Next Steps?

If School Is out Forever, How Do We Get to What’s Next?

by KATHERINE PRINCE on APRIL 1, 2011

At our session at SxSW Interactive earlier this month, participants embraced the idea of moving toward a future learning system where all kids get to choose from a wide variety of digital and physical settings, studying on their own time and at their own pace and working with a variety of adults – as well as with their communities – to pursue their interests.

Among the many great and potentially paradigm-shifting ideas that they generated as possible paths forward, four stood out as priorities for further discussion:

• Creating some kind of learning agent and learning experience review system to which anyone could contribute, a kind of “Yelp for Ed”
• Requiring that every major media corporation have a pro bono, public service educational arm
• Pursuing gamification as a design strategy, where we would move from testing to the idea of contest
• Encouraging the Googlization of education assets

In short, we would have a proliferation of freely available learning resources, would restructure learning experiences to increase intrinsic motivation and engagement, and would have new ways of assessing quality among a diverse array of learning providers and agents.

In addition, learners wouldn’t study the same things just because they were the same age. Technologies would be deeply integrated in learning experiences, as would community. New funding models would emerge to separate funding for learning from property taxes, while policies would support a seamless rather than segmented view of education across what we currently call K-16. And, while all learning agents would be IT fluent and would have access to personal learning networks, some of them would be part-timers with other primary professions.

The ideas went on and on, limited only by our short hour together.  Taking into account the elements of the learning system with which we were working, or others that you think are important, what do you think are crucial components — or at least starting steps — for preparing for a learning system that puts all learners at the center?