The Second Educational Revolution Rethinking

The second educational revolution: rethinkingeducation in the age of technologyjcal_339 18..27

A. Collins* & R. Halverson†*Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA†University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

Abstract This paper drew upon a recent book (Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology) to sum-marize a number of prospects and challenges arising from the appropriation of digital technol-ogy into learning and educational practice. Tensions between traditional models of schoolingand the affordances of digital media were noted, while the promise of these technologies forshaping a new system of education was reviewed. It was argued that new technology bringsradical opportunities but also significant challenges. The urgency of seeking a coherent modelfor the future of education in a technological age was stressed.

Keywords computers and education, educational technology, future of education, history of education,life long learning, schools and technology.

The world of education is currently undergoing a secondrevolution. Digital technologies such as computers,mobile devices, digital media creation and distributiontools, video games and social networking sites are trans-forming how we think about schooling and learning. Allaround us, people are learning with the aid of new tech-nologies: people of all ages are playing complex videogames; workers are interacting with simulations that putthem in challenging situations; students are takingcourses at online high schools and colleges; and adultsare engaging in social networks and online learningenvironments to manage their professional lives. Newtechnologies create learning opportunities that chal-lenge the traditional practices of schools and colleges.These new learning niches enable people of all ages topursue learning on their own terms. People around theworld are taking their education out of school and intohomes, libraries, Internet cafes and workplaces wherethey can decide what they want to learn, when they wantto learn and how they want to learn.

School systems organized around age-grading, tradi-tional curricular sequencing, accepted professionalaccreditation and long-standing funding models havestruggled in adapting to new, learner-directed technolo-gies. We often think that our current educational institu-tions have always been here, and have always struggledto adapt to change. However, the genesis of our currentschooling system occurred in response to a similar tech-nological and economic tumult – the industrial revolu-tion. Our current model of schooling grew out of thetechnologies and social practices of the industrialrevolution.

The rise of the public schools moved from an appren-ticeship era to a world of nearly universal schooling thatcame to identify learning with schooling. The currenttechnology revolution differs from the industrial revolu-tion in one important way. While the industrial revolu-tion gave rise to a universal schooling system wherenone had previously existed, the information technol-ogy revolution presses a very real, active system toreconsider its fundamental practices. Our paper high-lights some of the challenges involved when a technol-ogy movement seeks to redefine learning in the face of avibrant, pre-existing institutional structure.

Accepted: 16 November 2009Correspondence: Allan Collins, 135 Cedar Street, Lexington, MA02421, USA. Email: [email protected]

doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2009.00339.x

SPECIAL ISSUEOriginal article

18 © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (2010), 26, 18–27

Who will ultimately benefit from this contestbetween the new technologies and schooling? We thinkschools have served the world very well. We greatlyadmire the teachers who have dedicated themselves tohelp children from different backgrounds to learn andthrive in a changing world. Schools have made invalu-able contributions to the world’s development and wethink they will continue to do so well into the future.However, we think educators and policymakers need torethink the relation between education and schooling.Education is a lifelong enterprise, while schooling formost encompasses only the ages from five to 18 or 21years. Even when students are in school, much of theireducation happens outside of school.

We all know that technology has transformed ourlarger society. It has become central to people’s reading,writing, calculating and thinking, which are the majorconcerns of schooling. The consumer market for newtechnologies has exploded as companies explore how tocreate and sell the next generation of products to con-sumers who are looking for an edge up in the race forsuccess. This means that technological products andservices for learning are popping up all over the educa-tional landscape and also that schools are being left outof the big picture. The longer schools stay out of thetechnology discussion, the more that education, tradi-tionally viewed as a public good with equal access forall, will be up for sale to those who can afford access tospecialized services.

The central challenge is whether our current schoolswill be able to adapt and incorporate the new power oftechnology-driven learning for the next generation ofpublic schooling. If schools cannot successfully inte-grate new technologies into what it means to be aschool, then the long identification of schooling witheducation, developed over the past 150 years, will dis-solve into a world where wealthier students pursue theirlearning outside of the public school.

Incompatibilities between schooling andinformation technologies

The opposition between schooling and informationtechnologies is a development of the recent history ofschooling as an institution. The growth of a late 19thand early 20th century system of universal schoolingwas sparked by new information technologies such astextbooks (Kliebard 1989), bureaucratic information

systems (Callahan 1962) and assessments (Lagemann2002). However, as the current ‘one best system’(Tyack1974) began to take shape, it became less tolerant offundamental changes to core practices. Informationtechnologies pose direct challenges to how schoolingoperationalizes learning. These challenges illustrate thedeep incompatibilities between schooling and the newtechnologies.

Uniform learning vs. customization

Deeply ingrained in the structure of schooling is a massproduction notion of uniform learning.Age-grading andcommon assessments, for example, emphasize thebelief that everyone should learn the same things at thesame time. However, one of the great advantages ofinformation technology is customization. Computerscan respond to the particular interests and difficultiesthat learners have and provide content on any topic ofinterest.

Teacher as expert vs. diverse knowledge sources

Schooling is built on the notion that knowledge is fixedand that the work of the teacher is to present what isknown to students. Teachers serve as experts whose jobis to pass on their expertise to students. Hence, mostteachers do not like to see their authority challenged bystudents who find contradictory information or who askquestions beyond their expertise. In contrast, informa-tion technologies provide access to many differentsources of expertise. It is easy to find activities, such asweb communities or online discussion forums, wherestudents themselves can serve as experts or can developknowledge to challenge prevailing views. Schools havefound it difficult to similarly decouple expertise fromauthority.

Standardized assessment vs. specialization

The assessment technology employed in evaluatingstudent knowledge uses multiple-choice and short-answer items in order to provide objective scoring.Recent education policy initiatives, such as the NoChild Left Behind Act (2002) in the US, have onlyincreased school reliance on common assessmentinstruments. However, this form of testing requires thatevery student learn the same things. Information tech-

The second educational revolution 19

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

nologies emphasize different approaches to assessment.For example, video games and simulations provideexcellent examples of how performance-based assess-ments can be integrated into learning environments.Similarly, reputation measures in participation forums(such as the product reviews at Amazon.com, or theadvice forums at Yahoo.com) provide a communityapproach to assessing knowledge. Whereas informationtechnologies press us to think of new approaches toauthentic assessment, standards-based reforms inschools have instead sought to reinforce a single, tradi-tional path towards measuring what students know.

Knowledge in the head vs. reliance onoutside resources

There is a deep belief among teachers and parents that totruly learn something, it is critical to internalize itwithout any reliance on outside resources. Therefore, ontests, students are usually not allowed to use books orcalculators, much less computers or the web. The oppo-site is true of the information technology world, wherethe measure of knowledge is more about how and whereto find relevant knowledge. In the workplace, you areoften judged on how well you can mobilize resources toaccomplish some tasks. Information technologies, suchas social networking, Google or mobile GPS tools,provide a living example of how cognition is distributedacross people and networks.

Coverage vs. the knowledge explosion

Schools have long been interested in conveying all theimportant knowledge people might need for the rest oftheir lives. When schooling equals learning, thenschools must regularly review what they include andexclude from the curriculum. As knowledge has grownexponentially, the coverage-based response of schoolshas resulted in fatter textbooks and longer years inschool. The trade-off between coverage and relevancehas resulted in curricula that are ‘a mile wide and aninch deep’. The Internet, for example, has permanentlyredefined the relation between learners and knowledge.Information technologies have made the criterion of‘what is worth knowing’ increasingly difficult to upholdin recent years. Being able to discern which questionsare worth asking, for example, take on a new meaningfor which schools currently do not provide adequate

preparation. People need to learn how to ask good ques-tions in order to find the information and resources theyneed.

Learning by absorption vs. learning by doing

Deeply embedded in the culture of schooling is thenotion that students should learn a large body of facts,concepts, procedures, theories, and works of art andscience that have accumulated over time. Schooling hasits roots in ancient traditions of teaching in whichknowledge was a scarce and sacred resource. Readilyaccessible public libraries and museums opened thedoor to a new conception of learning as exploration.However, information technologies have pushed us to aradical, learner-oriented understanding of knowledgeacquisition. Information technologies foster a morehands-on, activity-based education. Computers arehighly interactive and provide a variety of tools toaccomplish meaningful tasks. Hence, they are morealigned with the ‘learning by doing’ view of education,than with the ‘absorption of cultural knowledge’view ofeducation that permeates schooling.

Schools have integrated the state-of-the-art informa-tion technology practices of their genesis into a robustuniversal system of education. However, the new tech-nology revolution has called these practices into ques-tion. Schools foster just-in-case learning; informationtechnologies foster just-in-time learning. It is no wonderwhy many schools are uncomfortable with new tech-nologies, just as these technologies are becoming centralto all walks of life outside schools. Thus, schools are in aprecarious position. Continuing to commit to the tech-nologies of bureaucracy, assessment and print literaciesmay mean that school will become less important as avenue for education. Proponents of the informationtechnologies are at work to develop new approaches tolearning outside the traditional purview of schooling.We see the seeds of a new system emerging in the bur-geoning movements towards home schooling, work-place learning, distance education, learning centres,adult education and lifelong learning in general.

The seeds of a new system of education

We do not suggest that schools will disappear anytimesoon. Schools were prevalent in the era of apprentice-ship, and they will be prevalent in whatever system of

20 A. Collins & R. Halverson


education that comes into being. However, as the seedsof a new system emerge, we will continue to see thateducation will occur in many different, more adaptivevenues. This may mean that schools will have a nar-rower role in learning and that we will be forced to rede-fine the identification of schooling with learning.

Home schooling has been booming in the US over thelast 30 years. Based on a survey in 2003, the US Depart-ment of Education (National Center for Education Sta-tistics 2006) estimated there were 1.1 million childrenbeing home-schooled and that the number had increasedby 29% in four years. The survey also found that 21% ofthe families engaged in home schooling hired a tutor and41% used distance learning. The availability of onlinecontent and social networks has fuelled this growth. Asmore curricula are developed for computers, they arelikely to take over more of the content burden, leavingparents to act as facilitators. Social networks link parentsto groups of other home schoolers for the social aspectsof schooling and to collaborative spaces where parentsand children can share the home schooling problems andexperiences. Home schooling remains a controversialoption. It may indeed lead children and parents to takemore responsibility for their education, but at the sametime, their exclusion from public education means thatchildren will have limited exposure to diverse content,values and most of all, people.

Workplace learning has been rapidly expanding overthe last 30 years as companies have realized that theyneed to educate their workers to handle complex equip-ment and solve novel problems. Motorola, for example,has developed programmes to teach statistical analysisand other complex skills, and even basic reading andcomputing when needed (Wiggenhorn 1990). The con-sulting firm Accenture has been developing courses andsimulation programmes where employees perform thekinds of tasks they will encounter in the field (Nowa-kowski 1994). Xerox has developed an online systemthat contains stories of difficult problems to diagnosethat tech reps have compiled (Brown & Duguid 2000).Other efforts, such as LinkedIn.com, provide indepen-dent opportunities for workers to build social networkconnections for professional interaction and research.More and more of workplace education is addressingcomplex skills and access to networks needed for learn-ing to learn.

Distance education over the Internet is exploding atthe collegiate level, and growing at the K-12 level as

well. The Open University in Britain was one of the firstdistance education efforts to become widely successful.It currently has about 180 000 students and was ratedthe top university in England and Wales for studentsatisfaction in the 2005 and 2006 UK GovernmentNational Student Satisfaction Survey (Wikipedia 2009).The University of Phoenix is the most successful onlineuniversity in America. It has over 100 000 students alto-gether, including over 30 000 online students (Maeroff2003). As busy people realize they need more educa-tion, they increasingly opt to take distance educationcourses. Many states and districts are also experiment-ing with virtual high school programmes, where teach-ers at different schools in the system offer onlinecourses to students at other high schools in the state.Utah, with 35 000 online students, and Florida, with21 000 online students, are farthest along on this path.Some virtual high schools are organized as charterschools that enrol students from across the state.Although distance education has a head start in adulteducation, the development of virtual K-12 schools pro-vides challenges for bricks and mortar public schools.

Adult education is growing, with more adults takingcourses in the evening at adult education centres andolder people returning to get graduate or undergraduatedegrees. Many people now go onto the Web to learnabout particular topics they are interested in, such ashow to invest in stocks. Adults often go on vacationswith an educational purpose, such as a retreat to discussbooks or a trip with an expert providing guidance. Adulteducation is one of the major growth industries. Whilemuch of the learning that goes on is recreational, it stillprovides valuable knowledge that sometimes may leadto a second career or the pursuit of a long-term interest.Perhaps it will turn out that some of our most productivecitizens are older people, who use their free time to keeplearning.

Learning centres run by Kaplan, Sylvan and othercompanies have risen, where people can go to learn theparticular skills and knowledge they need. They mostcommonly serve to prepare students for national tests,such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in the US,and to tutor children who are having problems in school.The No Child Left Behind Act (2002) called for K-12districts to provide tutoring for students in failingschools, which has also contributed to the growth of thelearning centre industry. In the 1990s, the US Depart-ment of Education launched an initiative to support non-



profit community technology centres to servecommunities, where access to computers and othertechnologies is limited. There are now over 1000centres in different locales, such as housing projects,storefronts, community organizations and libraries. Intime, learning centres might evolve as an alternative toschool at the high school level and beyond, where teen-agers and adults can go to study particular subjects ofuse to them.

Computer games have proliferated with the advent ofhome computers. The Sims series, such as SimCity andthe Sims, have introduced generations of students andadults to complex system simulation-based game envi-ronments. In the best selling game Civilization, playershave the opportunity to relive the development of globalsocial and economic history. Players must plan, chooseto negotiate or fight, acquire and allocate resources, andmake decisions to advance their civilization. There arealso many computer-learning environments for youngerchildren as well, such as handheld games, interactivebooks, and kid’s websites. As the early online multi-user virtual environments proliferated, people from allover the world began to converse or explore places thatothers have created for them. Today’s graphicallyenhanced massively multiplayer online games have ledto an explosion of participation in virtual worlds.Gaming may help young people learn a variety of lead-ership skills, such as resource allocation, negotiatingwith friends and adversaries, manipulating situationsand environments, actively pursuing their goals andrecovering from failures. As John Seely Brown andDouglas Thomas have suggested, the gamers of todaymay become the leaders of tomorrow (Brown &Thomas 2006).

Web communities have arisen to support every pos-sible interest people may have. Often, young people arejoining these web communities in order to pick upskills and knowledge that might enable them to pursueparticular interests. For example, Michele Knobel(2008) describes a teen whose passion was Japaneseanimé. This led him to participate actively in theAniméMusicVideo.org web community where helearned remixing skills from fellow members. Thecommunity liked one of his works enough that he putit up on YouTube as the ‘Konoha Memory Book’.Similarly, Brigid Barron (2006) describes a middleschool girl who became interested in digital art. Shejoined the web community xanga.com where she

studied the techniques and the source code of the digitalartists on the site. By their active participation in webcommunities, these young people are gaining skills andknowledge that may be very useful to them in later life.

Technical certifications raise questions about how wedetermine the adequacy of the knowledge gained apartfrom formal schooling experience. Until recently,schools and colleges had a monopoly on the certifica-tion business. The growing use of the general educa-tional development test in the US as an alternative to thehigh school diploma has begun to cut into the highschool monopoly on certification. In recent years, a hostof companies, such as Microsoft and Cisco, as well astechnical societies, have developed exams that certifythat a person has a particular level of skill in some occu-pational niche, such as creating web pages or maintain-ing computer networks. Because the certifications aremore specific than diplomas, they are more meaningfulto potential employers.

Internet cafes are springing up all over the world,where people can go and log on to the Web for a smallfee. These are perhaps the libraries of the future. Theyparticularly attract young people who spend hours onthe Web, engaging in conversations and games, readingabout what is happening in the world, learning how toprogram, or exploring different sites that relate to theirinterests. In much of the world, schools have beenresource-poor. The opening of the Internet to the worldgives people who have been deprived of an education away to compensate, if they have the initiative.

The cumulative effect of these innovations is toextend learning throughout life and over many venues.With time, these pieces might come to make up the frag-ments of a new system of education, in which schoolshave a less central role, as in the apprenticeship era.However, for now, these elements have developed inde-pendently of one another. They do not yet form a coher-ent system of education. This is where the need forvisionaries is most apparent. It will take energeticvisionaries to do the kind of work Horace Mann and hiscolleagues did during the first educational revolution –which is to figure out how to build an equitable andcoherent system from these emerging pieces.

A comparison of the three eras of education

One way to consider the present state of schools is tocontrast where we are with where we have been and



where we are going. We are now entering the lifelonglearning era of education, having experienced theapprenticeship and schooling eras. These three erasdiffer in many aspects. In some ways, the lifelong learn-ing era reflects a return to some of the core features ofthe earlier apprenticeship era.

Responsibility: from the parents to the state to theindividual and parents

With the Industrial Revolution, the state took overresponsibility for educating children from their parents.There was a concern about immigrant children learningAmerican values and language. In the present era,responsibility for education is moving away from thestate to the parents for younger children and the indi-vidual among teenagers and adults.

Content: from practical skills to basic skills anddisciplinary knowledge to generic skills and learningto learn

The content of education before the Industrial Revolu-tion focused on the skills and crafts of their parents andrelatives, which children would need as adults. After theIndustrial Revolution, schools stressed the learning ofbasic skills that children would need to function as intel-ligent citizens and workers and on the knowledge in thedifferent disciplines. With the digital revolution, thefocus is more on generic skills, such as problem solvingand communication in different media, and on findingresources and learning from them.

Pedagogy: from apprenticeship to didacticismto interaction

The pedagogy of apprenticeship involves observation,coaching and practice. The adult shows how to do thingsand then watches while the learner tries, fading supportas the learner gains experience. The pedagogy of schoolinvolves lecturing children, having them read texts andpractise doing tasks, and testing to see if they havelearned what was taught. The pedagogy of the currentera is evolving towards reliance on interaction. Some-times this involves interacting with a rich technologicalenvironment such as a computer tutor or a game on theweb and sometimes with other people by means of acomputer network.

Assessment: from observation to testing toembedded assessment

In the apprenticeship era, the master observed learnersand corrected them as they went along, giving themtasks they were ready for and seeing if they completedthem successfully. In the schooling era, testing emergedas the means to see if learners had acquired the skills andknowledge taught, before passing learners on to the nextlevel. In the lifelong-learning era, assessment usuallyoccurs as the learner progresses through a computer-learning environment in order to provide support tocarry out the tasks and determine whether the learnerhas accomplished the goals. This looks more similar tothe assessment in the apprenticeship era than the testingin school.

Location: centred in the home vs. centred in the schoolvs. centred in multiple venues

In the apprenticeship era, most work was composed ofhousehold and domestic industries. Children usuallylearned to carry out adult tasks from parents or relatives.With the Industrial Revolution, children were gatheredin schools to keep them off the streets and prepare themfor industrial life. Schools are not very amenable to thecustomized education that is now sought, and so, educa-tion is moving into many different venues, such ashomes, workplaces and learning centres, where learningmaterials can be accessed from computers and the web.

Culture: from adult culture to peer culture tomixed-age culture

Before the Industrial Revolution, children learned fromthe adults who were working around them. Peer culturearose with schooling and in many ways, adopted atti-tudes and beliefs that were opposed to learning. Aslearning moves out of a school setting, peer culture mayweaken and there will be settings where children areworking on tasks with their parents, other adults, peersand often in isolation from other people in a computerenvironment.

Relationships: from personal bonds to authorityfigures to computer-mediated interaction

In the apprenticeship era, children learned from adultsthey grew up around. With the advent of universal



schooling they were learning from adults they did notknow well and who did not understand their personalneeds and abilities.As we move towards computer envi-ronments, learners will be interacting with systems thatare responsive to what they do but that have little under-standing of them as individuals. However, at the sametime, the systems will deal with them in a non-critical,impartial manner.

Perhaps the most striking change from the appren-ticeship era to the schooling era was the state’s assump-tion of responsibility for educating children. In thecurrent era, people interested in getting ahead are takingback responsibility from the state. However, at the sametime, what will happen to learners who are unable totake advantage of the technologies that are transforminglearning?

What may be lost and what may be gained

Since we are in the midst of a technological revolution,it is difficult to estimate the effects that it will have onschooling and learning. However, it is safe to say thatthe revolution in education will be felt all across modernsociety. As with any revolution, there are will be bothgains and losses. Pessimists predict that people willbecome increasingly subservient to their technologiesand will lose more and more control as technologycomes to dominate their lives. Optimists foresee agolden age of learning opening before us, where peoplewill be able to use technologies to find new solutions forthe educational and economic problems of our society.We do not envision a future that is either bleak or idyllicbut where elements of both are present. Here, wedescribe the potential losses and potential gains to helpus think about major concerns.

Equity

Schools have been the means by which many immi-grants have gained access to the mainstream culture andeconomic status. Despite widespread tracking and seg-regation, the public schools have acquired widespreadacceptance as the institution that can foster social andeconomic equity. Technological approaches to learninghave begun to draw human and material capital awayfrom our commitment to public schooling. Parents whowant to give their children a good education avail them-selves of options such as home schooling, private

schools, and learning centres. If this withdrawal ofresources causes the education world to fragment, itmay begin to relinquish responsibility for universalaccess to high-quality student education. In this world,the lives of the economically disempowered are likely tosuffer the most, and public schools may become littlemore than the institutions of last resort.

Citizenship and social cohesion

Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann felt that educationshould prepare people to be good citizens and assimilatethem to a common culture. Jefferson thought that thepeople need education in order to make wise policydecisions. Mann was committed to common educationas a path for developing social cohesion in an immigrantnation. Both goals may be lost as parents and individu-als take over responsibility for learning from schools.Moving beyond a shared commitment to public educa-tion may increase the capacity for interest groups tobreak off pieces of the system to serve more narrowlydefined educational goals. The home schooling andcharter school movements, for example, will continueto accelerate the ability of interest groups to customizeeducational opportunities. Further fragmentation byinterest groups may put the collective commitment to aschool system that safeguards citizenship and socialcohesion at risk. A key consequence of this erosion ofcommitment will be that people may have fewer oppor-tunities to learn about people from other backgroundsand cultures. Technology-driven customization pushesus further into separate ‘cultural zones’ (Brooks 2004)where similar-minded people cluster together. Thismove towards self-segregation can reinforce localprejudices and make the goals for which Jefferson andMann worked more distant.

Commercialization

Education has long been seen as a path to economicadvancement. In recent years, however, the expecta-tions of the education system have come to focus moreon education as the engine for international economicgrowth and competitiveness. Perception of economiccrisis is reflected in the growing disparity in incomebetween college-educated and non-college-educatedpeople (Murnane & Levy 1996). Hence, parents feelpressured to buy their children technology-based educa-



tional services, such as educational videos and games,computer-based resources, private schooling and spe-cialized tutoring, so that their children will have anadvantage. The gap between the ability of the haves andhave-nots to participate in these new markets will exac-erbate the educational inequalities that the publicschools have tried to mitigate.

Broader horizons

When people select their own education goals, they pickthings that interest them or that are career-oriented. Theemphasis on interest-driven educational products, ser-vices and goals can privilege vocational and profes-sional career paths, such as business, engineering andeducation, at the expense of traditional arts and humani-ties studies. However, a major goal of education is toexpand people’s horizons. Hence, there is the problemof parents steering children along narrow vocation-driven paths. This means that children may not beexposed to different views on issues and become moreparochial in their ideas.

More engagement

One potential gain is that education will be directedtowards what people want to learn and hence, moreengaging. For example, parents who school their chil-dren at home usually encourage them to pursue topicsthey are interested in. Furthermore, in distance and adulteducation, people choose courses they think will helptheir careers or that reflect their interests, and whenpeople purchase educational videos, games, or simula-tions, they choose things that are fun or exciting to them.So they are much more likely to be engaged in learningthan school children.

Customization

Information technologies allow for the customization oflearning environments to the needs of learners. Com-puter learning environments can facilitate creativeexpression, and can provide hints and support to stu-dents when they need help. Hence, computer environ-ments can adapt to the level of the student’s ability andcan provide the kinds of individualized learning envi-ronments that allow all students to succeed.

Less competition

Because schools expect common learning outcomes forall, a sense of failure overwhelms many students whocannot reach grade level expectations. Many studentscope by turning their energies to other activities, such assports, music, video games or other social activities. Aperception of failure often leads students to try as littleas possible in schools. Information technologies allowstudents to cultivate and pursue their own learninggoals. Facilitating intrinsic motivation may help stu-dents to access successful learning opportunities, andmay surmount the sense of failure that comes wheneveryone is supposed to learn the same thing at the sametime.

More responsibility

Parents who school their children at home try to instil asense of responsibility in the children themselves.However, it is not just home schooling that fostersresponsibility among learners. If people are learning atwork or at home using distance education, they areforced to take responsibility for their own learning.When the state took over responsibility for education,families and individuals ceded most of the responsibil-ity to the schools. Many school children seem to defythe schools to teach them anything. However, people arenot going to learn much unless they take responsibilityfor their own learning.

Transformed peer culture

Another potential benefit is the redistribution of theeffects of peer culture. Successful students oftenbelong to peer cultures that support school learninggoals. However, oppositional peer cultures emergewhen students collectively feel incapable of success inschool environments. These oppositional cultures typi-cally devalue school learning and make it difficult forstudents to associate learning with desirable life out-comes. Information technologies, particularly webcommunities, create spaces for students to participatein interest-based affinity groups. These groups canprovide opportunities for students to develop peergroups that reorient peer cultures around legitimatelearning goals.



Rethinking education

Our current learning systems are in flux. We will makethe policy and practical decisions in the upcoming yearsthat determine the degree to which our schools willembrace the potential of information technologies. Tobe effective in changing the education environmentrequires that the builders of the new education systemunderstand the imperatives of the technologies drivingthe changes in education. The seeds we describedcontain elements that may merge into a new system.This is the time we need another Horace Mann toprovide the vision for an educational system that canintegrate all the different elements that are developing.These elements do not form a coherent system, and fewpeople know how to avail themselves of the opportuni-ties that are out there.

Society should not assume that the only way toimprove education is to improve the schools. There areother questions we need to consider, such as: how canwe develop games to teach Mathematical reasoning?How can we make learning technology available tomore people? What tools can support people learning ontheir own? What kinds of computer-based learningenvironments support the learning of 21st centuryskills? What role will social networking play in profes-sional learning? These are all questions about improv-ing education outside of schools.

A possible education reform is to develop nationalcertifications that can be administered on a computer orby assessors at any school or learning centre. These cer-tifications would be much more narrowly focused than ahigh school diploma. People would apply for as many asthey like and can sit for them whenever they are ready.Certifications could be developed in three areas: aca-demic skills, generic skills and technical skills. In theacademic area, English competency might be assessedat the 3rd grade, 6th grade, 9th grade and 12th gradelevels of reading and writing. If people wanted to takecourses to prepare for the exams, they could, or if theywanted to study on their own, they could.

Certifications could trace a new path for rethinkinghigh schools. For example, teens might follow a numberof different paths. They might attend school, work,study at home to take certification exams or participatein some kind of youth organization. If they want to go tocollege, they might try to get all the certifications theyneed for college as soon as possible, and go off to

college at age 15 or 16. Others might work for a whileand come back to school to prepare for college. Peoplecould take courses whenever they are ready, at whateverage, paid for by the state. This would produce a mixed-age population in high school and college courses, filledwith people who chose to be there.

At the K-12 level, technology will continue to changewhat is important to learn in a variety of ways. There arenew literacies that are becoming important, such as cre-ating videos, animations and websites. Computers cancarry out all the algorithms taught through graduateschool, and yet, Mathematical reasoning is more impor-tant than ever. Teaching students to solve sophisticatedproblems with computers will be much more importantthan training them to execute algorithms that computerscan do for them. Memorizing information is becomingless important with the Web available, but people doneed to learn how to find information, recognize whenthey need more information and evaluate what theyfind.

At the post-secondary and professional learninglevel, many people will be training for multiple careers.They will need to develop skills that facilitate goingback and forth between learning and work. Ongoingprofessional learning could lead to a new class of per-sonal counselling networks to guide people to newlearning opportunities. If they leave work, these coun-selling networks could provide advice on other voca-tional opportunities. People will be going back and forthbetween learning and work throughout their lives andideally they should be able to consult the same counsel-lors as they make these transitions.

We argue that parents, citizens and policymakersneed to continue to push for a more expansive view ofeducation reform. We already have a vibrant, highlycharged discussion about the goals of education. Now,however, we need to push the discourse into addressinghow new technologies can help us reshape these institu-tions that we have come to rely upon. We need ourschool leaders and teachers to understand how learningtechnologies work and how they change the basic inter-actions of teachers and learners. Our technology leadersneed to work together with educators, not as missionar-ies bearing magical gifts, but as collaborators in creat-ing new opportunities to learn. It will take a concertedeffort to bring about such a radical change in thinking. Ifa broader view develops in society, leaders will emergewho can bring about the political changes necessary to



remake our schools in light of the new technologicalrevolution.

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