Jim Shimabukuro poses what appears to be the most significant challenge to learning technology: "The Digital Promise, in its current form, is not sustainable. Over the long haul, no school or school district can afford teachers and administrators plus an additional layer of technical specialists and outsourced services." This leads to a new imperative in teacher training, suggests Shimabukuro. "The thrust of teacher training ought to switch from the teacher as technician dependent on outside sources to teacher as independent innovator." For example, he writes, "A model for a teacher-empowering digital promise is the MOOC," which suggests that "the teacher of the future will be able to develop a teaching and learning environment using the resources on the web."
All very good, but I find I have to reject the sustainability argument. We sustain what we find valuable, pretty much no matter what the cost of the investment. We sustain trillions of dollars of road infrastructure, military endeavours, bank and business bailouts, and other such things. No amount of cost savings will satisfy the sustainability argument so long as we have a political environment that recognizes these other things as priorities. It is good to reform education, but not as a result of the sustainability argument; indeed, in spite of it.
All very good, but I find I have to reject the sustainability argument. We sustain what we find valuable, pretty much no matter what the cost of the investment. We sustain trillions of dollars of road infrastructure, military endeavours, bank and business bailouts, and other such things. No amount of cost savings will satisfy the sustainability argument so long as we have a political environment that recognizes these other things as priorities. It is good to reform education, but not as a result of the sustainability argument; indeed, in spite of it.
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