The history of western education contains many innovations and shortcomings, this much is clear to almost every observer. Certainly, the issue of accesability is front and center in this conversation, whether in terms of affordability of knowledge, the disruption or outright distruction of indigenous ways of knowing and learning, or special needs in education.
The documentary Most Likely To Succeed, is provided for free through the Uvic webportal. I had the opportunity to watch this movie for a different course this term, and it outlines a blend of different teaching techniques, but fails to address most aspects of accessability. However, it does relate to some of the other questions posed for this week’s readings.
The documentary demonstrated student-centered learning, and highlights some of the benefits and drawbacks of it. While it does help students get more invested in the material, it is also a big adjustment to make, and can often cause a little uncertainty in students. I know that going to a self directed highschool led to me floundering in certain courses, as I was often uncertain what I was supposed to be learning.
However, I feel like High Tech High also requires a great deal more sychronisity, as much of the teaching and learning occurs in the moment, and that isn’t possible to capture or reproduce for later students, or students who aren’t able to attend class on a regular basis due to chronic illness or other issues.
Bringing the conversation back to the readings, Twenty Years of EDTech shows a little of the progress that has been made on the side of asynchronos teaching, but in my opinion, it still has a long ways to go. VR is perhaps the most promising technology for teaching, as it allows some practice of hands on learning in a safe environment, but the cost of the technology is still prohibatively expensive, and has many accesability issues that have yet to be addressed.
Furthermore, the Open Praxis article shows how the scale of education has changed over time, while the methods have largely remained the same.
Finally, in regards to connectivism, while the accumulation of knowledge from random sources around you resonates with my personal experiance, I have also ran into circumstances where I have been unable or unwilling to engage with this kind of learning. It might work better in different topics, or be beneficial for certain domains of knowledge, or just not be effective for certain people.
It’s difficult to have a universal standard, as humans are wildly diverse in physical, social, mental, and spiritual fields. Where one person might be content to wander from topic to topic, another might have a laser focus, and move from area of interests in a straight line, or stay in one area for their entire life. To have one standard for both of these people is also to fail each of them in some fundimental way, to say nothing of any of the thousands of other people who engage in learning for one reason or another.