Internal v. External; Sustaining v. Disruptive
The last post covers most of my thoughts on the blog issue, but I think that it is important to use the blog example as an illustration of a broader point. Educational technology–like technology in most any venue–can really be defined as either a sustaining or disruptive innovation. These are buzzwords that I tend to use quite frequently, but the distinction is quite important.
Simply put, sustaining innovations are those uses of technology that simply digitize (and perhaps slightly modify) an old paradigm and make that traditional practice “modern.” Using closed blogs for students to provide responses to readings and class discussion is an example of such an innovation. Internet technology is used to enhance the traditional practice of student discussion, reading, and response; when such technology is applied, more active dialogue between student and instructor (and other students) is encouraged through blogging features such as commenting, tagging, and rating.
A disruptive innovation, by contrast, presents an entirely new paradigm and opens the users to new experiences that would not be possible without the technology’s use. Students writing in public blogs is an example of such a paradigm change. The Internet has, among other things, provided a ready outlet for cheap public distribution of information. For the first time, the creative voices of individual students can be published for the world to see, and meaningful interaction with readers from all over the world can potentially take place.
So why does this matter? The Internet is a great thing, so we all agree, and it has made many aspects of our daily life and work much more efficient (teachers taking student responses electronically in blog format), but its greatest potential to make a substantive difference is not in its ability to sustain old norms but instead to promote new ones. Instructors and students have interacted for years without blogs, but students have not had the types opportunities to write for a broader audience until very recently. Whereas the Internet acts as an enhancement in one case, it acts as the crucial ingredient in another. “Innovating,” be it in a classroom or an office suite, requires participants to blend new solutions to old problems with completely new opportunities. A true innovator is one who is able to seize these new opportunities while also understanding reality enough to know that the sustaining innovations are immediately helpful. When given a choice, take both.
Three cheers to internal and external blogging!
(For a quick discussion of sustaining and disruptive innovations in a business setting, read the introduction of Clayton Christensen’s Seeing What’s Next)
technorati tags:Blog, Innovation
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The question becomes disrupting who or disrupting what. In a sense, one could imagine either internal or external as disrupting traditional dynamics within a class. My thinking behind emphasizing this distinction is to get students to be conscious of audience. Everyone has learned a style of thinking, journaling, notetaking, public-speaking as it were. The trick is to figure out which voice is appropriate to what.