What's next for Christian education?

I don’t know what’s coming next either.

Buses? Class sizes? Cleaning? PPE? Enrollment? Staffing? Budget?

But there is one piece I do know something about.

The Digital must become part of our learning space. Of course, I am rather biased on this topic. I have spent the last decade preparing for this.

Let me share a few thoughts I have.

I see two major red flags the moment we start thinking about online learning in September.

1. You and your staff are fighting to reach the finish line. When you get there in June you and your team will be exhausted. 
2. We have only 2 months to prepare. All of my experience tells me that it takes 6 months to 2 years to create a high quality online learning experience. (And remember that what you’ve done since March is emergency remote learning, NOT online learning.)

I see four ways forward. These approaches are not mutually exclusive, in fact I think that the answer will need to be a mix of them.

• CREATE. Your staff, your school goes and creates the online experience from scratch.
• COLLABORATE. Team up with other schools and teachers and work together to create.
• CURATE. There are a great many free options available on the internet. Find them,
• CONTRACT. 
• Purchase online curriculum/tools/platforms and have your teachers use it.
• Pay another school or organisation to run your online learning for you.

The reality is that none of these four will work in isolation.

To CREATE you would need a pool of experienced and skilled staff who have a deep understanding of what quality online learning is and enough time to do the work. You don’t have either. Yet.

To COLLABORATE will require someone to organize and make decisions. What platform, what pedagogy, who owns the IP, who will pay?

To CURATE you would need to find resources that match your vision and mission for Christian education. Finding that for free will not be easy.

To CONTRACT you will have to give up some level of control over your curriculum and perhaps even the teaching itself as well as spend money. And you are still going to have a hard time finding alignment with your vision and mission.

THE WAY FORWARD

Here’s what I think.

We are going to have to COLLABORATE across multiple schools to get ready. The job is too big for any of us. For September we should CURATE and CONTRACT as much as we can in order to reduce the workload on our staff. The long term goal over the next 2 to 5 years is to give us the breathing room to build the capacity and platforms so that we can CREATE our own uniquely Christian learning experience that will meet each local community’s needs.

What’s next? Let’s go find out!