There’s no question that health care, and specifically health care reform, is a top domestic issue our nation faces today. With so many people without health care, and many of those with health care coverage largely unhappy with the system, change is desperately needed. Despite this, the debate on health care is overshadowing another area in bad need of an overhaul, and one which is critical to our future: education.
Despite the numerous technological advances at our disposal, education continues to lag behind in adoption of these technologies. With increasingly compressed budgets, the public education system is overwhelmed: fewer educators are teaching a larger number of students, and the quality of a student’s curriculum is suffering as a consequence. Moreover, the Federal government’s No Child Left Behind policy has favored math and reading over everything else, and conditioned school districts around the country to “teach to test” rather than to focus on fundamentally learning the material or delving into other equally important topics such as social sciences, art, history and geography. The private education system has generally been shown to provide a more diverse and advanced curriculum that challenges students based on their individual achievement levels. But not everyone can afford private schools, and not all children are suited for the private school system. Any improvements in the public education system requires changed thinking on how our children are educated. Linear spending logic (if I have more money, I can hire more educators and educate more students) is quickly becoming a legacy strategy. Even in good times, government budgets will continue to be compressed, with public debt increasing and avenues for taxation getting close to exhaustion. The question is how do we increase the quality of education to our children while accepting this new financial reality? The answer is embracing technology, not in a gradual sense but in a way that is revolutionary to what we know today.
The traditional learning boundaries of a physical classroom have already been transcended. The Internet provides a wealth of resources to learn and practice any subject material. Online resources such as Wikipedia and Math.com as well as online education systems like the Stanford Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY) are redefining how students can learn. Moreover, it is freeing them to learn at their own pace, as opposed to the artificially prescribed rate of a physical classroom. The effectiveness of having students learn at their own pace has been highlighted in several studies as well as in John Holt’s classic book How Children Learn. Textbooks and printed materials are becoming quickly outdated, whereas Internet-based materials can be updated in real time, giving students real-time access to the latest information whenever they want it. One can argue that the classroom altogether is already becoming a thing of the past. Take, for instance, the growing presence of online state-accredited schools such as the California Virtual Academies (CAVA) negate the need for a physical classroom, and allow students to participate and learn virtually. This trend has been largely organic thus far, catering to a niche group of parents and students who are open to alternative forms of learning and knowledge acquisition. Given the major advances in technologies at our disposal, it isn’t a stretch to transform this into a mainstream phenomenon. To do this will require the combination of two driving forces of change:
- A definitive push from state education authorities towards virtual learning;
- A pull from parents and educators to make the education system more accessible and available.
State education authorities have a vested interest in pushing a virtual academic agenda: it is the only solution that will resolve the combined challenges of continued cost cutting while providing a quality education. Parents and educators will benefit from greater flexibility and a wealth of options on how to educate children which were not previously available. This does not preclude the use of a physical classroom to achieve these goals, but a change in the way these classrooms are used will drive efficiencies in learning and knowledge acquisition. Video communications have evolved extensively over the past few years and the immersive video experience is now a reality. Telepresence, which enables high definition life-sized video communications amongst multiple remote entities, provides a suitable alternative to travel or the need for participants to be in the same location. Educators no longer need to be where the students are, and can reach a much larger groups of students as a result. These students can be interconnected in ways that were previously not possible: within a given school district or across state and even international boundaries. A classroom in San Jose could be linked with classrooms in Uganda and Japan to create a virtualized learning environment where students can interact and learn about each others’ culture and language … and even foster new friendships. The cost of high definition video solutions has been prohibitive in the past, but companies such as Polycom and Lifesize are driving down the cost and putting these systems within the reach of school budgets. The money saved in reorganizing the classrooms,
Virtualization can also extend well beyond the classroom walls. With the commoditization and availability of high-speed bandwidth in the US, along with the availability of affordable and interoperable video solutions, students can now connect with other students and educators from their homes or from other locations away from the traditional classroom. Beyond the obvious social implications, and the enriched learning that comes with breaking down physical boundaries, classroom virtualization ultimately addresses the cost issue by allowing a smaller group of educators address a much larger student population efficiently and effectively.
Another trend driving virtualization, and alluded to earlier in this post, is the presence of online material. The Internet is a truly global and accessible network, allowing pretty much anything to be available online. Material previously confined to textbooks and other written education materials are now instantly accessible. This has a number of advantages:
- The information is easily available to anywhere and on any Internet-capable device ;
- The information is not bound by geographic location, so it can be viewed anytime and anywhere ;
- The information can be contributed to and enhanced by a larger community of educators and experts, as well as benefit from feedback from the students who use the material, all contributing to improving the quality of the online content ; effectively crowdsourcing.
Presence and accessibility of online resources address another issue. Textbook providers have long been criticized for their practical monopoly and high prices. A growing number of student organizations and advocacy groups are actively challenging the textbook “racket”, and some have come together to form alliances such as Make Textbooks Cheaper in an effort to bring more affordable textbooks to all students. There are also initiatives underway to bring textbooks online. Flatworld Knowledge, for example, promises “remixable textbooks by expert authors”, offeirng books that can be viewed online as well as ordered in print. It is clear that sites like this one are relatively new and in need of content, an addressable challenge in the crowdsourcing model. Over time, more and more textbook materials could be made available online, which would make them affordable, updatable, searchable and even printable. This is not to say that all textbooks should be free. Structured learning content has value, value worth paying for. But in the place of scarcity and a selling model based on monopolistic practices emerges a business model whereby the authors and their contributors can contribute and get compensated, while setting price based on supply and demand. This gives the students and educators choices in terms of what textbooks should be used.
With the different elements of education virtualization in place, educators, school administrators and parents now have more options. Educators can now reach a much larger student population and povide a focused curriculum virtually to larger groups not physically co-located. What’s more, educators now have the option of offering enhanced curriculum materials or even semi-private and private tutoring to students for a fee. Virtualization opens up a markrketplace for educators to offer their services and for students to pick the extra learning services they need. For school administrators and school districts, the removal of physical barriers means that more students can be added cost-effectively to the school roster without having to actually be in the school and burdening infrastructure. And because educators can now address a much larger student population, less educators are needed, this further saving costs. This may at first sound bad for the educators themselves, but if we consider the open marketplace classroom virtualization creates, many educators now have the opportunity to specialize and offer paid differentiated services to students. All of this can only contribute to a better education that reaches more students and in a manner that is cost effective.
All of this cannot simply be relegated to wishful thinking. The technology exists today, and the return on investment that justifies the transition to a virtualized classroom environment is demonstrable. The key is mustering the willingness to take the steps needed to put this change in motion. This will only happen when educators, parents, students and the school administration band together and commit to making this a reality.
