Barriers+Discussion

The privacy issue is a big factor in our district. There is a concern for student safety in the web 2.0 world. The biggest stumbling block is trying to tell teachers who have been teaching well for so long that they need to change Lack of computer access. How do we rethink technology needs when people are held back by the computer lab model of access. Two things hold us back: The need to prepare students for sat2 subject tests and the content in these tests. Also the lab and equity access issue. Students who have their own laptop can do more than kids who rely on school tech. The students, especially the best and brightest, are good traditional learners, and they don’t want to “put themselves out there” to try something new. Also parents want kids to do well on AP and SAT2 tests. Our population is good at the old ways of learning and we encounter resistance to change from them. Buy-in from other teachers for “passion based learning.” Teachers are married to their curriculum and don’t see value in student directed learning. Student access to computers at home holds us back. Broken computers, home computers with viruses, etc. keep us from using google docs etc. to complete assignments. Teachers are reluctant to buy-in because of the time constraints that come with making these changes. How do we get them to be excited about these changes? How to we encourage them to want to learn about how to change? Access to computers is limited. What will be the reaction of our colleagues regarding buy-in for making these changes? How can we get them to see the importance of passion-based learning? Not because they don’t want to change for the better, but because they don’t even know what’s out there, and can’t see a way to find the time to learn the tools and to be comfortable with not being an expert. How do we change the culture so that teachers feel good about allowing students to help them with the teaching? The need to teach to the AP and SAT II holds us back. We encounter student resistance to inquiry learning and passion-based learning. Learning the tools can be a barrier as well in terms of time. Independent schools who don’t need to teach to a specific standards based curriculum are choosing to do just that by teaching to SAT subject tests and AP courses. This leads to a push to cover content that eliminates so many possibilities for inquiry based projects that would lead to more student driven learning. This is such a squandered opportunity!
 * What holds us back? **

We pride ourselves on being about the individual and working one-on-one with students. There is a level of exhaustion that comes with that amount of “overscheduling” that makes it hard to learn new things. We need to learn new classroom management practice to deal with the constant connectivity.

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Librarians as pathfinders though the research tools. Limiting the databases that kids are allowed to use for research. Help find age appropriate references. Barrier is the librarian is not seen as a department or resource for other departments. Some teachers do not use what is available. Or some departments don’t see library as being “specialized” enough======

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Range of depth different students bring to the learning is always there. Some bring a lot to the opportunity, some not so much. So some students are not mature enough to engage and take advantage of the opportunity.======

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Reward risk-taking. Multi-year process—the risk-taker in year one becomes the model for “the stuff that worked” in year two. You need a network of people to run things by (in a workshop format) to get feedback before you implement the lessons. ======

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1. linking passion based learning and barriers to that, we are a prep school and our main objective is to get kids into very good colleges, passion based learning brings fears that students will not have the required skills needed ======

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3. Banning things from school children, and the lack of time à  filtering for time sake, what are we teaching when we are filtering? Why is social networking blocked in schools? Shouldn’t we as teachers who need to model good digital citizenship, model that for the students? Getting students to think about what they SHOULD be doing. Filtering blocking what is the reason? Why do we do it? Phones? Why shouldn’t we promote back-channeling in the classroom? Can twitter, text, be useful in the classroom? What are we doing? ======

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4. "I use blogs and wikis but I think I am more cynical”. What is holding us back is that “someone needs to be the adult” with educational background to guide the kids through inquiry with educational guidance. We were hired for a reason. We learn from our students. The skill that is getting removed is teaching the students how to think. It is important to remain cynical. ======

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5. Set curriculum makes it difficult. Without written tests hard to test skills in grammar curriculum. It is hard to fill the old curriculum with the new tools. What we are teaching them now is different than before. ======

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9. The time that is put is when using technology is being viewed from other teachers as something “we do not want to use it if it is all this work”. Students who have access with one teacher may not with another teacher which results in parents being upset. The faculty is not willing to learn new technologies and the tech teacher is involved in multiple support role. ======

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10. How to link it with curriculum, how to cover assessments when fitting in time with web 2.0. Language delayed, big jump from basics to collaborating learning about immigrations. There are no guidelines that tell us what to do. No technology program. ======

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· Standardized tests issues – allow them to pursue passions, but will they go in the direction to give them a good score on the SAT – students have to be more engaged than they have been trained to be, some pushback from the students======

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· Jr Sr English teacher: also standard testing issues/hurdles ,Parents put pressure on girls to do well on SAT, heavy curric, how to find time for the projects like this; just getting them logged on etc that alone takes time;======

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· Librarian LS: how to convince other people that this is the way to go… if something has been done the same way every year forever and the teachers have been there for a long time, problem is that the other teachers are not working in that way yet, this is a BIG shift in thinking and we are not all there yet======

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· 6th gr core LA/SS: no worried for standardized testing; but how to give kids a base of knowledge, with passion-based learning, will the pendulum swing too far, will they not know places in the world, history, etc that is a real gap because we go too far in the direction of passion based learning; how to find the balance between passion’based learning and the basic stuff they need to know======

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· Fr teacher: balance and time; takes a lot of instructors time outside of the classroom; so much to do already, is a burden; time from the kids point of view; yes we buy into this, but balance is a key; passion can cause kids to do great things; if teachers were given more time to learn technology, prepare for this, it would work better; if teachers teach less courses, then they need more teachers;======

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· The barriers are time and it is overwhelming because my schedule is so full; sometimes I will google something and the filtering program blocks it, YouTube also: time issues can be related to protocols======

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· Head up MS and US: one barrier is we don’t have enough school choice, as the only ind school in the county, serve many different kinds of families: what kind of school are we? Traditional? Permissive? Standardized testing issues/ what outcome do we want from the education; is skill/life long educ and learning more important than traditional look of success; if the parent body was more unified, we would have more success with kids being more self-directed======

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· History: technology support – not enough for what the teachers will like to do; MS principal is behind us, but how am I going to assess this if I have done passioned based learning; I don’t have a rubric for that======

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· US Principal: educ and teaching is people-based; people have difficulty engaging with difficulty; why change when it is so hard to do, even when you have the best of intentions; do we have time to reeducate people, and to give some of that authority to kids can be difficult; the psychological issues are there = a big barrie======