RETHINKING EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF TECHNOLOGY THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION AND THE SCHOOLS 1 By Allan Collins and Richard Halverson The world of education is currently undergoing a massive transformation as a result of the digital revolution This transformation is similar to the transition from apprenticeship to universal schooling that occurred in the 19th century as a result of the industrial revolution In the apprenticeship era most of what people learned occurred outside of school Universal schooling led people to identify learning with school but now the identification of the two is unraveling All around us people are learning with the aid of new technologies children are playing complex video games workers are interacting with simulations that put them in challenging situations students are taking courses at online high schools and colleges and adults are consulting Wikipedia New technologies create learning opportunities that challenge traditional schools and colleges These new learning niches enable people of all ages to pursue learning on their own terms People around the world are taking their education out of school into homes libraries Internet cafes and workplaces where they can decide what they want to learn when they want to learn and how they want to learn Who will benefit ultimately from this revolution In America there is a commercial push to sell educational products to consumers who are looking for an edge up in the race for success This means that technological products and services are popping up all over the American landscape Education once viewed as a public good with equal access for all is now up for sale to those who can afford specialized services and computer programs We think schools have served America and the world very well We greatly admire the teachers who have dedicated themselves to helping children from different backgrounds to learn and thrive in a changing world Schools have made invaluable contributions to the world s development and we think they will continue to do so well into the future However we think it is time that educators and policy makers start to rethink education apart from schooling Education is a lifelong enterprise while schooling for most encompasses only ages five to 18 or 21 Even when students are in school much of their education happens 1 This article summarizes arguments in the forthcoming publication Collins A Halverson R 2009 Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology The Digital Revolution and the Schools New York Teachers College Press 1 outside of school We all know that technology has transformed our larger society It has become central to people s reading writing calculating and thinking which are the major concerns of schooling And yet technology has been kept in the periphery of schools used for the most part only in specialized courses The central challenge is whether our current schools will be able to adapt and incorporate the new power of technology driven learning for the next generation of public schooling If schools cannot successfully integrate new technologies into what it means to be a school then the long identification of schooling with education developed over the past 150 years will dissolve into a world where wealthier students pursue their learning outside of the public school Incompatibilities between Schooling and Technology There are deep incompatibilities between schooling and the new technologies Uniform learning vs Customization Deeply ingrained in the structure of schooling is a mass production notion of uniform learning This belief stipulates that everyone should learn the same things at the same time But one of the great advantages of technology is customization Computers can respond to the particular interests and difficulties that learners have and provide content on any topic of interest Teacher as expert vs Diverse knowledge sources Schooling is built on the notion that the teacher is an expert whose job is to pass on their expertise to students Teachers do not like to see their authority challenged by students who find contradictory information or who ask questions beyond the teacher s expertise In contrast video and computers provide many different sources of expertise Often teachers feel threatened by these views because they undermine their authority Standardized assessment vs Specialization The assessment technology employed in evaluating students uses multiple choice and short answer items in order to provide objective scoring But this form of testing requires that every student learn the same things To the degree technology encourages students to go in their own direction it is in direct conflict with the standardized assessments pervading schools Knowledge in the head vs Reliance on outside resources There is a deep belief among teachers and parents that to truly learn something it is critical to internalize it without any reliance on outside resources Therefore on tests students are usually not allowed to use books or calculators much less computers or the web The opposite is true of adult life where technology supports people s use of outside resources In the workplace you are often judged on how well you can mobilize resources to accomplish some task Coverage vs The knowledge explosion School pursues the goal of covering all the important knowledge people might need in the rest of their life As knowledge has grown exponentially textbooks have grown fatter and fatter It has become difficult to cover all the important material and so curricula have become a mile wide and an inch deep Given the explosion of knowledge people cannot learn in school all they will need to know in later life So they need to learn how to learn and how to find the information and resources they need Learning by acquisition vs Learning by doing Deeply embedded in the culture of schooling is the notion that students should learn a large body of facts concepts procedures 2 theories and works of art and science that have accumulated over time In contrast technology fosters a more hands on activity based education Computers are highly interactive and provide a variety of tools to accomplish meaningful tasks Hence they are more aligned with the learning by doing view of education than with the acquisition of cultural knowledge view of education that permeates schooling By way of summary school fosters just in case learning while technology fosters just intime learning There are many reasons why