I attended a masterclass held by the State Library of Victoria with Charles Leadbeater. Charles started by looking at Web 2.0 technologies. He mentioned that we have moved to an era of publish, then filter rather than filter then publish. He talked about today’s participatory culture in which web 2.0 has encouraged users to be consumers and producers of content which previously was difficult to produce. He talked about communities in which contributing and sharing is critical but sometimes can be chaotic. These communities need structure but not top down structure.
He then looked at the future of learning. His first statement that traditional ways of improving schools was ‘plateauing’ was interesting as he says there isn’t much more that we can do if we focus on assessing content alone. I was really interested in his assertion that improving school performance would be achieved by putting relationships at the heart of learning. (eg the right relationship - recognition for where they come from and what matters to them as a learner). He spoke of schools being part of an extended community where learning occured and was recognised (eg schools, families, social networks, extended community)
Finally, Charles gave me his recent writings on ‘What’s next’ 21 ideas for 21st Century Learning’ Here Charles summaries his key concepts around what might contribute towards successful school in the 21st Century. Its the first time I have seen a good analysis and suggestions for where we need to change our emphasis in being successful in the 21st Century. I suspect you could translate much of what Charles says here into the workplace as well. This is worth a read!!
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