The Need for a Learning Revolution

Upon viewing the TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson, I do agree with his central argument of shifting away from a one size fits all system of education to more personalized learning environments. Our learning environments are highly standardized resembling an industrial assembly line or on the “fast food model” as described by Robinson. These are not conditions where students natural talents can flourish and where they will feel passionate about and maintain an interest and ownership in their education. Learners are more likely to make meaningful connections with ownership of ideas. Learning activities need to be authentic by connecting them to the real world and allowing learners to decide the “what” and “how”, with a clearly defined “why” provided by the educator. Educators need to create environments where learning experiences and instructions are planned with learners achieving ownership as a goal; if learners use their own ideas and follow their passions they will be more engaged and will dig deeper and obtain a much better understanding of the curriculum.
Digital learning and the integration of technology can certainly help to innovate our education system by giving educators and learners the tools for more personalized and relevant learning. A technology that personalizes learning experiences is ePortfolio. EPortfolio can take several forms, such blogs, websites, digital journals etc., but their purpose is to serve as evidence of learning, illustrate a student’s mastery of the content and their ability to demonstrate its application and make new connections within the content area and beyond. More than anything else, I think the smartphone personalizes our computing experience. The OS My phone goes through my Gmail to provide me updates for things like upcoming bills and flights and automatically adds events to my calendar. I can use the NFC chip in my phone to submit payments in stores and I can access my bank, credit card and other accounts using their respective apps. There appear to be emerging areas where smartphones will be able to personalize learning beyond what desktop or laptop computers are able to do, for example the use of augmented reality, virtual reality and the many sensors that are inside and can be added to the phone.


References

TED Talks (2010, May 24). Bring on the learning revolution! | Sir Ken Robinson. Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LelXa3U_I




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