Email: Treasure MAAP?

Treasure MAAP?
	For the next few days, I'll be covering the Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs (MAAP) conference in Rochester and passing on some of the most interesting, exciting, and thought-provoking concepts.

The second presentation I attended was a big-picture description by Bob Wedl, the executive director of Innovative Quality Schools, of what 21st century education will end up looking like. Being more of a zoomed-out, where-we're-going session, it raised a lot of different ideas that may seem weird or out there to those of us who obsessively focus on wringing the last bit of productivity out of the 20th century school system.

A few dominant themes connected the different parts of the presentation. One is that technology is going to keep changing education until it looks very different from the teacher-lecture model that is the mental picture many of us have of “what school looks like”. It's still tricky to tell what's shiny and what's substantive, but the overall momentum is towards technology creating more opportunities for individualization of instructional techniques and learning opportunities.

Another theme was increasing the connection between secondary education and students' post-secondary lives. This means creating opportunities for high school students to participate in supervised work experiences and get more technical training. Especially in the last couple years of high school, students are figuring out which paths they're likely to take, and making the workplace, technical college, and four-year university experiences more accessible will not only help a student figure out the best path for him or herself, but also help make sure the last couple years of high school are as productive as possible for that student.

One final point that is interesting, especially in younger grades, is the increasing potential of game-ified education [starts video]. There's still a lot of work yet to be done to make reliably effective educational games (especially on the computer), but a few teachers are already developing ways to create classrooms that almost entirely revolve around games.

Again, there was a lot of big picture dreaming going on in this session, but it did make some good points about the need for an educational system that's a good fit for the United States in the 21st century.

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