How about; ‘Somebody learning something better/faster/cheaper/deeper with the help of somebody/something else’? And the alternative? Well…that would still be learning, sense we always learn…but no help, and not the same result. However; does such way of playing with words really matter? Yes, it does. It even matters a lot. And here is how it does.
Take a look at these pictures… give it some short minutes:
1: Students with laptops at a university, a teacher without. Note perhaps: some educators still don´t use PowerPoint, maybe for a good reason. From 2020.
2: One individual, out of 500 million, using Duolingo to learn a language. Note perhaps: his age and his ‘classroom’. Idea by a Carnegie Mellon Professor and a post-grad. From 2010.
3: How it looked, no hardware/software, when I was this age, year 1970. Note perhaps: different age/room = a seminar at a conference center with industry people, year 2020.
Are these pictures different, or instead similar?
This question could get different answers if we firstly thought about the learners, or the educators/technology/age/years, while answering it – mirroring how we see the core?
The thing is…‘Development of education’ tend to look different depending on how we perceive the core activity. That was the reason I initially gave a suggestion. Let´s try it again…
‘Somebody learning something better/faster/cheaper/deeper with the help of somebody/something else’?
It is actually not about technology, not even about teachers, or classrooms. It is about learning.
And from that point of view: everything from teachers to digital tech, to classrooms, even schools, are only tools.
It´s really about them. And ‘them’ are actually able to learn in many different ways, for instance without teachers/schools…even without EdTech, being involved. And a really good, also very strong, example of that is…how come we managed to learn how to walk – which, by the way, is a pretty advanced thing to learn? And we did it, but no teachers, no schools, not even ed-tech, even was close to be involved.
Well, the ‘tool’ we actually used for it was…trial-and-error, and a desperate need we seem to have had to actually learn it.
One might then start to wonder: what could today be developed into the best tool that can help another person to really learn something faster/cheaper/better/deeper than if learning did happen with another kind of ‘tool’, even done without any help from the “outside world” at all?
Why use an old car for travelling, if a better one could be made available?
A person interested in learning something have a tendency of not caring that much on how it is done.
They just simply wants to learn something…and the faster, or deeper, or even cheaper…the better.
In the end of the day it is the best tools that will win this battle.
And that is a fair fight to have.
Disruptive Education 