Why now?
New York is looking to Bill Gates to “reimagine” education. Obviously, Bill Gates has been successful in some of their endeavors. Bill Gates is one of the richest men (note: not people, men) in the world. Mr. Gates has done some great humanitarian work.
However, he has does not successful track record in education. In fact, Bill Gates has already tried to “save” education with completely unsuccessful results. According to Business Insider, his initiatives did more harm than good. Now, on one hand, there is nothing wrong with failure. We should actually celebrate failure that leads to learning. However, this is a case where Mr. Gates does not have the background, he has money. He also seems to be well meaning. However, education is far more complex than most people understand.
Cuomo, who does provide really good press conferences on the COVID-19 situation in New York, doesn’t have a great track record on education.
Our driving force really ought to be what is good for kids. Bottom line. We should not be trying to win the news cycle. We should not be trying to make ourselves “look good”. We should be doing what is best for kids. That gets lost far too often.
Experience Right Now
Lots of teachers were suddenly forced to provide learning online. Those teachers did a fantastic job. Many teachers have great experience in pedagogy, strategies, and resources in face to face instruction. However, many fewer have developed those same skills for using technology. Understanding technology use in education is a different thought process. The issue is, one needs to understand the educational process and technology. Truly understanding the educational process is key. Education is very different than a for profit business.
Companies made their products free. That period of “free” is now ending. Many of these companies now hope that teachers, schools and districts will start paying for their product. (This is why they developed and offered the product/service in the first place.) Many teachers adopted tools that were “popular” or shiny. After all, they needed to pick something quickly.
Why Open Source?
Educators need to start “steering the ship” in developing and implementing technology in education. Instead of trying to adopt the perspective and development of the venture capitalists, educators need to start developing things that will work for students and teachers. Open source is a great way to do that. Open source allows for educators to provide feedback. Open source allows for a continual development and improvement cycle.
Of course, this is not a short, quick process. Developing OER (Open Education Resources) and open source takes time, vision and leadership. The current employment cycle of a Superintendent is 5-6 years. Superintendents are frequently looking for “quick wins”. Companies are usually very good at catching the PR cycle. (Unfortunately, rarely do we ever do long term follow up. Plus, no one wants to have made a “bad” decision. So we end up with a cycle of everything is great and wonderful.
Again, unfortunately, this doesn’t really help kids.
Roadblocks
There are several roadblocks. First and foremost, this would take true leadership and vision. This means vision in terms of curriculum and processes. Superintendents tend to have a pretty short employment cycle. Superintendents have to consistently respond to the “now”.
Michigan has gone through somewhat of a similar process. The State of Michigan declared the #GoOpen movement. The #GoOpen movement is adoption of Open Education Resources (OER). The State also invested in the creation of social studies resources. Despite some early criticism, the nature of
Local Control is another mitigating factor. Open source could be developed at the state level and districts could adapt and adopt from there. In the beginning though, the choices would be limited. It would take quite a while to develop options for a wide variety of school districts.
Investment
I like to say that we are constantly investing in someone. Either we invest in ourselves, or we invest in someone else. It is frequently easier to invest in someone else. At least in the short term.
Investment in ourselves is hard. There would be some fits at the beginning. However, with vision, once some of these projects take off, the effectiveness of our curriculum could skyrocket. Additionally, schools could be saving a serious amount of money. (This would be harder for all to see though. It is much easier for the salespeople to come in and explain how much money you’ll be saving with their product. Frequently, these savings come from “creative” accounting.)
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