Post on open education

Hello all,

Open education ties into the sharing topic we covered. Open means accessible and in a classroom that means sharing knowledge with your students and fellow teachers. David Wiley spoke at length on the importance of sharing and how so many people these days are so scared to. Their sense of possession is at a reckless level. He quoted Thomas Jefferson and in paraphrasing said, I can light a man's candle without my flame being taken away from me." This is a way of thinking that is crucial if we are to see growth in our schools. 

This doesn't stop at the doors to our schools. We need to encourage the communities around our schools to participate and become networked with our teachers. They need to know what is going on in the classroom so that they can know exactly what their child is doing for 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday, for the better part of a year. That kind of knowledge helps to strip away the stigmas that form when schools are shut off from the communities. It allows for healthier communities and higher occurrences of students finishing school rather than dropping out.  

The future of learning only changes in the ways that society views the usage and importance of its resources. Meaning, as technology advances, it depends on society's view towards that technology as to how it will be used. Will it benefit or hurt educational growth? Can the technology be used to enhance learning outside of the classroom as well as within it? These are all questions that society need answer when new technology is given to them. And it is teachers and other educational staff that can be the ones to influence these decisions. More importantly than the technology is the willingness for society to involve itself in its children's education. Communities must become more open and better equipped to help its children learn and achieve higher levels of education. It already takes a village to raise a person. Now we need to get that village more involved in the schools and other learning centers for the sake of educational progress. Make a push for parents to attend school meetings and functions. Stress the importance and power of school council and board meetings. 

The final question asks: Will technology make textbooks obsolete? I think that it will in some places. Learning centers with more funding for technology and e-books and devices to read those e-books on can successfully move away from paper books. There will always be a need to work around the specific needs of the child and for the students who come from homes where e-books and tablets are impractical, they will need other options such as a paper copy. There are curriculum that exist without textbooks at all. To me these are the most fascinating. The earliest teachers didn't have textbooks that they assigned chapters to read from and they communicated and taught concepts to students just fine. There are plenty of teachers today that only use the textbook as a rough guide and assign next to nothing from it. Edutopia had a wonderful article about a chemistry teacher who ditched the textbook completely and has actually found his students enjoying his class more and learning more about actual chemistry and how it works in the world. Here is the link: Edutopia