Public education is about to rush into the 21st century - what will it look like?

K-12 education has been limping along for some time, strung up between two conflicting political viewpoints and hard up for the money required to create a meaningful and beneficial change to an aging system. As technological advancements are refined, schools will be able to offer new and affordable curricula that will change how, when and where students learn and teachers teach. Knewton, a specialist in adaptive learning technology, gives us an infographic explaining the "flipped classroom" including what it is, what it means, and how the change will impact the balance and function of work at home and in the classroom. I can't (yet) use Knewton's embed option in this system, so I'm including a smaller copy of the infographic below. You can access the full sized infographic on their website. I'll pick up the article after the infographic as I feel it is very important to understand before we continue.Click to move past the infographic My Background with the Flipped ClassroomYou should understand the flipped classroom isn't a new idea. Teachers, professors and workshoppers have been using this method for some time. I first encountered it in graduate school back in 1996. I first supported the method around 2002 for Darrel Walden, a professor I worked with at the University of Richmond, who was using a new webcam to record and post his lectures online, reserving classroom time to engage students and he felt it was very popular and provided great value to his students. Sadly, there were also members of campus who didn't like the idea - some of them in the academic technology services unit where I worked.A few years later, I was tasked with teaching groups of 20-35 (depending on the year) administrative assistants to use Microsoft Excel. Finding they were struggling to get the "homework" done outside of the eight hours of training time, I used the university's account with Virtual Training Company to select specific videos each of my workshop attendees should watch before each class session - which was then turned into a hands-on learning time in which they completed tasks using the software while I moved around the room and helped them work through problems or answered questions on the instructor computer. It worked very well and proved the value of a new way of looking at how we present our lectures/instruction. When I instructed an advanced seminar on instructional technology for K-12 teachers in 2005, I introduced the concept as part of the course - though it wasn't called flipped classroom at the time.In 2009, I moved to a new role at the University of Toronto Scarborough, where the specialist in the office next to mine was running the WebOption - an opt-in service for faculty who wanted to put their lectures online and provide the choice to students on whether they attended a lecture in person or watched it online or, for many, did both. Demand for these courses skyrocketed and were proving both popular and beneficial to college students.The classroom of the near futureComputing devices are dropping in price, with some dropping under $100 and even a very capable device like the previous generation Amazon Kindle Fire HD selling for $100 as I write this. Affordable technology plus internet access (broadbandexpert.com shows a $30 option in my area) finally gives public education an opportunity to move in a different direction. Here is a possible timeline for change and how students will benefit.  What happens over the next 5-10 years as this is adoptedGrade 6-12 students watch teacher created content, videos or slides with narration, to receive the information necessary to begin applying the lesson.BenefitsStudents view passive material (lectures) outside of the classroom, saving their time with the teacher for more interactive lessons.Teachers have more opportunity to identify the needs of individual students and offer extra lessons and/or material when required.Students missing class will not miss out on information and can make up missed work during study periods.Ten to fifteen yearsAll high school students are now familiar with the new format. Students are now allowed to access more course material and progress at their own pace.The online teaching resource industry explodes, creating new startups focused on providing interactive lesson material paired with training resources for teachers.BenefitsLeaders in subject areas are allowed to tutor other students during class time, further reinforcing their own knowledge of the material.Students capable of mastering material on their own are allowed to progress and then use extra time on other subjects as needed.Teachers spend time identifying a variety of materials for different learners in place of trying to create a "one size fits all" curriculum (for those without teaching experience, it is possible to create a variety of lessons and/or receive work in a variety of formats - this also creates much more work for the grader).Fifteen to twenty yearsThe teaching resource industry has changed the face of education, developing interactive materials capable of engaging students at every level. New media technologies offer virtual learning spaces in the home where a combination of interactive media walls, holograms and self-assembling robots are capable of recreating a wide range of experiential material for children to self-explore.BenefitsLessons are increasingly gamified, such that children view learning as both engaging and relaxing.Individual education platforms, made up of social networks driven by sophisticated machine intelligence (if true AI isn't available and affordable by this point), are able to track student strengths and weaknesses, weaving lessons together such that a student can be working with math (their strength) while also learning grammatical sentence structure (their weakness) - or in reverse.Human teachers have become facilitators and councilors, in place of the instructional disciplinarians they too often are today, providing the 'human touch' while focusing on students intrapersonal and interpersonal development.Beyond twenty yearsStudents no longer earn grades. Credits are provided for each lesson, building towards completion of milestones which unlock new material. Students are required to complete a minimal level of mastery in each content area before moving forward in others.Courses offer students a range of deliverables for each lesson, letting the student identify the medium they prefer: written, oral, video, etc... Teachers and system still require students work in all media types, but students choose from available options each time.Schools are now learning hubs, connected into the global network. Privacy settings and security systems allow students to safely work with any other student in their network on projects, sharing unique perspectives in their final work.Schools no longer shuffle students into classrooms, instead allowing students to identify which classroom they wish to attend and when - though they are still required to master all content, they can choose which is next based upon how they feel at any time.Teachers shift into just-in-time-training specialists who enable students who wish to incorporate more advanced material into their work.Or am I delusional?The other possibility is governments, believing technology can completely replace teachers, cut salaries again and again, driving even the most dedicated teachers into other fields. The replacements act more as cashiers at the arcade, spending time troubleshooting equipment and monitoring for bad behavior. As educational advancements move forward, our societies will decide whether a minimal tax savings is worth gutting the humanity from our schools. If so, the digital divide will increase as families capable of affording private schools move their children into these environments.Why make these changes?Our current educational system was designed for a time before the information age. Today's classrooms are not as engaging as they could be, but trained to keep students in a desk and on-topic for much of their time. The lock-step mentality of the current system keeps students from splitting their time to maximize their opportunities. For the West to compete with the population of China (currently 1.35 billion vs 973 million for US + Canada + Mexico + European Union), we will need to maximize the ability of every child.This graphic shows the revised version of Bloom's Taxonomy, with four levels in place of the traditional verb wheel or pyramid. Our current education systems spend too much time on remember, understand and apply, the three lower level objectives. For us to maximize students potential, we need each to be immersed, engaged and self-leading to spend more time analyzing, evaluating and creating - skills necessary in an information-driven economy.Also, traditional education does not provide the necessary emotional and physical activities necessary for students who need to be both mentally and physically fit. Greater flexibility for students and shifting teachers away from classroom management towards student interaction will provide students more physical outlets to maintain their health and also to work through the emotional overloads which are both common and important for youth development.Your thoughtsAs a tax-payer, do you think these systems should be implemented along with the current student-teacher ratio or should they be used to cut funding requirements for schools?As a parent, would you feel comfortable with a system that tracked your students development, giving them more decision making - even if much of that feedback came from software?As a teacher, do you think your time will be better spent as a facilitator for individual students in place of managing whole classrooms at a time?From any role, do you think something different from what I've outlined will happen? If so, what will happen and when?Recommended reading Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is an amazing tale of a young woman educated through an interactive book using human actors to provide interaction the system cannot. A great story and a unique view of what can be done through something providing a range of interactive lessons.