Last week I mentioned that I offered my Grade 9 computer students an opportunity to design the school system from the ground up, with no preconceived notions of what was possible.
Given the changes that have occurred in the world outside of education, it may well be that an entire rethinking is necessary if schools are not to be viewed as irrelevant. Suffice it to say, there were some interesting suggestions.
To begin with, the students did not see school as being a place that they need to be all of the time. Still, they did view school as a place to gather and access resources so the concept of a school building was still important to them. Their consensus seemed to lie with the notion that they’d like to watch presentations by the best, most exciting teachers in each subject they needed to take. For this, on-line access to prerecorded presentations that could be viewed at any time of the day or night appealed to them.
In a follow-up to each presentation, students felt an on-line series of exercises could provide them with some guided learning and reinforce the concepts they needed to know. Although there was some uncertainty about how that might all play itself out, the students seemed to lean towards the notion that virtually all notes and tests could be done on-line and in the end, a standardized test run through a computer system, could verify that each student had learned the required curriculum content.
They decided that when a student was ready for a final exam, he or she could go to the school where their identification could be verified and they could be given a test under a supervised situation. They were surprisingly concerned with ensuring all students be accountable.
Also important to them was the opportunity for them to learn what they wanted to at their own pace. Some students felt they could finish school work much more efficiently without the bus rides, blank periods of time, and wasted instructional time waiting for peers to get ready. Some felt they would do no more than one or two courses at a time and they’d do them in a more compact period of time. Some said they would want to get a job during the day and work on courses at night.
This notion of independent learning is not new, although technology has made it easier and that is a critical point for students. They don’t want technology to be a minor part of their education. They want their books, notes, tests and teachers to be accessible to them at all times and anywhere. They want the freedom to learn as they see fit, not to be constrained by the needs of a school system or the style of an individual teacher.
I raised the concern that some students might do nothing, but they had several reasonably good suggestions to deal with that. First, since there could be a lot less teachers in the system and the cost savings would be considerable, they wanted to be paid for a school credit.
Second, there would be a limit to the freedom. A computer tracking system could be used in each home school to determine how many credits a student is completing on his/her own. Fall too far behind and you have to attend and complete credits on the school computer system.
I might add that while they said fewer teachers would be needed, they felt that those who were the “star instructors” should be very well paid, as an incentive for the best and brightest to become teachers.
Effectiveness would be measured by students voting on-line for the best teachers so that the good ones would get paid more and the ineffective ones would be taken off-line.
Graham Hookey is an educator and writer. Email him at ghookey@yahoo.com.