Question everything #pelc12 #edtech

Posted on May 24, 2012May 30, 2014 by David Hopkins

Thank to Dave Cormier for sharing this video on Twitter, it’s amazing! I hope you think so to.

I have transcribed a few of the sections that really move and inspire me, what these children are doing/have done is brilliant, I hope you agree.

“Thousands of years ago the native Americans embraced the idea of a village, the entire community as teacher, as curriculum. The idea that everybody had something to offer was given. Somewhere along the way competition bled into efficiency and efficiency bled into standardisation. We are missing community, cross-generational expertise. We believe that technology wants to help us get back to to us.”

“We are suggesting that is compulsion, the assumption that was must teach and measure certain things, that is keeping us from betterness, keeping us mediocre rather than breathtaking. So we stop measuring learning, instead we prepare people for uncertainty, we facilitate curiosities, we create ‘community’. We create spaces of permission with nothing to prove because we believe ‘there is never nothing going on’.”

If you’re interested, check out the other 4 videos in the series: Dream (2), Connect (3), Do (4), and Be (5).

“There is never nothing going on” – Ray Rafiti

Now, I’m not an educational activist, nor do I want to upset the system or hack anything, but I do wonder why we continue to do things the same way despite evidence showing us there is a better way. From this video I can reflect my own experience at school, at university, etc, that I was not in the best ‘environment’ for my style of learning: I had to take myself out of the classroom to be comfortable to learn (but I still sat in the classroom with everyone else – does this mean I did twice as much?). From the video I question whether Schools are preparing children to learn a subject or learn to live in the world. There is a place for both, but I tend to see an either or approach, never both? Have I missed something … “we stop measuring learning, instead we prepare people for uncertainty, we facilitate curiosities, we create ‘community’.”

It strikes a chord with me, nothing more than that. And it is that chord that reminded me of the keynote that Simon Finch gave at PELeCON12 (pelc12) in April this year (2012), he opened ‘Something Better Change” with this video:

Another Brick in the Simfin

Powerful stuff, and equally powerful was the full 50+ minute keynote – watch and be inspired (and he knows his stuff from working WITH and IN schools, not just talking ABOUT schools).