How do we restructure or reconceptualize public secondary schooling so that it is as effective as possible in the year 2025? The idea of the local brick and mortar public high school is going to change dramatically in the decade. While the structure(s) will remain and be used during that time frame the students who attend “classes” at that location can and will be spread more distantly than any time that I can recall. Technology improvements and eventual cost reductions are going to make it possible for distant school districts to be linked to afford all students a varied and challenging curriculum regardless of where they are located.
Accompanying the technological advancements will be changes in the curriculum itself. There will be a movement away from standards based education to afford deeper and therefore more meaningful exploration of educational material. Not all standards shall be cast aside rather the overarching standards developed and published by INTASC and NCSS will supplant the individual lesson standards that are en vogue on the state and local levels in our country.
Locked in step with the change in curriculum and structure teacher pedagogy will also adapt to the new educational environment. Teachers will be more flexible and accepting of new technology because they will come to understand that standing in front of a class showing overheads is no longer effective. Along with the acceptance of technology teachers will also (have to) be much more culturally sensitive because of changing demographics in most of the nations school districts. These changes are influenced by family planning and immigration and will shape how teachers work with students and their nuclear families to create a challenging and successful classroom environment.
The move away from strict standards based education is going to be both good and bad in the short term. From a positive standpoint, teachers are going to be able to design lessons that deal with important facts, trends, events, etc. more deeply allowing students the freedom to explore subject matter instead of grazing the surface to meet arbitrary testing guidelines. The negative side to that change is that instructors are going to be required to do more planning as an individual and as a cohort to cover the material effectively and to vary assessment methods. That being said the long-term advantage far outweigh the negatives.
Again technology is the catalyst for moving away from standards based education. The fact that most handheld devices (cellphones, Ipods, netbook computers, etc.) can provide just about any “historical fact” via wireless wi-fi/wimax networks almost instantaneously; the need for strict recall of facts and figures is marginalized. Rather the skills required to interpret those facts and figures as well as working with team members with differing skills and abilities to complete assignments and projects are going to be much more valuable. The ability to work effectively with partners and groups will be valued by higher education as well as future employers regardless of where they reside on the globe.
Instructional changes away from the lecture based, fill-in-the-blank worksheet note taking will also be a positive change in the classroom. As instructors and instructional teams across discipline areas build the new curriculum those brain numbing worksheets will be cast aside in favor of student constructed knowledge. Teachers will provide baseline knowledge and instruction allowing student partners/teams to work together to build their understanding of a subject/problem working to build not only a consensus but also become subject matter experts that they will in turn teach to their fellow students. This project based, multidiscipline instruction model will equip and prepare the students of 2025 to excel not only in higher education but also in the real world corporate or public work sectors.
Building this “new” school of the future is going to require vast amounts of resources not typically found in a traditional secondary level textbook. Technology, there is that word again, is going to provide a bridge or is it a barge of data and information for students and instructors to use and consume. Tablet style PCs’ or netbooks will become cost effective means to provide multiple textbooks and data for use in the classroom. Partnering with the portable computer is a wired classroom/community which allows for multiple options to provide classroom instruction but also student work product submission and presentation. The use of blogs, wikis, RSS, webcasting/webcamming and other web based applications will allow students to work almost anywhere at any time.
This change should sound familiar to many in the corporate world as many companies and local governments have embraced telecommuting for their workers over the past decade. Similarly, as technology and networking via wi-fi/wimax become more affordable to schools and communities students will have the freedom to work at their own pace while meeting individual and team deadlines (sound familiar corporate world) just like their adult counterparts.
The object in reconceptualizing secondary education (both public and private) is to create students who are prepared to meet the challenges of their current and future environments. The changes and their associated benefits listed above are only a small glimpse of the potential improvements that can and will be made in our educational systems. Each of the points made above point to educators and educational systems that are flexible enough to meet changing environments and times but also to meet the needs of their student body and community which is what they are there for in the first place.
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