Matt Bowman

After visiting several blended learning schools, I now know why Anthony Kim says content doesn’t matter (and no, it’s not just because he’s building something else).

Content doesn’t matter because the gains in blended learning schools may have much more to do with enabling small group instruction, while the rest of the kiddos are “babysat” constructively by computers, than most folks realize. That might seem like a downer for edtech cultists, but the truth is that right now, some practitioners believe the gains they see in their blended schools have almost everything to do with the small-group teaching and almost nothing to do with the instructional efficacy of the content they use. The content simply isn’t good enough yet to rely on for core instruction. The best programs are engaging (that DOES matter), and constitute a healthy supplement that also keeps kids busy, but the content is NOT shouldering a substantial portion of the teaching load in some successful blended schools.

That’s not to say blended learning isn’t worth the hype. It IS worth it; it’s just that the value right now isn’t coming directly from content. That may change, however, as software and data-delivery to teachers improves in the next two years. This is one of the trends to watch during the 2011-2012 school year: Can content shift substantially from the “babysitter” end of the spectrum to “teacher” in more blended environments?

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Come August, I’ll be helping with Mission Dolores Academy, a new blended-learning k-12 Catholic school serving inner-city kids in San Francisco. In preparation, I’ve been poring through the field of online educational content, and there’s more good stuff than I realized. Compass Learning, DreamBox, Achieve 3000–most subjects and grade levels are covered by at least decent adaptive programs.  Except for religious instruction. Fortunately for my schedule but unfortunately for the kids, there is basically nothing out there that teaches Catholic religion in an engaging web-based, intuitive (for k-8) way. If you want to build good religious content and are looking for an incubation school, please shoot me an email.

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It’s easier to build than destroy.

That’s why every time an education pundit says standardized tests are not a good way to measure student achievement, that pundit NEEDS TO OFFER A SUPERIOR ASSESSMENT METHOD that is specific and measurable. Otherwise, those criticisms should be read as “I want to keep the status quo in education.”

Very good, well-meaning people, even edu-revolution proponents tend to say standardized tests are inadequate. That’s like saying an exercise routine is inadequate to assure health.

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There’s a pregnant pause after such a statements that ought to be filled with some prescription…. What more is needed? a diet? doctors visits? yoga? If you leave it at the pregnant pause, it sounds more like a justification to give up on the project altogether.

So when one of my favorite edtech bloggers sideswipes standardized testing, my fingers get itchy.

On Wednesday, Hacking Education author Audrey Watters predicted that “data-driven” would become a buzz word for edtech in 2011. I agree that the use of hard data to evaluate educational systems will hit an inflection point this year. But I take issue with her caveat:

Of course, we’ve seen the demands for data in education for a long time now, with the push for standardized testing as the premier method for gauging student achievement. And now, we’re seeing moves to use these test scores — “data” — to measure teachers’ performance in turn. Admittedly I am unconvinced that standardized test scores say all that much about student achievement, and so I tend to resist the idea that data we use to be “data-driven” is solely reliant on test scores.

Fine, but what else do we throw in the mix? If we’ve got a one-legged stool, throwing stones at that leg isn’t going to help.

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Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs), managed to get Bill Gates and queen of the teachers union Randi Weingarten in the same room together, and published the interview Monday on Newsweek. The meaningful moment of discord comes on page 4, when Lyons suggests tenure for teachers is ridiculous. After offering what has become the standard response, “tenure is a proxy for fairness” (I keep hearing this from education academics, too–it’s in some memo the Status Quo Federation is passing around), Weingarten deflects the accusation and suggests the real problem is a lack of “support” for teachers, aka funding:

We do not have an epidemic of bad teachers. But we don’t support our teachers the way countries that outcompete us do. These other countries spend a lot of time figuring out how to prepare and how to support teachers and how to align teachers’ work with what kids ought to do.

No, we spend more on professional development than they do. We spend more on salaries than they do. We spend more on pensions than they do. We spend more on retirement health benefits than they do. But we have less evaluation than they do. In many districts you have to give advance notice before anybody can come into your classroom. That’s part of the contract. So there are some real differences in terms of the personnel system in these other countries.

I realize Weingarten is only doing her job when she spins words like tenure and evaluation. Unfortunately, painting evaluation in the public mind as an attack on teachers is an effective way to ensure job security for her constituents. But no one intends evaluation as an attack–it’s the way to help them and the system improve.

I’d be interested to discover where the “tenure as a proxy for fairness” line originated. If you have tips, send ‘em my way in the comments or to mattwbowman@gmail.com.

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I don’t like starting. If I were a movie director, every film I made would begin in medias res, with some dude running down a street.

But there’s no getting around the obligatory inaugural apologia for your blog’s existence. You’ve got to kick the gate open somehow if you want to get on with the race.

So, without further ado, here’s the point of this site:

The education system needs serious innovation.

The global Silicon Valley is great at innovation.

An overwhelming portion of the talent and money in the global Silicon Valley goes toward creating addictive and pointless virtual brainmush crackworlds designed to suck as much cash via kids out of parents’ credit card accounts as possible.

To aim more talent and money at education, the budding edutech sector needs more attention, and more collaboration.

This blog is a first microstep by your correspondent towards accomplishing the task, which will ultimately be achieved by a broad community of people (see blogroll for a sample), of catalyzing the emerging edutech underground into an industry that can not only improve the education system, but redirect the entire social fabric of the connected world in a more powerful and positive direction.

Students around the world are waiting for Supermen, and the geeks in the tech world are an army of Clark Kents. Here’s to hoping they find a phone booth.

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