Schools in the Cloud

Sugata Mitra raised some very interesting theories in this TED Talk. Mitra believes we are structuring our education system like the British Empire from 300 years ago. This way of educating helped make the bureaucratic administration machine, meaning everyone could had the ability to perform some basic tasks: good handwriting, the ability to read and perform mathematical operations in their heads.
He believes that system in no longer beneficial in today's society. After many successful experiments  leaving students, many in poverty and with no prior educational background, to learn for themselves with nothing more than a computer and someone encouraging them, he developed the Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs) method. This method is to provide students with a question and essentially ask them to find the answer on their own with the only 'teacher' being someone who merely asks them about their findings and gives them encouragement.

What I like about Mitra's proposition is it gives students more responsibility for their learning. The answers are not 'served on a platter' for the students to memorize. The students find the paths to the answers themselves making the topic much more memorable. Additionally, the students will feel the empowerment and the confidence of being able to solve problems on their own and ultimately enjoy and appreciate learning more.

My concern about this proposition is for special education students, discipline problems and students lacking drive. We live in a educational system that attempts to give every student every possible opportunity to succeed (or pass). Parents look to teachers of these struggling students to give them thorough explanations, detailed study guides and a lot of hand holding/discipline in order to motivate them to succeed. This proposition does not address that. Additionally, I feel there is a segment of the public (voters of our Boards of Education) that do not believe teachers do enough as it is and will not understand this method (it is not how they were taught as a child) and may believe it is a strategy for teachers to do less work. I also hope this does not devalue the role of teachers as professionals (especially those working on Masters degrees!) by essentially saying, "Any granny with one hour could do your job!"

What I like is the encouraging role it gives teachers. I know teachers will still be ultimately responsible for determining grades and disciplining, but my favorite part of teaching is 'being the granny' and complimenting and encouraging students. My Game Design class has an online textbook and curriculum, online activities and assignments and I encourage my students to work ahead if they are able so, so this type of teaching is often times in action in my class, especially with me as a new teacher in this subject. I often play the granny role when they figure out something new that I did not teach them or know myself, I praise them and encourage them and encourage them to share their newfound information with the class (while I take notes!). This creates a great classroom (or as we say in Career and Technical Education, workplace) culture of encouraging the best quality work, even if it is above the requirements (or their 'pay grade').

We are almost to the point where the cost of technology is more inexpensive and efficient for students to work on digital devices more and more often. More students will be expected to find their assignments, and turn them in and communicate with their teacher online. I have done this since 2010 through wikispaces.com and Engrade is now creating that type of environment, if the teacher chooses to use it. I hope there will be more collaborations through video chatting. In my kindergarten class, a parent talked to our class via Skype from a beach in Greece and in my Game Design class my students talked to three different Globaloria game design executives via Google Hangouts. These were easy and extraordinary experiences for my students. I think as people get more comfortable with video chatting, it will happen more often. Although, I think 'the future', especially in more rural areas, can be slow coming. I hope students will work together more often and it will become easier to assess every student's involvement (I struggle with this). An old friend of mine posted on his Facebook feed recently, "When I die, I want the people who did group projects with me to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time." My students get a kick out of this when I mention it.