...and in the future I hope to look back and see how my thinking has changed!
Look, the internet has taught me nothing. There's a statement for you. Except I would argue that it hasn't taught you anything either. It's what people are willing to share on the internet that has made all the difference and it's that single fact that leads me to believe that the future of schools is less important than what we can do right now.
I've spent more than enough time thinking, and reading, and dreaming. Haven't you? Don't you find sometimes that what tires you out most at work is not the politics, but the fact that if you take that risk you've been thinking of you're going to fail in front of a number of stake-holders who have a pretty low tolerance for failure? I want to take some risks!
I'm part of a hive-community of innovative and academic education researchers who all appear to agree (because I choose to follow people that think like I do) that education has a problem. I haven't yet come across a succinct 140 character summary of what that problem is though. What is it about the current education system that is broken? What is it that is driving us to a major system overhaul over the next thirty years?
My thought: the fact that we think we might one day do better. Only I got to thinking that doing better now is what the problem is, and the biggest single problem I face from day to day is that you can't really think about education from a scientific point of view when you're actively engaged in the process doing it professionally. Moreover, the analysis can not be done instantaneously, but must be measured over a significant number of years. So how are we ever supposed to know that what we are doing now is going to be better for the future?
Besides, who has that kind of time when students are competing for schools, and jobs, now!?
If I were to set up a brand new system tomorrow within the confines of a universal education system in the Alberta region this is what I would be thinking:
1. The school of now is socio-collaborative.
No teacher can provide enough instant feedback to meet the needs of a diverse and growing student body in their classroom. A social network can, and does. If students are publishing and choosing those they trust to embed into their "circles" then they can and will get feedback that is important and more frequent then they currently do.They will protect themselves against those they know will seek to harm, and will seek out those they know will be honest while maintaining a large community of those that will simply remind them how beautiful and awesome they are. They will also find people who will push them forward and provide them with the missing details.
Look at your social community... the place where you publish what is important to you. You've already created it for yourself. And sorry... you created it yourself.
2. The school of now is diverse.
First thing that you do when you adopt a new technology is personalize. Not a single one of you reading this does not have access to a computer which you yourself have determined the layout, organization and work-flow for doing what you do best. It has been influenced largely by what you've seen others do, but bares a mark of your unique and important learning style and value system and should not be tampered with.So quit trying to market the "one product for all" attitude we've put in in computer rooms and libraries across our nations and by gum move away from creating PROFILES on public computers.
3. The school of now is portfolio based.
Information is no longer the limiter in our system. The time it took to go to the card catalogue, look up the two books on sharks that are not yet checked out, read them for a report and then regurgitate the information is now being used watching YouTube videos of cats -- being eaten by sharks.Students are already becoming CURATORS of their own libraries. They are creating YouTube channels in their names, they are flooding Instagr.am with THEIR visions, and frankly, I WANT IN ON IT. As their teacher I want to know what it is they're thinking and seeing, and watching and learning and by publishing it publicly I'd argue that they WANT me to know too.
Why are they doing this? Because we want people to recognize what it is we know, we don't want them to TEST us on it. We want to say: I'm ready for you to see this now that I've tuned it to what it is I want to say... that's why we look so good on our profile pictures!
And HOW was it we all learned how to do it? Well, I did it by pushing buttons, and my Dad does it by scanning eHow's and my students do it with a YouTube video and frankly I don't really care how they do it because the final project reveals a great proficiency at getting it done and if the Facebook Timeline has shown me anything: it can be measured as growing and changing at a rate that is significant and on par with my peers.
4. The school of now is open-sourced
If I can't change it, adopt it, innovate or create... I don't want it. And it had better be free. No wonder we all freak out when an app costs more than 99 cents... forget that... when an app is not free. We will give up our rights to our information so long as we have the right to design, create and improve the software/hardware we are purchasing.There is a long history of the glorification of hacking and piracy. Not only is it mainstream in our current schools, it's the norm. Being from a highly affluent school population the first question I field from middle schoolers interested in the new technology I employ is not, "what does it do" but "did you jail break it?"
People want to be disruptive. It's that fascination with celebrity. It's why we personalize, and if it's not open-sourced then I can't experiment with it...
I am not one to promote copyright infringement, purposeful or unintentional. Which is why I am so incredibly for sharing, flipping, public-archiving, the collective commons, and any software that allows teachers and students to say, "here is what I'm doing, reading, liking, loving.... and frankly you should see it too."
5. The school of now is time independent.
I've said it already. Even in the best situations, you put 25 middle schoolers in a room together with the most engaging lesson and you're going to lose valuable time to hearing about what they love the most in life right NOW. Themselves, or celebrity. So why force those minutes to be anything else?Like us, students need their coffee breaks, their afternoon jogs, their naps, their snacks, and their mediation. More-so if they're not working towards things that they themselves understand as moving them forward.
Our job is to guide them forward, not to judge whether the path they take will be lucrative, because -- seriously -- no teacher can possibly know the future and what's going to be lucrative. We have one job: Communicate the gov't mandated curriculum and create a space where the resources that allow students to show proficiency are readily available and accessible.
And in the school of now, that's already been done.
So, given you agree with these 5 postulates I ask only this:
A) Admit you're not an expert and stop worrying if others will see you as such if you start sharing your work. The reason people like the internet is because people put stuff on it, if they're going to love learning, stop being so selfish and start publishing!
B) Find a way to open up the curriculum as a hand-book for your students. They'll ask you for directions. Since you've already been there, at least you'll know the way.
C) Let them socialize. It's the only way they'll develop trust and resiliency. Which is far more important for their success than proficiency; that comes with time, trust may never.
D) Trash the schedule (okay this isn't a small thing, but it's so necessary) -- when that structure is gone you'll be reminded just how much of a non-expert you are and how much your colleagues can gain from your expertise, and how much you can gain from theirs.
E) Take a good improv class. Seriously. It's the best way to become aware of how great it is to FAIL.
So I come back to it. We're already in the school of the future... only no one has bothered to bring it all together in one place... They're trying... just look at Kahn Academy, Edmodo, Discovery Learning, et cetera, et cetera, et al, ad nauseum...
Imagine with me then what would happen if all that time on a social network was spent by people sharing, liking, publishing and creating ways of doing learning better. A place where a student can say, "I need to learn about Dalton's Law and I need at least three different options for how to do it, and 9567 people have already viewed, vetted, and selected the top 5 choices for that lesson.
And all you had to do as a teacher was to encourage, assess, and respond...
Because that's the school of now, and it's way better than worrying about the future.
