Commentary – Heiny: A Call for Visions of Education and Learning in 2010

This is a call for a robust discussion – in the spirit of comity – about visions of education and learning in the year 2010.

Various businesses and agencies formulate vision statements as an effort to define common ground for their participants to work toward. This ground consists of existing and prototype products and procedures to show how they can be used to accomplish something of value.

The housing construction industry offered at CES 2006 a next generation home using off-the-shelf electronic products for visitors to see, touch, and feel. They called these lifestyle products. Bill Gates offered in his keynote address at CES 2006 a stunning vision of a business office that uses off-the-shelf electronic products in five years. These will increase business efficiency.

I know some educators have started building constituencies to make your vision of future education and learning a reality. No two visions appear alike. That’s good.

It is too early to settle what education and learning in 2010 should look like. It is time to add more visions to the mix of prospective appearances of these social functions five years from now.

Some education and learning vision designers started with business or learning models, others with electronic hardware, still others with software designs. Each start contributes ideas others may consider to support their vision of future education and learning. Some seem directed to an electronic lifestyle. Others appear to give priority to increasing learning efficiency.

Probably millions of data points, products, procedures, and alternative judgments about their utility, plus fertile imaginations, exist to formulate the future of education and learning.

This is a call for each of us to share our picture of education and learning that can exist with off-the-shelf and out-of-the-archives products and procedures in 2010. Let us describe how we would like to learn, what products and arrangements would increase our performance proficiencies, and how we think others will benefit more from education and learning in 2010 than we did when we attended schools.

A suggestion: Cherry pick from among facts, models, and processes to create a vision of education and learning. This is a call for personal statements. Write what you understand can or should exist by 2010, not what a committee, colleagues, a group, school, or other entity may want to exist. Keep your picture simple and plausible, even if you think it’s science fiction or fantasy. Life will complicate it soon enough.

Here is a sample of questions that come to mind when I create or review visions of future education. Maybe you address other questions.

What do you think the next generation of education can look like in 2010? Will learners drive it or will others? Will criterion referenced learning exist? What will electronic hardware and software developers contribute to this vision? What do you want them to contribute? What definition of teaching will dominate common sense? Will teachers consist of software developers and electronic machines as well as people? Will teachers have a solemn duty to insure that learners meet individualized learning plan objectives? How many educators will more efficient electronic student learning programs replace? What distribution of personal benefits from education and learning will exist among learners and educators?

What learning do you think can occur in that year and for whom? What electronic data and knowledge bases will learners use to increase their learning and learning rates? Will they use such technical means as Direct Learning, Direct Instruction, and Backward Learning Curves? Will traditional textbooks still exist as required products for all learners? Will all students perform at traditional grade levels? Will current ideas of grade levels exist? What percentage will exceed these traditions because of more efficient learning media?

Will schools as we know them today exist in your next generation vision? What will be their social function, if mobile electronics exist to connect learners to learning and instruction programs as well as data and knowledge bases?

What off-the-shelf products exist and can exist to create your vision of next generation of learning? Will digital ink and descendents of Tablet PCs be used? What part will application software providers contribute? What existing data and knowledge bases will remain useful? What new data and knowledge bases will someone have to create for your vision?

What road map do you think we can use to arrive at a next generation of education and learning? Who has the best capacity to create education and learning roadmaps to 2010? What interests must be assuaged to fulfill this roadmap.

Please send me a copy or link to your vision, if you post it somewhere else. I’ll post either your copy or link for others to consider.

Let’s distribute and critique pictures of education and learning in 2010 for developers, publishers, and policy wonks to build toward or to have to reject! Either way, you can influence the shape and extent of education and learning in 2010 by sharing your visions today.