Forget devices, the future of education technology is all about the cloud and anywhere access,teaching and learning is going to be social. says Matt Britland.
What is your opinion?
Less privacy and too much information may cause even greater problems in sorting facts form fiction.
Yes to some extent as the teacher no longer has to spend a lot of time facilitating the students' understanding of the content as they have access to most of it already via the Internet. Instead of teaching, we will engage in mentoring students online in a collaborative relationship between mentor and mentee.
Best regards,
Debra
Recently I leaned a new term- Heutagogy, it will be relevant and really applicable in the scenario.
Being a socio constructivist, I do agree about the social aspect of teaching and learning or the socio construction of knowledge. However, one must cater to different teaching and learning styles demanding different approaches. These approaches must allow for the following: time for reflection, abstract conceptualization, and practice, whether it be virtual or in the classroom. If participant-learners are empowered, they will develop critical problem solving skills using a variety of tools at their disposal to solve the problem, whether it be socially or individually, depending on the complexity of the problem, resources available and time constraints.
Yes, it is true that we can easily access to find all the answers for questions we have in learning via internet or social forums which may raise so much challenges for teachers and educators to engage and get students really commit with conventional learning and teaching environments. However, from my opinion, with this trend, the role of teachers or lectures should be considered as mentor who provide the students with clear directions of searching and applying all fragmented kinds of information (from websites, social forums etc) to construct these information into a system of knowledge that allows them to use for daily problem solving and decision making process. Again, it is not about the quantity of information that we get from internet (via cloud access); it's about the quality we will get. And as an educator, we should care about this for all our students.
I bet they said something similar about railroad tracks and super highways. Highways and railroad tracks are only of use if the technologies that can best access and leverage their potential is available. Walking down the highway from city to city may be better ( more efficient) than hiking through the woods to reach the destination, but the access technology (device) car, motorcycle, or bicycle is the actual ellement (efficiency tool) that allows the highway to bring about improvement (increased access and efficiency). So, while the “cloud” holds great potential- you still got to get to it!
The true benefit of the cloud is the reduction in hardware load required to acess it. Think about your “portable computer” in 1983, it weighed 28 pounds and needed telephone lines, a modem or serial cable to connect. Today your watch, ring or basketball can access and collect and send information. The technology tools (devices) will always be the great leveler, the element that makes gathering and sharing “easy”. Don’t count out the influence of device innovation.
Learning to my mind has always been social, and is formed from such experiences - that can be bad or good. I agree that education is already cloud-based and also with William Eric Johnson that actually it is access that will be a larger determiner here to how education changes (enculturation of the cloud I think is and will continue to be hugely evocative). All this makes me think of Illich (1973) and Dewey (1938): Education has so much to do with the quality of experience, how habits are formed and of course, to reiterate a previous comment, the more contemporary digital reimagining of Heutagogy, or more traditionally put: being learner-centred. Perhaps something related and worth a read here would be: Postman, Neil (1992). Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Knopf.
Thanks Nabel kadum abd-ali, this is a great topic for discussion! I wasn't sure if I could add anything or not to the dialogue taking place here, but as I read through all the great responses to your question, it made me think more deeply about the issues at stake, and so I thought I should try to post some of my own thoughts about these things, in an attempt to support the dialogue as much as I am able to.
My own take on this is that an important element here will be the degree to which technology use by educators is able to match the technology needs (including non-educational uses) of technology by students. As pointed out by Syamsul Fozy Osman, heutagogy (essentially self-directed learning) is one of the important drivers of modern educational learning, and this takes place both within and outside-of educational institutions and systems. In this respect, the teacher's role will need to focus more on mentoring, coaching and feedback for students, in order to help guide and direct student use of technology for learning purposes (as already pointed out by others in this dialogue). This includes being able to incorporate what might be called "virtual social support strategies" into the teaching/learning process, and in a way that allows adaptive learning to occur.
Thus, the notion that future education is "all about" the cloud may be too limited in scope, although the use of a socio-constructive framework seems set to provide an appropriate ongoing framework for future education, particularly in the form of collaborative and cooperative online learning approaches (project-based learning is great for these). Other elements need to be considered as well however, including specific examination of adaptive learning and the role of gamification (incorporating game theory into education), and how these elements might impact on both the social elements of future learning and the ways in which cloud technologies can be used to support them.
Hope this is helpful, and cheers everyone...Tony :)
I believe effective teaching and learning has always been social. Ask any adult what do they remember about their school time. It will be a stage production, tour, piece of art or craft, practical chemistry class where the chemicals went 'poof' or any other similar happening. The use of technology must have an objective, a function, a reason to use. The use of Google search means nothing unless the information is used for a specific purpose. This does not have to start as social. However it will become social when shared.
If Cloud is a teacher, who am I? That is the question. Won't self-directed learning become self-awarding business. To my mind, a human student should communicate with human teachers. At least as long as there are some left :-).
I think the term teacher will be replaced by facilitator in future years. We are no longer required to spoon feed information. Machines can do that. However we still need humans to switch on the machines, ie. Inspire students to seek knowledge and model what to do with it.
Teaching & learning is definitely going to be social and it is already happening.
socio construction of knowledge (socio constructivism), yes?
experiential and transformative learning, where even, whenever, however, yes?
Yes,thats correct..try to focus on the principles as well as practicle examples..yoy can manage yr lecture virtually
Ubiquitous learning is already on, being the cloud the main source. There might be one issue about it and it is the scarsity of connectivity in some places of the world and the high prices of internet connectivity in some others. But the future undoubtly lies on this sort of learning. Social media also plays its role in learning as providing the motivation for it.
Indeed, we are living the third revolution, which is a mixture of scientific and technological progress.
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