School's out?

15. How technology has changed the way we learn.

A few months ago I was doing a long journey alone by car, which gave me time to think about the prospect of starting out on my PGCE course. D-Day was just a day or two away.
Flipping channels on the radio I landed on BBC Radio 4 just as a programme with the title 'The Educators' was about to start. At any other time I might have opted for music instead, but under the circumstances I decided to keep listening.
For the best part of half an hour Sugata Mitra, the Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, expanding upon his vision for the future of teaching and learning. It was fascinating, but for me the timing wasn't ideal.
His vision for a world where learning is self-led is inspiring, but possibly not good news for student teachers. In Mitra's future, teachers are effectively obsolete.
You can't embed BBC files here, but here's the link. It is well worth a listen. He talks about his experiences providing computer access to Delhi street children (via something that looked like a cash machine) and about how children will learn for themselves if only they are giving the tools to make it happen.
First his street kids learnt how to use the computer, then they mastered English to understand what they saw on the screen and that opened up the internet for them. So, the future of teaching lies in what appears to be a combination of the humanistic approach to self-led learning - and technology.

It amounts to a world that has little or no need for teachers. In his radio interview, Prof Mitra says: "There will be machines that can replace a good teaching, just like there will be machines that will replace a heart surgeon."  
Of course, Sugata Mitra was only new to me. When I told friends and relatives about what he had to say they had already heard of him - he was 'the hole in the wall guy'.
I also discovered that he's also a TED star. There are a few Mitra talks to watch, but the most up-to-date is 'The School in the Cloud', from February 2013.
It's a great watch. Mitra is a inspiring speaker who manages to tell a big story in a light-hearted, self-deprecating way. It's worth spending 22 minutes on, but if you're in a hurry just listen to the anecdote at 10:55 - it will make you laugh.
If you want to hear much more of what he has to say you can watch an hour-long presentation to a conference in Harrogate last year. Here's the link.
What it all means for educators is open to question. He may be right when he says that in the future we will not need schools (and presumably colleges) any more, but how we get from here to that future remains to be seen.
He has his detractors. For example, the blog The Digital Counter-Revolution calls him the most prominent representative of an anti-teacher movement.
That movement, it claims, is made up of people who think that learning and education are good, but that teachers are bad. They have a vision, the authors argue, of teaching as being all about a Pink Floyd-style factory producing bricks.
Personally, I'm inspired by Mitra's vision, but do have reservations about how inhuman it all sounds. He talks about learners having access to knowledge but being minded by facilitators who can teach nothing, because they know nothing. 

Sources:
BBC Radio 4 'The Educators' Sugata Mitra (Broadcast 17.9.14) Link
Digital Counter-Revolution www.digitalcounterrevolution.co.uk (Accessed: 18.1.15)
Hole-in-the-Wall www.hole-in-the-wall.com (Accessed: 18.12.14)
International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language, Harrogate 2014 Link
TED Talks 'The School in the Cloud' www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3jYVe1RGaU (Accessed: 18.1.15)