Most kids use a mobile phone. Most kids spend time online. Most schools prevent both. Our kids are online; it's time their education was.
By the end of the decade most U.S. schools will blend online and on-site learning to customize learning and extend the day and year. Most high school students will do most of their work online. All students (and teachers) will have Internet access devices and broadband. Cloud-based school-as-a-service will provide 24/7 access. The good news is that digital learning won't cost more, and it will boost achievement and graduation rates.
It's inevitable. We're a decade behind where we should be in terms of innovation, improvement, and achievement, but the rate of change is increasing. Online learning is growing by more than 30 percent annually. Like college kids, high school students are blending their own learning where options exist.
And the options are about to get much more interesting. Second-generation online learning will be customized to a student's level, interests, and motivational profile.
The transition will be uneven depending on state and local leaders. Existing schools ditching textbooks and moving to personal digital learning. New charter schools offer interesting technology blends and themes. Where state funding follows the student to the course level, things will change fast.
This week I'll be visiting with many of almost 900 charter authorizers. The National Association of Charter School Authorizers is leading the charge for better charter schools. I'll mention that state policymakers can lead by updating their charter authorizing law (as noted in this blog on differentiated authorizing strategies) for innovative and online schools.
Qualified applicants with a strong hypothesis should be able to seek conditional approval for innovative school models that incorporate novel assessment systems, performance-based progress, unique staffing and compensation models, distributed learning, blended institutions and/or year-round learning. State commissioners could modify criteria to target specific reforms, populations, or geographies.
Reflecting the internet's ability to cross municipal and state borders, virtual and blended school operators should have the ability to enroll students statewide. Only 18 states have authorized statewide virtual charter schools. Lagging states have been protecting districts from competition by denying statewide virtual charters or by providing only a fraction of typical funding with weak rationale.
Susan Patrick from the International Association of K-12 Online Learning and I will encourage authorizers to lead the way in expanding high-quality options for students and families.
Now that netbooks and tablets cost less than textbooks, it's time for schools and districts to embrace digital learning. It's time for more engagement, more time on task, more productivity. Our kids are online, it's time their education was.
Follow Tom Vander Ark on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tvanderark
Jim Wallis: It Takes a Movement: The Next Steps
Texts, regardless of the medium are not learning.
Knowledge is a consequence of experience.
Pearson Canada's Karen Hume has written a new book on student and teacher engagement in the context of 21st Century Learning. Karen shows how teachers can keep students in the game in the midst of change, and how teachers can tap into the skills they already possess while the available technologies catch up. Here's the link: http://www.pearsonschoolcanada.ca/index.cfm?locator=PSZqHb
Speaking as one who has professionally experienced the effort to bring technology to the mathematics classroom from 1965 to the present I think I can bring a little perspective to your observations. A person who can pick up a "simple Algebra" book and really move on to Calculus is not a person who presents much of an obstacle to any education program. Spend a futile half-hour trying to explain why 6 divided by 2 is 3 to a student who knows that 2 times 3 is 6, while 25 other students are drifting and you gain real insight into the problem.
Direct interaction with the active mind of the student is the most effective way to improve the chance of real learning, but not every mind can absorb the lesson at the same rate and, though we hate to fail, some may never absorb the lesson. And meanwhile all those others you are not interacting with are not progressing, at least not because of your interaction with them. The successful teacher fight the battles they have some realistic hope of winning. It is educational "triage," you save the ones it seems your medicine can help with the time available.
Technology is important yes, and not because mathematics is an extremely technical enterprise or computer programs are clever. In truth printed books were a "technology" product, as were logarithms and even the symbols for numbers.
But since I began teaching, the gadgetry, other than calculators, have mostly been diversions.
Alan
http://mailVU.com
let's go back to slate and pieces of chalk
I'm taking a single college course now, and I use the internet as a reference for the obscure details I can't find quickly in the textbook. Like the Kahn Academy podcasts, small chunks of education in short segments seems really promising. On top of all that I'd like to see a layering of collective work on study projects. But that will require some way to parcel out tasks and coordinate projects.
Blends will produce rapid path to mastery as they now do in the military for pilots with a mixture of online, onsite, simulation, and flight time.
I am tired of seeing my grandchildren yoked to the bad old ways of learning, particularly mathematics, when there are so many on line alternatives available.
I'm an old guy, 71 now, but decided that I really need to learn math from the ground up, all on line, and using the latest tools. I started with simple Algebra, then Trig, Pre-Calculus and now Calculus. I have used three different on line tools in the process and have only had to go to actual class to take the tests. I can study when and where I want to and if I don't feel like working on a day that I don't feel well - I simply don't.
It takes me a lot longer to get through a subject than if I had been in a physical class but then I feel like I really understand it when I'm finished.
It also takes discipline but that is true of all things at all times in you life.
For you to say that spherical trig is some sort of measurement that can be applied to the real world shows that you are not connected to the real world.
What I attempted to say was that there are new ways to learn, thanks to the Internet and interactive software, that makes learning math the old way beside the point. It can still be done but why would you? Its like spending your time learning long division when everyone on Earth has a calculator.
I use Mathematica to play with Calculus but the average student has to force himself through diligence and hard work to learn Calculus.
I play, the student works.
That's the difference.