Eduction is changing!

Market Place, the program I heard on Vermont Public Radio, had an interesting story about the role of technology in education. It focused on the opportunity to individualize education with online video, especially. This story reinforces what is to me going to be the primary function of schools in the future (and this is different from our current function in education).

The work of "instructing" students is going to be done by others-- probably on video-- who are better than instructing than we are. Their instruction will be available anytime and anyplace. (In the past few years that I have been teaching physics I experienced this as my students and I watched Walter Lewin's lectures on YouTube.)

The work of teaching will include setting the context for that instruction and helping learners to apply the lessons in that instruction to authentic and relevant problems. (My physics students and I spent much time in class designing experiments and demonstrations of the physics in Lewin's lectures.)

The difficultly for educators right now is the transition... many entered education because the enjoyed and excelled in "schools as instructional places," and they were prepared to work in those settings. Unfortunately, those setting will be preserved and experienced as museum exhibits in the coming years.