Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Why Educational Change Is Hard

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
Lehmann looks at how some of the principles in Clay Shirky's book "Here Comes Everybody" can be applied to facilitating change in schools, as well as the limitations of his examples as applied to education. "So there are a couple of questions that we can examine through Shirkey's lens, then... first, why is it that schools are so hard to transform using these tools when commerce (for instance) has been so easy to change? And second, what has to happen within the community of folks -- loose as it may be -- who care about the notion of 21st Century schools." Lehmann proposes that part of that problem is that schools have a high cost of failure when compared to many of Shirky's examples of how new social media enables small businesses and individuals to take a chance whereas those with enormous institutional infrastructures are less inclined due to a higher cost of failure. All told, this is a very thoughtful analysis of what can be done regarding all of the angst being expressed in the education blogosphere about the slow rate of change in education. Hat tip to a post by Will and a tweet from Britt. -BD

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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