Systems Theory and a vision for Technology

I am reading a great book by Peter Senge (Sen-gay) entitled "The Fifth Discipline." He talks about Systems Theory as the fifth discipline that integrates the others which are personal mastery, mental models, building shared visions and team learning. He uses a word which isn't commonly used in organizational settings but I have heard it in church!

Metanoia- literally, in Greek, means a "transcendence of mind." Dr. Senge says if we understand the meaning of metanoia, we can understand the deeper meaning of learning. Not learning as in taking in information and then spitting it back out but learning that "enhances our capacity to create." That's the kind of learning we want to foster in our students and in each other as their teachers.

I spent last week at the ISTE conference in Denver listening to and engaging in dialogue with experts in integrating technology. The focus is on using the technology as tools. Project-based-learning or PBL was bandied about everywhere I went. Much of what I walked away with was encouraging. I am exhilarated thinking about the possibilities.

I am back at TC for the month of July. What I have learned this week is that sometimes we use PBL in the classroom to provide our students with opportunities for learning that look like learning that enhances our capacity to create but unexamined mental models keep our students from moving forward. If we believe our students are not capable of learning complex processes and assume that they won't need to learn them, we eliminate any possibility for their learning them.

We fail our students and we fail ourselves. So my goal for the summer and the rest of my life is to begin to break open my own ingrained assumptions about the world and learn how my actions affect how I relate to the world. Our school has a lot right with it. We also have a lot of "untapped potential for creating our future." We tap that potential by being a learning organization. More on what that means specifically later!