What are we really looking at?

In a meeting yesterday looking at some data. The data wasn’t about student achievement but technology usage. I was reminded of one of the most important things, stop reacting and look deeper.

It seems like we really want to jump into solution mode, find what we think is the issue and then tell someone how to solve it.

Our tech director is pretty much a genius. I fear the day he retires.

As we all looked and started to offer reasons, excuses and ideas, he stopped us. Our redirected attention was to think about what people were using instead of some interactive software we saw lower usage numbers on.

We thought back ten years and how the classrooms teaching looked now. We talked about what we saw in the classrooms today. Much of what we saw then was a lot of whole class instruction around an interactive board. Today we see a lot of small group, centers and such.

I think if we would have jumped into solution mode we might have pushed teachers into a direction we don’t want them to go.

I read this article a few weeks ago about about asking the right questions. This was a great reminder to me to look a little deeper and not to react too quickly.