Page 11 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

No matter how old or how expert, we must now live a dual life; as an educator and as a learner, as it is now impossible to be one without being the other.
We all know that the world is changing at an unprecedented rate, with almost everyone required to be continuously learning, understanding and applying knowledge, ideas and concepts along with creating ingenious products, systems, environments and media. However, our greatest challenge is focussing on what matters; what is worth learning. As educators, we are fully aware that a lot of what schools teach is trivial and will not be remembered or used after the test.
What does matter is that we can no longer think of ourselves only as individuals, or only members of our family, local village, town, city, state or country. It is now time to leverage our capacity to learn in order that we see ourselves as members of planet Earth, with each member having a responsibility to every other member, regardless of our place of origin, our ethnicity, faith or gender. If we understand self, as much as that is possible, then we have a chance of understanding others. We like to think of ourselves as being mostly rational, sensible and logical but that is not the case and fortunately so. Humans are mostly passionate and non-rational and that provides the potential for us to both love and feel anger. It is okay to feel these emotions but it is what we do with those feelings that matters.
The purpose of school is to enable everyone to understand their own nature and that they have choices about what actions they take; to love or to hate; to uplift or denigrate; to create or destroy. Understanding who we are, means appreciating we have choices about our self-talk and our actions. Once we learn this lesson then we have a chance of leaving this world a better place for everyone that follows.
What matters, is that we know how to learn and understand who we are.
------------------------------------------------ How to use this Resource
Welcome to this ‘living book’ and congratulations on your purchase of this resource, either as a physical book or the electronic edition (or both). If you purchased the physical book you also have access to the electronic version. This resource is a new approach to publishing. The online copy of the book will be updated regularly and, as such, its contents will change and added to, as our knowledge of learning improves, based on emerging research,.
You will be notified of the subsequent editions of the ‘book’ via the email address that you provided when you ordered the ‘book’. You can then download the updated edition from the website: http://www.marktreadwell.com/. Via a web link provided to you, you will also be able to access a set of additional resources that we have curated in Evernote.7 These links to online resources will provide additional support to the ideas and concepts provided by this resource. The Evernote links provide you with a stream of prompts to stimulate and keep you up-to-date with the thinking of educators and researchers around the globe.
As well as reading this book, you can watch the videos that are available at the top right-hand corner of each chapter. The videos are designed to prompt further discussions and these will be updated over time. The questions at the end of the three sections will also be updated from time to time as the text is updated, or as new issues arise. Using your email address, you can access the PDFs of the diagrams in the resource for personal use and professional learning sessions with staff. As the text suggests, you are encouraged to use the walls of the classroom to display the Learning Process posters and additional resources that this resource contains.
7 Evernote is a useful tool that allows you to archive resources into folders which can then be shared and accessed by others.You will neded to download the evernote app or service (free) in order to access these resources. Availabale fromJune 2017