Thursday, September 8, 2011

Time for teacher to become a learner !

Today I read an interesting blog written by Josh Sternberg , titled: Social Media's Slow Slog Into the Ivory Towers of Academia.  In the beginning of the blog he quoted Howard Rheingold, a professor teaching virtual community and social media at Stanford University as,"If you took a soldier from a thousand years ago and put them on a battlefield, they'd be dead. If you took a doctor from a thousand years ago and put them in a modern surgical theater, they would have no idea what to do. Take a professor from a thousand years ago and put them in a modern classroom, they would know where to stand and what to do." 

This crisp observational statement made me think. Well! everything has changed (our ways of living,farming methods,dressing styles,communication methods.....) and the change is still going on. But why hasn't pedagogy changed so drastically over the time period ? Afterall  our present education system was designed to suit the needs of a different era. As Sir Ken Robinson also said in one of his talks, that our present public education system was designed and conceived for a different age.It was designed in the intellectual culture of enlightenment and economic circumstances of Industrial Revolution.

We all know that advent of digital age created a digital divide. So,how do we fill in the gap of this digital divide? Of course, by learning new ways to reach and teach the Digital Natives. Yes, it's time to learn their language! With the exponential growth of technology and its applications in almost all the spheres of life, educators have to learn, in order to move on! Our students are mobile learners. They think in different ways compared to the way we used to think when we were young. They think differently because their environment is different than ours. As Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, stated  in his Social Development Theory that 'social interaction play a fundamental role in the process of cognitive development'. According to him, humans use tools that develop from a culture (such as speech and writing) to mediate their social environment
                             http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images

We have observed that more and more  kids  appear unmotivated to learn in the traditional classrooms and all this baffles us. Think for a second, why is it so? Times have changed. Our kids are moving in an age of  ULearning (Ubiquitous Learning) where the podcasting, handheld computers, tablets, smartphones are  the tools of learning. It is a prediction that mobile phones will become the dominant handheld device for mobile learning in next 5 years and 'Moblogging' is in vogue. But some  schools where learning via information sharing  is supposed to take place, appear to be cut off from these realities.

I  must say, our present educational setup needs complete overhauling in order to teach  Generation Z learners. By overhauling , I mean not just the infrastructure but the pedagogy also. We are standing at a crucial juncture where the beginning of New Future is taking place. If we don't get ready to move on, we'll be left behind. But that's not all! By remaining aloof from dynamic technological environment and trying to teach with an archaic methodology, we'll be doing great injustice to the future citizens of this world. 

References:
  • RSA Animate-Changing Education Paradigms [Video] Retrieved Sep.2,2011 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
  • Social Development Theory (Vygotsky). Retrieved Sep.3,2011 from http://www.learning-theories.com/vygotskys-social-learning-theory.html
  • Sternberg,J. (2011) Social Media's Slow Slog Into the Ivory Towers of Academia [Blog] Retrieved September 3,2011 from http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/social-medias-slow-slog-into-the-ivory-towers-of-academia/244483
  • Technology [Picture] Retrieved Sep.12,2011 from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=technologies&ctt=1#ai:MP900289583|mt:0|
  • U Learning: Educating a Mobile Generation. Retrieved Sep.3,2011 from http://www.slideshare.net/timbuckteeth/u-learning-educating-a-mobile-generation-presentation-637794
  • Wurzel,G.(2011) Time to adapt to teach the 'digital native' generation. Retrieved September 4,2011 from http://www.statesman.com/opinion/time-to-adapt-to-teach-the-digital-native-1819844.html