Fig. 1, Ken Robinson: On education ... and a fix for the huge drop-out rate in American Schools.
An excellent TED lecture. Worth taking notes. These are mine.
Offered by fellow student Marshall Anderson on the H818: The networked practitioner journey.
Worth listening to a couple of times (as I have just done).
Music to my ears, though I am not a teacher and have given too much of my career to the mechanised teaching he knocks ... digital and interactive learning is and has been, surely, a product of the mechanised approach? But you don't question the legitimacy of e-learning in an e-learning agency and suggest that a blended approach would be better.
They have one product on the shelf.
Which puts me at odds with the hand that has fed me for the last couple of decades. Next stop Finland? There is of course an answer here and that is recognising, please, that children, whilst deserving a better education system and approach, are NOT always at school ... this curiosity and motivation can be developed at home if and where a family have parents with the time and inclination and where, ideally, they also have contact with grandparents and even cousins, and especially friends.
FIG.2. TED Lecture with Ken Robinson
Ken Robinson is right to celebrate the human side of the child, that:
- human beings are naturally different and diverse
- that 'lighting the light of curiosity' is key and that
- human life is inherently creative.
For the moment my interest is with my 17 year old daughter and 15 year old son ... hoping and helping them to find and know what motivates them. It is this that will get them through school, a worthwhile goal beyond the barriers that exist in formal education - you still have to satisfy the standardised tests in order to get a place at university. Which is another schooling environment Ken Robinson doesn't touch upon - you can give us human beings too much freedom. Parameters are stimulating, both the negative and positive ones.
A struggle makes something worthwhile.
It helps to create a common memory too. Fundamentally this reminds me that any learning and especially e-learning needs to be seen in context - an e-learning platform or project is never exclusive, it is always part of what else is going on in the participant's life.
Blended, rather than pure e-learning is surely therefore the way forward?
Wise words put succinctly and with wit. Common sentiments that we struggle to realise. Privately educate? Home educate? Or move to Finland, Canada or Singapore?