Disruption required: Changing our Schools in the Age of Technology

In follow-up to the screening of the film Most Likely to Succeed, about the transformative nature of project-based learning, Shrewsbury Schools hosted Will Richardson, a leading thinker and writer in the area of social online learning networks and education.

Richardson is also a former teacher and parent of two teenagers. A strong advocate of school change, he asked the audience to have an open mind as he challenged our ideas about education. For example, does teaching need to only happen in the walls of our schools when we have the sum of human knowledge accessible in our devices? Should we only learn from teachers we can have face to face contact with when the web offers powerful opportunities for connecting with experts from around the world? How effective are our schools when only 32% of students report feeling engaged?

According to Richardson, there are three main drivers at work:

• -Technology is changing the way we can learn
• – Traditional school systems are increasingly ineffective and irrelevant
• – The future requires different skills and literacies

Richardson believes that much of the problem with education today is that we’re trying to do “The wrong thing right.” He questions many of our school’s standard practices, like separating content into different subjects, teaching to students of the same age, learning in 50-90 minute blocks of time, should all students learn the same curriculum the same way, and should all students be assessed the same way?

Richardson maintains that many of the reasons we do these things is because it’s easier for the schools and not what’s best for students. Further, he believes that an overstuffed curriculum required for standardized tests prevents students from developing mastery and learning deeply in any one area. Combined with the fact that testing shows that most students forget what they’ve learned within one year. The result is stressed out disengaged students and teachers. Shockingly, 69% of teachers report feeling disengaged.

Richardson asserts that technology has created a new reality in which learners can learn almost anything, anytime, anywhere. He predicts that the most important skill our future workforce will need is the ability to learn. How do we develop learners? Per his latest blog post:  Doing the right thing in schools starts with one fairly straightforward question: What do you believe about how kids learn most powerfully and deeply in their lives? Once you’ve answered that as an individual and as a school community, the question that follows is does your practice in classrooms with kids honor those beliefs?

In other words, if you believe that kids learn best when they have authentic reasons for learning, when their work lives in the world in some real way, when they are pursuing answers to questions that they themselves find interesting, when they’re not constrained by a schedule or a curriculum, when they are having fun, and when they can learn with other students and teachers, then are you giving priority to those conditions in the classroom? Are you acting on your beliefs? http://willrichardson.com/post/141211628845/were-trying-to-do-the-wrong-thing-right-in

Richardson has authored four books, most recently Why School? How Education Must Change When Learning and Information are Everywhere (September, 2012) published by TED books and based on his most recent TEDx talk in Melbourne, Australia.

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By Colleen Corbett