Guest Commentary: Using Technology to Move Beyond Schools

For the past few weeks, a working group on the "Futures of School Reform," organized by the Harvard Graduate School of Education has posted essays on an Education Week blog.
The goal of the group is to "engage a wider audience in an 'urgent' conversation—one that it hopes can advance the national dialogue on improving public education for all children.
"Using Technology to Move Beyond Schools," was written by Richard F. Elmore,the Gregory Anrig professor of educational leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Elizabeth A. City, executive director of the doctor of education leadership program and lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Elmore and City write, "With rare exceptions, schools currently treat the digital revolution as if it never happened. Computers, more often than not, still sit in dedicated rooms, accessible only with adult supervision. Laptops, when they are used at all in classrooms, are frequently employed as electronic worksheets, digital typewriters, and presentation producers, rather than as extensions of students’ access to knowledge. When students do use technology to extend the reach of their learning, they typically do so by visiting predigested information sources and cutting and pasting information into predetermined, teacher-driven formats."
But, they continue, "When students step out the door of the institution called school today, they step into a learning environment that is organized in ways radically different from how it once was. It’s a world in which access to knowledge is relatively easy and seamless; in which one is free to follow a line of inquiry wherever it takes one, without the direction and control of someone called a teacher; and, in which, with a little practice, most people can quickly build a network of learners around just about any body of knowledge and interests, unconstrained by the limits of geography, institutions, and time zones."
Click here to read the complete post and the three possible school scenarios for the next generation of learners.