Social learning, online video and disruptive innovation
This is one of my favourite TED talks. Mark Pagel discusses how social learning, and the language skills that enable it, are responsible for all human achievement - from our rapid expansion across the planet, to the iPhones and iPads that we carry. It's our ability as a species to learn from each other, and to adapt and improve upon the ideas of others that sets us apart from other species - and he briefly touches on how the internet is starting to add fuel to the social learning fire.
One of the learning technologies that I'm most excited by is online video, and I'm convinced that our new-found ability to quickly share video (as broadband speeds grow and online video tools evolve) will lead to a tipping point in online learning.
Of course, learning online has been possible since the internet was in its infancy - but up until now, it's been almost entirely a text-based affair. Now, I'm not decrying the power of text as a learning tool - it's always going to be a key part of our sharing and retention of knowledge. But for most of us, learning is a visual thing. It's also a human process, and we've adapted to learn best by watching other people do stuff, and imitating it.
Asking students to learn a concept by copying out of a textbook is considered to be 'bad teaching', and explaining a concept in an engaging and interactive way is considered to be 'good teaching' - and it's the human element of the latter that makes the difference.
From YouTube to the Khan Academy, we're starting to see great examples of people sharing their knowledge using online video. If I want to learn to play the piano, I can jump onto YouTube and pick from the 100,000+ videos that 'normal' users have uploaded. If I want to grasp the concept of multiple dimensions, this video explaining it through animation does the job very nicely.
As this network of user-generated knowledge, and the ability of everyday users to personally contribute to it grows, it'll be interesting to see if Clayton Christenson's model of disruptive innovation will play out - with on demand, student centric learning slowly creeping up on, and taking traditional education systems by surprise.
Online learning in many schools at the moment resembles the text-based internet of the past, with a few token Powerpoint files and Word documents uploaded after lessons. We often hear the phrase 'back to basics' in education, and that's exactly what schools need to start doing with their online provision - going back to the 'basics' of humans showing humans how to do stuff. And online video, at the moment, is the best way of them achieving that.
