K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: College, There's an App for That: How USC Built a 21st Century Classroom

Derek Thompson:

"Everything about this program pushes definitions about what is a semester, what is the university, what is a classroom, and where do the faculty belong?"

In the spring of 2008, John Katzman, the founder of the Princeton Review, approached the Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program at at the University of Southern California with a revolutionary idea. USC could increase its graduates by a factor of ten without building another room.

Every year, California adds 10,000 new teachers. And every year until 2008, USC graduated about 100. The school felt "invisible." How could it build influence without new buildings? Katzman said his new project, 2tor, Inc, an education technology company, promised a solution. Forget the brick and mortar, and go online, he said. USC was skeptical. Surely, no Web program could possibly deliver an in-classroom quality of instruction.

Katzman disagreed. I have something to show you, he said.

I thought about this (the accelerating move away from Frederick Taylor [Blekko | Britannica | Clusty] style 19th Century education that we still seem to spend buckets of money on) while attending this week's Madison School District Strategic Plan 2 year review. More on that meeting next week.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 28, 2011 3:36 AM
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