When the “modern” high school system was established in the early 20th century, only 10 percent of 14- to 17-year-olds attended high school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2006). It wasn’t until 1918 that all states required children to attend elementary school; in that era, a high school education was a luxury afforded only to upper-income families.

The article goes on to describe three approaches for reform, (1) align what schools expect of students with the demands of college and the workforce, (2) offer a rigorous, option-rich curriculum; personalize learning; and provide necessary supports, and (3) improve instruction by mining data and using digital technologies. The article isn’t real clear about what digital technologies are, or how they might improve instruction other than the role played by data. However, data is not information.

In order for data to inform our instruction, many factors have to be in place.

First, time is of the essence. Teachers don’t have enough of it, so asking them to do the data mining work without enough training (also a time issue) is asking a lot.

Second, data alone isn’t enough. The link from data to teaching is complex. The data has to be interpreted in order to be informative and prescriptive. Do we really know enough about how the individual child is learning to say that a specific result on an assessment or observed progress indicator should require a specific intervention?

Third, time is still of the essence. The time between the assessment or observation and the intervention needs to be measured in seconds, not minutes or hours or days or weeks, or in the case of standardized tests, in months. The time to help a student learn is at the point where the learning is not taking place, not at a time after the assessment is taken, the scan sheets are turned in, the assessments are scored, the results are returned, the committee meets to review the results, the plan is formed about intervention, and the instruction is delivered.

I’m all for informing the craft of our teaching, but it has to meet the needs of the instructor in the classroom, and more importantly, it has to meet the needs of the learner.

ASCD

As far as I know, there is no real study anywhere that demonstrates constructionism works at scale. There is no documented moderate-scale constructionist learning pilot that has been convincingly successful; when Nicholas points to “decades of work by Seymour Papert, Alan Kay, and Jean Piaget”, he’s talking about theory.

There are three key problems in one-to-one computer programs: choosing a suitable device, getting it to children, and using it to create sustainable learning and teaching experiences. They’re listed in order of exponentially increasing difficulty.

Nicholas’ new OLPC is dropping those pesky education goals from the mission and turning itself into a 50-person nonprofit laptop manufacturer, competing with Lenovo, Dell, Apple, Asus, HP and Intel on their home turf, and by using the one strategy we know doesn’t work. But hey, I guess they’ll sell more laptops that way.

So here’s to open learning, to free software, to strength of personal conviction, and to having enough damn humility to remember that the goal is bringing learning to a billion children across the globe. The billion waiting for us to put our idiotic trifles aside, end our endless yapping, and get to it already.

ivan krstić · code culture » Sic Transit Gloria Laptopi

http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Db4VhoWGZ2eA

http://www.smartmobs.com/2008/05/12/china-earthquake/ 

Here is the Ustream link: Marsopolis 2008 Reno, Nevada, Ustream.TV: 350 fourth grade through eighth grade students participating in. Education

Here is the Learning Is Messy blog post link: Learning Is Messy - Blog » Blog Archive » Marsopolis … Messy Learning … And I’ll Ustream It?

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