The horizon behind: 2011 in review

In February the New Media Consortium (NMC,click) released it’s much awaited Horizon Report from an in-depth look at the ongoing conversation across contexts. The resulting report presents critical trends and challenges for education and learning and was so accurate that with 2012 just around the corner it already feels stale. This isn’t a criticism, but more nearly an acknowledgement that this group saw what was upcoming for the period of 2011-2016 and pinned it down. Perhaps it could be argued that this report influences what comes to fruition but realistically the growth and development in education as it interfaces with technology are so rapid and so full of possibility that it would be absurd to think one entity can guide it. I am in awe of them for accurately highlighting what was/is coming.

The two key trends the 2011 report highlighted were that “sense-making and the ability to assess the credibility of information are paramount” and “digital literacy is less about tools and more about thinking”. Since we rolled out the 1:1 CLC program at school, both of these themes have become more of the focus of the conversations I have been a part of. A colleague and I were just commented the other day how huge a relief if is to no longer worry about reserving laptop carts or how to make an assignment work for two people on the same computer.

One of the things I love about being a part of the current zeitgeist is that for most good ideas, if you can dream it up, there is someone who has already made an app for it or is making one. Because the technological solutions exist or will exist very

Rainy Scene in Yokohama - Days Gone By

shortly, I find my mind is free to dream about the interactions and collaboration we can foster in school using a fuller range of the tools available.

The digital divide, once seen as a factor of wealth, is now seen as a factor of education: those who have the opportunity to learn technology skills are in a better position to obtain and make use of technology than those who do not. – 2011 Horizon Report

For me, the fascinating part of the latest trends in education isn’t their novelty, it’s that we didn’t notice them before. I remember when my high school chem teacher, Dr. Johnson, issued an entire class the same take home “open book” test. While I don’t remember whose brainchild it was, I do remember 30 or so of us meeting up in the town library to collaborate. This was obviously pre-internet and thankfully the librarian didn’t call the school. We subdivided the test into small teams with each subgroup developing expertise in our select area. While the learning in our target areas was authentic because we truly mastered that small area from a position of keen interest, pulling resources from shelves with wild abandon trying to get our section of the test perfect. Where we crossed the ethical line was in the open exchange of answers with other teams for the other areas. Knowing that it would be too suspicious if we all had the same answers correct/incorrect, we all agreed to make one or two intentional and random false answers to give the illusion of individual variation.

Not surprisingly as a class we did pretty well on that test, individually however, I learned about 1/6 of what I was supposed to have learned even though my grade didn’t reflect this. As a young student I didn’t enjoy chemistry much so I didn’t lose much sleep over our “collaboration”. As an educator now, however, I find fault in my younger self for not having more scruples but also see how much was wrong with that assessment. Had it been designed so that we could develop areas of expertise followed by teaching each other what we learned, it would have been a very different dynamic. While I didn’t see much value in memorizing the periodic table when I knew which page in the book it was on, I was pretty invested in my friends. I would have learned some chemistry, if for no other reason than, to just keep connected with them.

Fast forwarding 20 years later into my master degree program I was to engage in a structured chat with a partner and then submit the text from our conversation to our professor to be assessed. To make sure we hit the assessment criteria, I suggested we log into Skype and the chat forum at the same time to carry out a real-time behind the scenes dialog so we could orchestrate our written content to fit the highest band. Ironically, I remember feeling like we were “cheating” because clearly we had figured out a way to reverse-engineer the system. Differently to Dr. Johnson’s chemistry class, however, we increased our investment across the full spectrum of the assignment and tighter collaboration resulted in increased learning. We didn’t cheat the system or ourselves, but found a way to make the learning more authentic, easier, and fun.

As the two preceding examples begin to illustrate, human learning can be characterized by a drive toward efficiency and collaboration. The technology we used in a North American high school in 1989 to bring us together was the automobile and library. The car at least was expensive, bad for the environment, and far more dangerous than opening a laptop. Coupled with a full library, 30 friends, and a card catalog this was as powerful a combination as we could cobble together.

Digital literacy is less about tools and more about thinking. – The 2011 Horizon Report

Rather than worry about whether people embrace the latest technology tools or turn away, what educators can do is to continue to focus our thinking on the nature of our assessment so that we encourage students to move toward collaboration that fosters authentic learning. In pursuit of real learning people will seek out the tools that best work for the purpose. Critical in this process if for us to model active learning ourselves. As emphasized in this past year’s horizon report, the digital divide isn’t as much a factor about wealth anymore as it is a factor of education. Anyone hungry for knowledge and understanding even within the narrow confines of their own discipline, will be, as a matter of course, well-briefed in the range of technologies that feed the appetite. On the next horizon, it’s safe to predict intellectual famine among the disconnected. – AC

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