Jesse Schell shared 4 key trends with us which are affecting the way we live and which will change the way we teach. Jesse performed at his best with an inspiring talk full of humour.
The 4 trends he defined and choose to make his point where:
TREND 1: Beautiful
Everything is getting more beautiful. More and more objects in our live are designed not just for function but also more estetical. From builings, phones and even our toothbrushes.
TREND 2: Customization
More and more stuff gets personalized. From the coffee you drink, the m&m’s with your face printed on them, choosing your personal avatar in games and mixing your sodadrink to taste with Coca Cola Freestyle.
TREND3: User Generated
Jesse called Wikipedia “humanity greatest achievement”. This, together with Little Big Planet for which users have created over 2mln game levels, where is examples to illustrate this trend.
TREND4: Authenticity, real
For this trend Jesse refered to the book Authenticity (Pine & Gilmore)
So how do classroom looks nowadays?
Everything in education is still ugly. Everything from classrooms, teachers, students, books, everything is still ugly in education. Customized? Standarized. So how about sharing and cocreation? Highly illegal. Nobody is allowed to look at other peoples work. And is education real & connected to reality? Definitly not. Todays teachers are more like managers. They’re not real world experts.
So what should happen according to Schell?
Design
Things become beautiful through design. This isn’t about a different color classroom, but is about designing different ways to get the desired message across. Designing courseware as games for example. Jesse referred to: The Multiplayer Classroom (Lee Sheldon)
Customization
Respect the Learner. Different people require different ways of education. Technology allows this. Examples: YouMedia, Kahn Academy & Quest2learn.
An important sidenote: CURIOSITY WILL WIN. Curiosity isn’t in todays curricula, but in this age of mass information memorizing facts isn’t key, asking questions, being creative is what it’s all about. The current standardization kills curiousity.
How about sharing?
Sharing has to be build in to courseware. You can for example stimulate cooperation by giving a team an assignment which requires different skills. The team should consist of people who poses those different skills, but no one can complete the taks on their own. In order for the team to succeed they need each other.
How about real?
We need expert teachers. Teacher who can connect to real life. A good teachers looks for touchable moments, when people fail, that are the moments where people are more open to being teached. To achieve this we need real life simulations, serious games, with the teacher as dungeon master.
Technology and software is not about eliminating the teacher, but a way to empower them.
Another great talk by Jesse:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PkUgCiHuH8[/youtube]