Back to School, Whatever That Might Mean...

As a school board candidate I was invited to join the All Staff kickoff Monday, and even accorded the opportunity to stand and be recognized. Got a chance to meet the board members I haven't spoken to yet, as well as the other competitors. Fine people, all.

Dr. Dressen gave a rousing speech with Awesome as a theme, doing his entrance as the Edina Hornet. Okay, it did get a little long, but he had a lot to say. Having had to come up with these kinds of speeches, I make mental notes as to what I would cut and so forth, and it would be hard to make any useful suggestions—the man knows what he's doing.

But, it was an odd juxtaposition, bookended as it was by a talk I attended in the same room on digitally mediated learning by a well known ed blogger named Will Richardson. To paint a picture, the morning started in the EHS Performing Arts Center (beautful, modern, new) with the marching band surrounding the staff. This is large scale, brick and mortar education at its very finest. The day ended in the same setting with a modern prophet telling us, essentially, a lot of what you see in education today is going away.

It reminded me of my first exposure to Quality Management Systems, 20 years ago. The manufacturers sitting in those rooms were a lot like the educators attending Richardson's conference. They were told things were going to be very different in ten years, and man were they right. It's like how a Saturn V rocket hovers on the launch pad before really gathering speed.

Most days, I'd rather that it all stayed the same—that we could go on having large schools with hundreds of students, and all of the benefits that economies of scale bring (i.e. video production classes, jewelry making, etc.). But, according to Richardson and a lot of other educators, our medium term future will likely see students spending half their time or less in brick and mortar settings interacting with counselors, coaches and teachers on a personalized learning plan, and the rest of the time in virtual environments, learning from a wide array of non-licensed educators. Beyond the medium term, the need for centralized facilities and administration might loosen even further.

My question for him was, given the medium term situation, how would an Edina school district protect its educational "brand" so to speak? How would they package these highly customized learning plans and present them to employers and universities in a way that is comprehensible? How will students be measured when the common measure is taken away? The answer was pretty vague.

I gathered from the talk that schools will help students navigate their core curriculum and help them to build an online presence that demonstrates their ability to contribute to a network of experts in their chosen (elective) field. An example was given of a young man who became a well known cinematographer without ever taking a single structured course in it. He simply surrounded himself with other experts, threw his work out there for critique, and kept learning from the process. Anyway, there's a lot of material there for just one blog entry, so perhaps I can come back to it later. If you're interested, his presentations may be found here.

On a personal note: I had a campaign get together Sunday night for which I burned a nice batch of pork ribs and made a Lemon White Chocolate cake from Rose Levy Beranbaum's new cookbook, Heavenly Cakes (Christmas present from the lovely wife). It has, and I kid you not, 17 eggs and 1.5 lbs of butter. I couldn't serve it to one of my guests because he could not prove that he had his worldly affairs in order. Everyone had to bring a note from their estate planner and he forgot his.