Cindy and I have taken a couple of long trips in the car lately and I have used the time to listen to Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers. It is the kind of book that is interesting and invites interpretation and speculation.
The book consists of a series of stories that demonstrate that the reason individuals who we regard as extremely successful are so good at what they do is because circumstances have allowed them the opportunity to spend great amounts of time (10000 hours) on something. It is this combination of circumstance and time spent that greatly changes the odds of success.
The identification of what factors represent “circumstances” is what makes this book s0 fascinating. Circumstances range from birthdate in the example of successful Canadian hockey players to access to interactive coding opportunities when such opportunities were extremely rare (Bill Gates) to culture differences in how numbers are represented in language and the assumption that success requires personal commitment to lengthy periods of meaningful work (Asian success in mathematics).
One of the final chapters (chapter 7) considers the success of KIPP (Knowledge is Power). The analysis explains a major source of SES differences in academic performance as learning outside of the school day (summer and outside of school). In a way, KIPP intends to compensate for this difference by extending the school day, week, and year.
As a technology advocate, my tendency is to attempt to understand some of these factors within the environment I understand. Perhaps technology offers opportunities to extend the day, week, and year. This would require that ALL students have access outside of school and have the opportunity to use this access in meaningful ways. This reminds of the concern regarding high bandwidth access from home. 1:1 initiatives would be a start, but the most important applications would allow students to take the computers home and also keep them throughout the summer. Having a computer would be of limited value without Internet access. City wide wifi might be a solution in some situations. Finally, there is the problem of how access would be used. The KIPP expectations require intense activity (the descriptions from the book focus on math). I have less to say about the curriculum and I am not ruling out direct instruction, but I do note that the advantage of growing up in a family of means is not so much about formal instruction as it is about information rich activities (e.g., travel) and related discussion. Perhaps a place to begin would be to encourage a continued virtual connection to the school as a learning community through participatory web activities. Would a student with Internet access be able to find some interesting participatory activities during the month of July?
