FutureWatch 1: Youtube K-12 Criticism

Can the United States Education system keep up with the rest of the world? According to the youtube video, A Nation in Crisis: American's Educational System is Broken, it cannot, even citing that we are in danger of becoming a 3rd world labor market by the year 2030. How can this be? In my view we have excellent teacher training in our country, innovative technology, and wealth, but is it being utilized to its potential? Not according to the youtube.com video Pay Attention, which delivers a powerful message urging teachers to start using technology to teach more efficiently to engage students, and spark creativity of our youth. In this blog I will discuss the foregoing points and my reaction as an educator.
Watching the videos was eyeopening to me, and the statistic that jumped out was the U.S. ranking of the OECD countries:
How can the United States improve its educational system to maintain its status as a dominant world power? Thankfully, this issue is one of President Obama's priorities. An article in a recent issue of the Economist, highlighted the reasons U.S. children are lagging behind their European and Asian counterparts. For example, American children have one of the shortest school years, 180 days, compared to as many as 200 days in other OECD countries. American children also have one of the shortest school weeks, 32 hours a week, compared to a 60 hour school week in Denmark and Sweden. In addition, the long summer vacation acts as an "eraser" with children forgetting up to a month of instruction. President Obama has urged schools to "rethink the school day," wanting an overhaul of the school calendar, which originates from our farming days; he is pushing for longer school days and a longer school year.
Recovered from YouTube.com June 15,2009:
As an educator, I am happy with this plan and I believe that teachers need to continue to educate themselves on best practices. A small amount of U.S. schools have taken President Obama's advice. A charter school known as KIPP has instituted more education, increasing student's class time to 60% more than their peers resulting in higher test scores. However, in this economic crisis and without more funding, it will be difficult for schools to change their traditional routine.

Preconditions for Whole-District Ecological Systemic Change

It is well documented that piecemeal changes in education have little or no impact to improving schools; ecological systemic changes are needed. Ecological systemic change recognizes the importance of interrelationships between all relevant stakeholders and their environment. However, systemic changes in education do not come overnight, and before one can even begin to think about whole-district systemic change, research shows that three prerequisites must be present: core and supporting work, social architecture, and the district's relationship with the external environment (Reiser and Dempsey, 211). In this blog we will discuss the existence of the foregoing prerequisites in a rural school district which we will call David.
The first prerequisite for ecological systemic change is the core and supporting work. This is focused on the existence of a core group of school and community leaders with a common vision. David has in place a core group of leaders with a common vision for the district, as the district has a good reputation because of past successes. This core group is made of the superintendent, principal, school board president, and an active PTA. However, a recent shift in leadership has weakened the core group leading to inconsistencies which may make ecological systemic change more difficult.
The second prerequisite is the internal social architecture. This refers to the power and political relationships, communication, and incentives within the school district. David's strength in this area is the good communication between the administration and staff. We have a open door policy, where teachers are encouraged to speak with administrators regarding new ideas or expressing concerns. On the negative side, David does not have consistent set of curriculum standards, we are required to follow state standards but up until this coming year have all been teaching from various math, spelling, and science textbooks. There has been difficulty mandating away from this hodgepodge approach for fear of lower morale among the staff.
The final prerequisite is the district's relationship with its external environment. This is the district's attention to the ever changing community needs, and its ability to build and evolve around these needs. David's strength in this area is providing frequent family nights, where parents are given the opportunity to come and learn how to enrich their child's learning. Reading tips, math games, and other creative teaching strategies are also provided. David's biggest weakness in this area is its inability to meet the needs of a growing lower income population.
Overall, David has many of the necessary conditions in place for ecological systemic change to occur. 

Multimedia Individual Learning Theory

This week Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a plan to eliminate textbooks in favor of digital books, his plan goes along with the buzz in education toward 21st century technologies. Everywhere kids turn they have something competing for their five second attention span, animated billboards, interactive video games, computer animated videos, Interactive Whiteboards. As the push by the California governor today to become more mobile, education, in most classrooms across the nation have followed suit. Classrooms have become increasingly active, and students are learning with the help of technology.

What does this mean? ... More individualization in education, with new technologies emerging it is becoming easier to individualize education for students based on their abilities, talents, and interests. I believe these advances in technology events are sure to drastically shape the future of education. I propose that in the next twenty years an instructional theory,called Multimedia Individual Learning Theory will emerge. According to this theory, technology will be used to read each user like a, and determine a course of learning based on prior knowledge, schema, and talents. Therefore, the educational plan will be fluid, each learner will work at their own pace, have their own experience, the amount of success with the lesson will automatically determine the next course. Also, material will be individualized based on each student, if they have a natural talent for science, lessons will give many enrichment exercises and simulated practice in this area of study. Enhancing the talents of students more rapidly than ever before, and possibly enlarge the learning capacity for students. When education is tailored to individuals, this would decrease cognitive load resulting in a higher capacity to learn and retain knowledge. We are embarking on a world where learning will be virtual, learners will be able to experience 'real world' learning with electronic simulations, become connected with experts in each field they are studying.

What does this news mean for educators? ...

They need to make sure their membership to CUE is active and current. Teachers will assume a different role in the future, current knowledge on new technologies, and their implementations in the classroom will become a necessary prerequisite. This new theory will be great for members of instructional design by definition in Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology instructional design is, "learner centered, iterative, measured, goal oriented, able to be measured, and a team effort" (p. 13). This new theory will play into instructional design as it is centered on each individual learner, their progress will be measured and set on goals that are individually defined.

While I can not predict the future, it seems technology will play a large role in reformatting the traditional education format that most adults are used to. However, the benefits of this revolution may increase knowledge and an individuals ability to learn based on their specific makeup.