When you think about it, learning is a rather quaint, but deceptively powerful word which we continually use, abuse and misuse in our work almost every day. Yet we see it constantly trivialised and thrown about like confetti across so many different contexts it's no wonder that it's real meaning is then lost in so many of the critical conversations around the purpose of school. For some, it's simply seen as a measure of intellect when someone is described as being learned or scholarly; at other times it is taken as a function of teaching, as in the oxymoronic “she only learned what she was taught." Still many use it as a comfort word within schools when they talk about 'learning spaces" and being "learner centered." In recent years it has become fashionable to preface it with an adjective such as "flipped," "blended," "personalized," "deeper" et al. as if the word ‘learning’ on its own is simply not capable of conveying significant meaning. Now we all know it’s not … [Read more...]
Dare to Re-imagine
How often have you ever had to wait for a taxi that never seems to come, or in fact never does? And how do you respond to that prolonged wait? Frustration, anger? So, what was so different about Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp who, on a snowy Paris evening in 2008 also had trouble hailing a cab? Their response. They invented Uber. There wasn’t a start-up incubator on that street corner in Paris; they didn’t ideate or even iterate. They simply dared to re-imagine what alternatives might be possible. So how was it that every one of us who has been frustrated waiting for a cab didn’t do a similar thing? And by the way, why were so many cab companies so slow in responding to what was a very simple idea that could have been replicated so easily? It doesn’t matter whether you agree with Christenson’s thinking around disruption or not; Uber has not only disrupted the taxi industry but now also the prepared meals service, shared rides and much more. And of course, Uber is just one … [Read more...]
Raising the Bar on Change in Schools
Remember 1849 when everyone seemed to be heading to California in search of gold? That's the feeling I'm getting lately when it comes to change in education. Almost everyone seems to be trying to lay claim to "change" in schools these days. Chromebooks! Personalization! AI! It's the new gold rush (though I doubt the football team in San Francisco is going to be renamed as the "17ers" any time soon.) Seems "change" is really starting to become stylish, and on the surface, that would seem to be a good thing. But I have two questions. One, how much of the "change" that we're seeing right now is really more than novelty, surfac-y stuff that's making us feel like we're changing even though we're not? And where will Chromebooks and personalization and AI be in five years? (See: iPads, flipped learning, and Second Life/VR as exhibit A.) I'm struck, yet again, at how we seem to be ignoring the fundamentals. Maybe, ironically, we need a "back to basics" movement when it comes to … [Read more...]
Who is Paying Attention?
A snowy start to the year can certainly slow things down a lot in the North of our planet, and below the equator, a sharp dose of summer will mean lying on beaches to enjoy the end of the summer vacation. So maybe we all did need a wake-up call to get us going this year. So, we can thank the politics of the world’s greatest democracy (sic) these past few weeks for bringing us back to reality, and make sure we were all paying attention. No doubt a few of you have had to recheck your calendars to be sure the year isn’t 1984, with all of our post-truths, and "alternative facts." But let’s for a second look pst the distractions, as difficult as they may be, and see what we can learn. Yes, we know we learn from great leaders, be they educational, corporate, or indeed, political. In politics, we’ve read about the courage and wisdom of people like Mandela, Lincoln or Churchill. In recent times, while I’m not sure we have seen a lot of "shining lights," I am intrigued by what Prime … [Read more...]
What Have You Learnt This Year?
As the year draws to a hectic close, and clichés like that one become more prevalent, I have been reflecting not so much on my best books or films or even restaurants of the year, but rather, on what I have learnt* over the past 12 months? Here at Modern Learners, we’ve spent another year, and dare I say another 40+ issues of this humble little newsletter that winds its way across 16 countries to thousands of loyal subscribers, extolling the virtues of ourselves as learners. And yet how often do we take the time to reflect on exactly what that has meant for us personally? We talk about being learners first and foremost, yet even as I say it, I take it for granted. In our schools our learners are usually assumed to be the students, and yet as teachers, learning is the work. If we describe ourselves as modern learners maybe we all need to more consciously re-evaluate the extent to which learning impacts our lives on a daily basis. It’s probably appropriate for us to reflect on a … [Read more...]
The End of the Beginning of New Credentials
Stay with me on this. Its a topic that I think warrants a little more than we normally share here, and I promise, no politics and no mention of the “T” word... I’m not sure if you’re fully aware, but right now there are signs of a fundamental shift in the way our students will access higher education in the near future, and ultimately it will have implications for K-12 which I feel we need to be prepared for. While we were all might have been enamoured with many of the early online learning innovations around the turn of the century such as MIT OpenCourseware and later that decade the pioneering MOOC’s of Stephen Downes, George Siemens, and Dave Cormier, the longer term impact was that it provoked us to further explore how the internet and ubiquitous access to technology could and should impact higher education. Who could not fail to be impressed when some 155,000 people signed up for the MIT course on Circuits and Electronics in 2012, while Sebastian Thurn and Peter Norvig’s … [Read more...]
The EduRoad Ahead
So what happens now that Donald Trump is the soon-to-be president? You can do a quick Google search to find out what the pundits think the direction will be. If you do, you'll note that almost every initiative will continue to be driven by the same stuff: improving test scores, higher graduation rates, more college acceptances, etc. In short, there will be no larger conversations as to the practical solvency of the system as a whole. No discussions about redefining how learning is defined and measured. No re-imagining what learning could be in the hands of the learner with a powerful piece of technology. Nothing like the quote in this week's newsletter from Irmeli Halinen, head of curriculum development with Finnish National Board of Education, who said: “The world is changing. We have to think and rethink everything connected to school. We also have to understand that competencies needed in society and in working life have changed.” Yeah, no...not expecting that to come out … [Read more...]
The Moons are Aligning
I was lucky. I completed my teaching degree in the 1970’s during a time of new ideas, new directions and new thinking. It wasn't just a time for hippies and Woodstockers, but importantly it was also a time of provocative and open discourse around education, which inspired vigorous public conversations around the role of school and theories of learning. Those were exciting times when the writings of Illich, Reimer, Smith, Graves, Postman and Weingartner came to the fore, built on the ideas of people like Dewey, Montessori and others from decades earlier. In between my ‘extra curricular’ activities as a college student, we had the privilege of being given time to engage in deep discussions around a diverse range of educational philosophies that came from those writings which subsequently had a profound impact on the choices I have made in my life. It was time when educators across many countries were inspired to believe that the conditions under which young people were learning … [Read more...]
Bells and Cells and other Big Fat Myths
How much of what we do every day is part of a routine, habit, or in some cases almost a ritual? I know that for most of us the getting out of bed, shower, teeth thing certainly is, but when it comes to our work the context of the question shifts, and maybe it’s a cause for deeper reflection. Take school bells for example. For most schools, some loud noise, usually a bell is a signal for students to move to class, or move to a new class. It’s an organiser, keeps kids in the places we want them to be, but are they really necessary? It’s not a debate I want to continue here, but they are plenty of examples and discussion online, and it’s just one of the many practices we take for granted as a necessary part of a school day. What I am interested in are the assumptions that underpin such practices. On the one hand maybe it does make sense to have an audible means of organizing large numbers of students, on the other there is an argument that this is an opportunity to support a culture … [Read more...]
What If We Stopped Evaluating Teachers?
"How much of our “progress” as teachers has been spurred by fear of failure, of punishment, of low test scores, of a poor evaluation?" That's a question that has me thinking this morning, asked in an interesting blog post by Arthur Chiaravalli on Medium. It's especially compelling considering my recent trip to Finland (summarized in our ChangeLeader Facebook group...join us!) Probably the most surprising thing I heard in talking to teachers there is that they do not get evaluated. As in never. As in, no personal improvement goals, no alignment to test scores, no unannounced "visits" to monitor what's happening in the classroom. I want to unpack that a bit here because it feels like such a radical concept to teachers in the United States. (From what I understand, regular evals and observations also aren't required in Australia and New Zealand either, and vary from province to province in Canada.) As Pasi Sahlberg commented in his most recent book: “The Finnish education system … [Read more...]