Our biggest advancements in 4000 years?

Tina Roth Eisenberg, a swiss designer working from New York, asked this as an icebreaker question during a creative morning, a monthly breakfast lecture series.

Some answers—see them all here on Flickr—are predictable, others not. What’s yours?

Palomar5 Education organised a small, conspiratory event in reponse to Sir Ken Robinson’s call to bring on the learning revolution, a great opportunity to get some glimpses of how we will learn in the future through the lenses of Basti Hirsch, who went on a five-week education expedition through the United States; Aron Solomon, who is busy creating a boarding school with wheels, the Think Global School; and Margret Rasfeld, who founded a protestant reform school in Berlin. What have I seen?

I am here for the learning revolution.
And you? Photo by wfryer on Flickr.

I have seen three very different approaches to and understandings of learning and education by people who share the belief that—while public education remains a fundamental cornerstone of democratic societies—much of what happens in our institutions of formal education is wrong and represents a broken system.

I have also seen a few shared principles underpinning three schools that are so very different –

• the Science Leadership Academy, “an inquiry-driven, project-based high school focused on 21st century learning in Philadelphia,”
• the Think Global School, “a global, private and non-profit high school that travels the world and tosses educational sterotypes out of the window,”
• the Protestant Reform School, “a Berlin-based reform school aiming to introduce a radical change of learning culture.”

Many of these shared principles, I would guess, are key to most of the innovative education endeavours I know. Add to the list and share what you think in the comments!

We will learn in the future by

• following rhythms of inquiry and learning rather than rhythms of compartmentalised structures and times,
• moving away from memorising and teaching towards exploring and learning by doing,
• turning away from sitting and listening passively to constructing and collaborating actively,
• facilitating learning from failure instead of punishing every little mistake,
• accepting uncertainty as the only certainty there is within the complexity of learning,
• relating learning and living in ways that are fruitful and enriching both ways,
• not teaching what to learn and think, but by teaching how to learn and think,
• inventing and facilitating new and integrated learning formats, combining subjects and approaches,
• turning away from instruction and control towards facilitation and support,
• moving away from spaces controlled by educators towards spaces controlled by learners,
• providing encouragement and support instead of criticism and barriers.

Admittedly, this list is generic—quite possibly, too generic—but it’s a start. Wir fangen schon mal an.

As the co-ordinator of the ultimately cool moderation and trainers team, I had some fun playing around to make a short promotional movie (see larger version here):

If you are interested, head over to the ESP Platform, register and discuss away!

This year’s main topic will be “energy” – a topic concerning every single one of us. Do you always take the car? Do you save energy? Do you ask yourself, how long our energy feedstock will last?

Discussions are organised in five thematic areas, namely technology, geography and politics, society, economy, and individual responsibility. The discussion forum will take place on October 9 and 10, 2008 in Aachen.

Who knows – maybe see you there?

Dr. Peter Scott from the Centre for New Media, Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University, UK predicts that “the future will show that formal and informal models of learning will start to combine powerfully into a joint strand which is some way between both; something like ‘non-formal’ learning.”

Something like, eh?!

The most important resource of the twentyfirst century, politicians say, is education. How fatally wrong: The most important resource, being the most scarcely one, is willpower.

In a nutshell, the article argues that transformation and change will happen not through education alone.

So how do we reach for the stars now?

Pictures courtesy of Lida Rose and Carf.

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