- Al Meyers
- Smyrna, GA
- United States
social enterprenuer, community activist, inventor, artist, peop, AICPA
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What if the TED Community worked together to build the model 21st century learning environment? What would it look like?
The TED Community has some of the most innovative minds in the world. This goes beyond TED-ED. We have digital media experts, researchers, educators, public policy experts, politicians and entrepreneurs. The community has all of the tools and resources in it to become the ultimate disruptive innovator in education. What about adding a new type of fellow: a TED-ED Fellow, and have them work together on a project to design a new learning environment, and one that can be scalable. Then take the "idea" and use the financial resources of TED to turn it into an "idea worth doing."
The model would need to account for teacher training, compensation and evaluation; curriculum standards, learning pedagogy, and funding sources, to name a few factors that need to be accounted for.
I believe there's no better brain trust in the world to tackle this project than an open-source TED collaboration.
L.A. Hall
Simplified, education is about raising generations of well informed people with the tools to make well informed decisions. I think we've lost a lot of that along the way.
Rick James
Tobias Hansen
Let's close our eyes and imagine an institution. You can picture your college, or any other institution. Here we (the students) learn, and we develop. We make use of the "drop-in" Term. No signing up, no appointments. Students talk, while students listen. When a student gets an idea, he gets the time and the tools to nurture this idea. And when he thinks it's valid he announces a talk, to inspire others.
While opening the door for investors, corporations, organizations who are looking for the next big thing. If they find an idea that they think is brilliant, they can contact the student.
Think
Inspire
and put it into reality.
Mark Hurych
Language Acquisition, multiple language systems and their corresponding phonemic awareness:
A permeable family room, people coming in and out for feeding, diaper changes, etc. Siblings and parents included, but the target group is 6 to 8 months old. Teachers are pre-teen to elder grandmothers, must have very positive affect and fluency in at least one language. While people are mingling and carrying on multiple conversations the learning pairs will be face to face for 3 to 6 minutes, covering a wide repertoire of language expressions of a particular language in each turn and rich sampling of the spectrum of sound in that language. Allow time for repeated exposure as the infants are rested and alert and ready for it.
With enough exposure in a comfortable positive setting, this will give the optimum potential for multiple language acquisition. The learning objective for the group, not any individual per se, is to expand the number of possible languages acquired and used throughout life. Smiling is a prerequisite.
Mark Hurych
A circle of interested people, mostly 7- and 8-year-olds, who are all familiar with this activity, sitting cross-legged on a carpeted floor in a large room with nice acoustics. Taking turns, different individuals sing a verse of "Darby Town" and start another round of a song-experience-game. During the game, everyone gets a turn to be a partner. Each pair visits an imaginary Darby Town and acts out the scene while singing.
As seen by an observer, it is just a game. For the participants, especially those who become deeply engaged in the variations, it can be a language lesson even for English as a second language. With some alterations or posed questions by the leader/teacher, it may become a Math lesson (How many pairs are in our group today?), music theory (What is the SOLFA symbol for the note we sing for the word "Town"?), singing harmony (Who can sing the ostinato pattern while the rest of us sing the lyrics?), poetic rhyme and meter (Who can think of a different ending for the verse that still rhymes with "day" at the end?)
Al Meyers 500+
Mark Hurych
HOWEVER: In the case of the best window of opportunity for the infants (I mean the 6 to 8 months old variety), they do not respond to computer screens and need the one-to-one in person experience.
For everyone else, the "older" students, yes, all of the above, and game-oriented context-embedded language learning I think is key. Yet, in looking at the best case scenarios for your dream learning environment model for the 21st century, I think nothing beats the person-to-person experience with acting, dancing, singing, and playing bundled together--when you can get it! Of course this would also depend on the comfort level of the students to make sure they were ready to participate comfortably in that kind of learning environment. (3D visualization--Hmmm)
Bob Van Oosterhout 20+
Schools are structured more like a factory than a learning environment. Putting dozens of children the same age in rooms in a building, making them sit all day and passively absorb information doesn’t make a lot of sense when we look at human nature and the needs of our world.
It is hard to find anything in the structure of school systems that facilitates optimum learning. Decisions are top-down. School boards, administrators and Departments of Education are all far removed from the day-to-day needs and interests of individual students. Education has become a process of mass production, where it is next to impossible to be consistently responsive to the ideas, abilities, needs, and limitations of any one student. Children are herded like cattle from class to class while their personal gifts, interests, and pressing concerns are buried and sometimes lost forever.
School systems have removed learning from the real world. Education mostly occurs behind closed doors. What is learned and how we learn it has little immediate application to daily life. Education has become an abstraction where we go away to fill our brain and then try to figure out how to apply it to what needs to be done. School systems squeeze education into a tiny, rigid frame. We need to expand that frame and rethink what learning is all about. We need to look beyond our limited concepts of schools, grades, curriculums, and teachers and recognize learning as a natural part of life. We need to use the tools now available to envision a responsive, interactive system that meets the needs of people and our world, and then figure out how to get from here to there.
Bob Van Oosterhout 20+
He started the next school year doing very well but continued to be blamed every time there was trouble. He maintained balance and did not over-react but it was clear that the school had given him a label that would be hard to break. I spoke to his mother about it and she decided to try home-schooling. She started by asking him what he wanted to learn. He said “Puerto Rico!” He wrote a booklet on Puerto Rico that included history, geography, geology, marine biology and economics. He learned how to use a spreadsheet and made graphs and charts that summarized data he collected. His mother said she never had to remind him to do his work. He woke up in the morning thinking about what he would do next. He learned more in a month than he had in the previous year.
Jan Wee
chad manderscheid 10+
Kai-Xin Young
As a student, when I consider the education system, the first point I think of is the teachers. They are the ones implementing the system and my most frequent point of contact with the system. Now, learning is mostly exciting to kids when they are young, but then this generally lessens as they get older. Why is that? The answer is in the difference in which things are taught. I believe changing the teaching approach would also be valuable.
When you are young, you are taught through demonstrative means - that is, teachers communicate theory to kids by showing. Think back to how you learnt to tie your laces - someone showed you the way, right? In K - 6, science and art was always the most exciting lessons because it was hands-on and we were shown theories. You were engaged in learning, understood the theory, and could see how it applied outside of school. You acquired knowledge and skills.
At some point in 7 - 12, showing becomes telling. This is when you (and many teachers too!) become disinterested and started to really question whether what you learnt was really applicable outside of school. You were exposed to more subjects and were told theories in them. You memorised a lot of theory, but did not understand it and could not put it into practice outside of school. The theory stuck in your head up until exams, then you forgot it. You may have understood and remembered some of that theory, so that was the knowledge you acquired, but what about the skills? How much of that theory could you actually put into action? Mostly limited, I'd say.
A demonstrative approach to classroom instruction would engage students and teachers more, and encourage understanding, not just memorising. With the wealth of classroom technologies these days, there has got to be more and better ways to educate kids other than just telling. My best teachers demonstrated by exemplifying themselves, drawing, videos, role-playing, etc.
Albert Hill
Recently the idea of placing the burden of engagement on the teachers rather than the students was floated by me. In this approach educators design their curriculum to be as irresistibly engaging as possible, and students always have the ability to opt out and work on something they want to do. (This is in stark contrast to much of our current system,where students must force themselves to pay attention to whatever is being presented to them, or pay for it on the test.)
This approach seems that it would reward a nice balance of theory and practice, using the 'authentic context' as Scott put it to personalize to each class and/or even every student. Student input on the path of study is important to keep them interested, and the teacher is actively building the education to match, rather than just following some set plan.
A side note: This style may get rid of the 'base of knowledge' that we all supposedly come out of school knowing, but as long as that is acknowledged/accepted, then I don't think there is a problem (especially since it is already true).
Mahadevan Venkatakrishnan
Albert Hill
Taking student input to direct the course of study could be the future. This guarantees the learners will be engaged with the material, since the want to learn it. Of course being the educator, knowing what you know beyond what the kids know, you can steer the inquiry to some extent, and introduce possible new avenues of study.
The first challenge is to start with something that the learners find irresistible, that they want to start engaging with [and always allow them to opt out, to have a quiet space where they can explore something for themselves - this is a new idea I've been considering]. Once they're in, its a cooperative of leading and following [like an ouiji board, haha] between learner and educator, to find a path through whatever topic was begun.
Mahadevan Venkatakrishnan
While I say this, I also feel that among the most important criteria in creating a 21st century learning environment will be to structure it in such a way that it transcends language barriers, it is inclusive towards the poor and illiterate. Thank you.
Laurens Rademakers 50+
If these uttterly "useless" features are not included, and if the body gets neglected, we will create a dull world of technocrats, bureaucrats and marketeers - an utter disaster for mankind.
On another note, and referring to your title: perhaps a single striking feature of the future "model" will be that there is exactly no single "model" at all, but rather loose open-source structures that can be molded and adapted to myriad needs (or better: desires). The education of the future might be at once highly individualized (catering to specific desires) and highly collective (networked, peer-based, socially relevant).
Mark Hurych
Yes. You indicate a good direction for educational systems. (180 degrees from the industrial model!)
Always, the question remains: what will this look like?
Poetry, music, dance, basic science and many other areas of learning and living expand the concept of "useful"--as they should. This usefulness or value is beyond commercial or monetary. How about quality of life? Maybe we need metrics to help us measure the benefit of experiences that are not defined by profit margins.
For example, my quality of life is only partially defined by my income level. I think that revolutionizing education in the best possible ways will include revolutionizing our thinking about our larger contexts as well. As for the "open-source" aspect, my best guess is that it would be most effective to look at the human developmental windows for learning and a child's growing ability to make valid choices about what to learn.
In order to develop the best model, given what we now know, expertise would be needed from many different areas of study.
I'm so sorry I can't tell you what this would look like, but your "open-endedness"
and, to quote Michelle Holliday: "So that's the pattern: mix together divergent parts, convergent wholeness, dynamic relationships, and then let life do its self-integrating thing."
divergent parts = input from research, business, artists, game developers
convergent wholeness = it's all about tomorrow's child being ready to live a full life
dynamic relationships = among students as well as global networking
self-integrating = freedom to grow rather than micro-managed structured schedules
Thank you for sharing,
Mark
jaeyun hwang
chad manderscheid 10+
Postulated
Points 1. The primary source of wealth on the planet is human intelligence and empowered energy.
2. If #1 is true then every student who does not achieve his potential is a loss to the global GDP.
3. If #2 is true then Education should be priority #1for everyone's economic welfare.
4. Traditional Education has failed like totalitarian forms of communism and money alone won't fix it.
4.1 If you continue to tinker with traditional education like Gorbachev did with a planned economy you will still get only a slightly different result and are only proving your insanity ie. if you always do what...get what you got.
5. Communism and western education share several fallacies, among the most important of these are lack of personal freedom and responsibility which destroys natural human motivation and enterprise.
5.1 Secondly dictating labor or learning with quotas or sacred cow curriculums disrespects human dignity.
5.2 Slavery is inefficient, coerced learning is an oxymoron. Any learning which lacks intrinsic motivation isn't.
6. If 1>5.2 are true then the foundational requirement for any successful educational revolution must begin with respect for individual human dignity and differences in learning styles.
7. If 6 is true then helping each student to discover1st, how they learn best and then 2nd, what their natural proclivities are will be the most efficient in determining any course of study.
8. Self discovery as part of understanding what it means to be a human being and how we are all different and yet similar should be the only required subject. EVERYThing else should be elective. Several studies have shown that one year after graduation the "successful" students retain only 20% of required curriculum in any case.
Kalpak Nikumbh
The problem is an old one. Marcus Aurelius, Philosopher-King and Emperor of Rome in the years from 161 to 180 said in Meditations: From my grandfather's father, [I learned] to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home, and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent.
JAMES DAVIS
Passion spreads knowledge.
The next generation of people must have all their concentration set on pushing mankind forward. So there can be a better future.
Science. Love. Art
Paul van Zoggel
3 subjects indeed, I use the same words with this meaning;
Science = understanding material world
Love = understanding immaterial world
Art = understanding the connections between Science and Love
jaeyun hwang
Bob Shingles 10+
For example, there would be part of the community that would want to build the educational structures in a green eco-friendly manner while others would argue that a complete green campus is unnecessarily rigid and would consume too many resources from online educational development.
There would need to be focus. A clear picture made from the many compromises on various ideas, a consensus, would be required and I do not know if that would be possible for the entire community.
On the other hand it could all work out great.
inthegarden beyondthecave
One way to teach practical wisdom is by example, but that only goes so far. Virtues become vices when they are not limited by practical reasoning.
Another is to use literature and movies to encite empathy. There should be a class every school day in a students life that focuses on empathy inspiring literature.
Another is to get people to think through practical problems. Start with a premise like all people matter or treat others the way you want to be treated and work on discussing what follows in particular situations or for particular policy questions. Engage the children in learning how the facts matter, and thus, how the other discipllines are relevant for answering these questions. This class should meet just as often as any other core curriculum calss. Have the students keep a journal with regular writing assignments on such matters. Hold small group discussions of three or four students to discuss the journal entries. Have students write responses to other students journal entries.
For the most part, these two classes would replace Language Arts. They would effectively teach writing, reading, and the analytical arts through the hands on practice of doing them.
Bernd Fesel 30+
All new techniques and new tools in school (and there are brilliant ideas in the blog already) will only be as good as the skills of the teachers in each and every local school - they deserve our most attention. what a huge logistic task: training this force for the future...so diverse and spread out. So the central question seems to me: What is the best training and learning tool for teachers to innovate and to be motivated?
Then we can care about technological ideas.
And finally one small easy thing to do: Best payment for the persons which have the responsibilty to lead our children in the future. At least in my country Germany teachers are under-paid.
Paul van Zoggel
I am in a project in the Netherlands on the topic; How can a teacher learn to be curious to learn, it sounds probably better in German;
"Wie lernt ein Lehrer lernen"
We are formulating like 5 'ways' a teacher can be excited again in teaching, including having more engaged pupils.
Audrey Misiano
As a teacher who loves learning, I'm curious to learn your 5 ways you document to work!
Audrey Misiano
Audrey Misiano
Use global video conferencing to allow students to teach learners in other countries. People of all ages and cultures can learn from one another...and promote multicultural awareness and tolerance.
Audrey Misiano
Paul van Zoggel
Al Meyers 500+
Paul van Zoggel
zack simmons
It seems odd to me that our early mathematics and reading books are constantly changing when the information is not.
I've personally been consistently disappointed with my textbooks since as long as i could form an opinion, and many times my teachers have agreed with me.
i remember specifically that my 8th grade math teacher held on to her old algebra textbooks until they literally fell apart because they were far superior to our modern textbooks.
why would our textbooks be getting worse?
Claudette Cohen
zack simmons
anyone here know the details of what it takes to get a textbook sold in a major educational institution?
Al Meyers 500+
chad manderscheid 10+
Dan Hare
Ose Schwab
And what if the actual process of designing such a sketch becomes itself a learning environment? For I believe for us as humans to continue to reinvent what is best and needed requires a process of ongoing exploration with a mindful eye to response, outcome, shifts, needs, etc. as an approach built into the environment and learning effort. With today, we have technology as a great resource.
Resources/thinkers about learning communities are:
Ellen Langer - The Power of Mindful Learning
Sir Ken Robinson of course
Peter Senge et al - "Schools that learn"
Ricardo Semler's work "lumiar educational institute" http://www.lumiar.org/eng/falaram.php
Parker Palmer's perspectives of learning
Learning and the Brain conferences http://learningandthebrain.com
Adele DIamond - neuroscientist specializing in learning
Marva Collins
to name a few...
Al Meyers 500+
http://vimeo.com/lur/carpediem
chad manderscheid 10+
inthegarden beyondthecave
This rule provides a method for approaching decision making. At first it appears to be merely a rule for conduct, but it turns out that the conduct that it identifies as most important is the conduct involved in choosing the methods for making choices. Then among those methods, it singles out as being most important the methods for evaluating the methods for making choices.
Thus the rule moves one toward identifying the most fundamental principles of evaluation and provides a method for identifying what those principles are.
But, of course, fundamental rules of evaluation are useless if they are not applied. Consequently, our original principle requires us to apply the fundamental principles of evaluation. The students will be lead by their project to explore the implications of those principles as applied to the infinite variety of situations that can arise.
In applying those principles, some of the most important applications have to do with developing methods of thinking that are consistent with those principles. Thus, our student will become involved in defining the methods of the various academic and practical disciplines.
Since the facts always matter when a principle is applied, the student’s investigations will interest them in learning from all of the academic disciplines.
In this way, all of their studies will form a coherent and meaningful whole.
Christopher Harris
It requires learning a bit about them, socializing, asking questions, and generally having a less "self-centric" viewpoint...but that might not be a bad thing.
I'm sure there are some tribal practices (such as cannibalism) in the world where it is considered an "honor" to be eaten by someone...and most people in that group would welcome that honor. While I'm not going to judge their behavior/culture, I can certainly say that it's not an honor that I would share.
Just an observation that the Golden Rule may not be the ultimate filter through which to shape the world or to make decisions. Absent any information (or ability to get information - which is rare as long as you are willing to take the time to inquire) then the Golden Rule might serve in a pinch. But, in my opinion, it is not the highest standard to which we can aspire.
Treating others the way YOU want to be treated results in you treating the people who are actually like you the "correct way", for everyone else it falls short of perfect. Treating others the way THEY want to be treated results in you AND everyone else being treated the way that they want to be treated.
inthegarden beyondthecave
You agreed that the Golden Rule is a place to start and that is what I want. I want education to start with the Golden Rule because I think that is the first step in deveolping rationality. Starting there does point us toward where you want to go: taking others wants as a basis for one's own choices (That is the way I want others to make choices that effect me). As I see it, your rule is merely the Golden Rule laced with greater self understanding. My reason for wanting to have a school like this is actually so the children will actually experience how complex moral understanding develops outward from a simple method like the Golden Rule (similar to how complicated mathematics develops outward from a simple method: counting).
Working through the different permutations that occur as one develops moral understanding by trying to apply the Golden Rule in varied circumstances helps show that we have a much more shared system of moral thinking than we often think we do which puts us in a better place to understand and respect each other.