As the pace of change in the 21st century continues to increase, the world is becoming more interconnected and complex, and the knowledge economy is craving more intellectual property. In this environment, it is critical that we shift our focus from education to life-long learning. Fortunately, the increasing availability of learning resources on the internet is coinciding with the growing importance of continuous learning. If we are willing to view learning from a new perspective, we are no longer resource constrained.
Opportunities to enhance learning by exploring the edge are presenting themselves as well. It is at the edge that most innovation occurs and where we can discern patterns that indicate new kinds of opportunities and challenges. In this context, the edge can mean many things: kids who grow up digital, second-tier and for-profit teaching institutions, developments in rapidly changing nations such as China and India, new kinds of institutional frameworks such as creative commons, open source, and Wikipedia, and new media forms. Each of these relates to another edge – the edge of the educational establishment.
Because I was brought up as a hard core technologist, I was surprised to find that some of the most innovative uses of technology occur on another edge – at least from my perspective- that is, in the humanities. Not the first place I would have looked, but I was wrong.
A New Context for Learning
Let’s step back a moment and look at the context we all find ourselves in and the challenges we face. First, every one of us recognizes that today’s kids, our students, are different from most of us here. They have a new vernacular - a digital vernacular. But today’s students also learn in ways that are different from how we learn. How can we begin to take advantage of those differences?
Second, one of the most ironic situations is that although education is more important than ever today, the public—at least in my home state of California—seems less willing to pay for it than ever before. At a minimum we need to find ways to tap the naturally occurring curiosities of our students so that we can turn them loose to do more learning on their own.
Third, if we want to educate students for the 21st century, we must realize that most students today aren’t going to have a fixed, single career; instead, they are most likely going to follow a working trajectory that encompasses multiple careers. As they move from career to career, much of what they will need to learn won’t be what they learned in school a decade earlier. They will have to be able to pick up new skills outside of today’s traditional educational institution.
Fourth, since nearly all of the significant problems of tomorrow are likely to be systemic problems – problems that can’t be addressed by any one specialty -- our students will need to feel comfortable working in cross disciplinary teams that encompass multiple ways of knowing.
Fifth, and finally, one of the big challenges we face is how to encourage institutions of higher learning to become learning institutions themselves. Some for-profit institutions, such as University of Phoenix, are doing this quite well. Perhaps we need to learn some practices from them.