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Thursday 11th September 2008 9:00 am

Patrick Whitney: The Last Model T

The Director of IIT’s Institute of Design argues that the school system is the only institution that has not transformed in the last century. 

2008 is the 100th anniversary of the Model T. It was a remarkable development, becoming the icon of US industry’s ability to create a mass production system that would incesscantly drive down the cost so that everyone could afford it. It did this by making all the products the same, giving people any color they wanted as long as it was black. It achieved scale and success by standardizing the input of material, processing it in a consistent manner, and standardizing quality control at each step in the process.

American industry has learned a great deal in the last century and one of the key insights is that digitization changes operations from focusing on consistency to flexibility, variety and consumer choice. In fact, the leading companies understand that there has been a power shift from producers like Ford who ruled in the era of an economy of scale, to consumers who rule in our economy of choice. This flexibility of production leading to variety and choice exists in almost every sector except one; educating our kids. Like companies in the early 20th Century, our public school system classified the incoming material, processed it in standardized ways, created stages in the process where quality was checked, and eventually certified or rejected it.

Sound familiar? The confluence of digital technology and media is now twenty years old and the country it is being used to make the old system more effective and efficient. It analogous to the crazy idea that Ford Motor Company would use computers to make a 100-year-old factory run better and not find ways to use the technology to change how it worked. The real power of digital media in education is to reform the institution itself, not just the delivery of content. This leads to concepts like: A collecting a variety of competencies, instead of if passing twelve grades, becomes the dominant structure? Learning becomes kid centered instead of curriculum or test centered. Schools are nodes on a network of companies and civic organizations that make learning relevant to jobs and how the world works. This would be in contrast to their current status as stand-alone institutions. Teachers are chosen by their abilities not by their educational degree.  Imagine (and respond with) the possibilities.

Editor’s Note: See more at http://www.electroniclearningrecord.org

Category: Civic-Engagement, Credibility, Ecology-of-Games, Identity, Race-Ethnicity

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