למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

And this is where the “don’t go to school” chorus can be quite tone-deaf. A veritable cottage industry has sprung up to pen the “don’t go back to school” books, blog posts, articles, and op-eds. But the advice — “don’t go!” — frequently comes with some trite recommendations of what to do in lieu of formal education: “Need a job? Invent it.” Or “Want to learn anything? Write a personal learning plan.” Or “budget $150 a month” to take smart and interesting people out for coffee. Or “open up 20 or so tabs in your Web browser.” “You can learn anything you want on the Internet!” — except, let’s be honest, you can’t. And even if you could, so what?

At bottom, I find the question to be whether this new technology serves institutions in their teaching, individuals in their learning, or corporations in their missions.

The numerous interdependent stakeholders in education technology with their legitimate interests are in tension with each other. Even mission-driven companies need to make money, and non-profit foundations need to show short-term results to donors. The education system needs to demonstrate high test scores and college enrollment among all populations, and learners need to get good grades and get into a good college in order to support a middle-class life. This leads to the prioritization of profit over mission, trivial experiments over deep research, test preparation over critical thinking, and grades over learning.

If the education ecosystem is in a meta-stable state that resists change, and if the institutions of education have near absolute power in defining and awarding accreditation, and if the processes and outcomes of this system are sub-optimal for most students as compared to our aspirations, then disruption, as with the Web 2.0 shift elsewhere, is much more a matter of removing constraints and allowing organic evolution than it is of top-down reform.

To disrupt education, focus on the products and services that shift power from institutions into the hands of individual students, parents, and teachers: online assessments that tell a student what she has learned and what she could learn next, knowledge maps that show how specific skills and understanding add up to expertise in a subject or field, guided tours that take a learner through the experiences that develop mastery of various subjects, collaboration platforms that support peer learning and peer standards of excellence, data collection engines that give learners deep insight into their learning: more, invent the tools and resources that give power to learners and to the teachers that guide, encourage, and inspire them in ways that have not yet been framed or considered.

Point out the unintended consequences of what will be a stuttering, messy, disruptive force interacting with a massive, stable system already rife with its own abuses and consequences ....