The School of Everything

What would be the impact on education if students were offered a choice of coming to our buildings or not?

Or maybe lets not even think that radically.

What would be the impact on education if, for at least a portion of their day, students could form classes around their interests and request that they be given an expert to work with them? Or what if teachers were more free to design courses that might last from a few weeks to a few months and students could decide where they wanted to be?

Would this produce chaos or would it result in self organising learning environments?

Last week when I was at the MADLAT conference, a lady spoke about a problem they are having in their school with kids being constantly late for class as they are taking the time to finish up online whatever it is they are interested in doing. She felt that many more things need to be blocked in schools to prevent situations like these from happening. I thought the opposite, wondering how we can make the classroom spaces more interesting and appealing to kids, making them want to be there. How can we make it so good to be in a classroom, that the kids would just not want to miss being there?

This idea of self organizing learning environments is partly the idea behind the new School of Everything, organized as an experiment and a dream by a few people who the edtech community should become much more conversant with such as Stowe Boyd, JP Rangaswami and others, this site is twenty first century education in action. People are free to organise courses around almost topic. They can sign up as teachers and / or as students. While still new in concept, I think what will happen over time should be apparent. Topics which are popular with students will find teachers. Teachers who offer something that students want will find their classes filling up. Even operating on the idea of the long tail, in an international market place of learning such as this site, even those topics which are interesting to only a few people will find teachers and students. Over time, reputation in this space will take the place of accreditation and the system should move ahead without anything more official than people's interests in learning.

What would this model look like in a school system? Would it allow (force?) us to become much more hybrid spaces, where students and teachers can be drawn from anywhere around the world? Think of a school being a learning space where some of the students are local and others are drawn from around the world. The teacher would be the best at what they do and may not be local at all. A school building becomes one possible place where people gather to learn simply because it has good resources and connectivity, but not because it is the only option available.

It might be interesting to organize something like this as a proof of concept for next school year. Hook a few classrooms together for a short period of time, have students organise themselves into courses and topics based on interest, give them a structure (a wiki, a twitter account, skype and chat connections, ??) and see what emerges.

Tags: selforganising learning, school of everything, stowe boyd, jp rangaswami

Comments

[Rodd Lucier]

I recently blogged and podcasted on how the machine of education is more content following old patterns, than in seeking more engaging alternatives. My most recent analogy is the way we park our cars: http://thecleversheep.blogspot.com/2008/05/think-outside-of-driveway.html
The 7 minute audio version is here: http://media.libsyn.com/media/thecleversheep/teacher68.mp3

Educators are very good at always doing what they've always done, but when desks were first set up in rows, with a blackboard at the front of the room, there were no comparative studies demonstrating why this model was 'better'.

I for one would love to see classrooms look differently from one school to the next, and a flexible curriculum that adapts to the interests of student and teacher learners would be a good first step!

[kamccollum]

I think this is a very interesting idea. Are you proposing that students choose from a set of school or teacher provided topics or would they have the freedom to propose their own topics as well?

[Jenny]

There was a recent post on Students 2.0 that described a mini-term that sounded a lot like some of what you suggested: http://students2oh.org/2008/03/05/mini-term/

My elementary school has intersessions, 1-2 week periods between quarters that are similar. We can choose to teach and then choose what we want to teach. Students sign up for two different classes, an am and a pm class. It's a fantastic experience. We've found some wonderful strengths in students and some great interests.

I'm all for this idea. Sadly, I can't figure out how we make it happen on a grand scale. Any major changes like this are so intimidating and scary to most folks.

[Clarence Fisher]

I think there are many possible ways for this to happen. The concept of passion based learning structures that turn into self organised learning environments needs exploration. I am not sure what it would look like in an internet based model where kids and teachers communicate by distance. I'm not sure it would even work, but it's an idea.....

[Ewan McIntosh]

The thing about School of Everything is that it doesn't need organised again by and for a school district or set of classrooms - just use SoE! It means that your students can help each other, for sure, but also help others in the 'real world'. Let me know if you do decide to pursue this. I know the SoE guys would be keen to help get the 'formal' sector part of this 'informal' space.