The Future for our kids

I have long ( and often hard) struggled to come to terms with the institutional nature of our education systems and establishment. One particular theme always come back to me and that is that of 'learner reponsibility' (never mind learner voice for the moment.) I have always opted for change by revolution or productive cataclysm ... think of Noah and the Flood ... sort of what I had in mind for education. A world sized skip so that we could begin again.

David Warlick comments to a post on Will Richardson's blog: 'that the best thing we could teach kids today is how to teach themselves ... in a response to David's:

Our kids’ futures will require them to be:

• Networked–They’ll need an “outboard brain.”
• More collaborative–They are going to need to work closely with people to co-create information.
• More globally aware–Those collaborators may be anywhere in the world.
• Less dependent on paper–Right now, we are still paper training our kids.
• More active–In just about every sense of the word. Physically. Socially. Politically.
• Fluent in creating and consuming hypertext–Basic reading and writing skills will not suffice.
• More connected–To their communities, to their environments, to the world.
• Editors of information–Something we should have been teaching them all along but is even more important now.

The comments to this post (What Do We Know About Our Kids’ Futures? Really.) are well worth spending time on.

Further reading along the theme took me to Don Ledingham's Learning Log where he outlines the potential of 'Curriculum for Excellence' and sites 33 ideas which could together turn evolution to revolution.

They are worth a read in themselves to focus the mind but some in particular stick out to coincide with previous comments:

Young people over the age of 16 may devise their own curriculum by accessing courses available at their own school, other schools, further education and higher education institiutions learning and on-line learning environments.

Schools can use voluntary mentors who - following appropriate disclosure - can support the independent learning of students

All learners will have their own personal computer with wifi capacity which they can use at home and at school to access their learning.

Read about a maths lesson in 2020 ...

It seems to me that we have reached a sort of Tipping Point and that the way forward is to take a gigantic leap not based on all of our previous knowledge and experience but based on a leap of faith. We have too much information to compute quickly enough to make the radical changes that our young people need as they grow up in the digital world. (read about thin slicing)We are held back by our own fears ... it is time to grasp the light sabre in our hands and ...