Successes...And A Lingering Question

     This has been an interesting week in our educational technology class.  I have enjoyed observing how quickly my classmates' weblogs have evolved, and appreciate people sharing what they have learned about adding multimedia content to their blogs. (See Anna's great post on 5/21/2013 about embedding a VoiceThread in a blog post.) On the same day Evelyn posted a really thought-provoking piece on a rural North Carolina school that she encountered on a recent trip.  It is part of a national network of schools whose parent organization advocates on-line and project-based learning.  Although at this stage of my training I feel that web-based learning should be used judiciously (I sincerely hope the students do not spend the majority of their day in front of a computer screen), I was intrigued that the project Evelyn discovered helped the students explore and honor their region's past.  As for my own project--this blog--I added links to three blogs by adding the blog list gadget to my site's layout, and I started tagging my posts.  
      Two thoughts came to mind during this week's presentations about twenty-first century technology "openers" for transforming education:
 
 1) Monitoring outcomes is essential in evaluating the efficacy of any educational program or tool.
My impression is that there is a lot of talk about availability of online information, but little mention of learning outcomes resulting from the application of this information.  Since accountability is becoming a substantial component of "traditional" educational programs, I am wondering what standards are in place for assessing both individual students and entire programs involved in on-line learning.  After a bit of searching, I came up with two reports (both out of Colorado) that may offer somewhat different perspectives on recent developments in K-12 online learning:

• Keeping Pace 2012 (from Evergreen Educational Group)
• Online K-12 Schooling in the U.S. (National Education Policy Center)

2) Context is important.
I am a big believer in context.  (The irony is not lost on me that I am writing this blog under the name of my home town, not my own name.  It is because this is an apprenticeship, and I do not claim any expertise on these matters.) Whenever I read a non-fiction book, or an article or report online, I do my best to determine "where the author is coming from".  Imagine my surprise when Ivan Illich was cited as having influenced the author of the aforementioned "openers".  This would be the same Dr. Illich who wrote a book on the limits of modern medicine, a book I ordered and read while in Vienna long ago. (I was thinking of going into biomedical research.)  In a nutshell: Dr. Illich was an intriguing person, a polyglot, an itinerant, an advocate for the disadvantaged, and most definitely someone who thought outside the box.  In a great online tribute he is described as "a genie who could not be kept in any bottle. Like Goethe’s Mephistopheles, he was a 'spirit who ever negates'".  This negation included not just the medical establishment, but also schools.  Certainly a title like Deschooling Society sends a pretty clear message (although I checked the book out of the library to get the full story).  My question, though, is what am I to make of this text (and its "offshoots") as a pre-service teacher, and as a product of--and a believer in--public schools?