Adminfo - and Vice Principals

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Technology/Moving out of the comfort zone Embracing ambiguity Musings of a digital immigrant by Raymond Lemoine February 08 • Adminfo • 4 Thirty years ago, computers hit schools and completely changed the world teachers and students inhabit. The problem then was, 1) the computer was a relatively new invention; 2) inventions revolutionize; 3) revolutions are disruptive; and 4) schools and people who work in them don’t like disruption. Like the tractor that first appeared in the mid 19 th Century and forced the farmer to embrace the fact that his old tired yet reliable stallion was to be replaced by a machine, the computer demanded that educators look at the way they taught. The computer was to the teacher what the tractor was to the farmer … unknown, unproven, and up to a certain point, menacing. Although the red flag had been hoisted over traditional educational practices many times over the span of the last five decades, this new technology would rapidly bring to light that education was sadly focused on outdated metrics. It would catapult teaching away from the antiquated stand and deliver pedagogy and would afford us new opportunities to improve our teaching. Some of us brushed it off as being another passing trend and would Sister Pierre-Joseph in a digitally altered photo by Raymond Lemoine.
scoff at any mention that it would eventually revolutionize teaching by teachers and learning by the learners. Many of us plunged head first into the technological revolution, all the while anxious about the anticipated ambiguity that this new technology would bring to our profession. At the outset of the revolution, most of us were unprepared for what was about to hit us. Lewis Perelman, author of School’s Out (1992), argued that schools were out of sync with technological change, “ … the technological gap between the school environment and the “real world” is growing so wide, so fast that the classroom experience is on the way to becoming not merely unproductive but increasingly irrelevant to normal human existence” (p.215). In 1993, Seymour Papert, one of the most important thinkers of the past half-century wrote, “ In the wake of the startling growth of science and technology in our recent past, some areas of human activity have undergone mega change. Telecommunications, entertainment and transportation, as well as medicine, are among them. School is a notable example of an area that has not.” Granted, our concept of schooling had evolved and there were more and more attempts to change the formal structures of education, (how can one forget the Year 2000 project, circa the early 1990s) but these shifts in educational trends were led more by changing demographics as well as economic structures and cultures than by our desire to rethink education so that it would be more in sync with the real world. For most of us, the arrival of technology into schools took us completely off guard. And yet, the writing had been on the wall for quite some time. I, for one, had first read the writing in 1963, in a prophecy uttered by a wise 71-year-old nun. Sister Pierre-Joseph was not only the grade six teacher of our small village school, she was also the Mother Superior to the other sisters and thus, the educational leader and pedagogical savant of our school community. I remember her greeting us every morning with her habitual shortwinded ‘Bonjour les enfants,’ panting after lugging her 4-ft 8-inches, 200 pound frame up the old school/convent grand staircase (at least I remember them as being grand), her red face accentuated by the blackness of her habit and that starched white visor that framed her face. Sister Pierre- Joseph was strict, but then, she was a nun, and all nuns were strict. What I remember the most about Sister Pierre-Joseph was that she was a true visionary. One day, in one of our math classes, Victor, my cousin (we were all cousins in that school), tired, bored and exasperated after having spent the past 90 minutes working at five pages of long divisions, shared out loud his frustration in regards not only to the complexities of long division, but also to the redundancy of the whole long division phenomenon. The class’ collective gasp preceded what seemed to be an eternity as all of our eyes anxiously and nervously turned to Sister Adminfo VOLUME Adminfo is published five times per year by the BC Principals’ & Vice-Principals’ Association. Subscriptions for non-members of the Association are available for $32.10 per year, including GST. Adminfo welcomes your editorial contributions and student artwork. All material should be sent to: Richard Williams, Editor, Adminfo, #200-525 10 th Avenue West, Vancouver V5Z 1K9 [call 604-689-3399 or 800-663-0432, fax 604-877-5381 or email: rwilliams@bcpvpa.bc.ca]. Editor Pierre-Joseph, perched high behind her elevated desk in front of us. Time stood still, the deafening silence individually punctuated by the inner sound of our pounding hearts, for some in excited anticipation, for others in anticipated terror. Needless to say, we, all 38 of us, were taken aback by Victor’s dare devilling and reckless outburst. Alas, the strict and mandatory silence permeating the classroom (essential element to the learning process, we were told) was broken. More importantly, Victor, a child, a student, and thus a mere minion in the vast pool of ignorant children that made up our world, dared question the validity of what we were asked and needed to do in order to one day, as all adults had done before us, ascend to the world of wisdom and knowledge. The silly girls in the front of class were of course scandalized, if not traumatized, by Victor’s outburst. I, on the other hand, was impressed. This was not the first time that he would get into trouble for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and consequently, Victor had a bit of a reputation as being the black sheep of the school. Victor was my hero. Sister slowly rose from her pedestal. Slightly leaning towards us, both hands firmly on her desk as to get a Richard Williams 20 NUMBER 3 February 08 • Adminfo • 5
Page 1 and 2: Adminfo February 2008 Volume 20 •
Page 3: We run the risk of having a particu
Page 7 and 8: VCR, but then, who needs it. I can
Page 9 and 10: Learning/The unending process Utili
Page 11 and 12: Good news/early childhood research
Page 13 and 14: will become bored because they’ll
Page 15 and 16: hilaration again, the same dedicate
Page 17 and 18: have begun to place real value on t
Page 19 and 20: Enhancing every child’s life chan

Adminfo - and Vice Principals

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