Education always seems to be changing. We see new movements or redirection. Fresh experiments or retooling. Newfound priorities. Newfangled nomenclature. Staying on top of these changes is important.
The constantly shifting environment in the ed market predisposes us towards some key questions we need to be asking ourselves: Who are we selling to? Are we selling to the right group? Is this the right time? How should we respond? What disruptive innovation is around the next corner? What surprises are hidden in the long tail tail of innovation? If we move ahead now, does that limit our market or does it safeguard a foothold for the future?
A new book by Sonny Magana, Disruptive Classroom Technologies: A Framework for Innovation in Education helps bring a bit of clarity to the complex educational marketplace. I attended one of Magana’s sessions at a recent ed-tech conference, where he introduced his new framework, one that helps us understand where technology in schools may be headed. Magana’s work is built upon the prior work by Clayton Christensen, who developed the theory of disruptive innovation. According to Christensen, “Disruptive Innovation describes a process by which a product or service initially takes root in simple applications at the bottom of a market—typically by being less expensive and more accessible—and then relentlessly moves upmarket, eventually displacing established competitors.” Through his framework, Magana hopes to give us a sense of what is taking place, and will take place, in the K-20 education market.
Magana calls this framework the T3 framework, with the ‘T’ standing for the translational, transformational and transcendent stages or uses of technology. This framework can best be clarified in the chart below:
Here’s a brief breakdown on each of these stages and why they are important to recognize:
T1: The Translational Stage
In this stage, technology is used in schools mainly as a tool for automation (picture in your minds efficiency, organizing, communicating, testing, grading, calculating). But technology can also be used in a consuming role (picture acquiring information through digital text, audio, and/or video).
Magana argues that these functions are the most common applications of technology in schools today. You know… the Google suite, the multitude of currently available apps, digital textbooks, ebooks, podcasts, streaming, the list goes on…
My sense of this stage is we pin our hopes as a manufacturer or service provider to the present, as opposed to the future.
T2: The Transformational Stage
In this stage, technology is used to change the role of students from receptors of knowledge to producers of knowledge. At the simplest level, student produce content in order to demonstrate what they have learned; at a more sophisticated level, students develop and ‘contribute’ content for other students and even external audiences.
Magana submits that a minority of forward-thinking schools are operating in this dimension today.
My sense of this stage is that it is an ever-increasing phenomenon, a glimmer of our nearest future. Over the last few years, in many of my articles, I have mentioned the steady and slow gait towards the ‘prosumer’ in education, the growing validity of and demand for student-created content.
T3: The Transcendent Stage
In this stage, technology use becomes, according to Magana, transcendent. The first element of this stage involves “inquiry design”. This is, simply, when students solve an interesting problem, hopefully an original line of inquiry, something personally relevant to and chosen by the student. The desire for greater inquiry in the classroom resolves itself well with the growing trend for “deeper learning” in schools. Last year’s International K-12 Horizon Report predicts continued growth for the “Deeper Learning” trend, which is defined in this report “as the mastery of content that engages students in critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and self-directed learning.” The Deeper Learning movement echoes not only the shift from passive to active learning and the appreciation for higher order thinking skills, it also calls for pursuing the “enabling role of technologies” to get the job done. This would be a nice hook for the display industry to hang their hats on.
A second dimension of the T3 stage involves social entrepreneurship. “Social entrepreneurship”, Magana summarizes, “combines generating social good generating value. (Shapiro, 2013)” He explains: “Students imagine, design, and create new digital tools or platforms as solutions to wicked [societal] problems that matter“. Most importantly, he notes something incredibly important: “A Key driver of transcendent technology use is student passion”. This dimension is all about student choices, not the choices for learning offered by educators or ministries of education.
Magana suggests that only a sprinkling of schools is functioning at this level. So there’s room to grow. He also surmises that T3, or transcendent uses of technology, are the truly disruptive activities—ones that can change the direction in which education is headed.
My sense of this stage is that, here, Magana misses the mark. First, I hate the word ‘transcendent’,—it’s too far-flung and otherworldly for me—so let’s just call it a ‘surpassing’ stage. A step higher. That’s fine. I also feel that Magana is remiss in failing to identify other types of entrepreneurship-as-learning in the classroom. There are other types of value generation in learning, which are perhaps even more disruptive and even more likely to swell. I am thinking of plain old ordinary classroom-based entrepreneurship (micro-enterprises, as we call them in schools), as we now see bubbling up frequently with 3D printing stations in schools. I am also reminded of another new entrepreneurial development now rising in schools: edupreneurship. All types of value generation are worthwhile.—Len Scrogan
