So, I've been thinking about Will Richardson's blog article, "So What is the Future of Schools?" He quotes Michael Horn, one of the presenters from Microsoft’s School of the Future Summit, as saying that "within 15 years, almost 50% of all courses will be delivered online." I don't know if he meant just high school classes, or college ones as well.
I found this not necessarily encouraging, but rather sad.
As much as I can see great possibilities with the advent of technology, as evidenced by the "Hole in the Wall" studies done in India by Sugata Mitra (The Child-Driven Education), I have seen the repercussions of online classes at the high school level. We offer a variety of online classes each year, including Virtual High School classes, and Academ-e classes through UMO (these semester classes count for college credit - a big bonus for many students).
Drawbacks I have seen:
Except for the most well organized, meticulous, attention-to-detail oriented individuals, students at the high school level struggle with online classes. Their feedback, again and again, is that it wasn't what they were hoping for, or they didn't learn much, or it was way too hard. Many struggled with the amount of organization they needed. Some just missed having any interaction with a teacher. Many have told me they have no interest in taking another class online, even with the offer of college credit for some of them.
For the most part, students who have been successful with online classes would be successful with any type of learning, whether teacher-oriented, hands-on, or completely independent. This makes up a small portion of the school population.
By the time we hit college, many students (like us) now have the ability to multi-task, to work collectively or independently, to follow through on the many requirements and deadlines of an online class. Just this first week has had a phenomenal amount involved, and I am only just finishing the last few of those requirements!
So, if the vision for the future involves lots of student involvement and technology in teaching, I think that is great. If, instead, the vision involves slowly phasing out real live teachers in favor of the virtual, I think we are doing our students a terrible disservice.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Saturday, June 29, 2013
My Curriculum Experience
Having taught high school mathematics for the last 13 years, I have seen and participated in a wide variety of curriculum development activities and changes. When I first started, everything was being aligned to the Maine Learning Results, which we "unpacked" and carefully examined, finding important parts of our textbooks that dealt with each area, and creating numerous documents to support them. At the request of the State, we created "Common Assessments" meeting particular standards, learned how to co-grade them with common rubrics, and tracked each student over multiple years for each of the math standards addressed in the Learning Results. I remember a lot of file folders, and an entire file cabinet dedicated to this!
Then the State decided to eliminate this requirement of conversion to standards, and our district abandoned it. The state assessment at the high school level changed from the MEA's to the SAT's, which led to the adoption of a brand new textbook series on our part. We spent an entire summer aligning our text to the Maine Learning Results, and have a huge binder with the results of this endeavor.
Then the Common Core were officially adopted by the State of Maine. While there are many similarities with the Maine Learning Results, there are complete areas now abandoned, and other concepts included. For the last two years, we have been carefully and painstakingly examining how we measure up to the Common Core. Just this year, we have entered all our data about Content and Skills for each class we teach into Atlas, a curriculum mapping resource, and will add our Assessments next year. Almost all of our workshop days have been dedicated to this for these two years.
It has been both interesting and overwhelming. Much of the time, the process has seemed completely divorced from what I do daily in the classroom. I believe that documenting what I do, versus examining how to do it better, are two very different things, and look forward to this class immensely!
Then the State decided to eliminate this requirement of conversion to standards, and our district abandoned it. The state assessment at the high school level changed from the MEA's to the SAT's, which led to the adoption of a brand new textbook series on our part. We spent an entire summer aligning our text to the Maine Learning Results, and have a huge binder with the results of this endeavor.
Then the Common Core were officially adopted by the State of Maine. While there are many similarities with the Maine Learning Results, there are complete areas now abandoned, and other concepts included. For the last two years, we have been carefully and painstakingly examining how we measure up to the Common Core. Just this year, we have entered all our data about Content and Skills for each class we teach into Atlas, a curriculum mapping resource, and will add our Assessments next year. Almost all of our workshop days have been dedicated to this for these two years.
It has been both interesting and overwhelming. Much of the time, the process has seemed completely divorced from what I do daily in the classroom. I believe that documenting what I do, versus examining how to do it better, are two very different things, and look forward to this class immensely!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)