This YouTube video talks about the world in 2025.
The link if you can’t play the video in screen.
It asks some pertinent questions that affect all of us in the education business:
or will students collaborate to teach each other? through social networking, virtual environments, sharing… exploring … creating.. collaborating.
While I watched this I thought about how much my life has changed in just the last year. 2025 seems a long way into the future when I think of the radical changes that have happened in my life in the last 10.
There are things I do now that I didn’t do even just a year ago, technologies I have that I didn’t have then.
What about you?
11 Comments
I agree that even in the last year I have re-developed large amounts of content and changed my own practices to try and keep how I work up to date and the content of IT courses relevant to the ever increasing technological world our students live in. The fact is that our students are plugged in now more than ever and as a result online developments will only increase in speed. As teachers we need to get to know these developments, and tap into the virtual world our students are spending so much time in, if we are to guide and maximise their learning of the knowledge we wish to facilitate.
Rather than just spend hours playing online games where they just kill each other or invovled in social networking sites discussing who has changed their hair colour, wouldn’t be great if students played online games that develop an understanding of course content and are invovled in social networking sites discussing questions posed in the virutal classrooms of our future.
I think many teachers feel like the way we teach will radically change in the next 15 years, but are also afraid of the unkown and so hold on to the tried and tested teaching methods that have already been outdated for years. As a result student engagement in learning and behaviour management are increasing issues in many classrooms.
Teachers must apdapt to thrive. We have to take these new technological developments and those that will be thrust upon our lives in future and bend them to our will, use them to enhance learning, rather than try to exclude them from our schools and force students into an Industrial Age learning model. One thing about all our futures is certain… change, and so we must!
The Wordpress YouTube embedding needs a fallback for devices without Flash as I couldn’t see a link to touch. It is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwbHn7gg1IE for other mobile people.
We cannot plan for a future 15 years out. The accelerating pace of change makes much of the future utterly unpredictable. What we need is lightweight processes and institutions that are able to easily adapt and a workforce that is equally flexible.
My 2yo is totally adept at flicking through ipod touch apps and launching them, exiting with home button, turning it on, unlocking, plays a number of games and listening to story books. There is no way I could have predicted that in 1994 when only yuppies had mobile phones, Microsoft was a year away from releasing an operating system without a web browser because they didn’t think the Internet was important, and I judged cars by their capacity to carry all the bits of my computer.
This video is yet another example of the ‘change’ hype that has inflated the imaginations of those living in the online bubble. In over 200 years, the fundamentals of school education - institutional child minding with a professional veneer - have not changed. Web 2.0 is just another trendy accessory, equivalent to OHP’s, biros, fountain pens, slates, etc., which will be absorbed into the industrial model. Sure, I love the opportunities of SMART boards, wiki’s, mobile techniology, etc., but I’m too sceptical to see it as revolutionary. Plato had Socrates say that the written word would kill true knowledge and while I agree it was more revolutionary than anything in this video, his predictions were equally flawed.
I agree with Paul on being ablet to have any reliable prediction that far ahead. The rate of evolution is rapid and so again Paul has hit the nail on the head “What we need is lightweight processes and institutions that are able to easily adapt and a workforce that is equally flexible.”
I wish I could lay my hands on the original material. An Indian academic talks about schools as they exist now, large institutions, not being able to survive. Teachers have their own school consisting of a few students. These teachers care for their students over a period of years. Coaching and mentoring. Supported community learning. Parents select a teacher for their child in a similiar way that perhaps they select a music teacher. These very small outfits are able to bend and flex more easily to cater for changing needs. I think this could work well.
“A general lack of motivation affects perhaps 40% of all pupils in secondary schools.’ Michael Barber’s publication ‘The Learning Game’ (1994)
“Although children are all born with intrinsic motivation to learn, levels of self-motivation decline as they progress through the education system.”
I think the best statement last year regarding the death of the NF book is still Peter Macinnis on our Hubsite when this came up:
These photos aren’t a primary library are they! Not even a secondary school, I don’t believe. Online sources have a ways to go toward the pluses of print : easy access, esp for beginning and ESL readers and boys, diverse, quality controlled - back up for when the internet just can’t come up with the goods at the appropriate level and attractive format.
I organized the internet training for NSW schools in 1999 when net connections were being installed for the first time, so no troglodyte. Instead consider all learning styles and all sources.
Chiz, Georgia
I’m feeling like a grumpy old man … the objectives are wonderful, but they are the same ones I had when I started teaching (but with different technologies.)
Seems to have a very utopian view of human nature that I think is unrealistic and this has implications for at least motivation, honesty in assessment and quality of work.
Ahh..here it is. Thanks Janet.
Here is some information about that Indian academic.
http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/edition-13/narayaran/
Take the time to listen to “A dangerous but powerful idea”
Until VCE and HSC change ICT will only be a tool to aid student’s skills in communication. Even then,some of our students are misusing these skills in social networks to bully each other. So, do I personally see any progress in having such advanced technology? At this stage, no. Until we as teachers learn to use the tools efficiently and effectively ourselves, our kids will not be able to. Again, if VCE and HSC are pen and paper, what’s the use of learning ICT. Obviously, there are career paths which make use of the latest technology and instructors are to become quite specific in their fields to teach these technologies. What about Medicine, Law, Art? Hmmm, lots to think about.
This in my opinion is total fantasy, like the promise of OBE. It all looks great in theory but fails to recognise the reality of the students in our classrooms. The majority of them are not self motivated, information seeking, hard working life long learners, the majority of them are lazy, lowest common denominator, do as little as possible and selfish. Without the pushing of interested , well trained, caring and motivated teachers student collaboration would degenerate into self interested mindless chatter.
I am not being negative here, but it is just a fact of adolescent development that I remember being taught at university in educational psychology that the majority cannot see further than their own tiny self conceited little world and will not progress without guidance and encouragement. I also found it sad to think that a physical mentor was completely removed from the video and would contribute to the lack of connection students already feel between themselves and adults due to the reduction in the family unit. Antisocial behaviour and violence will increase just as it is now.
First of all, sorry for not putting the YouTube link in, and thanks for pointing that out Paul. I’ve added it now. I’ll try to remember to do that in future.
I’m flattered that you have all taken the time to comment and thank you for your contributions.
Riccardo - I think we are learning that educators need to provide space their students will want to access. We need to channel some of the skills they are learning elsewhere into their learning. If you think about how much things have changed for most teachers in the last 15 years, we have already done a great deal of adaptation - well, some of us have - and that leads us into the point both you and Paul were making. The rate of change has been so great that it is very hard to predict what the next 15 years holds.
Jonathan - I am not sure that it is all hype. If the new technologies are not creating change in the delivery of the curriculum, and providing new ways of teaching and learning, then I think they ought to be.
Peter - that is an interesting concept. Some of the smaller rural schools would be a bit like that wouldn’t they?
Georgia - I think the motivation problem is really at the nub of it all. One aspect of the latest technologies is that they can ofrten appeal to different learning styles and include in the loop some students who have to date been left out.
Yes it was interesting that there was no sign of a mentor Michael. I too can’t see that the teacher will disappear.
Marco - one of the things is that the way we assess has to change. I think my point is that students are not learning ICT. They are using ICTs as tools in their learning.
I think the underlying objectives of teaching have not really changed Chris, but the way we deliver has and should.
Inspiring? Mutton dressed up as lamb? “Inspirational ideas” or “engaging technologies”? John Dewey and A.S. Neill or technology’s SLEs (Social Learning Environments) and PLEs (Personal Learning Environments)?
So what’s “inspiring”? Is the destination the same, or is it the journey that is just a little more inviting?
Utopian ideals are usually dangerous when it is suggested that everyone can or should have them, and the liberating idea about technology (and the misleading commercial message) is that perhaps we can all have our educational cake and eat it too by using technology!
And why not hang on to that hope? Technology has liberated (to some extent!) those willing to go along for the ride, but the “chains” of traditional, geographically-bound learning (classrooms and libraries) still serve a vital economic purpose, be it a19th Century one!
Will classrooms still exist in 2025? Will libraries still exist in 2025? Will teachers still exist in 2025? Will learners teach themselves?
Maybe, Kerrie, the question is a moral one - should classrooms still exist in 2025? Should libraries still exist in 2025? Should teachers still exist in 2025? Should learners teach themselves?
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