Predictions for Learning in 2008

Predicting the future is not one of my talents. However, I do enjoy making educated guesses about how things may change in the near future, and with that spirit I take this opportunity to participate in The Learning Circuits Blog’s Big Question for January 2008: Predictions for Learning in 2008.

The “Big Question” doesn’t specify what kind of learning or what level of learning, so I will focus my predictions primarily on K-12 learning for students and teachers.

Accountability & Policy

• More schools will fail to meet AYP. Actually, what I expect will happen is that some schools who have previously failed to meet AYP will pull themselves up while many other schools who previously HAVE met AYP will find themselves suddenly in “AYP trouble.”
• Public Education will be a front-burner issue with 2008 elections along with health care, the economy, and the war in Iraq. It may not be on the front burner at the beginning of 2008, but as AYP results come back in the summer, more parents and educators will become more vocal about their concerns with NCLB and the state of many of our schools.
• There will continue to be an increase in the use of “growth models” to assess individual student learning — and many, if not all, of these efforts will be much more successful than previous methods of assessing individual student growth and school/teacher effectiveness.
• There will continue to be growth in the use of technology to monitor and track student progress related to standardized state exams. This will be biggest area of growth in the use of technology in public education during 2008.

Technology

• We’ll hit a plateau on the district-IT admin-level. While more teachers will begin to adopt new technology and Web 2.0 in their classrooms — on their own — district-level push to integrate more technology will level off as district admins assess/evaluate recent tech purchases and how their use was implemented. District-level admins will re-evaluate approaches to “roll-out” in light of less-than-desired implementation of various tech in recent years (i.e. distance learning labs, smart boards, and laptops.) Districts will become more conservative with classroom technology purchases.
• However, a few brave souls will explore the use of emerging technology to address the needs of academically unsuccessful learners. In some districts we may see some growth of distance learning, video webcasting, and podcasting to allow more students access to the more effective teachers, as well as the expansion of virtual school offerings and extended school hours to address the need of older students/dropouts who are trying to balance employment with completing their high school education.
• More educators will turn to online social networks for professional learning. Okay — safe prediction there. The numbers increased in 2007 and it’s pretty safe to assume that the numbers will continue to increase through word-of-mouth and one-on-one “hand holding” by colleagues.
• More districts will turn to online Professional Development solutions as a way to expand offerings and increase personalization. Additionally, thanks to the use of “growth models”, schools and districts will be able to target specific PD to teachers identified as “in need” based on results from their classrooms.
• OLPC and ASUS EeePC will inspire more than one school to attempt 1:1 wall-to-wall in the 08-09 school year.

To combine the two themes above, I predict that as more schools focus more on accountability and student performance on accountability measures, focus on technology integration and other subjects will continue to decrease.

In other words, thanks to NCLB, I predict more of the same for the system as a whole. At the individual level I expect more experimentation and exploration of new tools fostered by encouragement and support from colleagues in face-to-face interactions. As the system moves in one direction, many individuals will move in the opposite direction — and that divergence will have implications for 2009.

What are YOUR predictions for 2008?