Education Next – Michael B. Horn
“In a New York Times op-ed a couple weeks ago, Susan Pinker, the author of The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter, showcased the evidence that too much technology can be a bad thing, particularly for the most vulnerable students in our society. She made some important points in the piece. But even as she acknowledged toward the end that technology has a role to play, she missed spotlighting how technology can help us redesign schools to allow students to achieve what appears most important in her mind: the chance for students to have far more meaningful face-to-face interactions with teachers and peers—a counterintuitive yet important part of blended learning’s promise for many students. In our research, we’ve long pointed out that merely cramming computers in schools or simply handing them out to students won’t produce the educational gains well-intentioned people desire when they start with technology. But we’ve also pointed out that without harnessing technology’s power, redesigning schools and classrooms to be able to personalize for each student’s distinct learning needs—critical to helping every child fulfill his or her potential—is a pipedream. The key, as with all revolutions powered by technology, though is to start with the redesign of the model itself, in this case the instructional model, and then use technology in purposeful ways to accomplish key goals and solve pressing problems.”(more)