Please watch this video about Kahn Academy. This might not be the future of education, but it is at least someone trying to push some traditional boundaries.
For me, the most eye-opening thing was the data that was available for people to look at (at this point, teachers), and how amazing it was to see how students varied in how quickly they moved through material not just in general, but each individual student hitting some bumps but then accelerating.
It was just really impressive.
Thanks to Nate Beran for pointing me at this video.
It is node by Steelcase and it is just about exactly what I would wish for seating in a classroom today. Flexible, designed with technology in mind, it moves, and you can store stuff below the seat and it comes with you. SUCH A GREAT IDEA!
I agree with almost every word Josh Pickett says over on his blog about education today (he writes from the UK). It is the classic idea that more isn’t always better. More time spent in school, more subjects covered, more tests, etc.
I still believe there is a base amount of “stuff” someone should learn in school, but we’ve really gone off the deep end when it comes to adding more courses, raising “standards”, and adding tests of all kinds to try and do what … churn out better test takers?
We don’t need kids working more, we need them working better. We don’t need more time in school, we need better time in school. We don’t need more homework handed over to kids, but better, more engaging, and probably LESS homework handed over to kids and MORE time given for them to pursue activities outside of the confines of the educational system.
I happened upon a talk done by Sir Ken Robinson today by way of Dave Caolo of 52 Tiger, and there was a single phrase that struck me and it has to do with education today:
They’re trying to meet the future by doing what they did in the past.
You can listen/watch the whole video on YouTube and it is illustrated, which is cool, and I tend to agree with a lot of what he says about education today. Also check out his site and view some of his other videos.
From Fraser Speirs this morning I got the following quote from Steve Jobs in 1980.
Our whole company, our whole philosophical base, is founded on one principle. That principle is that there is something very special and very historically different that takes place when you have one computer and one person. Very different than if you have ten people and one computer.
That’s the whole idea behind 1:1 computing initiatives in education today.