I have been thinking for a week on how to express this second part of how technology is driving the need for changes in our educational system. In order to make this clear, I am just going to contrast what I think needs to leave the schools, and what needs to be focused on more heavily. Since this is not meant to be a white paper, I will keep it pretty concise. Before I dive in, one thing that is an interesting example of how technology has changed education is the grammatical accuracy of a document. Blogs like this one are typically meant to be stream of consciousness. They are more about ideas then correct English. I have had some people around me want to correct a Technology Story after it was out because they did not think something was worded “properly.” They understood the context perfectly, they just did not think I followed grammatical rules. This is an example of how technology has changed communication. Something that was written in the past, was expected to be perfect. Because we write so much more in electronic formats, and for more reasons, I think we can let go of having to be perfect – as long as we get the ideas across. Heresy I know, and it is about to get worse…

Things that need to go away in education:

  • The summer vacation – this was caused by farming needs, and does nothing but help people get out of the habit of learning. Give a few more breaks during the year and go all year long
  • The Jug and Mug philosophy of teaching. The teacher is the jug of wisdom, and they pour out that knowledge into the mug of the student. We need to move more to a style that teaches through lots of other methods like self discovery and observation
  • Not allowing Wikipedia as a reference source. Please explain to me how Wikipedia is any less of a resource than other sources that have less people giving expertise. Wikipedia now attributes authors so give it up and step into this century
  • The ban on laptops in classrooms. I don’t care what age you are, if you have a laptop, you should be able to use it to take notes, and do searches – at the appropriate time! So they cannot be open all day, but can be opened during work times.
  • We have to get rid of tenure. Teaching needs to be performance based as to rewards. Don’t even try to debate this because it does not work today and no one can show that it does.
  • Memorization and regurgitation as a model for learning. With every fact available in a nanosecond, it makes no sense to just stuff facts temporarily into people minds. All this tests is a students ability memorize for a few days, then dump the information to memorize more.
  • Teacher parent meetings as the only communication between us. There are a ton of tools for communicating over the Web and this can make a more robust flow of information so parents are not blind until the report card comes out. By the way, it is not a report card anymore…

Things we need more of in education:

  • Collaborative learning by using the Internet as a tool for students to work with other students around the world
  • Problem solving skills – this is the number one skill that will help kids prosper when they get out of school – because there are always problems
  • More life skills, less subject facts that will not be used by the majority of kids. For example, everyone will need financial literacy. Very few will need advanced algebra. Yet, what do we spend time teaching?
  • Creative thinking is going to be more and more valuable as computers take over left-brain tasks. So let’s teach processes and build skills around creativity as a life skill
  • Worldwide communication skills. Now that we have the technology to talk to people anywhere in the world, we should build deep skills on students with how to use social networking to enhance your career and quality of life.
  • Self-discovery skills. With the Internet now providing a huge resource of help and information, we need to teach students how to have critical thinking and to use the Web as a tool to help learn how to do anything you have not been taught to do as of this point.

In the end, the story from the Bible of teaching a man to fish instead of giving him a fish applies with this new model of education. The education system has said for years that they are teaching kids how to learn – not just teaching them facts. The truth is, technology changes the game entirely as to what that means. We are still stuck with old teaching methods for the most part – and need radical change.

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com