More Food for Thought

This weeks reading stirred up quite a bit of thinking on my part, and the lecture in class solidified the process. Faverty, Brown, Deedy, Christensen, and Meyer all explore the future of technology in education, and the process of updating an outdated system. For the purpose of this blog I would like to respond to Christensen's article specifically. I would like to use four quotes that spoke to me:

If the goal is to educate every student to the highest potential, schools need to move away from this monolithic classroom model...
Yes! I totally agree, but the question is how. How do we move educators in a direction that students have already been moving. In fact, they are way ahead of us. We have a significant amount of remediation to do with our educator population. How will we deal with the resistance that has kept us where we are at. We seem to be a "past practice" society, that is almost emotionally tied to what "has always been done." I mean, most classrooms are still set up in the standard rows of the traditional school houses. Maybe we should start with moving around a few chairs! The challenge falls on the educational leaders; for they are what will be driving the renovations of the school system. In the enGauge article, the authors give almost a recipe for this renovation process. I found this to be very insightful, but wondered if our school cultures would be ready to recieve this message.

When an educational approach is well aligned with one’s intelligence or aptitude strengths, understanding can come more easily and with greater enthusiasm.
We have been talking about this for years...I believe we call it differentiation. A buzz word that is heard on almost any school campus in America. We are currently struggling to accomplish this goal. Special education was on board since its inception. With the use of IEP's (Individualized Education Plan) students are guarded by the law to ensure a differentiated educational experience. Whether or not these specifications are actually carried out in the classroom setting can be debated, however there is a system in place to assist in making it happen. I have always wondered why general education did not consider IEP's for every student. Although I understand the time demand of such a feat, it seems almost reverse discrimination to hold these high quality control standards for some students and not all.

If the goal is to educate every student to the highest potential, schools need to move away from this monolithic classroom model and toward a student-centric model with a modular design that enables mass customization.
This modular design, while sounding wonderful, does not seem plausible at this point in our educational history. It seems as though this is a top down sort of statement. If we are going to start from the bottom up, there needs to be a significant shift in values, beliefs, and visions of our schools. Again, I believe that this begins with educational leadership. Leaders need to alter the culture at their schools so that they are willing to take risks, without the fear of losing their credibility if not their jobs. Change is uncomfortable, and often scary, for there is no guarentee that it will be better than what we have. This is where trust becomes essential! If educators trust in their leaders, I believe they will follow them wherever they go (even into the cyber world)!

The United States has spent more than $60 billion equipping schools with computers over the last two decades, but as countless studies and any routine observation reveal, they have not transformed the classroom, nor has their use boosted learning as measured by test scores.
WOW! This is startling! 60 billion...where is it? What has been enhanced by this financial invesment. Can you imagine if this happened in the private sector? People would be fired, companies would declare bankrupcy, and someone would have to answer a whole lot of questions. I think stats such as this is why citizens do not push for more money to be given to education. We have mismanaged our resources, and have not shown the public that we can utilize our fiscal allocations effectively. This has lead individuals to question whether or not the public can handle educating the youth in this country. Personally, I do not blame them for asking this question.