At a recent Intel sponsored Innovation in Education event in Washington, DC, Tim McDonald spoke about the potential that technology could have in bringing about dramatic change to K12 education in the United States. Many of his points had been presented earlier in a paper that is still available, How Information Technology Can Enable 21^st Century Schools.

The information technology (IT) revolution has transformed American industry, worldwide industry, and will be the key to how we live in the future. Unfortunately it has not changed the K-12 schools; it has bypassed American schools. IT has influenced schools, influenced teachers, influenced how we teach, but influence is not good enough. We need to totally transform how schools operate. Not only are our schools not teaching, they are costing us more money than we can afford.

Information technology has the ability to radically change and improve American schooling without raising costs and in fact, with cutting costs. In fact it is believed that IT not only can improve school it can do it by enabling a pedagogy that works specifically to meet the needs of individual students; to personalize education. We need to go from mass production where all students are basically treated the same, to mass customization, where all students are individual students.

American education is not working. We need to redesign our schools so that we do a better job of educating the majority of students and also those that are underachieving. Reform has generally consisted of standards-based reform and the charter school movement. These movements have basically copied the existing models and have not brought about real reform.

Currently, the U.S. schools have a dropout rate of about 33%. The students who do graduate from high school are not well skilled. It is estimated that 55% of the graduates do not have the reading skills needed to succeed in college. To some people, the fact that we have not been able to change our education for the better demonstrates a lack of will to improve our education system.

The mass production model in American education has several features:

The structure of the school and its curriculum does not easily allow students to pursue their specific interest. Financially it is not possible to provide customized services for students.

The IT revolution has made it possible to personalize education. Personalization should be included in our schools and added to the pedagogy. We call this Type 2 learning. Type 2 learning occurs when the student is at the center of the learning process and is an active participant.

This chart provides a comparison of the old model of schooling to the new model of schooling.

 

In order for this to happen the following needs to be accomplished:

For America to regain its position in the 21^st century it needs to truly dedicate itself to educational innovation and that only can be done by using instructional technology to promote personalization of education and encourage students to become their potential.

 

Source: How Information Technology Can Enable 21^st Century Schools