A thought provoking entry. It leaves me thinking that the rush to digital, much like the swinging pendulum, is an “either, or” scenario.

Why not provide as many different modalities to students as possible? The ability to deliver, prescriptively, content and services that work for all students, starting with the the individual student’s need first, seems to be a more appropriate approach.

I believe there is research available that indicates online learning doesn’t have any more significant increase in areas, particularly early childhood literacy. What is needed, in my opinion, is a prescriptive approach that uses as many content delivery tools as possible, and empowers the teacher to customize the content and delivery to meet the individual needs of her/his students.

Just my two cents…

I think its important to distinguish between content and the context in which it is delivered. Slapping the same tired textbook content (not that any AEP member publishes such materials!) into digital form is obviously not what you or anyone else is excited about, especially students. But take a look at the textbook infrastructure – its built around the book as an object. Some schools seem to have the idea that you can just substitute ‘laptop computer’ for ‘printed book’ and you have ‘gone digital’.

The truth is, the consumer electronics you mention are slick, heavily designed systems that target consumers with all the skills the marketing gurus can muster. But think for a minute about the history of the personal computer – there were many badly designed, incompatible programs sold to consumers who put up with a lot of frustration just to type a letter or send an email 9and lets face it, there still are those programs!). People don’t really want ‘computers’ that can do many things badly, they want devices and services that work.

The education market is not nearly as nimble and consumer driven as the entertainment industry, and probably never will be. So there are going to be plenty of issues building a digital infrastructure for education that effectively exploits digital technology and the potential of the internet – 20 years will go by in a flash! The gadgets will change, but the basics wont.