Hello fellow educators welcome to podcast #81. Today I want to pick up on the discussion we have been having on the issue of educational reform. In podcast #78  I spent time talking about the three specific areas of educational reform that we have been involved in at Heritage Christian Schools. We have been involved in the first area of reform since we started Heritage more than 24 years ago in how we approach curriculum. We started Heritage with an the emphasis of Christian Worldview integration within our curriculum. We started our campus program using the ACE curriculum and our staff was made up of a few professional teachers and many parent volunteers. As funding become available we shifted to a more teacher centered curriculum and have worked hard to not lose but rather develop a more sophisticated approach to Christian Worldview Integration. This value, at times, may have compromised some of the Biblical integrated perspectives but in most cases we have become better at integrating our faith into the classroom.  This has also taken us into our next educational reform. We have called this reform transformational education. In order to truly disciple our children we have to do more than pass on knowledge to our students. We have to give them educational experiences that help to form their lives into their gifts and callings. Jesus didn't just teach his disciples he brought them into experiences that challenged them to their core. He told them to heal the sick, cleanse the leapers and raise the dead. We have to see our role as educators in this light. Christian educators don't just teach knowledge they enable their students to experience the principles we are discipling them into.

Over the last fifteen years we have been working slowly in the third area of reform, technological innovation.  Let me first say that there is nothing in this direction that is exclusively Christian. In fact, technological reform comes packages with some very significant dangers attached. Technology has a way of disrupting the old traditions and with this the old morals can easily be manipulated. We have seen the erosion of values in our culture through the advent of television, for example. The technology in itself is not the problem but because technology has a liberating effect it becomes a place where the old standards don't apply in the same way as the traditional mediums governed those standards in the past.  Technology undermines the controlling authority structures so that an entirely new regime of control emerges. This cannot be illustrated any better than how the internet is now transforming everything about our lives and culture. This new medium of communication and information is restructuring how we communicate, make decisions, do business, pay taxes, find our careers, meet people, develop our relationships, entertain ourselves and sustain ourselves. The internet has freed not just North American culture but, in fact all of our world's cultures are being quickly transformed into a global society. Back in 2006 I wrote, Discipling this Generation for a Digital World, to help our community to see how prolific these changes are and how they will be for the next generation. It is both exciting times we live in and dangerous times. Technology will not have a neutral impact upon our culture because, by and large, we are still very fallen in our thinking and approach to life. We are really not a Christian culture and thus any liberating effects of technology will just free us to become who we really are and in most cases this is not something we want to let out in the open.

So let me swing the pendulum of  reform here. Imagine what television would have been like if Christians never involved themselves in this technological transformation. In the early years of television Christians were the main influence on what type of content was acceptable. Not only did it become a platform for entertainment it also became a place for the gospel. Billy Graham and Oral Roberts were some of the first to use this medium to bring the gospel message to the masses of viewers. My own father found Christ through television evangelism. To this day it continues to be a medium for our message and ministry. Of course the volume of material that comes through is anti-Christ in nature. Consider how dark those networks would have become with no Christian content. Networks like HBO is an example of this. I believe this is where all of television would be today had not Christian leaders seen this as an opportunity to be included in the medium.

So I have been calling our community to become engaged in the new medium of this generation, the internet. As educators we have to involve ourselves in this new reform. Will it have dangerous affects upon how we educate and what our children have access too? Absolutely. But if we don't get involved we will find ourselves in a digital culture without a voice to bring the most important message of all time or introduce the most important person in the universe whom everyone needs to friend on Facebook. Let's face it, the internet and all its disruptive possibilities is here for good, either we shun it or engage it as we enter the war for the culture of the future.

So we have started the dialog of how online technology will change our classrooms. It is not an easy discussion. Change is never easy and educational technology will change how we do nearly everything in our schools. Indeed it already is beginning to chip away at our old ways of doing things. All one has to do is step into any typical library in nearly any school and see that students are not consulting the printed page for their information. Books will always have a place but not so much for research, students read more for entertainment than for information.  When it comes to research we now go to the internet. Google is the new librarian and  research assistant.

I have been reading two very interesting books that talk about the implications of these changes in education. The first is "Disrupting Class" by Clayton Christensen which details why education will be going through this disruption. I would direct you back to podcasts number 76 and 77 where I talk specifically how Heritage Christian Online School has become a disruptive force in our region of the world. The second book which was given to me by a fellow online educator is "Liberating Learning" by Terry Moe and John Chubb. This book focuses more on the politics surrounding the coming changes. Although the book is specifically about American education and the struggles they are facing many of the principles and politics apply beyond the boards of the US. They detail how the state based teacher unions are the main obstacle to educational reform. They point to a very interesting correlation of teacher unions and cyber schools. In states where the unions are strongest there are no or few state funded cyber programs and in states where the unions are weakest the strongest and more numerous cyber schools have emerged. The thesis of the book is that technology has the power to decentralize education which is not good for local state unions that build their power on controlling local policy. They also point out that online education has the potential to change the standard formulas of class size and the teachers job, two aspects that are pivotal in the union's reason for existence. British Columbia is no exception to these pressures. Our teachers union is mounting significant political pressure in many of our public DL programs. Many DL schools are now having to modify their programs because of union complaints. As the union prepares for its go at a new contract next year there will be definite political pressure to control and regulate the Distributed Learning schools across our Province.

Online technology is a coming reality no matter how many try to stop it or block it is coming. Here is a quote from Liberating Learning: "Technology is different from accountability, choice, and other educational reforms. It is not really a reform at all. It is an exogenous social force that originates from outside of the education system, is transforming nearly every aspect of American social life, and will keep transforming it in the decades ahead. The educational system is unavoidably caught up in all this, resistance notwithstanding. It lives in a larger social environment, it depends on that environment for survival and the environment is rapidly changing, due to the impact of an exogenous force that educators cannot control." Another words, because the world around us is changing it is only inevitable that our schools will change as well. Terry Moe and John Chubb suggest that these changes will take at least 20 years in most of the US but in Western Canada, I believe the change will be much quicker and thus enable us to become leaders in the new genre of educational technology to our Continent and ultimately the world. We have some specific differences here in BC and Alberta. First, our teacher unions do not hold as much sway as in most of the States. That's not to say the BCTF doesn't hold significant power. Indeed, it is probably the most powerful union in our Province. What is different is the Union's ability to lobby the existing governments. Instead of indirectly influencing specific politicians the union has been on the outside for the last 20 years and has resorted to strikes to make its way. This has resulted in weakening public opinion and backing of the striking teachers. The fight is coming. Next year the union will begin negotiating the next collective bargaining agreement and I promise there will be items on the agenda that affect DL education. We are in a unique position at Heritage to continue to leap frog over our public school counterparts because, as an independent school, we don't have to deal with the unions. This is why independent schools are typically number one on their hit list. Because more than 11% of the BC student population is in independent schools we have become a political force as well. Another significant factor in BC and Alberta moving forward is our government's willingness to fund and facilitate Distributed Learning. BC has initiated programs that allow every district to have their own DL School. They have continued to allow cross enrolment between districts so that students can go to the best and most competitive online programs. They have structured their regulations around best practices developed by the DL schools themselves. They have invited, what Christensen calls in his book, Disrupting Class, the non-consumers to participate. Home schoolers have been the first to benefit from DL schools.

In Liberating Learning, Chub and Moe detail multiple ways education will be changing. Here are several of the examples of what they suggest and how we are stepping into these educational reforms at Heritage:

"Most schools will be hybrids of the traditional and the high tech....bringing students together (at least for part of the day) for face-to-face interactions with one another and their teachers, yet also very much organized around computers, software-driven course work, Internet-based research, and distance learning for many courses that are specialized or costly for individual schools to provide on their own." With our BC Online School initiative we have been enrolling students from around BC who are still part of their high school programs. Last year we had students from over 185 different high schools. This year we are beginning the challenge of how to make this work in a campus school environment. As an independent Christian School we have a the unique advantage to become leaders in how education will look for most schools in the next decade because we have the freedom to reform our programs without the political constraints that our public counterparts have been saddled with.

"Schools will be more customized to students....Technology will do away with the standardized, "one size fits all" approach to education that has turned kids off and made it difficult for them to learn. In the future, students will be able to move through curriculum at their own pace; have greater flexibility in choosing when and where to do their work; ..." Our motto for BC Online School is "Any Place, Any Pace, Any Time." We have written our courses to be asynchronous so that students are not tethered to a classroom schedule. Obviously geography means nothing in an internet world and we are structuring our programs so that students can start and finish when it is convenient for them. This has created many challenges for our teachers but with innovative solutions we have been able to work through these challenges.

"Schools will provide more effective instruction...technology itself will enhance instruction, promoting learning in ways that teachers in traditional classrooms never could. Sophisticated computer graphics, simulations, and video will communicate difficult concepts with extraordinary clarity. Software will guide the student through challenging material and provide lots of opportunity for practice and feedback along the way." We are seeing this in our new course revisions that take some of the most difficult aspects of curriculum and create flash animated instruction that students can watch, repeat, slow down, approach from different angles. This is something that the traditional classroom has never been that good at. Teachers have to get through the material for the entire class and often leave the slower student behind. We have built in the capability for students to access and upload similar type learning objects from previous classes. If a student in Math 12 is missing an essential concept in Math 10 it is now a matter of clicks away and instant review is available. It is a new day for curriculum delivery.

"Schools will be more beneficial to teachers....Teachers will have a greater variety of schools to choose from, and a greater variety of roles they might play." At HCOS and HCS our teachers have multiple opportunities for growth and development. In HCOS we pay teachers on a student by student basis so that good teachers can make much more money. We also have many part time teachers who are also home educating their own children. Online teachers work from home. In our campus program teachers will be able to do a bit of both which will help shape their careers in multiple directions.

"Schools will be less costly." We have experienced this in our schools on a number of levels. In our campus school we have been able to offer our higher end high school students courses and programs that in the past we have not been able to afford. We would either have to deny the student opportunities or lose enrolments. We are able to run our Online Schools without tuition even though we  only receive 50% funding as compared to the public schools. We are a lean mean teaching machine. We run the largest Online school in British Columbia from six offices. Our teachers and students all work from home. We have nearly eliminated all facility costs. Imagine what we would be spending to facilitate a traditional school campus of 1500 full time and another 2000 part time students. 

"Schools will be more competitive and offer more choice...."

"Schools will be more autonomous."

"Schools will do a better job of serving needy constituencies..."

"Schools will continue to socialize students....No one is required to put their children into schools that conduct all their work at a distance and offer little or no face-to-face interaction." We will always have this option but our classrooms will become a place of rich interaction and instruction that allows for the teacher to be the proverbial guide on the side instead of the sage on the stage. The social environment doesn't end in the online world either. Cobb and Moe continue, "The notion that computers and distance learning somehow undermine the socialization of students is out of date, and based on an overly narrow notion of what socialization is. There will be plenty of social interaction going on in the schools of the future, even in pure cyber-schools. It will just take a different form than what we are used to today."

"Schools will be better at doing what works...."

We are learning what works and what doesn't for Christian education. It is our heart and call to continue to lead Christian education in this new frontier of education. I believe that both our Online and Campus schools will continue to be a model of 21st century education practices and we will find ways to support Christian Schools worldwide as they grapple with the challenges of this new digital world and education.

Please email us your comments and thoughts on today’s podcast. Also, if you would like us to mail you a free copy of my book or send you the download link for the audio version of, Discipling This Generation for a Digital World, simply send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and let us know what type of an educator you are, home schooler, classroom teacher, school administrator, or interested parent. Please let us know how you heard about the podcast and, of course, please include your mailing address. Thank you for listening and thank you for your commitment to discipleship-based Christian education.