By Bill Dunklau
Computer Technology Department Chair, Lakehill Preparatory School
Presuming that we have passed through the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions and are now in the Digital Revolution phase of the Information Age, it would appear that education is poised to become the major beneficiary of recent technological advances. Small changes afforded by microminiaturization include the computer lab, the rolling laptop cart, the 1:1 (ratio of computers to students) initiative, and the BYOD (bring your own device) initiative.
Further changes made possible by the World Wide Web include high-speed access to data and information, all but obsolescing the traditional way that research was done. Still, the changes to education from digital and wireless technologies have been more evolutionary than revolutionary. Blackboards gave way to greenboards in the ’50s and to whiteboards and even interactive whiteboards more recently, and the milled library card catalog is gone, but in terms of types of spaces, daily time structure, student movement, and teacher activities, don’t most classrooms look and operate pretty much the same as they have for 50-100 years?
But that could be changing. The organization of information into curricula and the widespread availability of such knowledge could have a revolutionary impact on education. It could dramatically reduce the cost of professional development, change the roles of knowledge mediators in and out of the classroom, and further accelerate the accumulation and transmission of knowledge and practical capabilities involving knowledge.
I say that because over the past ten years I have traveled to Duke, Roger Williams, Cal Poly Tech, University of Utah, Virginia Tech, Adelphi, Northeastern, Georgia Tech, and Brown for week-long computer science workshops. In contrast, I have just finished an online six-week certificate course from Georgia Tech and am now enrolled in six- to eight-week certificate courses from Berklee College of Music and from California Institute of the Arts. Did I mention that these three online courses were free of charge and available throughout the world, using material from textbooks that are being finalized as we complete the courses? I am putting some of this material into my curriculum for this semester, other material for next semester. When using these new materials, I am sharing lesson preparation and presentation duties with the professors who generated them. When mediating instruction with these new materials, I am exchanging some of my personal preparation, lecture, and demonstration time for individualized student attention, mentoring, and monitoring.
I would like to think we may be at the advent of “Ed 2.0,” in which the preK-12 system, in partnership with the post-secondary system, will produce and consume high quality materials of various types that students can access and re-access, use to increase and demonstrate proficiency, and that institutions can accept as a basis for awarding course credit.