Disrupting Class

Questions for "Disrupting Class"

1.  Explain the difference between interdependence and modularity.   How is education currently organized?

Interdependent is standardized and monolithic.  You get it or you don’t.  Modularity is about the experience and giving responsibility to the students.  The school struggles to teach differently because they follow an interdependent design.  Teaching monolithically is the more simple way to blanket over material in one strategy.  Unfortunately it does not cater to all students’ needs and styles of learning.  Thus in the system, many students do not have access to their learning potential because they do not learn how to conform to this blanket form of teaching.  Then there is modularity teaching.  This style presents different learning intelligences giving different students access to the material.  This form removes responsibility from the teacher and places more of it on the students.  It is based more off of the experience and process than the end result. 

2.  Explain the disruptive innovation theory.  What does this have to do with schools? 

The market must be modified to reach those who are non-consumers to survive.  Disruption is when non-consumers enter the market.  This disruption is not a break through improvement but reaching out to those who previously did not consume.  The shift to online courses is a disruption to the school market in which it provides students a different form of learning.  Those students who were non-consumers in Arabic or Mandarin because the school did not have the means to support a teacher, now have the option to take the class through online learning.  This online learning is disruptive in offering new courses to students who were previously non-consumers.  New disruptions need to be implemented into the school system.  There are too many students who can be considered non-consumers to the traditional form of teaching because they are not benefiting from the traditional teaching style.  To disrupt the pattern of traditional teaching we could potentially reach out to those students and create more consumers in public education.  

3. Why doesn’t cramming computer in schools work?  Explain this in terms of the lessons from Rachmanioff (what does it mean to complete against non-consumption?)

Loading a room with computers that are going to collect dust and never be used in the back of the classroom is not going to improve student’s teaching.  It is how the teachers are going to implement the computers in the classroom that is going to make a more effective classroom.  Teachers need to be able to utilize them in effective ways, to use them to implement student centered learning.

In the past if someone wanted to listen to music, they had to go to a music venue.  Then RCA created a way to bring music home to non-consumers creating a new market.  As a result this new form of produce dominated the industry and became much more effective and convenient for music listeners.  Music venues still exist, but RCA created a new dominance.  The same needs to happen for computers to work in schools.  In the preliminary stages of introducing computers right now, they are not creating a flip like RCA created.  Once computers have become more effective and “user friendly” to the classroom environment, they will have the same effect as RCA has on music.  It is just a matter of time till computers are able to reach students who are not benefiting from traditional teaching.    

4.  Explain the pattern of disruption.

The start off is always slow, and then increases dramatically until it reaches a ceiling of 100%.  To gain more consumers from non-consumers always has a little bit of a slow starting point.  Once this foundation starting point is finished you can see the S curve begin to form when more non-consumers are becoming consumers at a rapid rate.  Once the growth has leveled out, and new competitors enter the market the curve begins to flatten out creating the last loop of the “S”. 

5. Explain the trap of monolithic instruction.  How does student-centric learning help this problem?

Monolithic is teaching is not teaching to multiple intelligences.  It means that there is only one teacher to a diverse group of students that receives one teaching strategy from the teacher.  Student centered approach is taking different learning intelligences into account and creating an individualized approach to learning.  Students receive education in this form more as individuals.  The difficulty that arises with this approach is that it becomes much more difficult to accomplish with growing class sizes.  Take for example by class, I have 62 students each period all with different backgrounds and learning styles.  With a class this large it is extremely difficult to cater to a student centered learning style, but can be done with precise planning multiple intelligences can be presented.

6. Explain public education’s commercial system.  What does it mean to say it is a value-chain business?  How does this affect student-centric learning? 

The way we approach learning and school procedures is very linear and systematic.  The way students are lined up constantly, organized, shuffled, and directed to do tasks is very systematic.  They begin in kindergarten, and systematically reach standards for each year until they hit the finish product of graduation from high school.  This system’s term in the market world is a value adding process (VAP), when a product is added or modified on an assembly line and then graduated to be consumed by consumers.  This student/product is upgrade while moving through the system with a “value-chain” number attached, known as a GPA.  The value of the student’s school ability is the GPA, and the value chain of the school system.  All learning in traditional teaching is based off the GPA in terms of value and thus affects learning on a huge level.  Students are thought of as product with a value number.  If a student it just a product they are not seen as an individual with different needs, but another student with the same defect as the last and the same approach to improvement is taken.  By adding on this value marker we degrade the process of learning enrichment.  We lose the true reasoning of education in a society.