Will technological development flood the traditional model of school?

FREREF Plénière Carrefour 1 Carrefour 2 Carrefour 3

De : Arkadiusz Nalepka
Pays : Polska/Małopolska
Structure MCDN

Will technological development flood the traditional model of school?

A race for services in education i.e. does ‘uberisation’ endanger schools?

‘Sharing economy’ and ‘on demand economy’ set new trends and change the job market by means of their most famous start-ups preferring creative and innovative use of ICT. The reliance on ICT in services reduces to minimum the time and distance between seller and buyer’s needs and it minimalises the costs. The way the economies work contravenes the idea of having one speciality which guarantees one job in a lifetime and it eliminates people who are unwilling to change and gain new qualifications continuously from the job market. Nowadays everyone can be taxi drivers (Uber), hotel owners (Airbnb) or cleaners (Handy), thus let us pose a question if thanks to technology a stationary school will become outdated. Does current educational system established in an industrial period have enough potential to anticipate surprising directions of civilisation changes and a potential to prepare a student for the changes? Is oncoming educational Uber a matter of time? Can schools which are factories of ready-to-use knowledge educate innovative students?

The knowledge offered by schools which is sealed in the curriculum will not be sufficient for students to prepare for approaching changes! The school in the world of global accessibility to knowledge HAS LOST ITS EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS to be the only source of knowledge. A slogan repeated by students that school is a waste of time questions the need to gain knowledge in the school building in view of various possibilities of nonstationary or remote education. Students claim it is due to time economy and unnecessary distance, created by traditional school, between knowledge and their needs. The needs of learners GO BEYOND THE USUAL TRANSMISSIVE CONTENT OF KNOWLEDGE, FOCUS ON ITS PRACTICAL EXTENT, CREATIVITY IN COMMUNICATION, CREATING A PERSONAL EDUCATIONAL PATH AND SHARING KNOWLEDGE BY MEANS OF ICT. How to prepare the school for the change? Technological school modernisation is not sufficient. It is not enough to equip the school with proper devices, software and manuals for the staff.

School modernisation projects conceived and developed by education decision-makers often undergo FETISHISATION of infrastructure, which copies a common opinion that it is enough to provide schools with modern equipment to modernise education. However, school modernisation will end up applying ICT to already existing educational practice and techniques without restructuring the entire educational process as a whole. The next vital stages will not be reached and they are: INTEGRATING ICT WITH THE CONTENT AND FIELDS OF EDUCATION, AND SECONDLY TRANSFORMATION STAGE OF FORMS OF INSTRUCTION AND THE FUNCTIONING OF SCHOOL AS A WHOLE. It is a challenge for modernisation to transform the school into a system combining various learning environments by means of ICT solely as a tool useful to establish learning organisation and educational networking. There is an urgent need to INTEGRATE THE METHODOLOGY OF TEACHING WITH STUDENTS’ DIGITAL WORLD when the development of new technologies moves ahead of teaching methods. Education is condemned to the CONVERGENCE OF FACE-TO-FACE TEACHING AND BLENDED- LEARNING. This change will prepare a student for lifelong education.

Is the teaching profession able to ‘update’ or will it become redundant?

A teacher as a solely authoritative source of knowledge has already lost the race on the market of educational services as being less competitive similarly to an encyclopaedia vs. Wikipedia. However, in the world flooded by chaotic information, which decreases the level of education, the role of a teacher WHO ORGANISES AND MANAGES THE LEARNING PROCESS rises in its importance. The essential skills of a contemporary teacher are coaching skills, open-mindedness, the ability to inspire and motivate students, which will help students answer a question ‘where?’ but mostly ‘how and why?’ Only a teacher-innovator can instil a habit of lifelong learning.  It is impossible for any institution to impose innovation on a society but systematically ‘updated’ teachers can serve as its promoters and supporters; teachers whose skills will assist students to go into their digital world. School modernisation constitutes mainly teachers’ competence to use ICT as a tool to teach students and instruct them how to use it to learn at school and at home…
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