Learning Counsel likes to share points we’ve learned or synthesized from our 30-city road-show tour and research. In San Antonio, we brought together a lot of our current readers for a good hot breakfast and short discussion about “What’s Hot and What’s Not.”
What’s Not
The opposite of all “Hot” things, of course, which are coming up. Particularly not shifting budget to totally digital. That is going to directly cut across all actions to modernize sustainably.
But we also cite:
- Too Many Log-ins.
- Teachers spending up to 25% of their time searching for digital content/building their own digital lesson plans.
- No or incomplete teacher PD for tech based teaching styles continues to be an issue.
- Not having a “systems” mentality of institutional change.
- Missing Student Data Privacy Policies and Practices at all levels and lack of digital citizenship training for students and teachers.
What’s Hot
- A deep understanding of software and differentiating between merely “digitized” vs. full digital.
- Budget shift: The 2016 Learning Counsel survey of digital curriculum strategy and transition found that 80% or more of school budgets have not shifted from paper textbooks. The fastest way to get sustainable is to go to a full coverage model of digital. Stop trying to do both.
- Stakeholder engagement—having everyone related to the shift on both the tech, academics and administration and even buildings involved in planning.
- Embedding change as a constant. It’s time now to declare that schools and teaching are in the war-zone of going digital for real. An ever-readiness and constant alertness to change is required.
- Mirroring the Real World. When schools redesign to mirror the real world of work with a varied environment, they’re setting students up to more easily transition to modern work places.
- Shifting traditional school libraries to dynamic digital lounges and maker spaces to support new learning styles.
- Beyond 1-to-1 to access equity. Working with communities and counties for ubiquitous internet connectivity on school campuses and at home.
Other Recommendations were:
Plan to attend the Gathering 2017. Not your usual event, this is a meeting of the minds. Call-for-speakers is currently out, but (shhh!), we’ve already locked in a former Security guru from Uber, a Navy Seal combat veteran and speaker on organizational transformation from Forbes magazine, and some of the most innovative districts we’ve ever found coming to speak about things like “Humanizing,” analytics and more. It is going to totally rock!
Join the Learning Groups. We’re not into shallow-end of the pool regarding understanding the learning software revolution, we want you to join groups so you can swim in the deep end.
Find out where you stand and contribute to the digital transition. Take the Survey! Save the world.
These were the Hot vendors to visit on the Expo floor that we recommended by booth number – and you can still look them up online!
