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

Chapter 1: Why Schools Struggle to Teach Differently when each Student Learns Differently

1. Explain the difference between interdependence and modularity. How is education currently organized?

Interdependence: The characteristics of the way they fit together (the interface) cannot be predicted. In this case, an organization "must develop both of the components if it hopes to develop either component" (p. 29).
The architecture of the interface is proprietary because any other organization making this product will choose its own best-way of making it. Since it has to make both components anyway, one organization isn't interested in what another organization's components are like, or how they fit together.

Modularity: Specifies the fit and function of all elements so completely that it does not matter who makes the components or subsystems as long as they meet the defined specifications.

Education is organized with four types of interdependencies:

Temporal: You can't student this in ninth grade if you didn't cover that in seventh.

Lateral: You can't teach foreign languages in other more efficient ways because you'd have to change the way English grammar is taught; and changing the way grammar is taught would mandate changes elsewhere in the English curriculum.

Physical: There is strong evidence, for example, that project-based learning is a highly motivating way for many students to synthesize what they are learning as well as to identify gaps in their knowledge that need to be filled. But many schools can't adopt widespread project-based learning because the layout of their buildings simply can't accommodate it.

Hierarchical: Ranges from well-intentioned mandates, which are often contradictory, from local, state, and federal policymakers that influence what happens in schools to union-negotiated work rules that become ensconced in contracts and policies at state and local levels.

Chapter 2: Making the Shift: Schools meet Society’s need

2. Explain the disruptive innovation theory. What does this have to do with schools?

Disruptive Innovation Theory: Explains why organizations struggle with certain kinds of innovation and how organizations can predictably succeed in innovation. Disruptive innovation take root in simple, undemanding applications in what is a new plane of competition where the very definition of what constitutes quality is different from what quality and improvement meant in the back plane. The impact of this change in the definition of quality is that the disruptive products is the new plane are not attractive to the customers of products in the original plane. They don't want and can't use them. Because companies need to meet the needs of their customers, the companies that made the products in the original plane of competition have a difficult time engaging simultaneously in the new, disruptive plane as well.

"With education, the question becomes how to apply disruption as a positive force, propagating new ideas that are relatively simple to adopt and that offer an inviting, student-centric alternative to the often tradition-bound processes of many school systemsWith education, the question becomes how to apply disruption as a positive force, propagating new ideas that are relatively simply to adopt and that offer an inviting, student-centric alternative to the often tradition-bound processes of many school systems."

With education, the question becomes how to apply disruption as a positive force, propagating new ideas that are relatively simple to adopt and that offer an inviting, student-centric alternative to the often tradition-bound processes of many school systemsWith education, the question becomes how to apply disruption as a positive force, propagating new ideas that are relatively simple to adopt and that offer an inviting, student-centric alternative to the often tradition-bound processes of many school systemsWith education, the question becomes how to apply disruption as a positive force, propagating new ideas that are relatively simple to adopt and that offer an inviting, student-centric alternative to the often tradition-bound processes of many school systemsWith education, the question becomes how to apply disruption as a positive force, propagating new ideas that are relatively simple to adopt and that offer an inviting, student-centric alternative to the often tradition-bound processes of many school systems

Right now, schools do not seem fully prepared to exploit opportunities around disruptive innovation. Schools, like businesses, tend to stick to customary practices, even if it means beChapter 3: Crammed Classroom Computers

3. Why doesn’t cramming computers in schools work? Explain this in terms of the lessons from Rachmaninoff (what does it mean to compete against nonconsumption?)

Cramming computers in schools does not work because it will "never allow schools to migrate to a student-centric classroom. If change were to occur, Christensen states, there will be "no teachers to teach, then computer-based learning will, step by step, disrupt the instructional job that teachers are doing in a positive way, but helping students learn in ways that their brains are wired to learn and by allowing teachers to give students much more individual attention."

The Rachmaninoff recordings are successful if it does not compete directly with the live musician. Relating this to schools, cramming computers are successful if it does not compete directly with the teacher.


Chapter 4: Disruptively Deploying Computers

4. Explain the pattern of disruption

Disruptions fist compete against nonconsumption in a new "plane of competition." In that plane, the technology improves, and the underlying cost declines. The technology begins drawing applications from the original plane of competition into the new one.

5. Explain monolithic instruction. How does student-centric learning help this problem?

Monolithic Instruction is standardized or a "one size fits all" type education with no customization to tailor to the needs of students and their learning abilities. On the other hand, student-centric learning is when education is customized to fit the needs of all students with different types of learning abilities.

Chapter 5: The System for Student Centric Learning

6. Explain Public Education's Commercial System. What does it mean to say it is a value-chain business? How does this effect student centric learning?

Public Education's Commercial System

                1. Subject matter experts create textbooks and other instructional tools, which codify the concepts to be taught and the methods used for teaching them.

                2. Curriculum experts at the state and local levels then make decisions about which textbooks to adopt.

                3. Teachers deliver the content to the students

                4. Students are assessed based on what they were taught

The Public Education's Commercial System is a value-chain business in that the value added is linked to the process with the main functional parts. In time, student centric learning "will move mainstream when users and teachers start piecing together enough tool module to create entire courses designed for each type of learner."