The Google-fication of education

I found this passage from an article on the booming business of on line learning really interesting --

"If a kid goes home and studies for three or four hours, that kid produces high stakes data. Right now, we just lose it all," says Jose Ferreira, Knewton's CEO and a veteran executive from test-prep behemoth Kaplan. "If you do your homework online, we can capture 100,000, 200,000 data points. And then we can create a personal textbook for you based on your weaknesses."

Now that's pretty cool. I've been saying for a long time that there is a needed change in 21st education: school has to become more of a process and less of a place.

I know traditionalists will scoff at this and declare, "students still need to go to school."

Maybe. Maybe not.

Think of how we all learn. When I was learning and researching how to build my patio a couple years ago, there was no one central location I went to in order to learn.

I went to Lowe's for the supplies and bought a book there. But I also went on-line to see tutorials and advice.

I talked to several people, even inviting one over to give me immediately feedback and advice.

Then I just went ahead and did it. And basically taught myself.

You traditionalists, just ask yourself how often do we allow students to learn in school as I did in the patio example?

If it had been school, a teacher would have lectured 45 minutes a day for one week on building a patio. Students would have studied soil and composition. They would have studied water flow and other things that are important, but are delivered in a totally disengaging (and impractical way).