Abolishing the Traditional 9th-12th Grade Structure of High Schools

Use python to take over the world! Competency education offers an effective way to radically improve high school education, but there are technical barriers to widespread adoption of the model. This talk offers a way to lower the barriers to widespread education reform.

Presented at PyCon 2013.

Transcript

1. Abolishing the Traditional 9th - 12th Grade Structure of High Schools Eric Matthes @ehmatthes peak5390.wordpress.com
2. I teach HS math & science in AK
3. At PyCon 2012 Paul Graham asked us to fix search, email, and universities, but...
4. ...said that fixing high schools is too hard. Is it?
6. Competency Education Each new student gets a blank map of all possible skills and knowledge
7. We make a “competency map” for each student, based on post- high school plans.
8. We support learning and help students demonstrate competency.
9. When you complete your map... You're done. There is no 9th grade, 10th grade...
10. ...whether that means 2 years or 6 years.
11. This is being done, but every school implementing competency education runs into technical issues.
12. Current solutions: • wall charts and binders • one-off internal tools • new proprietary solutions
13. Proprietary solutions will never foster widespread adoption of a new model of education.
14. Free and open education tools work: • instant adoption • continuous revision • in-built forking behavior
15. A trio of tools: • Open Education Competencies • Open Curriculum Builder • Open Competency Tracker
16. openedcompetencies Subject Subject Discipline Competency Area Essential Understanding Learning Targets
17. Any school can “fork” any other school's system.
18. A school can continuously improve its system.
19. Competencies can be mapped to existing bureaucratic standards, for reporting purposes.
20. opencurriculumbuilder You have emacs, vim, git. Teachers still build their curriculum plans in Word.
21. Build lessons, projects, learning experiences, assessments from competencies.
22. For teachers, but also anyone who wants to organize their own learning.
23. opencompetencytracker The only security-critical component.
24. Starts with a complete blank map.
25. Allow any teacher, administrator, or student to track their learning.
27. Abolishing the Traditional 9th - 12th Grade Structure of High Schools Eric Matthes @ehmatthes peak5390.wordpress.com