In his work, Disrupting Class, Clayton Christensen posits that students come to school for only two reasons:
- To interact with peers
- To feel successful
Every year, 200 students enter Carondelet. Every year, we spend time before school getting them acquainted with their iPad and learning the systems that teachers expect them to use for class.
For the last two years, Joan and I have tried to find ways that would allow us to deliver this information in a way that would fulfill both of Christensen’s two reasons students come to school.
We decided to rethink how we provided information about what students need to do with their device. In essence, we made tech the excuse that would allow students to accomplish the Christensen goals instead of making their day here about us and our need to teach them certain tools.
We accomplish this we adopted a Sugatra Mitra approach to learning (his amazing TedTalk below).
The challenge each year is to design a class that renders the two of us all but obsolete and forces them to interact and engage with each other.
Joan Tracy and I discuss what the students need to do. Joan gets inspired and builds magic resources using Schoology as the platform.
Both years the course is different but the format is pretty much identical. We basically want them to struggle with each other and to figure things out and not depend on us to be the purveyors of knowledge.
Why? Because “I Can, and I Will” is our battle cry after all, right?
The fear with these systems, is people think it renders the teacher obsolete… I would beg to differ… It makes the teacher more indispensable. Designing, creating, providing an environment of trust in which they can explore and learn does not happen in a vacuum. True, Joan and I are not center stage, but the reality is, we probably never should have been…