Future of Brick and Mortar School Debate

This is my account of what happened during the debate with some commentary at the end. Thought interesting points were made, but the one solid thing I did was subscribe to Gary Stager's blog!)

Tuesday started with a debate on the future of brick and mortar schools. Robert Siegel, moderator of All things Considered on NPR was the moderator. All attendees, numbering in the hundreds, were able to vote on a response system before and after the debate.
Michael Horn, author of Disrupting Class, was the first to speak against brick and mortar schools. He states that defining a school by its brick and mortar boundaries restricts what can be considered learning and are detrimental because it assumes that those in one school learn in the same way or have the same needs. Research shows this is not true. Bricks and mortar schools can’t provide the resources to motivate and teach all students. Online learning holds the potential to allow students with distinct needs to reach resources that can help them. And with research showing promise, online learning in its infancy makes this an exciting time. Socialization is limited to a small community, but with distance no longer an obstacle and communication and community expanded across the globe, restricting community to a neighborhood short-changes students. Students need to be able to communicate with and collaborate with those across the country and across the world.
Brad Jupp, senior advisor to US Department of Education, speaks for public schools, He states that our schools are not only necessary, based on the fact that we need to get together to “learn something”. Schools stand for a cause of bettering our students and therefore our communities. Of the 140,000 schools, many are run down and in need of help, but if we redouble our effort, and utilize great technology and know how, we can make them great again. Schools hold together our community, our clubs, our neighborhood organizations, and even a place to access technology for those who can’t get it elsewhere. Most of all, schools allow us to anchor our students in their effort, where they play school sports, where they work with great teachers, and where they meet with each other, working with each other where they can work together to come out greater than when they entered. We can’t leave schools behind and discard them before we’ve fully put forth an effort to utilize the benefits of it.
Dr. Gary Stager, (or catch his blog here) Executive Director of the Constructivist Consortium speaks against brick and mortar schools. The trouble is administration and we focused technology on No Child Left Behind, on datawarehouses and online testing, instead of utilizing technology to have students do real learning. Maybe physical schools should be for dance classes, orchestra classes and high tech learning labs. But these are the first things to get stripped away from public schools. Maybe online learning isn’t the answer either. Because many courses don’t allow for the type of communication and customized learning that is possible that should mirror the strengths of the best physical schools. (a lot got left out because he spoke so fast, but was incredibly well spoken.)
Cheryl Lemke, CEO, The Metiri Group spoke for physical schools. She stated that we aren’t for the “old way”, but are for 21st century learning and equal opportunities for all students. It’s not one or the other or all black and white. We hear of the success stories of online virtual learning, but what about the children who come from single parent households or homes where parents can’t provide all of the support that virtual learning requires. Students don’t come as self directed as they need to be to take advantage of virtual learning. Teachers in a physical school, in an evolving role, need to work with students to help with those things. Distance learning, by it’s very name, has distance between teacher and students that doesn’t benefit all. Instead, a hybrid model may be best where face-to-face as well as virtual is the best solution. Also, we need socialization because of the development of social capital so that our children have an investment in communities, to give back and be a part of the community, so students need to be a part of not only a global community, but also a local community. (most convincing arguments yet!)
Marshall Thompson, Senior at Walt Whitman High School, did a rebuttal against physical schools. He stated that we the problem is that we live to learn for eight hours a day in a physical school, but we need to set ourselves up as part of the international community. We have the capability to live on an international level. We don’t need a place to “get together” to learn something. Getting together on an online community allow us to get perspectives that don’t exist in a local community. Looking through a bricks and mortar lens hasn’t led us to update these schools, in fact we’ve dropped programs that are essential to learning, so staying with
Eric Bakke from West Springfield High School speaks for physical schools. He shares that while his school is not physically perfect and is a bit run down, as the summer winds down, he is excited for the beginning of the next school year, not only because of what he will learn, but because of where he will learn and who he will learn with. We have one need that we share in common, and that is to learn to work together. We learn that through coming together. The effort put forth by the teachers in contagious to students and helps us become the learners that they want us to be. They help us to take on the passions for the subjects, the arts, that they have in themselves. It is through those teachers that I have learned to love the subjects that I have a passion for today.
Gary Stager presents the summation against physical schools. He reinforced that all students don’t learn the same way. That we can give students access to a wider array of resources through online learning. There is a bankruptcy to our imaginations in what we expect of our teachers and of our students.
Cheryl Lemke argued that we need schools that are not our parents schools and not our schools but are our children’s schools. We need the community and the online community to work with students to offer them everything that they need. There is common ground no matter what side you’re on. Local and global connections can and need to coexist.

This followed with a question answer session, but I’m going to take some time to respond. I wish that I could have put more of Gary Stager’s speech. Although he ended up speaking against faulty thinking and not necessarily physical schools, what he said was thought provoking and forward thinking. It didn’t pull punches and stated some of the things that don’t make much sense when it comes to utilizing technology. For example, he stated that, as far as he can tell, there are just as many teachers that are forward thinking today as there were 25 years ago. Where does that get us? No further than we were 25 years ago for those teachers who are resistors to technology’s use in the classroom. Also, the large focus on interactive whiteboards seem to reinforce the focus on the front of the room instead of collaboration as we talk about. These were powerful statements to make in front of educators who believe in the strengths of technology in education and received a mixed reaction.
The ideas of a mixed model end up making the most sense to me, but I wonder about where the great models are for this. I’m sure they’re out there, but they aren’t put to the forefront and examined enough for my liking.

NECC-Anticipation

I'll be blogging from my iPhone during the National Educational Computing Conference. I'm eager to see how it goes.