Archives: January, 2009

The State Board meets monthly and much of what is discussed is relevant to the work of LEARN NC.

These meetings are, for the most part, public. The agenda and other documents relevant to that month’s meeting is posted in advance on http://www.ncpublicschools.org/sbe_meetings/ so you can see what’s planned and decide if you want to participate. You may choose to attend or plan to listen to the audio stream.

Even if you don’t take in the meeting F2F or through streaming audio, you may find it is helpful to read the posted minutes and reports after the meeting or check out the Highlights or Legislative Report. These documents are posted a few weeks after the meeting so you will have to watch for them. Documents are organized according to the State Board goals (attached), so when you see cryptic headings for items like GCS1 or TPS3, those correlate to the goals related to Globally Competitive Students or 21st Century Professionals.

The selection for the next staff book club is Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn. The review from Publishers Weekly is listed below. Click on the link to see more reviews and reader comments.

From Publishers Weekly
It’s no secret that people learn in different ways, so why, the authors of this book ask, “can’t schools customize their teaching?” The current system, “designed for standardization,” must by its nature ignore the individual needs of each student. The answer to this problem, the authors argue, is “disruptive innovation,” a principle introduced (and initially applied to business) by Harvard Business School professor Christensen in The Innovator’s Dilemma. The idea is that an audience in need will benefit from even a faulty opportunity to fulfill that need; in education, the demand for individual instruction could be met through infinitely customizable online computer-based instruction. The authors, all professionals in education, present a solution to the ills of standardized education that’s visionary but far-fetched; even they admit that their recommendations would be extremely difficult to implement in current school systems. Still, the authors’ unusual case, though occasionally bogged down in tangents, is worthy reading for school administrators, teachers, parents and, perhaps most of all, software developers. Charts.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

http://www.amazon.com/Disrupting-Class-Disruptive-Innovation-Change/dp/0071592067/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231788969&sr=8-1