Week 3 #2: My School Convergence...or Lack There Of

This is a separate post from my other week 3 post. It is discussing my own school and it's lack of convergence. Any ideas on what I can do as a teacher is much appreciated.

Convergence in the Schools

                Friedman’s ideas about the triple convergence make sense and really made me think about how this is affecting me as a teacher. First off, I think there are several people and administrators in my district that are trying to maintain the hierarchy of knowledge and not using technology as much as they should. There are often times where the students know more about what is happening in the school or district before the teachers. It is as though the administration is afraid of the backlash of teacher ideas or opinions, when really all we really want is to be able to know the happenings so we can have factual discussions with our students instead of having rumors flying around. If the administration would use some of the workflow software such as Google Docs and any meeting software, we would be able to have a short meeting or discussion about whatever is happening. Instead, we as teachers are stuck in Jarche’s hierachical triangle while our students are floating around in the wirearchical world of knowledge. The last big thing that happened at our school was a break in and we found out officially who was involved through the news which our students told us was just posted. Needless to say, we never found anything out from our district.

                It seems as though our district is stuck in convergence two with departments not using the same technology and therefore not able to talk to and understand each other. Our high level specialists are not talking to the administrators who are not talking to the teachers. We have a pyramid on the level of communication as well as the level of technology. I made this figure to represent my views of technology use and communication within our district. As you can see, the largest group at the bottom, students, are the ones with the technology and therefore information in their hands. It progressively gets less as we go up the hierarchy towards our administration. The administration is able to provide the technology for us, but their use of it is quite limited or very different from what the teachers and students are using. Administration is losing touch with what is out there.

                This brings me to convergence three where Friedman talked about collaboration instead of competition with other countries. On a smaller scale we can look at it as groups within businesses or schools. Administration should be collaborating with teachers and even students as to where to proceed in the future instead of trying to be so powerful. The students want to have a good education and a good school. They are on a different level though. They are able to get information with only truly needing a teacher there to guide them. Given the opportunity and the resources I think we would be surprised with what our students can do, and I think it scares people. The same goes with businesses. The entire basis of the show Undercover Boss on CBS seems to show how disconnected some managers are with their employees and companies. Each company has employees that deal with their customers on a daily basis but seem to speak a different language than the managers. While I am sure the managers are not meaning for this to happen, it is happening. Working horizontally with each other would provide ownership for each member of the business or school and therefore possibly produce amazing and unexpected results.