The beginning of the year is a time for reflection and for making plans, and never more so in the blogosphere where if there’s something to be talked about, it will be – and ad nauseum! I’m going to be looking at some excellent posts about the future of education and schooling and about what has been achieved in transforming the landscape thus far… :D

The posts that have caught my eye and inspired my thinking this week, then, are:

• Chris Sessums – Contemplative Practice: transforming the meaning of education and Skills for 21st Century Learners: preparing ourselves for participatory culture
• Dave Warlick – A Story about Information
• Karl Fisch – The Best of the Fischbowl 2006
• Stephanie Sandifer – A Perfect Storm
• Wes Fryer – Podcast 107: Be (Constructively) Digitally Disruptive in 2007
• Will Richardson – The “Perfect Storm” for Education

Before I start properly, I’d just like to make a public statement: Chris Sessums, please write a book! I reckon I probably include every post he publishes on his blog in my weekly roundups, simply because of the high quality and thought-provoking nature of his writing. If he distilled his blog posts into a book it would be an absolute winner! Go and read his latest musings (linked to above) and I’ll leave it there. Otherwise I’ll have to start a fan club… :p

Let me give you some context: I’m currently in the situation where I have to re-write an expanded thesis proposal due to my last one not being focused enough (too used to blogging!). As I’m planning to look at the changing nature of knowledge and how educational institutions are adapting to this (Ed.D. blog) the things that have caught my attention are related to this.

First, then, Karl Fisch reflected on his best blog posts of 2006. Karl’s blog is explicitly for the professional development of teachers at his school and he does a great job. Last year he managed to discuss ways in which the curriculum should be a safety net instead of being something we slavishly follow, put together a video called 2020 Vision that showed a chain of events up until the year 2020 (very thought-provoking), and wonder what 21st century schools should look like.

Everyone within education knows that schooling needs to change to reflect knowledge and society in the 21st century. Higher education institutions have got this to some extent, but I still had to travel and hour and half each way to get books out of my university’s library! As Dave Warlick puts it in A Story about Information, nowadays knowledge and information are the raw materials which we work with. I felt a bit frustrated having to drive so far to get my raw materials today!

But then when we look at schools, do we see change even to the limited extent we see with universitites? I don’t think so! Examinations are still the be-all and end-all and the tokenistic coursework requirements tend to be subject to a lot of plagiarism, unfortunately. :-(

With such a mismatch between the world of the student (and that which they will experience in future) and the current situation in schools, something’s got to give. Stephanie Sandifer in A Perfect Storm and Will Richardson in The “Perfect Storm” for Education both talk about how the current western educational paradigm needs to change – fast. Stephanie writes,

…our education system â€â€? like human societies in the past â€â€? is in danger of disappearing. I think [Miguel Guhlin's] right â€â€? and â€â€? I think it needs to disappear and be replaced by a new system that works for our students today. And this needs to happen NOW.

Will quotes Dan Kinnaman:

Despite the radical transformation of data storage and information access, there has been no associated transformation of K12 education. Alarmingly, there may be no sector of society where technology has had less impact. That’s because K12 education persists in operating on the premise that to have school, you must physically co-locate teachers, students and curriculum materials. Teachers and students are assigned to stand-alone, self-contained school buildings that house paltry collections of mostly outdated curriculum materials. With rare exceptions, digital technologies and interactive communications are still largely peripheral to the primary activities of the typical school day. The premise that co-location is required is invalid, and we need to stop spending inordinate amounts of time, energy and money to maintain it as our fundamental operational structure.

As Wes Fryer says in Podcast 107: Be (Constructively) Digitally Disruptive in 2007 we need to disrupt the current structures, but in ways that are constructive. He cites a new version of Bloom’s Taxonomy that I blogged about a while ago which puts ‘creation’ as the highest-order skill (rather than ‘evaluation’). I listened to Wes’ podcast on my trip up to Durham to get my ‘raw materials’. We seriously need to get more organized so that educational technology can take the repetition, boredom and constraining factors that currently define much of western education. As he says, it’s possible to differentiate to a much greater extent using the technology we have today than it has been previously. And if we don’t do that, we’re letting our students down. Something to think about over this next year, at least. I’m going to try and get a wiki going with my students!

Things that didn’t quite make the cut:

• The Gender Genie – find out how masculine or feminine your writing style is. Turns out I don’t actually write like a girl! ;)
• The “Dumbness of Crowds” – great post by Kathy Sierra about how individuals are usually the ones that come up with great ideas, but it’s the ones that are come up with by groups/committees that are usually given the go-ahead. She contrasts ‘collective intelligence’ with the ‘dumbness of crowds’. Worth a read, especially as she links it to Web 2.0 stuff… :p

Photo credits: play, 4.15a.m., & One Laptop Per Child (Set) by Hector Milla @ Flickr