Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Learning Counsel has been working furiously on a program we call the Hybrid Logistics Project. In this briefing, LeiLani Cauthen, CEO & Publisher at the Learning Counsel will bring you the high notes, explaining the ‘why,’ and most importantly, the benefits to you and your district. “I'm going to give you a briefing on hybrid logistics,” said Cauthen. “This is a project that's new from the Learning Counsel and the EduJedi, with several different companies getting behind it to help make it become a reality. Hybrid Logistics is an answer to what really has been happening in the field, specifically with the change in space and time use.
“So this is the new conversation point logistics that will capture the underutilized capacity of human resources with peer to peer transactions. If you are familiar with Uber, that's really what they did. They captured this unused resource of all these other cars and put them into play with a peer-to-peer transaction. That's not happening in education right now because most people in education administration think in terms of whole group rather than a fully personalized pathway where every student is moving at their own pace, not necessarily competency-based learning, but moving at your own pace. Even held back if you move too far ahead, like, ‘Hey, you're way ahead in math. Cause you're super smart at math, but you're way behind in language. So we will double up your language time and drop you out of doing more math, just for right now.’ That capability doesn't exist in the whole group world.
“It's definitely a wanted and needed thing by consumers of education. They want real personalization. They don't want their child getting an F in one subject and A's in another, that doesn't make sense. Why aren't you spending more time with them on this other subject?
“It's like, Hey, here's my time zone. Here's my main calendar. And then an educator can set up, what's called a Nomex, which is basically either one step or several steps and, and label that for how many students need to hit this step in order for it to trigger the live interaction. It’s like when you would use Uber and you do the group option because you want the cheaper rate to get to the airport. So you do the group option. The cohort has to all be in for the Uber to start driving. The more advanced logistics for individual schools and districts would involve creating their whole pacing calendar, which would actually not be separate PDFs anymore or separate spreadsheets. It would be incorporated in layers for the teacher to look at on his or her own calendar so that they could see it as they're doing their planning.
“And also much more sophisticated with sections, segments, rotations, daily walks and setting up classes, and then being able to just make those little pins. Here's the moment of live interaction. Maybe you're using your own learning management system connected in, and you say, stick this pin. This is when we have to have an actual class physically come together. So this is a really a flip of your thinking, hopefully where you're saying, ‘wait, I don't understand because all the kids are in the class, right? But maybe 10 of them are moving faster than another 20 of them. So if you're watching how the pins would work, when these first 10 arrived, they're given this particular direct instructions, when the next 10 arrive, then they get it. This allows the teacher not to be doing a lecture style all the time but focusing attention on the ones that are farthest behind to catch them up and move them into the next cohort. That's Uberization and using logistics at its most advanced algorithmic inference sort of way.”
This is the future of education, and the method in which a real personalization can come into play. It all sounds a bit complicated, but once it is in place, it will make everything much simpler – particularly for the teacher, who will gain much more teaching time when and how it is needed.
