1 Weight Bearing Walls a metaphor applied to education  Physical structures must have walls or other supports to hold the roof up...  If you have ever remodeled a house, it is good to know which interior walls are “weight bearing.” Not all interior walls are...  If you are going to remove a weight bearing wall (WBW), you must provide another support before that wall can be removed...  If you don’t, the roof will cave in... duh!

2 Weight Bearing Walls 1.Grade Levels 2.Courses/Curriculum 3.Class Periods/Bell Schedule 4.Students Assigned to Classrooms 5.Textbooks 6.ABC Grading System/Student Evaluation 7.Learning Happens in Schools/Use of Space 8.Nine Month School Year/Agrarian Calendar 9.Report Cards/Informing Parents 10.Paper and Pencil Orientation

What they do for us: 1. Grade Levels 3 Today’s power technology: What they stop us from doing: Who is doing it now: Allow us to group students and to move them through the twelve- year cycle Allowing all learners to progress at their optimum rate of learning Allows for the mass customization of products and services Apple iTunes, Google, Amazon.com, Bing

What they do for us: 2. Students Assigned to Classrooms 4 Today’s power technology: What they stop us from doing: Who is doing it now: Allow us to divide/group students into manageable numbers and to assign staff responsible for control and accountability Bringing students with similar learning needs together with a master teacher to study and master a specific learner outcome Allows for complex schedule coordination Microsoft Exchange Calendar, Yahoo! Calendar, Google Calendar, Apple iCal

What they do for us: 3. CLASS PERIODS/BELL SCHEDULE 5 Today’s power technology: What they stop us from doing: Who is doing it now: Provide logistical control of curriculum, courses, staff and students …we always know where everyone is…or should be Putting everyone…learners and teachers…in control of getting to where they need to be Allows for complex schedule coordination Microsoft Exchange Calendar, Yahoo! Calendar, Google Calendar, Apple iCal

What they do for us: 4. COURSES/CURRICULUM 6 Today’s power technology: What they stop us from doing: Who is doing it now: Identify what we will teach/cover, and divides the content into chunks that fit into quarters, semesters, years, and ultimately into graduation requirements Allowing life-role learner outcomes to determine the direction and progress of learning Allows any content to be available from anywhere at any time Wikipedia, Bing, Google, the Web

What they do for us: 5. TEXTBOOKS 7 Today’s power technology: What they stop us from doing: Who is doing it now: Provide authoritative and dependable content/curriculum in chunks that fit a specific course…teachers know what they are to teach and students know what they are to learn Accessing nearly unlimited content from anywhere that directly fits learner needs and interests Virtually all known information is readily available on the Internet Bing, Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia

What they do for us: 6. PAPER AND PENCIL 8 Today’s power technology: What they stop us from doing: Who is doing it now: Provide written documentation/records of the performance and achievement of students Using digital records of student performance that are easily reconfigured into different formats Thumb drives which hold 8 gigs of data, cloud technology, Dropbox, Google Drive. Thumb drives and larger digital storage devices available in all electronic stores, Target, Walmart…computer backup drives store and protect great amounts of information

What they do for us: 7. ABC Grading System 9 Today’s power technology: What they stop us from doing: Who is doing it now: Allows us to evaluate the progress of all students, rank/compare their achievement, and determine those who have met graduation requirements Allowing each student to create an electronic portfolio documenting his or her learner outcome demonstrations Personal production of all types of media... with rather good quality... by anyone with a computer and digital camera YouTube, MySpace, Facebook... and many, many people from their homes or offices

What they do for us: 8. REPORT CARDS 10 Today’s power technology: What they stop us from doing: Who is doing it now: Allow us to evaluate the performance/achievement of students and communicate that evaluation to parents Providing learners, parents, and teachers real-time information regarding real student achievement Secure, encrypted digital communication with anyone “with a need to know” Banks, online retailers, Amazon.com, eBay

What they do for us: 9. LEARNING HAPPENS IN SCHOOL 11 Today’s power technology: What they stop us from doing: Who is doing it now: Allows the school system to be in control of students, to create a system of accountability for the physical well-being of learners, and to efficiently administer a logistically complex organization Learning in real-life contexts, making effective use of community resources…both physical and human resources Allows anyone to learn anything from anywhere at any time from worldwide resources Phoenix University and other online learning courses and degrees, cyber schools, exchange programs, learner “shadowing” opportunities