Algebra iPhone Apps and the Online Learning Revolution

Dan Lips / January 23, 2010

Picture the world in 1960 and imagine how much has changed over the past half century.  Now picture the average classroom in 1960 and today.  In both, you’d probably see roughly the same thing—a teacher standing in front of a row of desks.  Today, there might be a computer or two in the classroom.  But the set-up and the teaching process are probably about the same.

This mental experiment highlights how education is one of the areas of American life that has been most resistance to change over the last 50 — if not 150 –years.  For the most part, students still pass through schools like widgets moving through a factory.   The school calendar remains based on the agrarian calendar.  Whether or not child had access to a great teacher often is still determined by where he or she lives.

This is beginning to change.  Fast. (more…)