THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
The human rights activist Malcolm X said: “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” Former Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn, speaking back in the mid-Noughties, said: “The education system will have changed enormously in the next 20 years — driven partly by global changes, but most importantly by the needs of students themselves.”
Globally, politics, economies, culture and life itself are in a constant state of flux. Likewise, technology. Ireland has an education system to be proud of — we rank seventh among the OECD’s 36 countries, with Canada, Japan and Israel ranked highest. With this constant state of flux, however, as a society, as a culture and as educators, we must adapt or be left behind.
I mention all this because of the ongoing row between parents of pupils in some secondary schools and the cost of smart tablets for use in the secondary curriculum, with parents paying for the gadgets, some of which are costing up to €700 and the rest. Since the policy was introduced in 2014, parents reckon they have spent close to €1 million on the tablets, which they say can only be bought and serviced through one designated provider. The iPads cannot, as such, be used outside the classroom because of embedded algorithms.
Technology clearly has a place in education but I suggest it has to be used in a targeted way. There is incontrovertible evidence that technology can, if used correctly, be a powerful learning tool. But we should not completely rely on it.
In one classroom are those who argue that such technology for young people can lead to sleep deprivation, distraction, multi-tasking and overall have a negative impact on learning when compared with traditional methods.
In another room are those who say Ireland’s education sector is at a turning point — and the other side agree — but, with the European Commission estimating that 90% of tomorrow’s jobs will require digital skills, Ireland’s talent pool must have such technology. Regardless of the sector our young people choose to work in, one thing is clear: digital technology is the new reality.
Schools are now in the middle of technological innovation. Chalkboards are still ubiquitous, but computers are increasingly being used not only to supplement learning but also to administer it. Parents can expect the coming buzzword to be ‘personalised learning’, as this technology-enabled classroom education is being called.
In schools in the UK, the US and elsewhere, those using Summit Learning, a personalised, online learning approach developed and funded by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, the computer becomes the teacher, executing a largely self-paced curriculum and offering more flexibility and autonomy for students. The, at the moment minority-used, Silicon Valley platform has created controversy as some parents and educators resist change.
Personalised learning in schools is altering and modernising the educational landscape. It is just a launchpad to greater things.
True education transformation will come, I believe and wrote here recently, when those young minds (and parents) realise that they don’t need an intermediary at all. As AI will change many jobs, it too will one day make teachers, as such, redundant. I foresee more, though. Personalised learning in conventional schools then will shift to self-directed education or what educators call unschooling, or education driven by students using the resource-rich networks of both real and digital communities.
Conflating learning with schooling, mired in coercion and a controlled curriculum, is an outdated idea.
We grown-ups at last see how technology as educator works in our adult lives. Whether it’s using YouTube to fix a drain, Duolingo to learn a language, audiobooks to listen to books or FaceTime to have lessons with your double-bass teacher, technology is schooling us to shed our hitherto schooled vision of learning.
Technology frees us from the institutional paradigm (or mode) of traditional education and lets us teach ourselves. Our children intrinsically know it will do likewise for them.
It’s their brave new world after all…
