How Do We Discover What Is Possible Beyond What We Know?

from fastcompany.com

I stumbled across a snippet about the GED in Fast Company that got me thinking – Do we know enough about technology and how to use it to find new and better ways to support young people?  Can technology help us do something better or perhaps even help us do things that we haven’t even dreamed of?

Here’s what Fast Company said: For students who took the test on paper, 72% of students passed the GED. And if they took it on computers, 88% passed. The explanation from DT Turner, director of public affairs for GED Testing Service,is that students “were able to focus better because the computer delivers one question at a time, and they weren’t overwhelmed by all of the questions and the bubble sheets.”  We hear a lot about how students unfamiliar with technology are disadvantaged – but maybe they aren’t? Maybe there are enough other benefits to compensate for using a new technology. My guess is that there are other dynamics at play, but let’s just take that factoid at face value for a bit because it’s worth pushing ourselves to ask:

Are there ways that we can use adaptive software and its rapid feedback to help students learn the foundational academic skills but also other basic foundational skills? 

Could we figure out software programs that gave rapid feedback to interviewing so that students got micro-feedback in a private setting before they participated in mock interviews in a job-readiness course?

Could job training, such as specific skills and being introduced to all the formal routines of a workplace, be placed in a software program so youth got a head start before showing up to a job? Could we help them to know all the formal routines that will be expected of them and already know some of the specific jargon used in a workplace?

What if students feeling a lot of stress could make a choice about how they do their work that day -- in a classroom, in job training, or even in a therapeutic setting? Maybe that means working one step at a time or working in a small group – whatever is going to be most productive that day?

What about biofeedback?  What if students were getting biofeedback as they learned something new or just in managing their daily lives? Would it help accelerate the development of new methods to self-regulate, recognize when they are getting triggered, or would it even help them develop their leadership skills?

I know that I don’t know enough to know what is possible. I think we have to forge allies with folks in the technology, med-technology, ed-technology, and learning sciences to start figuring out what we can do beyond anything we’ve ever dreamed of.