Video – “With the opportunity of online learning coming on, what we talk about is shifting from this factory model system to a student-centered one that personalizes for each and every child,” says Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute and co-author of the new book Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools.
Below is an interview with Horn, conducted by “Reason” magazine Managing Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward during the National Summit on Education Reform in Washington, D.C., during which he describes how blended which joins traditional classroom models with software-based and online learning can create a game-based classroom environment that encourages students to help each other achieve educational goals. He also discusses how, as education moves beyond traditional institutions, credentialing will have to evolve, assessments will have to become more organic, and regulations will have to become outcome-based.
Comments
How did you fall for this corporate sales pitch?
The video and story oversimplify the problem. I'd like to see a "reformer" actually spend time in the classroom or NOT be sponsored by a corporate schemer.And do you really want your kids to be surrounded by electromagnetic waves and corporate sponsors without your input? Maybe feed them a lunch menu from Monsanto while we're putting these "reforms" into place...
Which "corporate schemer" is
Which "corporate schemer" is sponsoring this? The only organization I see associated is the nonprofit Christensen Institute. I don't understand why you're so aggressively against this, it seems like a step up from the authoritarian and conformist way most schools are currently run. Kids already are "surrounded by electromagnetic waves and corporate sponsors", and while I don't see what he's advocating as a truly holistic education system, it still seems like an improvement.
Technology is just a different factory model
You're talking about technology right, not a state sanctioned program that includes and understands meditation or natural healing. I wish all this hype about tech was an improvement but the last nonprofit that people were so excited about, The Gates Foundation,brought us the never-ending computerized PARCC testing of 2015 and if you remember it was all dressed up as the advent of technology and individualized learning, and the end of No Child Left Behind. You can be sure these corporations aren't selling art, theater, and music lessons - you'd need a human teacher for those. Neuroscience has shown that keyboarding doesn't make the lasting neural connections that handwriting does, that memory and cognition are best reinforced by actual hand – brain connections. Technology has lots of bells and whistles and there's lots of money to be made; that's why it's being promoted so aggressively. Politicians don't understand schools and neither does big business; when we lose touch with the teachers Walmart gets closer to taking over education.