Will School Become Redundant, Too?

Do students actually need to come to school to get what we are giving them?

I’m not just being provocative. Well, a little perhaps, but not entirely. At a recent conference, after showing a variety of educational podcasts, screencasts and recorded lectures available from such free services as iTunes U, I put this question to my audience: “Why will students still come to school in the future? What will we offer them at school that they won’t be able to get online?”  The only answer offered was “credentialing”.

Once, knowledge was scarce. Students needed a local teacher to help them find the right knowledge and to explain it to them. Where else could they go? Being unschooled meant being uneducated. Not any more. Knowledge is now abundant and freely available to anyone. Now, if a student wants to learn biology, she can go online and listen to my podcasts and screencasts, or those of other biology teachers like Bozeman. If it’s maths that a student wants to learn, then McDonalds (yes, the restaurant chain) provides MathsOnline free to all Australian secondary school students.

I can hear the doubters saying “but students aren’t self-disciplined enough to seek out learning that way”. I disagree. So do the five hundred students who have downloaded my podcast this afternoon in the time it’s taken me to write this article.

When I was a teenager, the local music store was a favourite haunt! But music shops are becoming redundant because buying music online is so much more convenient.

It won’t be long before bookstores and newsagents also become redundant as books, magazines and newspapers become available for direct download to our iPads and other mobile devices.  And if you don’t believe me – Arthur Sulzberger, the Publisher of the NY Times recently said “I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years” and last week Verizon (the dominant local phone company in the USA) is reported to have asked regulators for permission to end delivery of the printed “White Pages” phone book to all New York residents!

I think schools and universities are in danger of also becoming redundant, because just as with music, there will be more choice online, it will be more convenient, cheaper and will allow kids to learn when they want, where they want, as often as they want, for as long as they want and importantly, from whom they want.

This is a trend that is only going to accelerate. As young people increasingly turn to the Internet to access a smorgasbord of some of the best teachers in the world to explain topics to them – we need to ask what we will be offering students at school that they won’t get better, cheaper and more conveniently from their online teachers?  And we have to come up with a more satisfactory answer than “credentialing”!

That’s why its so important that we reinvent ourselves as teachers, redefine what “Classroom” means and re-imagine the role school can play in the lives of our students.

Podcasters of the Lost Ark

Podcasting is such a versatile tool.  I’m constantly amazed by the way innovative teachers find new applications for it that I haven’t thought of.

Two media teachers at our school, Stuart Rose and Andrew Nicholls are the latest example of educators I’ve seen using podcasting in a novel way.  They wanted their students to enjoy watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, but they wanted to be able to point out particular features of the movie (devices that Steven Spielberg had used to create mood – or whatever) that relate to their media studies.    To achieve this, traditionally, in class, the students would have to watch the movie, fragmented into 4 periods, punctuated by 24-hour intermissions involving Science, Maths,  English, dinner and sleep.  Hardly the immersive experience intended by Spielberg for cinema-goers!  Alternatively, students could watch the movie in one sitting at home – but without the benefit of the teacher directing their gaze to features of curricular importance.

Stuart and Andrew’s solution is to record a podcast that students can listen to while they are watching the movie.  Andrew and Stuart just sat together and watched the movie, discussing with each other the things they would like their students to notice in the movie.  The podcast lasts the duration of the film, with periods of silence and periods of talking.

It’s a neat idea isn’t it?  A student goes home, simultaneously presses ‘play’ on the DVD player and ‘play’ on their iPod , and then sits back on the couch with some popcorn to enjoy the movie, interrupted occasionally by their teachers drawing their attention to the important things to notice.  It’s also a clever way of avoiding copyright violation, as the movie itself isn’t included in their podcast.

I can picture teachers using this idea in any number of ways.  For example, I think it would be perfect for replacing the original narration on that documentary that has great visuals but uses terminology pitched at the wrong level.

Giving My Cellphone Number to My Students

One of the questions that I am most frequently asked when I give a presentation about using mobile phones in learning and teaching is:

“Aren’t you concerned about giving out your mobile phone number to STUDENTS? “

I’m not.  Here’s why:

1. I have been giving my cellphone number to my students (ranging from year 8 to 12) for a number of years now, and have never had a student or parent abuse the privilege.  I have not had any prank calls, or abusive texts.  I have had no calls at inopportune times.
2. If a student really wanted to ring and abuse me, or play a prank by calling to wake me in the middle of the night, why wouldn’t they just ring my landline phone?  The number is publicly listed in the white pages!
3. If a student did misemploy my mobile phone number, they would leave a trail of evidence to their misdemeanour – and a much clearer trail, than if they called my landline phone.
4. In my experience, the benefits of having my students networked 24/7 far outweigh any risk.

Like Pavlov’s dog salivating at the ringing of a bell, I think some teachers experience a conditioned fear response when hearing the words ‘cellphone’ and ‘student’ in the same sentence.  It’s just a phone.