Columbus or Viking?

With just today being Columbus Day, I can’t help but think about explorers. The dictionary defines explorers as people who “travel in or through (an unfamiliar country or area) in order to learn about or familiarize oneself with it.” Columbus was sent to seek out a new world. He was sent out to learn about the world with the preconceived notion that the world was flat and that he might sail off the edge. He took on the challenge not really knowing how it would turn out. He must have been sailing on faith. He must have been sailing because deep down in his heart he knew the possibility of something life-changing could happen and he wanted to be in on it. What he couldn’t have known was that someone, or a lot of someones had already discovered what he hope to find.

So why is it that Columbus gets credit for finding the “new world” when the Vikings really found North America a long time before Columbus? Why is it that Columbus gets credit for finding America, when in reality he was on the island of Cuba? Does Columbus get credit because he had a better publicist?

The same can be said of a lot of great technology discoveries and a lot of great lessons learned by students all across the world. John Spencer of http://teachingunmasked.blogspot.com said, “If you know a world and do not know your own backyard, you know nothing. If you know the world and do not know your own backyard you can colonize without thought… without resistance… We are spending a lot of energy teaching our children about the world without teaching them a thing about their backyard… We are living in a place that was once designed for others.”

The big push in technology right now, the famous “discoverers” of new ways of teaching and learning, are asking teachers and, consequently, their students, to begin to learn collaboratively with classrooms across the globe. In theory this sounds wonderful and Spencer admits this. But he also admits that if you don’t know your own backyard, you really aren’t learning about the world. This can be as simple as content. If you don’t know your own government, literature, or history, then how can you share it with someone else, let alone compare yours to theirs? If you don’t understand the technology, or the software available to you on your laptops, then how can you expect your students to use it? How can you get involved in project-based, or challenge-based learning projects with others when you are not using them in your classroom? I see a lot of teachers who want to participate in collaborative classroom projects, but they aren’t allowing the students sitting right in their room the time to work together. How can they learn to work collaboratively through technology if they don’t understand group dynamics at home, or in their own backyard? We, as teachers, are famous for taking a lesson or project that was once taught by someone else (the Vikings) and then revamp, reorganize, personalize and use it in our classrooms. So does that make us more like Columbus?

The phrase, “we are living in a place that was once designed for others” is perfectly applicable to education. As teachers we tend to work in rooms that were built for paper and pencil learning and trying to adapt that place for technology. As we are beginning to integrate technology into our classrooms we are trying to adapt our old curricula, resources and materials to technology with the least amount of work to change. This doesn’t work. Columbus couldn’t change the land he discovered. He couldn’t change the materials that we on hand, but he could introduce new. So can teachers.

Now it sounds like I am knocking teachers, and I am not. In fact I need to praise the teachers of our district for their creativity. They do a lot of really great projects. They really use our 1:1 laptops in many innovative and engaging lessons. They have been doing this for a long time, but does this make them the Vikings or Columbus? Our district was one of the first in the state to go 1:1, and we continue to help other districts prepare to go 1:1 as well. We weren’t the Vikings in Nebraska, someone else gets that honor, but we enjoy being part of the Columbus entourage.