You are About to Witness an Education Revolution: Part 1

Yes indeed, the time as come.  Experts, marketers, bloggers and administrators are all marching to the same beat: We are on the brink of a massive education revolution.  It is becoming more and more common to find multiple articles daily from credible news sources that stress the important of "e-learning" or "m-learning" for the "i-generation."  I'd like to share a few of them in this post and the next as a follow up to our Ten Things a Teacher Should Know In the 20-Teens article to point #3: Explore How  to Teach, Not Just What to Teach.

As our digital natives enter the education world, some are light years ahead of their instructor in networking, online etiquette, accessibility to information and adaptability to newer technologies.  Since we cannot change the way the students are learning, it only makes sense that we must change the way our teachers are teaching.  Such a call to action would have to be answered by not only the universities and colleges that train our next generation of teachers but also the education supply companies, the parents, but most of all, the teachers themselves.


But what exactly needs to be changed?  
-The content?  Not necessarily.  Although certain standards may have been tweaked to accompany some of the growing technologies, they have mostly remained the same and students still need to learn to read a map.

-The time of day that school takes place?  Although there have been about 120 schools across the country that have shifted to a 4-day schoolweek and have claimed improvements in student test scores, there isn't sufficient evidence to support this wholeheartedly.  This could be a maybe.
-The delivery of the content?  Now we're on to something.  So says former President of both the California Charter Schools Association and the Los Angeles Unified School District, “data shows that more than half of the students say that the easiest way for students to learn something new is by practicing and watching, which is one of several critical reasons why we need to re-wire our educational approach.”

In other words?  Teachers must become students again... sometimes to their own students.  In an Associated Press article that asks how we should teach future teachers, "Hemant Mehta's formal training was useless when it came to keeping order in the classroom and getting students to pay attention." The article continues, explaining "the 27-year-old needed help from Twitter, math blogs on the Internet, TV sitcoms and experienced teachers down the hall."


Suzanne Wilson, chair of teacher education at Michigan State University from the same article adds to the mix by bringing up a daunting point. "It's complicated in the United States because we don't as a country agree that teachers need much preparation.  We're deeply divided on this as a country."


But what are the challenges to changing the attitude of educators towards such a momentous shift?  In a survey reported here, teachers cited the following factors as barriers to using information and communication technology in their classrooms:


    * Extent of the curriculum that needs to be covered during the year (81.4%)
    * Time constraints (71.7%)
    * Time required for preparing information and communication technology-based activities (60.4%)
    * Availability of infrastructure (53.5%)
    * Amount of quality content (50.7 %)
    * Lack of in-classroom teacher support (50.2%)
    * Lack of participation of teachers in decision making (43.4%)
    * Need for professional development (37%).

At first glance, it appears that we just revealed a project that's a bit bigger than anticipated.  Considering the leading challenge, not only do teachers have a large amount of content to cover, they also have No Child Left Behind Axe looming over their sweating brows.  This, in fact could arguably be a direct or indirect cause to many of the remaining factors.  Such a rationale is a fair explanation used from the critics to this movement.  From a new-age perspective however, there exists an argument that is just as powerful: the use of information and communication technology will assist students in learning quicker, thus moving through the extent of content quicker and allowing the rest to fall into place.

Platforms are beginning to crop up like ConnectYard that would allow instructors to communicate with their students through social media.  They may also start a second Facebook Profile that is only for school-purposes, an online blog, a wiki and much more.  Possibilities are growing every day for teachers to reach their students in a method that will maximize the learning potential.  Some teachers have even allowed students to text them.  We are about to witness an education revolution.  Will you be a part of it?