Education in 15 years time

Well this seems to be the topic floating around the blogasphere at the moment. So why not add my 2cents worth (sorry Dave). I think we need to take a careful look at a number of interesting factors that I believe will depict our learning spaces of the future….

1) Schools as institutions needing to survive
At the end of the day schools need to survive just as any business does. I don’t just mean from a pure financial perspective (while that is important), I mean more from how our schools market themselves to the community. The question to ask in 15 years time will be…. “Does our community value educational technology and if so to what extent?” My past school is doing very well at the moment with enrolments because the technology spending is matching the desires of the community. There is still a big “WOW” factor when perspective clients (parents) walk into our classrooms with interactive whiteboards, projectors, networked computers, and many other gizmos that look impressive. My point here is that I can see this declining in impact and therefore not becoming a priority for our school administrators. Some of you may remember the Mel Gibson film “What women want” where he suddenly becomes able to hear what exactly the opposite sex wants from men. This newfound ability gives him a way to give the opposite sex exactly what they are after. Well I see school administrators like this Mel in this film. They have many different ways to find exactly what clients (parents) want from a school. At present technology of all different types is the thing that impresses our clients. I have watched a group of parents on a tour of my past school and the jaws drop when they see the gizmos….. Do they actually know how or if it will help their student learn better? Probably not, but it works for now so school’s will stick to it.

My point being, that how our learning spaces look in the future will largely depend on what our community seems to hold as important for education.

2) The focus on teacher professional development:
I will never forgot a quote from a former colleague when she saw her new classroom fitted out with interactive whiteboards etc… she turned to me while I was “playing” with the new “toys” and asked “What is all of this worth in dollars?” When I gave her an estimate she replied…. “Umm, well how about we get rid of all this and spend the $8000 on readers for my 2nd graders!!” It sticks out so clearly because it demonstrates how poorly we sometimes jump into new technology. Sure it looks good and it is a great tool when used by an educator who knows what they are doing, however, someone who has little training or desire to use it is not going to prove to administrators and the community that it was a wise investment. I think that if the money is being spent now on new technologies and our teachers are not trained sufficiently, future spending will very quickly be cut. To the defence of my previous school, they did look at a lot of comments like these and see that PD was a big must. Unfortunately, I will not be around this year to find out if they follow through.

3) How our pre-service teachers are being trained:
I wonder if our teacher training institutions are thinking what may be expected of teachers in the future. I actually don’t think it is a matter of making sure there is a bench-mark of all teachers in IT proficiency, I actually think there is a need to have teachers able to see how this generation of students they will be teaching live. What technology do they use? How do they use it? What do they enjoy using? Etc etc….. I actually think all teachers should know about chat programs, mobile phone functionality etc…. There is so much more insight into how to best teach and provide effective learning spaces when we take some time to work out how our students of today live and learn. I have added a table from some notes I took at a conference last year…. Some interesting insight into our learners of today (Generation Y)

New Engagment and what works best today:

(Mark McCrindle: McCrindle Research)

These are just three areas that I think will determine our learning spaces of the future. I don’t prescribe to the idea that they will be like the classrooms of today with just a few changes. While this could be the case, I think it will more likely come down to how our schools and community changes in the coming 5 years. Some schools will get it right and some will probably miss the boat….

Just my little carry on for the day……

Cheers,

Brett