Hard time coping now? Don´t wait five years.

I still haven´t convinced myself to continue to write in English. It made a lot more sense when I was in the US and had a few international readers, somehow I´ve started to find it quite satisfying and challenging to write in English. I get spelling and grammar mistakes pointed out from a friend of mine but I´ll take that as a compliment.

Right now all high school students in Sweden are doing the "SAT:s", in Sweden called Nationella prov (National tests). I started wondering when 1-to-1 learning, i.e having access to laptop with internet, will make its way in to the classrooms and the standardized tests. As the world gets smaller and smaller due to globalization, collaboration and social media, the demand from students being able to using these tools in their natural learning environments will steadily increase.

One important aspect of this is the fundamental understanding that students progress more through collaboration, social skills and digital competence than by standardized tests and individual test taking. By that, I don´t mean that each student shouldn´t be given tasks according to their own development and skills but rather that we should emphasize and value more and different skills. The thing is, with computers and ICT we have possibilities to give students tasks that previously wasn´t possible. So how do we do it? How do we change the structure of learning from individualized competitiveness to collective progress without missing out on "the subject" (a reference to Foucault). Is it possible to make these structural transitions without losing the few benefits students have by "learning all by themselves"? To me, this raises some very important questions and I think the thing to look for beyond the 2.0 web, social media and collaboration is the whole organization of time and place in school. When 1-to-1 is as natural as pen and paper, which it will be in 5 at max 10 years, how do we organize schools?

That question is more controversial and revolutionary than anything our system has ever gone through. The impact this will have, not only on education but on our society as a whole, will be mind boggling. And those who don´t start to adapt to these changes right now, that includes the whole education system, will be left way behind.

If you think your teachers are having a hard time coping now how do you think they will cope in five years?

"We work harder with laptops, the time before we had laptops, work was harder"

It is an absolutely beautiful day in Maine today. Sunny, warm and very pre summer feeling to it. Todays program included visits to school in the morning and now, 14.30, a panel discussion on topics brought up by us participants after the visits this morning.



I got the privilige to visit Freeport Middle School and meet up with Raymond Grogan, principal, and Shawn Favreau (visit his site here). We were guided by a handful of young girls who also, along with their peers, showed us some fantastic projects they´ve been working on.
We got to meet Eric who showed us three projects, the first project was a 20 minute long movie on events that had influenced him in his life, so far. Remember, the students are 10 to 13 years. He also showed his podcast and his creation of clay sculptures the process behind it and how they documented it. You can watch their creations at their site click this link. The reflection above was made by a student (and quoted by Chris Toy) at Freeport Middle School today.

One of the things that stroke me the most was the childrens engagement in their own learning. It´s so different to read about the Maine initiative and to actually visit the classrooms to see and almost feel how they work with their computers. A perfect example of how to work with the computer was in wood work/carpentry and how they created models in Google SketchUp and then built them with the tools. One of the boys were making a model of a small cabin which he and his dad is supposed to build this summer, from the model he has created.

Google SketchUp was an essential program in their classrooms. It´s free and I recommend every school to download it. They used it in so many projects, one was to build a model of an energy efficient house with solar panels and other smart solutions. Someone had made a true scale model of Maines house of representatives/congress (don´t know the exact word) with all the furniture, people and everything in it.

Principal Ray

Two of the boys had built their own photocopier in Techno and programmed it themselves. The feeling I got from seeing them present it was like "This? This is nothing special. We do it all the time. And it´s fun". O_o



The feeling in the school was so positive and teachers as well as students gave us the feeling of constant learning, constant development. It truly felt like they were on an endless journey, exploring and trying to find new ways to engage each other. And they are not done. This is not the final destination or end to their 1 to 1 project. A thing they pointed out many times.

"Don´t not expect 1 to 1 to raise your testscores through the roof, it might raise writing and maybe other subjects too, but what it does do is engaging the students, learn them how to collaborate, find information, value information and produce new knowledge. This is not a solution for raising the grades or the SAT scores, it might very well do that too, but this is truly the best way to make the kids ready for the 21st century. This is 21st century skills and digital competence and we can´t measure that with test from 40 years ago".

A trip to Maine

So I´ve finally decided to write parts of this blog in English. Mainly because I´m heading to Maine tomorrow and therefore will meet a lot of non Swedish speaking people. Although we are a delegation of approximately 50 Swedish attendants, there will certainly be people from other countries too (apart from the US obviously). Once a year we make this trip with Apple but for me it´s the first time. We´ve been hearing, watching, reading and learning from the Maine initiative for almost nine years and I´m thrilled (seriously) that I finally get to go. I´m a bit stressed though as I´ve got so much to do before leaving. I´m soon going to start packing and checking that I have everything with me.