"What are we building schools for?" ”

How can technology change education? This is an enduring topic, and people who believe in the internet may say, "Look at the Silicon Valley, there are so many EdTech companies." But this year it accepted the funding of wise (World Innovation Summit for Education, wise), walked a circle of developed and developing countries, and wrote "learning ' We really should talk about technology, but I'm afraid it's not in the way that Silicon Valley is superstitious, ' ethically click here and Marvell will fix modifiable, ' says Graham of reimaged".

This year, Graham Brown-martin by Wise, to Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the United States and other places around the world to visit the schools, organizations and projects, and to communicate with educators after writing " Learning reimaged"a book. In his book, Graham mainly discusses what educators should "teach" and "How to teach" in the interconnected age (connected world, not the Internet).

I think the most enlightening thought he brought to the audience was: What is parochial (or education) for? How can technology assist in this process? Here's what I and Graham did for a talk.

The first question I threw to Graham was: why this year, he chose to explore in his new book How Technology affects education? I thought it might have something to do with the investment boom in online education at home and abroad, but Graham's answer was quite surprising:

When I was talking to other guests at the wise summit about the impact of the ipad on education, some people told me that they didn't even have power on their places, so what about using the ipad?

Then I suddenly realized that I was bound by Western ideas, the Western world has always stressed that technology can be applied all over the world, such as Silicon Valley has been firmly believe that only a button, all the problems can be solved. But "Technology change everything" is incorrect because most parts of the world do not have the internet and are very poor, even without electricity and clean water.

So Graham thinks this year should be about technology, but it should be in a way that is subversive, rather than Silicon Valley's "technology is omnipotent and can solve all the problems." For example, when he visits China, he is more concerned not with the technical means used by each school, but how the technology can be used in different regions to motivate and mobilize the Chinese middle class to pay more to promote the development of education and improve the quality of children's education.

He mentioned the example of Deng--Deng launched an online campaign using Weibo, to encourage and motivate netizens to donate money to help children in poor areas, Deng this activity more as a diplomatic ploy, because it did not embarrass the government and eventually the Government was actively involved in the event.

So, Graham says, he does not want to simply write "We need to give students a laptop, the IPad," The view of the Western world, the current digital technology in various countries and cultures are very popular, but its use of different ways, this is his trip after a confirmation.

So did Graham come to a conclusion on this trip? I'm curious. He replied "Yes", of course--

"I've been in the workforce for about more than 30 years, and when I started working in the late 80, people are talking about the changes and transformations that technology and technology can bring to education, and then for a long time I turned to stardom, film, video games, and when I left the entertainment industry and returned to education in 2004, Find that the status quo of education has not changed much.

Although a great deal of technology has been applied to education, and the world may have hundreds of millions of of dollars of money invested, but education has not changed dramatically, we still let the children sit in the classroom in rows and rows.

At the same time other aspects of life have changed a lot, for example, now I can be in London with Skype in Beijing with you chat, such as the success of Facebook.

Why do we not see similar changes in the education sector? Why is the education sector still quiet and not "disruption"? In fact, education is not the same as the music industry, it is only a business, but education is not. We often ask ourselves what is education for? Why do we send our children to school? People will give you different answers.

Politicians often answer that education is part of the economic development Plan. such as Singapore, since Mr Lee's inauguration, Singapore's education has become part of the country's economic development plan-a chaotic 60 ago, a New England withdrawal from Singapore, a housing shortage, high unemployment, race issues and so on, and Singapore's government has developed a comprehensive economic development plan , and the plan was successful.

But Singapore's education is like a factory, society says society needs workers, well, we cultivate students into workers, society needs programmers, well, we make students into programmers.

I think when we look at the impact of technology and technology on education, and why technology does not make a fundamental transition to education, we need to know that education, like religion, mass media, political systems, is designed to strengthen and stabilize the status quo, to strengthen the rights of the ruling party, this ruling can be anything , such as political domination, the richest 1%, and so on, so it is very difficult to change education.

And I have learned from this journey that technology can be applied to education in two ways: one is that it is used to strengthen the existing teaching model, which is happening now--that technology is applied to schools, not to change or create a curious, unconventional creative thinking, but to produce passive, Obedience to millions of of people without creativity.

This is almost the technology as a production model to strengthen the teaching method of the 19th century, like "I need to put this knowledge into your mind," when you go to the exam, you can not bring mobile phone to enter the examination room, and the people who sat together to sit very far. It's crazy, stupid and crazy, but it's just what we're doing.

The second approach is that there are those who think we are in a society where knowledge is within reach, and we do not need to remember the number of people in Beijing, the names of successive kings or Queens of England, because the knowledge is readily available online. We should learn to know how to acquire this knowledge and how to compare different fact descriptions to analyze which one is right. For example, western versions of historical materials and Chinese versions of historical materials may be very different, but which is the right one? How do we analyze it? This is the ability to assess and solve problems and to find information.

This is a new teaching model. Imagine if we could carry the phone with us in the exam, and you had to communicate with your neighbor to get the answer, which changed everything. I think this is the opportunity that technology can bring to education. ”

So what does it look like for Graham, if our existing teaching scene is overturned, in the future?

' When we talk about the word "disruption" of education, we may think of some huge investments in educational technology, but most of these investors don't understand what disruption is, they think they understand. If you really want to disrupt education, that needs to first disrupt evaluation system, is the way we test students, there is no one to do this.

"Over a long period of time, we think that an online education similar to the Khan Academy would be disruptive, but the Khan Academy is just for students to watch other people make videos, it's very nice and beautiful, but it's just an old system that strengthens the older education system." The ideal system is for kids to be able to make videos on their own instead of other people, and I've seen such systems in Jordan, as well as at the Western school of the People's Congress.

In a poorer part of the Amman east of the Jordanian capital, Madressa, children use a low-cost laptop, videotaping and making their own learning videos and uploading them to Facebook. You know, in England, children are banned from using Facebook in school, but I am surprised that students learn how to use Facebook and share their learning experiences with Facebook in a poor area of the Jordanian capital, Amman, and I have seen similar situations elsewhere.

So, there are two aspects of technology to emphasize, one is that there is a group of technology to strengthen the existing education system, while the other group is thinking and practice how to use technology to make changes. After that, people will think about the evaluation system: if we want to test the skills needed in the 21st century, then we should use the 21st century technology to carry out the test, we should allow candidates to take the phone into the examination room, allowing candidates to collaborate and share ...

I think now we need an education system that fosters creative talent that can have different ideas, such as being able to advise on solutions and solving abstract problems with new thinking. We look at the current education system, is divided, mathematics, science, language and so on, are separate, not like in real life, in order to solve a problem, all the relevant knowledge are assembled together. and technology in the current education system in the problem-solving, the application of knowledge integration and so on, it does not necessarily have to be in a country, but also can be cross-border. For example, we bring together English-speaking and Chinese-speaking children, this creates a different society where they can work together to solve problems, and then they can understand each other and co-operate well, because we need to solve many problems in a very short time, such as how to solve climate change, antibiotic failure? How to create happiness, laughter, music, art and so on to make life beautiful things? And so on, we can't do this without the collaboration of the global talent. ”

Finally, since Graham has a lot of insights and ideas about his future education, I ask him how he educates his children. Will he try a very different way of parenting?

As a result, Graham replied that he had a 27-year-old daughter and a 25-year-old son, both of whom had been enrolled in the university and accepted the basic education of tradition. The younger 13-and 9-year-olds are also studying in public schools (he doesn't trust private education), and his four children are enrolled in the standard education system and seem to enjoy it.

But the awkward fact is that most of his children's studies were acquired outside the school. "I have considered for a long time to let my children self-study, I myself is self-study, at that time, ' self-study ' this phrase has not been created." But social interaction and friendships are important, schools, colleges, and ultimately no longer about papers or papers, but your classmates, "Graham says, so he's open minded to let kids learn by themselves, and he wants them to do something different at school." If he had enough money and time, he would take them on a trip, want to know China to come to China, want to know the United States to go to the United States experience.