Schools have always been political institutions, but recent decades have found them increasingly political. This appears to be grounded in the electoral benefits that can be gained by politicians who promise to “fix education.” Other societal factors including demographic changes, calls for accountability, financial influences of publishers and philanthropists, and rapidly-emerging industries have influenced school Read More
Category: Schools
Innovation Age Schools?
Educators are fond of adding various adjectives to the word age to capture the nature of schools that reflected the realities of school during that age. We can also trace the history of our schools through some of the vestiges that remain: Summer breaks are a remnant of Agrarian Age Schools when children’s labor was Read More
Inductive Reasoning…. How About Inductive Education?
Qualitative researchers are among the thinkers who practice inductive reasoning. They investigate questions, gather experience, immerse themselves in their data which captures the part of the world that holds their interest. From their data, they identify generalizations that appear to be supported by their data and they seek to apply those generalizations to other situations. Read More
Elevator Pitch on “Effective Schools”
“Effective schools” is a nebulous term. We could define schools in which students earn top scores on standardized tests as effective; likewise, we could define schools in which students write cogent essays (or create paintings, music, and dance) expounding the evils of standardized tests as effective. In fact, these schools may not be exclusive; perhaps Read More
Thoughts on Schools
School has been a social institution for centuries. The purpose of school, the nature of the curriculum, the role of the experts who operate school and teach in school, and the people enrolled as students are variables that change to reflect the dominant culture. In many cases, these factors are explicit and accepted by all Read More
Contingencies and School Structures: A Short Rant
The publicly funded schools for young people, commonly called K-12 schools in the United States are an example of general purpose schools. Modeled after liberal arts education, we can trace the history of these schools to one-room school houses maintained in villages and towns early in the nation’s history. Ostensibly, these schools were places where Read More
Elevator Pitch on #Schools as Wicked Solutions
Schools are organizations in which consensus is very difficult to achieve; the probability of sustaining commitment to any decision reached through consensus is lower still. Those decisions tend to be overturned when leadership changes or in response to other political influences. This is a source of real and reasonable frustration for teachers; it is unavoidable. Read More
#edtech Access isn’t Sufficient
In 1993, Seymour Papert imagined two time-traveling professionals from 100 years earlier; he speculated the physician would be flummoxed by the technology as well as the work of doctors and nurses in the 20th century clinic, but the teacher would find the technology and the work in a 20th century classroom very familiar. Papert based Read More
When Computers Started School
Historians of technology trace the beginnings of computers from the analytic machine of Charles Babbage in the 19th century. The history of electronic digital computing is usually measured from the creation of Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the computer built to handle the massive computations necessary for military applications (including for the Manhattan Project Read More
On #edtech Audits
Information technology is an essential aspect of every school. Students and teachers use computers to consume and create digital information. Administrators and staff use cloud-based student information and business systems to manage data and facilitate operations. Librarians manage digital collections and subscriptions to full-text databases, and technology specialists support learning management systems and other infrastructure Read More