The November 2008 executive briefing features an interview with Ian Jukes, Ted McCain, Frank Kelly, authors of Teaching the Digital Generation – No More Cookie Cutter Schools (published by Corwin Press)

Here is an excerpt:

The industrial age schools were developed a full century ago, to bring industrial efficiency to high schools. They were created for mass instruction of relatively homogenous students. Lots of kids didn't go to high school and so disciplines were separated, times broken into equal increments, teachers taught the same material over and over each day. Kids moved from room-to-room, subject to subject-to-subject when the bells rang.

The same process is being used for a much more diverse mix of kids and the success rates in terms of graduation, college, and workforce readiness have been terrible. There are entire major urban districts where graduation rates of less than half the kids who start, end up being successful. …The potential for digital technology can't be realized within the confines of classrooms, mass group instruction, separate disciplines and such. …

We need to shift the focus that the industrial age schools had on content or knowledge skills and change it to higher order thinking skills. Ted McCain had a great idea in one of his previous books where he described himself as a highly educated useless person.

That is, he knew a bunch of stuff, but didn't know what to do with it and that really won't work for kids in the 21st century. We also need to embrace the new digital reality. The schools have been very slow to adopt that technology to teaching and learning, whereas the world around that has and we want to change that. …

Schools must offer more choice. Choice is a hallmark of the 21st Century. Everyone outside of education is leveraging the power of technology to provide people with unprecedented options for everything from the features on cars, to the color of appliances, to custom made clothing, to when and where and how information is accessed.

The world is moving very rapidly from a mass production approach to a mass customization approach. Consequently, students and parents will expect and demand that schools offer them the ability to customize their learning experience to match their needs and wants.

Plus much, much more…..

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