Page 17 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

Some opening questions we need to reflect on: When did you last use a pen or pencil to write something down? My guess would be that most of you did that very recently, probably to create a list. Next question: What percentage of your writing is done using handwriting? My guess would be an upper limit of 5–10% at the most. For how much longer will we teach this skill? Learning to write is a process that takes up hundreds of hours of teacher and student time in primary schools, while even our generation is rarely applying the result.
Let's keep going with this theme. When you need to learn something quickly, do you:
A. race to the local library, scour the library catalogue for the best book and take it home B. callafriend
C. fireupthehomecomputersittingonthedeskandsearchonGoogleforthebestsolution D. open your phone and do a Google search
E. gotoYouTube,searchfor,andthenwatchthevideoofthesolutiontoyourproblem
There will be a range of answers, but increasingly people are selecting answer E, and this is especially true for younger people. YouTube has 1.2 billion videos available online and accessible from any internet-connected device, and YouTube gets 800 million unique visitors each month. Why are many of us selecting YouTube as a learning platform? Primarily this comes down to efficiency.
Many people learn more efficiently from watching a video than from reading, and younger people seem to have no historical hang-ups with moving between text and video, utilising both learning platforms, according to their appropriateness.
Banning students from taking their devices into classrooms and exams is based on the fear that students will download the answers to the test questions from the Internet. Of course, they will as they have lived and worked within an information- rich landscape for most of their lives. In the last 20 years, the information landscape has changed dramatically from one that was entirely oral and text based to one that is increasingly dominated by video. In response to that change, educators are now transitioning their practice. We now need to ask very different questions and think about what a curriculum may look like, considering the explosion of rich media and its ease of access.
If we asked clever, rich and more open questions in exams that encouraged the application of new or existing knowledge to form ideas and concepts, and then applied those creatively, students could access the internet to find the required knowledge but they would then have to develop their own understanding to apply that knowledge to the context being inquired about. Learners would have to build that understanding by interrogating the knowledge they primarily found on the Internet, using questioning techniques to develop the resulting ideas and concepts that they could then apply creatively.
If we began test ‘papers’ with a prompt that stimulated the learner’s curiosity, it would then focus the test on the learner’s ability to learn, and they could develop knowledge into ideas and concepts that underpin their world. If we provided them with some guidance and support around being competent, the students could work far more efficiently in groups or independently, to develop deep understanding, as it is their curiosity that drives their learning, as opposed to tests, exams and textbooks. Can you imagine a world where schools tested real understanding and its application as learners did their tests on their devices and collaborated to develop their creative solutions! How much more relevant would that be?
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