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The educational reform has become such a popular debate subject that it almost rivals the more polite conversation breakers, such as the weather here in Australia. Everybody has an opinion, everybody knows how to better educate our children and everybody has agreed that times change and the way people studied years ago, may not be applied today. With so many voices, of course, the educational reform is still so controversial.

As a definition, innovation is always difficult. People tend to fear what's new and are usually reluctant at embracing it. But, nowadays, we have at hand amazing tools, given to us by the advancement of technology, that could help us develop and implement changes with great ease. Then why is education innovation, based on all the IT resources available to us at the touch of a button, so difficult to implement?

We'll walk through what education innovation actually means and we'll check a couple of the key issues it faces, in what follows.

Layers of innovation

Innovation in education, as well as any other domain, faces three layers of depth, each of them requiring a different approach, understanding, and predisposition to be accepted.

First, we're talking about the "barely scratch the surface" level, meaning an upgrade of the educational system. These are the changes we easily accept because we can actually see and witness how they make our life easier. For example, typewriting and printing essays as opposed to handwriting them. Easier for students to type, modify, change ideas, mix them up and rewrite all over again. Easier for teachers, when they don't have to decipher every tangled handwriting.

The second level means a significant modification to the educational process itself, mainly regarding its quality. For example, the homeschooling system is opposed to the institutional learning process. Or, altering the curriculum in order to make the whole system based on specialization comes in opposition to a system that puts the accent on general knowledge.

And last, the main goal, which would be a transformation of the educational process, at its core. We're thinking of a fully automated educational system, based on network, online and self-learning. In implementing this revolutionary change lies the real challenge.

Skills for the future

One key point is acknowledging the skill set needed for future jobs and establishing the way to acquire them through this new IT innovative system.

Right now, there is a general accord on developing social-emotional learning, as a way to prepare future graduates to the changes in the working force market. It is believed that mastering these traits, can help you be a part of a team and adapt easier, regardless of the domain you specialized in. And so, you'll have dissipated the fear of graduating into unemployment, due to the irrelevance of the field you majored in, on account of technological advancements. But how would the development of social or emotional skills make sense, when cutting out the main place where these happened: the standard classroom, the student-teacher, or the student-student relationships?

The quality of your Internet

When talking about self-learning, you need to be truly careful at the quality of the information you take for granted. The Internet is not a very reliable source of information, as long as anybody has access and the freedom to write anything, in any form. The IT innovations we talked about, give you the possibility to apply for a phd research proposal writing service, which could guide you to a successful dissertation. However, you must make sure that this service provider meets certain criteria of professionalism and qualifications, in order to trust the quality of the work you receive.

The main way to evaluate a service provider on the Internet has become the ratings system, where every user measures his approval. The down of this system is that every user must rate the provided service, for it to be relevant. Also, the number of users to rate it must be of statistical relevance.

Next, there comes the issue of testing and grading of self-educated students. Is online testing accurate or enough? Or some specific tests are to be developed in order to underline the way the student assimilated these not that easy to evaluate skills.

It all comes down to numbers

Because in the end, the main setback is taking into account the amount of money needed to test various solutions, without getting back any short-term remuneration.

On the other hand, today's kindergarten children can be quantitative evaluated based on academic data, employment rate, career growth only after about 30 years. Quite a time gap for us to be using some revolutionary system, based solely on statistical predictions.

And a final shortcoming is that this change must be accepted on a large system scale, not just locally implemented, for it to have the desired impact.