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What do you think is the future of learning?
In the spirit of Sugata Mitra's TED Prize invitation to the world to "ask big questions, and find big answers," tell us how you imagine learning will change in the years to come.
Topics:
education sir ken robinson
Ally Niu
individual creativity and initiative will be rewarded as the new economy of the future will.
Charan Singh
Though it seems the real CREATIVE POWER remain in “HoW” ONLY !!
The Aha !! The WaHoo!! The Awe moments come through “HoW” often remain unnoticed due to current practices of emphasis on -What, Why, Who and so on – These are the True moments of INSIGHTS that can bring long lasting change – be it in the life of someone, or in a community or a country or for the entire humanity !!
Do these moment occur like a big bang or constitute as a chain of small Aha !! WaHoo moments – happening all the time that eventually get combined as a BIG WaHoo !! Insightfulness – that manifests as a CHANGE !! That Affects All ? this needs to be seriously looked into
Libor Supcik 10+
Mike Carney
Libor Supcik 10+
Theresa Mueller
Generally I think there will be a great difference between traditional schools having no computer or better lets say internet connection like in rural areas there in Nepal. There they can establish such great school projects for free and even learning and living direct self-sufficient democracy from little on.
On the other hand where they are connected to the web, they could even combine such models using the www.
on a bigger scale for their project. Or would this be to a fast and corrupting the original idea? Please feedback - thanks!
Emil Johansson
However there are so many other aspects that you dont choose and that dousnt help you in your education. Social and psychological.
It effects you and it could be very negative. If you want to meed people in a study group or get help from tracher sure, let that be an option, But i think that if people can learn for their own sake in their own way it can be so much easier and better.
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Theodore A. Hoppe 200+
http://edudemic.com/2013/03/the-amplify-tablet-a-device-custom-made-for-teachers-and-students/
Feyisayo Anjorin 50+
Those who are really serious about learning will learn, they will ask the right questions and find answers. They wont be encumbered with numerous excuses for not learning.
Technology will not do the learning for anyone.
David Hubbard
Feyisayo Anjorin 50+
David Hubbard
David Hubbard
Don Anderson 20+
2, 3 and 4 year degrees are the future, and the notion that universities need to teach kids to be PC/liberal is also obsolete.
People learn much faster now than ever before, and being racist and/or sexist has gone the way of the 8-track prayer.
Now they could "START" teaching students to garden, eat and cook healthy, exercise and maintain a home and budget, and that that would make graduates more desirable to employers.
And isn’t that the only goal a university should have?
Rachel Thomas
As much as I would like to agree that university degrees should take less time than they already do--or that professional degrees like the M.D. should be accomplished in a shorter amount of time--I think that the ultimate goal of a university isn't to make students more desirable to employers but to create an educated, curious citizen of the rapidly changing, more globalized world we live in. That, unfortunately, takes time and exploration, diverting our attention from "core" classes that would allow us to receive degrees in a shorter amount of time and exposing our minds to other ideas. I don't think any student truly regrets taking classes that weren't technically devoted to their own goal; rather, they wish it hadn't taken so much time. From my experience I don't think that universities are all that concerned with political correctness anymore but more with promoting secularism and pluralism, so I'm curious as to what you mean by that?
Don Anderson 20+
From the student’s view point getting desirable employment is the only thing that matters, and not to have their political and religious views suppressed.
Let’s face is universities only support individual differing viewpoints as long as they agree with their viewpoints.
And you need to consider what makes a desirable employee, besides the foundation of know the field the employee will be working in. The ability to communicate and work with others of different personalities is important, but should not be the primary goal focus of the education.
So all political and religious classes should be switched to a national online class system, this would remove the teacher own personal views from the teaching.
Also employees need to be creative and continually learn, and not just member how solve problems based on how it was done before. Let’s say you were hiring a civil engineer would you hire the kid that knows everything Isaac Newton and Archimedes had done or the kid that can figure out have to use Google-Earth and AutoCAD to improve the way your company is doing things.
So I’m not saying drop the social classes; just that they need to be updated for the current times and to be reduced in importance and to rebalance the focus.
P.S. Based on too many of the doctors I have seen, I think the M.D. degree program needs a major overhaul.
Rachel Thomas
I do completely understand that from the student and employer's viewpoint, knowledge is the real commodity while critical thinking, etc. are great embellishments. However, I base much of my thinking on this point from a book called the Medici Effect (http://www.amazon.com/Medici-Effect-Elephants-Epidemics-Innovation/dp/1422102823/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363020806&sr=8-1&keywords=the+medici+effect). In essence, this book argues that in an ever-changing atmosphere of invention and development, true innovation can only come from intersections of fields rather than lateral improvement in fields. For example, combining perspectives from unrelated fields--like business administration and brain research--can sometimes elucidate concepts that were previously hidden from our eyes. If we're not exposed to those ideas and how to relate them to what we truly want to know, how else will we develop innovative ideas? Universities are businesses too, and I think more than anything that they want to know their students are capable of either developing that innovation at the school itself or giving them a good name for doing so. I think I'm trying to say that we might not want to reduce their focus, but instead emphasize the cross-applicability of different ideas and fields.
I completely agree with you on the front of classical vs. applicable education; there's no use in reciting the derivation for an equation if you can't apply the equation itself, absolutely.
carolyn mcauley 20+
Bharath Nagamuthu
David Hubbard
In my boring 1950's high school there was nothing to keep a healthy young man awake, except girls and most of our days were lost in daydreaming. The educaion they were forcing on us was not relevent too us at all, but it was the ticket to higher things, so we thought. 50 years later , we look at our life and say "What have I done?"
If you can say "I found God." your life is success. It doesn't matter how your lived, it worked, because you found your way home.
What we know is a commodity. Each specialty has a need it fills and can finance our trip through this life on Earth. We may care for gardens or we may care for millions, each in the end, is no more or no less than an aspect of the timeless,ongoing force of creation.
That said, we have the problem of educating children that are born into technology. We still like the old Norman Rockwell classroom idea. Dress it up and call it a lecture hall and it's still the same thing. The old education paradigm has not shifted with the times.
Over the internet, on demand, children can have access to the very best presenters, with the very best graphics and links to whatever is required and we can free taxpayers of the backbreaking expense of an outdated system. Students would be free to learn what they want, when they want, Teachers can go freelance helping where needed.
Summerhill proved with thier impressive results, that a school where the kids were free to learn at their own pace, helped by the teachers only where needed, scored high on all government tests. It was mainly ignored in public schooling. The system has changed little from the days of 1955, except that more kids are driven to school today.
We are not preparing our childern for the world we are living in. We are teaching them what we think they'll need to now, in a future we can't understand.
John Gianino
Theodore A. Hoppe 200+
Maybe we shouldn't. What is your argument for or against?
What other animals need to learn to learn?
John Gianino
Theodore A. Hoppe 200+
Perhaps you can also offer a reply to my question: What other animals need to learn to learn?
Rachel Thomas
Theresa Mueller
george lockwood 20+
Robert Winner 50+
Until we get a honest appraisal of the educational system and rennovate the system to include 21st century equipment and methods to meet 21st century needs and demands we will continue to be a political toy at the hands of elected officials who made campaign promises and throw money at a problem.
I have a solution and it involves competent / non-competent learning through modular developed courses. This would also include two tier curriculums: 1) College prep; and 2) Industrial and manual trades.
We have to stop thinking the answer is the goal and start believing that application is the goal.
2000 characters limits my thoughts. I wish you well. Bob.
pat gilbert 50+
My understanding is that if you test that the teacher is forced to teach to the test. But at the same time what happens if you don't have testing?
Robert Winner 50+
That would assure us that a chef could actually prepare a meal ... not just recite the ingrediants. That the math students could apply formulas to real world situations .... and perhaps that students could not only read but comprehend.
In my competent / non-competent theory .. I attempt to take the pressure off of the instructors and put the onus on the student. It is my opinion that schools offer a "opportunity" or maybe even "exposure" to a learning environment. I can force you to go to school but I cannot make you learn ... you can stand in a garage all day but that does not make you a car ... and a whole bunch of other silly sayings.
Just as a thought ... does our current testing evaluate the student, the teacher, or the system?
As always good to hear from you. I wish you well. Bob.
David Hubbard
pat gilbert 50+
Should the test be on application?
Rachel Thomas
1. The Internet! It's both a miracle and a burdensome monster. But of course, the Internet made it possible for anyone to get an education--you can literally look up ANYTHING. As a result, the future of learning is obvious: everything depends on whether you can own a computer or get to an area where you have internet access. It hasn't completely removed the social stratification of education, of course, but it's getting closer.
2. The future of education is very different. From what I've noticed as a young, inexperienced student, I see middle class complacency everywhere I look. I don't see my peers getting excited about what they're learning or grateful that they got the chance--and I'm not exempting myself from this phenomenon by any means. I think we've come to take education for granted in a country that offers it to us free as we grow up, and in a remarkably accessible way as we get older. Given the option to learn or to be entertained by the myriad technological devices we have, what do we pick? Of course I don't speak for everyone, but I'd say it's probably the latter option. I think this complacency is turning us into a generation of stratified skill--those with no education, those with lukewarm interest in education and learning, and those with hyper-utilized skill and extreme interest in learning. The issue is, as innovation becomes more difficult to create, it's going to be isolated to the third group. Learning, I think, is suffering because of all the wonderful things we've been able to afford as the middle class' power has increased, and I think we're going to suffer later because of that.
3. Other countries are getting ahead because of both factors. And I think that will leave America behind, and unskilled.
David Hubbard
Rachel Thomas
David Hubbard
The boredom of studying irrelivant subjects would be greatly eliminated as students made their own course decisions. Perhaps you decide to change your career, which we are told can be increasingly expected, you have only to focus on the information.
True, this only applies to theory. Practical, hands-on learning can only be experienced direcrly. so on-line learning would still have to be supplimented with guided training.
The most important thing is that alternative education paradigms are discussed and we consider outside the box thinking. The existing system was established over 200 years ago to prepare us for participating in bureacratic orgqanisations.
The world has changed completely since then, yet we are trapped by inertia in a woefully obsolite system
Gregory Pipkins
For the next 20 years or so, I'd guess that education will become in large what Pat Gilbert said: auto-didactic, privatized, and online. Education (quality education) will become a privilege again, unless you live in a "consciously capitalist" country like Switzerland. In which case, yay for you :) In a place like the good ol' U.S. of A. public education will probably become increasingly outdated, while private institutions will charge an exorbitant amount of money for a "world class" education that will in large be culturally insensitive.
For those who SEEK education, it will be increasingly more rounded with all the tools available to us, including: our elders, travel, the internet, libraries, TED (;~), some schools, peers, progressive programs and projects, etc.
Education has always been and will always be beneficial for those who (ARE TAUGHT TO) value it.
pat gilbert 50+