CNN.com commentary on federal stimulus education funds
Posted by michael_horn | Under Educational technology, Online learning, Schools Tuesday Jun 2, 2009CNN.com published a piece by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn today, June 2, 2009, on the recent federal stimulus funds for education–and on what the proper role of the federal government should be in in transforming our schools. You can read the commentary, “Don’t prop up failing schools,” here. Let us know what you think by commenting on the article, and we can also continue the conversation on this blog as well.
Great comments on the need for increased bandwidth and improving our infrastructure in K-12 education. As someone who works in technology at the high school level I couldn’t agree more. I think you over-state the importance of online learning and “student-centric software.” The answer is better teachers, that challenge students, not sitting them in front of a machine to do work. Socratic questioning and relevant projects that force students to use higher level thinking skill are strategies that motivate authentic learning experiences.
No question that in many cases project-based learning and so forth can create much more intrinsically motivating experiences for students. Online learning can be a powerful tool in this with its power to bring simulations and so forth into the learning experience. I would agree, however, that by itself online learning doesn’t necessarily equal more student-centric learning. If the correct policies and actions follow, it is a very promising scalable platform for it, however, which does set it apart.
Thanks for your comment back Michael. I read Disrupting Class and Tony Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap back to back this Spring. Both are great reads and challenged me to think about different approaches in public edcuation. I think the real value online learning can bring to K-12 education is in hybrid classes. Face to face interactions kids have with each other is so valuable to social development…I would like to see big class discussions coupled with online learning activities to try and break kids out of the “routine” at school. I cringe at the image of students coming to school and everyone sitting down in front of a computer with headphones and only interacting with the machine and the teacher. I think somewhere in the middle is the answer.
I agree with you. Among other reasons it’s why in the fictional scenarios we had the online learning occurring in a physical location with other students around.
Some other thoughts are that I think the online players will bit by bit add physical/hybrid elements to their programs to do those tasks one by one and because they have shifted the platform of learning, the students and teachers will come out to it. I’m skeptical the old classrooms will successfully bring the modular models in at scale, although I imagine there is some fuzziness here.
Also, an important note is that for many of the online programs, much of the learning does not actually happen on the computer or online. They have many offline activities in fact, particularly for the younger students. The online is merely the platform to be able to introduce the more student-centric experience, but in fact, at its best, it has a great variety of experiences and so forth. Hope that’s somewhat helpful, too.
[...] was followed by an entry on Clayton Christensen’s blog entitled “CNN.com commentary on federal stimulus education funds“. It is interesting to read this bottom-line perspective, which fails to consider the [...]
This article is exactly why I am a disciple of the disruptive innovation theory. I agree with every single point. It gives me pause when a surge of capital goes into fixing a problem before the road map is built. I hope that government listens to you, Professor Christensen.
Al Meyers