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Welcome to the Curriculum Lab podcast where we celebrate innovative educators, entrepreneurs and their impact on education. Let's talk about educational strategies to empower learners and inspire growth.
Welcome to the fourth episode of "EdTechVerse" podcast, where we delve deeper into the discussion about personalised, student-centered learning in education. What will it take to bring this to fruition in 10 to 25 years?
In this digital era, does education en masse only lead to mass unemployment post graduation?
Are traditional education models no longer sufficient in grooming students for career success in the 21st century?
Is it time to consider the merits of personalised, student-centered learning for children, young adults and working professionals?
In our previous episode, we talked about Tomoe Gakuen and AltSchool, innovative schools which attempted to implement personalisation instead of uniformity in its pedagogy.
If we were to put on our start-up thinking hats and use the lenses of an entrepreneur, we would likely recognize that both schools were prototypes, fore-runners of a big hairy audacious goal, a bee hag of what education could be like, if personalisation were more than a pipe dream.
A big, hairy audacious goal, bee hag, is a compelling, long-term goal that inspires a group of people to take action to complete a task that seems impossible. Bee Hag comes from the 1994 book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras.
It was found that these industry stalwarts had a few things in common. It largely boiled down to their culture, their approach to new ideas, and a focus on building the company itself.
What do you focus on building as a parent, your child’s future or your child’s strengths?
What is the culture of the top education institutions in your country?
What is your country’s approach to new ideas?
Moving the needle on traditional educational models requires hard work and know-how. More than that, it requires the belief that it is possible in the first place.
Here’s an extract of a sci-fi short story that talks about schools in the future when humans live in sky cities:
Just as the business of D1DN is news, Aristotle24, ARTL24 specialises in education.
An 8 year-old Zinnia stretched out her left hand and made a couple of taps in the air with her right.
A rectangular panel of light hovered above her left palm and lines of text started scrolling and narration began.
"The aerial city of Dragon 1 Degree North (D1DN) is one of 24 cities constructed after the melting of Terra in 2049. Each city revolves around Terra's low earth orbit at about 28,000 km/h resulting in it completing one revolution in 92 minutes. All city dwellers see 16 sunrises in a day."
Every ARTL24 school term lasts for 70 days for all the children, teenagers and young adults training as apprentices who make the journey from their home city to ARTL24. There they stay until term break, lasting another 70 days, where some choose to take summer classes to accelerate their progress and some choose to relax. This alternate cycle of classes and rest continues as students are placed on differentiated learning curriculum and individually assessed. Aptitude, skill and preference are part of the algorithmic mix when coming up with personalised learning needs analysis. Students are deemed competent by the ability to complete requirements suitable for their development milestones. For young adults, apprenticeship placement is a continual process and apprentices are free to change their choice any time before graduation.
"If there was an upside to the melting, it was the fact that it took time for Terra to become truly uninhabitable for humans. There was no mass extinction event which provided a time buffer for the 24 aerial cities to be built."
"That was the only upside."
"With dirty smog, high solar radiation, weather anomalies, and food shortage, humans did what came most naturally when survival is threatened. They went to war over the most precious resource - habitable land."
"The 5-year war ensued, decimating four-fifths of the population in Terra. The deteriorating natural environment almost killed the remaining fifth until humans came to their senses and drafted the Alliance Agreement."
Zinnia made a swipe to the right with her right index finger.
"The aerial city of Capitol1 (CPTL1) is the first of 24 cities constructed after the melting of Terra in 2049."
What’s interesting is that bit on a differentiated learning curriculum where aptitude, skill and preference are part of the algorithmic mix when coming up with personalised learning needs analysis.
It is also interesting to see that students are deemed competent by the ability to complete requirements suitable for their development milestones. Assessing learners based on their competencies in required subject areas is still necessary but banding learners into groups according to their personal development milestones is likely fairer than banding according to age groups.
In addition, adding learner preference into the algorithmic mix places the learner at the center of his or her learning, acknowledging that multiple intelligences exist and being people-smart does not equate to being self-smart.
Should we have advanced learning algorithms at our fingertips, why not apply them to making humans smarter in more ways than one?
Being word-smart in the 18th or 19th century was prized in higher education circles while being number-smart defines one’s scholastic ability in the 20th century.
Advances in education theory and practice can now finally be realised with advances in technology. There is no longer any need for anyone to be stuck in the education systems of the past 3 centuries.
We hope today's EdTechVerse episode on personalised, student-centered learning inspires you to make this your next big hairy, audacious goal. Join us in the next episode as we ask, “What is STEAM education?”.
As always, stay curious, and keep learning!