A facility, a curriculum, and a faculty.

No, that’s not really my answer. It comes from the movie Accepted. Bet you thought I exhausted that thread of conversation, eh?

This comedy culminates with Justin Long going before the Ohio state Board of Education pleading his case for his made-up college to receive accredited status. When asked to state his case, the chairman of the panel stated that in order to be accredited the university must have “a facility, a curriculum, and a faculty.”

What followed was a comedic attack on the traditional conception of a school or university.

First, the school was derided for not having an athletic facility (just think how much that’s helped Rutgers), a library (even though they’re outdated), and a bookstore (Amazon > eFollett). Perhaps the only legitimate facility concern was the lack of a clinic. I can see how having one would be advantageous, but it would also be understandable for a small school to overlap with area hospitals and clinics.

Then, the curriculum was ridiculed. The classes were all created by the students, based around things that they wanted to study – art, cooking, rock and roll, engineering, etc. Some of it may have been ridiculous and out there (it is a comedy, after all), but it was the idea being ridiculed – that students should be able to create the course catalog.

Finally, they were asked about the faculty. The entire student population rose, and the justification given was that the students were also the faculty. Novel concept, eh?

An Absurd Example of Network Learning

The reason this stuck with me is that recently I’ve seen a lot of posts cropping up about networked learning. In my RSS feeds, I caught a quick post by Will at Weblogg-ed about what network learning looks like in the abstract along with a video shared by Steve at Teach42 that explains network learning in the K-12 context (great video, btw, go check it out).

South Harmon Institute of Technology in Accepted is not a perfect example of network learning. It does, however, embody in an absurd way some of the aspects of network learning and it highlights where the greatest challenges are going to lie.

The three things that were used to define a university in the movie are all radically altered if you begin to consider network learning.

Facility. The typical classroom is just not suited for network learning. Desks can be arranged to facilitate intra-class discussion, but if there aren’t enough computers to allow access to the internet then you’ve failed before you started.

The focus would no longer be on desks, books, paper, copies, etc. 

• Books would need to be replaced by computers – and we’d have to start thinking about access to computers and information at home. If you taught from the textbook, would you expect a kid to do well if he had no book at home?
• Desks would be replaced by tables, computer lab style.
• Internet access would have to be improved – in my building its super-sluggish during the day when it’s split between so many classrooms. I can only imagine what it would be like if the majority of the school was accessing something simultaneously.

This would be a radical change, and one requiring some serious dollarage, but I think it’s the easiest thing for people to re-conceptualize. I think we’re slowly moving towards this anyway – although administrators expect the computers to co-exist with paper books. It would be easy enough to jump off the cliff and go all digital.

Curriculum. This, I think, is the biggest problem. Network learning strikes me as a pretty constructivist way to go. As such, you can’t impose a standardized curriculum on a student.

Sure, you can set some parameters and guidelines, but I think this would be more along the lines of a handful of standards than the hundreds of strands in the NJCCCS for Social Studies. Like in Accepted, students are being given a stake in what they are learning. Administrators like this as a buzz-word, but when push comes to shove I think state and district administrators will stand against it.

A lot of time, money, and political muscle have been invested in creating standard standards like the NJCCCS. I don’t see how they can continue to exist in a meaningful way if education transitions to a network learning approach. You’ve got to dump standards based curricula out the window, provide students with an open roadmap, and let them draw in their own curricula.

On a side note, I’m now curious how many strands there are in the NJCCCS for Social Studies. I think I’ll count that up over the weekend, and then laugh at the idea that we can accomplish that with 3 years of Social Studies courses. My bet is that you’ve got at most 2 to 3 days per strand, spread out over the three years.

Faculty. There’s certainly a role for faculty in network learning, but it’s not your traditional role. Teachers would really need to be facilitators – instead of people just talking about it.

A lot would change for teachers and the way they’re viewed by administrators.

What about lesson plans? If students are driving their own learning on a daily basis, am I still required to fill out some silly form about what we may or may not do in class that day?

Can we function in this manner with current class sizes?  I’ve got one small class of 13, and it’s pretty easy to get them working independently on their own projects. I can go around and provide help as needed, and there are few enough students that no one is ignored for long. For my other class, double that to 26 students, count 13 of them as mainstreamed with a mix of behavioral and learning disabilities, and this doesn’t work so well.  There are 26 students starved for one-on-one attention and two classroom teachers to provide it. Good luck.

What if teachers don’t know technology? This could be solved through professional development (if it’s effective). But something else to look at is teacher education programs (and non traditional programs, like New Jersey’s alternate route). At the Rutgers GSE, I was only required to take one course that related to technology, and my content area classes included very little about technology. I’d bet that the vast majority of teachers in the classroom are unprepared for this role, and we aren’t doing a good job of creating new teachers that are.

How Do We Break the Mold?

It all comes down to the fact that education has rarely functioned this way in the United States, and there will be resistance to changing in this direction. There are very real logistical problems (are our facilities and faculty prepared for this?) and there will certainly be political opposition to any effort to dismantle our weighty state standards.

I don’t see any likelihood of a radical change like this seeping its way into my bureacratized, politicized district. Nor would I expect other large urban districts to be able or willing to make such a drastic change.

I’d look two places for this type of change.

Small, wealthy suburban districts might have a shot. They’ll have the per capita spending to outfit the facilities, the students will have access to technology at home, and a small district might be able to effectively mentor its teachers through professional development (or selectively hire those with the necessary skills).

The alternative is charter schools. They’re small enough and can selectively choose teachers that fit their new mold. They’re also free from some of the constraints and political oversight that prevent public schools in general from being innovative. It’s assumed that charter schools are going to take drastic measures to alter the course of education – so it’s more acceptable.

Maybe enough success stories will crop up that network learning will catch on. In the short term, I doubt it. If anything, it’ll become another buzz word, administrative teams will push it down the pike, and they’ll concoct something that they call “network learning” but is entirely disocciated from the actual ideal.