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Someone who is no longer teaching, asked me the other day, “What are the chief current issues in education? What are the most controversial and nagging questions that we face?
I gave her a couple, but my perspective is unique. What do you think — in as few words as possible — are the greatest questions facing education in this digital age?
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How does our education system, which is notoriously slow to adopt new ideas, keep up with technology that changes daily?
To test or not to test… and why?
How do we prepare children for a collaborative world in a multiple choice education system?
What will we do when the “consumers” of public education (businesses, universities) decide that they can do without us?
Today’s biggest problem in education is resistance, not on the part of the students (they are moving into this new age quite nicely), but with our teachers who are scared out of their minds to lose control of the classroom. What they don’t realize is that they never had control, just the perception of it.
How do we engage students in curricula that appears useless to them? Many already write for real audiences and work in areas that are untouched by schools.
How can we prepare students for the world of tomorrow when the tools of today aren’t even available?
Current issues: networked learning, open learning, individualized learning
Controversial: How irrelevant have schools already become?
Nagging: Where is the lever? (More and more of us recognize the need for enormous change, but how will we get there?)
So much to do … so little time.
How to make undergrads, who are rejecting learning and have been well trained not to think or ask questions, understand and realize the importance of learning?
How do we prepare our students for a future we can scarcely imagine?
There is a crisis of relevance in many schools/systems today.
How are we preparing students for a globalized future?
Regurgitate or digest?
Leadership.
How will we ever reach students when we refuse to change ourselves? In the past we have always been able to keep up a little with emerging trends even though we did not embrace them, but now the gap is getting even wider and the students are moving on. School stays the same. We keep wondering what we are doing wrong but never look at changing anything.
How to revitalize schools, making teachers the key, but moving from a functionalist environment to a post modern environment. Pretty much all the questions 1 through 13 so far.
How do we change attitudes about extreme blocking of Internet sites, cell phones and other similar technologies that could revolutionize the way we work and learn?
Catering for the ever growing Gifted and Talented population in our schools. Thank goodnss for Web 2.0 as a start.
How long will it take before we redefine the role of the teacher? And what will that redefinition look like?
Issues: Disruptive Innovation (individualized instruction, personal learning plans), School Choice (charter schools, online courses, homeschooling, private schools, unschooling, etc.), Dropout Rates, Loosing our Gifted and Talented students to unchallenging pedagogy aimed at the middle.
Questions: How can we make changes that address these issues? Are school systems too burdened with tradition to address these challenging issues?
“Disruptive” it surely needs to be.
Helping teachers recognize the need to adapt their methods, and to support them while they change. Many teachers teach the way they always have, yet their current students have different needs than students from the past. Teachers need to step back and put the needs of the students before any insecurities of their own.
Combining the “standards-based, assessment for learning, differentiated instruction” movement with the need for more “21st century authentic learning” while simultaneously realizing the need to be “held accountable” by federal, state and local officials.
Access!!!
There is a large debate over school vouchers; should these vouchers be allowed to fund private schools, if so which ones – religious or non-religious? There are many solid points to the argument that support the funding of school vouchers, as well as, views that support the idea that school vouchers should not be able to fund any type of private school.
How do we provide technology and resources to our students during this time of significant budget cuts and financial concerns?
Laura,
It’s a good questions. But I keep wonder if we might find, with inexpensive netbooks and some rather interesting open content projects going one, that we can actually do digital education more cheaply than print (15th century technology).
— dave —
…using a 19th century classroom model in the 21st century.