Innovation in education: are we ready for change? A disruptive technology is one that radically alters an existing market – the iPod displacing the Walkman, for example, or tablets eating into sales of PCs.
In the same way, new technologies have the potential to disrupt the education system, bringing about major changes in the way pupils learn and challenging the way schools and colleges are run. "We've been on the brink of radical transformation in education for about 20 years now," says Eylan Ezekiel, digital engagement consultant for ONSchool, a specialist innovation school he hopes to open in Oxford. "The question is whether there is the energy to turn some of the exciting innovations into something that has a broader impact.
" The European Commission has warned that young people who can't use digital skills in business will be at a disadvantage when applying for jobs. "Children should learn to code in the same way they're dealing with other media," he says. Facebook is taking its own steps toward making this a reality. New Teaching Strategy: Let's Do Homework At School. April 25, 2012|By TERESA M.
PELHAM, tpelham@comcast.net, The Hartford Courant A 12-year-old kid sits at the kitchen table with a paper filled with numbers, letters and shapes in front of him. He sort of remembers what his teacher said earlier that day about the Pythagorean Theorem, but not exactly. His parents are of no help, having learned this stuff 30 years ago. He's alone, and pretty much stuck. That's the typical schoolwork/homework model: The teacher lectures in class, while students either listen passively, or hold up the class by asking to have something explained just one more time. Angela Pisarz, a 24-year-old, energetic, second-year math teacher at Watkinson School in Hartford, is trying something this year that is the complete opposite of that old system.
Students in Pisarz's Accelerated 7th grade math class do no "homework" at home. At the risk of sounding like a seventh grader: "Duh. " Why hadn't someone come up with this before? Teresa M. The Ever-Expanding School Day. Viewpoint The Ever-Expanding School Day The term "flipped classroom" is becoming more familiar all the time.
Learning no longer need take place just between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. or within the walls of the old-school classroom. I probably heard the term "flipped classroom" a dozen times during the Consortium for School Networking conference in Washington, DC, in March. Look at "The Flipped Classroom" in the April 2012 issue of T.H.E. When she writes about Faulkner and the math classes in Byron, MN, education consultant Kathleen Fulton is talking about a specific program in a specific school, but the term "flipped classroom" is becoming more familiar all the time.
It's not just happening in Byron, and it's not just taking place via YouTube either. But in educational technology, some things can change quickly. Khan Academy: The future of education? - 60 Minutes. Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent education. The Flipped Classroom: Turning the Traditional Classroom on its Head.