{"id":10839,"date":"2010-10-22T12:46:39","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T16:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=10839"},"modified":"2010-10-22T12:47:15","modified_gmt":"2010-10-22T16:47:15","slug":"the-need-for-second-order-types-of-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2010\/10\/22\/the-need-for-second-order-types-of-change\/","title":{"rendered":"The need for second-order types of change&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ednetinsight.com\/news-alerts\/voice-from-the-industry\/the-secret-government-plan-to-transform-education.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>The secret government plan to transform education<\/strong><\/a> &#8212; from EdNet News by Thomas W. Greaves<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Tucked away on page 79 of the absolutely splendid National Educational Technology Plan 2010 is a gem known as Grand Challenge 4:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>4.0:  Identify and validate design principles for efficient and effective  online learning systems and <span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>combined online and offline learning systems <\/strong><\/span>that produce content expertise and competencies equal to or better than  those produced by the best conventional instruction in <strong><span style=\"color: #800000;\">half the time <\/span><\/strong>at  <span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>half the cost.<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">It is a gem because if it comes to pass, it  will be truly transformative. It will have the power and potential to  solve our educational woes, improve our national security and, over the  long term, provide a major boost to the economy. It must be a secret  because if people know about it, they are not talking about it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Since  the microcomputer revolution began in schools around 1980, educators  have been looking forward to the day when computer technology would  become transformative. However, even schools with a 1:1 student-computer  ratio have failed to accomplish this goal.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">The root cause of this lack of transformation is that in the vast  majority of cases,<strong> we have employed first-order change rather than  second order-change. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Our problem is analogous to the Pony  Express problem. We can breed faster, stronger horses. We can do  research to find better horse feed. We can require that letters be  written on tissue paper. No matter what we do, there is a limit to the  improvement we can get. It will still take ten days to move a letter  from St. Joseph, Missouri, to San Francisco. No amount of tinkering with  the system, not even the use of an electric saddle for the horse could  cut the time from ten days to five days or to one day. Nor would any of  these changes cut the cost of delivering a letter in half.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">One  common term that describes incremental improvement efforts is  first-order change. <span style=\"color: #800000;\">The special horses of the Pony Express were a  first-order change.<\/span> The corresponding term describing transformative  change is \u201csecond-order change.\u201d<span style=\"color: #800000;\"> Moving from horses to trains or trains  to airplanes is an example of second-order change.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>From DSC:<\/strong><br \/>\nAlso relevant here is a posting that I did (on my archived website) back from Dec 2008 entitled,<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.calvin.edu\/~dsc8\/walmartofeducation.htm\" target=\"_blank\"><strong> The Forthcoming Walmart of Education<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The secret government plan to transform education &#8212; from EdNet News by Thomas W. Greaves Tucked away on page 79 of the absolutely splendid National Educational Technology Plan 2010 is a gem known as Grand Challenge 4: 4.0: Identify and validate design principles for efficient and effective online learning systems and combined online and offline [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,86,57,99],"tags":[617,614,290,619,572],"class_list":["post-10839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blended-learning","category-change","category-cost-of-getting-a-degree","category-hybrid-learning","tag-blended-learning","tag-change","tag-cost-of-getting-an-education","tag-hybrid-learning","tag-walmart-of-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10839"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10842,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10839\/revisions\/10842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}