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Live Chat today at 4pm Eastern: "Why School? How Education Must Change When Information and Learning Are Everywhere"
Author Will Richardson will be joining us for a live Q&A today at 4pm Eastern!
Continuing with our series of TED book chats, for the next week and a half we'll be discussing Will Richardson's new TED eBook, "Why School?"
Traditional educators, classrooms, and brick-and-mortar schools are no longer necessary to access information. Instead, things like blogs and wikis, as well as remote collaborations and an emphasis on 'critical thinking' skills are the coins of the realm in this new kingdom. Yet the national dialogue on education reform focuses on using technology to update the traditional education model, failing to reassess the fundamental model on which it is built.
In TED's new eBook, "Why School?", educator, author, parent and blogger Will Richardson challenges traditional thinking about education—questioning whether it still holds value in its current form.
The book is available for Kindle, Nook, and iOS devices (which have a great new custom TED Books app):
Kindle copy: http://www.amazon.com/Why-School-Information-Everywhere-ebook/dp/B00998J5YQ
iOS app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ted-books/id511071050?mt=8
You can also read more on Will's blog: http://willrichardson.com
So, let's get things started... when information is everywhere, what is the purpose of traditional schools?













Will Richardson
Aja Bogdanoff 20+
To our participants, thank you as always for sharing your excellent questions. We hope to see you again soon for the next TED book chat!
Paul Genge
Regarding assessment. I understand we are completely rethinking education, here. And with good reason. Even John Seely Brown, in his long tail and learning as enculturation ideas, talks about a virtuous cycle between niche interest development and coming back to the "fat part" of the tail to learn that core knowledge and then students returning to their niche interests to apply it. He says a core curriculum based around critical thinking (and I would add literacy and numeracy to a point). Could Performance Assessments (I know they present many challenges for reliability, etc.) that are open ended and authentic provide some common ground between competing views on approaches to education?
Will Richardson
Mirek Mráz 100+
Carl Jung complained about over-protectiveness of the European educational system (in a way that repressed talented students and favoured average) whereas he liked American approach that, in his opinon, focused on assisting inquisitive minds.
With this indredible access to information, I think teachers will become imporant mentors on how to filter information and how to think analytically. Learning process will take place outside the classrooms as well and will be self-paced and individual according to the interests and abilities of children (students) - we can see that in the case of Khan Academy.
One of my many questions regarding this topic is: What would Carl Jung of the future be like?
Will Richardson
Adam Burk 500+
Apple Lynch
Will Richardson
Morton Bast 200+
I'm aware that my education was both excellent and fairly progressive, but it certainly fell squarely within traditional definitions of schooling -- what is your response to an honest opinion that that system worked for me?
Will Richardson
Lino DeGasperis
Will Richardson
Claire Boonstra
I talk about moving away from a (societal) system which is only based on achieving status, towards a new system which is built upon creating value. It's a very personal talk and was very well received. I hope you like it too!
Lino DeGasperis
Paul Genge
Will Richardson
Paul Genge
Max Goldstein
Lino DeGasperis
Lino DeGasperis
Will Richardson
Max Goldstein
But do we have the best content? Hardly. Instead, in the last decade we've ridden the wave of Moore's law to excellent technology, but our understanding of human nature has been left behind. We now have the technology to do what Seymour Papert wanted to do in the late 70s, when he wrote Mindstorms, but we're not doing it. Instead, the ed-tech "innovators" focus on repackaging old pedagogy, primarily lecture. The students' chance to explore the subject matter is defeated by trying to get the right answers. What Papert suggests in his book is that right answers don't matter nearly as much as the process used to obtain them. Humans do not think they way computers operate, so why do we treat online education like a file transfer?
Will Richardson
I think we have amazing content stored on the Internet, but the job now becomes ours to find it, vet it, and learn from it. We can't be waiting for someone else, schools included, to be delivering it to us. Totally agree as to the dysfunction of the current system's attempt to teach and measure only a small slice of what can be learned.
Max Goldstein
This is especially problematic when there's always the possibility of another great find if you look just a little bit more, which leads to skimming many pages rather than deep reading a few. Another benefit of the traditional university: once you've paid tuition and moved to campus, you're going to focus on what they give you.
Aja Bogdanoff 20+
Will Richardson
Wm Chamberlain
Will Richardson
Adam Burk 500+
Ryan Gallwitz
If you were building a new high school or middle school today what aspects of construction or design would you consider to support your vision and idea of what school should today and the next 25 years? From the learners perspective what would that building look like? I'm referring to school as a noun instead of a verb in this case.
Ryan
Will Richardson
Ryan Gallwitz
Muhammad Hafiz
Saulo Soares
My name's Saulo and I'm from Brazil. I'm currently 17 years old and I'm quite fed up with this archaic and outdated system we have at present. It's not endemic in Brazil, though. It happens in every corner around the globe. People wrongly assess diplomas alongside with formal education being more important than the practical application of that matter per se. They just care about whether you have a diploma or not.
I'm on my penultimate year of high school and it's being really tough to keep up with this. They oblige us to load our brains with lots of information we're most likely not to ever use! Scarcely have we time to even think about what we're learning, as we are expected just to do well on a standardised test that pretends to value how intelligent or likely to succeed we are. That's totally wrong! I learn a lot of things from books, people, the internet... Furthermore, school doesn't teach us the necessary tools we need to learn, it only teaches us how to perform well in a test. It doesn't set us for life. I strongly feel that I've wasted many years of my life stuck in a classroom :(
In a nutshell, I'd like to know whether it's really necessary to go through all of this (finish high school, go to college and follow a well-worn path that has been previously set for us to take).
The thing is, I aim to become a successful entrepreneur, I fancy learning by any means, but I'd far rather if it were in a more intimate and informal way.
Thank you for your attention, greetings from Brazil :)
Will Richardson
Certainly, many have become successful via dropping out and following their passions. It's still a more difficult path, however, but I do think it's opening up more and more. There is a huge groundswell of creativity and innovation here in the states, and I think as schools do more to nurture that, the learning experience will get better and better. Whatever you do, don't lose your passion to succeed!
privacy please
Lorita Watson
http://www.thielfellowship.org/
And I see many young people are using college campus with all its infrastructure labs, equipment, people etc. to incubate their Startups. Good luck!
Lorita Watson
Will Richardson
Lorita Watson
Adam Burk 500+
privacy please
Morgan Kolis
Will Richardson
Aja Bogdanoff 20+
Will Richardson
Adam Burk 500+
Will Richardson
Aja Bogdanoff 20+
Saulo Soares
We're all different! How come they think we should learn pretty much the same stuff and be expected to reach a specific score on a standardised test?
I'm on my penultimate year of high school here in Brazil and I'm quite fed up with it by now. I study at a private school, as most public schools here suck.
Paul Genge
gigi benzio
Thanks (please reply)
Will Richardson
Rick Gilson
Christine Pomroy
Will Richardson
Christine Pomroy
Linda Martin
Will Richardson
Lino DeGasperis
Lino DeGasperis
Rick Gilson
Lino DeGasperis
I am a vice principal in a secondary school in Ottawa, Canada. I just read your book over the past couple of days. It really hit home, because our board has invested heavily in the instructional coaching model. At the secondary level, this has involved a coach working with groups of 4 to 6 teachers in a school - typically full days, every other week. The work involves co-planning a task, observing one teacher deliver it in their class, and debriefing around student artifacts. The task usually involves a critical thinking strategy.
I mention all this because I think this approach will get at a meaningful classroom practice, which can bridge us to the new paradigm envisioned in Why School.
Will Richardson
Muhammad Hafiz
Will Richardson
Lino DeGasperis
What I missed was your point in the book about how teachers need to model how they use on-line collaboration in their professional lives, so that students can learn how to do it effectively. Good point. I am already seeing many benefits of doing so, in the easy access to the thoughts of many professionals, who are grappling with the same challenges I am.
gigi benzio
Will Richardson
Aja Bogdanoff 20+
Will Richardson
privacy please
Will Richardson
Adam Burk 500+
Will Richardson
privacy please
Will Richardson