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The Winds of Change

From an article in the Sun Herald in Australia… seems that at least one school is biting the bullet and going for a radical rethink of school…

E-volution of education

A 24-HOUR school with no traditional classrooms and where students
use mobile phones and laptops to learn is being built in Sydney.

Designers of the Catholic school for 1700 pupils say it will keep
students interested ‘and reduce truancy and behavioural problems.

Pupils from kindergarten to year 12 can attend the school- being
built at Stanhope Gardens, in Sydney’s north-west between 6am and
10pm.

They can have access to their work and lesson material at anytime on
the Internet and staff will provide online tutorials from 8pm to l0pm

The traditional classroom concept will disappear, replaced
by “learning spaces”, the school will be referred to as a “learning
community” and teachers will be known as “learning advisers” said
Greg Whitby, executive director of schools in the Parramatta diocese.

“The walls of a classroom become redundant because students are able
to access real time, any-time learning.” he said.

THE SUN-HERALD October 8, 2006 p. 39

Read the full article.

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The 90-9-1 Rule

I’ve always been a great believer in the Pareto Principle, sometimes more commonly referred to as the 80/20 rule. This principle basically suggests that in any group or organisation there will usually be 20% of the people who produce 80% of the results. This observation generally holds quite true, be it a club, a group, a classroom or even a family… there is always a minority of the people who produce a majority of the results. It may not always be exactly an 80/20 split, but you can pretty much guarantee that the work done by any group will almost never be spread evenly among the workers.

Once you understand and accept this fact, a lot of the frustration and annoyance of life starts to go away as you stop worrying about how you’re going to get the majority of the people to do more than the minimal amount that the Pareto Principle says they will do. The fact is, they never will. Those people will never do more than the miminum, no matter how we cajole, threaten, or incentivise them. Like gravity and taxes, some things are the way they are because they just are… Live with it.

So I was interested to see this report from Jakob Nielsen, one of the world’s most respected human interface analysts. Nielsen studies human interaction with computer systems and tries to get designers to make systems that work with people, not against them. He tries to identify what you might call “human nature” and encourages designers to create systems that adapt to people rather than the other way around as is usually the case.

From one of his recent studies, he observes that in most online systems, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

From my own experience with online systems (discussion forums, blogs, email lists, etc) as well as real organisations (committees, clubs, etc) I would have to agree with Nielsen. There is always a bulk of the work/traffic/discussion/effort/ideas that is actively done by a relatively small percentage of the users/participants/workers. I wish it weren’t that way, but I’ve always found that it is.

So, how do you interpret this principle in your classroom? What implications does it have?

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Teachers, are you paying attention?

If you are a teacher in a school, this video should be required viewing.

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It may just change your view of what you do, and if it doesn’t, you should get out of teaching now. If you can’t become part of the solution then you are almost certainly part of the problem.

Btw, this comes via mscofina’s blog, which is most definitely worth a look.