Comments on The Fischbowl: A Low-Fidelity Education?

A traditional classroom is already often very low ...

2009-10-07T08:59:43.169-06:00

A traditional classroom is already often very low fidelity. A traditional school is too. How would you do K-12 simpler and cheaper than we do now? Adding online courses is an enhancement, a sustaining innovation, unless you can substantially cut costs elsewhere.

Where are you going to do that? Fire the teachers and hire temp replacements without college diplomas? Put one teacher in a room with fifty kids and computers? Let the kids stay at home?

Well, maybe. But unless you're doing that, hybrid coursework is higher fi. The premise is that it is more expensive (but a good value) and better. Which is fine, but this whole "lo-fi" frame is pointless then.

OTOH, the situation for post-secondary is completely different.

This was such a great read! I am a pre-service tea...

2009-09-23T19:49:11.290-06:00

This was such a great read! I am a pre-service teacher working on a Master's in Social Studies education and I really can't wrap my mind around this discussion. My classes are filled with new methods and strategies to "change" the system and while I do believe that if implemented correctly, they could be valuable, some of my colleagues are determined to just "teach how they were taught." Although it would be unfair to say all of my classmates subscribe to this train of thought, many of them, like myself, are overwhelmed by the workload we've been warned about and are trying to figure out a way to “just get through it”. For education to be as high quality as we would hope it to be, the world would have to be perfect. Online education partnered with the conventional classroom is a great alternative to the one size fits all method, but I also see education moving in the faster, more accessible, online route.

I think that one of the issues that we have is the...

2009-09-13T13:32:02.720-06:00

I think that one of the issues that we have is the fact that education takes an either/or perspective. There are many different programs that are put into place in schools but the model itself has stayed the same in most cases. We still work the way we have traditionally worked regardless of the programs that are introduced to the system.

I know that in my district one of our issues is that we have two very distinct firewalls. There is the firewall that has been put into place to protect students from outside content, but there is another firewall that has been put into place to safeguard the system from the world at large as well. I can't help but think that the use of the second type of firewall is what will lead many students away from the current educational system.

We can't afford to be an either/or kind of system. We need to provide high quality experiences for our students but we need to ensure that those experiences are of high quality. Right now we are not focused well enough to provide high quality experiences because we are spread too thin with too many programs. In that sense, the online classes that students can take as an alternative become more appealing because the quality of the face-to-face interaction is not as good as it would be if the teachers were able to just be teachers. This isn't the case in the schools I have worked in. The teachers are the coaches, RTI/PBS representatives, student activity sponsors, technology committee members, goal team leaders, etc. At the end of the day when you pile on the grading, the lack of professional development during school time, the actual lives that teachers lead outside of school with their families, and the multitude of roles listed above...in my mind you are setting up a situation where classroom instruction is not as good as it used to be and, if trends remain the same, will degrade in quality as more work is dispersed to the few people willing to remain in that classroom environment.

Schools will remain a necessary and vital part of our society's youth, but we should be taking all of that information we have on brain research, multiple intelligences, and differentiated instruction to provide our students with the kinds of learning experiences that are the best fit for them instead of this one size fits all approach to learning that is leaving us in a situation where we have to ask the question, "A low fidelity education?"

@Karl Fish We have 600+ students and have limit...

2009-09-09T15:09:29.700-06:00

@Karl Fish

We have 600+ students and have limited our "alternative" school to 16 seats. It will grow!

@Wm Chamberlain - I think you're right, there is a...

2009-09-08T18:45:42.949-06:00

@Wm Chamberlain - I think you're right, there is a big part of school culture that sees value in what we do and how we do it - and they should to a certain extent. But I think we are often blind to two things: that sometimes (often?) we could do it better; and that our practice doesn't always reflect our ideals.

@Dave Meister - That is interesting. How many seats in the alternative? And how big is your school?

The change will happen rapidly. Once alternatives...

2009-09-08T15:50:06.591-06:00

The change will happen rapidly. Once alternatives are viable and mainstream, we will wonder why we stayed with this model so long. Homeschooling has demonstrated the fact that the alternative to traditional education is viable and can be of high quality! We opened an "alternative school" within our school this year with a different time schedule (begins at 11:30 and ends at 5:30) where most of the basic academic curriculum is delivered online. The available "seats" were filled in one day and the waiting list is double what we have enrolled ......hmmmmmm! Thanks for the interesting read Karl!

This reminds me of a unit of study being done by a...

2009-09-08T15:05:16.654-06:00

This reminds me of a unit of study being done by a former colleague on the Maori. He is having his students research why and how their culture and customs seem to have remained virtually intact despite the changes to their environment. While I am not sure of the absolute answer, I suspect it is something along the lines of the Maori see value in what they do and how they do it.

This makes me wonder if the same isn't true of our school culture today. Perhaps it doesn't change despite outside pressures because people in the culture see value in what they do and how they do it? Do we need to rethink the way we address change because of this?