Disrupting+Class

**Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns**

Christensen, C. M. & Horn, M. B. & Johnson, C. W. (2008), //Disrupting Class//. San Francisco, NY: McGraw Hill.

__Introduction__

1.) Maximize human potential. 2.) Facilitate a vibrant, participative democracy in which we have an informed electorate that is capable of not being "spun" by self-interested leaders. 3.) Hone the skills, capabilities, and attitudes that will help our economy remain prosperous and economically competitive. 4.) Nurture the understaning that people can see things differently - and that those differences merit respect rather than presecution.
 * The introduction begins by stating that we have high hopes for our schools and lists four aspirations:**

- Schools are underfunded. - There aren't enough computers in the classroom. - Students and parents are to blame. - The teaching model is broken compared to other countries. - The teachers unions must be the problem. - The way we measure school's performance is fundamentally flawed.
 * Some theories about why school struggle to imporove are introduced:**

The authors approach in writing the book is to stand outside and put innovation research on a set of lenses to examine problems from a different perspective.


 * __Motivation__** leads to successful innovation.
 * Extrinsic motivation** is that which comes form the outside.
 * Intrinsic motivation** is when thew work itself stimulates and compels an individual to stay with the task because the task itself is inherently fun and enjoyable.

- When there is high extrinsic motivation for someone to learn something, schools' jobs are easier. - When there is no extrinsic motivation schools need to create intrinsically engaging methods for learning.

__Chapter 1: Why Schools Struggle to Teach Differently When Each Student Learns Differently__

//Rethinking Intelligence and How We Learn//

Gardner's definition of intelligence: - The ability to solve problems that one encounters in real life. - The ability to generate new problems to solve. - The ability to make something or offer a service that is valued within one's culture.

Gardner's eight intelligences: 1.) Linguistic 2.) Logical-mathematical 3.) Spatial 4.) Bodily-kinesthetic 5.) Musical 6.) Interpersonal 7.) Intrapersonal 8.) Naturalist

//**The School Dilema: Standardizing Teaching Versus Customizing Learning**

__temporal__ - you can't study this in ninth grade if you did not cover it in seventh __lateral__ - you can't teach certain foreign languages in other more efficient ways because you would have to change the way English grammar is taught __physical__ - project-based learning is a highly motivating way for many students to synthesize what they are learning __hierarchal__ - well-intentioned mandates, often contradictory from policymakers


 * Can We Customize Economically Within the Present Factory Model Schools?**//

Much of the support begind standardization - categorizing students by age into grades and then teaching batches of them with batches of material - was inspired by the efficient factory system that emerged in industrial America.


 * //The Potential for Customized Learning in Student-Centric Classrooms//**

Computer-based learning is emerging as a disruptive force and a promising opportunity.

The proper use of technology as a platform for learning offers a change to modularize the system and thereby customize learning.

Student-centric learning is the escape hatch from the temporal, lateral, physical, and hierarchal cells of standardization.

__Chapter 2: Making the Shift: Schools Meet Society's Needs__

The disruptive innovation theory explains why organizations struggle with certain kinds of innovation and how organizations can predictably succeed in innovation.

//**Applying Disruption Theory to Public Schools: Defining Performance**//

Schools actually have been improving - society has moved the goal posts on schools and imposed upon them new measures of performance, "In essence, the public schools have been required to do the equivalent of rebuilding an airplane in mid-flight - something almost no private enterprise has been able to do."


 * //Job 1//**: Preserve the Democracy and Inculcate Democrtic Values - Basic education needed to be universal, they reasoned, so that all citizens could participate in the democracy.


 * //Job 2//**: Provide Something for Every Student - Prepare everyone for volcations. The goal was to produce a sound workforce for jobs ranging from adminitsrative functions to technically demanding manufacturing positions so that America could compete with Germany.


 * //Job 3//**: Keep America Competitive - The nation asked it's schools to take on the new job of keeping the United States competitive.


 * //Job 4//**: Eliminate Poverty - No longer can public schools simply raise average test scores in their schools; instead, public schools must see to it that every child in every demographic improves his or her test scores.

__Chapter 3: Crammed Classroom Computers__


 * Deploying Disruptive Innovations Against Nonconsumption**

To succeed, disruptive technologies //must// be applied in applications where the alternative is nothing.


 * Technology Implementation and the Legislative Process**

Much like what lawmakers face when they introduce a bill, oposition attempts to squash or motify the bill and changes are made. In organizations, leaders must manage the process or disruptive innovations will become a sustaining innovation that fits the current model because organizations cannot naturally disrupt themselves.


 * Nypro's Novaplast Machine**

The "Novaplast" was a disruptive machine that allowed Nypro to create plastic molds in a quicker and more efficient manner that would help them compete in the global marketplace. Although it was clearly an innovation it was not widely accepted because it did not fit the organizations business model, this is an example that shows how an organization cannot disrupt itself.


 * Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab, and Online Brokerage**

In the 1990's Ameritrade and E-Trade disrupted the brokerage market by giving the public an inexpensive means to make trades on their own. These firms had created an innovation where none had previously existed. Charles Schwab and Merrill Lynch attempted to provide the same services but within their core business, the result once again is that an organization cannot disrupt itself and they were unsuccessful.


 * The Impact of Transistors on RCA and Sony**

__Cramming__ - selling disruptive products to existing customers.

Sony used the disruptive technology of the transistor which replaced vacuum tubes, to concunsumers by selling electonics to new markets. In contrast RCA sought to improve the technology it had which was difficult.


 * Cramming Computers in Schools**

Schools have invested heavily in computers, but students are using them sparcely. Schools are using them as a tool and a topic, not a primary instructional mechanism that helps students in ways customized to their intelligence.

Computers have been adding cost while failing to revolutionize the classroom. They get used in limited ways to simply maintain rather than transform pervailing instructional practices.  Computers have made no dent in allowing students to learn in ways that correspond with how their brains are wired to learn and migrating to a student-centric classroom.


 * How to Implement Computer-Based Learning: Lessons from Rachmaninoff**

The innovation of the phonograph provided people for the first time a means to listen to music when and where they wanted - it was truly innovative. The technology can succeed only if it competes against nonconsumption, where it is better than nothing. Virtually every successful disruptive innovation happened in a similar manner, competing gainst nonconsumption, and was better than nothing even if it was not perfect.

__Chapter 4: Disruptively Deploying Computers__

There are areas of nonconsumption in US schools where computer-based solutions can take hold.

A transition from teacher-delivered to software-delivered instruction has two phases:

//computer-based learning//: expensive, proprietary software that is monolithic in regards to student learning styles

//student-centric technology//: software developed to help students learn in a manner consistent with their learning style


 * Following a Disruptive Pattern**

Disruptions after competing with nonconsumption improve and costs decline.


 * Four Factors That Will Accelerate the Substitution**

1.) computer-based learning will keep improving 2.) students, teachers and parents will be able to select the body of material that fits each type of learner - the transition from computer-based to student-centric technology. 3.) teacher shortages 4.) costs will fall significantly as the market scales up


 * The Sequence of Substitution**

The change to student-centric learning will create a vacuum of nonconsumption where student-centric technologies can be deployed.

Disruptive innovation should not target cources schools want to teach, but those the schools would be relieved not to have to teach but which they need to offer.


 * The Future Classroom**

Teachers will act more as learning coaches to help students find the approach best for them. They can mentor and motivate through use of real-time data on student outcomes. Since student-centric learning is more personalized, we could increase the number of students per live teacher.

__Chapter 5: The System for Student-Centric Learning__

Two stage disruption process: 1-an innovator makes a product more affordable and simpler to use than what is available 2-modular design, it's simpler and inexpensive to upgrade a product -the existing value chain will be disrupted


 * Disrupting the Commercial System**

The entire system of creating education materials, making decisions about what to adopt and delivering content to students must change.


 * Three Types of Business Models**

//Solution Shops// - employ experienced, intuitively trained experts whose job is to diagnose problems and recommend solutions.

//Value-Chain Businesses// - bring inputs of materials into one end of their premises, transform them by adding value, and deliver high value products.

//Facilitated User Networks// - customers exchange with each other.


 * Public Education's Commercial System**

Step 1 - Producing and distributing textbooks and instructional materials - //value chain business// Step 2 - Marketing and Distribution Step 3 - Deliver content to students Step 4 - Individual assistance Step 5 - Testing and assessment Step 6 - Teacher training


 * Disruption Towards Student-Centric Learning**

Stages of disruption: Public, private and charter schools Computer-based learning Student-centric learning, facilitated user networks


 * The Technological Platform**

Platforms that allow nonprogrammers to create content (Quickbase, Second Life)


 * Distribution through User Network Business Models**

Open source software, self-diagnosis "push marketing"


 * The Benefits of User-Generated Content**

We learn much better when we teach than when we are sitting passively in a classroom, this is why technologically enabling students to create content for the second stage of disruption is healthy for student-centric learning.


 * Disrupting Regulated Markets: Lessons from Other Industries**

When disruptive innovators begin forming user networks parents, teachers and students will be able to circumvent the existing value chain and the balance of power in education will shift.

Two types of investment with great impact:

1.) development of technological platforms that nonprofessionals can use to create student-centric learning tools. 2.) building and facilitating a user network

__Chapter 6: The Impact of the Earliest Years on Students' Success__


 * Language Dancing**

Where parents are engaged face-to-face with with an infant and they speak in an adult language as if the infant could comprehend and respond.


 * Neoscience and Language Dancing**

When a parent engages in extra talk-speaking 48 million words to an infant in the first 36 months of life, many more synaptic pathways to the brain are exercised and refined. Expanded cognitive abilities can result in success or failure when beginning academic work.


 * A Case of Multigenerational Entrapment**

The children of lower-income, poorly educated, inner-city parents are trapped in a multigenerational cycle of educational underachievement and poverty.


 * What to Do**

Rather than fund programs that hire people to substitute for parents, we should teach children to be parents before they become parents.

__Chapter 7: Improving Education Research__

Education is unique in that it is improssible to use research to predict with great certainty the resuklts of actions. A process by which education research can become capable of predicting which initiatives will improve our schools is important.


 * How Disruptive Bodies of Understanding are Built**

Descriptive and Prescriptive Stages

Describe the phemonena as acurately as possible, develop constructs
 * Step 1: Observation**

Categorization of phenomena based on characteristics
 * Step 2: Classification**

Exploration of associations between the category-defining attributes and outcomes of interest
 * Step 3: Defining Relationships**


 * Moving Forward in Education Research**

Every action that policymakers, administrators, and teachers take is based upon theories that if they do certain things they will get the results they need.


 * What Makes Statements from Research Valid?**

Three trust measures: reliability, internal validity and external validity. Many policymakers often take actions that are inappropriate for their particular circumstance.

__Chapter 8: Forging A Concensus for Change__


 * Charting the Degree of Agreement**

Once managers know the direction they want to take their organization they need to convince all stakeholders to work together to get there.


 * Mechanisms of Movement**

Success and when people are given a common language and a common way to frame a problem, which can occur if there is a sound theory that people broadly understand.


 * Moving from Agreement to Cooperation**

Power Tools - When an organization's members share little consensus on either agreement dimension, the only tools that will elicit cooperation in pursuit of a new course are "power tools" such as fiat, force, coercion, and threats.

Management Tools - Coordinative and process-oriented management tools that include training, standard operating procedures, and measurement systems.

Leadership Tools - Results oriented tools that are more effective due to high consensus.

Culture Tools - Employees will cooperate almost automatically to continue in the same direction, shared basic assumptions.


 * Separation**

Dividing the conflicted parties into separate groups so they can be in strong agreement with others inside their own group, and yet they don't need to agree with those in other groups.


 * Public School Systems in the Matrix**

Common Language - with a common language and a common framing of the problem, tools like strategic planning, measurement systems and salesmanship can be effective.

Power - Fundamental school reform requires that school leaders are comfortable amassing and wielding power. Governing by school boards are ruled by majority votes which limit power.

Separation - When leaders do not possess the power to compel cooperation in discordant environments.

__Chapter 9: Giving Schools the Right Structure to Innovate__

The Soul of an Organization - an organization's structure affects its ability to innovate. When the task is simply to improve individual components, organizational structure can faciliatate these improvements, but when systems need to be reconfigured a compartmentalized structure impedes.

A Model of Organizational Design - Four problems categories for innovators; fuctional, lightweight, heavyweight and autonomous.


 * Innovation and Organizational Structures in Public Schools**

Public schools have a structure that mirrors the architecture of their product with functional and lightweight teams. When the task of redesigning is given to teams of teachers who work within their departments projects are tied up in endless debates, few compromises and little change.

Sustaining innovations since their job is to do a better job educating the same students as a district.
 * Chartered Schools**

School districts can create new school architectures by using charter and pilot schools as heavyweight teams. Codification eliminates overhead and allows teachers to find unique solutions and problem solve.
 * Spreading and Codifying New Architectures**