The Experiment

Today I tried a new thing with my students. I told them they could work on whatever they wanted, as long as it had something to do with English. Of course we brainstormed at the start of class so they could get some ideas and they had to show me what they had been working on at the end of class, but the rest was up to them.

The idea came from a video we watched in training by the writer of a book called “Drive”. He was talking about software companies that allotted a certain amount time for employees to work on their own projects. Something that was taken up famously for Google – It seemed worth a shot.

Well, I wish I could say it was a total success, but that would be a lie. Bearing it mind that it was a first time for students, I'd say that about 40% really went at it, another 40% did work but didn't really challenge another 20% did “something” but nothing that was really worth the time.

It's a problem that I've found with a number of “free range” activities in the past: The top students get the most from it, students in the middle do fine as well, but the students and the bottom seem to do a lot less than when we do more traditional teaching activities - those with the the teacher standing over them and guiding them through each step.

Now I'm a long way from turning my back on a student led approach – I still think it's the best way for the majority of students and I don't believe in holding back the middle and the top at the expense of the bottom. But I would like to find out some tips and tricks for brining the others into the fold, but how do you “teach” people to learn for themselves?

21st Century Education

While rather ironically taught in twentieth Century education style, the course I had today at school on twenty-first Century English did make me think. The whole idea was that thanks to technology, students have now moved beyond the good old fashioned teaching style and that new things have to been taken into consideration to really deal with these changes and develop students for the real world. That means taking into account things like the Internet and social networking.

It's great that academia is starting acknowledging that things are changing and I think any step towards modernisation of education is a step in the right direction. However, it does seem that the kind of education that they are talking about is something that would have been suitable for when I was at high school and their in lies the rub: academia does not live in the present, but only in the past. It's a twentieth century model of research trying to find ways to deal with twenty first century children, rather than becoming twenty first century itself and it doesn't work any more.

Think about it. Most people with doctorates are no spring chickens to begin with. I mean they might have profile on facebook or twitter, but do they really use it? Is it actually a part of their lives? Maybe, maybe not, but it doesn't matter, they can still study it, right? After all you don't have to have been a drug addict to understand drug addiction. Then again, I bet it helps.

But that's not really the main problem. The thing is, that the world is changing faster than ever before. When someone prepares a study on education and technology, it's going to be out of date by the time it gets to publication, never mind by the time that it filters down through the system and into the actual classroom. So what we are getting now are educational methods based on students who in many cases have already graduated and even if it is current, we are teaching them to deal with the technology as it is today. Not the technology as it will be by the time they have finished their education.  To put it into context, when I started school, around 1987, I don't think I had ever seen a mobile phone or used the internet. Almost thirty years later the thought of not having a net connection scares me.

So what to do about it? Well of course we could try to modernise academia, although that in itself seems like quite a mine field and far outside my world as a lowly teacher. As for predicting future technologies, while fun, it does seems like a rather hit or miss idea - Myspace was a sure thing for a while. For me though it seems that the best thing I can do is help students learn to adapt, because that, more than any skill is what's going to be needed if students hope to do well in any future no matter what technology they encounter. Maybe it would be better then if we worked on universal education - skill that are useful no matter the technology, or lack of - rather than trying to keep up with the current trends.