Institute of Design at Stanford spoke about the portability and flexibility of learning spaces.  What was interesting was their learning laboratory — including moveable white board walls, stacks of sticky notes ready to be used for moments of brilliance, moveable learning spaces and side spaces for teaming.  But what also was stressed was that learning was portable and defined by the space, and that learning was not driven by tools but the ability to promote higher order thinking skills.

Emerging Trends in Learning Space Design

Most recently two great examples appeared on the Web that truly inspired my thinking about what is a learning space. I look around my own classroom and realize one-half of the furniture and instructional space are rarely used by students.  The recent highlight of Colorado’s Virtual Learning Cafe really inspired me — because of not only the layout and flexibility but also the idea that blended and virtual instructional strategies will empower students to maximize collaboration and innovation.

In the article, Sweden’s Latest Classrooms Don’t Have Walls, the key descriptors include the concepts of collaborative, independent, and project-based spaces to identify how the work will be done. The images reflect involved and engaged students with technology and their peers, not with teachers drilling instruction.  The exploratory and productive nature of these spaces inspires me to think of instructional spaces just like the modern work spaces of tech companies such as Google: The openness and mobility to do work are the keystones to inspire innovation, higher-order thinking, and ideas to impact society beyond the classroom walls.

When I look at the newly defined spaces and think about my role as instructor, the emerging story of how we can learn with fewer restrictions and more mobility may be keys to preserving innovation in schools.  Mobility is the work that continues to resonate in my mind around the ideas that is may be by device, person, tools, or learning experience.

So my role as the facilitator of learning is to foster the the process of learning around my cited six essential learning elements of Generation C that can occur in any space. The recent article on How To Turn Your Classroom Into an Idea Factory really struck me that the learning process and higher-order thinking expectations are the root of how we can effectively prepare Generation C for the world they will enter.

Five Forward-Thinking Ideas to Promote Innovative Learning Spaces and Processes

•  Learning is not space dependent.

• Flexible learning spaces include access and furniture.

• Spaces should allow access to virtual networks via Internet access and tools to maximize the use of Generation C’s network.

• Learning is not time-dependent, because personalized learning schedules are breaking the molds of traditional school days.

• Blended, virtual learning and project-based learning will become the new norm; spaces need to meet the needs of collaboration and flexibility beyond the computer. 

My final blog entry will address ideas about preparing Generation C for the “world of work.”  The original coining of this phrase was based on the new workforce of connected age 18-35 employees, but the redefining of Generation C as the 5 to 18-year-old students pushing the envelope of education will further redefine the “world of work” they will enter.

I still struggle as an educator when I say instruction and learning can be tied to one type of learning platform and one programmed curriculum. When I think about the technology tools, programs and ideas that have come and gone, it does make me wonder whether or not, ultimately, the Internet is the only equalizer for all students. 

Why the Web as the Ultimate Equalizer?

In 1995, as a bright-eyed and open-minded classroom teacher, I attended an educator conference about this new topic called the Internet.  The facilitator discussed ideas about how information via the Web could somehow influence classrooms, teaching, and the daily lives of everyone.  In fewer than 20 years, the discussion has now shifted on digital education and learning: Instead of influencing learning, now if the web goes down, it is an emergency situation during the school day.

Today, why the is Web access the number-one goal for leadership?  Simply stated, the vast amount of digital content and teaching are quickly moving education to a new era.  The extension of learning opportunities beyond the classroom walls create rich interactive learning experiences — taking our students all over the world with tools that do not have to be app specific.

The Realities of Mobile Learning Access and Equity

The range of mobile devices and tools provides some interesting trends in education.  Following the research about the use of these tools, access to only the Web via mobile devices defines daily activity — not only for educational activities but also for entertainment and daily communication tasks. The ability for educational leaders to recognize these trends to identify the access to the Internet via mobile device data plans versus at-home Internet access is essential. For schools looking at adoptions of tablets, the limitations for extended school must address the issue of Internet access as home via Wi-Fi or ethernet. 

Six Strategies to Address Equity and Access at the Learners Level

• Student Access and Equity Survey Tool administered by teachers to create a knowledge base of in- and out-of-school access, personal-device access, and digital skill level to create accommodations as needed
• Alternative School Day Access Plans plans via checkout, extended lab hours, or community resources
• Rental or Lease Programs to supplement 1:1 or bring-your-own-technology (BYOT) programs
• Standardized Scope and Sequence of Skills and Strategies based on the six essential elements posted in my previous blogs that can be adapted to any technology tools and personal devices
• Adequate Professional Development in open-source, Web-based, and a variety of technology tools so educators understand strategies to eliminate any barriers to digital-learning experiences
• Web-based Software and Production Tools to promote collaboration, creativity, and public sharing of learning products

The reality of mobile learning and the value saving components of digital-learning content will move educational leaders forward.  As cited in the National Association of Secondary School Principals article Using Mobile Devices in School NAASP Report, the incorporation of technology devices and freedom to learn whenever via access are  essential components of 21st-century schools. 

In my next blog, the physical design of schools and learning spaces to incorporate the learning needs of Generation C will offer some insight into how we can think differently about future of school collaborative-learning environments.

Everyone has followed the Did You Know series, which is currently up to the 4.0 version.  What intrigues me about this series is the growing emphasis on the tools to define a way of life and a generation that is connected without mentioning the strategies to meet the needs of these new digital learners. The world is, in fact, becoming smaller through technology, but the demands of words are creating a new purpose and process of education.

My own experience promoting philosophies such as project-based, challenge-based, and, now, the newest topic of passion-based learning, has refocused my thoughts about the role of technology in learning.  Technology is not only a tool to achieve a learning objective but also an instrument to shape the process and product of learning. Use of technology to align with student passions, service, and contributions to impact beyond the classroom walls is the key to engaging Generation C. 

Reviewing the 12 Ways Technology Has Changed Learning, the tools and information access assumes this will change the learning process and the impact of learning.  Educators must not be caught up in the gadgets of learning; instead, they should focus on the ability to shape experiential learning and student ownership of the process to discover, create, and problem solve.

The Essential Tools  

The six  essential tools to equip Generation C  to make them productive beyond the devices, gadgets, and social networks are:

• Personal Responsibility to promote motivation, engagement, and  commitment to use education
  to make an impact on the world

• Critical Thinking beyond the classroom to promote problem solving to look at problems and
  issues beyond the local environment

• Creativity to foster innovation, entrepreneurship, and idealism through experiential learning

• Collaboration to understand the concept of thinking globally but acting locally with redefined networks

• Re-Learning Strategies to promote flexible skills, adaptive tendencies, and an open mind on creating knowledge

• Communication across different medians that will include virtual, personal, and Second Life environments

Education programming can be shaped by things such as common standards and performance tests, but the movement needs to address these six elements to move students to be the future thinkers.  School districts implementing programs that require computer science programming courses or apps development for middle school students are showing higher achievement results.

The opportunity for students to have equal access to educational tools and programming in and out of school is the next problem facing educational leaders.  This topic will be addressed in my next blog looking at classroom strategies and community attempts to minimize these issues.