What Can Failing Restaurants Tell Us about 1-to-1?

Recently I was read­ing some arti­cles on 1-to-1 pro­grams that didn’t live up to expec­ta­tions. This is not a new story, of course.

But there some­times is a ten­dency to believe that giv­ing a device to every stu­dent in a school or dis­trict or sub­set of this is mirac­u­lously going to solve all ills:

• Test scores will rise!
• Tech­nol­ogy skills will skyrocket!
• Stu­dents will be engaged!
• The com­mu­nity will sup­port us more fully!
• Peo­ple will visit!
• Every­one will love us!

It’s the same old story as when I first did the research for the first and then the sec­ond edi­tion of my book. There MUST be a mag­i­cal for­mula here, right? A ratio of 1-to-1 com­bined with every stu­dent and every teacher = huge nee­dle move in all the ail­ing and dif­fi­cult aspects of the school. Plus every­one will like it.

Sorry, there’s more work to it than that. Wish it were eas­ier but it’s not.

Here’s an inter­view with Celebrity Chef Robert Irvine writ­ten by Richard Feloni of Busi­ness Insider, list­ing the 5 things he sees as major rea­sons restau­rants fail. Article available at http://www.businessinsider.com/why-restaurants-fail-so-often-2014-2 They are:

• Inex­pe­ri­ence
• Bad Peo­ple Management
• Lack of Account­ing Skills
• Spotty Cus­tomer Service
• Sub-Par Food Qual­ity and Execution

There is no men­tion of stoves, refrig­er­a­tors, pots, pans, knives, utensils.

We need to look at edu­ca­tion holis­ti­cally and not about hard­ware or soft­ware. What is the expe­ri­ence in the class­room of the stu­dent, what are the fac­tors con­tribut­ing to that expe­ri­ence, what is the philo­soph­i­cal view­point of that school, what can we change, what can we improve, what do we have to work around, what is the lead­er­ship, what do teach­ers say, what do par­ents say, what do stu­dents say?

Tech­nol­ogy can’t solve every­thing, so let’s stop sim­pli­fy­ing this highly com­pli­cated endeavor. All those restau­rants which failed within 5 years had stoves, refrig­er­a­tors, elec­tric­ity, and gas. That’s not the rea­son they failed. Intro­duc­ing 1-to-1 with­out a seri­ous look at every­thing else can result in pock­ets of suc­cess but not trans­for­ma­tion. Take the time, energy and effort to go deeper.

• Pamela Livingston (cross posted from 1to1schools.net)