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Will We Need Teachers Or Algorithms?
De Seminario de Antropologia
Articles in English - Links to English websites · Glossary of anthropologic terms
I want to comment on what I consider a far greater misuse of talent and training: that of our children/students, mostly here talking about high school education. We have focused so much of our education system on children attending primary school, then middle school, then high school, all with the objective of attending university. This is a progression that still remains unchanged and largely unchallenged. Yet, this system is completely linear and, most tragically, unwaveringly standardized not only through instruction methods, but also through testing. Worse, it is mostly what I call “fixed time, variable learning” (the four-year high school) instead of “fixed learning, variable time” to account for individual students’ capabilities and status.
[editar] Identifying Emerging Trends In Education
There are new key trends that I see emerging in education enabled by advancing technology: namely decentralization and gamification. By understanding these trends, it is much easier to imagine why we won’t need teachers or why we can free up today’s teachers to be mentors and coaches. Software can free teachers to have more human relationships by giving them the time to be guidance counselors and friends to young kids instead of being lecturers who talk at them. This last possibility is very important—in addition to learning, schools enable critical social development for children through teacher student relationships and interacting with other children—classrooms of peers and teachers provide much more than math lessons. And by freeing up teachers’ time, technology can lead to increased social development rather than less as many assume.
Let’s start with decentralization, which involves not only making content available online but also producing content that is interactive and mobile. It’s encouraging to me that we are starting to seriously experiment with content that is different than linear translations of books to online. With the new platforms, we have the ability to rapidly run experiments with new styles, techniques and resources (like social learning) which will lead to a new understanding of education.
At a very simple level, organizations like Khan Academy are making up for students who have bad teachers by starting with good lectures on every topic. And it seems to be working; hundreds of thousands of students are already accessing these videos, making up for what is lacking (likely from their “average teacher” – on the other hand good teachers, the top 20%, like great doctors, will always be in demand, and though each of us can tell stories about an awesome teacher, anecdotal counterexamples to my assertions are not “statistical proof” of the general quality of teachers).
The universal availability of inexpensive web access devices like tablets and smartphones and new trends like gamification and social software will surely add to the acceleration. Meanwhile the ability to collect data online, at a scale not possible in traditional systems will help us better understand student behavior. When every click and every hesitation at every stage of every reading, assignment or problem is available to analyze with big data techniques, we will finally understand at an exponentially faster rate what works and what does not.
The other trend I am excited about is gamification. When parents think of games, they usually consider them a waste of time. More importantly, they consider them a waste of talent. The debate about the place of games in learning rages on, but one aspect of gaming is unequivocally clear: it’s sticking around. Therefore, I firmly believe that we should embrace it and harness its best parts to drive the education of our children who grow up with online and mobile games.
Imagine friends helping us understanding subjects while they also understand our context. Both the students helping and the ones being helped are likely to understand the subject matter better in my view. And with points and stars and badges and the like both are likely to want to spend more time participating, and will be more motivated when they do participate compared to today’s average classroom. Add reputation systems to that and one has the beginnings of a revolution. The content to train the trainers will be produced by some of the top 20% of teachers, and over time technology will multiply the impact and reach of these top teachers, motivating the rest of the best to participate as well. Other motivated teachers can feel free to jump in while the rest can go enjoy their favorite TV show.
[editar] Envisioning Future Education
Rather than pushing education on its students, the teachers pull the students into education through a game-like progression exploring 21st-century skills such as code-based problem solving, social media generation and integration, and design through games. The beginnings of these future trends of educational institutions and platforms are, therefore, already in place.
One other critical piece in my vision of the future is (re)-discovering the potential of each student as just that – a student. Pioneering social experiments such as Hole in the Wall have shown us once more in explicit terms the incredible ability of children to learn if self-motivated. Children who have never seen – much less operated! – a computer, were able to learn how to browse the web, play games, learn the basics of a foreign language, and read manuals to the software in the computer. All of this within the timeframe of less than three months. Most of these tasks, they accomplished within hours of playing around with the machine!
More importantly, they were then able to teach themselves and others in their community. Children have the natural ability to learn and teach. With socialization, big data analytics and gamification as helpful tools, the future of education lies in providing children with an environment in which they can learn in their own way, at their own pace, and their preferred style/methodology/modality.
We may not need as many doctors as we have today but I suspect there is still a major role for the 80% of teachers who are not in the top 20%. They can provide the “human touch” and be mentors and coaches. Maybe teaching will become interesting enough to attract more teachers!
Technology can allow us to make better use of our natural human resources, be they related to our health or to our education. Empowering patients to understand themselves better through continuous and comprehensive data and enabling students to develop themselves through accessible and attractive environments…this is the future I see.
