Look at the Glowing Parchment

Moving from a traditional classroom to a blended learning environment is certainly all the rage. As the price point has dropped significantly, school districts are discovering that we are reaching that critical level at which it is nearly practical to provide each student with a digital device to enhance their education. It is clear to most educators, these tools can make a difference. The question is how will this level of technology impact learning in the classroom.

Unfortunately, as is often the case in education, we aren't getting the message across to the public very well. Throughout the news one can find articles about how tablets, chromebooks, & laptops are replacing textbooks. Children now no longer have to read those old textbooks instead they can have a $200-$300 glowing screen. Put your Smith-Corona and correction tape away, we have a shiny laptop to type that five paragraph essay on. No more looking through the encyclopedia, the Internet has all the information on the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act. 

In the technology press, reporters look to extend the narrative about how each new product will disrupt the status quo. Whereas in education, the narrative is consistently about substitution. The pen substituting for the quill. The word processor substituting for the type writer. The tablet substituting for the textbook. It's not that innovation isn't happening, its the narrative that is defining the change a substitution instead of redefinition.

Yes, tablets, chromebooks, & laptops can substitute for the textbooks and word processors. However, if that is all we use them for then the narrative is right, we are buying really expensive glowing parchments. The reality is that we are redefining the learning environment. Each day our teachers and students are discovering new ways to learn concepts and create innovative products. No longer is a flame test subject to the observations of a freshman's eyeball, but with tablet in hand, the students can record the experience and debate the nuances of colors and wavelengths as they analyze their recording of the experiment. Now as second grade students have a question about the distance between the Earth and Mars, they reach out to experts in the field, tweeting 8th grade science classes down the street or NASA engineers developing rovers exploring the Martian Surface. Students create videos modeling the prepositions they are learning in dance and song. Our teachers and students are disrupting the learning establishment in classroom after classroom. They are not using these digital tools as simply glowing parchments but are instead creating products unimaginable five years ago. Now it is time for us to disrupt the narrative. We, as leaders, whether students, teachers, or district administrators cannot sell ourselves short by publishing the message about digital textbooks. The 1 to 1 revolution is about changing the learning experience not simply the latest model of a glowing parchment.

All societies need a little disruption: