Curriculum 21: Or how you should stop worrying and learn to love technological innovation in education.

Heidi Hayes Jacobs

I was inspired by a Christmas present to myself, Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World by Heidi Hayes Jacobs.  I ran across the title while doing some shopping on Amazon and found her ideas and writing style instantly engrossing.  Her work with curriculum innovation and the Common Core State Standards is doing a lot to bring the United States’ education system out of the 1800’s and into the 2000’s.  A particularly enjoy how she has declared war on the #2 pencil.

The principal of our local K-8 worked with our state Representative to secure a grant which funded Apple iTouches for every student from the 2nd grade up.  The iTouch's were loaded with educational content organized and synchronized by their classroom teachers, they have been allowed to use them at school, and even take them home, effectively stretching the school day into the evening by sometimes several hours.  This grant and the technology itself was considered very controversial by many who saw "gadgets" replacing "traditional" book learning.

I have heard a lot about “traditional” skills and knowledge but since the threat of the end of the Mayan calendar has now passed, I’m hoping that more people will embrace the idea that our children’s future is uncertain.  I’m hoping that they will stop doing them a disservice by hobbling them, ensuring that they will be unable to compete in the Global Market with some kid in India who lives in a cardboard box but knows how to create a podcast.  Tony Wagner’s The GlobalAchievement Gap does a fair job of explaining how our faith in The Three “R’s” is rendering us obsolete.

I would like to make it very plain that my audience here is not a community of educators.  They’ve heard all of this.  My audience here is parents.  Mom and Dad, Auntie, Uncle, Grandma, Grandpa, Foster whatever…  Whoever out there who is responsible for feeding and clothing a child is also responsible for educating them.

With the slow but inevitable adoption of the Common Core State Standards in Alaska, it is easier than ever for parents to understand the Standards that their children are being held to.  Heck!  There's even an app for it!  Parents can also explore ways to integrate technology and skills into their home life by exploring the intersection of Common Core and Curriculum 21.

What are the schools for, you ask?  The schools are there to do what YOU tell them to do.  Look around at successful schools and school districts.  They are filled with children whose parents that are the squeaky wheels.  The “helicopter parents” who advocate, oversee, and, basically, make the lives of the principals, superintendents, and school board members a living hell if the educational needs of their children are not met.

I am the best/worst sort of "helicopter parent."

While an overabundance of "screen time" can certainly do a child a disservice in some ways, engaging with the myriad of enriching handheld and online apps is far more beneficial for a child than "traditional" paper and pencil worksheets and textbooks.  At one point, textbooks were innovative educational technology and they are still very often a subject of controversy.  Even writing was, at one point, considered a hindrance to authentic learning!  By none other than the great-grandfather of education, Socrates, himself!

Socrates felt that writing ruined a student's ability to memorize information.  Because students could look things up they had access to a lot of information without really knowing anything.  Sound familiar?