I'll be presenting two sessions later this month (February 18th) at the Minnesota Online Educator's Association (MNOLA) conference. One of them is a session I call "The Real Disruptive Innovation" which questions whether Clayton Christensen, Mike Horn, and Curtis Johnson are right in their assessment that the disruptive innovation in education is individualized instruction. Or rather, whether it is the individualization done by the teacher or that done by the student through choice that is innovative and disruptive. I hope in this presentation to raise questions and spark discussion weaving in ideas of the theory of disruptive innovation in schools, the purpose of school, and how to build community and capitalize on student interests.
Here is my slide deck for this talk:
So, if families and students are not choosing online schooling for individualized learning, what are they choosing online schools for?
If the purpose a family or student chooses your school is something other than individualized instruction, should the school work to address this/these reasons?
If a student is choosing online schooling so they can let other interests take priority over school, how do you as a teacher draw upon those other priorities to improve the quality of that student's schooling?
What do you think? I would love to share your input at my presentation.
This morning I listened to Kim Ross, principal of Minnesota's first online high school, give a keynote speech to a group of educators in Southeast Minnesota. I can't say that he said anything that we have not heard before. It was a good talk about how the world is changing and about how online education allows for teachers to individualize instruction and focus more on relationships with their students. He gave a general overview of the theory of disruptive innovation in education and drew special attention to how this individualization of instruction made possible by online learning was the disruptive force, not the technology.
In the past few years schools have been looking at online education as a major disruptive force. We have seen exponential growth in enrollment in online schools and as a result a lot of our traditional brick and mortars have seen a decline. It has been widely thought, and I must confess that for a long time I have counted myself among those holding this belief, that schools need to modify their programs to draw upon what is happening in online education to improve what they do and make instruction more individualized. In answer to this we have seen a slew of measures taken by traditional school systems in an attempt to capitalize on this theory and retain students. Many schools have tried offering their own online courses, others have invested heavily in technologies like interactive whiteboards with the thought that if only they made the presentation of class theatrics more visually appealing students would be more engaged, and other schools have experimented with hybrid courses which are primarily online courses augmented with periodic face to face meetings.
None of these solutions ever really felt right to me but I have only recently been able to make enough sense of what I have been thinking to articulate it. Perhaps the rise in enrollment in online schools has very little to do with the quality of education they offer and more to do with declining relevance of schools in general. I have noticed and I have spoken with many teachers who have observed that in the past few years student motivation to meet deadlines, to attain a good grade, and to complete all of their work has been on the decline. What worked to motivate students to "achieve" five years ago isn't working today for a large percentage of our students. "Its like they don't care if they pass my class."
What has changed in the past five years? What are kids doing today that they were not doing, or able to do before? What they are doing is learning. They are learning on their own in ways that were not really possible before. Through highly engaging Montessori-like online learning environments like YouTube, Flickr, fansite forums, Myspace, Facebook, etc. they are learning deeply about the things that interest them and are relevant to them. The scale has shifted to a point where the technologies available to learn deeply about anything online on your own has in large part outperformed what our school pedagogies and our school systems can compete with.
To illustrate this, take the following video as an example. What is this kid doing in this video? How is he using the technology to aid in his learning? Does he need school to help him learn? What is the broad implication of this? It is worth seeing this video on the YouTube page and reading through the comments he has received (click here).
Do online schools do this? No, not really, but what they do is offer a credential just like students can get at a traditional brick and mortar, only online allows a student to endure the arduous and tedious task of schooling at their own pace and in their own time. Online schools allow students the ability to let their own interest-driven learning to take a front seat and take top priority. The asynchronous nature of the majority of online instruction means that it is not getting in the way of the learning activities that are really meaningful to kids. It is not that online learning or individualized instruction in an online school are so much better than that which students receive face to face in a traditional brick and mortar, it is that online schools don't get in the way.
Thursday evening, in an Elluminate session hosted by Will Richardson (that I with I had been able to attend but only later viewed the archive), Jon Becker discussed a blog post he wrote earlier this year calling into question the truth behind the claims many people in the edublogosphere (or edutwittosphere) have been making about the need for school change. If you did not attend the session or listen to the recorded archive I highly recommend it. Its OK, I'll wait....
Jon frames his discussion very well on his blog post, which is largely repeated in the first few minutes of Will's interview/discussion with him:
Those with whom I network for learning purposes through Twitter, blogs, Nings, etc. are largely members of an amorphous educational technology community. That community is fond of throwing around terms like “change” and “reform” connected to schools or education and most often the “change” or “reform” is largely related to advances in technology. The gist of the argument is that technology has changed the world we live in but not schools so schools need to catch up (or something to that effect). Schools are becoming “dangerously irrelevant,” right Scott?
I have to admit that I have spent the better part of the past four years arguing for school change and have used many of the arguments he "throws under the bus." Working in an alternative school and seeing a disproportionate number of really bright students who were there because they were bored was "proof" for me that something about school had to change (now I am under the bus with Ben Grey).
Working as an art teacher for nine years and having to find a new job every couple years because my program was cut due to declining enrollment caused by school choice (Online Schools, Charter Schools, Post Secondary Enrollment Options, etc.) which was evidence (note, I did not use the word "Proof" here) for me that there is truth in the Disrupting Class argument (though, Disrupting Class is not really an argument for school change but rather an explanation for what is happening in our k-12 schools). The Disrupting Class argument does address the type of student Jon mentions in his post, the one who school works well for, because every time a program is cut opportunities for those and all students are lost. [See my previous posts: Budget Cuts, Disruptive Innovation, and a Solution for Public Schools,Animated Explanation of Disruptive Innovation in Education, or The Case for Charters, Part 4: Disruptive Innovation: Why Traditional Ed Is Ill-Suited For Change]
Now, this discussion, as do many discussions about school reform or school change, led to the question, "What are schools for?" When asked this question, in my mind, Dr. Becker was less than articulate and rather indecisive. He, in a round-a-bout way says he thinks the purpose for schooling is to prepare students for participation in a "deliberate democracy." But, as those in the chat box were quick to bring up, we are now talking about schooling in a global world and not all students live in democratic societies.
Essentially, Dr. Becker poises himself and Dr. McLeod on classic polar opposites in a debate that has been around for as long as our nation has existed. Since the conception of public schooling in the U.S. (and for much of the world) we have had this Jeffersonian-Hamiltonian conflict in our collective answer to the "What are schools are for?" question. Thomas Jefferson believed that schools should prepare students to be informed citizens who could function in a democracy and Alexander Hamilton believed schools should prepare citizens to be productive workers. So, in the evolution of our schools they have always been burdened by this debate.
Another reason I have heard a lot, especially from teachers and echoed in a recent post by Will Richardson, is schools need to teach students how to learn or that they need to develop students into "life-long learners." This argument/philosophy I find extremely shallow and largely flawed. It seems to me that life forms, or at least sentient life forms, are life-long learners as a matter of their nature. We are all learning beings, it is part of being alive. Schools don't teach students how to learn. Students come to school in kindergarten (or even preschool) having spent 4-6 years learning and they would continue to learn with or without school. We also are curious by nature. If anything, schools teach students to temper their curiosity by inadvertently punishing them for it. It is often said that it is an academic virtue to be inquisitive and to think critically and that schools should try to cultivate this ability in students and I wholeheartedly agree with that claim but, in my experience it seems like whenever a teacher does a good job of this the institution of schooling throws them "under the bus."
So, what is the purpose of school? If you are involved in school reform or school change at any level, be it as a reformer or a critic, you have to first have a clear articulate answer to this question. I believe schools exist to prepare all students for the world they will live in. This is a simple but loaded answer to this question and is broad enough to include both Jefferson and Hamilton. But, I am curious how you answer this question. What is the purpose of school? Having a clear and concise answer to this question ought to be a prerequisite to engaging in debate or discussion on matters of school change. For that Jon, I am pulling you under the bus with me. For now its a good place to be. Lots of good company down here.
I might as well rename my blog the "Disruptive Innovationist." It seems since its inception three years ago this blog has been dominated by this topic. Anyway, Dr. McLeod recently gave a great presentation to the NEA about Disruptive Innovation in Education. It is definitely worth a watch. He uses up-to-date statistics and synthesizes ideas put forth by both Clayton Christensen and Daniel Pink seamlessly.
Click Image To Watch
Essential Questions:
How are you going to be relevant when:
Some teaching functions will be replaced by offshoring and software
Dispersion of teaching functions erode membership base (and thus financial/political power)
21st Century is a decade old - Why are we still talking about giving students 21st Century Schools?
