7/7: School in a Cloud

I really appreciated Sugata Mirta's TED talk about his "school in a cloud." We talk so much about the manifold advantages and disadvantages school districts face, but I don't think we put enough effort, energy, or resources into actually creating change in those underserved communities. What would it mean to distribute Chromebooks to all of our kids? What would it mean to inspire curiosity and forgo the pressures of relentless testing? Mirta's students in India engaged in learning because it was relevant to them. As Wesch reminds us, we must engage students in that which interests them. Testing does not interest them. We know this. We also know we need data, so how can we balance these two drastically different needs (admin v. students)? It is perhaps an age old question, but what can we do about it?

Mirta asks newer questions. Can we level the playing filed? Is it really just a matter of resources? Willing knowing every be obsolete? Are we adapting to a changing world? Maybe we just need to know how to access information; if students know how to use technology, how much do they really need to memorize? I'd argue, perhaps in line with Mirta's discourse, that students today don't need to memorize information as much as they need to practice and become comfortable with it (i.e. conventions of grammar and spelling). 

The logos below are some of the more popular English-teaching websites. They all employ native (sometimes fluent) English speakers and "beam them off" to China to work with very young Chinese students. I've seen my friends work for these companies; the teachers are given a script, and their only job is to read it in a very animated voice, encouraging the student and giving praise. I've always been a little skeptical of these teaching positions (are they kids really learning anything?), but after listening to Mirta's TED talk, they sound just like his "grannies in the cloud." 

 

Perhaps, then, these companies and teaching positions have a valuable purpose after all. I agree with Mirta: we don't need to make learning happen, we need to let it happen. The teachers on these websites aren't forcing the students to perform in any certain way, but rather supervising them as they learn pretty much on their own. Mirta also proposes learning as self-organization, as "intellectual adventures driven by the big questions" that teachers pose (and perhaps that they themselves pose re: Wesch's learning not teaching). If the teacher can take on the role of the motivator, perhaps the students will challenge themselves more than we thought possible.