"Disrupting Class" Brainstorming

[Fred Bartels]

Clayton Christensen is arguably the world's foremost expert on the impact that disruptive innovation can have on existing organizations. In "Disrupting Class" Christensen (and co-authors Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson) present a compelling case that within 10 years 50% of the courses secondary school students take will be computer delivered, and that by 2024 80% of courses will be taught online. These courses, according to Christensen, will provide customization that takes into account different intelligences and different learning styles. If Christensen's theory is correct -and there is a distinct possibility that it is- then our schools are likely to undergo huge transformative changes over the next 15 years. This is a place to discuss Christensen's theory and begin to think about how independent schools could manage the changes that may very well be heading our way.

[Wendy Drexler]

Fred,

I completely agree. Early research is already starting to support your position. Blended learning seems to to be optimal delivery. Of course, that depends on course design. Instructional design is always the key factor in course quality and success. So, the question becomes how do we optimally design a course with the right balance of F2F and online instruction/activities to best meet the learning needs of our students and the curriculum? Thanks for sharing the New Tech Foundation link. Very interesting.

Wendy

[Laurie Bartels]

Hi Wendy,

I posed a similar question on iScoop and would love to hear what others who may have done this have to share about their experience. (Thanks to Marcy Mann for trying to get the discussion going!)

I know there is much to say for just jumping in, which is what I will be doing. However, avoiding quicksand is always helpful, and for that it would be nice to have a guide :-)

Cheers, Laurie

p.s. Apropos of this discussion, just received notice from the Infinite Thinking Machine about tomorrow's (Thursday, February 25) discussion with Susan Patrick and Mike Lawrence about Online Learning. You can read more about it here.

[bill smoot]

Four years ago I set out on a personal project to find and interview some of America's greatest teachers in all walks of life: K-12, public and independent schools, as teachers in other contexts, from prisons to Actor's Studio to the athletic field to the FBI Academy. The result was fifty-one fascinating interviews that were published as a book (Conversations with Great Teachers) by Indiana University Press. I, too, read "Disrupting Class" with great interest, but my own teaching experience and my experience doing those fifty-one interviews left me convinced that many of the high-tech ideas are to be resisted. The great teachers I interviewed reminded me that there is no substitute for the personal touch, the passion, the human sensitivity of a great teacher, and even those who used the latest in high-tech devices emphasized that those devices were mere tools no better than the teacher using them. To be frank, I found "Disrupting Class" to be lacking in soul, and certainly lacking in a sense of what great teaching really is.