Thumbs Up...Thumbs Down?

"A world order is emerging that is characterized by connectivity, change and convergence."  Students must learn to deal with complexity from the earliest grades on.  Students need to develop the ability to see interrelationships and gain a better understanding of the complexity of technology and society.  - 2030 by Rutger Van Santen et.al. (2010).

The authors of 2030, two eminent scientists from the Netherlands, were discussing what was needed to meet the many great challenges that mankind will face in the next two decades.  Education played a critical role in meeting these challenges as the above attests.

Around the time that I read this, I attended the annual conference of the Pennsylvania Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.  While there, I attended a keynote presentation by Dr. Mike Schmoker, a respected authority in the area of school improvement.  Dr. Schmoker was both entertaining and engaging.  He set forth a clear path to school improvement that was concise and easy to understand.  All we needed to do, according to Dr. Schmoker, was to follow the tenets of Madeline Hunter's direct teaching.  In Dr. Schmoker's opinion, formative assessments could be as easy as asking for a "Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down!"  We've known this for years, Dr. Schmoker proclaimed.

Dr. Schmoker went on to tell the audience that technology was a distraction and that we should stop burdening teachers with trying to integrate it into their curriculum.  We should allow teachers who were not ready for such complicated stuff to develop the fundamentals of teaching before asking them to learn how to use technology to improve learning.

I found myself being seduced by the simplicity of it all.

As I shook myself from my brief reverie, I realized that Dr. Schmoker was describing the ideal teacher-centered, large-group classroom.  A classroom where the teacher transmits  knowledge and the pupils signal "message received" with a hardy thumbs up.  While this might have been appropriate in the mid 20th Century, a time coined the "Broadcast Era" by Don Tapscott, it is hardly adequate preparation for the "Participatory Era" of the 21st Century!

The idea that a "Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down" provides any reliable or useful information is preposterous.  How does it reveal depth of understanding or even how a teacher might adjust his or her strategy to accommodate student needs.  It simply provides the teacher with some confidence that it is okay to "push on."

In a student-centered classroom where students engage in learning rather than simply observe teaching, the lesson serves as the formative assessment.  In such a participatory setting, teachers are able to directly observe depth of understanding and level of mastery.  They can then provide customized instruction because they have far more information about why students are struggling.  Teaching in such a classroom is anything but simple!

Can this be done without technology?  Probably, but it can be done more effectively and efficiently with technology because, used correctly, technology can empower students.

As I reflected back on Dr. Schmoker's presentation I tried to imagine any other profession that would  tolerate a statement that active practitioners should not be required to utilize advanced techniques and technologies until they "learned" the basics of their profession.  Can you imagine such a statement at a medical conference?  Imagine a nationally renowned speaker suggesting that surgeons should be allowed to use outdated methods and technologies simply because they hadn't kept up!  Would you send you son or daughter to such a physician?

At a time when students are expected to be life-long, independent learners who will doubtlessly rely on technology to expand their knowledge and hone their skills;
At a time when technology permeates almost everything we do socially, personally and professionally;
At a time when the solution to almost every major problem that we face personally, as a nation or even as a global community calls for an understanding of advanced technologies;
At such a time, how can we as educators ask parents to send their children to the "successful" classroom that Dr. Schmoker describes?