Some thoughts……
When we look into the future of resources for senior science
there are many exciting directions and possibilities. Will the future be driven
by stability and evolution or by innovation and revolution? There are many who
would suggest the later presents the optimal path for the use of information in
our classrooms of the 21st century. Let’s open the floodgates and
allow information to flow freely into the hands of kids, empowering them to learn
at their own rate, and focus on their own interests. Exciting and heady times
are upon us and let us seize the day seems to be the common battle cry of early
adopters eager to try out the new gadgets. With the world changing almost on
what appears to be a daily basis, punctuated evolution seems like a reasonable
metaphor for resource development and ultimately usage of information in our
classrooms. Sadly, it’s not information that drives education, but time. Our
educational information ecosystem replaces energy in a natural ecosystem with
time. As so the question is really should be how can any resource we produce
save teachers time? And the answer to this question requires a deeper
understanding educational information ecosystem for developing resources.
As Neil Postman remarked, access to information is not a
problem. The problem is determining what information you want and how to use
it. Essentially this thought captures past resource development for K – 12
education. A textbook took a given curriculum, brought together experts in the
field and crafted a story that guided both teacher and student through the
curriculum in a meaningful way that the teacher couldn’t replicate (or at least
with out significant financial and time cost). With the advent of the InterWeb,
these model has been somewhat roughly tossed out and the control returned to
the teacher with the expectation he or she will be able to use the massive
volume of free information to craft engaging (and entertaining!?) lessons and
at the same time empower students to take control of their own learning. The
educational landscape is littered with pilot projects from early adopters
supporting the validity of this assumption. Sadly, the solutions appear unable
to scale up as various factors from cost, lack of infrastructure, expertise and
time pressure the next wave of users. Trending from these experiences is a
growing realization that a blended model taking the best of the print world and
the best of the digital world, combined with the communication tools given to
us by the InterWeb might provide an reasonable way to navigate into the
educational information ecosystem. If this is the case, what are the properties
of this ecosystem we should consider before building a new resource for school
classrooms?
Through various readings and conversations I would suggest
the following properties must be present in any new resource that builds from
the educational information ecosystem. And for each property, the driver is
ensuring that the teacher’s time is not lost or wasted like unrecoverable heat
resulting from friction.
Open – there is
no one controlling authority. At different times some members of the ecosystem
may have a greater role than others, but there is no top-down authority. Also
connected with this idea is digital rights management (DRM). In an educational
setting it doesn’t work. A better solution is to create cultural norms that
model appropriate use and all teachers to follow those norms with their
students with relative ease.
Collaborative –
to borrow from David Weinbergers book “Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified
Theory of the Web”, the relationships among the people in the ecosystem are
nonexclusive, but often mutally supportive. Anyone can join the ecosystem
though some have preferred positions.
Customizable –
information must be customizable for the end user. At the same time, many
people will not want a huge amount of customization due to the time pressures
this creates. In many situations, customization may be the result of choosing
between several equal options. With each class the choice may be different.
Predictable –
this feature is a counter balance to customization. As time is the limiting
resource, much of any resource needs to be predictable so that the teacher can
use the information with confidence year after year.
So, as we move forward with creating new resources, we must
remember that time is the driver of the ecosystem. Even the best ideas will not
survive the educational environment if they require to much of the teacher’s
time. As this is a finite quantity, any resource program needs to nurture this
key component of the educational information ecosystem.
