Ted Kraver
Over the decades you have read thousands of pages on the woes of education and scanned hundreds of lists and gone to dozens of meetings on what to fix. I would like to assure you that we are at the beginning of the end of our long trek. Here is the dynamic and élan need to effect the solution to the Grand Challenge.
Ignore the Naysayers
First, we ignore the naysayers.
“Students today depend on paper too much. They don’t know how to write on a slate without getting chalk dust all over themselves” [Principals’ publication, 1815]; “Students today depend too much on ink. They don’t know how to use a pen knife to sharpen a pencil” [Teacher’s journal, 1815]; “Ball point pens will be the ruin of education in our country. They use these devices and throw them away. American values of thrift and frugality…” [Federal Teachers, 1950]; “Computers give students an unfair advantage. Those who use them to analyze data or create displays will be eliminated” [science fair judge, Apple Classroom of Tomorrow chronicles, 1987].
Practice Forward Thinking
Second, we decided that if we are in the 21st century we might as well act as if we know how it is going to play out. The following model that looked at the past two centuries and the following one is very helpful to review.
| K12 EducationAttributes | 1800’s | 1900’s | 2000’s |
| NameResponsibility Technology | Letters&NumbersParents Book – Slate | LegacyState Book- Blackboard | eLearningStudent, Parents and TeacherDigital Curricula, Computer, Internet |
| Expectations | Social Replication | Success for All | Individual Success |
| Content | Practical Skills | Disciplinary Knowledge | Learning How To Learn |
| Pedagogy | Apprenticeship | Teaching | Interaction |
| Assessment | Observation | Testing | Embedded Assessment |
| Location | Home | School | Anywhere |
| Culture | Adult | Peer | Mixed Age |
| Relationships
Time
Success Criteria |
Personal Bonds
Not Much
Support Family |
Authority Figures
5hrs,180dys,13yrs
Career-College Ready |
Teacher and Computer Mediated Interaction
Anytime, Accelerated Pace Achieve Calling |
Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology,” Allan Collins Northwestern University, 1997, with additions by author.
Incorporate Management Theory
Third, we will rely on a number of powerful theories and practices that had emerged within the management world over the past few decades. They include these:
- Support the self-realized individual teacher and learner at all levels.
- Innovation is always driven by small, highly motivated, entrepreneurial task teams.
- Innovative public system change is best done by civic entrepreneurs.
- Education system sectors from state to classroom must be redesigned as a system that supports individualized learning.
- The system transformative driver is the state sector.
- The change levers that transform industries connect to governance, human resources, technology, and interorganizational design.
- Scenario-driven strategic planning delivers a good enough way to understand future possibilities.
- Scenario planning with financial analysis delivers on “show me the money.”
- Systems don’t have ideology or politics so they are best addressed with rationality, innovation, and creativity.
- It takes eight years for any large organization to transform after the CEO gives his or her blessing.
- A comprehensive, long-range road map that has a task for every player and a Gantt chart to keep them on schedule must be produced.
- eLearning is the only transformational enabler with a large enough effect factor.
- Technology-driven innovation has delivered 80 percent of our societal progress during the past 200 years, and it is now time to apply it to education.
Find the Right Term
Fourth, we needed to settle on one word to capture the heart of the solution. Two decades ago an article in Science developed the rationale that technology-driven innovation was responsible for 80 percent of the advancement of humankind. eLearning embraces the current system blend of information technology, digital curricula, and formative assessment data with innovative teaching pedagogy to finally have education join the list of societal progress leaders.
What’s in a word?
There is something uncanny about these newfangled vehicles. They are all unutterably ugly and never a one of them has been provided with a good or even an endurable name. The French, who are usually orthodox in their etymology if in nothing else, have evolved “automobile” which being half Greek and half Latin is so near to indecent that we print it with hesitation: while speakers of English have been fatally attracted by the irrelevant word “horseless.” New York Times Editorial, January 3, 1899.
But by 1900 the Times had changed their index, replacing “Horseless Vehicles” with “Automobile.” That is why we have selected eLearning as the 21st-century word to bundle online, digital, technology, education, pedagogy, etc. into a small letter e for the electronic technology and the capital word Learning to focus on process and outcomes. Borrowing the format of a core definition from our friends at the Advanced Distributed Learning initiative:
is any learning supported by digital means.”
Ted Kraver, Ph.D., is president of eLearning System for AZ Teachers & Students, Inc., a not-for-profit 501(c)3 volunteer systems design and advocacy task team. eSATS is a volunteer nonprofit advocacy organization that was formed in 2003 to transform Arizona’s K-12 education system from legacy education to eLearning. You can reach Ted at ted@kraver.cc.
