I stumbled into a video today (by reading John Costilla’s great blog), and am struck by its message. There is no question we are all HYPER-Connected these days, and swimming in information.  And this fact is especially true for the younger generation . . . students currently in school.  But all this ‘information access’ begs the obvious question:  If we have better, more complete access to information, why are not not smarter, more informed, having a better life-experience?

A few salient points from this video —

• Despite the explosive growth of cable and internet news, US citizens are, on average, about as aware of major news events as they were 20 years ago. (PEW)

•Even with near constant coverage of the war in Iraq, 63% of 18-24 year olds cannot find Iraq on a map of the Middle East. (Roper public polls)

•We’ve never had so much information about our planet, yet our ability to live well on it continues to decline.    And on and on — (Watch the video).

SO — What’s this mean?  I certainly do not have all the answers, but it’s pretty clear to me that students STILL need TEACHERS.  But what KIND of teachers???   A few thoughts from this peanut gallery:

1.  Teachers should be GUIDES, not FOUNTS, of knowledge.  No teacher should deliver knowledge through lecture only.  But no student is likely to learn entirely from unguided discovery.

2. Curriculum itself must be changed.  We must reflect this information access phenomenon, and teach students how to find relevant, accurate data online, how to interpret it, analyze it, and draw conclusions.  (Any one for Blooms Higher Order Thinking skills here??)

3.  Learning occurs outside the institution.  DUH.  Yet, we still often run schools as if the sum of what kids learn occurs in a classroom.  We need to leverage all the ‘teachers’ a student has in his/her life — parents, siblings, TV, internet, etc.

4.  Expert teachers must be paid like the experts they are.  We rely on great teachers for the very economic scaffolding that supports our knowledge-based economy.  Yet we pay them like ‘public servants.’  As a result, we don’t always attract the best and brightest to this profession, and the very best teachers don’t stay.

Thoughts?

Image by Old Shoe Woman via FlickrI just completed a wonderful and engaging online dialogue tonight with the staff and selected teachers from the Center for Teaching Quality .  This wonderful group is working hard to ensure a research-based approach to teaching quality — with a focus and commitment on cultivating teachers as leaders.

My colleague on this panel was Rafiq Kalam Id-Din ,  Founder of Teaching Firms of America, who is currently exploring the possibility of a school model based on the structure of law firms.  His notion (and my apologies for paraphrasing) is that schools should be run more like partners run a law firm — with teachers empowered to make executive and management decisions.

I was able to chat with the group about the importance of teachers as entreprenuers, and the work of empowering teachers by helping them create IP, and connect with one another, as well as with the content providers in the teaching and learning space.  . . the work of WeAreTeachers.

Of course, the real stars of this dialogue were the teaching practioners — the folks who just spent an entire day today in a classroom, yet still found time to engage with one another this evening — and to be learners as well as teachers.

We talked during this webinar about the huge number of political, social, and economic barriers to teachers’ being developed as leaders.  There was a very robust conversation about the role of teacher unions, and the failures of the current accountability systems in the US education environment.

Toward the end of this call, it occurred to me that there may be some ways to over come these barriers — and I enumerated 3 I’ll share here:

1. Teachers MUST be compensated differently.  No, I don’t mean ‘career ladder.’  What I do mean is that we must find a way to pay our best teachers more money. Until we do, we simply won’t change much, nor will we attract the kind of talent we need to make the shifts we must make. As Ann Richards used to say “Political power is meaningless without economic power.”

2.  We MUST embrace accountability, yet change the current system entirely.  A single student test at the end of the year is archaic and in-effective.  New accountability systems, driven by teacher leaders, and informed by high student expectations and evaluation of REAL student work must replace the current system.

3.  We can no longer reform schools in a vacuum.  We MUST align school reform and teacher leadership with other forces that will surely drive our political and policy agenda in the coming years.  “It’s the economy, stupid” is not just a political slogan; it could also be a driver that delivers real reform.  Couple that with the enormous environmental challenges we are facing, and these pressures may give teachers the latitude they need to substitute ‘teaching to the test’ with ‘teaching to the economic need, and to the environmental challenges.’

Why can’t we take the Al Gore challenge to be energy independent within 10 years, the Tom Friedman challenge to create an entirely new ‘green economy,’ and in the end transform our economy, our environment, AND our schools????

It could happen.

John Costilla recently pointed me to Jeremiah Owyang’s blog from yesterday about Social Media and the Economic downturn.  Jeremiah’s work always inspires me, and today was no different.

Since we work with 3 groups in our WeAreTeachers community, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts regarding where the economic downturn and social media opportunities intersect for Teachers, Professional Associations, and Companies that do business in the education space.  I’ll follow Jeremiah’s lead and create my comments in the form of lists.

Teachers:
1.    Teachers’ Family Income.  Teachers in traditional education institutions are probably less likely to get ‘laid off’ than their counterparts in other industries.  While school district budgets will be challenged, they tend to lay off teachers as a last resort.  That said, teachers can forget about big salary increases for a while, and the overall family may be more dependent on that income than before, as spouses jobs may go away.
2.    Teachers Need to Augment income.  More teachers are likely to seek additional income to supplement their base salary.  Expect more private tutors, more teacher-created-content for sale, and teachers more available to participate in focus groups, dialogue, or other opportunities to enhance income. We support these opportunities for Teachers at WAT, and are working hard to be sure our tools help put money in teachers’ pockets as quickly as possible.
3.    Student family income.   Students may get their personal budgets cut.  Many families are cutting back on cable tv, music downloads, video game purchasing, etc.  In a tough economy, families focus on the basics, so students may  have more time for study, for learning, and for spending time online.

Associations:
1.    Member acquisition.  With challenged budgets, professional associations must be sure their value proposition is clear and improving for existing members.  Associations will need to reach out to non-traditional methods to get new members.  We think the WAT network, together with the I Am Teacher app in Facebook can help.
2.    Conference/Vendor revenue.  This one is BIG.  Most associations rely on their yearly conference for sustaining revenue.  Fewer teachers may travel to these, and, more important, fewer vendors will exhibit and pay the associated fees.  We think there will be a huge increase in online Un-Conferences,  NetCafes, and other vehicles to engage.  WAT has technology to support this approach.
Companies in Education:

1.    Cost of Support.  A huge cost of sales for most companies is the expense of training end-user teachers in their products.  There will be a big move toward online alternatives.  At WAT we will have an on-line delivery tool and scheduling system available for our Business Affiliates later this fall.  This will represent a huge cost savings for these companies.
2.    Renewals.  Everyone in this business understands it’s not just about the initial sale.  Real success occurs when end-users embrace solutions, and renewal business is secured.  Companies are seeking ways to make those connections, but are not always able to get teachers to come to their company-specific communities.  WAT provides a secure, inexpensive way to provide PROFESSIONAL engagement between teachers and the companies they do business with.
3.    Local connection.  While business is global, much of business is also local. Many of our business affiliates are putting up regional profiles in WAT in order to craft a local engagement with their customers.
4.    Options to Vendor/Booth Displays.  Participation in tradeshows has a big history in this industry.  But  ROI is hard to measure.  Many companies are looking at Un-Conferences online, NetCafes, and other online tools to connect to users.  This is going to be a high-growth arena.

The bottom line is this:  Like other things in life, an economic downturn can be a very scary thing.  OR (AND??) it can be an opportunity for us to re-think how we engage, live, interact, and do business.  And this inevitably brings out creative juices, new solutions, new opportunity.  We hope WeAreTeachers can be part of the fuel to that positive response, and look forward to YOUR good ideas to guide our work!