Beware of the changing teaching landscape

A friend of mine quit his job and opened a publishing company not too long ago as the putsch to overturn the low reading culture gathers pace. He aims to play his role in popularizing reading in Rwanda as he spreads knowledge, not least through school text books. And, being a forward looking entrepreneur, he must be angling for the locally nascent digital segment, where books – e-books – can be stored and accessed from computers. The popular One Laptop Per Child initiative and other similar efforts in the region to put computer devices in the hands of our school going children are already taking off to the next level. My friend must be aware that this is the harbinger of things to come as technology takes hold and new models of teaching, such as “blended learning”, get fine-tuned across the world. According to one definition, blended learning is a mix of teacher and student face-to-face instruction, where learning, at least in part, is through delivery of content and instruction via digital and online media with some element of student control over time, place, path, or pace. As things stand currently, teachers and students have to download large PDFs and read them, just as they do with physical text books. But there have been efforts to make learning more technologically responsive through cloud-based (Internet storage) solutions that will be digitally “native.” While the efficacy is still being fine-tuned, it is technology-assisted personalised learning where adaptive assessment and continuous feedback aims to create a constantly changing portrait of what a child knows, allowing computer algorithms to recalibrate lessons to fit students’ needs. This remains in the realm of possibility. In more practical instances, schools are able to use education technology for targeted tasks, including streamlining parent-teacher communication, collecting homework and letting teachers share lesson plans. In teacher-parent communication, for instance, the teacher can download PowerPoint slides and make edits to customise teaching content and send it to parents to support their students. Where this is already operational in some American schools, instruction is delivered to students through computers and supplemented by face-to-face instruction with teachers. Students’ tasks are directed by a main computer monitor overhead in front of the classroom where each student has a clear view. In this model, students advance in their grades at their own pace. Closer home in Kigali, there are a couple of schools – driven by Kenyan and Ugandan educationalists – anchoring their curriculum on Christian ethics through a similar teaching model. Using the traditional method of text books – called “paces” – students are allocated personal space or “office” from where they learn and mark their own scores under teacher supervision. This model is already entrenched in Kenya and Uganda, where students advance at their own pace through defined curricula for their grade level. While they may have computer labs, the only thing lacking is the personal computer at the students’ “offices”. The computer, in modernising the “office”, is personal and provides focused digital space that channels the student’s attention. And, as broadband Internet takes hold locally and in the region, it is this that will enable the next level of cloud-based teaching in the region. To come back to my friend, I am sure he is alive to these changing trends; that, in due course, computer algorithms may recalibrate lessons to fit individual students’ needs and must run with the times. There’s still some way to go, however. Blended learning models have been around since the 1990s and were pioneered for the military and corporations and started in classrooms not too far ago. The reality, however, is that we may not dispense with teachers soon, despite technological advancements. Good teachers are intuitive and usually have a great and lasting impact on a child’s cognition and learning curve. Teachers make quick decisions about how to introduce new ideas and speak in a way that resonates with a slow student. They order concepts for maximum comprehension, and reinforce ideas and skills. In short, the classroom decisions depend on the teacher’s reading of the subtleties of a specific situation. It is something even the fastest and most advanced computer in the world cannot do yet.

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Beware of the changing teaching landscape