Tablet computing and the digital classroom it portends will transform the role of educators. They won't teach. They'll manage the learning process of their students. The Freakonomics podcast once referred to this as a student's "playlist": a customized curriculum where the teacher helps with hands-on work and identifies problems or outliers. Already, initiatives like New York's School of One are trying this out (although the project is limited to a three-hour after-school program at the moment).
Screenshot of a spreadsheet dashboard used at School of One to track student performance.So the irresistible force of digitization -- which has already redefined publishing, music, television and dozens of other industries -- is about to meet the immovable mountain of teachers' unions. The unions can step up, helping their members make the transition to tomorrow's learner-centric, tech-heavy classroom. Or, the unions can dig in their heels, resisting change and fighting the inevitable accountability that comes from analytics and digitization.
Tablet computing and the digital classroom give students access to petabytes of knowledge, tailored to their current situations, abilities, and learning preferences. It's how we can overcome many of the problems endemic in today's schools. It'll mean retooling and retraining teachers, equipping them for the student-centric classroom of tomorrow.
As long as the unions don't get in the way.
