The Nature of Technology at Walton

Today at Walton we distributed a powerful resource that students have to help them learn. Ms. Dwier-Selden and I recalled today that when we were in Middle School “in the dark ages’ (her words) we relied on textbooks as our primary go to for accessing content not directly taught. Students now have laptops and access to the worldwide web. The power of these tools cannot be overstated, but we must also recognize that they far from being the most powerful resources that students have to access learning.

The most powerful resources they have are their brains and their drive to succeed. These must be activated by related resources, their teachers and their classmates, who must engage, encourage, challenge, and generally help them to uncover the concepts and ideas that they discover and explore in their classes. Individual minds interacting with the minds of others is what leads to exponential learning. It always has and it always will. And schools are built on this. Good ones, at least. Ones that trust students with some freedoms through the encouragement of collaboration among students. Ones that embrace ordered chaos and recognize that a boisterous and lively classroom is more often evidence of engagement rather than poor classroom management. Ones that encourage students to bring questions to their teachers even if those questions are not necessarily in the pacing guide.

I have seen these things at Walton in these first two days in session. But they were there before the students arrived as teachers collaborated to explore big ideas such as, “What does it mean to be rigorous? What does it look and sound like? What does it not look and sound like?” Teachers are the chief learners in a school and at Walton these teachers take it seriously. Their ability to carry this over to their students is evident.

So if we know that textbooks and laptops are just tools to help support our more important resources of having amazing brains and being able to interact with the amazing brains of others then why don’t we just issue textbooks like we always have? The answer is that our world is a very different one than the “dark ages” in which Ms. Dwier-Selden and I (and many of our staff) grew up. It is a world that recognizes that the interaction between brains for learning is not limited to staying within a school building, but instead is open to the whole world through the worldwide web. We are at a tipping point in learning and our students deserve to be part of it. And here’s the other thing-they are ready. They know the expectations. They know the responsibility. They know the power of learning that they carry with them in their laptops. And they know the world out there is an exciting one that their teachers will help them to discover with safety and responsibility always at the forefront.

Our teachers also know that sometimes the best way to learn is to shut that computer down and to rely on the power of our minds. Our teachers know that the laptops are not the primary go to for our students, but one of many. Our teachers know that sometimes students need to hike down to the Hardware River, which runs through our awesome school grounds, so that they can hear the birds sing and water babble over the rocks to remind them that the awesome power and complexity of technology is no match for the awesome power and complexity of nature-of which we are all a part. 

Josh Walton, Assistant Principal