Education Reform: If We Just Give Kids iPads, They’ll Learn More?

Education Reform: “Today, over 3,000 free tutorials are on the Khan Academy website. Okay, you say, so it’s neat technology and there’s lots of good stuff out there; is that it? No, and here’s where it gets interesting.”

Education Reform: It’s September already, so I’m trying to figure out where the summer has gone and have begun dreading the coming snow. It’s also time for my annual “Back to School” column. This year, we begin with some video watching…

• If you’re primarily interested in higher education, watch this video
• If you’re primarily interested in K-12 education, watch this video

Of course, you can watch them both, but the themes are similar.

Both videos imply a 20^th (or 19^th) century education model for dealing with 21^st century challenges and opportunities. Everything from class size to irrelevant curriculum, from lack of involvement to ineffective teaching, all seem to point to an education system that at best is treading water and at worst is falling behind the rest of the world (as several studies, like this one, point out).

Technology to the rescue?

http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1006/marc-my-words-if-we-just-give-kids-ipads-theyll-learn-more-right

Tom McDonald’s Comments:

As I’ve been saying all along, the instructional design (pedagogy, aligned with research proven, learning methodologies) is the change needed (from one to many, to learner centric), that will be delivered to individuals over cool technology, that will advance individual, long term,  learning outcomes

Schools have experienced, the hard way, that delivering traditional one to many teaching to individuals over cool technology will not advance individual learning outcomes.

The technology (tablet) is simply a delivery vehicle of great or poor pedagogy.

Great pedagogy can be integrated into web based software, delivering critical content AND learner centric pedagogy to individual students, advancing individual, long term learning outcomes…The best of all worlds.

Tom

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