Deeper learning schools tend to use a common set of building blocks to form the foundation of their work. These building blocks vary in form, depth, and intensity depending on the classroom or school model, but together they foster the four big shifts that define innovative schools. Not all these building blocks are present in every deeper learning school, but most deeper learning school models incorporate at least a few. In no particular order, they are:
• Project- and inquiry-based learning environments that emphasize greater student agency and the active application of cognitively complex thinking, communication, and collaboration skills
• Authentic, real-world work students derive from community projects, internships, digital simulations, and other learning experiences
• Competency-based education and standards-based grading that shift the focus of assessment from seat time to learning mastery
• One-to-one computing initiatives (and concurrent Internet bandwidth upgrades) that give students access both to digital learning devices and to the world’s information, individuals, and organizations
• Digital and online information resources, often including open-access resources
• Online communities of interest that supplement and augment more traditional learning communities
• Adaptive software and data systems (and accompanying organizational models) that facilitate greater individualization of learning content and pace
• Alternative credentialing mechanisms that enable individuals to quickly reskill for and adapt to rapidly evolving workforce needs and economic demands
• Flexible scheduling that moves students away from fifty-minute chunks of time—and a prescribed number of hours and days in a prescribed location—and toward opportunities to learn longer, deeper, and in more places about important life skills and concepts
• Redesigned learning spaces that accommodate flexible, student-centered grouping and learning tasks rather than classroom spaces that the needs of instructors or janitors dictate
Although these building blocks are presented here as separate items, they usually work in coordination to create qualitatively different learning experiences for students. The combinations a deeper learning school chooses—and the depth of their implementation—form that school’s unique character.
Our Message
The intent of this book is not to denigrate the efforts of the numerous sincere and dedicated educators who are trying the best they can to serve students well within traditional school systems. We’re both passionate advocates for schools, educators, and students; we both have long histories in the public education system; and we’ve both been vocal proponents of powerful learning, student and teacher rights, and adequate school supports and funding. But we also recognize that schools need to change (and if we’ve done our job right, by now you do too). We can’t keep doing the same things that we have always done, nor can we continue to move at the frustratingly slow pace that we’ve seen so far.
The intent of this book is to recognize that despite our very best efforts, much of what we’re doing in schools isn’t working because it isn’t relevant to the needs and demands of the world around us. For the most part, the problem lies not so much with our people but with the outdated systems that many of us are struggling to abandon. When societies shifted from an agricultural model to an industrial model, we responded by changing how we educated our young people. Now that our societies are shifting from an industrial model to a global information and innovation model, we need to change our approach to education yet again.
In some respects, the concerns in this book are no different from the concerns of the authors of A Nation at Risk and its many heirs. We also raise questions about the education that students experience in most of our schools. But our worries lie in completely different directions than poor performance on standardized tests, and our prescriptions bear little resemblance to the technocratic “solutions” that policymakers tend to prefer. We agree that schools need to change, but that change should have to do with a school’s relevance, not just with its achievement scores. Complex problems don’t get fixed with simplistic approaches.
The challenges that lie before us are too great—and the opportunities ahead are too powerful—for us to sit back and pretend that the status quo is adequate. We love schools. But we must change them in order to save them. However, the paths that we advocate for in this book so far have been unrealized on a large scale. And despite our eye on the future, we recognize that concerns regarding the relevance of contemporary education are timeless. We have always known what the goal of great, relevant learning looks like. Today, although we have more barriers to overcome, we also have more ways to achieve it.
Chapter 1
The Information Literacy Argument
Before newspapers, radio, and television, much of human information gathering was done on a one-to-one level, through local word of mouth. Eventually, this was supplanted by the beginnings of the analog information world, which started in earnest with ink on paper. Books, magazines, newspapers, fliers and leaflets, dictionaries, encyclopedias, folding maps, and other paper-based materials comprised the vast majority of our analog information space. Creating and distributing these materials was expensive, and large companies and international distribution channels emerged to move paper from point A to points B and C: think printing presses and delivery trucks and bookstores and newsstands and libraries.
We evolved a few other information channels as well. Telegraphs and telephones were great for point-to-point communication but didn’t work very well for reaching the collective masses. Radio and television became ubiquitous, but as with their ink-on-paper counterparts, distribution was costly. Nearly every citizen could (and did) access radio and television content, but few had the resources to create and disseminate that content via transmission towers and network contracts.
Because of these distribution inefficiencies, information had only a few sources: those few commercial and government entities powerful or wealthy enough to afford a printing press, a broadcast station, or syndication rights could transmit it. In the analog world, nearly all of us were passive consumers of whatever information those entities decided that we should read, listen to, or watch.
These analog information channels are all still in existence as of the writing of this book. But digital and online channels—the so-called “cloud” that we can access through laptops, tablets, smartphones, and the Internet—are rapidly replacing them. This digital landscape creates new affordances and challenges for us as informed citizens. In this chapter, we will examine these new ways of communicating and accessing information, and consider how they offer new opportunities for collaboration.
New Ways of Communicating and Accessing Information
With digital information that moves at the speed of light, we can communicate in ways that are unhindered by geography and time. There are profound ramifications to this collapse of time and distance in normal human interactions. We regularly connect with individuals and communities across the planet, which urgently ratchets up our need to be globally aware citizens. In the 20th century, students often learned about people in other cultures through stereotypical presentations of those cultures’ food and holidays. But in the digital world, our ability to interact with our peers in other countries requires us to go far beyond such minimal levels of awareness in order to achieve a deeper understanding and appreciation of who those peers are and how they think.
We