There was something exceptionally cool going on in Indianapolis this week during the NMSA annual conference where I just presented. Yet, it was also exceptionally troubling.

In the back of the exhibit hall somebody had set up a “Classroom of the 21rst Century”. Essentially, what they had done was bring in a class of real middle school students from a local Indy school and had them spend the day in an exhibit hall area that had been fashioned into a “21rst century classroom”.

There were laptops on every desk, an interactive whiteboard at the front of the room and all the latest digital gadgets that teachers and students can use for classroom instruction were on display — so that passerbys (and purchasers, of course) could catch a glimpse of education’s future.

And like I said they had brought in real kids to participate in a regular class that was simply being held on location at the conference. (About 25-30 multicultural 7th graders I believe, but it was very much set up as a real classroom.)

And so I watched for about 20 minutes. Like I said, the idea of it was very cool and I salute all the folks for being innovative and trying. However, a part of what I saw freaked me out.

Smartboards, laptops, autoresponders and the such were everywhere. Okay, cool. And lots of teachers and admins were gawking. Well, I was gawking as well… but for a different reason.

Because academic rigor, critical thinking and demanding intellectual thought were almost nowhere to be found. The display was basically “worksheet lessons” that had been digitalized.

Oy vey!

I mean I get the good intentions of everyone but lots of old school educators remain skeptical of drinking the 21rst Century Digital Future Kool-Aid, and though I am a HUGE advocate of 21rst century skills, when I see what I saw, I understand why there is so much recalcitrance.

I watched it take 7 minutes – that’s right, 7 minutes – for a boy to come up to the front of the room and do a “fill in the blank worksheet style problem. Uh huh, a worksheet style problem.

The sentence on the interactive whiteboard was something like, “Libby is a ________________ retriever.” His task, fill in the blank. (I swear, I am not making this up.)

Now being that this was on a Smartboard, they had a picture of a golden retriever. And the teacher could make it bark. (Took him a bit though.) And the task (for the entire class) was to have 1 kid come to the board and write the proper “fill in the blank word” by hand into the blank on the board while 26 other kids watched and learned.

Learned what, I don’t know.

Of course the kid struggled with the digital pen for a wee bit, he accidentally leaned on a part of the board rendering it ineffective, the teacher tried to correct the kid’s mistake but they both found themselves writing at the same time so the board couldn’t respond properly and by the time all was said and done, over seven minutes had passed before this kid had written the word “golden” by hand into the blank… and then the teacher magically transformed the student handwriting into digital text with a press of his magic pen.

The audience went wow.

And I went WTF?

Like I said, seven minutes to fill in a single blank on a glorified, digitalized worksheet with a self-evident answer while the other 26 students did nada but try to remain well behaved.

In a way, being that I am the type of teacher who believes that there is a place for cell phones and the such in the classroom, this is my great fear. Just as some educators have turned computers into nothing more than glorified typewriters and then relaxed into believing they are incorporating technology into their curriculum by having done so, I am also afraid that the gadget craze is going to create a sense of false futurism.

The bells and whistles of technology are not going to replace the need for critical thinking and whether or not you mimeographed your worksheet question “Libby is a ________________ retriever.” in 1950 or you put it up on an interactive whiteboard at the front of a room filled with kids in some kind of one-to-one laptop environment, the actual teaching is still piss-poor.

If you are going to demonstrate a 21rst century classroom, these kids better be doing things like using the tech tools to build inquiry based webquests on the retriever breed or something… not “Libby is a ________________ retriever.”

Otherwise, what’s the point?

And more scary is how I saw the heavy hitting admins and superintendent types in the back almost salivating at the thought of all this 21rst century digital technology.

Lemme tell ya folks, I don’t care if “Libby is a %^#$Q* retriever.” Technology is a tool to wield but if we are not building the brain muscle of our kids, it’s better that these tools just stay on the shelf so that we don’t all dupe ourselves into believing that just because a class has laptops, Smartboards, and gadget up the yin-yang, there is actual learning going on.

And I am sorry if anyone from NMSA takes offense at this but if you are going to demonstrate a classroom lesson for the educational public to see, demonstrating scholarly rigor has got to be your first priority.

Let’s not let our eyes deviate from the real prize, right?

Fixing tenure is not going to fix our schools. Will it help? Yes. To what degree? I’d suggest not a great one. There are at least 3 other things I’d much rather have in my back pocket before busting tenure or giving merit pay. And in no particular order they are…

1. School readiness so that kids enter classrooms with the skills and knowledge they need to be in that room. Grouping kids by age and using social promotion as a vehicle to shuttle kids on through the educational factory that is U.S. schooling whether or not they have learned anything is an abysmal failure. How come no one rips this to shreds in the major media? Kids fail 6th grade and they go to 7th. They fail 7th and they go to 8th. They fail 8th and they come to high school without one element of merit to their being on that campus other than the year in which they were born. Ridiculous.

2. Parent accountability. Do I really need to go on here? I mean how many blog posts have I already written on the need for America’s parents to step up? This is not about race, socio-economic-status, region of the country, urban or rural, black, brown, white, yellow, or green — it’s about the crisis of parental ownership we are seeing day in and day out as it plays out in a destructive typhoon that ruins the lives of our students. Hard for me to get a kid to care about their schooling if their own parent doesn’t dive a damn about it. And giving a damn is measured in actions, not words All parents pay lip service to this idea that they care — but not enough of them are rolling up their shirt sleeves to do the work necessary to create a framework in which their children can be educationally successful. The opportunities are there. I mean I teach in Lynwood, California — spitting distance from Compton — and yet scores of kids ARE taking advantage of the opportunities available through public schooling, going to college and becoming citizens of this country which make me darn proud. And what’s almost always the driving force behind them? Parents.

3. Growth model assessment. Haven’t we yet recognized that bubble sheet tests are so narrow, so off-base, so 20th century in a 21rst century world that to continue to worship at their altar is literally praying to a false God at this point. Sure, they are the most convenient and the most cost effective form of assessment. But if they suck, what’s the point? Is there a teacher in the country that feels the state tests accurately measure either their students’ most real, most authentic abilities or their own professional aptitudes as a classroom instructor working with kids on a day-to-day basis? It’s hogwash built on hogwash perpetuated by folks who are making a financial killing off of the testing industry. For all you conspiracy theorists out there… follow the money.

Hell… I can’t stop at 3 — so here’s a bonus!

4. Resources. Anytime we’re ready to join the 21rst century and actually allow our kids to use this great new invention called a cell phone that’s connected to the internet in order to participate in class, the practical, prudent, pragmatic world is ready. We can provide a kid with hundreds of pounds of textbooks which they absolutely loathe at the start of every year but the idea of giving them one tool that they will actually enjoy and eagerly use and stuffing it full of open source content in all of their subject areas, well… TOO REVOLUTIONARY!! Can you say deja vu? It’s hogwash built on hogwash perpetuated by folks who are making a financial killing off of the textbook industry. For all you conspiracy theorists out there… follow the money.

And if I suffer from a mysterious poisoned blowdart while keynoting my next conference, at least you’ll know from which direction it was fired. LOL!

More and more attention is being paid to the notion of writing in the 21rst century. This report just came out and it’s got some stuff that is well worth reading. However, the irony that I am posting this on a digital thread on a ning, well… in a way, if you are already reading this, it’s like preaching to the choir.

Having said that, there is no doubt that the world is changing under our pens and keypads. The idea that students in the next era will have to be competent writers using 3,000 words, 300 words, 30 words, 3 words and no words to express their ideas is somewhat of a leaping off point for comprehending both the opportunities and challenges of the era ahead.

Yet, while writing changes, shifts and morphs I am not fearful because the importance of critical thinking rises with these new mediums — instead of diminishing. In my estimation, thinking seems to be more important than ever as weighing, evaluating, synthesizing and applying brain power appears to be more important than ever to the writers and readers of the 21rst century. I mean so many folks are bemoaning the demise of newspapers but it’s not the black ink which smudges on our fingers in a semi-hard to navigate linear, non-interactive transmittal of information in an environmentally unsound paper-wasting business model that people are decrying… what they really fear is the art of real journalism is being supplanted by bloggers who have no training in the art of effectively verifying information. If newspapers die, I am not sure we care. If journalism dies then democracy is at risk. Now on one hand, the first hand twitterers and bloggers who are on the scene at things like the Mumbai bombing provide some of the most insightful information into what happened at the scene of the disaster — so the bloggers and twitterers certainly have their place. On the other hand, if people don’t pay for their news, then the NY TImes, Washington Post and so on, do not pay real journalists to go investigate, illuminate, and communicate the salient facts (i.e. the perpetrators, their motives, the impact on a geo-political scale and so on). Twittering an analysis of the international complications which arise from destabilizing governments through attacking civilians seems as if it might be a bit lightweight. (Huh? 140 characters isn’t enough space to get Kissinger-style insight into the circumstances? You are just so old fashioned, Mr. Alan!)

Now I am not so quick to defend traditional journalism because they let a buffoon like George Dubya pull the wool over our eyes with the whole WMD farce which really cost America… well, I am not going to go there. But traditional, mainstream media drank the kool-aid for the neo-cons who were hell bent on invading Iraq under a cooked up WMD scenario so all the things which I fear traditional journalism is supposed to defend us against and represent is on shaky ground with me. However, if world news devolves to the point that a 15 year with a blog is on equal footing with a pulitzer prize winning Chicago Tribune reporter in terms of disseminating our news, I do feel there is some cause for concern.

So what does 21rst century writing look like? That’s easy — it looks like a lot of things… and it’s evolving. But how do we effectively think about writing — both while we are doing it and when we are reading it? These, seem to me, the real questions.