Because of advances in technology– mobile technology, new and exciting social media platforms, iTunes, and YouTube– the way today’s students share information is very different than in the past. This new information paradigm requires educators to consider new approaches to educating students. Because of the way today’s students learn, it’s important that educators tailor instruction to meet individual student learning needs and design curriculum that addresses student interests.

One of the first successful ventures into this new learning paradigm was MIT’s free online coursework venture in 2001. Kamenetz points out,

“Today, you can find the full syllabi, lecture notes, class exercises, tests, and some video and audio for every course MIT offers, from physics to art history. This trove has been accessed by 56 million current and prospective students, alumni, professors, and armchair enthusiasts around the world.”

What’s interesting about these new sorts of technology-oriented changes is they are disrupting the traditional model of teaching and learning. As schools like MIT take advantage of the Web, they are able to “disseminate high-quality materials at almost no cost, leveling the playing field.”

According to Cathy Casserly, a senior partner at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, organizations like MIT are

“changing the culture of how we think about knowledge and how it should be shared and who are the owners of knowledge.”

The problem, it seems, is most universities are still mired in a 20th century mindset when it comes to how educators think about knowledge and learning. While universities remain prohibitively expensive and unnecessarily rigid in terms of how instruction is provided, a growing movement of high-tech do-it-your-self students or “edupunks” are creating a new and exciting market for decentralized learning.

According to Kamenetz,

“The edupunks are on the march. From VC-funded startups to the ivied walls of Harvard, new experiments and business models are springing up from entrepreneurs, professors, and students alike. Want a class that’s structured like a role-playing game? An accredited bachelor’s degree for a few thousand dollars? A free, peer-to-peer Wiki university? These all exist today, the overture to a complete educational remix.”

The education futurists see the development of Web 2.0 as the final death knell of the 20th century learning model. The proliferation of open source learning tools, social media technology, mobile learning tools, and the ability of educators to cheaply and effectively construct rich, complex, individualized learning experiences for students is bound to revolutionize education.

As teachers move to utilize new technologies to improve curriculum and pedagogy, there are a few important problems to consider. Perhaps the most difficult problem, at least in a practical sense, is how teachers effectively integrate different technology-based learning tools to create a seamless learning experience. As a pedagogical practice, using new technologies to disseminate the different sorts of academic information high school and college students need is a very complex task. Therefore, teachers are left asking an important question: How should teachers use this technology to deliver effective instruction, and once we’ve identified effective ways to do this, how exactly should teachers organize the curriculum?

In some ways, integrating technology with high school and college curriculum may seem like a simple task, but any experienced educator will tell you it’s definitely not. Shifting from a classroom mindset to an online mindset not only presents significant practical problems, but the transformation can be very difficult for teachers to conceptualize. Perhaps this is why many universities, including MIT, have been unsuccessful at creating highly effective learning environments using Web 2.0 technology, at least compared to the traditional classroom experience (MIT’s online courses could hardly be considered examples of effective curriculum and pedagogical design!).

It’s not to say there aren’t individual examples of online curriculum that incorporate innovative design principles and rigorous curriculum to create a rich, student centered learning experience. The problem is finding examples of large-scale models that can easily be incorporated by any given university or high school. Although there are certainly emerging models that show exciting promise, most tech savvy educators would admit we’ve got a ways to go.

It’s also important to consider the problem of deciding exactly which digital tools educators should utilize to improve student learning. Digital tools such as micro blogging, open source learning management systems, and web-based student information systems are important tools for creating a robust and integrated learning platform. But which tools should educators use, and for what purposes? Furthermore, how can these tools be integrated to create a seamless learning experience? What’s exciting, I think, is that the tools and information are presently available. The problem now is constructing a learning infrastructure that truly works? Today’s teaching environment requires educators to utilize a variety of programs in order to deliver effective instruction– a learning management system, a different grading program, a different student information system, and so forth. Teachers, therefore, are faced with a difficult challenge. Not only do they have to figure out which technologies to utilize, but they have to figure out how to make them work together. Figuring this out requires a lot of time, experience, and perseverance. Once all the factors are considered, designing a great online course can be quite expensive, time consuming, and frustrating.

When this problem is considered at the high school level, moreover, the issues become even more complex. Perhaps this is why high school teachers and administrators are reluctant to move courses online.

Although the potential benefits online learning presents are exciting, shifting the way educators think about teaching and learning is definitely not an easy task. Nevertheless, the more students and their parents demand highly individualized and inexpensive curriculum, educators will be forced to change the way they deliver instruction. The market forces that are shaping today’s schools will, at the most fundamental level, disrupt the current educational model. The problem we face as educators is deciding which tools we should use and the best ways to use them. Finding a solution to this problems might require the sort of radical thinking the edupunks like to embrace.