While I thought Reigeluth and Harmon made very interesting statements about the state of education as well as its trajectory, I also felt as though they were talking over reality, and not in a way that felt visionary. I felt that Reigeluth's overview of the lacks in our current educational focus, and the the highlights of what incorporation of his vision for learner-centered individuated instruction would need to focus on, was compelling. It captured a lot of the educational ideals I ascribe to as well - just in time learning, championing student guided and student motivated direction, plans that met a student where they were at and task over an expectation of passive absorption - I felt that his theories miss in painfully glaring ways the importance of the social and peer-to-peer aspects of education. I felt this especially hard when the most compelling part of Harmon's essay jumped out at me, his theory that we have moved from physical progression to knowledge progression and that coming next may be something based in spiritual progression. I assume we can look at that from non-religious constraints, and consider what that could mean. To me, in that, I hear the phrase, "what makes a human." And that, to me, is inextricably linked to our relationships with each other. To imagine and envision a future of education in which the highest ideal is individual focus ... what does that say about how our future would value the necessity and power of community? It is our peers, it our educators, it is our family and friend units that allows us to take what is learned into the realm of emotional resonance. It is where we understand meaning, and appreciate what makes critical thinking so deeply important. That there was next to NOTHING discussed relating to this element of these dreamed up instructional futures felt like an unacceptable glaring omission for leaders in the field.
Due to this I preferred Chapter 18 - which was focused on media technology, but felt more like a side-conversation to Chapter 17 in which the less head in the clouds academics sat down and said, OK those guys have their cloud theories, but how can we actually boots on the ground make a difference in the reality as it is and for more people than just those who live on the tech campuses of the future or can afford to send their kids to elementary schools version of Harvard? What about the rest of us and what can we do with our academic privilege and stable place in life to bring these changes to schools in a meaningful and scalable way to the realities as they are?
To even have them MENTION the topics of equity and who is left out in these conversations in disproportionate ways was affirmation in their work, and in the context of embracing tech but recognizing the ways it distracts from core issues that will not go away by just adding more tech. It was also deeply refreshing to read their blunt commentary on the ivory tower gone corporate world. Publish or perish which has become its own version of capital gains and scholar stock exchange. To look at that and say, you know what, we have the stability in life to say Nah - that is the kind of professional I want to be learning from. The kind of identity that gives me passion for what this field might do for the world of ed tech, and those we design for. I also loved the efficiency of framing our lens shift from asking, "what works?" to "what is the problem and how can we solve it?" Huzzah!
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