Today I'm gonna teach you like it's 1999: Part 2

The problem is schools were not designed with learning in mind. As the likes of Sir Ken Robinson have so eloquently explained the school system is a product of the industrial period and is built on the industrial concepts of mass production, efficient use of resources and management of time. I am neither a technophobe nor am I a purveyor of the dystopian views which some extol but I am painfully conscious of the limitations that using technology for its own sake can bring to a learning environment. I would love to redesign my school on the Google working model, where students would be free to access learning in flexible ways from flexible spaces – where innovation and creativity were rewarded more than punctuality and appearance. But the tenacious factory approach to schools is a result of the practical need to educate hundreds of young people every weekday between the hours of 9 and 3.30 in buildings which are mostly outdated and rooms that can barely hold 33 people, let alone allow flexible usage.

The reality of the sometimes uneasy relationship between technology and education is that the two are not always mutually beneficial. As I ranted about in Part 1, I think the use of technology is sometimes something that reduces the quality of teaching and learning. The ideas which I put forward as a potential rebalancing are by no means new and when I say teach like it’s 1999 I don’t mean it in a backward looking, modern life is rubbish kind of way. My proposal is that teachers actually need to do two things: 1. Embrace technologies and social media and use them to reinvent home learning 2. Consider how, or indeed if, they are needed in class at all (i.e. teach like it’s 1999).

Home learning largely consists of preparation (or frontloading as they say in the USA), consolidation (usually some kind of assessment) or applying the skill or knowledge in a different context. All of these lend themselves to the exploitation of social media and technologies. The Flipped Classroom concept essentially focuses on preparing students for deeper and more creative learning experiences in class by asking them to engage with video content before the lesson. Done well (teacher generates their own content with resources for interaction) this method frees up the lesson time for more creative and collaborative development or teacher-led explanation or demonstration. Increasingly students are able to access online content on phones and other mobile devices so why not allow them to engage with the content anytime, anywhere? 

Consolidating learning also lends itself to social media. Asking students to write blogs, a wonderful way of reflecting or encouraging them to collaborate on document creation using Google Docs or SkyDrive are much more engaging and relevant activities than ‘complete this worksheet’.

Why not give consideration to a series of lessons which might exploit this idea of engaging students in learning outside of the classroom? A four lesson series of lessons could have the following:

• Frontloaded home learning using a 10 minute video and associated question sheet to introduce a new topic/concept
• Lesson 1
• Use of social media channels to respond to any needs for clarification/further exploration of ideas
• Lesson 2
• Consolidation home learning task such as a blog entry or collaborative document
• Lesson 3
• Use of social media channels for further discussions
• Lesson 4
• Frontloaded home learning task for next topic/concept

So what happens in the lessons if the content is delivered outside of class? Deeper learning, that’s what. Learning is a complex concept, but it is generally unanimously felt that being the passive recipient of someone else’s knowledge is not the most effective form of learning. So what is the most frequently used ICT tool in classrooms? PowerPoint: A presentation tool with its bullet points, crappy clip art and dreadful sound effects which has consumed teachers’ planning time for over a decade. Gradgrind would have loved it! But haven’t many moved on from this rather fin de siècle approach? BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and the proliferation of iPads, Chrome Books and Smartphones surely means that students and teachers can now be constantly connected, exploiting the opportunities of new technology in the 21^st century classroom. The truth is there are some really innovative and experimental teachers out there who are testing the boundaries of pedagogy. There are forward-thinking and well-funded schools who are equipping their classrooms with the latest gadgetry to entice their learners and motivate their staff. But most people are still using PowerPoint.

Maybe we just get caught up in what we think the classroom of the present/future should be like and assume that it is a replica of Google HQ. We assume that it should be filled with amazing technology. But for what purpose? Technology in itself is not the answer for education, in the same way that it is not to blame for all of society’s ills. The reality of most classrooms will continue to be centred on the human relationships that exist between one teacher and 30 students. Activities, therefore, during that period of time need to be tailored towards optimising the engagement and opportunities for deep learning. New technologies can be best exploited, for most of us, outside of the classroom. Let’s remember why we got into this game in the first place. Let’s remember how we used to engage them in 1999.