Education 2.0
Are we only up to 2.0 after 10,000 years of civilization?
Discussing participatory learning as a 2.0 is exemplary of the education system's disconnect to the human experience. This illustrates the distance assimilation tactics have taken human passion out of education and attempts to restrain student's natural desire to engage their world.
The goal is simple: to revolutionize everything. In working towards that end, we need to put practicality and even realism on the back burner and explore the 'what if' forest. This method may bear little fruit, because there is a construct that has existed since the beginning of human society. But, the goal is innovation and unchartered waters and questioning everything.
We spend so much energy trying to find the magic algorithm that will address all students and all learning styles in a nice, easy to administer canned lecture. Innovation - setting the box on fire and never looking back - is the more realistic enterprise, more empathetic to the human animal on the journey to understanding.
Genius is when passion kisses inspiration. Galileo, Franklin, Edison and Einstein were turned on by their work. They embraced it with the passion afforded the human psyche when allowed to breath deep the possibilities. Their work wasn't a logical procedure sequential in the academe's school of thought, but was a process of surfing outside of conventional thinking, holding on to the orbit of possibilities. Then ignited by the epiphany of an open mind, they let go of that orbit and transcended the conventional solar system to other dimensions of understanding.
Like Ms. Frizzle says, "Get dirty! Make mistakes! Try new things!" And this is where the new technology is blowing the doors off of traditional learning environments. Students are no longer constrained to the teachings of one perspective. Even if an instructor brings in many resources, those resources are filtered through their perspective, their trained understanding. The possibilities are limited, as is the education. Now, through the limitless resource of our connected Web, perspectives can be formed without prejudice. This is the critical thinking pushed in the academe, squared.
A cynic of technology was suggesting that although students have access to the Grand Library that is the Web, most of them will just go to the corner and play video games. And? That student will potentially play that video game and start to see shortcomings and invent new features. Tools are now widely available to follow any path of inquiry. In the process, they will potentially stumble upon an entirely new technology that cures cancer. What? How can you get from a video game to the cure for cancer? Why not. Haven't most of the greatest discoveries been by mistake? a bi-product of seeking an answer to another question?
What is education? Can we possibly devise a comprehensive curricula when the skillset needed for success is changing exponentially? The morphing society cannot fill its needs with a static curricula. Is the video game not an education? Is text messaging shorthand not a formal language with its semantics and communication of ideas?
Children are born with all the knowledge they need, an information packet of bounty beyond the wildest dreams of our greatest minds. Allowing them to explore their intuition and follow their passions without walling off boundaries fuels innovation. The traditional education system serves two functions: assimilation and social interaction. Assimilation to what? Have we seen net benefit for society by fencing off freedom, limiting perspective or pretending we are teaching 'the' truth? Wouldn't we better serve our human experience by teaching that we actually know nothing, which translates into intellectual freedom? So, go ahead, kid. Have at it. And social interaction: are true relationships formed through navigating in and out groups, generating personality traits that best fit the most popular molds. Encouraging individuality forges more intimate relationships that allow us to grow together and reunite as one human organism, making for a much more interesting conversation in the commons.
We need to lose this idea of force feeding technology to the traditional system and use the opportunity to move humanity into the next paradigm. Looking around, we see that this idea isn't a question or a suggestion, because the students are naturally evolving technology, crafting a vehicle to take them deep into their inherent information packet, poking around, grabbing the secrets of existence, declassifying and publishing them to the world.
This in no way is to say that the innovation within the assimilation factory does not have merit or deserve respect. The opposite. This is an inquiry into how to take that spirit - the passion to unlock doors - and unleash it onto society. The traditional education system is a used car that is on its last legs and continually breaks down on deserted highways. It needs to be retired. New tires and a tune-up won't do. We need to let the kids tell us how to build a bio-computer engine that uses the earths gravity for propulsion. They know how. We need to let them find their information reserve and give them a platform to tell us what to do next.
