‘Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future’*

As I was unable to attend the Education Future Forum, held in Sydney earlier this year, Dr Phil Lambert kindly emailed me his presentation, 2010-2020: Ten Propositions for the Decade.

Phil’s paper is lengthy and it is not my purpose here to cast a cold eye over it but to take one issue of interest and seek your input, dear readers.

Phil has the following tables outlining some ’false dichotomies in education’ that are of particular interest to those, enthralled with ’21st century learning’, who want to keep the best of what are considered traditional practices.

Figure 1 – old versus new models of schooling and Learning

Old Model	New Model
Reform existing schools	Create new schools
Larger schools	Smaller schools
Delivering education	Students learning
Read books, listen to talk	Explore the Web
Time-bound/place-bound	Any time/any place
Technology as textbook	Technology as research
Groups, classes	Individualised
Time is fixed	Time is variable
Standardisation	Customisation
Cover material	Understand key ideas
Who and what	Why and how
Know things	Apply knowledge
Tradition	Relevance
Over-reliance on multiple – choice tests	Written/Oral demonstrations
Testing for accountability	Testing for understanding
“Make ‘em”	“Motivate ‘em”
Instructors	Advisers/facilitators
Teachers serve administrators	Administrators serve teachers
Administrative management	Professional partnership
Adult interests dominate	Student interests dominate

The second example, developed by Shaw (2009), presents windows into a supposed classroom of last century and that of a preferred C21 classroom.

Figure 2 – 20^th Century Classroom versus 21^st Century Classroom

The 20th Century Classroom	The 21st Century Classroom
1960s typical classroom – teacher-centred, fragmented curriculum, students working in isolation, memorising facts.	An architectural firm establishes an alternative school providing internships for high school students.
Time-based	Outcome-based
Focus: memorisation of discrete facts	Focus: what students know, can do and are like after all the details are forgotten.
Lessons focus on the lower level of Bloom’s Taxonomy – knowledge, comprehension and application.	Learning is designed on upper levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy – synthesis, analysis and evaluation.
Textbook-driven	Research-driven
Passive learning	Active learning
Learners work in isolation – classroom within 4 walls	Learners work collaboratively with classmates and others around the world – the Global Classroom
Teacher-centred: teacher is centre of attention and provider of information	Student-centred: teacher is facilitator/coach
Little to no student freedom	Great deal of student freedom
Discipline problems – educators do not trust students and vice versa. No student motivation.	No “discipline problems” – students and teachers have mutually respectful relationships as co-learners; students are highly motivated.
Fragmented curriculum	Integrated and interdisciplinary curriculum
Grades averaged	Grades based on what was learned
Low expectations	High expectations – “If it isn’t good it isn’t done.” We expect and ensure that all students succeed in learning at high-levels. Some may go higher – we get out of their way to let them do that.
Teacher is judge. No one else sees student work.	Self, peer and other assessments. Public audience, authentic assessments.
Curriculum/school is irrelevant and meaningless to the students.	Curriculum is connected to students’ interests, experience, talents and the real world.
Print is the primary vehicle of learning and assessment.	Performances, projects and multiple forms of media are used for learning and assessment.
Diversity in students is ignored.	Curriculum and instruction, address student diversity.
Literacy is the 3 Rs – reading, writing and maths.	Multiple literacies of the 21st century – aligned to living and working in a globalised new millennium.
Factory model, based upon the needs of employers for the Industrial Age of the 19th century. Scientific management.
Driven by standardised testing.

Phil says:

“What we see here are two separate models suggesting that what happens in all schools and classrooms is one approach that is stuck in the past and must become the other (preferred approach) today. There is no room for a model that incorporates new approaches along with some proven practices. Instead we are presented with what is considered “in” (the “new model”) and what is now “out” (the “old model”).”

Your ideas

Q: Do exponents of the ‘new model’ completely have to reject the current paradigm to evolve?

Q: How is this binary to be resolved positively and our schools evolve?

*Phil’s speech opened with a quote from Niels Bohr, prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future which amusingly sums up the challenges of crystal-ball gazing.

Tim O’Reilly Explains the Internet of Things

I really enjoyed this post from Read Write Web, the ‘Internet of Things’, highlighting Tim O’Reilly’s recent keynote.

Some viewing. The first video is 5 minutes long and the second is 36 minute but worth your time. After my viewing, I had the following in my mind:

Q: What does it all mean for our students, communities and for us, as learning professionals, working in large education systems endeavouring to change them?

Maybe we need to be thinking/organising more like this and reflect collaboratively about the future of our education systems with a wider range of people.

Make sense? I am (enjoying) struggling to understand what this all means, or will mean in a short few years.

more about “The Internet of Things“, posted with vodpod

 

 

more about “YouTube – O’Reilly MySQL CE 2010: Tim…“, posted with vodpod

NB I can see that Judy O’Connell is thinking hard about similar things, with her post about the Semantic Web.

Whatever Happened to the Book is Happening Now!

At great risk of appearing unneccesarily sycophantic, I need to say that Mark Pesce‘s post, Whatever Happened to the Book,  is clever, unusually clever, even for Mark. Everything that currently intellectually interests (read obsesses me) about literature and our hyperconnected age is explored.

Please read it closely and tell your friends, especially if they are teachers still learning.

Here’s a taste, I particularly enjoyed the third section:

So what of Aristotle?  What does this mean for the narrative?  It is easy to conceive of a world where non-fiction texts simply dissolve into the universal sea of texts.  But what about stories?  From time out of mind we have listened to stories told by the campfire.  The Iliad, The Mahabharata, and Beowolf held listeners spellbound as the storyteller wove the tale.  For hours at a time we maintained our attention and focus as the stories that told us who we are and our place in the world traveled down the generations.

Will we lose all of this?  Can narratives stand up against the centrifugal forces of hypertext?  Authors and publishers both seem assured that whatever happens to non-fiction texts, the literary text will remain pure and untouched, even as it becomes a wholly electronic form.  The lure of the literary text is that it takes you on a singular journey, from beginning to end, within the universe of the author’s mind.  There are no distractions, no interruptions, unless the author has expressly put them there in order to add tension to the plot.  A well-written literary text – and even a poorly-written but well-plotted ‘page-turner’ – has the capacity to hold the reader tight within the momentum of linearity. Something is a ‘page-turner’ precisely because its forward momentum effectively blocks the centrifugal force.  We occasionally stay up all night reading a book that we ‘couldn’t put down’, precisely because of this momentum.  It is easy to imagine that every literary text which doesn’t meet this higher standard of seduction will simply fail as an electronic book, unable to counter the overwhelming lure of the medium.

Below are a few unformulated reflections. I intend to write a ‘proper’ reflective piece about ‘the book’ and possible futures.

Perhaps, because this topic is obsessing me at the moment – colleagues and friends would have  noted my reactionary but concerted efforts recently to read more books/novels/fiction - I feel, after reading this twice, I want to know  what ‘will’ happen to the concept of the book even more.

Will the ‘literary text…remain pure and untouched, even as it becomes a wholly electronic form’ – one part of me desperately hopes this is the case, like painting or sculpture.

We all love hypertext and many of our ereaders take little or no advantage of the medium. It is true what Mark says about the ‘economic purposes of publishers’ meaning that they will want to publish ‘dead texts’ in the ‘light’ of their ereader platforms. However, one cannot agree with ‘it does not make the electronic book an intrinsically alluring object’. The Kindle, in spite of its limitations is ‘alluring’ to many readers for a host of reasons that Mark dismisses. Primarily the ubiquity, one can download quickly a new release and carry many texts around. I know, from chats with luddite colleagues that, bound in leather, it appeals to traditional lovers of literature but techie types respond well too. There are issues and our cultural publishing industries need to adapt, or even better, innovate quickly.

Ironically, or maybe sadly, I’d like Mark to answer in a 140 characters, ‘what happened’. There is something not quite right about the framing of the piece, as all this has not quite, ‘happened’, not quite, it is all in the process of becoming.

More later…after I have chatted, perhaps with you, readers of this blog.

Your thoughts?

Google won’t make us stupid

 

“Most experts agree that Google won’t make us stupid.”

 

PREDICTIONS

 

5 Minds for the Future

I managed to read Howard Gardner’s most recent book, 5 Minds for the Future these holidays and think it a useful tract. I enjoyed the book.

It would be rare that an educator did not know Gardner’s contested work on multiple intelligences and to have made use of it in their classroom.

He opens his book suggesting that the these ’minds’ will be needed collectively and by individuals who are to ‘thrive’ in our hyperconnected future. The 5 minds are:

1. Disciplined – we all need to have mastered one discipline to prosper or run the risk of being limited to menial tasks
2. Synthesizing – traditionally valuable, now being able to synthesize from a ‘dizzying’ range of sources becomes even more invaluable or the individual will be personally and professionally overwhelmed
3. Creating – builds on the previous and allows the individual to step ahead, even of technology, so not to run the risk of being replaced by computers
4. Respectful – the need to understand others is fundamental in the home, workplace and in a global sense
5. Ethical – going beyone self-interest and able to ponder the greater issues of existence if we are to flourish responsibly

The last two ‘minds’ are particularly interesting within this framework and give Gardner’s thesis a usefulness to learning professionals beyond the norm for this kind of list, particularly as it is so accessible to students.

Have you read this book? Thoughts?

I will post some comments later in the term to feed back what my 17 year old students feel about Gardner’s suggestions for our ‘future minds’.

You can watch Howard Gardner’s lecture on this topic here.