Self organised learning

"Self organised learning", education through the Internet.

With the advent of Google, YouTube, TED and so many other sources, information at your fingertips, the Internet brings a whole new opportunity for gaining knowledge, virtually in your pocket.

Societies agenda for school children and young adults, for the life when they become adult has in some ways changed. Part of this is to do with the requirements in the work place which has changed so much in the last 40 years. Go back 40 years and most of jobs were semi -mechanised and people were merely a cog in the manufacturing process. Teaching was by rote, learning was a function of remembering reams of things just in case you needed to know stuff at a later date.

In today's world, machines are far more able to do the job from start to finish and the need to employ thousands of people to fit widgets is gone. 

A new concept is being introduced, that of "learning only what you need, at the moment when you need it".

It becomes largely curriculum free, a space where understanding and answering a question comes from the speed and the inter-relatedness of the subject matter which is available on that monster file, the Internet.

A guy in India decided to experiment with children in India's rural heartland by providing what in effect was a "hole in the wall" computer, set at a hight to suite young kids, who were free to use it. He was amazed to discover how quickly these previously semi illiterate kids were discovering a world of knowledge that had not been remotely available before. He set them projects and without adult help these kids learnt the answers, not only to the questions he had asked them but  as the process stimulated them, they wanted to know more and more.

From our traditional point of view this was not 'teacher cantered', 'curriculum based', 'joined up education' which we recognise but rather it was knowledge specific.  Learning only what you had been asked or what you needed to know.

At the end of our school education, we enter work. Most of the education we learnt at school is forgotten and we hone our skills around the tiny bit of specific knowledge we need to do the job.

The argument is that children learn best by themselves, particularly in small groups, without the strictures of a teacher, other than acting as a facilitator. Their minds are inquisitive enough to grasp the links and their enthusiasm is sparked by it all being a part of a system of "self -discovery".

Learning is not like growing a tree, a process from root to branch but more molecular in that the part is not the whole and depending on ones importance in the structure, you need to know what you need to know. 

This is not some Orwellian nightmare since it is predicated on the freedom of "wanting" to know. This can be brought about by the stimulation of the teacher, the parent or even the peer group. One of the things which seems to set the Privately educated child apart is this 'stimulation' which through smaller class sizes and receptive teachers who seem to have the time and the inclination to act as mentors,  bringing the child into that special place of inquiry, of wanting to know.

Embedding knowledge through "self organising learning" seems to be the way to go. 

It presumes that all children want to know about the world around them and whilst some find the rational, binary route, which needs discipline and rigour, too difficult,  a more self motivating method would be far more successful.