An Essay by David H. Lyman

© 2011 - DHLyman@mac.com

Education Must Change:

Education Needs to be Better.

Education Needs to be Affordable.

Education Needs to be Now

How Can We Do This?

Education in America is in crisis--three crises in fact.

First crisis:  the system of school buildings, classrooms, teachers teaching the 3Rs out of text and work books, is old and outdated. This system was conceived in the mid 1800s to train factory workers for the Industrial Revolution. We are beyond that. We are now facing a new revolution--the Digital Technology Revolution--yet the public schools system, even our colleges are stuck in the past. A new system is needed.

Second Crisis: The system we have now is broken.  “No Child Left Behind” is leaving most of our most brilliant, talented, passionate and creative students outside as the system attempts to cram math and science into the heads of our kids who want something else. Why math and science? Why math and science to the exclusion of art, dance, drawing, acting, music, creative writing and sports and recess?  We are no longer a nation of factories and factory workers.  We are a nation of creative, innovative, out of the box thinkers--we always have been. That’s what defines us as Americans. Yet, we ignore our greatest asset--our creative, innovative kids who could be the next generation’s inventors, writers, designers, musicians and entertainers. We are losing our ability to innovate, just when we need it the most. Eliminate art, music, theater, and athletics from our school systems--the very activities we need to instill creativity in our kids and spark their imaginations--and we end up with a culture of “sheepeole.”

Third Crisis: We are broke. American can no longer afford the antiquated, bureaucratic educational system we have. School districts around the country are facing deep budget cut, laying off teachers and staff, closing school, increasing class size to 30 students or more.  A system that was broke just got worse.

Something has to be done. Now!

Perhaps this financial crisis will drive us as to reconsider our educational system in a new light. If we are an innovative culture, then we need to embrace innovation and change in all levels of society, especially education. Throwing more money into a broken system will not make it better, it only prolongs the inevitable.  We need a whole new system of education. How can we get one? Much of it may already exist, but in pieces, scattered across the Internet, hidden in classrooms where teachers are exploring on their own, defying the Federal mandates and school policy to invent new ways to teach today’s kids. 

To move to the Next School will take some time, a lot effort and debate and some mistakes along the way, but the process has got to begin if we are to re-invent the educational system. We need to decentralize education. We need to get public education it out of the hands of the Federal Government, throw out” No Child Left Behind” and replace it with “A School for Every Child,” and return education to the teachers, parents and especially the kids. Has anyone asked them what they want to learn?

A Professional and Personal Perspective

We need to explore the possibilities for what the latest technology can do to make education better, and more cost effective. We need to explore who is doing what already, what Apple, Microsoft and the others are inventing. We need to discover an entirely new way to teach and educate. I have been involved in alternative education for more than 30 years. I founded, built and ran three international institutions here in Maine that changed the lives and launched the careers of ten of thousands of professionals working in media today. I also have two young kids, ages 10 and 12, in public school. I see them struggle with the system, come home frustrated, angry and depressed. Not the experience I would like them to be having.  We have tried Waldorf private school, home (boat) schooling and  now public school. So, a lot of what I am about to write comes from a deeply personal need--to create an educational system that fits all kids, including mine.

How Can We Solve This Complex Problem?

This movement needs to start at the grassroots level, with parents, the kids, teachers and school administrators, especially school board members, taking charge of their schools. This can be done. Here is my outline.

1. ✦Parents, teachers, administrators and especially the kids, need to change the current educational systems.  Don’t wait for the Federal or State Governments to initiate change--this needs to be a grassroots effort.
   

2. ✦Listen to the teachers and the kids--they can tell you what’s wrong. Some of them may tell you how to fix it. So far, no one has asked . . . or listened.
   

3. ✦Discuss the issues, take action and begin to change the way our kids are taught, from the local perspective.
   

4. ✦Replace “No Child Left Behind” to “A School for Every Child” this means tailoring an educational experience for each child, based on their learning style and unique intelligence.
   

5. ✦Stop testing kids for what they know, instead test them for who they are, then build a curriculum K-12 that fits them.
   

6. ✦Explore what’s available on-line, research what being done in other schools to re-invent and re-imagine the classroom and educational systems.
   

7. ✦The two popular feature-length documentaries: Waiting for Superman and A Race to Nowhere, point out the problems, but leave out many of the solutions.
   

8. ✦Give parents, teachers and students options for how their kids are taught and what they are taught
   

9. ✦Give parents and kids guidance, and information on the options, so they can make educated choices
   

10. ✦Do not be afraid to experiment, test new ideas and explore options--the risk is all part of the natural process of growth.
    

11. ✦These re-imagined schools need to share their success and failures
    

12. ✦A national database of options needs to be built providing parents, teachers, school board and administrators with an idea of what’s being tried, what works, and where the system is evolving
    

13. ✦Each school system need to pressure State and Federal politicians to eliminate “No Child Left Behind” and replace it with more local and family goals and options
    

14. ✦The Federal Government needs to get out of the way of education.
    

15. ✦We need more diversity, more experimentation, less central control, less bureaucracy
    

16. ✦We need to acknowledge that all kids are not the same. Kids are different, they have individual learning style, different intelligence, and different, unique futures. Some will be scientists, others mathematicians, but most will  follow a different career path as service providers, artists, entrepreneurs, athletes, inventors, entertainers, musicians . . .  viable and valuable career paths.
    

17. ✦Our kids need to fine their own “careers,” discover their own unique place in the world.  Kids need to know that a career is who they are, rather than just “a job!” 
    

18. ✦Life is so much more than earning a living. Life is about living, and we should be teaching the joy of living in school along with the skills that nearly everyone will need to live a full and enjoyable life being themselves
    

19. ✦Bring back Recess. Make recess the equal of any academic class. Ask any kid they’ll tell you there is not enough recess time. They need time to acquire and practice their social skills, learn sportsmanship, how to play on a team and how to lead a team--more valuable lessons than learning the capitals of the 50 states.
    

Do Kids Really Need to Go To A School?

When I started high school in the mid 1950s, our new school building had not yet been finished. For three months that fall, we attended classes in spaces scattered throughout the village of Brookfield, Massachusetts. I had Algebra in the library, English in the Catholic Church, social studies in the fire house, assembly was in the town’s opera house. While  the new high school, Tantasqua Regional High, the second regional high in the state, was state of the art, I will always remember the experience of walking outdoors through the village common to class--it was like being on a college campus. Education can take place anywhere, and at any time. Teaching needs a teacher and one or more students--this can now happen on-line in a virtual classroom.

Last year, we taught our kids on the deck of our sail boat, sailing from island to island in the Caribbean. Home schooling (or, in our case boat schooling) is a viable alternative to the public school classroom. Having access to the Internet, my kids could conduct research on volcanos, the history of the Caribbean, and the animal and plants they saw along the way. It was a magical experience. We found many families doing the same thing, and all were sold on the option. Having a tutor come in to your home for two hours a day to work with your child or children is another option--for the students and for the teacher. As far as the academic subjects go, tutoring is far less costly than private school and greatly more effective than private or public school. Tutoring is an alternative career for classroom teachers who are fed up with policing a class of 30 kids, the bureaucracy and classroom maintenance.

The Next School

A Picture of The Next School

Let me draw a picture of what education might look like in the near future. Some of this picture may appear far-fetched, but some of that future is already here. My picture is incomplete for there are questions yet to be answered, problems solved. But, as we enter this new world of education, as we gain experience as we go, see new options, and will develop more effective way of teaching and learning. In the process this new system may be far less costly than the one we have now. But we will not get there if we creep along as we have been, tweaking a broken system. Bold leaps are needed. We need to explore what the future will hold as we make use of that knowledge.

We need Research and Development.

What would this school of the future look like? How will it work?

The Next School we are entering is a learning environment, both physical and virtual, it is attuned to each individual student’s needs, learning style, intelligence and career path. I see the following:

   

1. ✦Schools and libraries merge into a single physical and virtual campus. Schools now are learning malls, where kids come to attend a class that needs classroom time, they go to school to socialize, network, join a team, receive counseling, meet with a teachers to be tutored in a specific subject or work in a laboratory.
   

2. ✦Half of all course content and curriculum is available on-line, at home, in school.
   

3. ✦Lectures on all topics feature some of the world most  respected, inspirational and knowledgable speakers. These lectures are available on-line to anyone, anywhere at anytime. If you didn’t get the content the first time, re-wind and watch it again, and again. Can’t do that in a live classroom.
   

4. ✦School are no longer tied to the clock.  Kids come to school when they need to. Younger kids in the mornings, teens in the late morning and afternoon
   

5. ✦Teachers record their lectures and have them available on-line, available for their students to view anytime, anywhere, and review again if needed.
   

6. ✦Students watch the lectures at home and bring the homework to class.
   

7. ✦Teachers now have time to become mentors, facilitators, coaches--working one-on-one with their students, in their classroom or from their home
   

8. ✦While the classroom experience is still a major factor in student life, the classroom is now connected to the Internet, giving students access at home on a snow day, even living in another country
   

9. ✦Students log on, watch the class in action, are seen by those in class on the screen, and join in on the debates, Q&A and share their discoveries
   

10. ✦Students have the advise and consent of parents and counselors, they can select their own curriculum, one that suits their own unique learning style, unique personalities and career paths
    

11. ✦Music and art, sports and theater are on par with academic “left brained” subjects
    

12. ✦With on-line courses, students can progress at their own pace, leaping ahead of others in their age or class group
    

13. ✦Do away with class by age, instead classes are organized by subject, level of ability and interests
    

14. ✦Provide teachers with training, so they understand the value of technology and are able to use this technology as they incorporate on-line course content in their classrooms.
    

Schools are Not Bricks and Mortar--Schools Are Ideas and People

The schools I am speaking of are not schools as we know them today. They are not physical factory buildings that run by the clock, line kids up in rows and teach the same thing to all kids. We throw out “No Child Lift Behind,”  and replace it with “A School for Every Child.”  We decentralize school systems, open up education and make it available at anytime, to anyone, anywhere. Our kids don’t even need to leave home to have access to the school I envision. Yet, they will have access to the very best teachers, listen and watch inspiring lectures, learn from the very best educators. They can do some of that now, but more is needed.

First, we do not need new school buildings. We need a new kind of school, one that makes use of the technology we have already in our hands--and will have tomorrow. We need to turn our physical schools into open learning centers--shopping malls of educational opportunities. We need to refocus school administration and get school board members thinking outside the box. We need to open up the educational process and make  learning meaningful and fun, so kids will buy-in. We need to provide options, services and pathways that can be followed throughout life as we mature, and grow as adults. So far, we have been trying to fix a major wound with a band-aid. Instead of creeping into the next millennium, we need to take a few bold leaps.

Teachers Need to see the Possibilities

Teachers may find the future scary, but most teachers I talk with find the current situation impossible. Teachers and school administrators fear the technology, of losing control, of being replaced by a new form of education. But, if teachers are part of the process, become conversant in the technology and its possibilities, learn to incorporate on-line content into their classes, change their teaching style to make use of the technology--they will become more effective as teachers. But, first they need get them on board. Their students are already logged-on, tuned-in. You can’t keep them off it. They are eager for the rest of us to climb on board.

What impact will this new technology and delivery systems have on curriculum?  How can this new model bring down the cost of education, while improving student performance? Teachers can help solve those two problems, if they are part of the process.  Soon, It will be possible for a high school or college student to complete their entire curriculum, graduate, earn a degree, launch a career, advance their profession--all on-line, at home, selecting a curriculum they want, one that fits their learning style and career interests. Some online high schools and colleges offer this already. Will this replace the teacher?  Not if the teacher changes as the system changes.

This new technology is just an information delivery system, same as a book, just more expansive, interactive and immediate. FaceTime now allows the Internet to be social and personal.  Student and teacher connect on-line, face-to-face via video. Teaching becomes less didactic and more interactive. Freedom from delivering content, teachers now have more time to spend with their students, one-o-one, as coaches and mentors.

The classroom experience will remain a valuable part of the educational process, and for some kids this traditional form of education is appropriate. For others, one-on-one mentoring one-line, working in collaboration with peers on-line, working with a career councilor or life coach on-line, acquiring course content on-line will be just as valuable, often more so, than the traditional classroom experience. 

The New Global School

Instead of classrooms full of 20 to 30 kids--all with various interests, learning styles and intelligence--classes in this new “school” are made up of like-minded kids who shared learning styles and interests. Can’t find enough kids of one type to fill a class? Invite in kids who are in another town, or state, or country who share the same learning style and interests. Classes are not held by grade or by age, but by interest, level of comprehension and acquired skill.  This new educational system allows the student, parents and teachers to tailor an educational experience that is unique to each student, that is geared to that child’s unique learning style. Kids will be learning on their own, at their own speed, sometimes alone, sometimes one-on-one with a mentor or tutor, sometimes in a class or on-line with others.

Imagine a school where the very best teachers and experts come into each class each day to discuss course issues, demonstrate how to do something, explain complex theories. A school where the most inspirational, gifted and charismatic speakers are available, at any time, to anyone, anywhere.  This already exists. Log-on to www.PopTech.org, or www.TED.com. Watch and listen to some of the world’s most innovative thinkers explain how things work.  Go to www.FORA.TV and watch panel discussions with some of the world’s most amazing leaders, watch them argue and discuss all kinds of subjects, then screen the very best documentary films, on-line, at anytime. This is only the beginning. Go to www.TheREAnimatie.org and follow their illustrated lectures. Amazing stuff! Home-schooling now takes on new meaning.

The “out of classroom” experience I am talking about exists. We’ve had it for two decades: ”Distant Learning” or “e-Learning.”  There are scores of on-line K-12 schools, and most universities and colleges have some of their curriculum on-line,  but most are still using old technology, using cumbersome models. I am talking about the next generation of technology, some of it yet to be invented--but I know we will invent it . . .  soon.

All this changed recently, when Steve Jobs announced the new Apple iPad2 . . .  a new platform that teachers can use to present course content, students can see each other on-line, access course content and link up through social networking with their peers, their mentors, coaches, and course facilitators. FaceTine and streaming video now allows us to connect on-line as never before.

Creating a Global Classroom, Or Learning Environment

This new technology and software allows on-line students to see into a classroom, to be part of that classroom dynamics--no matter where we are. Look at  www.GoToMeetings.com, and the new SKYPE conference software--these systems connect a class full of students with another dozen students living far away, at no or very little expense. The distant learning systems that used to cost $100 of thousands, now cost pennies. All any student needs to join in is a laptop, or iPad2 or a Smart Phone and access to the Internet--the higher speed the better. Social Networking now takes on a whole new meaning--and purpose. While “Distant Learning” has been with us for 20 years or more, in today’s environment it is outdated, cumbersome and frankly, boring. The technology I’m talking about has just arrived, and teachers, administrators, parents and students need to learn to unlock its power. Video: live and archived, graphics, visual aids of all kinds can now be presented in the classroom on a large flat screen, at the same time on each students’ laptop or iPad2--in the classroom, or on-line at home or in an Learning Mall somewhere in the world. A teacher’s chalk board notes and drawings are created, live, on the iPad2 and displayed on everyone’s personal screens, simultaneously.  PowerPoint slides, website links and photographs are accessed from the faculty’s iPad2, and immediately presented on everyone’s laptop or iPad2.  Students, on-site and on-line, can interact freely, verbally  as they share their own images, graphics and visual content, just as if everyone were present in the same physical classroom.  They can see and hear each other. Questions, answers and debates are shared between the  physical classroom and those on-line across the world. Some classes may be entirely on-line. The virtual classroom is here.

Creating an Educational Resource Library

Each class, each lectures is recorded and when completed is instantly available on-line for review by the participants who came in late, fell asleep, or missed the class entirely. Students can review content of a lecture, review the slides from a faculty’s art history course, on-line, at anytime, anywhere. An ever expanding library of recorded classes and lectures, on all sort of subjects are archived and available--for free, or for subscription, depending on the business model.

But these on-line courses and lectures are only one of the elements in this new world of Internet Education. The students themselves will be teaching each other, texting links to one another about an on-line lecture they just discovered. They’ll be posting questions to their Facebook list, and receiving a deluge of responses, while they share discoveries and concerns.  Learning ceases to be regimented, controlled and stratified. A kid with a mind for math, (they do exist), may whip through arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, basic and advance algebra, calculus and statistics all in a year or two. This young math-whiz is not held back by the system or others in his class--he or she progresses at their own paces and abilities. A kid with a talent for music can be composing symphonies, play all the instruments in an orchestra, record and tweak his or her piece and publish that composition, while at home, solo or with buddies, on-line. It’s all there now, but today’s schools do not teach this stuff--they keep this technology at arms length. Why? Are the teachers or the administrators not conversant with what’s happening, or they are scared of loosing control, or just stuck in the past? This new technology puts knowledge into the hands and minds of the students. It’s free.

Educational Malls

The physical schools I envision look more like learning malls, where socializing take place, where kids go for athletics, for group activities like theater, choir, and band or to work with a teacher or coach in a lab or studio. Adults and students drop in anytime that suites them. They can visit a gallery or a workshop, or join a class in a studio or a classroom. These learning centers are open all day and all night. Wifi is everywhere, free. Counselors and coaches are available and mentors meet with their protege. Teachers hold classes in what now looks more like a television studio than a traditional classroom. Their lectured are taped and available on-line, at any time. Teachers now are able to work one-on-one with students, freed from having to repeat a lecture or demonstrations over and over.  Their lectures are on-line. A student with their iPad2 on their lap, sitting under a tree in Africa can join a class in Algebra given by one of the most brilliant and entertaining teachers of algebra there is . . . along side another student seated at home in Norway. Kids can replay a lectures or watch a lab demonstration a second or third time, without fear of embarrassment for asking. Now, teachers become tutors that make on-line house calls, or hold classes with students at a learning center that is also on-line.

A New Educational Schedule

Kids do not operate on a factory clock, so why should schools? Teens are not fully awake until around 10 AM, and not ready to learn until 11 AM. They are seldom ready for bed until after 2 AM. It’s their natural biological clock. Ask them. They’ll tell you. That’s true. Studies show that starting school just one hour later will raise student scores half a grades. Would starting school 2 hours later, say 10 AM, raise scores a full letter grade? Worth a try? Why not throw the clock out all together. Kids go to school when they are ready to learn, when they have a reason to go. They go because they want spend time with friends, with a teacher, a mentor, or a counselor, or because they are on a debating team, a soccer team, in a band, or need to work on a lab or studio project with others. They can learn the elementary stuff at home: math, reading, history, as they conduct on-line research, write papers, take tests. . .  all on-line, anywhere.

Schools as Open Community Learning Centers

Today, a child who is home schooled has little or no access to team sports, social or cultural activities at the public school. We’d like to change that. Make the public schools more open and accepting of kids in various learning situations. Many towns already incorporate this, offering sports, social and cultural activities through the local YMCA or other non-school organization. If a town’s library and the public school were to merge, physically, become a community-wide educational center, accessed by all, tax dollars would be better spent, and the citizenry better educated

This can be done today, in nearly all communities. No new buildings need be built, no new staff or faculty hired, just a shift in perception of what education is and can be.

The Movement has already begun

In 2004, Salman Khan, a hedge fund analyst, began posting math tutorials on YouTube to help his young cousins in another city. Six years later, he has posted more than 2,000 tutorials, which are viewed nearly 100,000 times around the world. Bill Gates discovered him, is now funding his on-line math school, and introduced him on TED.com. (www.KhanAcademy.org) Take a look. Salman is now working with school systems in California to develop a math curriculum that frees math teachers from doing the chalk board lectures, allowing the teacher to working one-on-one with those students that need help from a real person. And this is only the beginning.  Salman’s system tracks each student’s progress, and shows a “coach” where the student is having trouble. If a student has difficulty with a math problem, they click a button and a YouTube video pops up giving an explanation. You can’t get that kind of feedback in a classroom. And, the student can watch the explanation as many times as they want. No embarrassment for admitting you didn’t get it the first time, or the second. My son and daughter are now hooked on this system. It works!

Alternative History Courses

My picture of education make use of short video clips, documentaries, interviews, and historical re-enactments. A history class can now take a virtual tour of historic sites, talk to actors playing the role of historic characters, go back in time to experience what it would be like to live in Colonial America. Students can spend a few weeks living alongside the Pilgrims in Plymouth, the first permanent English settlement on the American continent, or join a family living in a village in pre-Industrial Revolution America. These living museums exist today. Plymouth Plantation, Old Sturbridge Village, Colonial Jamestown  are all recreated, living museums where a class can visit . . .  for those fortunate to live within driving distance. For those too far away, these short video episodes provide a virtual experience.  Through scheduled webinars, a history class can meet a character from history and ask them what their day, what their life is like. Science students join researchers in the lab, visit the Smithsonian or Cape Kennedy and meet inventors developers working on new technologies. This access gives students a real feeling for the science and what professional scientists do. Through on-line video documentaries, interviews, and course content students have access in real-time, to real people living in far off places who do valuable work. These short 5-minute documentaries, strung together into a seamless course, over a wide range of subjects replaces text books, and bring immediate and real life experience into a classroom, or home classroom.

For Parents . . . and their kids

Do Kids Really Need to Go To School?

My family and I spent last year living onboard our sail boat exploring the islands of the Eastern Caribbean. We were “boat schooling” our kids, ages 9 and 11 as we went. The experience was as much an education for us as for our two kids. As a professional educator and learning visionary, it was especially enlightening to see how our kids, and other kids we met on other boats long the way, handled the learning, socializing and physical activities of boat and island life.  I came away realizing the following:

1. • Kids are unique, each with a different learning style and mission in life
   

2. • Kids learn best when there is a reason to learn--purposeful learning
   

3. • Kids only need 2 to 3 hours of home (boat) schooling for them to keep up with their land-based peers, provided those 2 to 3 hours are focused learning.
   

4. • A lot of families have chosen to home (boat) school their kids--it’s not as strange as it appears, nor anywhere nearly as impossible
   

5. • Home schooled kids are on a par, often ahead of kids graduating from public high school.
   

6. • While there are lots of packaged home schooling program available, we elected to pick and choose and put our own curriculum together.
   

7. • Parents may not be the best teachers for their kids, they may need a tutor.
   

8. • What our kids missed while off cruising through the Caribbean, they more than made up for with practical, first-hand experience. They came back wiser, more in touch with themselves, and with a higher self esteem--they had just completed a major adventure.
   

Can Kids Learn By Themselves ?

Can and will kids learn all by themselves? If left alone, at home, outside a classroom will kids just watch TV? No. If they are learning what they want to learn, doing what they love to do, they will log-on and become engrossed in an on-line course.  Its called purposeful, self-learning.   If we can build a learning system that allows kids to follow their natural interests and embraces their natural learning styles, they will learn, and faster than in a classroom.

Yes, kids may need someone to watch over them from time to time, even daily. But, our most brilliant, talented and driven kids don’t someone looking over their shoulder. They don’t want to be held back. These kids--tomorrow’s inventors, artists, authors, scientists, filmmakers, entrepreneurs just want their teachers to get out of the way. “Can’t you see I’m busy here,” my son tells me.

Make the learning delivery system fit the kids’s learning style, one that engages them in the process, gives them real problems to solve and they will acquire the skills and knowledge that is needed to solve those problems. If they need to learn calculus in order to figure out the thrust necessary for a space vehicle to escape earth’s gravity, they will learn calculus. Once a kid gets hooked on learning, once they feel the power learning, knowledge and process gives them, our jobs as teachers and parents just became whole lot easier.

How Can We Build This New Learning Environment?

What will it take to embrace this new world of learning? Some of it is already happening. Some of the technology is almost there. Some schools are experimenting with the options. Parents are now looking for options for teaching their kids: private schools, tutors, home schooling, on-line possibilities. States are looking into Charter Schools and Magnet Schools. People are beginning to question the system.

    “Is this system right for my child?”

    “Dad. I hate school. Why can’t they teach me what I want to know?” asks my 10 years old son.

    Soon, perhaps in a year or two, we will see a shift in education, and a quiet revolution will change the face of education as know it now. A new learning philosophy is emerging--lead mostly by the students themselves, students who are beginning to work and learn outside the traditional pathways.

What Will It Take?
The elements of this new educational system include:

    • Get teachers involved in the process of change. Introduce them to the technology and show them how it works and can make their job of teaching better

    • Stop testing kids for what they know, and test them for who they are. Find out what learning style best suites each of them.

    • Develop learning systems that are aimed at these various “Intelligences” and learning styles

    • Realize that creativity, imagination, intuitive thinking are as valuable as rational, linear thinking--perhaps more so in a world where innovation is needed

    • Give students and parents options and choices

    • Give students on-line course content they can access at any time. Give teachers on-line course content they can incorporate into their classroom teaching

    • Free up teachers from repetitious work, allow them to become effective as mentors, coaches and counselors

    • Build a library of on-line content, lectures, documentaries, virtual tours, and interviews that provides access to the world’s knowledge . . . and make it free

    • Provide a “stepping stone” pathway of e-learning that joins on-line course content with real life experiences and in classroom experienced--ending with a degree or diploma.

    • Turn schools into open educational malls, eliminate the school day’s schedule as it is today

    • Allow students and parents options for learning, give them the goals, but let them design the pathway to reach those goals

   

What is needed

Federal, state and local governments need to invest in educational reform--not in the current system, but in R&D to discover and develop a newer, more effective and  affordable systems. We need to explore and re-invent education.

Teachers, administrators, and politicians need to shift their perspective, embrace this the Digital Revolution and support this shift to on-line learning with their words and tax dollars.

Teachers and administrators need to become savvy on digital, on-line, video-based technologies and methodologies.  Teachers need to learn how to incorporate their course content into the emerging on-line systems. Teachers need to reinvent the way they teach, not necessarily what they teach.

Corporations and foundations need to support start-up enterprises and non-profits as they develop on-line course content and systems, to ensure the nation has a skilled and knowledgeable work force that can meet the challenges of the future.

Students are already hooked up, logged on and tuned in, waiting for the establishment to climb on board.

Is this worth doing?

David Lyman

Creative Director

The Camden Center for IDEAS*

Camden, ME 04843

iPhone: 207.841.4139

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