For the next 55 minutes, students work independently at their computers, learning core subjects or electives through online curricula aligned to Arizona’s state standards. They put on headphones or twist iPod ear buds into their ears, because the online programs are interactive and multimodal—comprised of audio, video vignettes, Flash animation, quizzes, and games. Paraprofessionals called “assistant coaches” walk through the center to make sure kids are doing their work, fix computer glitches, help with academic questions, and—most important, administrators say—check in emotionally with the students, talking with them about anything at home or at school that might be affecting their learning.
susan carter morgan on 02 Jul 10The shift from 'sage on the stage' to 'guide on the side', while it has served an important function in shifting the focus from the teacher to the learner, does not capture the fullness of the implications of this shift. We have been hearing about the importance of 'lifelong learning' for some time now in formal education. If, as Bauman asserts, 'unlearning' will be as important to social success in the 21st millennium as learning has been in the 20th millennium, then the habit of 'lifelong learning' will need radical re-thinking in terms of the nature and purposes of pedagogical work. Put simply, we will need to see a further shift from sage-on-the-stage and guide-on-the-side to meddler-in-the-middle (McWilliam, 2005).
