Over the last several years I have watched with growing interest the development of more and more technologically based ways to learn. Online classes and online learning in general would seem to be a great leveler for some students, schools, and communities. One thing which I have been expecting, though, it that this implicitly upsets the apple cart of traditional bricks and mortar school administration. I have been waiting for the fight between traditionalists, bureaucrats and others who are less inclined to try out some of these new additions to our arsenal of teaching and learning methods…with the teachers and other exponents of the use of technology for learning…
In some of these quotes (below), you can start to see how the powers that be are trying to control the ‘battlefield’. The fact is that there are some great potential advantages to using some of these methods (in reasonable measure) to give more room for teachers to deal with individual students while in class, is uses already available technology which has become a part of life outside of school for most of us, and there is an actual case where there could be some financial savings!
So, with these ‘advantages’ which are enough to justify experimenting with, why fight? For the same reasons there are always fights…power.
Criticism of Online Learning Misses Important Questions
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/04/criticism-of-online-learning-misses-important-questions
The number of students at the K-12 level who are taking an online course has increased dramatically over the past few years. The most recent figures from the Sloan Consortium, an advocacy group for online education, put the number at over 1 million in 2007, up over 47% from two years earlier. About 200,000 students attend online schools full time.
A story in this week’s New York Times takes a closer look at this trend, suggesting that the explosion in online learning may be motivated more by opportunities to save districts money and less by the chance to provide quality education.
One of the most rapidly expanding areas for online learning, the story points out, is in credit recovery courses – a chance for those who failed a class to still get credit. These classes are used by high schools, particularly in high-poverty districts, to help increase graduation rates and avoid federal sanctions.
Will Public Schools Co-opt Digital Education?
http://biggovernment.com/bmattox/2011/03/29/will-public-schools-co-opt-digital-education
When I went to a meeting last fall about the new virtual school in our county, I publicly praised the local school superintendent for embracing digital education. I should have held my tongue.
Or so at least says a new report written by Michael Horn and Heather Clayton Staker of the Innosight Institute. The report, “The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning,” catalogs the exponential growth in the number of U.S. students taking at least one course online – from roughly 45,000 in 2000 to three million K-12 students by 2009.
In addition, the report describes the incredible potential that digital education promises for America’s future. “Online learning has the potential to transform America’s education system by serving as the backbone of a system that offers more personalized learning approaches for all students,” write Horn and Staker.
So, why should I have held my tongue?
Because the report also warns that much of the promise of digital education could be thwarted if public school systems seek to squeeze new technologies into old frameworks.
“There is a significant risk that the existing education system will co-opt online learning as it blends it into its current flawed model—and just as is the case now, too few students will receive an excellent education,” Horn and Staker write.
And how exactly might this “co-opting” occur? By school districts adopting policies like the one our new county virtual school has adopted – that all virtual classes must fit within the existing school calendar.
Now, at first blush, this may not seem like a big deal. If the rest of a student’s courses are following the traditional school calendar, why shouldn’t the virtual school courses do the same – especially since most online students are “hybrid learners” who spend part of their school day in the traditional classroom?
Horn says doing this turns one of the great advantages of digital learning on its head. As he explained in a recent interview with eSchool News, our traditional school system “measures seat time and moves students along when they hit certain dates on a calendar.” In this system, “time is fixed, and the learning is variable.”
In 5 Years, U.S. Schools Will Be Connected to Others Worldwide
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/04/in-5-years-all-u-s-schools-will-be-connected-to-others-worldwide
