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| Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns | 
 enlarge | Authors: Clayton Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, Michael B. Horn
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
List Price: $32.95
Buy New: $17.11
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Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 1758
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.1
ISBN: 0071592067
Dewey Decimal Number: 371.3
EAN: 9780071592062
ASIN: 0071592067
Publication Date: May 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Disruptive thinking for the classroom June 12, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I am a layperson with an interest in education and technology. I read Innovator's Dilemma and was anxious to see if Clayton Christensen could apply his unique business lens to sort through, and perhaps solve the issues concerning our failing public education system.
He and his colleagues didn't disappoint me.
This book was eminently readable and layer by layer, uncovered the weaknesses in the way we educate our kids. It's not simply a matter of putting technology in schools or tutoring kids who learn differently; it's a matter of changing the way the monolithic system, and entrenched stakeholders, work against innovation and creativity in learning by challenging the underlying foundations of that system.
According to Christensen, flexible individualized instruction combined with the proper use of technology, rewiring content development and distribution channels, and the creation of online networks of students, parents and teachers working together instead of in opposition, can revolutionize education in the United States.
If you care about the future of education, and of a child's ability to compete in the global economy, read this book.
The future of education June 21, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
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.
 no solution here July 28, 2008
6 out of 13 found this review helpful
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.
The Way of the Future in Education June 12, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
The authors are on to something really, really big here- the eventual replacement of the method of instruction that has been in use since before the days of Socrates.
[...]
Interesting but rather jargon-heavy August 23, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
"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?
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