Not everyone is a student, but we are ALL learners
Five educational breakthroughs that will make learning finally belong to all of us
Let’s face it. The greatest challenge in schooling is establishing and maintaining learner attention. Learners who buy into the game of school are students. Those that don’t buy-in, struggle in school.
It does not have to be this way. Yet, this has been the way educational organizations have operated for over a century. This is a gatekeeper model which has long undermined school culture.
The great challenge of digital age schooling and learning is reconciling the fact that not everyone is a student…in the traditional sense. Not every kid studies. But everyone is a learner.
A nostalgic version of the past is all that’s holding us back
We need to understand where our end-user’s attention is. However, instead of focusing on leveraging that attention, we waste energy on whining about social norms. Instead of meeting them where the attention is at, we fight it. Why?
I meet a lot of adults who are saying that they’re upset because kids don’t know how to behave socially. This is code for the fact that they are upset because they think their kids are always on their devices. It’s not just parents that are saying this. Teachers are equally guilty of making this charge.
They believe that kids are not talking to each other. They complain that little Sammy in not playing with other kids. These adults have decided that their children are socially awkward because of this behavior. They think the only way people should communicate is face to face talk.
Here’s the problem. Adults are being nostalgic about the medium of communication. The reality is that this same adult had parents who were saying the same thing about them when they were locked up in their bedroom yapping it up on the phone with Lucy all night long. What did you do when you were 11 and none of your friends were around. You went outside and hit a freakin’ ball on a rope with your hand…alone. Then, you begged to have a Nintendo in your room so that you could binge on 6 straight hours of Mike Tyson Punch-Out!!
These things we did in the past, that we romanticize, are not social. Now, here’s the truth. Every kid in Generation Z is dramatically more social then previous generations ever were. The technology that we dreamed about having is their reality, and they can hack it. TRUTH.
Gen Z is busy keeping streaks up on Snapchat. While their Gen X or Millennial parents are dreaming of a wonderful yesteryear that hardly even existed. Today’s kids are using devices and platforms that we don’t know enough about, even though we are using them too. How do you think this article found you?
The Gatekeeper Educational Model
In the same way that nostalgia threatens to undermine parenting, it similarly undermines schools. Here’s a quick history lesson. In the late 1800’s American captains of industry were industrializing urban areas in America. Immigrant labor proliferated in these urban centers. Working conditions were poor, but these factory conditions did little to effect the bottom line. It was the abysmal living conditions that had a greater impact on industry. You see, workers were going home after exhausting, inhumane workdays, and they were abusing substances like alcohol, and in general just making poor decisions. Workers were committing theft and abuse, along with a host of other forms of debauchery.
Bringing formal public education, which was generally a rural phenomenon, to the industrialized urban centers, was an attempt to illicit social norms in these poor working-class communities. It was a long-term solution for a confounding problem. Industrialists were playing the long game by explicitly teaching decorum.
The schools were designed to create more compliant communities and a more manageable workforce. The modern manifestation of the student was then born. The schools were the gatekeepers, and it was the schools responsibility to turn out compliant students.
The Digital Age is about creating learners, not students
Schools today are guilty of romanticizing the idea of the student, just as today’s adults are overly nostalgic about their own youths. The problem with this reverence for the past is that technology is transforming the way we work, play, communicate and learn.
The one minute take-away for this article is that the future has arrived. The technology that we dreamed of is not what is coming any longer. It is already here, and it’s disruptive to those that aren’t ready for it.
If we continue to believe that generating students is the sole mission for schools, then we will fail in creating digital age citizens. We will fail because we will not create the adaptive learners that can contribute to the cultural transformation of the social, political, and economic world.
& now back to the idea of attention
Today’s social influencers have this figured out. Whether it be Casey Neistat or Gary Vaynerchuck or any other big-time social media personality with a cohesive message and a compelling narrative.
They understand that visual images are processed at 60X the rate of written words. They are teaching the hungriest of today’s learners at a pace far faster than schools can because they are using the mediums that make it possible to scale learning. Mediums like YouTube and Instagram.
If you listen to their messages you will see that their content is chock full of social-emotional learning. #Empathy, patience, and determination are typically the theme. Schools are trying to teach these same values, but they tend not to have the attention because these themes are muddled by accountability measures, but that’s a topic for another post.
The take-away here is that not only are the needs of learners different today, but who and how we can reach learners is entirely different, as well. I believe today’s New Media is providing an awful lot of alternatives for learning, but the thing is, we as adults have to be the ones who go out of our way to teach and to be teachers. Even if we are not “teachers”.
Finally, the five educational breakthroughs that will make learning finally belong to all of us
- MOOCs — Massive open online courses. While learner attrition in these courses is at 95%, they still provide an unparalleled value and potential. #MOOC
- Vlogs — Video blogs. This is where the attention is. The possibilities are endless!
- mLearning — Mobile learning is learning that takes place on a device. It happens anytime, anywhere. #mLearning
- micro- learning & credentialing — Big businesses are turning to these eLearning alternatives because they offer anytime, anywhere flexibility. In addition, the learning is adaptive and retrievable at any time.
- PLNs — Professional Learning Networks are making it so that mentor-ship is an anywhere, anytime possibility. Ed chats are live on Twitter around the clock and around the globe! #PLN
Tying it all together
New media offers cost-effective, attention driven alternatives for the modern learning paradigm. Given the fluidity of job skills and the uncertainty in education of which skills are going to actually be necessary in the next five to ten years, I believe that leveraging media platforms to teach the most important emotional intelligences like empathy and patience seems like a wise choice. In the meantime, do some research on the five breakthroughs that I’ve mentioned.
And remember, learning belongs to all of us. So, let’s make history together. Be sure to like this, share it, and leave comments! Thank you for your time & attention.
