Thursday, July 9, 2009

DIGITAL EDUCATION REVOLUTION by Ken Grisham

In the academic world of the 21st century, the inexorable march that we know as the “digital classroom revolution” presents challenges unlike others that have ever been faced in the history of education. With a very “deliberate speed” (almost always too slow), the majority of schools are making the shift to a digital world. Many schools have been led (naively) to believe that the digital classroom revolution is just a matter of more PC’s and software in the classroom. While that is certainly a start in the right direction, how many schools have we seen that purchased new computer hardware and software only to have much of it be “underutilized”, or worse, NOT UTILIZED AT ALL? Even those schools who believe they are going the right direction, often don’t fully appreciate the task in front of them or how to approach it, and certainly don’t realize the magnitude of the tasks they will be facing. Much of this failure to recognize the magnitude of the those tasks is the direct result of not being able to recognize and anticipate the speed of emergence and evolution of the “digital universe of tools and content”. This galactic shift in the world of information must be considered when evaluating the overall framework of the digital education environment of the future. To be successful, every school MUST develop a “digital classroom strategy” that addresses each of the aforementioned issues.

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