An old friend and teacher (although I suspect he might prefer a term like facilitator) sent me a link to the following Ted Talk video by Sugata Mitra that he found particularly inspiring and fits in with his way of thinking. It discusses a little about the history of our current model of schooling and an alternate model for education using the cloud. Check it out here:
In my own teaching, a lot of the time I try to play the role of the facilitator for learning rather than the lecturer, and these ideas fit in with that. One of the most important things a teacher can do is help a student learn how to learn, enabling them for lifelong learning.
The video also reminded me of a poster that I had in my late teens. It was some old army design I think, with the message being, “Don’t keep it in your head, but know where to find it”. The point being that you don’t need to memorise everything, as long as you know where to find the information when you need it (it never escaped me that that didn’t help with exams). In fact, it is more reliable and safer to do it that way. It ties in with the way we have access to so much data in the cloud these days, and we tend to retain less information in our brain.