…before their teacher, school, or district did….
Before the district considered BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) students were bringing devices to school.
Before the school thought to promote collaboration, students were digitally storing, sharing, and providing feedback on each other’s work.
Before the teacher allowed publishing to a live audience on the Internet, students were sharing to online communities.
What gets replaced next?
Students could replace teachers who only teach through lecture and worksheets. Higher quality instruction is in many state online schools already. Families could move students to online instruction and realize a new flexibility in the family schedule.
Districts could replace location-based populations with online interested-based populations. As specialty online curriculums come into focus,
Students could replace all academic texts with personally purchased texts. Students already make small purchases for current products. The increase to families may be modest, however the savings to districts is potentially huge.
Students could replace a grade level with projects to encompass an old-fashioned school year’s worth of learning.
2016-11-15 at 8:10 am
Penny,
What interesting thoughts! It shows that we need to be sure to adapt our practice to suit the evolving needs of our learners!
I do think that the need for schools to exist for the social aspect is very important. The schoolhouse is not only a place of formal learning, but also needs to be a place where we will learn to respect each other for our differences and learn how to interact.
I think it would be very interesting if we could do away with the grade levels that we currently have that limit students in what they can and can’t do. Allow for less batching by age and more batching by skill.
Thanks for sharing!
2016-11-15 at 8:59 am
Daniel,
I struggle with how to get out of my own mindset around this topic. Being schooled since Pre-K it is tough to look at this from different perspectives.
I think our students might have the best ideas, but I wonder how we best solicit those?
2016-11-17 at 9:52 am
Might not be the same thing, but professionals developed on their own professional communities exchanging knowledge, like some Reddit channels and in general, people offering help and exchanging knowledge about open-source software.
From there some culture organization comes from, I think, observing how things go on in start-ups, but generally – traditional schooling goes against this current.
2016-11-17 at 10:01 am
I agree, it is a shame that professionals feel the pressure of individually seeking learning opportunities, but I know it is true.
I cannot image how it must feel to students in this day and age to be so limited by their teachers/schools/districts.
Thanks for your thoughts Nikos!