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Howard Reingold: How the Internet blurs the line between students and teachers
American media expert, teacher and writer - about the ideas of mutual learning and self-education on the Internet
Howard Reingold is a world-class researcher and futurist specializing in the study of cultural, social and political influences on the media landscape. His Peeragogy project brought together the best practices of effectively educating people with shared interests.
On October 18, he will speak in Moscow at a conference on new educational technologies EdCrunch, organized by the journal about the future of education Edutainme, the center for technological entrepreneurship DigitalOctober and NUST MISIS. Before the conference, Reingold spoke about how he sees the present and future of education.
- At EdCrunch, will you talk about social networks and learning? How does this relate to one another?
- It seems that we learn by ourselves, but almost always with someone else. While social media is not widely used in education, the monopoly of the school is weakening with the development of the Internet, social networks, new formats and forms of interaction. It is not necessary to sit in a classroom if the programs of the best universities are available online, and many important things can be learned from friends on social networks. The utopian idea of self-organizing groups learning without teachers is becoming more real. There are so many motivated students on the Internet that together they can master any discipline. The tools for finding and selecting learning materials make you an expert.
In ten years of interacting with students on blogs, chat rooms, and wikis, I have learned that Internet erases hierarchical differences between students and teachers. At the forum, the teacher is no longer an authority, I am no less interested in my students teaching me. All this led me to a pedagogical philosophy based on the ideas of Lev Vygotsky, John Dewey and Paulo Freira: the roles of the student and teacher are a social construct, not something that is taken for granted.
Society has fundamentally changed, there are more opportunities for communication and creativity. The traditional purpose of education – the transfer of knowledge – today looks like craftiness. The new goal is self-education.
- Does all this work only for adults? Or can sixth-graders learn zygote education on their own?
- I'm not saying that thousands of YouTube videos can replace live lessons. But just because students are sitting at desks doesn’t mean they’re listening to teachers. Thanks to the Internet, they know that there is much more knowledge than it may seem in class. A good physics teacher can be fascinating, but collaborative project work and practical problem solving seems even more exciting.
In recent years, I've been working on a series of interviews with teachers using social media in the classroom. One said that at the end of each lesson he asked his students what to do next. For his classes, schoolchildren come up with interesting projects, and the teacher helps to implement them, teaching the skills and knowledge necessary for each case.
This is a fantastically successful approach: one student, for example, made a video tutorial on how to use social media in a school that was then used throughout the state. Another arranged with several local schools to open sports sections for people with disabilities. Learning to learn and act at the same time is something that is critically lacking.
- And are students able to focus on their own interests, at least not distracted by posts or photos of friends on social networks?
- In the current system, the pupil is haunted by a presumption of guilt: something bad is always expected of him. In addition, children are protected from the world that already surrounds them outside of school. How will it help them live in a big world? I’m not sure we’ll be able to educate children about ethical living in digital environments if we default to them as criminals. In such a situation, we deprive students of independence, decide for them what to be interested in and what not.
Of course, there are a lot of suspicious things on the Internet, but this is only the flip side of the ability to instantly get answers to any questions. Schools should not divide information into good and bad, but teach children to correctly ask questions and determine the reliability of the answers received.
There are schools in America where internet access is completely banned. I understand the reasons, but what about all the innocent schoolchildren who get a toy version of reality? Can they learn anything from it? It is a question of whether we will put armor or bulletproof vests on our child, escorting him to the street, or simply recommend looking around when crossing the road.
We must teach children how to navigate in this free but challenging world. It is not always successful, but it is strange to impose restrictions on everyone because of isolated cases.
There are two billion Internet modems in the world, five billion mobile phones, and now the Internet of Things is being added to that. The Internet is no longer just a medium, but the medium in which we live. And its mission is to provide the world’s population with the tools to communicate freely with each other. I am currently involved in ConnectedCourses.net, a project that aims to convince teachers that they can use and create digital educational projects on their own.
- How to evaluate knowledge on the Internet?
- There are two approaches: to assess progress or outcome. Most of the school and university graduates I have worked with are judged by results. Students know how to get good grades, but they do not understand how to evaluate themselves and their colleagues. In adulthood, they will constantly face this need, and unfortunately, we do not teach students to measure progress.
I just don't understand why this approach isn't used by at least one percent of teachers. In practice, it's easier for most people to say, "If you answer 7 out of 10 questions, you get a four."
Some states have passed a controversial law that could see schools lose funding if graduates fail to score on final exams. This means that teachers will focus only on rote for the sake of the result, completely forgetting about the learning process. Self-education is critical now. Think about how many people you know are doing things that didn’t exist in school.
- But if we abandon the governmental evaluation system that everyone is guided by, who is able to formulate new principles and apply them?
- I have no answer to that question. However, informal evaluation practices have always existed, even before the Internet, educational institutions and the idea of grading. People learned from each other before teaching became a separate profession.
Despite the fact that I recognize the advantages of formal testing, alternatives remain especially important for me: informal types of tasks, competition. Of course, the forms I'm talking about are much harder to implement on a large scale, but that's no reason to neglect them.
Of course, many tasks are the responsibility of the state alone: without a system of universal education, we would return to learning only the children of the rich. But any state administration is inevitably conservative, so such a system cannot quickly adapt to new conditions of life.
Anatoly Sperkh: I think the school is turning into a soluble drink
Neurolinguist Tatiana Chernigovskaya: How the Internet Affects Our Brain
In one of his works, Neil Postman writes that tasks and assessment systems that have not changed for decades always remain the prerogative of adults, and students themselves are deprived of the opportunity to develop these principles independently. A hundred or even ten years ago, teachers could teach relevant knowledge, but now everything is happening so quickly that self-education is the only correct strategy.
Interviewed by Natalia Chebotar
P.S. And remember, just changing our consumption – together we change the world!
Source: www.chaskor.ru/article/govard_rejngold_shkoly_dolzhny_ne_delit_informatsiyu_na_horoshuyu_i_plohuyu_a_uchit_detej_gramotno_zadavat_voprosy_i_opredelyat_dostovernost_poluchennyh_otvetov_36910
Howard Reingold is a world-class researcher and futurist specializing in the study of cultural, social and political influences on the media landscape. His Peeragogy project brought together the best practices of effectively educating people with shared interests.
On October 18, he will speak in Moscow at a conference on new educational technologies EdCrunch, organized by the journal about the future of education Edutainme, the center for technological entrepreneurship DigitalOctober and NUST MISIS. Before the conference, Reingold spoke about how he sees the present and future of education.
- At EdCrunch, will you talk about social networks and learning? How does this relate to one another?
- It seems that we learn by ourselves, but almost always with someone else. While social media is not widely used in education, the monopoly of the school is weakening with the development of the Internet, social networks, new formats and forms of interaction. It is not necessary to sit in a classroom if the programs of the best universities are available online, and many important things can be learned from friends on social networks. The utopian idea of self-organizing groups learning without teachers is becoming more real. There are so many motivated students on the Internet that together they can master any discipline. The tools for finding and selecting learning materials make you an expert.
In ten years of interacting with students on blogs, chat rooms, and wikis, I have learned that Internet erases hierarchical differences between students and teachers. At the forum, the teacher is no longer an authority, I am no less interested in my students teaching me. All this led me to a pedagogical philosophy based on the ideas of Lev Vygotsky, John Dewey and Paulo Freira: the roles of the student and teacher are a social construct, not something that is taken for granted.
Society has fundamentally changed, there are more opportunities for communication and creativity. The traditional purpose of education – the transfer of knowledge – today looks like craftiness. The new goal is self-education.
- Does all this work only for adults? Or can sixth-graders learn zygote education on their own?
- I'm not saying that thousands of YouTube videos can replace live lessons. But just because students are sitting at desks doesn’t mean they’re listening to teachers. Thanks to the Internet, they know that there is much more knowledge than it may seem in class. A good physics teacher can be fascinating, but collaborative project work and practical problem solving seems even more exciting.
In recent years, I've been working on a series of interviews with teachers using social media in the classroom. One said that at the end of each lesson he asked his students what to do next. For his classes, schoolchildren come up with interesting projects, and the teacher helps to implement them, teaching the skills and knowledge necessary for each case.
This is a fantastically successful approach: one student, for example, made a video tutorial on how to use social media in a school that was then used throughout the state. Another arranged with several local schools to open sports sections for people with disabilities. Learning to learn and act at the same time is something that is critically lacking.
- And are students able to focus on their own interests, at least not distracted by posts or photos of friends on social networks?
- In the current system, the pupil is haunted by a presumption of guilt: something bad is always expected of him. In addition, children are protected from the world that already surrounds them outside of school. How will it help them live in a big world? I’m not sure we’ll be able to educate children about ethical living in digital environments if we default to them as criminals. In such a situation, we deprive students of independence, decide for them what to be interested in and what not.
Of course, there are a lot of suspicious things on the Internet, but this is only the flip side of the ability to instantly get answers to any questions. Schools should not divide information into good and bad, but teach children to correctly ask questions and determine the reliability of the answers received.
There are schools in America where internet access is completely banned. I understand the reasons, but what about all the innocent schoolchildren who get a toy version of reality? Can they learn anything from it? It is a question of whether we will put armor or bulletproof vests on our child, escorting him to the street, or simply recommend looking around when crossing the road.
We must teach children how to navigate in this free but challenging world. It is not always successful, but it is strange to impose restrictions on everyone because of isolated cases.
There are two billion Internet modems in the world, five billion mobile phones, and now the Internet of Things is being added to that. The Internet is no longer just a medium, but the medium in which we live. And its mission is to provide the world’s population with the tools to communicate freely with each other. I am currently involved in ConnectedCourses.net, a project that aims to convince teachers that they can use and create digital educational projects on their own.
- How to evaluate knowledge on the Internet?
- There are two approaches: to assess progress or outcome. Most of the school and university graduates I have worked with are judged by results. Students know how to get good grades, but they do not understand how to evaluate themselves and their colleagues. In adulthood, they will constantly face this need, and unfortunately, we do not teach students to measure progress.
I just don't understand why this approach isn't used by at least one percent of teachers. In practice, it's easier for most people to say, "If you answer 7 out of 10 questions, you get a four."
Some states have passed a controversial law that could see schools lose funding if graduates fail to score on final exams. This means that teachers will focus only on rote for the sake of the result, completely forgetting about the learning process. Self-education is critical now. Think about how many people you know are doing things that didn’t exist in school.
- But if we abandon the governmental evaluation system that everyone is guided by, who is able to formulate new principles and apply them?
- I have no answer to that question. However, informal evaluation practices have always existed, even before the Internet, educational institutions and the idea of grading. People learned from each other before teaching became a separate profession.
Despite the fact that I recognize the advantages of formal testing, alternatives remain especially important for me: informal types of tasks, competition. Of course, the forms I'm talking about are much harder to implement on a large scale, but that's no reason to neglect them.
Of course, many tasks are the responsibility of the state alone: without a system of universal education, we would return to learning only the children of the rich. But any state administration is inevitably conservative, so such a system cannot quickly adapt to new conditions of life.
Anatoly Sperkh: I think the school is turning into a soluble drink
Neurolinguist Tatiana Chernigovskaya: How the Internet Affects Our Brain
In one of his works, Neil Postman writes that tasks and assessment systems that have not changed for decades always remain the prerogative of adults, and students themselves are deprived of the opportunity to develop these principles independently. A hundred or even ten years ago, teachers could teach relevant knowledge, but now everything is happening so quickly that self-education is the only correct strategy.
Interviewed by Natalia Chebotar
P.S. And remember, just changing our consumption – together we change the world!
Source: www.chaskor.ru/article/govard_rejngold_shkoly_dolzhny_ne_delit_informatsiyu_na_horoshuyu_i_plohuyu_a_uchit_detej_gramotno_zadavat_voprosy_i_opredelyat_dostovernost_poluchennyh_otvetov_36910
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