21st Century Leaders and Learners:The e-letter this week is a tribute to my former mentor in Iredell-Statesville Susan Allred. During her tenure in education, Susan not only served at all levels of K-12 public education, but she was also a four time National Baldrige Examiner and taught me, along with Dr. Terry Holiday, everything I know about systems improvement. In Susan's retirement, she has continued to consult on how to improve processes for teaching and learning. She has also been a key part of our k-8 elementary strategic plan at http://www.ncvps.org/ .
When she sent me this on facebook this week, I had to share.
Are Wii Fit?
This is a blog more than a FB post. It's an educational analogy, I think. Hope you enjoy it. Sorry Bryan, but you friended me! For Christmas niece Emily gave me a Wii Fit Plus software for my Wii. It was a good choice. I've had the Wii for about two years. The first year I was faithful with using it daily with a few exceptions. Then last March I started walking every day instead. Neither of these processes made me lose weight, but I certainly felt better - breathing especially.
Then August 13th hit and there was the broken ankle. So for four months my ankle was my excuse to do little physical exercise. Five pounds were added and I did not feel well. So, the Wii Fit Plus was a good gift to start over.
Here is the deal, when Wii Fit Plus software is put into the system, it remembered everything I had done in Wii Fit. It knew what I had been good at and it knew where I struggled. So, where I thought I would be starting anew, it remembered for me where I was, and I did not have to start completely over.
There are some things I am really good at still! I don't have to start at beginner's level. There are some things I need help on and there is an avatar who walks me through the exercises to remind me how to do them well. It helped me develop my fitness training plan and monitoring system. I was certainly tired at the end of the work out, but was not hopeless!
The educational learning system analogy developed in my mind throughout the exercises. It helped me solidify a principle that I believe: educational systems (schools, districts, classrooms) must be flexible enough to remember where students are when an intervention is tried and found not to work in order not to lose the student. My experience has been that we identify the gaps in student learning fairly well now, most of the time we then try a new intervention, but then what? Have we designed an intervention system that always remembers where the student specifically was before we began the intervention, do we have a way to know if the intervention works and then reset or retrain the student based on where he is/was?
If we are still waiting until the end of the course or year and have students repeat the course or grade and then just do the same thing again, we are programming frustration leading to drop outs. If, however, we are identifying what he does well with a review and maintenance plan and picking up there...have we not created a system to help students live better and maybe stay in school?
Can't do it? Too hard? How do we manage it? Well, if we humans don't do it, technology with avatars will. They already are. Heads in the sand, doing what we have always done, does not move us forward in a time when 3.0 technology is outpacing our educational improvement thinking exponentially. Think about it! Thanks for reading. Love to hear from you on the topic. Connect with Susan on http://www.linkedin.com/ @ http://www.linkedin.com/pub/susan-allred/a/10a/605
Susan is a remarkable testimonial as to why educational leaders and learners cannot continue to put their head in the sand regarding how to blend education and technology. Here's wishing everyone a happy new year, and we look forward to serving you in 2010 with the virtual advantage of http://www.ncvps.org/ and http://www.nclearnandearn.gov/
Happy New Year!
Bryan
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