Essential Reading: The Online Learning Imperative

I would like to introduce a new column: Essential Reading. My thinking is that I will share both what I am reading and what comes my way.

Today’s essential reading comes by way of the good folks at iNACOL. The Online Learning Imperative: A Solution to Three Looming Crises in Education is a report from the Alliance for Excellent education. Written by former Governor Bob Wise with Robert Rothman. The basic premise behind the report is that a key component of educational reform must be online learning.

Why? Here’s the quote that explains it all for me:

If you think about how much the world around us has changed just in the last twenty years, it becomes clear that the education sector is like a massive mainframe computer trying to fit itself into a smartphone world.

In other words, we are not adapting quickly enough to the world around us. When I look around, I see some teachers still teaching like it is 1954. This is no longer acceptable and goes a long way toward explaining how education has gotten away from us. No, that is most definitely not the only reason, but it is certainly a component.

And:

Simply put, the current process and infrastructure for educating students in this country cannot sustain itself any longer.

The report lists three looming crises including:

• CRISIS #1: Global Skill Demands Grow While U.S. College Graduation Rates Fall Behind

• CRISIS #2: The Funding Cliff—Declining Local, State, and Federal Revenues Mean Changing the Education Content-Delivery Model

• CRISIS #3: The Looming Teacher Shortage: The Growing Challenge to Bring Quality Content and Effective Teaching to Every Classroom

I encourage you to go and take a read. It’s a good read for those of us who think advocacy is part of what we need to do every day. Without giving too much away (because I do want you to go and read), the final segment of the report starts with:

Online Learning: Bringing High-Quality Content to Every Classroom

Tags: educational reform, online learing