ChangePresentationDL2006

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A presentation for Dynamic Landscapes
Champlain College, May 19th, 2006
Greg Thweatt
gthweatt@cssu.org
How Do You Think Outside the
Box When There is No Box?
Change
• Assumption …Change with technology
occurs rapidly.
• Assumption … Resistance to change often
is greater than the desire to change in
schools.
• Assumption … Understanding how to
manage change will help in the use of
technology in schools.
Who Can Help Us
• Luc De Brabandere, Strategic Management
Consultant
• Willard Daggett, Educator
• Jennifer James, Cultural Anthropologist
• Jamie McKenzie, Educator
Mr. Peabody

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Why Change? *
Every two or three
years, the knowledge
base doubles.
(from Leadership and Technology, published by the National School Boards
Association's Institute for the Transfer of Technology to Education.)
http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/chnsoc.html
Why Is Change Resisted?
Perception
(Brabandere)
• Perception can be a lens (standardized or
narrow thinking) or prism (strategic or
multi-faceted thinking) that calls into
question all the assembled ideas and
rules.

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Change Causes Stress
(James)
(James)
• Necessity to allow their brain to move
beyond the bombardment of information
(James’ definition of strategic thinking).
(James)
(James)
• Change can sap a leaders’ energy, “fogs”
the primary goal (to help learners think).
Also drains their passion … how to move
beyond this?
• James talks about the compelling story
as pivotal so as to clarify goals and
promote understanding (vision).
Perception
(Brabandere)
• “When you can not resolve a paradox, you
can only reframe it”.
Something doesn’t
make sense, yet the
decision is made to
keep the status quo
with a “new coat of
paint”.

4
“ There is so much writing on the wall it
will fall on you”.
Jennifer James
Perception
(Brabandere)
“When the only thing you have to hand is a
hammer, it is very tempting to treat things as
though they were nails.” Abraham Maslow
Need to generate many
ideas (more on this later
… stay tuned)
Perception
(Brabandere)
• “A lot of bad decisions are not due to a
lack of information, but rather to the way
our mind works.”

5
Take School
(instead of “Take Home”)
1. Questioning in a multi-faceted way
(strategic vs. standardized thinking)
2. It is important to generate many ideas,
not just one.
3. Change depends on a clear vision
(compelling story).
Positive change requires a perception that
is grounded on:
Change Impacts Culture that
Pressures Schools
Why Change? *
High school graduates
have been exposed to
more information than
their grandparents were
in a lifetime.

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Impact of Change:
Technology on Culture (Brabandere)
Change is changing. It took 50
years for electricity and the
telephone to reach 50% of
American homes. It took 10
years for the Internet and DVDs
to reach most American homes.
Soon change will be measured
in months and not years.
Impact of Change: Role of Children
(Jennifer James)
The current generation is the first where
children have self direction available to
them, learning life skills in early school
years (challenge for both adults and
children).
5 year olds are better at a complex
technology than adults (Nintendo) … 1st
time in history.
Impact of Change:
Technology on Culture (James)
Technology concentrates energy
that changes who we are
that changes economics
that leads to changes in demographics
that leads to different people who are
hired.

7
Why Change? *
Only 15 percent of jobs
will require college
education, but nearly all
jobs will require the
equivalent knowledge of
a college education.
Impact of Change:
•With the Internet, “open source” codes and
free services in the new economy are
replacing property relationships.
•How does copyright play into this changing
world? Will there be a copyleft too?
•With intellectual property, “will all rights
reserved be replaced with certain rights
reserved?”
Impact of Change:
Before: easy boundaries Now: globalization,
cyberspace =
everywhere and
nowhere
Where are things (space)?

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Impact of Change:
Before: work in an office
Before: learners in a
building
Now: teleworker
Now: virtual schools
Where are things (space)?
Impact of Change:
Before: time was a
constant
Now: time is confused,
time is a variable from
person to person
•CNN now has a clock with
no hour hand
•What does a “long time”
mean
•Does “time really = money”
on the Internet?
When do things happen (time)?
Impact of Change:
Before: Information had
limited and fixed ways of
production that was
mainly paper-based and
subject to deterioration.
Now: With digitization of
information we can
preserve it perfectly. We
can also alter it.
What is true and false (perception)?

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Take School
1. Learner/teacher relationship is changing …
learners know something that teachers don’t,
however, this doesn’t mean that the learners’
knowledge is accurate or wisely used.
2. “Rules” of information are changing.
3. “Space”, “Time”, and “Perception” have
changed.
Technology’s impact on society and the culture
needs to be understood by schools.
Examples of How Technology Is
Changing Learning
Why Change? *
Every day, 7,000 scientific and
technical articles are
published.

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Impact of Change:
• Writing – liberating ideas so one can edit,
re-edit, and recycle “words” countless
times thereby reducing the cost of the
production of words.
Impact of Change:
• Calculating – we now can manipulate
numbers without the need of mental math.
Trial and error have replaced strict
mathematical skills.
Impact of Change:
• Communications – we can now
communicate quicker (cellular and the
Internet). What about those who are not
connected (“the global village has no
suburbs”)?

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Impact of Change:
• Thinking – less emphasis on
memorization or paper-based constraints.
Sequence and linearity have given way to
relational databases and hyperlinks.
Scattered thoughts, jumping
from one related topic to
another or not related …
sounds like?
Why Change? *
There will be as
much change in the
next three decades
as there was in the
last three centuries.
James: How Technology Can Help
Educators Manage Change
• Technology can help learners with higher
order levels of thinking. How?

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• Technology can provide levels of depth on
topics in an exciting way. How?
• Technology can provide basics so the
learner can present higher order levels of
thinking. How?
• Technology can be thought of a “third
hand”. How?

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Why Change? *
Satellites orbiting the
globe send enough data
to fill 19 million volumes in
the Library of Congress –
every two weeks.
Jamie McKenzie talks about “Good Change”
(see her web site From Now On …
http://www.fno.org/jun00/goodchange.html)
Good change is based on good new ideas and the
need to move from “good old ideas” to “good new ideas”
… some thoughts (Luc De Branbandere):
• Generate many ideas
• New ideas may not always be good
• Choose the best from many … judge, analyze
and refine ideas
• Encourage questions … lots and varied in
types of questions
Types of Ideas
Type 1
• Change occurs
however system stays
the same.
• “Innovation”
• Follow the same rules
so as to protect the
system.
Type 2
• Alter the rules to
create a new
representation of the
system.
• Creativity
• “Nay-Sayers” look at
these ideas in light of
a Type 1 change.

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Types of Ideas – An Example
Type 1
When Napster first
came on the scene, the
record industry’s idea to
handle the situation was
to throw down-loaders
into jail.
Type 2
Apple’s way of dealing
with downloading songs
from the Internet was to
create the i-Pod …
encourage people to
pay for a download
rather than steal it.
On Generating Ideas:
(Brabandere)
• Creativity – at the core of generating good
new ideas.
• Before, creativity was defined as the art of
“getting out of the box”. Now, there are
fewer and fewer boxes.
• Creativity allows for invention (new idea).
• Invention is a new (original) relationship
that combines different “things” that were
never combined before.
On Generating Ideas:
(Brabandere)
• Before invention =
“matter-to-matter”
• Example: steam engine,
in the 17th century,
Thomas Savery is
credited in combining
steam with cranks and
connecting rods (he did
not invent the
components, just their
combination).
• Now invention = “matter-
to-bytes”
• Example automotive
industry over the last two
decades. What
relationships now exist
between “matter” (the
car) and “bytes”
(information technology)?

15
“As technology is based on logic, it appears logical to
assume that people can adapt from one form of technology
to another with only a shift in paradigm. A nice idea, but
people aren’t always so logical. This is why almost
everyone has a certain love/hate relationship with
technology. We all love it when it works. We all hate it
when it doesn’t. But the trick in using technology to
generate value is learning how to make it work for you.
Learning, understanding, and managing new and different
technologies are part of any IT manager’s job, but new
technologies are not learned in the timeframes usually
requested by others in the organization.”
Managing Technological Change - Cooper Smith
http://www.phptr.com/articles/article.asp?p=23473&rl=1
Take School
Change is About
• Generating ideas
• Creativity
• Asking questions (lots of questions, many
different kinds of questions, all the time)
• People not systems
• Finding value
• Timing instead of time
Resources
• de Brabandere, Luc. The Forgotten Half of Change. Dearborn Trade Publishing.
Chicago (2005)
• Jennifer James. James, Jennifer. http://www.jenniferjames.com/
• Good Change. From Now On. McKenzie, Jamie.
http://www.fno.org/jun00/goodchange.html)
• International Center for Leadership in Education. Daggett, Willard.
http://www.daggett.com/
• Leadership and Technology. National School Boards Association's Institute for the
Transfer of Technology to Education. http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/chnsoc.html
• Leadership and Technology. The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of
Authoritative Misinformation. Cerf, C. and Navasky, V. New York. Pantheon Books
(1984)
• Managing Technological Change. Smith, Cooper.
http://www.phptr.com/articles/article.asp?p=23473&rl=1

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