So how might schools survive?

Yesterday Will Richardson interviewed Clay Shirky author of 'Here Comes Everybody'. You can catch the UStream of the interview here:



and



One of the clear questions for me that Will asks is about the geographical nature of education and how technology has changed all of that and at the same time speeded up the process. On top of this Clay talks about organising without organisation ... students taking control of their learning, maybe as a subset of institutionalised learning. He goes on to say that he feels that schools as physical environments in which students from a locality study simply has to change.

Clay spends some time on the idea that we use much of our time learning time collaborating with questions and answers in a variety of groups and yet our assessment systems are based on individual abilities in contrived situations.

Clay comments that we want children/students to be able to figure out which tools they need to use in which situation. And these tools are changing tools. Much of what we want schools to do for out children can't be measured in our current ways.

Will asks Clay if students are just simply going to move out and do their own thing and as I have often said he makes the point that it is already beginning to happen.

Clay redefines the concept of 'digital divide' - he feels that it is not about access but about the socio/political imperative to use the technology to do things which you have not done before. This is a 'peer'/home/institution view idea and not to do with what kit/band width etc that is available.

Interestingly, on the day Apple launched its 3G iphone, Clay doesn't see that the phone is an ' ideal educational tool'. I think he might be missing something here ! Will seems to see that the phone might be a really useful tool but there are problems of 'bad behaviour' with the devices. My view here is that the publicity of the bad behaviour might be the thing that fuels it.

Unfortunately, for me, when asked the question about institutional change, he 'rights off' the early years saying that education there is not likely to change ... I do hope he is wrong ! There is reinforcement here for the idea that we need a system to evaluate collaborative work because it is this that will be really important.

When asked what would happen if there was no institutional education Clay feels that groups would organise themselves to provide it. If this would be the case it would be interesting to see whether it would be on a pre-existing model or if something new would arise ... Phoenix perhaps.

I may well have given my spin to what was said in the interview so it would be better to listen and see what you think.