Week+1

One of the highlights of this weeks readings in our class has been the concept of innovation in education.

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Ambient Insight is a firm that specializes in research on the topics of internet, online experience end the like. A survey recently published by Ambient Insight and cited in many occasions by educational sources says that by 2014, 10.5 million PreK-12 students will attend classes online. It seems that this study is here to confirm what both theorists and innovators in technology were suspecting. Christiansen in his book predicted that by 2019 50 percent of all high school courses will be online—he even said that by 2014 we would have as many as one-fourth of the student population taking on-line courses. In spite of the learning model, students are drawn by new technologies. In the midst of drastic budget reductions, school organizations are looking into online learning as an answer to many of their predicaments. How to teach a small group of students from a rural high school an AP course only offered by the community college, seventy miles away? How to maximize the experience and effectiveness of the best teachers? How to solve a scheduling puzzle when an elementary campus only has 45minutes to feed 1200+ students? The interesting angle that emerges from this is that the private sector is very willing to invest money, talent and energy into online educatiuon at the moment. This is a bit of an exception in K-12 education -where every company, from publishers, to service providers and consulting firmas- are making just enough not to dissappear. I guess these signs of investment activity are positive ones. My invitation is to embrace online education and incorporate it into the daily educational menu, before companies and the government decide not to invest any more in what seems to be the biggest change in education since Guttenberg's invention.