The eighth interview: Don Tapscott's interview about education.

It is sad that people do not have supernatural powers to understand whether the article or book to be read is of good value or not. Sadly I have lost interest in quite a few books or they have had deadlines and I had to return them. Thus I am going on with the articles, and wondering whether audio is applicable for a reading task?

Right now I am listening to Tapscott's interview. Bad quality, but good topic.
A quick scetch of what I have heard.

He is talking about today's learning. The kids today aren't prepared to working hard. The backgound of these kids is different and their attention span is different today, nobody even knows whether they have the possibilities to do their homework.
Pupils become very engaged in their computer, where full attention is guaranteed. They can actually mix all channels of media and do homework at the same time. The students are good collaborators.

According to Tapscott there is a need to change the education system. Education is teacher-centered and the students stay aside from the process. He is giving an example of Portugal, where everyone has interest in new generation's learning, but on the contrary he says that in American schools most of the children do not even have laptops.

He also acknowledges that technology is not of utmost importance, and integrating technology into the curriculum is hard work. He also brings forth that the model of education comes from the factory/industrial model, and we are gradually moving on to studio learning. He says that with a small class size you do not need technology, but with more than 30 kids it is impossible to hold a lesson/lecture without it.

What is the purpose of education? According to him children should not learn for the tests, it is important to have more students who know about the things happening in life. Students should be able to find information, synthesize it, organise it. They should know how to gain knowledge, be able to collaborate and communicate. Also how to understand context and to get information.

Tapscott gives lectures, and his intention is to make the students think.


Now to reflect on the topic, I have read several news where 21st century skills are discussed. Those are used to prepare the students for life and work. Test scores are not of use in real life, therefore, I think, the students should be able to concentrate their thoughts and also find necessary information in the web or anywhere. For example know which person to turn to for necessary information. I personally think that it is more difficult and time-consuming to search for keywords in the books since modern technology finds the answers more quickly.
The factory model of the current education system should definitely be reformed, since I can witness pupils who are unwilling to learn from the book and want more engaging content. They are used to interactive environments and sitting in one place for 45 minutes seems to be a strain for them. We still manage to calm the students, but it is getting more and more difficult with time. It seems that more and more pupils want to express their opinion and to wander off-topic. At the same time silence is required in the classrooms, otherwise there is no discipline according to some colleagues. While doing group- or pairwork there can be a little bit of talking.
Pupils have school stress.... all of this seems too much for the current generation of digital natives. The teachers are not that much accustomed to computers, it is an unexplored territory for them. Some of the teachers and parents have managed to become digital immigrants, to explore the territory and pull through quite well, but I think there is a lot of work to do in this field, first to educate parents and educators and then try to go on with improving our education. It seems that educators need more time and effort to be able to integrate computers into the lessons in order to make them more engaging for such learners. I think that today's digital natives will change the current situation, because they feel at ease with computers and technology, and in fact, they think that the teachers do not know much about it. They will be able to find the most interesting way of making the content engaging.
Also the pupils lack information finding skills. You give them the source and it is difficult for them to find the correct topic from there. But to learn a new game they probably do not need a manual, they explore and discover themselves the rules of the game. So that leaves us thinking how we could improve the learning environment of current digital natives being digital immigrants ourselves.