Transcriber: F Laffeber Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
Thank you.
So I do deal with video games.
I don't have any cool video games to show you today, though.
But we're going to be talking about educational reform,
which I think is so important,
because with a lot of my work, doing video games,
again and again I encountered situations
where it's challenging, it's difficult,
to actually structure the games in a way we can use them in the classroom.
So I started with video games, but moved into --
you know, we have problems,
we need to really change the system as a whole,
so these video games can work.
I'm going to be talking about educational reform today.
If you haven't been paying attention --
and I'd kind of be shocked if you haven't seen this --
educational reform is getting a lot of attention these days.
This isn't really anything new.
A report came out in the early 80's,
called: "A Nation at Risk", done by the Federal Government
and it said that our schools were dangerously failing.
Big time statement there.
But really, since the mid 80's to now,
not really a whole lot has changed,
except that push reform has now moved out
into our magazines, our TV shows, our movies,
even into our State of the Union addresses.
A more recent report, 2012,
said that our schools were actually a threat to national security.
I'm serious.
Condoleezza Rice said that our country
perhaps faces no more,
no greater security challenge than education.
So a lot of doom and gloom going around.
But what if I were to tell you that our schools are actually operating
at a near optimal level of performance?
Is that possible?
Can schools be performing optimally,
but still be totally inadequate?
Well it's possible and it's true.
The thing is, our schools have been using
the same model of education for a very long time now.
And they're very, very good at applying it.
The problem is we haven't really had a significant paradigm shift in education
since the Industrial Revolution.
Before then, schools were in the one-schoolhouse model:
suddenly, everyone moves into the cities to take the factory jobs,
so schools are tasked with educating mass numbers of students.
Furthermore, these students are largely going to be educated
to work in the factories themselves one day.
So schools adopted a factory model of education,
perfect for the Industrial Age.
In a factory model of education,
we group students into grade level, based on their age,
we give them all the same amount of time to learn the same content.
Now luckily, as we all know, all children are exactly the same as each other.
(Laughter)
I was just checking to see if you're paying attention.
Everyone knows we're all individuals
with our own strengths and weaknesses,
our own interests and passions.
Treating everyone as if they're the same when you know they are not,
is not a problem in the Industrial Age model,
-- the factory model --
because you're not actually that interested in learning.
You're focused on sorting students.
If we know people are different,
but we give them the same amount of time to learn the same content,
we're forcing their performance to vary.
So we're sorting them into those who can learn in the time they're given,
and those who cannot.
Those who can learn, move on through the system,
those who cannot, acquire learning deficiencies and fail.
This is perfect for generating two classes of workers:
a factory line worker who follows orders
and the manager who gives them.
The problem is, by and large we don't live in that world anymore.
We live in an increasingly dynamic world.
We're seeing massive change, whether it's social or technological,
everything is speeding up.
Today we need complex problem solvers.
We need collaborators, we need life-long learners.
People aren't working in the same job or even in the same career,
or multiple careers anymore.
You're having to learn all the time.
So why are all our educational reforms failing?
They're failing because we're trying to slap wings on a car in order to fly.
You don't try to drive a square peg in a round hole,
you design a round peg.
The factory model was never meant to do
what we're forcing it and asking it to do.
So if we're talking about a system that is focused,
a school that is focused on actually providing learning for all students,
what might that look like?
It would look very different from the factory model today.
In the factory model, we've got people in their grades,
we have people in their classes.
In a customized model of education:
grade levels - we don't need them anymore.
The purpose of a grade level is to group students as if they're the same.
If we know students are different,
but we're giving them the same amount of time to learn the content,
we're forcing their learning to vary.
We're forcing some of them to fall behind.
Without grade levels --
the grade level focus is basically saying: all you 12-year-olds are the same,
that's forcing those who can't learn in that amount time
to fall behind.
It's also forcing those who can learn more quickly
to slow down and wait for the others to catch up.
It's not an accident that many of our most gifted students
they are bored out of their minds.
It's also not an accident that our disadvantaged students
feel like the system is stacked against them --
because it is.
So no grade levels.
No classes.
Classes are another way that we're grouping the students.
A class lasts a finite amount of time,
and then it moves on whether you've learned of not.
We're also, with these classes,
dividing them up into these disciplines
as if a mathematician never uses English skills.
Or a scientist never uses math-skills.
It's an artificial remnant of a system that's focused on delivering content
rather than actually teaching real world problem solving skills
and applied knowledge.
What about math and English?
OK, classes.
We've got these disciplines here like this.
It's an artificial way of structuring things.
You know, when I was in school, I was pretty good at English,
read a lot at home, I liked reading and writing.
I wasn't too bad at math either.
It came to be a time, sometime around the 5th grade or so,
where I hit a patch where I was struggling a little bit.
I just needed a bit more time to kind of get things.
But the system does not allow for that.
Whether or not the teacher wants to give you that time,
there is no choice there.
So I moved on.
I didn't struggle so badly that I failed,
but I acquired learning deficiencies, gaps in my knowledge.
So suddenly I believe I'm no longer good at math.
But what's a school really going to be looking like,
if we don't have classes, if we don't have grade levels?
That's a radical vision that's so different
from what we have been doing before.
Well, students are going to be working on projects now,
projects that are connected to requirements
that are in their personalized learning plans.
Teachers are going to be freed up
from having to focus on delivering content,
to actually being able to focus on teaching,
facilitating learning.
You know, I once observed a history teacher,
using video games to teach World War II history in his class.
He only did this for one week of the year.
It is the perfect example
of a learner-centered versus a teacher-centered environment.
We observed him before he used the video game,
and he was great, he was up in front of the class,
he was telling jokes, he was telling stories,
he was firing off questions, calling on students,
putting forth so much energy and effort to keep them engaged,
while they sat there and stared at him.
And by the end of the period,
a lot of them were struggling to fall asleep --
and he was a great teacher.
We observed him using the video game in class.
It's a totally different environment.
Students are engaged,
they are collaborating with each other,
it's really loud in there.
And this passion spilled out into the hallways,
they are talking about gameplay around their lockers
and even over lunch.
And the teacher, he was practically doing laps around the classroom,
answering questions, looking for what he called "teachable moments"
to really drive their learning home.
And he said it was his most exhausting and most exhilarating
and most fun week of the year,
because the students were engaged and they were interested,
and they were asking him questions,
and they were forcing him to push his own knowledge.
Dare to imagine a world
where a student demonstrates her social studies and English skills
by writing a persuasive speech against ag-gag legislation,
and then delivering that speech to her state legislators.
Or demonstrating her science, technology, engineering and math skills
by designing a new model airplane,
testing it in a virtual wind tunnel
and then reporting on the results of that test
and her plans for redesign.
Or collaborating with her local museum
on creating a virtual, historical tour of a town.
Or conducting and capturing interviews with Holocaust survivors.
Children are passionate about their learning
if you allow them to use their passions to learn.
This sort of new paradigm system
will have projects that support meeting learning requirements,
while also supporting passion.
Now, if students are working on their own projects at their own pace,
we know technology will need to be a big part of this.
It'll be needed to plan for their learning,
to store assessments,
to track and report on where they are.
And if they're working on these projects,
those projects are creating evidence
of what they are competent at doing,
what they have mastered, wat they have learned.
So we need e-portfolio, or digital badge systems
that will store these projects as evidence
of what these students are capable of.
If you take math class right now,
you're going to be given a grade at the end of that.
That tells us nothing other than how you compare to your peers.
It doesn't tell us anything about what you can actually do.
With this project, sort of instruction,
project-based instruction, project-based assessment,
we're creating evidence of learning.
So students can now say to their parents: "Look what I can do",
instead of: "Look what I scored on this test."
Now I have a colleague who moved his family across the country,
so his exceptional gifted son could enroll
in this customized education model school.
Let's hope this school sticks around long enough in that format
for his younger siblings to actually enroll too.
It's so easy for these schools to be pulled back to the status quo.
Solitary schools are existant in a system around them
that hold them back,
hold them back to do what everyone else is doing.
I once gave a talk about new paradigm,
this new paradigm model of education,
and a woman in the audience got very excited and she said to me:
"I went to a school just like what you're talking about.
I was failing in my regular highschool, I went to this new school,
and suddenly learning was fun.
I was doing better than I ever had."
And I said: "That's great! Where was this school?"
She said: "Well, it's right here in Indianapolis,
but it's not like that anymore".
Solitary schools have the system stacked against them
to bring them back to where they are.
In order to actually make this change,
we have to be audacious.
We have to build support, broad support across the entire community.
That means we can't put all the responsibility
on all the schools and teachers anymore,
but parents have to be involved, businesses have to be involved,
community members and, yes, the government.
And everyone has to have a shared vision for where we need to be.
Is it going to be difficult to implement a customized model of education?
Of course it is.
But I've seen the sort of impact that it can have,
I've seen a school populated with nothing but students
who were kicked out of the local highschool.
These students had been incarcerated,
they've been violent with teachers, they were pregnant,
they were working multiple jobs to support their younger siblings.
As one of the teachers there told me,
once they get here and they realize they're driving their own learning,
it's like magic.
Suddenly, we're not the enemy anymore
and all those discipline problems go away.
So it can work, but it can't be solitary schools here and there.
The name of this conference is 'Daring Greatly'.
In order for us to have a true transformation of the system,
we're going to have everyone on board saying:
"This is the sort of system that we need to get to."
I invite you to join me.
Thank you.
(Applause)