In a new book Work Goes Mobile, authors from Nokia describe the transformation of their company to a global mobile workplace. In today’s Washington Post, Education Columnist Jay Mathews analyzes here the ten-year-old Challenge Index I that Newsweek is now using to prepare its annual “America’s Best High Schools” report. The contrast between the two approaches is stunning, and a bit scary in terms of how behind the times school thinking can be.
As I read about Nokia mobile teams of workers interacting flexibly and effectively even across countries and oceans, I have hopes and visions of students being able to do the same for their studies. Perhaps a mobile sophomore global studies class would enroll students from a country on each of the six populated continents; the class members would access their study materials and confer with each other using their mobile phones. In a view that makes our old way (just a decade ago) of looking at schools downright provincial, the broadest Challenge Index I measure of interrelationships among kids of different demographics is within a school itself. That is weirdly out-of-date and insular by workplace standards.
If we were writing Challenge Index 2006 for high schools, would we not be doing our youngsters the right service by putting mobility of people (students and teachers) and online open learning knowledge at the top of the criteria for education excellence?
