Refining a dream

In 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. was being interviewed and he was asked about his "dream."  His answer was an answer that I think every dreamer can relate to.  He told the reporter that his "dream" had become more like a nightmare.  In the 4 years since his "dream" speech he had learned a lot, he had witnessed the more subtle but just as damaging racism of the North in Chicago, he saw the effects of poverty and realized that the problems of the underprivileged went much further than the color of their skin and he felt what it was like to lose his political allies when he spoke out against the Vietnam war.

The dream became a nightmare.  In my experience most dreams do at some point.  I can think of business ventures, relationships and personal goals that started out as great dreams but at some point in the journey became nightmares.  Some of those dreams were beyond repair and I had to walk away, but the ones that could be fixed became better and more focused in the nightmare stage.  It is in this stage that the dream gets refined.  Unneeded parts get thrown away, important parts get refocused and parts I completely forgot get added in.  It is trial by fire.  What you are left with is a dream that has been tested, retooled and is now way better than your original dream.

I write this because I am living in one of those stages in my life as a teacher right now.  Teaching is a second career for me, I owned a small business for about a decade before teaching.  I somehow managed to get through teacher education with getting really screwed up (thanks to a couple professors that encouraged me to keep thinking outside the box) and I entered teaching knowing that education was broken but feeling that I could fix it, at least fix my little part of it.  And I knew how; I knew the answer that was going to fix it; it was technology.  The incredible things that technology could do for our students was going to change the way they learn and the way we teach.  The dream was there.

Of course I got hired on at a school that really had no technology, no future plan for technology and an administration that wasn't pushing for it or exploring its use, however none of that mattered to me because the dream was there.  I was lucky enough to be teaching with someone who had the same dream and the two of us started to work toward that dream.  We worked around the system, selling candy and having student dances to raise money for Chromebooks, we installed an "underground" wi-fi system since our building had none.  To me this is probably my favorite part of pursuing a dream, in this stage there are no concerns or fears.  It is just an all sprint to accomplish the dream.  The notion of the nightmare does not even enter your head (no matter how many dreams have become nightmares before.)

Today is about 6 years since the beginning of that dream and yesterday my administration sent me to Googlefest to learn more about being 1:1 because our sixth grade team is getting enough Chromebooks next week to be 1:1.  As I look at our building, that used very little technology just a few years ago, I see everyone is using it now.  Even the teachers that have been teaching for 35 years are using Chromebooks in their class everyday.  The dream is here.  I am lucky enough to have all the technology in my room I would ask for, my administration is pushing technology and all the teachers are using.  It should be glorious but instead when I look around and reflect on it it is a nightmare.

The part of the dream that I was not prepared for is how we as an educational institution would change technology to mirror how we already teach, I assumed that technology would change our institutions, but I was wrong.

Technology can bring out the best in our kids and our educational system.  It can inspire creativity with all the programs and knowledge that help kids create stuff.  It can inspire curiosity because answers are now available to you anywhere and more answers always bring more questions.  It can create collaboration between students in a class or students around the world.  It can give a voice to a quiet and shy student.  It can engage the un-engaged.



Technology can also do none of this.  Technology can be used to isolate kids.  Technology can be used to perform the equivalent of worksheets over and over.  Technology can be used to stifle creativity and curiosity.  Technology can be used to do the exact same thing we have been doing in education for the last 20 years and this is what we are using it for.

Look at how technology is being used your building.  In mine it things like IXL and iReady that are basically center worksheets.  It is used to practice memorization.  It is used to organize assignments electronically.  It is used to do the same things we use to do with a paper and pencil.  None of this stuff changes or fixes anything.

I am not immune to this either.  When I look at my own use of technology in my classroom I see a lot of examples that are just new versions of what I used to do.  So I came up with some questions I ask to evaluate my use of technology:

• Is what I am having my students do with technology isolating them in their learning or helping them collaborate with others?
• Is what I am having my students do with technology truly increasing engagement or is it just a polished form of something I used to do?
• Is what I am having my students do with technology encouraging creativity from my students?
• Is what I am having my students do with technology increasing my students curiosity or limiting it?
• Is what I am having my students do with technology encouraging all students to use their voice?

Obviously I still use technology that does not do all of this.  I love Khan Academy and the only criteria that it would meet is probably the engagement one.  However I am trying to be mindful to make sure that I use technology to make sure I can answer yes to everyone of those questions regularly throughout the year.  I challenge you to use questions like this and to always be evaluating how and why you use technology.

One program that I am very into right now is Peardeck.  I think that it engages students, it gives students a voice, it can be used to start conversations between students and it can build on their curiosity if I ask the right questions.

I know that I am not the only one who had the dream of what technology could do for education and I know I am not the only one that looks around now and sees more of a nightmare than a dream.  However this is not a dream that can be abandoned, it is too big.  It is time to refine the dream.  This is an easy dream to refine.  We need to commit to changing the way we teach first.  We need to foster creativity and curiosity, we need to commit to make our curriculum relevant and we need to give students more a voice.  Once we are doing that than use our technology to fit those goals, because technology alone won't achieve the dream.

P.S. If you study history you find that King's nightmare refined his dream also.  He takes his dream and it becomes a war on poverty that would lead to the poor people's march.  Sadly King gets assassinated before that march would take place.