July 13, 2009

This year, the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) took place from June 28 to July 1 in Washington, D.C. The annual gathering brings together educators interested in improving teaching and learning through the effective use of technology.

Among the speakers at NECC were Alisa Berger and Mary Moss, co-principals at NYC iSchool, a new, small selective high school in New York City whose success at incorporating technology into everyday learning is serving as a model for the development of other schools.

News@Cisco recently spoke with Berger and Moss about their experience at conferences like NECC, their thoughts on technology and education, and what they've learned in the NYC iSchool's first year – including some interesting perspectives on students and technology.

News@Cisco: What do you like to share with and learn from your colleagues at events like NECC?

Alisa Berger: What we talk about and learn at NECC helps us figure out where we are still "in the box" – where our thinking is still constrained because of a "that's how we've always done it" mindset. So I like to look at what other schools are doing – and what corporations and nonprofits are thinking about.

Schools are all very different – because of their contexts, district structures, state regulations, etc. So it would be difficult to see what one school is doing and simply decide that we like it, so we'll do that, too. But we can learn a lot from the different ways schools look at problems.

What advice can you offer to other teachers and administrators who are trying to get the most out of technology in their education programs?

Alisa Berger: I think we need to avoid assuming that technology by itself will solve all our problems. Rather, we should identify our challenges and see how technology can do very specific things to help. So, for example, simply giving every student a laptop is not going to mean that suddenly all my kids have better test scores. At NYC iSchool, our commitment has been that we never adopt a technology unless it is to meet a specific need that we have already identified.

Can you give an example?

Mary Moss: We're a small school with limited teachers and resources, so we can't always offer everything we want to. One tool that helped with that challenge this year has been WebEx, which we used to offer a geometry class taught by a teacher at another New York City school and our math consultant in California.

We had a small group of students who were ready for a new level of math; but our math teacher had a full load. Through WebEx video conferencing, the teachers in New York and California facilitated a geometry class twice a week; that enabled these kids to have access to a class that, under normal circumstances, they simply wouldn't have been able to take.

What do you see as some of the most difficult challenges facing educators in the next decade?

Alisa Berger: This is not necessarily new, "No Child Left Behind" presents its own set of challenges.  We have to start thinking about how to achieve two goals at the same time: How do we teach our kids the 21st century skills they need, even though they're not being tested on them and we're not being held accountable for them, while also meeting the accountability targets we have through "No Child Left Behind"?

What are your thoughts on how to take on that challenge?

Alisa Berger: We do it through our online course work – in that we use online courses to teach the students the content they need for the tests. Online courses allow kids to work in a self-paced, individualized manner; it allows them to study what they don't know as opposed to what the whole class doesn't know. It allows students to work on what is hard for them, when it is hard for them.

Mary Moss: One example is the success some of our students experienced in the New York Regents High School Exams this year. For one of these exams, most New York students take two years to complete the course work and to pass; but because our students were in an online environment, they could proceed at their own pace and move as quickly as possible through the material – some passing the exam in just five months.

This environment changes our teachers' job, too. Because the children have access to so much information, teachers can spend a lot more time helping them with interpretation, higher thinking skills and problem-solving.

Can you suggest some best practices in leveraging technology to teach young students in a better way?

Mary Moss: The first is what Alisa mentioned before: being very thoughtful about what technologies we introduce to students.

The second is how to train teachers: we never train them to use a technology in isolation. For example, when they want to use a new tool with a class, we train them first, and then we have the instructional technology trainer in the room while they are using the tool in class the first few times – in case something doesn't work. Essentially, we are ensuring that the hard part of the lesson is never the technology. That has been critical in getting our staff to feel very comfortable with lots of technology very quickly.

How do you address the "digital divide" – the gap between those with and without access to computers and the Internet?

Alisa Berger: We're a Title 1 school, so of course the issue of the digital divide is critical to us. We have a virtual desktop platform that allows us to create a very equitable, ubiquitous access to all the software the students need to do all their work, anywhere.

One of the advantages of being in a large urban environment is that Internet access is in the air; you can get wireless access virtually anywhere. And our children have access to computers through a number of sources – from their community centers and libraries to non-profit programs that offer refurbished PCs very inexpensively. Through our virtual desktop, it doesn't matter what's loaded on a machine or if it's too old to run the latest math software; it just needs to allow Internet access at a decent speed.

What are some of the most important lessons you've learned in iSchool's first year?

Alisa Berger: One is about a widespread assumption that our kids are all incredibly tech-savvy and don't need to be taught anything when it comes to technology: that is actually completely misinformed. Our kids are not, in fact, very advanced users of technology. They come at it from a different stance than adults might, so they become faster adopters of technology; but they know how to do very little on the computer until we teach them. A related point is that we underestimate the skills we bring to the table as adults.

Another lesson is around young people's online reading skills. We learned quickly that our students didn't know how to read online and that, before we could do online courses and fully use the Internet for instruction and research, we had to teach this skill.

When students are presented with online content, they skim; they ignore all the skills we've taught them about how to read for understanding. We found that it took our students about four months to begin to apply their traditional reading skills for a deep understanding online.  

Mary Moss: We need to forewarn students that it's going to be different, that it may be hard – and we need to support them through the transition. I think we assume that kids always want something new and different, but particularly for kids who have been successful in a traditional learning environment, this isn't necessarily true.

How do you think high school graduates who have enjoyed a technology-enriched education are different from other high school graduates?

Mary Moss: They'll be much better prepared for college and comfortable with how colleges are using technology. In addition, using online and technology tools requires them to develop independence much sooner, which means it also requires them to develop a public persona. In other words, when they are presenting their work, it's not just to their peers but to the world. So they develop networking skills and polish that would take much longer to achieve otherwise.

Students who have had the benefit of a technology-enriched high school education are better equipped with the 21st century skills they'll need to succeed in life and achieve their full potential.