“The Time/Place Edge represents the destruction of the old view of education happening within the four walls of the classroom, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., with some homework thrown in after school. Repeat for 180 days, 31 weeks. Take three months off for the summer. Repeat. That’s the old but persistent view of when and where learning happens. But when the world’s learning resources are always “on,” 24/7/365, the institution of “school” is gradually shifting to enable learning, “anytime, anywhere.”
- Education Nation by Milton Chen, p139
As a society we have confused learning with schooling and schooling with a very narrow definition of learning. Young people are forced to into passive roles and are instructed in discrete courses turning to math at 8am, history at 9am, English at 10am, etc... with each teacher offering them a different instructional style, assessment model, and level of engagement. As an educator, you teach the same lesson 5 times a day, or depending on your preps, three different lessons multiple times a week. For the most part, professional educators work in isolation, because there is little time built into the work week for collaboration and your colleagues each come to the classroom with their own philosophies of learning and personal experience.
School is one size fits all, but in reality we are each different shapes. We take what we can from formal instruction, but learn most through the social interactions, side conversations, bird walks, and hands on experiences we are drawn to. Our best teachers are the ones we choose from our peer group's, family, people we are casually exposed to (aka social network), books we read, movies we watch and music we listen to. We learn the things that really interest us, the stuff we need to get by or get out from where we are, and life has no grades.
I am an educator who never liked school, but always loved learning. I struggled fitting into a system I did not really believe in, but knew that if you want to have an impact you need to go where the kids are. I've participated in the Small School movement in NYC and gotten a taste of the International Baccalaureate model and the non-profit youth development world. Education reforms from the progressive to the conservative abound, but unless we fundamentally alter the one to many learning model of schools, and the way we reward kids for what they do outside of school (ie. family and community resources, homework, summer enrichment), we are never going to have an equitable educational system.
How do you transform learning to be more personalized, learner centered and real? I have spent a fair amount of time grappling with this question in the wilderness, meaning with kids and a small network of educators. I now see a whole cultural shift has taken place since I got involved in education in the mid-1990s. This shift has been brought about by the new cache for smart people to solve problems of equity and poverty. Education is no longer the isolated Cuban economy of the Cold War, the place for draft dodgers and do-gooders. No longer a profession of martyr's waiting to retire on our pensions, we are the home to market driven innovation, or at least have the potential to be. The influx of Teach For America data driven reforms, the Gates Foundation, and spotlighting 21st Century Learning are all changing the field. While many of my liberal friends want to keep education in the boxed-in world we grew up with, and the business class dismisses teachers as the problems, it is really the synergy of business, technology and educational entrepreneurs that are going to transform the system. Mobile digital media and new technological social innovations cannot be built by programmers and MBAs alone. It is going to take buy-in from educators to de-school society. (The kids are already there!)
How do you transform learning to be more personalized, learner centered and real? I have spent a fair amount of time grappling with this question in the wilderness, meaning with kids and a small network of educators. I now see a whole cultural shift has taken place since I got involved in education in the mid-1990s. This shift has been brought about by the new cache for smart people to solve problems of equity and poverty. Education is no longer the isolated Cuban economy of the Cold War, the place for draft dodgers and do-gooders. No longer a profession of martyr's waiting to retire on our pensions, we are the home to market driven innovation, or at least have the potential to be. The influx of Teach For America data driven reforms, the Gates Foundation, and spotlighting 21st Century Learning are all changing the field. While many of my liberal friends want to keep education in the boxed-in world we grew up with, and the business class dismisses teachers as the problems, it is really the synergy of business, technology and educational entrepreneurs that are going to transform the system. Mobile digital media and new technological social innovations cannot be built by programmers and MBAs alone. It is going to take buy-in from educators to de-school society. (The kids are already there!)
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