Should your educational changes be a sprint or a marathon?

District policymakers, administrators, and activist parents–stakeholders–seeing themselves as “agents of change”– seldom ask: change toward what end? Change in and of itself becomes the desired outcome, not the district’s long-term direction (e.g., prepare students for an information-driven economy, build decent adults engaged in helping themselves and others). And that is why the short-winded are attracted to school reform. From charter schools to “disruptive innovations” to delivering computer devices en masse to students and teachers, rarely is the question asked: Do these new things take us in the direction that we want to take tax-supported public schools in a democracy? If yes, how? If no, why invest scarce resources in them?  Sprinters worship speed and seldom ask these questions; they want to make grand changes fast and cheap. Marathoners have the time and energy to ask the questions and figure out how to get from here to there in chunks, not all at one time. They seek quality–“good”–over fast and cheap. Larry Cuban, "Long Distance Runners Make the Best Reformers"

I sometimes butt heads with educational technology evangelists over the pace and degree of change that schools should be undergoing.

The technoenthusiast school is very often "you can't leap the chasm in two bounds" group. The more disruptive and more quickly the change occurs, the better. And I can understand that impatience. We have students in our schools today that are not doing as well as they could so any delay in using technology to meet the needs of those students feels immoral.

But more often than not, I take a somewhat longer view. While one can't leap the chasm in two bounds, my belief has always been that we'll get a lot more people across if we build bridges from one side to the next and make sure everyone understands why the other side of the chasm is better that the one on which we currently stand.

When Cuban asks in his blog post quoted above if delivering computer devices en masse to students and teachers ... "take(s) us in the direction that we want to take tax-supported public schools in a democracy?", I can personally say yes. I firmly believe that these devices can help equalize access to resources and learning opportunities for all students in ways never before possible. (See The Technologically Proficient Technologist, Educational Leadership, March 2015)

But not magically. And certainly not instantaneously.

It's not the device. It's not the 1:1 initiative. It's immaterial whether kids get iPads or Chromebooks or use their personal smart phones.

It's whether those students get 24/7access to materials, activities, and most of all, human beings who are best suited to their learning needs. The device is simple. A few dollars and a MDM software wil put put Chromebook in every kids hands in under a month. It's the connections that are complex.

While handing out a device to every child is a sprint, it will be the ongoing PD around using learning managment systems, curating resources, building collaborative and interactive learning activities, and evolving "best practices" in the classroom that will be the marathon, the bridge that gets us across the chasm to where every student has a chance for a good education.

As Aesop once wisely observed, "The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running." Good words for those of us in educational technology to remember.

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