Dangerously Irrelevant

One of my favorite books on leadership is The Future of Management by Gary Hamel. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so. You can read my book review but the essential premise is that current management models, which are centered on control and efficiency, are extremely ill-suited for an era in which adaptability and creativity drive organizational success. This has major ramifications for how we think about leading schools and preparing school administrators, of course.

Like many other thinkers these days, Hamel also has created a web site, the Management Innovation eXchange, or MIX, where he and others can share ideas and have deeper, ongoing conversations about the reinvention of leadership and management. Although MIX sometimes employs buzz phrases that require deciphering, in general the MIX blog and other resources on the site leave me thinking for days at a time about critical leadership and innovation issues.

One such post was a recent one by Polly LaBarre which pertained to the concept of ‘FedEx days.’ These are days in which employees are given the opportunity to hack on their internal environment, workday processes, organizational outcomes, etc. to try and improve the lives of themselves and others. The key is that they have to ‘ship’ their ideas – e.g., present a prototype – within 24 hours. That’s where the name ‘FedEx day’ comes from. The idea of FedEx days wasn’t what has had me thinking ever since, however. Instead, it was this quote:

Innovation isn’t about structuring a process to lead to an outcome so much as it’s about creating space — both elbow room, the space to roam free of bureaucratic rules and red tape, and head room, the freedom to see differently, think wildly, and aim higher. The leaders who generate more creative energy and innovation are always wrestling with the question: How do we design in more slack? Or, how do we cultivate an environment and support work that enlists people as drivers of their own destiny and inventors of the company’s future?

The disconnects between LaBarre’s quote and our present schooling reality are brutal. In our current climate, societal and political trust in schools and educators are on the decline. Educators face increasingly stringent demands to standardize what used to be a profession and to try and make error-proof what is by definition an enterprise fraught with uncertainty. Unsurprisingly, as the recent MetLife survey results show, teacher job satisfaction is plummeting rapidly and educators’ willingness to leave the profession is 70% higher than it was just three years ago.

This is the environment in which school leaders must somehow find ways to create the elbow and head room that employees need to be adaptive and creative. We are not going to transition our schools and classrooms to technology-suffused, globally-interconnected learning environments that emphasise higher-order thinking skills without a great deal of risk taking and experimentation. And yet the policy and rhetorical climates right now emphasize exactly the opposite. I’m pretty sure that most teachers these days don’t feel that they are ‘drivers of their own destiny’ and ‘inventors of the [organization’s] future.’

As school leaders, in an era of ever-tightening restrictions and expectations and mandates, how are we making room for innovation? [and, as parents, community members, citizens, and professors of educational leadership, how are we helping them do so?]

[cross-posted at Education Recoded]

[UPDATE: We're all approved! Woo hoo!]

Just thought I’d give a quick update on our new online School Technology Leadership courses and programs.

We’ve got one last step in the University of Kentucky approval process. It should go smoothly about 2 weeks from now and then we’ll be completely and officially official. In the meantime, applications continue to come in; we have seen a great deal of interest both in America and internationally.

If you’re new to our courses, our 15-credit online graduate certificate allows educators to go deep-deep-DEEP on ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A). If you’d prefer an online Master’s or Ph.D. with an emphasis in School Technology Leadership, we have those programs too. All courses are offered at in-state tuition rates. We are aiming for at least one national and one international cohort to begin this fall. The application deadline for all programs is May 15.

ISTE and others are helping us recruit so we are thankful for their assistance. If you’d like to help us spread the word (hint, hint), here’s a blurb:

The University of Kentucky has launched its new online School Technology Leadership graduate certificate, Master’s, and Ph.D. programs. Participating educators will be deeply grounded in ISTE’s . Deadline for Fall admission is May 15, 2012.

If you’re interested, see the links below. And if we’re not exactly what you’re looking for, check out options from ISTE and Johns Hopkins University, Kennesaw State University, Leading Edge Certification, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), Intel, and others. There are 200,000+ school administrators in the U.S. alone. Most of them need a lot of help when it comes to technology, so find a program that best fits their needs and get ‘em started!

Additional info about the STL programs

• Flyer
• Overview
• Graduate certificate
• Master’s (or Ed.S.)
• Ph.D. [for which we expect a VERY competitive admissions process]
• Admissions requirements and application info [Fall deadline is May 15]
• Questions? Contact Dr. Justin Bathon, CASTLE Co-Director

UPDATE: The recording of this webinar is now available.

If you’re around this evening, please join me for what should be a lively and informative discussion about the use of social media by principals and superintendents to enhance school-community˝ relations:

March 22, 5:45pm Eastern
https://connect.uky.edu/edl646march22
(login as a guest)

We will be hearing from expert, social media-using administrators Patrick Larkin, Shawn Blankenship, and Michael Smith. Kicking off the webinar will be Dan Cox, Iowa principal and my current doctoral student who is about to defend his dissertation on this very topic. Dan will give us an overview of the findings from his study of administrators in the U.S. and Canada. Then we’ll hear from the school leaders above who are doing this in their school organizations!

This webinar is for the school-community relations course currently being taught by my University of Kentucky departmental colleague, Dr. Wayne Lewis. Hope you can join us! (and, if you can’t, we’ll be recording this and I’ll put the URL here)

Here are two quotes for you:

Economically disadvantaged students, who often use the computer for remediation and basic skills, learn to do what the computer tells them, while more affluent students, who use it to learn programming and tool applications, learn to tell the computer what to do.

Neuman, D. (1991). Technology and equity. Available at http://www.ericdigests.org/1992-5/equity.htm

AND

Those who cannot claim computers as their own tool for exploring the world never grasp the power of technology… They are controlled by technology as adults – just as drill-and-practice routines controlled them as students.

Pillar, C. (1992). Separate realities: The creation of the technological underclass in America’s public schools. MacWorld, 9(9), 218-230.

Twenty years later, these quotes still ring true. What is your school doing to close the technology usage divide (not just the technology access divide)?

Hat tip: Miguel Guhlin and Solomon, Allen, & Resta

When a school leader neglects to allocate sufficient professional development time for newly-purchased classroom technologies, that’s not poor technology leadership, that’s just poor leadership.

When a school leader doesn’t provide adequate technical support personnel for a new 1:1 laptop initiative, that’s not poor technology leadership, that’s just poor leadership.

When a school leader purchases system-wide learning software with little thought given to long-term financial and instructional sustainability, that’s not poor technology leadership, that’s just poor leadership.

When a school leader fails to ensure adequate parent education and support before initiating expensive, organization-wide technology programs, that’s not poor technology leadership, that’s just poor leadership.

When a school leader refuses to remove internal policy and filtering barriers that get in the way of students and teachers actually using purchased technologies, that’s not poor technology leadership, that’s just poor leadership.

And so on…  

In other words, most of the leadership problems we run into regarding school technology implementation and integration have less to do with the technologies and more to do with failure to enact good leadership practices. It’s likely that if school leaders aren’t facilitating appropriate training or time or funding or support or policy for technology initiatives, they probably aren’t for most other, non-technology initiatives either.

Does the technology lens sometimes cast new light on traditional leadership concerns? Sure. But next time you complain about your administrators’ poor technology leadership, ask yourself first if it’s a technology-specific issue or just a general leadership issue. Most of the time I think you’ll find it’s the latter.

Image credit: Confused

[cross-posted at K-12TechDecisions]

Fresh from the Digital Media & Learning conference in San Francisco are two new web resources, Connected Learning and the Connected Learning Research Network. The work is centered around three learning principles and three design principles:

Learning principles

• Interest-powered. Interests power the drive to acquire knowledge and expertise. Research shows that learners who are interested in what they are learning, achieve higher order learning outcomes. Connected learning does not just rely on the innate interests of the individual learner, but views interests and passions as something to be actively developed in the context of personalized learning pathways that allow for specialized and diverse identities and interests.
• Peer-supported. Learning in the context of peer interaction is engaging and participatory. Research shows that among friends and peers, young people fluidly contribute, share, and give feedback to one another, producing powerful learning. Connected learning research demonstrates that peer learning need not be peer-isolated. In the context of interest-driven activity, adult participation is welcomed by young people. Although expertise and roles in peer learning can differ based on age and experience, everyone gives feedback to one another and can contribute and share their knowledge and views.
• Academically oriented. Educational institutions are centered on the principle that intellectual growth thrives when learning is directed towards academic achievement and excellence. Connected learning recognizes the importance of academic success for intellectual growth and as an avenue towards economic and political opportunity. Peer culture and interest-driven activity needs to be connected to academic subjects, institutions, and credentials for diverse young people to realize these opportunities. Connected learning mines and translates popular peer culture and community-based knowledge for academic relevance.

Design principles

• Shared purpose. Connected learning environments are populated with adults and peers who share interests and are contributing to a common purpose. Today’s social media and web-based communities provide exceptional opportunities for learners, parents, caring adults, teachers, and peers in diverse and specialized areas of interest to engage in shared projects and inquiry. Cross-generational learning and connection thrives when centered on common interests and goals.
• Production-centered. Connected learning environments are designed around production, providing tools and opportunities for learners to produce, circulate, curate, and comment on media. Learning that comes from actively creating, making, producing, experimenting, remixing, decoding, and designing, fosters skills and dispositions for lifelong learning and productive contributions to today’s rapidly changing work and political conditions.
• Openly networked. Connected learning environments are designed around networks that link together institutions and groups across various sectors, including popular culture, educational institutions, home, and interest communities. Learning resources, tools, and materials are abundant, accessible and visible across these settings and available through open, networked platforms and public-interest policies that protect our collective rights to circulate and access knowledge and culture. Learning is most resilient when it is linked and reinforced across settings of home, school, peer culture and community.

Infographic

Below is an infographic made by Dachis Group that highlights these essential components of connected learning. What if every learning environment was centered around these principles?

The 21st Century Teaching Project Findings (Part 2)

Seann Dikkers  3/1/12

This post is part of an ongoing series abridged from the 21st Century Teaching Project (21CTP) – a study of expert professional development trajectories and digital age practice. 

Let’s assume that the goal of teacher training and professional development (PD) is to prepare teachers with powerful models, tools, and pedagogies that will inform expert practice over a career. If so, the 21CTP is designed to help us as a community, 1) hear from 39 award winning teachers, and 2) ask relevant questions about how to study and design teacher training and PD in the coming years.

When over half of these teachers say they completely changed their practice mid-career, I’m particularly interested in what, who, and how those trajectories started. In the first part of this series, I shared one data point on what wasn’t working. The following posts will highlight what was working, who did support these teachers, and how they did grow into expert practitioners.

21CTP Theme 2: Narrated Beginnings

A beginning narrative explains ‘what started it all?’ or ‘where did you first start thinking about?’ practice in the classroom. These questions inform essential beliefs, experiences, and exposure that is relevant to expert practitioners.

Immediately, ‘best practice’ studies are designed to give indications for expanded inquiry. Ideally, we can be given new insights toward recreating similar narratives with a similar end. (By the way, thanks for the clear and helpful feedback from the last post! You are all a gift and the comments are largely being integrated into the final write up of the study.) So we begin simply by asking those that are doing what we hope to see more of, ‘How did you do that?’ – then we listen.

My own assumption was that award winning teachers were going to be those that entered their professional life with a sort of ‘gift’. Their spark of life, talent, and refinement would eventually lead them to promotion and recognition – they were just gifted. They would have begun with a clear vision for expert practice and simply grow towards it. These teachers would have a ‘positive predisposition’ towards expert practice.

Upon completing the first phase of interviews, not one of the preliminary teachers fit this model. Instead I found teachers that claimed to have actually started teaching with faulty predispositions requiring change before they tapped into digital resources, paradigm shifts, and other teachers with great ideas to copy. Instead of having an internal compass, these teachers grew in a community of practice, looked for new tools, and laughed about epic failures as they learned and grew. They weren’t ‘gifted’ as much as they were ‘growing’ the way the rest of us do.

In fact, data from the 21CTP revealed four distinct ‘beginning narratives’’. For a full reading of all 39 stories, check here. 

Positive Predisposition

In the expanded round of interviews there were in fact teachers that had a great model of teaching they were seeking to resemble, and simply worked towards it. 15% of the teachers fit this beginning narrative I’ll call a ‘positive predisposition’ toward expert practice.

These narratives generally agreed:

“I have always taught the way I do now but I try to constantly try to find new ways and innovative ways to teach so, I’m a constant learner myself. I like to try new things.”

These teachers often had examples that they were trying to follow.

“I remember another elementary teacher who was very active and action oriented. She would act something out every day… I think that is the person I am trying to emulate.”

Those with a positive predisposition shared similar accounting of where they started on a path toward expert practice. They claimed to have always taught they way they did and often had a clear role-model they were trying to emulate.

Progressive Predisposition/Change

Not all teachers shared a positive role-model. On the contrary some entered the profession itching to change things or re-create their practice to look different from their past experiences. 28% of the 21CTP teachers fit this profile:

“Even in my early teaching, I was looking for a different approach towards teaching and learning.”

A progressive predisposition is equally powerful as a starting point for PD on the part of these teachers. However, lacking actual models, they often feel pressure from ‘the system’ and often reported looking outside the profession for new models.

“Again, because there is still a lot of pressure for the test and just getting things done.”

In year three, for instance, one teacher was “exhausted” and took a leave of absence. Upon returning, he reported re-connecting to, “The stuff I enjoy doing outside of school…” Refreshed, he was “always learning something new.”

For both predispositions, teachers were always looking for new ideas and tools to help them grow in the classroom. They held a constant idea of what they wanted and grew over time towards these mental models. 43% of 21CTP participants had a predisposed vision for teaching they continually worked toward. 
 

External Influence

Theme 1 noted what wasn’t necessarily working for expert teachers. From here forward this study turns to what was working for these teachers. For 57% of teachers, they changed their practice mid-career. It can’t be understated how relevant ongoing PD is for expert practice for these teachers.

The first narrative that experienced a change in disposition fit a profile where they experienced a person, tool, or PD program that they report was the start of a new way to practice their craft. Like those with a positive predisposition, these teachers identified a model of practice, through external influence, that became a driving goal. For instance, in the preliminary phase, one teacher credited their social network:

“Developing networking early on… Just sharing ideas, the basic web 2.0 type practices, ideas, tips, software with other educators within my state and increasing abroad. Shortly thereafter, within a year or so, I began to look at integration of video games and video technology into the classroom.” 

There was a laundry list of external influences that seemed unique to each person. In Theme 3, I’ll break down traditional and non-traditional PD assets and the degree to which the teachers were influenced by them. 23% of the teachers named these programs, people, and tools as the starting point for their changed practice.

Sudden Realization

The largest percentage of the 21CTP teachers reported a “sudden realization” or specific moment they could recall. Much like remembering where they were when they heard a major news story, these teachers had a moment when they perceived their own practice as deficient and in need of change. For progressive change narratives, they didn’t yet have a positive model, but recognized what they couldn’t do anymore. For example: 

“I remember crashing and burning real bad on what I would consider traditional lectures.”

“We all love our field, it’s so horrible to feel like you are torturing someone with the things you are passionate about.”

“I wasn’t bold and brazen, I was naive.”

“I had the moment where I realized I was teaching the same way my teachers taught me in high school and I was bored then and I was looking at some of my students who I knew were bright and energetic, lively kids and I could tell they were bored.”

These teachers (33%) did not consider themselves experts initially. They reported a simple realization that what they were doing wasn’t going to work anymore. They changed as a reaction and began doing anything else to garner better classroom results – starting a PD journey from a ‘sudden realization’.

So what?

Our best practitioners have told us that there are at least four beginning narratives toward award winning practice; it is a stretch to claim there is a predominant beginning narrative. Teachers can have positive models of practice, or a negative one. Teachers can enter the profession with a predisposed vision of practice, or not. Sources of change can be internal processes, or externally affected. As with our students, there are multiple types/paths for learning among adults. School leadership cannot afford to think that there is only one way to build expert practice. There is no ‘one size fits all’ that actually works for all.

I spend more time in the larger write up on this section noting that these beginnings don’t appear to be exclusive. Teachers noted one as primary, but often shared the importance of others.  

Also, among calls for reform, this data reconfirms past research that teacher beliefs about practice are significant PD components (see lit sources below). Some traditional models of training and PD (especially ones that provide models of practice – good or bad) should be clung to instead of thrown out with the bathwater primarily because, for some of the teachers, they work.

Finally, much of the PD field claims one progression for change: 1) Teacher learns, 2) Teacher changes practice, and 3) Student learning increases. For a significant portion of our sample, this was not what they claimed happened. For these teachers, they claimed they: 1) Got frustrated, 2) Changed practice, 3) Learned over time, 4) Student motivation increased, then 5) Student learning was enriched. Knowing does not necessarily preclude doing for these teachers.

In Theme 3, I’ll share a closer look at traditional and emergent resources reported as essential, or not so much, to these teachers. What worked, what didn’t. Among the leading PD assets: Effective Leadership, a Community of Practice, and New Media digital tools and resources. More to come…

Blog Discussion:

1. Do all teachers with positive role-models progress toward them over time? Really a larger study of a random sample of teachers could gather this and more about predispositions. In schools, talk to teachers and find out if there are predispositions that drive their PD, vise versa, or both.
2. There isn’t a clear ‘best’ beginning narrative, which means many types of beginnings can work towards expertise – not just “gifted” people. I find this encouraging to the rest of us! The data actually slants just a bit toward narratives where the teacher was “crashing and burning”, then resolved to be better. Never give up on teachers willing to grow, today’s worst teachers may be winning awards tomorrow if they are ready to try new things.
3. Buffet style PD is a growing technique for district and building level training. Are these models intuitively accepted more easily because they are addressing actual adult learning styles more effectively? Teacher selected PD opportunities should at least be targeted for further expanded study, at best these should be the default for district level leaders.
4. For all four beginning narratives, teachers had or sought a better way to teach. What they called the traditional model of ‘sage on the stage‘ or ‘grill and drill‘ was obsolete – which is expected of these participants – but not to be understated.

– 

Seann Dikkers is a researcher and dissertator in educational technologies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Dikkers spent fourteen years as in the public schools as a teacher, principal, and consultant. Dikkers has presented nationwide as a designer and consultant in new media integration strategies for educational leadership, teaching, and learning. His design and research bridges education leadership and curriculum and instruction scholarship – including CivWorld, ParkQuest, History in our Hands, Mobile Media Learning, Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling editor (ARIS), the Comprehensive Assessment for Leadership in Learning (CALL), and the Teacher’s Toolbox. Dikkers edited the recent release of Real-Time Research: Improvisational Game Scholarship and is the founder/president of GamingMatter. Currently, Dikkers is in the process of interviewing award winning teachers across the country to find out strategies for professional development growth in digital media use.

– 

Addenda:

Beliefs of practice aren’t conclusive, but they can be informative for a field of study. For those that are interested in more detail, this study is built to complement current evidence being gathered on PD (Desimone, 2011), revisiting teachers as case units (Borko, 2004), accomplished examples of practice (Sheingold & Hadley, 1990), and beliefs that affect practice (Calderhead, 1996; Pajares, 1992; Ertmer, 2005), in a time of emergent digital skills and ‘literacies, (Trilling & Fadel, 2009; Lankshear & Knobel, 2008; Collins & Halverson, 2009). That’s the short version. Though done and IRB approved, the full lit review will be approved for posting in the next couple weeks at the project home site – along with detailed descriptions of selection, collection and analysis methods. Look for it at: 21 Century Teaching Project.

Borko, H. (2004). Professional Development and Teacher Learning: Mapping the Terrain. Educational Researcher, 33(8), 3-15.

Calderhead, J. (1996). Teachers: Beliefs and knowledge. In D. Berliner & R. Calfee (Eds.), Handbook of Educational Psycology (pp. 709-725). New York: Macmillan Library Reference.

Collins, A., & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking education in the age of technology : the digital revolution and schooling in America. New York: Teachers College Press.

Desimone, L. M. (2011). A Primer on Effective Professional Development. Phi Delta Kappan, 92(6), 68-71.

Ertmer, P. A. (2005). Teacher Pedagogical Beliefs: The Final Frontier in Our Quest for Technology Integration? . Education Technology Research and Development, 53(4), 25-39.

Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (Eds.). (2008). Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies, and Practices (Vol. 30). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Pajares, M. F. (1992). Teachers’ beliefs and educational research: Cleaning up a messy construct. Review of Educational Research, 62(3), 307-332.

Sheingold, K., & Hadley, M. (1990). Accomplished Teachers: Integrating computers into
classroom practice. New York: Centre for Technology in Educaiton.

Trilling, B., & Fadel, C. (2009). 21 Century Skills: Learning for Life in our Times. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

How do you transform factory era school systems so that they better serve the needs of an information age society? You don’t do it by being timid.

Unlike most school reformers floating ‘tweak-the-status-quo’ proposals these days (let’s test kids more! let’s get rid of a few teachers! let’s make school longer! let’s lecture better!), the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS) decided to swing for the fences:

Read the full report. See what a different education system could be. Share your thoughts in the comment area!

Additional resources

• NextEd
• Educational Transformation Project

[cross-posted at Education Recoded]

There is a prevailing conception that students must learn facts and procedural knowledge BEFORE they can then engage in so-called ‘higher-order’ thinking skills. Educators, parents, policymakers, online commentators, and others point to Bloom’s taxonomy (which typically has been portrayed as a pyramid) and say, “See? You have to do this stuff down here before you can do that stuff up top!”

But that’s not how Bloom and his co-authors categorized the taxonomy:

Bloom et al. discussed at length their decision to apply an Aristotelian categorization method in their taxonomy. The choice was significant, because an Aristotelian method creates distinct, bounded categories ordered by complexity without the hierarchical assumption that higher-level categories always entail instantiation of those lower in the taxonomy (e.g., when evaluating, it is not always necessary to first apply and synthesize). Moreover, Aristotelian categorization emphasizes that these groupings are closely related and difficult to tease apart. . . . however, the division of the taxonomy of educational objectives into classes representing lower order … and higher order thinking … has prevailed in research.

Alexander, P.A., et al. (2011). Higher-order thinking and knowledge: Domain-general and domain-specific trends and future directions. In G. Schraw & D. R. Robinson (Eds.), Assessment of higher order thinking skills (pp. 49-50). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Similarly, as the National Research Council stated a quarter-century ago:

the term ‘higher order’ skills is probably itself fundamentally misleading, for it suggests that another set of skills, presumably called ‘lower order,’ needs to come first. This assumption – that there is a sequence from lower level activities that do not require much independent thinking or judgment to higher level ones that do – colors much educational theory and practice. Implicitly, at least, it justifies long years of drill on the ‘basics’ before thinking and problem solving are demanded. Cognitive research on the nature of basic skills such as reading and mathematics provides a fundamental challenge to this assumption.

National Research Council. (1987). Education and learning to think (p. 8). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Expert thinking does indeed require a high degree of domain knowledge. Hopefully no one is arguing that kids can be high-level thinkers ’without knowing anything.’ But the notion that students have to be immersed in ‘lower-level’ factual and procedural knowledge BEFORE they can do ‘higher-level’ thinking work doesn’t comport with what we know from cognitive research.

So what?

The problem with taking a sequential approach to Bloom’s taxonomy is that many students – especially those from traditionally-underserved populations – rarely, if ever, get to engage in the ‘higher-level’ thinking work that is critically necessary these days. Instead, they remain mired in the ‘lower-level’ thinking domains, doomed to a steady diet of decontextualized fact nuggets and procedural regurgitation. What is advocated as a foundational floor instead becomes a rigid ceiling in practice, thus negatively impacting student engagement and interest, knowledge retention and procedural mastery, dropout and graduation rates, workforce preparation needs, and so on.

We can do better. In fact, we already are doing better in certain places. We just need to take more cues from schools like those in the New Tech, Big Picture Learning, Envision, Expeditionary Learning, Independent Curriculum Group, High Tech High, and EdVisions networks. These schools do a much better job than most traditional schools of emphasizing ‘higher-level’ thinking work for students while simultaneously ensuring that ‘kids know stuff.’ In fact, we’re finding that students in these schools typically are more successful and care more about what they’re learning because whatever facts and procedures they need to know are embedded within the context of doing more relevant, meaningful, and authentic work. That sounds pretty good to me! Now, if my local school district would just get on board…

Your thoughts and experiences?

Image credit: Bloom’s taxonomy

[cross-posted at Education Recoded]

Earlier this month, PBS Learning Matters sponsored a discussion about online learning for students. I was asked to contribute a short piece. Here’s a paragraph from my response to the question, Is online learning beneficial for students?

As online enrollments have rapidly expanded, so too have accompanying concerns. Educators and parents worry about losing the nurturing intimacy of teachers and students who are connected with each other in face-to-face classrooms. Pundits opine that our youth are losing their ability to interact with live humans instead of screens. Journalists report that online schooling providers are raking in tens of millions of dollars while providing substandard, perhaps even fraudulent, educational experiences. Superintendents gripe that other districts’ provision of online courses results in interdistrict ‘theft’ of students and state funding.

You can read the rest of my post and those from others at the PBS Learning Matters web site. There’s some interesting conversation in the comment area too. Happy reading!