Imagine innovations that allow students to gain credit for the process of learning what they personally love, and not just getting a better score on what they must learn.
I
t’s been written that if you grew up using something then you’ll never consider it “technology;” it’s just how life is. The fact that we can find an answer to almost every informational question on this device that fits in the palm of our hands blows
us away. However, our students aren’t that impressed. Certainly there have been transforming technologies over the
course of human history: the spring-wound clock, the printing press, the automobile. Yet we’re wondering if our current educa- tional fascination with computer technologies is truly worthy of the word “transformational.” It’s not that we don’t love our gadgets. We can’t imagine writing
this article without our computers and the Internet, which we are using to send drafts back and forth. We wouldn’t think of leaving home without our smart phones. It may be that the transformation we are most interested in really has little to do with technology, al- though it can certainly be assisted with it. We’re most interested in a transformation in what we think of as
a quality education. We don’t think technology is transformational if it is used only as a sustaining innovation of the current model of education. There is a difference between transforming and improv- ing education. The transformation we are interested in has more to do with
building the capacity for students to identify what they believe can be passed on to others. That’s different than improving on what we are
34 Leadership
already doing. Let’s not mix up transformation with improvement. We submit that the cornerstone difference between improv-
ing education and transforming it revolves around something that seems too often missing in today’s schools: a love of and passion for learning and what can be done with what one learns. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with improving our current educational model, but when one invokes the word transformative, one expects more than just improvement.
Valuing the desired curriculum We are improving the current educational model when innova-
tions are used to solely produce better results of the required and assessed content. We are transforming education when innovations are used to provide a depth of individualization of learning for the student that includes valuing not only the required curriculum (what the student must learn), but also the desired curriculum (what the student wants to learn). Imagine transforming innovations that open the door for stu-
dents to gain credit for the process of learning what they personally love, and not just getting a better score on what they must learn! Transformation in education has a kinship to the idea advanced
By Glen Warren and George Manthey
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