Open Plan School..

The visit to Albany Senior High School the other day was quite stimulating. It was good to hear things happening. However, it could have been better if the trip was possible when the 'action' was still on (It was quiet during our visit; it's the exam time, isn't it?) More questions keep emerging after the actual trip.

A search to see if this was the first of its kind, Google gave me a few thousand hits and discussion of issues. One such was the discussion on hearing difficulty tied to the accoustics of these new schools. Portugal came with the idea of the OPen Plan School much earler and there is a lot of discussion going on as to the success or failure of these 'innovations'. Someone calls it 'old wine in a new bottle'. In some other discussion these new schools were compared to post World War schools where the need for such school was driven by country's economic conditions. Sokmeone else called it 'Lurching from Fad to Fad' and the article argued that it wouldn't work in an elementary level. It in fact created pandemoneum apparently. It wasn’t long before distraught teachers appeared in droves at principals’ doors pleading for walls or partitions to deaden the sound, lessen the confusion and lower the stress level of teaching young children in this mass of humanity.

Another article discusses the variety of activities that could happen in an open learning space: a girl is curled up with a book in one corner; in another corner a small group of boys concentrate on the brief outline of the day's science project that the teacher is chalking up on a portable board; a dozen children sit in carrles, earphones in place, listening to the recordings of their lessons they missed; in the centre of the space, six boys and girls work round a table discussing the newspaper clippings and so on.

The heterogenity in the tools used, platforms used, software used, learning styles, units of learning, learning intentions - how does it work that they 'pass' or 'fail' a course and an industry can view all these results with some uniformity.

a creative vision...

It is not the technology that inspires or even transforms education - it is the teacher. Someone explained it this way: using a chisel or a paintbrush is not in itself inspirational or transformational. It is the skilled hands of the sculptor or the painter that changes a lump of stone or a bare wall into the work of art. Similarly, computers, social media, any web tools we get our hands on, can only be used in this way if the practitioner has a creative vision. The video of 'Hole in the Wall' we watched in the class the other day reinforced this thought in me much more.

The need to repurpose education in the face of a changing world offers those working with technologies to support and enhance learning a range of opportunities previously unknown. The range of technologies is bewildering with social and mobile technologies, personal web-based tools and corporate systems all having things to offer. However who chooses the systems in any given context is also changing fast, with agendas like life-long learning and work-based learning introducing ever more stakeholders into the learning experience, and individuals being increasingly able to "opt-out" of using institutional systems.
How will institutions cope with this "new world" where not everything is under the control of the institution and increasingly both staff and students can "do their own thing"? A conflict of control between the individual and the institutional is growing, and the danger of innovation being stifled by the drive for "School regulations" is very real. The answer will be found in policies - but what policies are needed and who will frame them?
Reference:
Hole in the Wall (Full Report from TED): http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html