I have written about the use of technology in education for a while now (i.e. lots of posts, and a lot of scolding…hah!). I ran across this article the other day (an article I recall reading several years ago), and could see that this idea (mixing education and technology) was quite similar to the Music industry and MP3’s a decade ago (although it is still raging like a third world brush war still…). In both cases you can see that there have been some presentations of technology (i.e. technology which could create a real paradigm shift in the industry) effectively ignored by bureaucratic stasis.
Can Technology Reinvent Education?
http://blogs.hbr.org/innovations-in-education/2011/03/-robin-willner-is-vice.html
In 1994, IBM posed a deceptively simple set of questions to district superintendents and chief state school officers: Is there a long-standing barrier to school improvement that you think can be addressed by emerging technology to accelerate the pace of reform and support student achievement? What have you always wanted to do for students, teachers, or parents that might finally be possible? What are the critical levers for change that could be enhanced through technology?
But there was more to the challenge. Few superintendents had the time or the luxury to consider strategic issues or brainstorm emerging opportunities. The day-to-day pressures and crises made it unlikely that they’d given much thought to what might be done in new ways.
For the most part, the proposals we received for Reinventing Education avoided innovation and focused instead on approaches we had sworn to avoid: automating current practice by adding bells and whistles and expense, or doing things that didn’t work very well faster and more often.
Can IBM reinvent education?
http://www.worldandi.com/newhome/public/2002/december/lfpub.asp
Reinventing Education: new technology does not guarantee a new learning culture
http://www.wwwords.co.uk/rss/abstract.asp?j=elea&aid=4461
Salman Khan-let’s use video to reinvent education
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/03/salman-khan-lets-use-video-to-reinvent.html
If you made it to this point in this post, you might consider that the more recent and well advertised implementations of technology in education are feeble attempts (well over a decade late) to address some things which should have been looked at in 1994?
