Richardson's Blog - Discussion of Pedagogical Changes

Evaluation of Richardson’s Blogs on Pedagogical Change
In reviewing Will Richardson’s blog (http://weblogg-ed.com/), the first post I found of interest was from June 6, 2009, on what we would do if we created schools from scratch, having more of an idea of where the current students’ future will be going and the skills they’ll need to succeed. He has some excellent points. If future students will indeed be more independent contractors than traditional employees, as he stated in his June 8, 2009, post, then we need to arm them with the appropriate skills rather than making them sit quietly in rows and do photocopies of old problems. They’ll need to be collaborative, creative, technologically savvy, able to network across continents and languages, able to find consistent and satisfying income-bearing work in a different world than that in which I was raised. They will need to be able to identify, sort, classify, and make connections between small bits of information in diverse locations and congeal them into cogent theory, solutions, or opportunities – and they will need to do this quickly, independently, or collaboratively. How to teach these skills in primary school, or rather, how to foster self-learning, will be a constant challenge for the next generation of teachers.
Also mentioned in the June 6, 2009, post was a quote from Carroll about there being no teachers in the schools of the future, only learners. I found that disturbing and I hope this doesn’t come to fruition, because I credit fabulous teachers in my youth and current career as being the inspiration in my life. The absence of teachers would be a great loss to everyone.
The next post from May 6, 2009, was something I have thought about for our institution for a long time. Our positions related to academics are unfortunately centered around policy, program, accreditation, and the occasional statistic, rather than learning. A recent initiative to use learning styles in classroom instruction was reduced to a pilot program from which no useable data was retained regarding learning styles, only how many students took the assessment and how many instructors participated in the pilot program. Adjustments to teaching styles, an exchange of information between instructors, a plan to produce both better teachers and learners, all fell by the wayside despite good intentions. This seems to be the tragic-comedy of education; every few years someone gets excited enough to share an idea, try something new, re-invigorate an old committee – but essentially, we are still retrofitting the same system, rather than imagining and creating the new system of the future. So, Richardson’s comment about needing a Chief Learning Officer is great, but in actuality, I don’t think it will fit into an old system without being co-opted into a statistician or program evaluator – if we’re going to actually place strategic importance on learning, we need to place that position within the educational system that will outlast us all, not the one that needs to be recreated.
In New Reading, New Writing (April 22, 2009), Richardson discusses the trends that technology, and our pace of life, are producing in both reading and writing. With the new technology, an author can publish a book, and readers can comment directly to him via software, blogs, and the like. Similarly, anyone can publish their own blog, instantly becoming a ‘published author’ or recognized expert to some extent. Our methods of reading certainly change in response to the volume of material; we become scanners and skimmers. Our methods of writing become more journal-style, free-writing and brainstorming in print, rather than paragraphs hard-won after weeks of scribbles and edits. It raises questions about how we teach both reading and writing in school and whether we need a new category for web-based reading/writing that is separate from traditional literature reading and essay writing taught currently.