Many of our schools and colleges are still stuck in the industrial age – assembly line methods inform our pedagogy. Schools evolved from a need to feed the factories, bureaucracies and armies with people who could follow instructions and sustain repetitive processes. What was needed was a reliable part that would keep the machinery of the state or organization running smoothly. Schools responded to the needs of the employers of the day and trained students in performing task based activities, in stamina and in discipline. They learnt to respect hierarchies – which represented both power and aspiration.
It is acknowledged that education is about preparing children for the future. A future that is unknown and changes more rapidly than traditional curricula committees can keep pace with. The future of education has to include pedagogic models that totally invert the structures of the past – where schools are not about promotions or competition, for the business of learning and the business of assessment are different beasts.
Innovative models that include group and peer learning, game based learning and freeform pathways have been used in schools with a certain degree of success. Some have gained credibility over the years – and gamification is a science in itself now. Others have more skeptics than supporters, such as pure online learning.
India has been at the forefront of the back end of this innovation revolution – with a large and mature contingent of instruction design teams. But these design teams have been working to supply international markets, with the Indian education market being too nascent to support the industry. Even today, the innovators are held back due to the hurdles presented by a new market. The education entrepreneur seeking to build eVeltio Ten, a network for teachers spoke of the dissenting voices that told them not to try to sell to teachers because they think technology is the enemy. Some how or the other, providers found ways to avoid the teacher and sell to students or the administration. The teacher, however, had to run the smart class, had to deal with the students' improved access to canned digital content. A shared learning solution to the new issues facing teachers is on offer today.
Similarly, students have the option to learn socially, via various networks on offer – many of them customized for learning and assessment – such as Xplore. Others, such as Education Initiatives have been in the standardized assessment area for a decade – a very Indian innovation nonetheless. School Cinema has curated movies to derive lessons for students. While the larger players such as Educomp brought audio-visual learning to the classroom, others such as iDiscoveri took them further down the chain. Innovations today are more engaging, interactive and find new ways to build and reward achievement.
These innovations are young still, and many are being tested with schools and students. Yet they are the way of the future and will define the path to leapfrogging over other nations in education attainment levels. The current learning by rote system has served its purpose and time. While still not denying the utility of examinations, competition, the hunger to win or the other benefits of the traditional system, it is time to move on and hone a different set of skills and abilities.
It becomes the responsibility of enlightened educators to abandon their fears and the need for thcae familiar and comforting blanket of habit and try out new ways of teaching – with or without technology. They owe this not only to their present students, but to future generations. Innovations are not created via bright ideas alone – but are honed through practice and feedback from – dare I say it - mistakes. The best education practices for any community will only come from the responses of the student and teacher community. It is they who must build the future of learning.
No comments:
Post a Comment