Chapter 1: Why Schools Struggle to Teach Differently when each
Student Learns Differently
1. Explain the difference between interdependence and modularity. How is education currently organized?
1. Explain the difference between interdependence and modularity. How is education currently organized?
The first chapter explains how each person/student learns
differently. He then presents the tension between interdependence and modularity
in product/service parts. Education
today is mostly designed interdependently. There are four types of
interdependence in our classroom today:
- Temporal: You cannot study something in 11th grade of if you have not learned something in 7th grade.
- Lateral = the example Christensen the author use here is English vs. Spanish and how changing the Spanish grammar is taught is dependent on the strategies that English grammar is taught.
- Physical: For an example of physical: schools' physical layouts are not well designed to support project-based learning (PBL)
- Hierarchical = An example of this would be different educational laws at different levels
That means that the way we teach (standardized) and the way we learn (customized) don’t match, and we won’t be able to teach the way we learn until we change the system.
Chapter 2: Making the Shift: Schools meet Society’s need
2. Explain the disruptive innovation theory. What does this have to do with schools?
“The disruptive innovation theory explains why organizations
struggle with certain kinds of innovation and how organizations can predictably
succeed in innovation.”
The two types of innovations that the author talks about is
sustaining innovations and disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovation is not
an improvement.
This has to do with schools on many basis. Public schools are
public institutions. This is something that everyone forgets. Therefore, due to
hierarchial interdependency in which law mandate that all students go to
school, there are no “non-consumers” left to target. Society has asked schools
to pursue new metric of improvement from within the existing organization. This was designed to improve along the
old performance metric.
There really is no true disruption occurring in schools because
schools already have a lot of tasks that they must meet. To help this
situation, Christensen states that introducing technology, and computers into
the classroom might be able to create the disruption that might be beneficial
for students to keep learning content to be successful in the classroom.
Chapter 3: Crammed Classroom Computers
3. Why doesn’t cramming computers in schools work? Explain this in terms of the lessons from Rachmaninoff (what does it mean to compete against nonconsumption?)
Cramming
computers or even having computers in the classroom does not work because the
majority of the time, computers are used as supplementary to their teaching and
not used as the main component or focus in teaching the students. Basically,
teachers are not utilizing computers to their full power and not maximizing the
power of computers in the classroom. Computers need to be more integrated in
student learning and used to the students advantage while students are
learning.
Rachmaninoff
describes this in the 1800s. There were no alternatives to listening to live
music. Everything had to be live. But the invention of the phonograph changed
the way people listened to live music. People were able to listen to music at
the leisure of their own homes. The success of the phonograph is due to
non-consumption. Due to the fact that live music was not easily accessible to
everyone, the phonograph became successful. If live music were cheap and easily
accessible to people, then the phonograph would have failed.
Chapter 4: Disruptively Deploying Computers
4. Explain the pattern of disruption.
The
pattern of disruption first will target the “non-consumption” first. The
disruption will continue to improve and the cost will also decline. On a graph,
where the x axis represents time and the y axis is the % new, the graph is an S
curve.
5. Explain the trap of monolithic instruction. How does student-centric learning help this problem?
Monolithic
instruction occurs when teachers are so caught up teaching in front of a
classroom (traditional) and are unable to assist students due to time, energy
and resources. Teachers role change when student centric learning occurs.
Instead of being a teacher, the teacher becomes a facilitator or someone who
assist students in academic learning. With the use of proper technology, this
is where students gain most individual attention.
Chapter 5: The System for Student-Centric Learning
6. Explain public education’s commercial system. What does it mean to say it is a value-chain business? How does this affect student-centric learning?
Chapter 5: The System for Student-Centric Learning
6. Explain public education’s commercial system. What does it mean to say it is a value-chain business? How does this affect student-centric learning?
Value chain can be compared to student-centric learning. In
a value chain, value is added to a certain product in each step during
production. Similarly, in education, students are the “product” and value is
being added through many things. Some things that add value to students are the
teachers, society, school culture, faculty and staff, and friends.
Sam, I like how you broke down the four ways schools are interdependent. To me, this emphasizes how difficult and complicated the structure of a school is. Because each part is so dependent on the one next to it, it is understandable how incredibly difficult it is to change one part. If you want to change just one thing about one part then you automatically have to change the parts next to it and the parts next to those. It seems as though schools could greatly benefit from switching from an interdependent model to a modular one. This would make fixing problems much much easier for schools.
ReplyDeleteSam, I enjoyed your explanation of the concept of "cramming computers" in the classroom. As we have seen from observing many classes, specifically in math, the technology is only being used to assist with instruction during class. It is amazing to think that in classroom we are no even close to using half of what computers can really do for education and student learning!
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you. It looks like teachers begin to used computer more than before. That is a good sign becuause computers are becoming an important tool in the learning process of students. I am very sure that eventually in the near future, more and more teachers will begin to used computer in their classroom.
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