MS School of the Future – Not
Posted by: edugator in Education, ICTPD, tags: ICTPD EducationAt NECC a person from the Microsoft School of the Future in Philadelphia was part of a keynote panel discussion. It sounded like lots of good goals were being set within an interesting project with the aim of promoting digital learning. As a result I was keen to find out more about this project.
Just watched a Jim Lehrer “News Hour” report on YouTube. What a disappointment, in ten minutes there was not one remotely futuristic educational task being undertaken at this school. It was a $65m school with lots of techno whistles and bells but in the classrooms . . .
Students sitting in rows with teacher out the front demonstrating.
Every laptop screen view revealed screens full of text.
Student: “Now I can type up assignments at home”
The Principal was quoted as stating that “the real innovation is creating a kind of Microsoft corporate culture in the school” YIKES !
Sure the infrastructure was great but the rest was very unimpressive, unless it’s time warped and this is a school of the future from 1987.
After 10 minutes my only thought was “these people just don’t get it”. It included a clip of Bill Gates saying that American high schools are obsolete and not teaching kids what they need – so their solution is this????
I hope tht the narrow focus in this program was due to it being a “news” item and thus focused more on the technology than the learning, even though it should not have been. Otherwise this is a prime example of how to spend lots of money on technology and get it wrong.
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