Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
School-of-One logistics
What do you think of the concept of a “School-of-one” and Kahn Academies? How will this approach to technology shape the classroom of the future?
I believe that the concept of a “School-of-One” is a natural innovation of education reform in our society today. The concept of a school-of-one is that every child has different needs and abilities and it is expected their individual profiles be meet in our schools to maximize their learning. The obvious issue arrived from this concept is that teachers have too many students in one class to individualize their learning plans.
Kahn Academics recommends technology as a logical solution to meeting every child’s needs and providing teachers with the resources to do it. Kahn Academics provides a self-paced supplemental math curriculum that allows students to listen to lectures, practice concepts, and provide teachers with immediate assessment. Their website gives students video lectures to watch at home, and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help. Kahn Academics says this is an alternative to lecturing the whole class of students with different needs, “By removing the one size fits all lecture from the classroom and letting students have a self-paced lecture at home, they come back to class and work on problems with peers. Teachers have used technology to humanize the classroom. Students are coming back to interact with each other.”
Although this sounds great in theory, I wonder how effective it would be in practice? In my fourth grade internship class students have a regular homework routine to help practice skills learned in the class. One month in to the year, only about two-thirds of the class actually does their homework. We have several students who rarely get parent signatures and we know what goes home with them rarely makes it back to the class. So, how can we expect to assign the instruction part of the lesson for homework? Our students that don’t have access to the Internet at home would be shut-out from instruction.
In Freakonomics podcasts, How is a Bad Radio Station Like the Public School System, critics compare public school to a generic radio station. A generic, “bad” radio station plays music they think most everyone will like. The music is generally agreeable, however, not planned to an individuals taste. Because of this it may seem just OK to the generally public, but not great to very many individuals. Freakonomics says, “so that’s how a classroom is like the radio: a factory model. A beg fat effort to pitch right down the middle. But things are changing in schools”.
The podcasts then discusses the movement in education with concepts such as the school-of-one and how technology is the driving force making such individual plans possible in education. “A future with something like School-of-one will be different. Very different. Technology, instead of being discouraged in schools, would move to the head of the class, Teachers would have to be trained differently,” advised Freakonomics.
I believe in the theory behind giving every student their personal education and how technology may be the key to enacting such a demand. However, I feel there are still logistical issues. I look forward to learning about how to practically implement such teaching practices in the future.
References:
Stephen J. Dubner (2010, May 12). Freakonomics. How is a bad radio station like the puclic stustem. Podcast retrieved from: http://www.freakonomics.com/2010/05/12/freakonomics-radio-how-is-a-bad- radio-station-like-the-public-school-system/
School-of-one. Retrieved from: http://schoolofone.org/concept.html
Khan Academy. Retrieved from: http://www.khanacademy.org/
TED. Salman Khan video. Retrieved From : http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_ed ucation.html
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)