Education Needs to Be Personal

A friend of mine recently forwarded me an article from the January/February issue of The Futurist. In the article, “The World is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning,” Maria Anderson (2011) discusses the impact of technology on education and the role it can play in creating (or recreating) the origins of education: personal interaction. She notes, “As we re-design en masse education, we must address learners’ intrinsic motivations, which means that education must circle back to being personal again” (p. 13).


Anderson argues that technology can do just that – create a personalized experience for the learner. Her system, dubbed “SOCRAIT,” is explained as “a play on ‘Socratic’ that includes SOC for social, AI for artificial intelligence, and IT for information technology within its name” (p. 14). This system allows learners to choose any material from the web, determine the important items to be remembered or learned, and click on a button to choose or add questions about the material from/to a question bank, which can then be used to assess what has been learned. Questions would be short answer, rather than multiple choice, and learners would be able to self-assess their ability to determine the answers (p. 14). Needless to say, while the article focuses on the future of education and a re-defined role for educators, it reminded me of what has been lacking in our current system: inquiry.

I have been fortunate enough during my short time as an educator to be exposed to the Socratic Method, and Philosophy for Children’s (P4C) “softly Socratic” method. Both rely on the importance of the student created inquiry – not teacher developed, but teacher guided. These methods allow the students to develop their own personal inquiries, based on the content or direction provided by the teacher. Students then discuss chosen questions to push their personal understanding further. Anderson’s (2011) concept relies on the same ideas. She points out that “An entirely new ecosystem could grow up around this Socratic learning system” (p. 15). Indeed, it will have to, as our students face new challenges, many of which do not exist today. The great thing about the system proposed by Anderson is that it relies on the student to develop his/her course of action, choose what is relevant to learn for success, and determine the questions that will best assess their knowledge and understanding. Where does that leave teachers?

Perhaps in a better place than we are today. We aren’t boxed in by a pre-set curriculum, by scripted approaches, and by out-of-touch standardized testing. Our job, as she asserts, “is no longer to ‘deliver content’....” but “to help students search for good questions, help them to understand the content they are learning, provide them activities to help them work with the concepts or connect the material in an applied way, and foster discussion with other students on these topics” (p. 17). Such is the goal of every teacher, even today. The question is whether we can get from where we are now to this new point. Will the system allow such a radical change? Anderson compares our current education system and the constant ideas for improvement generated within it to farming the same plot of land over and over again. The soil just doesn’t allow for new growth, despite the insane amount of manure that’s been sprinkled over it in the last several decades. New ideas must come from outside the box – and that’s scary for many of us.

When it comes to technology, I am both excited by it and fearful of it, as are so many others. Part of the fear comes from my own lack of experience with it. Sure, I can text, IM and I love my IPhone (despite my resistance to getting it). Yes, I can create PowerPoint presentations, use an overhead projector linked to a computer, and ogle a document camera when I can get one! I even work at including technology based activities as often as I can – email assignments, webquests, and similar endeavors. And I’m developing the idea of a classroom blog for my future coursework! But I’m still a newbie compared to many of my students. That can be unsettling (though I’m learning to accept it as a sign of progress and life in today’s world). Yet, Anderson’s concept and proposal are exciting. While we are preached to about the powerful role of teachers in the classroom – we are the single greatest influence on student success in the classroom – it bears noting that the intrinsic motivation, that self-directed desire to learn by the student, will generate more success. To be free to invest in the inquiry of my chosen content, to expand my understanding of it as students choose their interest within a field/content and create their own path of inquiry, and to see education as the living conversation that it is between and among generations would be a true phenomenon. Even better, in Anderson’s world, teachers are still necessary and relevant, not replaced by automatons. We get to be what we were meant to be – the gateways to knowledge, not the gatekeepers and wardens of a hard-luck system. Now that is truly exciting!

To view the article yourself, go here:  http://www.wfs.org/content/world-is-my-school