adapt (evolve if you like over time) or perish..cease to exist because you are no longer able to exist. Schools have not always been(there)..nor are they required to continue if they are no longer providing the service expected.

Truancy is one problem, leaving for a better offer is another…when the majority have abetter offer it will be too late too change, just time to close the doors.

some do that already if they do not provide what their students/community/clients want. no different o business really…just better subsidised by the political forces of control and tradition.

Schools are essentially designed as prisons to keep students in line and obedient. You have to expect that at some point the inmates are going to rebel, particularly at a time when they’re being empowered by technology in the real world.

Even allowing students to talk to each other and collaborate on projects together, giving them some choices about their own learning, and shifting the teaching model from teacher as expert to teacher as facilitator (with a little bit of technology thrown in) would be revolutionary in most schools.

And thanks for checking out my “Mr. Winkle Wakes” movie.

I, until recently, was relatively optimistic about adoptive use of technology in education as indicated in my hopeful analysis in this post. In a conversation with a teaching colleague of mine, our discussion often returns to the adoption curve and impediments to it, outlined by Rogers in Diffusion of Innovations. Particular interest given to the 5 classifications of people based on how quickly they adopt an innovation, (i.e. innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards ) and thus help determine the rate at which the innovation is adopted. These characteristic are humorously/satirically portrayed here.

My colleague and I more than half expect a crash of the system will have to occur before things improve. In the US, that will more than likely occur 2012 (2014?) as No Child Left Behind stipulates that all students will show annual yearly progress (state assessment test). Unless that yearly progress bar is very low, most schools will be deemed as failing and the logic will follow that we have a failing system.

In any event, change will come.

Also think that so many “in-service” or professional development days are wasted, with teachers going off to be bored stiff at predictable workshops etc and students staying home to amuse themselves online – hardly a “meeting of the minds” — surely a new kind of PD day needs to be envisioned where the students are allowed to show what they know to teachers who need to see it – that could be *real* professional development!