Just as I posted this clip about the way kids use blogs and social networks, David Warlick posted this intriguing analysis of the way kids use online technologies. Dave posted an interesting graph that shows that kids assess that they acquire various skills equally in school and in off-school online environments.
Yes, there used to be a time when you went to school to learn A, B and C: facts, learning skills, social skills with peers, and then went home to learn skills D, E and F: how to deal with adults, perform acts of personal hygiene, and learn to do household chores.
But today, the distinction between school and off-school is blurring. With the increasing use of the Web in teaching, the kids go to school to learn how to learn (including how to find information online), not to sponge-up facts as recited by the teacher. The font of knowledge used to be the teacher, but today that same knowledge is at everyone’s fingertips, it just needs to be sought, understood, processed and connected to other pieces of knowledge.
The killer quote for me is this one:
I’d have to say, though, that the most interesting question that came from one of the teachers was something like, “If I gave you an assignment to make a video, would it bother you that I don’t know how to make a video and can’t teach you how?” The students glanced at each other and then shrugged in unison, each saying, “We’d just ask each other.” One of the boys said, “I’d probably ask someone else anyway.”
So, the teacher, apart from not being the source of information, is not even regarded as a source of skills on how to find information.
So, what will the role of teacher be in the future?
Not reciting facts. Not teaching technology. But managing the learning process: teaching critical skills – how to find, evaluate, connect and build upon the information that exists out there, how to determine what is important and what not, how to figure out what source is trusted and which one is suspicious.
The teacher of the future will be someone who coaches kids in the skills of media use and criticism. Instead of teaching facts, teaching how to evaluate facts. Instead of teaching this generation’s ideas and biases, enabling them to form their own. Schooling as a ‘subversive activity’ at its best.
Which is good.