Read the comments from a just-released survey of WV's middle and high school students.
http://wvde.state.wv.us/tt/2008/survey2008.pdf
Compare that to the central themes of Disrupting Class - the customization of learning opportunities made possible by technology, new roles for teaching professionals, making the case for different schools.
A match made in (Almost) Heaven
Dr. Curtis Johnson, co-author of Disrupting Class, will bring many stimulating ideas to the 2008 Create WV conference in October on how West Virginia schools can begin delivering children with the skills they'll need for 21st century success. The Charleston Daily Mail recently ran this story about his ideas on how schools need to be architected in order to foster the innovation required for global competitiveness.
On a related note, many folks aren't aware of the Mountain State Academy that exists in Beckley, WV. The private school is managed by Mountain State University and is one of the few private schools in Southern West Virginia. One of Dr. Johnson's mantras is that innovation in education must be achieved by setting up separate, small centers of experimentation so that innovative, effective educators are free to follow what they find works. Would setting up new pilot schools sponsored, managed or at least "adopted" by colleges and universities a way to achieve this in West Virginia?
On Aug.5-6, Dr. Johnson, co-author of Disrupting Class, spent some serious face time with individuals and organizations involved with public education in our state. I don't know if it was his engaging manner, engaging message or just the fact that people wanted to be engaged, but he started a conversation about how WV could begin to manage its own disruption, that struck a positive note everywhere he went. I believe the Education Track sessions will be Standing Room Only this year as we kickoff the Disruption.
I apologize that I cannot continue my summarization of Disrupting Class this post. While Dr. Johnson and I were sitting down at the Charleston Marriott, a highly recognizable WV media entrepreneur, sat down close by. It seemed a no-brainer at the time to give him my copy of the book and ask him to spend a few minutes with Dr. Johnson. Dr. Johnson promised to send me a new copy of the book and, if our strategy works, you might see him on a Sunday morning talkshow in October.
However, I can include a couple of thoughts from Turning Learning Right Side Up which I finished last week. No, better yet, visit this website http://www.sudval.org/ . This is the school that the co-author of the book, Daniel Greenberg, helped to start. Please take a moment to read their essays and learn about their approach to learning.
The System For Student-Centric Learning
This is a complicated chapter to read and understand.
Education, like a private business, is a "commercial system". "A commercial system is the context within which a firm establishes its cost structure and operating processes and works with suppliers and channel partners to respond profitably to customers common needs. The reason the whole commercial system must be replaced for a disruption to occur is that, in each stage, the actors's business models, economic incentives, and rhythms of innovation and technological paradigms are consistent and mutually reinforcing. Companies with disruptive economies simply are not plug-compatible in the old commercial system. What this means is that the entire system for creating education materials, making the decisions about which materials to adopt, and delivering the content to students must and will change."
The Innovators Dilemma that Mr. Christensen wrote about in 1997.
The book describes public education's current commercial system as being a value chain model (think manufacturing, retail, food service). The disruption that will occur will displace this system with a facilitated user network model (telecommunications, insurance, banking). In this system, "the network is a supporting infrastructure" in which "participation in the network typically isn't the primary profit engine for participants."
The ramifications on teaching, curriculum, content delivery, and investment in education will change the way the world learns.
The U.S. Department of Education produces a report on educational attainment by state. Here you can view in detail what % of adults 18 years and over have attained high school, two-year, four-year and graduate degrees.
Changing the trajectory of a region in this critical arena of life is difficult. Most of the lower-ranking states are poor and southern, demonstrating how long-term politics and economics shape the future of regions. There is such a tight correlation between the level of academic achievement, the economic prosperity of individuals and their long-term health that it's a wonder that states lacking in these rankings haven't risen up and demanded signficant change.
It's often been the case that desperate times call for desperate measures. But the willingness in West Virginia to embrace new educational paradigms and pilot projects has not matched the urgency that our results would indicate. While the WV State Department of Education has received positive feedback nationally for its 21st Century Education plans, it is difficult to infuse these new concepts and ensure teacher readiness at a local level.
We are very excited about the "Disrupting the Classroom" theme of this year's Education Track at the Create WV Conference. We encourage everyone across the state to personally invite their superintendent of schools and school board members to attend. Watch this blog site for ongoing updates on the topics covered in this track.
Here is the Meat of the Disruption
Chapter 4 - Disruptively Deploying Computers
"The disruptive transiton from teacher-delivered to software-delivered instruction is likely to proceed in two stages. We call the first of these stages computer-based learning. In this stage, the software will be proprietary and relatively expensive to develop; and it will be monolithic, with respet to students' types of intelligences and learning styles...The second phase of the disruption we term student-centric technology, in whcih software has been developed that can help students learn each subject in a manner that is consistent with their type of intelligence and learning style. Whereas computer-based learning is disruptive relative to the monolithic mode of teacher-led instruction, student-centric technology is disruptive relative to personal tutors."
Four factors will drive this disruption.
"First, computer-based learning will keep improving...in 2012 the technology's market share will grow from 5 percent to 50 percent.."
"A second driver of this transition will be the ability for students, teachers, and parents to select a learning pathway through each body of material that fits each of the types of learners-the transition from computer-based to student-centric technology."
"The third factor that will likely fuel the substitution is a looming teacher shortaage."
"The fourth factor is that costs will fall significantly as the market scales up."
"..10 years from the publication of this book, computer-based, student-centric learning will account for 50% of the "seat miles" in U.S. secondary schools. Given the current trajectory of the substitution, about 80 percent of courses taken in 2024 will have been taught online in a student-centric way."
"As the monolithic system of instruction shifts to a classroom powered by student-centric technology, teacher's roles will gradually shift over time, too. The shift might not be easy, but it will be rewarding. Instead of spending most of their time delivering one-size-fits-all lessons year after year, teachers can spend much of their time traveling from student to student to help individuals with individual problems. Teachers will act more as learning coaches and tutors to help students find the learning approach that makes the most sense for them."
Chapter 1: Why Schools Struggle to Teach Differently When Each Student Learns Differently
Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner defines intelligence:
-The ability to solve problems that one encounters in real life.
-The ability to generate new problems to solve.
-The ability to make something or offer a service that is valued in one's culture.
(That is not exactly the definition of an IQ score that most people use.)
Further, he came up with eight distinct intelligencies:
-Linguistic-ability to think in words
-Logical-Mathematical-ability to calculate, quantify,
-Spatial-ability to think in 3-dimensions
-Bodily-Kinesthetic-ability to manipulate objects, physical skills
-Musical-ability to create rhythm,tone,pitch and melody
-Interpersonal-ability to understand and interact with others
-Intrapersonal-ability to construct an actual self-perception
-Naturalist-ability to observe patterns in nature, understand systems
Most people have some capacity in each of the eight, most people excel in only two or three of them. Within each type of intelligences there are different learning styles. Nested within each learning style, people learn at different paces.
Here is the dilema: because students have different types of intelligence, learning styles, varying paces and starting points, ALL students have special learning needs.
"Schools actually have been improving...In a manner analagous to disruption in the private sector, society has moved the goal posts on schools and imposed upon them new measures of performance. What is unique about public schools is that laws and regulations make them a virtual monopoly, which makes it difficult and sometimes impossible for new business models to compete on the new measures. Society has asked schools to pursue the new metric of improvement from within the existing organization, which was designed to improve along the old performance metric. In essence, the public schools have been required to do the equivalent of rebuilding an airplane in mid-flight-something almost no private enterprise has been able to do."
"In 1996, President Clinton announced a transformative vision for computing in schools. He called for: 1) modern computers and learning devices available to all students, 2)classrooms connected to one another and the outside world, 3) making educational software an inegral part of the curriculum and as engaging as the best video game, and 4)having teachers ready to use and teach with technology.
(S)chools have crammed them into classroooms to sustain and marginally improve the way they already teach and run their schools, just as most organizations do when they attempt to implement innovations...If school administrators will change course, however, and first implement computer-based learning in places and for courses where there are no teachers to teach, then computer-based learning will, step by step, disrupt the instructional job that teachers are doing in a positive way, by helping students learn in ways that their brains are wired to learn and by allowing teachers to give students much more individual attention...(S)chools use computers as a tool and a topic, not as a primary instructional mechanism that helps students learn in ways that are customized to their type of intelligence..Computers have not increased student-centered learning and project-based teaching practices. The implementation of computers has not caused any measurable improvements in achievement scores...computers have made almost no dent in the most important challenge that they have the potential to crack: allowing students to learn in ways that correspond with how their brains are wired to learn, thereby migrating to a student-centric classroom."
Must be the time of year when books about innovation and education are on everybody's summer reading list. Here is a write up about the latest from Russell L. Ackoff, Anheuser Busch Professor Emeritus of management science at The Wharton School. (I want a title like this someday, Yeungling Professor Embarrasus)
http://www.changethis.com/47.02.TurningLearning
From the Back Cover of his new book, Turning Learning Right Side Up
In the age of the Internet, we educate people much as we did during the Industrial Revolution. We educate them for a world that no longer exists, instilling values antithetical to those of a free, 21st century democracy. Worst of all, too many schools extinguish the very creativity and joy they ought to nourish.
In Turning Learning Right Side Up, legendary systems scientist Dr. Russell Ackoff and “in-the-trenches” education innovator Daniel Greenberg offer a radically new path forward. In the year’s most provocative conversation, they take on the very deepest questions about education: What should be its true purpose? Do classrooms make sense anymore? What should individuals contribute to their own education? Are yesterday’s distinctions between subjects--and between the arts and sciences--still meaningful? What would the ideal lifelong education look like--at K-12, in universities, in the workplace, and beyond?
Ackoff and Greenberg each have experience making radical change work--successfully. Here, they combine deep idealism with a relentless focus on the real world--and arrive at solutions that are profoundly sensible and powerfully compelling.
Why today’s educational system fails--and why superficial reforms won’t help
The questions politicians won’t ask--and the answers they don’t want to hear
How do people learn--and why do they choose to learn?
Creating schools that reflect what we know about learning
In a 21st century democracy, what values must we nurture?
...and why aren’t we nurturing them?
How can tomorrow’s “ideal schools” be operated and funded?
A plan that cuts through political gridlock and can actually work
Beyond schools: building a society of passionate lifelong learners
Learning from childhood to college to workplace through retirement
Reinventing Learning for the Next Century: How We Can, and Why We Must
An extraordinary conversation about the very deepest questions...
Today, what is education for?
Where should it take place? How? When?
What is the ideal school?
The ideal lifelong learning experience?
Who should be in charge of education?
And who pays for it all?
Over the past 150 years, virtually everything has changed...except education. Schools were designed as factories, to train factory workers. The factories are gone, but the schools haven’t changed. It’s time for us to return to first principles...or formulate new first principles...and reimagine education from the ground up.
In Turning Learning Right Side Up, two of this generation’s most provocative thinkers--and practical doers--have done just that. They draw on the latest scientific research, the most enduring human wisdom, and their unique lifelong personal experiences transforming institutions that resist change. And, along the way, they offer a powerful blueprint for a thriving society of passionate lifelong learners.
I just bought the book. Stay tuned...