Future of Education

Dave Cormier and George Siemens are running a course on the Future of Education.  They are calling for responses.

Here is my collection of thoughts and a summary of reflections.

In this Education as an open system by Tim O’Reilly, the provision of a platform is the key to education as an open system. 

Web 2.0 or social media technology would then be based on media platforms as an open education infrastructure. 

So, instead of merely providing the content for the course (online course inclusive), and having professors or educators being a sage on the stage, would it be far better to create and develop platforms and encourage and support the educators and learners to co-construct, re-mix, re-purpose and re-use the resources and artifacts throughout education and learning?  This will ensure that education is more engaging, relevant and meaningful for all learners.  This is also about empowerment of learners in their learning process – to be part of the education and learning process, to direct their own learning with more personal autonomy, so they would become both consumers and contributors of knowledge and information within those open networks and platforms. 

The role of the institution would be platform providers, with the provision of educators and professors to facilitate or guide on the side along with the learners as they pursue their life long and life wide learning journey.  

Such mission would allow the educators and learners to collaborate in the design and re-design of the curriculum, the media platform, the tools, and the content.  This would involve the curate, search and design, re-mix of the content and creation of knowledge to further enrich the learning experience of both educators and learners.

Such value added flexible open education would also benefit not only the learners involved in the course, but the community of interested global educators and learners, and the governments.

So, what would be the future of education look like? 

1.  Courses could be massively open and based on open education principles like the MOOC (massively open online course) CCK08 and CCK09 led by George Siemens and Stephen Downes.

2. Courses would be designed based on the principles of Learner Centered Methodology, and are learner focussed.

3. Courses could be run based on open education networks like wikieducator.

4. Education would be based on a conglomeration of government networks and communities – The Government 2.0  initiative (increased interest by government worldwide in the potential uses of public sector information and online engagement).  This would promote openness, transparency in the policy and its development in society.

5. Education would be a mix or conglomerates of complex social and learning networks, including personal learning networks, with a combination of formal and informal learning throughout the life-long learning and life-wide learning journey.

Martin Weller in his Future of Education mentions that it would be about

-Creation

-Engagement

-Special audience

-Teaching

-Building spaces

-Encouraging and supporting learners to be part of the networks

-Building networks, and contributing to the networks.

So, where would this lead us in our educational journey?  What should we do as educators?

David Wiley in his The Future of education summarises it:

-Engage in Policy Reform

-Be more open for our students

-Role of New Media/Technology

George Siemens post on Open isn’t so open anymore also highlights the importance of openness in education.

What would you like to add?  What do you see will be the future of education?

Would it all start with the learning ecology? The connections.