Many school leaders now recognize that students will need broad computer science skills to be competitive in the 21st Century workforce. Adding an additional subject to an already crowded curriculum, though, may prove challenging to schools that feel overloaded as they prepare students in core subjects. Rather than (or at least in addition to) teaching computer science as a discrete skill, it makes sense to integrate web technology development across the curriculum, so students are learning to develop the web while they're mastering reading, writing, math, and other skills.
The Web has become the lingua franca of business, academia, and technology today, but schools continue to insist on teaching students how to create Microsoft Office documents. I believe this is because teachers themselves were trained in these tools, and never developed the core technical skills to use web technology.
There is a growing gulf between the 'simple and pretty' tech tools that students and teachers experience and the lucrative technology skills required by the modern economy. Web developers lament how complicated modern web development has become in 2017, requiring mastery of not only HTML and CSS but command line build tools and an ever-changing array of front-end frameworks.
Meanwhile the average student and teacher is held safe in a gilded cage of graphically rich cloud tools that protect them from learning (or ever seeing) the underlying code. Smartphone apps, Chrome apps, web apps all make it easier than ever to point, click, write, shoot, and share content, but this often comes as part of a "devil's bargain" where users agree to allow their personal information to be harvested and sold to advertisers in exchange for these convenient tools.
The way forward, I believe, is for teachers and students to broadly integrate open source personal cloud tools across the curriculum, so students are building those lucrative web development skills while they complete their core content work. What follows is my attempt to outline a plan that schools can use to provide students and teachers with powerful web-native tools for integration throughout the curriculum, giving users a gentle scaffolded learning curve for developing the skills that power the web.
A guiding principle in my thinking for educating under-served students in technology is that they should own their own devices, own their own data, and own their own presence on the web. Years ago, I wrote about how modern open source tools allow anyone to "Own the Means of Production" — by mastering the very tools that power our cultural media conversation — video, audio, and web technologies. Rather than perpetuating an inequality between the "haves and have-nots", an intentional edtech strategy can equalize wealth inequality by democratizing access to the core toolset used in productive work and thought in the 21st Century.
The tools that power the internet are free and legal for anyone to use, but sadly, they are too seldom taught in K-12 education. Teachers and students use consumer-level "apps" that shelter the user from the underlying web technologies powering them, and silently deny them the opportunity to study how those technologies works. This is an issue of access, of social equity. It perpetuates societal inequality by making students consumers, not producers, of media.
The ideal educational technology is a toolkit that students can continue to build their skills in over their entire academic career, to deepen their understanding of the web by doing their daily work on the web.
In my view, education technology is too often used to reproduce antiquated, teacher-centered modes of instruction, and consequently fails to produce the transformational learning outcomes we expect. Tech tools are selected to solve short-term challenges ("Which app lets me add my voice to a PowerPoint?") rather than long-term learning goals ("Which app will students still be using when they're in college?")
Following the principles of backwards design, we should design our edtech strategy backwards from the outcome of producing empowered, productive, tech-literate adults who are prepared for the modern workforce. The details of this plan may need refinement, but the core principles are designed to produce transformational societal change by empowering students with enduring technologies.
Following in the footsteps of exemplary programs like the Domain of One's Own project, this plan outlines a scaffolded yearly process of helping students build marketable skills in web technologies over the course of six years (grade 7 - 12). By the end, students will own their own web servers, their own domain name, and be fully proficient in administering self-hosted internet applications. They will know how to skillfully combine different cloud tools to be able to meet a variety of authentic communication and collaboration tasks. And they will use it as a jumping-off point to overcome the learning curve to mastering the web technologies that power the internet.
Most importantly, students will build identity as content producers, web developers, internet citizens, and proprietors of their own "real estate" on the web. Through ownership, they will take responsibility for their learning, they will learn to defend their intellectual property, and respect the intellectual property of others.
Wordpress is an open source web technology stack that's comprised of the most widespread and marketable tech skills -- HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, Apache. These are the core technologies that power the Internet and are the foundation of today's most marketable technology career skills.
Wordpress is "free as in freedom", meaning students have the unfettered legal right to run, modify, and share the technology. Wordpress is also "free as in beer", meaning that there are no licensing costs for schools to use this technology. Many modern tools like Facebook are "free as in beer" (we pay nothing to use it), but the company makes money by harvesting users' personal information and selling it to advertisers. It is not "free as in freedom", since the users are not allowed to view the code that powers their experience, modify it, and create their own derivative products with it. Wordpress allows all these freedoms, resulting in a powerful learning tool for the web developer of tomorrow.
Wordpress powers over 25% of the pages on the entire Internet, and has been modified in every conceivable way to produce professional sites of all kinds. More importantly, though, is that its powerful technology stack is wrapped in a user-friendly UI so novice users can be productive from day one. It provides a gentle learning curve to web development, where users begin simply as writers and gradually learn to customize and expand their web presence, adapting it to meet new challenges by using core web technologies.
By owning their own Wordpress installation, students begin to see their schoolwork as contributing to their own academic identity, not as a meaningless task they're doing "for their teachers". Students have a cumulative record of their academic growth, and the opportunity to revisit and revise their previous work to achieve greater levels of mastery. They build identity as a content producer, as the proprietor of a website — intellectual property gains new relevance when it's their property they're working with! They see writing as something they are doing to enhance their own public persona, and they take special care what they publish when they realize that "the world is watching." I have seen these transformations in my own classroom as students start to write for themselves and for the world.
Many school administrators today are looking for STEAM curriculum that's aligned to Common Core standards, and I am excited by the possibility of meeting that need while also promoting open source tools that build marketable skills for students. My plan is to use the Mozilla Web Literacy Standards as a guideline to organize this curriculum.
My vision is that students will use Wordpress for all their writing across the curriculum, posting assignments and projects for every class in a Wordpress site that they own and control. By using Wordpress to post their schoolwork in English, Science, Art, History, and Math, students will gain experience in the supplemental technologies that practitioners in those fields use to publish their work to the web (such as MathJax, R Markdown, Wordpress Timeline, etc.)
This site will grow with them throughout their academic career to become an eportfolio of their best academic and technical work. Exemplary work artifacts can be revised to mastery and can contribute to their professional portfolio that they show to colleges and employers. (My own Wordpress site, TedCurran.net, has led to my last two jobs, as well as book deal offers and other professional opportunities.)
Teachers can use it to organize classroom activities, creating hybrid-online courses using the flipped classroom model, and using Wordpress as a simplified classroom LMS. They can integrate rich learning activities directly into their courses using H5P.org eLearning tools, as well as integrating their favorite cloud apps.
Local organizations like Oakland's Tech Exchange and The eWaste Collective help connect disadvantaged people (and institutions) with free and low-cost computers and broadband internet access so they can experience the dignity and ownership of their own technology tools, rather than depending solely on their schools and employers for access. Through these organizations, we can implement a program to promote home ownership of computers and high-speed internet for students and their families.
Groups like Hack the Hood give students the opportunity to build web design skills while helping under-resourced local businesses establish their web presence. This would serve as a great service learning project for upper-grade students.
SkysTheLimit.org can match students interested in developing a business idea with industry mentors who can coach them.
This is a rough sketch of a scaffolded learning plan that would give students practical experience in a variety of web technologies over a six-year curriculum.
The first year of the program, students will learn the basics of how to use Wordpress as a writing and publishing platform. They will master its basic, consumer-level features for publishing text, images, videos, and files onto the web, and for organizing their ideas on the web.
- Students will be able to compose and post content (text, images, files) using a web-based WYSIWYG editor
- Students will learn to embed 3rd party web content in their posts, such as YouTube videos and Google Forms.
- Students will learn tagging, categories, and custom menus to organize information on their sites.
- Students will learn the basics of online privacy, and learn to control the privacy settings of their site.
- Students will understand and use Page History to roll back mistakes
- Students will gain basic understanding of web development fundamentals
Students will learn to use their Wordpress site as a central tool for collaboration with local and distributed partners over the web. They will learn about intellectual property, and how to respect their IP and that of others. Students will also learn about productivity tools like project management apps, calendars, to-do lists, and content curation apps.
- Students will invite collaborators to work on their site and manage those user accounts.
- Students will implement plugins into their sites to enable wiki collaboration, social networking, and other collaboration tasks
- Students will integrate social media and social bookmarks into their sites
- Students will intentionally license their work using Creative Commons or copyright licenses.
- Students will create a group project, publishing the finished product on their own blogs.
Students will go beyond the basics, learning to use HTML, CSS, and graphic design tools to customize their Wordpress site. Students will learn to create layouts, adjust fonts, colors, and add UI elements to their sites with intermediate code skills. Meanwhile, students will go deeper as site administrators, learning to manage users, set permissions, improve site security, and manage updates.
- Students will modify the default Wordpress theme with basic CSS
- Students will write and implement custom javascript features
- Students will learn to write and troubleshoot HTML in the Wordpress text editor (and/or a dedicated code editor).
- Students will install plugins to extend the functionality of Wordpress
- Students will write their first Wordpress plugin in PHP
- Students will skillfully use shortcodes to add rich UI elements into their posts
- Students will create and modify a Wordpress child theme
Students will explore the vast variety of plugins and themes available for Wordpress, and use these to build purpose-built websites to meet individual needs.
For example students will learn to create a knowledge base website, an ecommerce site, or a social network, just by using off-the-shelf Wordpress plugins.
- Students will modify a Wordpress site to serve a specialized function, such as a knowledge base, Q&A site, eCommerce, CRM system, portfolio, or other purpose-built website
- Students will create a database application using Wordpress and the Advanced Custom Fields plugin.
- Students will develop their own Wordpress theme using Underscores framework, HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
- Students will independently explore other web technologies for personal interests, integrating those with their Wordpress site.
Students will learn the basics of the Wordpress database, and how to add functionality to their sites by programming PHP plugins for Wordpress and adding custom functionality using JavaScript/jQuery.
- Students will learn how to use JavaScript to add valuable functionality to a Wordpress site, and develop that code into a Wordpress plugin.
- Students will develop a modern JavaScript web application using the WP-API as a backend server.
- Students will develop a PHP script to extend the functionality of Wordpress.
Students will choose a real-world challenge that needs to be solved in their community, or a self-directed programming challenge they would like to overcome. They will develop a site independently that meets the challenge, while collaborating with teacher mentors and industry experts. Students will demonstrate mastery on a variety of learning outcomes, engaging in an experiential revision process until they demonstrate mastery. If possible, we may work with community mentors who can provide professional-level critique of their work and encourage them to pursue it further.
Numerous pitfalls could result from allowing students to freely publish content publicly to the internet. Students might unintentionally infringe copyright, produce inflammatory speech, or publish personally identifying information that might put themselves or their peers at risk of physical harm. Indeed FERPA clearly outlines the legal protections for student privacy when publishing online, and schools are legally responsible to respect it.
It is technologically possible to make a Wordpress site function more like a private intranet, in which students would still be publishing, but their posts would only be visible to logged-in users authorized by the organization. This makes sense for students in earlier grades, and/or students who may not be ready to engage in a conversation with the wider internet. In other words, this approach technologically forces students' work to remain private within the virtual walls of the school community.
However, since our goal is to build our students into web-literate citizens, we should plan to move students gradually towards responsible interaction with the public web. While students are within our private install, we should provide explicit instruction in
- Password-protecting sensitive information
- Protecting oneself online from predators, bullies, and plagiarism
- Creative Commons and respecting intellectual property online
- Digital Identity, and how to protect your reputation online
Many schools successfully allow students to publish on the open web while respecting their FERPA rights. Here's a guide to the University of Oregon's procedures. Once students are ready to interact with the wider web, we can move them to a Wordpress install that's under their own control, where they can control their privacy settings and make modifications that protect their privacy.