Debate at NECC 2009

Robert Siegel, host of "all things considered" National Punlic Radio in the USA, moderates a modified debate, with the motion: "Bricks and Mortar schools are detrimental to the future of education"

Initial "Turning Point" voting from the audience gives: 37% vs 63% against (Perhaps as a hat tip to Iran, it's not clear how many have voted)

Michael Horn, best known for his book, “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns”spruiks the "factories are dead" line. Standard, predictable, valid, but workaday.

Brad Jupp, a senior adviser to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan continues, but he doesn't really say much that I can remember.

Gary Stager pushes his barrow "the bricks and mortar of our souls" are shown by the No Child Left Behind and similar silliness. He's on fire, very passionate, but is reading (probably the only time he's ever done this) which is distracting. He has great messages, but tries to get them all out in the allocated time, and, rather like a crowded curriculum, the impact is not as powerful as it could be. He talks over audience acclaim which is loud and spontaneous, surprising even him.

Cheryl Lemke argues against is the executive director of the Milken Exchange on Education Technology and founder and CEO of the Los Angeles-based Metiri Group. (These guys have done a lot of white papers for Apple and other tech companies). She engages more with the audience.

Marshall Thompson, a soon-to-be senior from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland provides the initial rebuttal. (Marshall, along with his followup rebuttal presenter, Erik Hawke, recently competed in the National Forensics League’s annual student competition in Birmingham, Alabama - this is clear from his style of presentation) Standard rebuttal, essentially stating that the bricks and mortar create the impression that this is all that education is about, ignoring the extra curricular and global interaction.

Erik Hakke, a soon-to-be senior at Springfield High School in Springfield, Virginia (yet another Springfield) talks about the leaking sinks in his school, yet this does not diminish his keenness to return to his school, rebutting the contention that bricks and mortar schools are a one size fits all solution.

Stager provides the "For" summation. Reads again, but less so. Better. "The blame lies in the bankruptcy of our imaginations"

Cheryl: claims that the For team has actually made the Against case. Not sure where her logic lies, but it's somewhere about the idea that bricks and mortar can be reinvented, and the community is most important and we can't lose a generation of children as a result of losing the bricks and mortar of the community structure we call a school.

Comments and connections have been collected via twitter, isteconnects and the live audience.

One of the online questions is directed to the 'For" team, but is answered by the "Against" team indicating that the question is largely irrelevant, it's more about the quality of the education irrespective of locale / brick / mortar whetever.

One from the audience: "What does the Fear of lawsuits do to schools?" (Spot the litigious society) Wow. Good answer from Brad Jupp "why is something a kid does in school different to one outside school?

Let's get the audience to respond now: In the words of the games show host: "the Survey said:" 26% (not detrimental) / 74% (detrimental)