Moving the Vision Along...

Wow... going away for a week for Spring Break sure causes one's Google Reader to fill up with posts. Sorry I've been out without a post, but now that I'm back to work, I've got plenty of stuff to catch up on.

One thing that caught my eye today was a graphic on a post at the Change Agency about School 2.0. The graphic itself was a copy of the School 2.0 Ecosystem map, which illustrates how connected the school of the future might be. It's a very interesting artifact, with examples of how technology can help schools connect to other schools, other students and teachers, workplace professionals, and the community at large - not to mention how the "learning environment" becomes more than just the classroom/school itself.

It provides some great food for thought - but not necessarily any complete answers. While it does point out some important things to strive for - such as the essential need of building capacity, the empowering and challenging of faculty, and the constant mastery assessment of students - each district will need to use its own measures to determine how best to meet this vision.

Here's what I think the really challenging part is: in order to move towards this vision - to really embrace and adopt "school 2.0" - schools, districts, teachers and everyone concerned will need to rethink their perception of what "school" is. We've been using this compulsory education model for so long, it's going to take a herculean effort to uproot it quickly OR a very long time to uproot it gradually. And by doing it gradually, we run into the very problem raised by the Change Agency blog post - how quickly do districts need to move towards this vision to achieve it before the elements of this vision become obsolete?

As I've mentioned before, will we find ourselves achieving school 2.0, only to find out that the new current standard is now school 3.0?