School V2 Blog

In 2000 we wrote a paper describing the potential paradigm shift that the internet suite of tools would offer education and how schools that chose to make this paradigm shift would be enabled to teach for understanding and that this approach would change the very nature of the world we live in.

Teaching for understanding makes use of  clever questions and powerful information and communication tools to access, interrogate and manipulate knowledge in combination with the ability to synthesise  numerous ideas, distilling them into a single conceptual framework and then applying those concepts within the framework in numerous new ways.
 

But why do we need to change from teaching for knowing to teaching for understanding? Put simply, the world is running out of clever people! There was a small percentage of learners who either believed in their own potential or others believed in them, and pursued the fulfillment of their talents and gifts, developing conceptual frameworks; ideas that they could leverage off and use to be creative and innovative. These people studied further or using raw talent became people of influence. In the 20th century world we only needed 5-7% of people with these capabilities in order to tell everyone else what to do.

In today’s world we need 20% of people with this capacity right now and by 2020 we will need 40%+ and to enable this number of people to be covertly creative the education system will need to explicitly teach and encourage people to be creative. Creative economies need creative people and therefore we have to explicitly teach learners to be creative. The precursor that creativity relies on is understanding, the ability to conceive conceptual frameworks of understanding and with a small dose of imagination turn these concepts into creative and innovative ideas.

The previous paradigm was based on an information poor landscape with information resources locked in libraries and let out in small amounts and in limited media formats. The internet paradigm has spawned a knowledge wave of epic proportions and those that choose to ride it and have the capacity for lifelong learning have the potential to learn at will, adapting to and thriving within, knowledge environments which are growing exponentially.

As educators we have a moral obligation to empower our young people for this age and to do that we must enter and tame this age ourselves. School version 2.0 is about preparing learners of all ages with the capacity for being independent lifelong learners so they can build on their innate gifts and talents and take on roles in their communities which fulfill the unique potential every human being contains within them.That is what this text and this age of learning is all about.