For this year’s back-to-school column, let’s go “where no one has gonebefore” and return to the original StarTrek television show, which premiered an astounding 48 years ago, thismonth. There, amidst all the 23rd-century wonder, we come across aclassroom on the starship Enterprise.We see kids using tablets to learn. Amazing how Gene Roddenberry got thatright, but in a 20th-century-style classroom? Two hundred plus yearsfrom now and kids are still seated in neat rows of desks in classrooms? Thatgot me to thinking, technology may be changing learning, but is it changing schooling?
Is today any different?
Last spring, I attended a presentation about K-12 learning technology given to parents in my school district by Jamie Casap,Google’s education evangelist. It was a great talk, full of examples of howtechnology can work to advance learning, laced with a few refreshing cautionsabout going too far or embracing it too much. Jamie talked a lot aboutcomputers, tablets, mobile apps, and the web, and the potential they have forrevolutionizing education. Impressive.
Towards the end of Casap’s presentation, I asked him if learningtechnology is so powerful, if it improves learning efficiency and enables personalizedlearning to meet individualized needs, why do all kids attend school for thesame amount of time? Won’t some kids need less time and some need more? Why areall classes the same length? For example, should math class and history classalways be 48 minutes long for everyone, every day? Won’t technology change allthis? He agreed but admitted we are far from there right now. It could be along slog.
It seems to me, as it might to you, that technology in our schools hascome upon a significant barrier: the schools themselves.
Can technology change schools?
We keep waiting for that “disruptive technology” to come along andchange it all. We thought it was video, then computers, and now the web. All helpful,but with hundreds of years of tradition, as well as entrenched and perhapsoutdated financial, personnel, infrastructure, and political models in front ofus, it’s not enough. Technology can and does improve learning, but its full valuemay never be reached if the context where it is used—the school—does notsignificantly change as well. And it’s not just K-12 education. Almost everycollege, university, and corporation has adopted some form of a traditionalschooling model. Years in the making, this won’t be undone quickly.
Progressive voices
I hopped over to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the mostprogressive forces for educational reform out there. On their page, College-Ready Education, down near the bottom, I found this quote from their mission:
“Allowing studentsto progress to new levels of learning as soon as they demonstrate mastery of atopic rather than moving forward based on the number of hours spent in aclassroom provides students with customized pathways to achievement, enablingthem to be successful every step of the way.”
I looked at other progressive educational programs and concepts thatfoster individualized learning, like the Kahn Academy, flipped classrooms,and MOOCs.Nothing’s perfect, but slowly, the conversation about structural change is beginning, like this fromthe College of Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder:
“We are seeingan accelerated philosophical shift away from “seat time” to demonstrable,competency-based learning.”
Encouraging, but are we moving forward fast enough?
The bigger challenge
When I think of how education is portrayed on Star Trek, I wonder how anyone ever learned enough to pilotstarships. I have the same concern today; hopefully you do too. Schools aren’tbad; they’re just having a very difficult time evolving. After all, they’veworked so well for so long. And if it ain’t broke…
Let’s accept that technology enhances learning and move on to biggerfish. If technology is going to help really change the game, all the players needto show up to rewrite the rules. Local school boards, parents and taxpayers,teachers and their unions, foundations, and government agencies must agree toconfront our preconceptions of what learning technology—and schooling—should be,and then act. We need more pilots, demonstration projects, best practices, anda little courage. And we must fundamentally change our thinking. Time is of theessence; outdated schooling models—even with great learning technology—won’tkeep us competitive or help us solve tomorrow’s problems.
We need to keep what’s good about schooling but open it up to newpossibilities and structures. The promise of technology alone will not advanceschooling, but if we are not careful, traditional schooling may kill thepromise of technology.
