Best Practices Education

Best Practices Education – Why Educationally Innovative Software Must be a Part of Education

Advanced, Effective, Efficient, Consistent, Affordable, Student Success, Performance Improvement Outcomes

Best Practices Education – By Tom McDonald, September 7, 2016

Best Practices Education: Let’s Identify the Problem with Traditional Education:

The research is solid that the current, incumbent, 20th century, one size fits all, traditional teaching methodology (lecture, video, eLearning, legacy software), DOES NOT not empower students with relevant, effective, efficient, consistent, affordable, 21st century learning and 21st century skills (student success). The research is plentiful and readily available, but is not accessed, understood and appropriately implemented.

Currently each individual traditional classroom, 3.1 million teachers strong, 50.1 million students strong, has a one size fits all, teaching methodology, that is unique to each classroom, with vastly differing student success outcomes, per classroom. The traditional, 20th century, one size fits all teaching methodology, which is teacher/institution focused, allows each teacher to share the same information with each student, regardless of individual student needs/fit. In addition to this, the one size fits all teaching methodology has been proven to, at best, provide individual student, short term, initial understanding, which is soon forgotten. The current, traditional, one size fits all, teaching approach, will never, effectively, efficiently, consistently and affordably provide deep, adaptive, individual student, 21st century learning/skills.

More specifically, on average, in K-12, we are spending, annually, $12,440 on each child and getting very little for it (especially when compared to other developed countries, that spend much less and get much more for their investment in student success outcomes)

In addition, research shows that we are spending up to $18,000 per educator, annually, for traditional one size fits all, professional development and getting zero impact on advanced individual sustained performance improvement outcomes (empowering individual teachers to empower individual students with 21st century skills).

Billions of dollars in annual teacher, one size fits all training, is largely a waste; And since one size fits all training is also the way teachers traditionally teach:

50.1 Million students are not getting adaptive, 21st century skills
3.1 Million teachers @$18,000 each not getting adaptive professional development benefits
$634 Billion spent to educate kids with little benefit
20.2 Million college students not getting adaptive learning skills (@15k per year plus)

Educations mission/vision is to advance individual student success outcomes. The research is solid that much can be improved.

Best Practices Education – Is this a big enough problem that needs immediate fixing? I certainly hope so.

I am assuming that we all have experienced the benefits of truly personalized, facilitated and reinforced learning; One teacher and one student. Collectively, figuring out what we individually need to learn, individually presenting the right, relevant, information to us at the right time, individually allowing us to understand it at our own pace, individually empowering us to learn this key information to fluency at our own pace, with professional/expert individualized facilitation, over time, at our own individual pace, so we are able to individually appropriately apply this key information, at our own pace, relevantly/successfully, over time, resulting in our individual ability to advance our individual performance, over time.

Anyone I have talked with agrees that the deep, adaptive learning, ideal, is one teacher to one student (differentiated , deep, adaptive learning).

So how do we get individualized learning, relevant, effective, efficient, consistent, affordable, 21st century skills (student success) for each and every student?

Best Practices Education -Now Let’s Identify what our Solution Options are:

(1) We could leave paradigms as is, the one size fits all teaching status quo, differing teaching approaches per classroom, with mediocrity in student success outcomes being our benchmark, ignore the research/best practices, nay-say anything that is proven to effectively, efficiently, consistently, affordably, advance teacher performance improvement outcomes, that result in advanced, individual student success outcomes and hope the problem will fix itself. In doing so, we could blame lots of things for a flawed incumbent, system, but in doing so, divert the attention away from the real problem. We know that doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result is insanity. This option is not effective, efficient, consistent, nor affordable.

(2) We could leave things as is, one size fits all teaching and then add piece meal/willy nilly, per classroom, technology that is/is not educationally innovative (tablets/whiteboards/clickers/software). Unfortunately, we are doing that now and best practices show that incremental transformation doesn’t translate to advanced student success outcomes. This option is not effective, efficient, consistent, nor affordable.

(3) We could modify each classroom to have only one teacher and one student.

This would add significant cost per student ($12,440, per student, annually, to somewhere around $72,500 per student annually). In a classroom of 25 students, with a conservative average annual teacher salary of 50K with benefits adding 50% of salary ($50k + $25k = $75K), you would add additional, annual classroom costs, of $1,800,000 [ 24 students x 75K per student, not taking in consideration other costs, like more classrooms]. Even if this was possible and it’s not, EACH teacher and EACH classroom would have a differing teaching/learning methodology (individually created by EACH teacher) with differing classroom, student success outcomes. This option is effective, but not efficient, consistent, nor affordable.

(4) We could follow the research/best practices.

We could collectively understand, access, embrace and appropriately implement, system wide, integrated, educationally innovative software, that seamlessly integrates research driven, best practices pedagogy and individually deliver/facilitate, deep 21st century learning, over time, over common technical devices (phones, laptops/tablets, desktops), in a changed deep, adaptive, learning paradigm of 21st century learning/skills, within a blended and flipped learning environment.

This will allow, effective, efficient, consistent, affordable, deep, adaptive, 21st century learning, for ALL students (At Risk, Traditional, Gifted), within each school district, school and classroom. We literally and measurably could obtain much better student success outcomes, with less effort.

NOTE: There is no such thing as rapid deep, adaptive, learning, that advances, individual, sustained, performance improvement outcomes. This example illustrates, in sales, what it takes to advance individual, sustained performance improvement outcomes. Even though this example is sales specific, the individual, deep, adaptive learning process is the same for other key content, that is meant to change behaviors and advance, sustained, individual performance improvement outcomes.

 For advanced student success outcomes to occur, the current one size fits all teaching paradigm must be replaced completely, not incrementally.

Changing educational paradigms FROM one size fits all teaching, TO 21st century, deep, adaptive learning, using system wide, integrated, educationally innovative software, in a professionally, facilitated, blended and flipped learning environment, will empower ALL teachers and ALL students (At-Risk, Traditional, Gifted) alike, to effectively, efficiently, consistently and affordably, advance, sustained,  student success, performance improvement outcomes. This option IS effective, efficient, consistent and affordable.

Best Practices Education – Which approach would you choose and why would you choose it?

Study: 75% of teachers use tech daily, 50% have 1:1 programs

“To truly take advantage of the power of digital technology, schools need to offer better professional development and ongoing coaching to help teachers shift their pedagogy in the right direction”

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To Discuss how these Solutions will add value for you, your organization and/or your clients, Affinity/Resale Opportunities, and/or Collaborative Efforts, Please Contact:

Tom McDonald, tsm@centurytel.net; 608-788-5144; Skype: tsmw5752