A Good Day & More Than a Little Disruption

This picture has nothing to do with the conference, except that it is in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency, and it is absolutely mesmerizing.

I may have admitted to my readers before, the apprehension I was felling about keynoting the Central States Conference for the Teaching of Foreign Languages.  No need.  What a hospitable group of people, and a much larger turnout than I had expected.  My message on a flattening world, flattening information landscape, and flattening classrooms seemed to resonate quite well with them, and they were so very welcoming to this mono-lingual lug.  I also did sessions on blogging and podcasting, merely leading up to Apple gal Janet Hills much richer presentation on podcasting.  She’s a real geekster gadgeteer who puts on a very impressive show.  I did leave her envying me and my new Logitech wireless remote — with volume control. 😉 Later in the day, I sat in on Tom Welch’s presentation, Language Learning in a Flat World.  Welsh is a consultant from Kentucky and is doing a lot of work on 21st century skills, and doing some work in my own state.  He use to be a French teacher, so he definitely knew the lingo and the buttons.  Welsh started off with Karl Fisch’s Did You Know? video and then talked about how KFCs in China are out selling Mcdonalds.  The reason?  KFC has adapted their menu to appeal to the Chinese pallet.  I heard exactly the same thing in New Zealand, that KFC stores  have an architecture that is designed to appeal to the Maori and other Polynesian cultures.  This is also being blamed for increased obesity among Maoris. Welch also predicts a coming tsunami in education.  He attributes it to three already established and emerging factors:

1. The identification of standards (an agreement on the “product”)
2. The use of common end of course assessments (quality guarantee)
3. Technology (oportunities for learning 24/7/7 – on demand learning)

Because of my well published predisposition against standards-based education and high-stakes testing, and any emphasis on technology (for technology’s sake), I almost disregarded this list altogether and and quite nearly deleted it right after I typed it into my notes.  However, I continued to listen. As it seems, there is one more factor, that when stirred into this cauldron, could quite easily transform this concoction into something apocalypticly disruptive to the business of education.  Simply erase the Carnegie Unit, the unit of measure for American education, and kaboom. I didn’t get this at first, but as Tom continued to talk, it suddenly rushed over me like a fever.  When a principal is confronted with a group of students who need to learn organic chemistry, and she are thinking of the situation in terms of standards of knowledge and skill to be attained to a specific measurable degree, then the answer is not necessarily an automatic, “I need to find a chemistry teacher.”  The answer is, how am I going to cause that learning to take place, and her options extend well beyond just hiring a teacher.  I’m not jumping up and down with joy over this.  I haven’t rolled the stone around enough.  I suspect that I am going to have mixed feelings.  But I must admit that on of the products that I was especially interested in, in the exhibitor’s hall, was a service where you can hire a teacher in Peru to teach you Spanish via the Internet for $15 an hour. It’s got me scratching my head!