In this talk at WordCamp in San Francisco, Mozilla CEO John Lilly, talks about 7 insights and 2 problems in Mozilla.

Insights:

1. Superior products matter
2. Without excellent experience and utility the rest is meaningless
3. Communication will happen every possible way, make sure it is reusable
4. Make it easy for you community to do the important things
5. Surprise is over rated, it is the opposite of engagement
6. Communities are not markets, members are citizens
7. The key is the art of figuring out whether and how to apply each of these ideas

Problems:

1. Engaged citizens are noisy
2. At scale there are no maps

So what does this have to do with education? It has everything to do with education because the 18th century model no longer works and we need to look at what is working in the world of open source. Education, like American auto makers, is being forced to change and the transition will not be pretty. So watch John Lilly’s talk and see if you agree.

While this change does not take education to the totally open and flexible iTunes purchasing model as some would prefer, it does provide significant flexibility to districts. In addition, it opens up the Texas market to a large number of companies that heretofore had no chance to compete. For the basal publishers that have owned the market, creativity and flexibility will, or at least should, become a new mantra.

California’s e-learning proposial is stil being sorted out.

There are already worrying signs that California is trying to go digital on a shoestring. Traditionally, publishers provide schools with a complete package: student textbooks, teacher’s guides with sample lessons and tests, and teacher training courses. In the emerging model, teachers must assemble their own package, combining e-books with free course “wikis” (shared online resources any user can update or revise), and networking with other teachers over the web to share best practices. It’s a new responsibility some would prefer to avoid.

The digital divide needs to be closed not just in hardware, but even more important in what to do with the hardware and software. Most teachers are not online in any significat way and and have never created a wiki or blog. Schools will have to open up their filtering and the 19th century modle of edcation will have to be scraped.

Larry Ferlazzo, an English teacher is Sacramento, CA is a blogger and Best of List developer who can help you cut through the Web 2.0 clutter to find some gems. Look on his sidebar for links to the Best Of pages. 

This is a quote from the principal’s web page.

Philosophy of Education: Our philosophy is congruent with the Experimentalist philosophy which views change as an ever-present process in a student’s learning experience. Experimentalism insists that curriculum is the subject matter of social experience and instruction is a problem solving, project-oriented process. The role of the teacher is to assist and advise the student, actively participating and contributing to their learning in order to expand and discover the society they live in and share experiences together. We believe that a child’s education at Ariel Community Academy should be based on current and up-to-date research that is supported by the best teaching and learning methods.  Therefore, students should be aware of their own multiple intelligences and utilize a wide variety of abilities to demonstrate what they have learned.

The last sentence says to me that the end of high stakes standardized testing is at hand.

I have been working weekly in the classroom introducing different Web 2.0 tools to the students and the teacher. The students have epal email accounts, a Delicious account and the class has a wiki. The teacher is very excited about the laptops and is eager to learn about integrating technology into the curriculum. She will be going to the MassCUE Technology Leadership Symposium with myself, Jake and 3 other teaches. None of these teaches have been to an edtech conference. If their first exposure to several hundred educators excited about the changes technology can bring to education is anything like mine, their approach to teaching will be changed.