“Whenever I go to class, I have to power down,” said a student. This loosely translated means the child must slow down their information intake to a crawl. It is highly probable that before they entered the doors for the class that day they digested their twitter feed, read the lyrics to their favorite songs, snap chatted a chronological story of how their morning went, and checked the scores and stats of last night’s Marlins game. Information is flowing relentlessly at them like a fire hose at full blast, and as they cross the threshold into school, we reduce this knowledge capacity down to a trickle.
Technology is transforming life as we once knew it in almost every way. It is not uncommon for me to have goods and services delivered digitally in a way that I want to consume them. From groceries to pants and everything in between, I use a digital platform to source, order, and receive both goods and information. We all do this. It is instant and gratifying to have most anything we want a mere click away.
And yet, with all the technological learning capacity and resources we have at our disposal the educational delivery to our students is still caught for the most part in a time machine of the Industrial Age, not the Information Age. Assembly line instruction is still the normal method in how we produce and prepare students for society.
In the book Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning, the authors make the case that our educational institutions must move in the direction of teaching in a manner that is motivational to students of today. We as educators must provide instruction that is vibrant, dynamic, interesting, and specific to the student’s style of learning, skill level and abilities. Educational curriculum is not a one size fits all proposition. Technology has the power to transform how our students learn in a way that is both engaging and challenging. Lecture style teaching is the past and we have the ability to create an interactive learning experience to create an interactive learning experience that has the potential to fully envelope the student’s learning experience.
Mass customized learning has the ability to personalize learning by understanding a student’s specific needs in a content area and deliver the curriculum in a way that will bridge the gap most effectively base on learning preferences. This is a very exciting propositions for teachers, that will allow them to cultivate a student to a more full potential. While some might bemoan this as the beginning of the end for the teaching profession, when technology is used to supplement an already highly effective teacher, the benefits to the entire learning community are boundless.
While technology cannot cure all the social ills of society nor answer philosophical questions such as, what is success, we can leverage educational technology in a way that creates some small liberty for its users to define this answer for themselves. After all, life is one generation standing upon the shoulders of another.
Schwahn, C. J., & McGarvey, B. (2012). Inevitable: mass customized learning: learning in the age of empowerment. San Bernadino, CA: Chuck Schwahn & Bea McGarvey.
Stansbury, M. (2012, February 21). Mass customized learning: the key to education reform? Retrieved from https://www.eschoolnews.com/2012/02/21/mass-customized-learning-the-key-to-education-reform/