Friday, January 25, 2013

The New World of Education

If you enter classrooms today, you'll often not see a teacher at the front of the room sharing information and leading the students. Instead you'll see students fanned out in the room and outside of it working on projects, creating multimedia compositions, reading, researching and collaborating.  In many ways, it's a much more fluid process than in the past, and with that change comes many questions and needs.

1. As we weave recording and voice more into presentations and projects, we enhance and enrich fluency skills and prepare students for future online communication and public speaking. But to record, you need a quiet space. Where in schools will we build in quiet spaces for mindful recording and audio composition?

2. When children are finished with online research and creation, what choices are left for them, and how do they access those choices.  Let's face it students today know the engaging learning platforms that are available out there.  How do we foster optimal choices, independence, goal-oriented learning and healthy play too?

3. And the perennial question, how do we foster dynamic questions around learning priorities and tools? How do we make decisions about best curriculum, and do we let students be part of that conversation?

The new world of education is opening the doors to possibilities we could only dream of many years ago. How do we proceed so we embrace those possibilities with strength and purpose?