Clayton Christensen offers a believable and intuitive approach to fixing our staggering American educational system. In a nutshell: people learn in different ways (no surprise here; it's a well-documented theory). Teachers too often teach one way (or two or three--the point being, teachers standardize. I understand. I've been a teacher most of my life. One of us and many of them in a classroom). His solution: Use 21st century technology and Web 2.0 to individualize lessons to suit needs.
That's where the problem starts according to Christensen. Schools throw technology at their problems in hopes software, hardware, internet websites, will fix their shrinking test scores. Every technology teacher I know agrees with the author that this approach is flawed and frustrates both students and teachers. Technology is a tool, to be wielded with a skilled hand.
Christensen gives teachers permission to disrupt class--shake it up! See what's going on. Here are some of my favorite ideas:
1) If the addition of computers to classrooms were a cure, there would be evidence of it by now. There is not. Test scores have barely budged. 2) Why haven't schools (with so much emphasis on technology) been able to march down this path (of student-centric learning)? ...because they have crammed the new technologies into their existing structure... 3) The world of education is one in which there is little agreement on what the goals are, let alone the methods that are best-suited to achieve them. 4) Public schools have been improving steadily, since 1900, but society moved the goal posts ...changed the definition of improvement...
I'd recommend this to any teacher intent upon integrating technology into their core curriculum.
Get more detail about Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.
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