Welcome to the Classroom of 2021

After reading this article about tablets in school I couldn’t help but picture the classroom of the future and wonder whether teachers have tried this exercise for themselves.

Welcome to the classroom of 2021

The teacher has loaded the common cartridge for the morning.  All the students are sitting at their desks where the new pressure sensitive chairs read how they are sitting and adjust the digital material on the white board to try to keep their attention as long as possible.  The camera at the front of the room observes that a student in the back row has stopped watching the white board and is looking at something outside the window. Noting that her student file says her hobby is dancing, the cartridge selects a video from the massive support database that includes some children dancing to continue the lesson. The change is registered as effective as the student is now back to looking towards the front of the classroom.

By 8:45 the class has moved on to reading. Student 165789-F3 is working on her reading assignment on her school assigned tablet. The rest of the students are reading a paragraph about William Jefferson Clinton to fulfill their non-fiction reading requirement. The paragraph talks about how proud he is of his daughter who has just been elected state representative. The passages the software has chosen for 165789-F3 do not include any references to a father as she has never known her father and is unlikely to be able to answer a prompt about one.

In the seat next to her, student 178946-W2 has automatically been added to the school dinner program because the system has noted that his mother lost her job ten weeks ago and has not found new employment. His name is added to the late bus list and his homework adjusted downward because he will not be getting home until later now. His mother’s WIC funds have been adjusted to reflect that she will no longer need to provide this meal for her child.  All of this has seamlessly happened in the ether world to her state issued debit card.  The teacher gets an alert from the district of this change and tells 178946-W2 of his new schedule. She senses a slight welling of tears when he learns that he will have to be at school for an additional two hours in the afterschool program instead of at home and she promises to stay and get him settled in with the other kids there today.  This does not seem to have much of a calming effect on him. Though she knows all kinds of intimate details of his life, she is a relative unknown to him. His only relationship with her is to get suggestions for other websites he can log on to when he is stuck or as someone who can get broken tech fixed.

It’s 9:00 and already the teacher has had to log a tablet repair order and move student 49861-J4 to a different assessment station since the camera on the one he was at stopped working and was unable to complete his weekly formative assessment without knowing when he had turned his face from the screen, bored or frustrated with the questions for even a moment. The teacher is glad the camera is not registering her frustration. This is the 5^th tech repair report she has had to make this week, and it’s only Wednesday.

Little 562890-R3 raises her hand and asks to be allowed to go to the bathroom for the second time today. The teacher sighs but allows her to go. As she walks out the door her student ID registers her move in her student file, triggering a visit to the community counselor in the office be scheduled to make sure there are no physical or emotional problems causing her frequent trips from the classroom. Sensors in the bathroom read her ID and assure that she has made it to the bathroom, how long she is there and log any other IDs that might be in there with her.

Back in the classroom the children have gathered for the morning math lesson. Today they will be covering shapes, whole numbers through 12,  angles, fractions (denominator only), and some idea of the area of a circle. The lesson requires them to draw a truck reflecting these concepts, talk among their group and agree on which part of the truck best represents the angle and the denominator.  The teacher goes around the classroom with her tablet and marks off the elements of the preset rubric designed for this assignment for each student.  She is glad she has this tool as she is not sure herself how to explain how we know the area of a circle to second graders who only know the bottom part of 22/7th.  

She notices that the group in the front of the classroom has already completed the assignment. No surprise there. Student 498615-J4 is part of that group and has secretly been getting supplemental lessons after school. That information isn’t in the system so she can’t accuse his parents directly, but there seems to be no other way he could be so advanced in his skills compared to the other students. Even if she had proof she wouldn’t say anything because he is helping her keep her job with his scores on the assessments. The other students are happy that 498615-J4 is part of their group. They always get good scores when they agree to his answers.

The teacher graduated in 2018. Her degree in global studies made her a great candidate for teaching. She wishes she had more credit hours in statistics though, which would help her make sense of her classroom and the daily reports she receives about her students.  It is hard for her to imagine the olden days when teachers, like Mrs. Jones down the hall in 5^th grade, didn’t have all the SES data on their students to help them in the classroom.  How in the world would you pick the right lesson cartridge from the network if you  didn’t know things like how many single children you had or which ones slower progression might be due to low birth weight?

Mrs. Jones has just announced she is retiring at the end of this year. She, at age 36, is one of the oldest teachers in the school. Unlike some of her predecessors she is not moving on to an administrative role. She seems kind of wistful about it all. At lunch, she joins the younger teachers less and less in their conversations about  which website has the best digital master teachers and what the latest glitch in software has been. There was a time when Mrs. Jones talked more, tried to engage the other teachers in exploring other curriculum materials, questioned whether what they were doing was right for the children. That was before the closed door meetings with district administrators. Since then, Mrs. Jones has said little to the other teachers. When asked what she plans to do after she leaves, she has vaguely suggested something with homeschooling although it is unclear how much longer that will even be legal.  Nonetheless, she appears to be looking forward to leaving the public school.

If they haven't already, teachers really should be thinking about the future education reformers have envisioned for them.

Common Cartridge for the Common Man

G.K. Chesterton once said, "Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another." Technology now seeks to do that digitally with the Common Cartridge. IMS Global Learning Consortium (aka ITIMS or IMS GLC) wrote the specification for the Common Cartridge which provides, "state-of-the-art practice in online education and training into an easy-to-follow format for creating and sharing digital content."

Basically, the cartridge is software that allows the user to combine a bunch of digitally available source material into one "lesson plan." Their platform allows users to go from one digital source to another without having to search, or log in, or wait for third party software to load.  This video,(look at the first video called "Introducing video for IMS Common Cartridge") demonstrates how the CC is intended for use in the classroom.  It is envisioned as a teacher resource for now.

Notice the classroom portrayed in this video.  Each student sits at a desk with a computer, working individually on their cartridge (which may not necessarily be the same one that their neighbor is working on). The role of the teacher is to periodically check on the students and offer advice.  Since there is no dialogue for the teacher in the video we are left to guess at the nature of the guidance they offer.  It COULD be offering some personal insight to the teachings of Aristotle, or it could simply be, "click on this tab to find that information."  You begin to see the evolving role of the teacher in the classroom with Common Core through Common Cartridges.

The video also gives a glimpse of what constitutes learning in the future.  After watching several similar videos about the cartridge I noted that they all sourced Wikipedia on their topics.  A student recently told me, "Teachers hate Wikipedia more than they hate guns." It would appear that Icodeon shares no such visceral aversion to that digital source. The cartridge also pulls in information from Facebook and Twitter.  In this way they seem to agree with Mr. Chesterton.  These two social media tap into the psyche, or soul, of a culture. Their accuracy might be a little in doubt and thus their place in a classroom could be questioned, but education in the future may care more about how people FEEL about a topic than the facts themselves.


One of the benefits digital media has over print media is its ability to be updated almost instantaneously.  If only Mitt Romney's book had been produced digitally he would not have had to explain its change on health care.  With digital media we can do as the first lady Michelle Obama demanded, “We’re going to have to make sacrifices, we’re going to have to change our conversation, we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history and we’re going to have to move to a different place.”  What would  George Santayana, who said, "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it," think of a history that was constantly subject to change as people were trying to study it?



The internet is a vast a wondrous place where fact and fantasy are separated only by a mouse click. The Common Cartridge is being rolled out as a tool that teachers can use to tap into this vast source of information to supplement or enhance their teaching experience. Teachers already do this with things like White Boards in their classrooms, but Common Cartridge will make that process more stream lined, like plug-n-play. Their only limitation will be to use the IMS approved basic curriculum sources.  This will be IMS members (who pay heavily for the privilege of membership), like Khan Academy. That list grows as the CC is expanded to its ultimate goal of worldwide education. The plan is already underway to have global education standards and Common Cartridge provides an easy way to do that.

At least initially, teachers will have the freedom to assemble the cartridge any way they like.  It's not too hard to imagine a parent conversation in the future sounding like this, "Oh I like Teacher A so much better than Teacher B. Her cartridges are so much better than his."  How long do you think it will take before school systems decide to promote Teacher A to making the cartridge for the entire school or district in order to free up the other teachers' time to collect data?  But since all work is now being done on the computer, which can collect data by the second, maybe we won't even need teachers to do that.  Yes, I can see the teacher's role evolving.  And to think it all started with Common Core Standards.

What in the World is Going on with Teachers? Common Core Praises Appear Again in Song.

We reported a few days ago on the singing Pep Squad teachers extolling the virtues of the Common Core standards.  We now have another set of teachers praising, literally and figuratively, Common Core standards This version takes on a religious fervor by the end of the clip.  It is set to the tune of "We are the World". 

From youtube and an unnamed school:






The words are difficult to understand, but the gist of the message is this:

There was a time when a child was left behind
They couldn't read, write or graph a line
There's a choice we're making
To change the world today
Ensure.........to day to day


(chorus)
We're Common Core
We are the standards
We're arguments to evidence to make a difference
It's the choice we're making
To set the students high
Ensure the betterment of you and I.


Now is the time 
To put it on the line
To try so the system won't decline
We're creating words (?)
For the brand new century
Ensure a brighter day for you and me.

(chorus) 


....To make a smarter place for you and I.


Unlike the previous posting we had about teachers singing about the excitement of instituting common core but looking uncomfortable, this group seems enthusiastic and ready for the challenge to save the students.


These teachers appear to have bought into the argument that because of common core standards, miraculous turnarounds for student achievement will occur.  Maybe the teachers won't be so excited when they discover many of them will be replaced by teachers from Teach for America and the common cartridge with preloaded curriculum.  Experienced teachers won't be needed for data driven assessments and predetermined curriculum. 


We'll be writing about the common cartridge and its importance in the implementation of common core in our next post.  The teachers might be singing a funeral dirge instead of a celebratory hymn about common core when they see how the common cartridge will work in the classroom and replace many of them. 

I doubt the common core will "ensure a brighter day" for teachers or students.  A "one size fits all" education is not appropriate for teachers or students.   The private companies developing the common core and common cartridge will be whistling a happy tune for the money made from taxpayers, but teachers, students and parents will probably be singing the blues as education becomes less about learning and even more about teaching to data driven tests.