Adding ‘Flow’ in Education
Thus we see that flow is an important ingredient if we want kids to learn while being happy. Montessori method of education is one way of getting students into flow. The challenge is to devise a whole system which can provide students flow experience right from pre-kindergarten to the college education.
I am not saying that today’s schools and colleges lack flow experiences totally. In fact I myself remember that sometimes I used to experience flow experiences in my school. The only issue is that traditional fixed time tables and focus on lectures and exams creates conditions where flow is seldom experienced by students.
Kids need autonomy to get into flow. Their is no way in which teachers can push students into flow. Flow can only happen spontaneously with the right working conditions.
Flow can become sometimes become addictive. The teachers and parents need to mentor the students if flow is becoming addictive. I have seen such addictions and have always found that the addict is able to control himself better over the long run due to such instances. In any case this addiction is not similar to drug addiction. It is just addiction to continue working even though there is no major benefit. It’s when a student continues doing new division exercises even though 2 hours have passed in the same work. Its when a kid continues writing code to make a game even though 3 hours have passed doing this same activity.
Parents and teachers should always guide if such work becomes bad for health or social well being. In nearly all other instances it is good if the student becomes highly motivated to do something related to education for long periods of time. I have seen kids and adults doing some educational activity for hours or many times over a few days and then leave the activity once they get satisfied. Over the course of doing such educational activity they learn a lot. They are highly motivated during the course of such work.
In any case if we do not provide students with educational activities which lead them into flow they will get into the flow state by playing electronic games. I personally think that educational activities are better for addiction than violent electronic games.
Thus flow is a phenomenon which needs to be harnessed to make education fun. The challenge for us is to create a whole system which provides a mix of challenge, skills and fun for the student while sticking to the curriculum. We also need it to be manageable logistically and affordable enough that such a system can be scaled.
I have many thoughts which are against a fixed curriculum but I have experienced that the K-12 ecosystem is still not ready to leave the curriculum. Also the logistical challenges which such a change will unleash will be difficult to quantify.
Through my research, experience and discussions with my team members I have shortlisted 3 ways of making education fun at scale. The following are the 3 ways :
- Transmedia Education
- Maker Education
- Startup Education
These 3 ways are relatively scalable and more research needs to be done to make them used by more students around the world.
Transmedia education involves using a story world like Mickey Mouse, Doraemon or Star Wars to teach. Kids the world over love transmedia worlds. We see kids hooked on to transmedia worlds created by Disney, Nintendo and Hollywood. If we can harness the power of a transmedia world to teach we can help a lot of kids to learn in a fun way. Transmedia education can be used at any age but it is highly suited for education upto the primary level. Young kids live in a fantasy world and thus we see them having appetite for large number of cartoon films. We also see them role playing their favourite characters. Unfortunately most fantasy characters do not teach much. If we can use the power of fantasy characters to teach then we can solve the education problem for primary kids at scale. YouTube and mobile applications can help such educational fantasy characters to reach the world at a very low cost.
Maker education is a term coined by Dale Dougherty in 2013. Dale has been an advocate of the maker culture around the world. Maker culture involves activities involving the making of stuff of all kinds. People create all kinds of stuff they like to create as part of the maker culture. Success of events like Maker Faire demonstrate that humans love to make stuff. Kids generally love to make their own toys, robots, animation films etc.
I had learnt C programming in class 8th because I wanted to create Super Mario like computer game. Game development taught me science, maths, artificial intelligence, marketing, design over the years. Thus maker activities can have a great role in education. Maker education can be very effective in teaching Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). It is highly suited for maths and science education from grade 6 to 12.
I have defined the term Startup Education myself. I have been an entrepreneur for many years and have seen myself and my employees becoming better learners year after year. My entrepreneurial ventures have not fetched me valuations involving millions or billions of dollars but my ventures have made me learn enough that I can sometimes understand technical concepts better than people from the most elite higher education institutions. I have started to understand the management practices in startups even better than some of the MBAs from elite institutions. Even my team members have become great at their work even though they have not gone to great educational institutions.
I have accidentally stumbled upon the future of higher education. The future of higher education involves creating conditions of a startup. Working in a startup converts a person into a 10x learner. The highs and lows of a startup are great place to learn art, science and commerce at the same time. The startup can be created on a college campus or it can be created in form of an open source project or it can be created as startup with small funding from government or philanthropic funds. In fact sometimes open a startup is cheaper than a college degree.
Thus I think that these 3 ideas are the answers to the education problems of the digital age. I will be explaining each one of them in more detail. I do not believe that these 3 are the only answers to education problem but I do believe that these 3 are one of the best ways of solving education problems of the world.
I have founded an open education project called Fun2Do Labs. To know more about it visit : https://fun2dolabs.org . Subscribe to me on Medium to read my posts on education and technology.
