Learning * Education * Technology

Just when you least expect it, smile….

We’re on Summer Vacation in the USA, but I work most of the year to stay up with my responsibilities as a teacher at Hinsdale High School in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. I just completed planning two new courses from top-to-bottom: Conflict Resolution and Non-Violent Communication, and The Rhetoric of Science Fiction. My wife, Jan, the school nurse, almost always comes over to school with me: not only to offer sage advice, but to copy, edit, proofread, etc. I received a couple of e-mails from our Assistant Principal the day before, “needing to talk about something” so that was another reason to go to the office this fine Thursday morning. Jan and I chatted as we walked from the parking lot.

“Now, that you have your new courses planned and repreps done for your standing courses, you’re going to get a job offer”, she said, almost laughing out loud. Since earning an MS Ed in Integrating Technology in the Classroom, I had been looking for a job as either a teacher or integrator, especially along the coast in Maine or New Hampshire. She was referring to this effort.

I was invited, first, by the Assistant Superintendent, to sit down in the Assistant Principal’s office. “**** has accepted a new job at ****, so we know longer have a Comprehensive Educational Technology (CET) teacher. Would you be interested in the position, if you could qualify for it?” I would be minimizing my surprise by saying, I asked myself if I was on Candid Camera. This was such an ‘outside the box’ solution to this staffing dilemma, I was amazed.

For those of you who don’t know, CET is the 21st century progeny of Industrial Arts. The administrators in the district/building felt my training and abilities were being underutilized as a face-to-face English teacher, and they believe this job would allow everyone to benefit. “Qualify?”

The State of New Hampshire has various Alternatives, I to V, to qualify to be an educator in the state. We will submit my portfolio, if no qualified teacher answers the district’s ad for the position, to see if I could qualify under Alt IV, a pathway allowed because there is a ‘critical shortage’ of qualified candidates. The job was posted in the Saturday newspapers and online. So, now we wait. Well, not just wait.

In the meantime, the Administrators and the Superintendent were going to sit down to firm up a focus in the short and a vision for the long term of CET. I decided to do some investigating myself.

I trawled the search engines for a while and then I remembered that because of the several conversation I had with **** over the years I had already done some legwork trying to support him in this very process. I went back to visit some of those ‘old’ links and among them was Project Lead The Way.

I have been blogging for a while, and, over the last several months, I have been micro-blogging on Twitter and Plurk. I told the community on Plurk about the job possibility, and they were all supportive and excited without reserve. This is where the process takes a Twilight Zone turn.

I asked them about whether they knew of or had any experience with Project Lead The Way. My question was met with a resounding silence. I tried the out-of-the-blue question on Twitter, and I received no repsonses there, either.

This is a program has units in all fifty states, 3000 schools, 7000 teachers, 5000 counselors, and, currently, 250,000 students. I only have about 400 professionals I follow or are ‘friends’ with on Twitter and Plurk, so it’s not unexpected that no one may have heard of it or have it in their district or school. On the other hand, I may have stumbled against a significant and unnecessary bulkhead in our society: The difference between technology and technology.

The effort to integrate technology – Information and Communication Technology – in our educational institutions, communities, families, and individuals; As online education grows like mushrooms after the rain – even virtual Phys ed; that we’re still overlooking a significant group of people in our society.

Over the last generation, the percentage of people working on farms and in manufacturing has shrunk from 60% to 6%. That is almost 2 million people currently working and needing successors and helpers in farming and manufacturing. If we had a workforce that was enabled as 21st century citizens we might be able to regenerate some of our last capacity in these sectors-food imports have grown 78% since the year 2000, for instance.

I think those of us who are early adapters (I still consider this VERY early) in the Information/digital revolution have to take a very careful look at what we are about and how we can serve all the individuals, families and schools in our world and not even just the USA.

Just think, one of our School Committee members has been taking classes required by his company management to master digital machining equipment. Suppose our children were getting a jump on that in school?

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