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Tarfumes.com - Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns
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List Price: $32.95
Our Price: $21.75
Your Save: $ 11.20 ( 34% )
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Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 371.3
EAN: 9780071592062
ISBN: 0071592067
Label: McGraw-Hill
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2008-05-14
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Studio: McGraw-Hill
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Editorial Reviews:
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A crash course in the business of learning-from the bestselling author of The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution… “A brilliant teacher, Christensen brings clarity to a muddled and chaotic world of education.”
-Jim Collins, bestselling author of Good to Great According to recent studies in neuroscience, the way we learn doesn't always match up with the way we are taught. If we hope to stay competitive-academically, economically, and technologically-we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, reevaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning. In other words, we need “disruptive innovation.” Now, in his long-awaited new book, Clayton M. Christensen and coauthors Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson take one of the most important issues of our time-education-and apply Christensen's now-famous theories of “disruptive” change using a wide range of real-life examples. Whether you're a school administrator, government official, business leader, parent, teacher, or entrepreneur, you'll discover surprising new ideas, outside-the-box strategies, and straight-A success stories. You'll learn how - Customized learning will help many more students succeed in school
- Student-centric classrooms will increase the demand for new technology
- Computers must be disruptively deployed to every student
- Disruptive innovation can circumvent roadblocks that have prevented other attempts at school reform
- We can compete in the global classroom-and get ahead in the global market
Filled with fascinating case studies, scientific findings, and unprecedented insights on how innovation must be managed, Disrupting Class will open your eyes to new possibilities, unlock hidden potential, and get you to think differently. Professor Christensen and his coauthors provide a bold new lesson in innovation that will help you make the grade for years to come. The future is now. Class is in session.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting but rather jargon-heavy
Comment: "Disrupting Class" is a very interesting read for people interested in improving education here in the U.S. Dr. Christensen argues that the main problem with traditional schools is that they cannot provide individualized instruction that best meets each student's needs. As a home educator, I couldn't agree with him more. He sees computer-based learning as a "disruptive innovation" that will solve the problem of how to provide this type of "student-centric" learning to the masses (since not everyone can homeschool or hire a tutor for their offspring).
Dr. Christensen revisits the argument from his earlier book "The Innovator's Dilemma" that "disruptive innovations" don't initially compete directly against the current market leader's product but rather against nonconsumption. For example, in the '70's Digital had a very successful market for $200k minicomputers. Apple couldn't directly compete with DEC's minicomputers because their personal computers weren't good enough at the time to solve the problems that DEC's customers had. So Apple marketed its IIe PC as a relatively affordable toy for kids. Kids were nonconsumers so it didn't matter to them that the Apple wasn't as powerful as the existing DEC minicomputers. A few years down the road, however, improvements in PC technology rendered DEC's minicomputers obsolete.
Dr. Christensen argues that the traditional government-run education system will in the near future be "disrupted" by the innovation of computer-based learning. At first, online learning will compete against nonconsumption by offering classes in subjects where there isn't enough demand in any given school to justify offering a traditional course (such as a very advanced math one or an unusual foreign language). But eventually, He believes that the technology will improve such that computer-based learning will render the traditional model of education obsolete.
In "Disrupting Class", he postulates that demand for computer-based high school classes will follow an S-curve that will start to "flip" (significantly accelerate) in the year 2012. In the years between 2012 and 2018, Dr. Christensen projects that the share of online courses will grow from 5% to 50% of all high school courses. That timetable seems a bit ambitious to me personally, but I believe he's got the basic right idea about the growth in the demand for online classes.
The main problem I had with "Disrupting Class" is with the way it is written. It reads like a management consultant's report filled with buzzwords and jargon (not surprisingly Dr. Christensen used to work for BCG). It would've been much better had someone else gone through the authors' draft and re-written it in plain English. I found it very tiresome to have to stop constantly to figure out what exactly the authors actually meant by all their convoluted gobbledygook. Throwing buzzwords and jargon into nearly every sentence doesn't make the authors look smarter, just much less coherent!
The other thing I would've liked to have seen discussed in "Disrupting Class" is the question of whether or not it is good for children's brains for schooling to be mostly computer-based. Dr. Jane Healey wrote a very interesting book about a decade ago called "Failure to Connect" about some worrisome research findings on the negative impact of computer use on children. Has more recent research allayed or deepened those concerns? Before our society makes the shift predicted in "Disruptive Class", shouldn't we be examining this very important question?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sort of innovative, fairly disruptive, but still needs measures
Comment: Any prospective reader of this book should first read Hubbard's How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business (for that matter, Christensen would have written a better book if he read Hubbard, too). Christensen rightly disputes some academic measurements, but too quickly dismisses better methods.
Apart from what he could have done better on the measurement issue, he makes a passionate case for getting out of the rut education finds itself in. Some of the recommendations might strike a business person or educator as a little impractical, but I think there is an interesting opportunity in every solution he proposes. True, there is a large genre of books about the need for change in education, but few take this angle. No educator's library should be without it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disrupting Class is a must read
Comment: Disrupting Class is a must read for educators, politicians, or anyone else who is interested in the field of education. The book provides a summary of Clayton Christensen's work on disruptive technology described in the earlier book the Innovators Dilemma. Horn, Johnson, and Christensen do an outstanding job of applying the theory of disruptive technology to the world of education. The book identifies a are large numbers of students being under served by the current model of education. This point is supported by the large numbers of students dropping out of school. The authors also state that many students are being underserved because a large number of schools do not offer a curriculum that is relevant and rigorous. This point is illustrated by the large number of virtual schools and charter school immerging in America. If you are interested in education you should read the book to see what education may look like in 20 years. If you are a politician trying to figure of how to fund an education system you need to read the book because it offers a more economical way to educate students. Or if you are a school administrator, like I am, trying to find a way to make your AYP goal you need to read the book because it will cause you to view the world in which we work a little differently. In closing, I have read numerous books on leadership, change, and specifically change in the field of education. I would place Disrupting Class in the top five of books I have read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: no solution here
Comment: In a nutshell, here is the 'Innovators Solution' for education: since all people have different learning styles, we need to change the education model to 'student-centric learning', which here means individualized computer-based learning. This is the core of the argument, which he fleshes out with his favorite case studies of Intel, Toyota, Dell, Apple, etc.
What they don't do is play this scenario out to its logical conclusion. If students go through 12 years of school learning alone, how do they come together to live and work in a society? He mentions in passing skills employers want out of high school graduates, but ignores a key one: ability to work together in teams. Individual learning may be helpful in certain subjects at certain levels, but there is another body of research about learning from peers, in class discussions and projects, that he is missing here.
Some of the examples and backing are just naive. There are examples of this style of education in other countries that support his claim, but none are offered here. There is plenty of opportunity for disruption in education, of which this idea is potentially one, but this book is a disappointment.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The future of education
Comment: Administrators, teachers, parents, and policy makers would do well to read Disrupting Class. The authors approach education with the perspective of an outsider - business person, technologist, entrepreneur - but the knowledge and thoughtfulness of an insider. Instead of offering didactic or hubristic "fixes" for education, the book provides a framework for thinking about education that is fresh and practical, particularly on such issues as how technology can personalize education for the needs of each student, and most importantly, how disruptive innovation can overcome the many obstacles that have heretofore prevented reforms in the US education system.
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