Things that need to go away in education:

• The summer vacation – this was caused by farming needs, and does nothing but help people get out of the habit of learning. Give a few more breaks during the year and go all year long
• The Jug and Mug philosophy of teaching. The teacher is the jug of wisdom, and they pour out that knowledge into the mug of the student. We need to move more to a style that teaches through lots of other methods like self discovery and observation
• Not allowing Wikipedia as a reference source. Please explain to me how Wikipedia is any less of a resource than other sources that have less people giving expertise. Wikipedia now attributes authors so give it up and step into this century
• The ban on laptops in classrooms. I don’t care what age you are, if you have a laptop, you should be able to use it to take notes, and do searches – at the appropriate time! So they cannot be open all day, but can be opened during work times.
• We have to get rid of tenure. Teaching needs to be performance based as to rewards. Don’t even try to debate this because it does not work today and no one can show that it does.
• Memorization and regurgitation as a model for learning. With every fact available in a nanosecond, it makes no sense to just stuff facts temporarily into people minds. All this tests is a students ability memorize for a few days, then dump the information to memorize more.
• Teacher parent meetings as the only communication between us. There are a ton of tools for communicating over the Web and this can make a more robust flow of information so parents are not blind until the report card comes out. By the way, it is not a report card anymore…

Things we need more of in education:

• Collaborative learning by using the Internet as a tool for students to work with other students around the world
• Problem solving skills – this is the number one skill that will help kids prosper when they get out of school – because there are always problems
• More life skills, less subject facts that will not be used by the majority of kids. For example, everyone will need financial literacy. Very few will need advanced algebra. Yet, what do we spend time teaching?
• Creative thinking is going to be more and more valuable as computers take over left-brain tasks. So let’s teach processes and build skills around creativity as a life skill
• Worldwide communication skills. Now that we have the technology to talk to people anywhere in the world, we should build deep skills on students with how to use social networking to enhance your career and quality of life.
• Self-discovery skills. With the Internet now providing a huge resource of help and information, we need to teach students how to have critical thinking and to use the Web as a tool to help learn how to do anything you have not been taught to do as of this point.

In the end, the story from the Bible of teaching a man to fish instead of giving him a fish applies with this new model of education. The education system has said for years that they are teaching kids how to learn – not just teaching them facts. The truth is, technology changes the game entirely as to what that means. We are still stuck with old teaching methods for the most part – and need radical change.

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

I did not have a great experience in my K thru 12 years in school. I found the whole process to by mind numbing in many ways. I did have a few good teachers along the way, and realize now that it was not so much the method they used as the force of personality I was attracted to. Luckily, I absorbed enough from them, while sporting a solid 2.5 GPA that I had the skills to go on and be successful in life. I have never forgotten how much I hated the process of school, and how freed I felt the day they let me out. I also recognize that some people loved school and it was the best time of their life. I suspect that had more to do with things other than getting an A however. Long and short, I have become less and less of a fan of how we educate. This is a technology content source so allow me to segue to the technology part of this diatribe.

Technology has afforded us large set of tools that can radically change how we teach, what we teach, and why we teach. I am mystified as to why as taxpayers and parents, we are not rising up to put more pressure on schools to modernize their approach. Only in a system without profit motive, and outdated measurements could you allow for such inertia to exist as we have today at schools. Allow me to present a list of ways that technology should be impacting education:

We have now created a massive “library” called the Internet, on a scale that is hard to fathom – and is instantly accessible from anywhere, for free. With a structure like this that will only grow and improve, why do we make people memorize facts as a measurement of IQ? Facts that anyone can get in a nanosecond with a search.

We have created a communications system that is now free, has many various modes of communication, and the ability to scale to deliver to millions at a time. With a system like this, why would we not use this system to deliver the best of breed education to people and not create more buildings, more local content, and more local delivery?

We now have knowledge engines like WolframAlpha that can do much of the heavy lifting in doing math based calculations, and analytics. With tools like this, why would we not teach kids how to use the tools, instead of the underlying engineering? They could simply stand on the shoulders of others instead of making every generation start at zero. I don’t even know how to do math longhand any more because I use a calculator. Am I stupid because of this fact?

With the ability to tap into Internet based communities of interest that contain thousands of people, why does it make sense to have kids only get input, or build relationships with a handful of students in their building? Why not have Italian students in Italy teach U.S kids how to speak Italian? And vice versa…

The sad part is, human beings get shaken up by revolutionary change. We are more comfortable by evolutionary changes that come at a slow pace so we can accept the changes slowly. The sad part of this is, we could easily paint a picture that is completely different as to how we could educate our youth – using technology – that they will use anyway as they grow up. It is not the students that will hold us back from completely re-engineering schools, it is the educational machine, and the parents behind them. More to come in Part 2…

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com