Is this educational site ready for the future?

Well, we hope so!

We tried to make it completely open, to integrate all the web 2.0 stuff everyone loves and to make it fun. It's an open, collaborative website where everyone can learn, teach and contribute.

It's also a real Social Network, which means that you can add other users as friends and you can share your thoughts and ideas with other users. But we tried to put aside the nasty stuff: we don't try to collect tons of information and we'll never sell or share your data.

This site is completely built upon Open Source and Free software, and we also promote Free software in schools and education. And yes, it's ready for cloud computing, eLearning apps can be physically stored anywhere while the entire network still remains absolutely secure.

The philosophy behind morzino.com

... and some thoughts on the future of education

We wanted to create an educational website that's both useful and cool at the same time. There aren't many sites fulfilling both criteria by the way. We hope we managed to build one.

We wanted it to be useful today so that it can help people to learn and succeed right now. But we also wanted it to be prepared for the upcoming changes that may affect all of us.

So what changes are we talking about?

The Future of Education

We believe that there will be a major "revolution" that will affect education on a global scale.

We don't know when exactly this will happen and we don't know if it will be a slow transition or a quick change. But we're quite sure this will happen and we think this will have very positive effects for all of those who are willing to learn.

After this revolution education won't be the same. The way we percieve learning and education will change. The roles of teachers, schools and governments will change too.

This will be a peaceful revolution, in fact it will be the logical consequence of current technological and social evolutions. It will be a technological revolution, and it will help to make knowledge and learning resources more accessible to most people on this planet. Take a look at the latest evolutions on the web and you'll notice that the revolution has already begun.

Our education manifest

The ideas behind this project are quite complex, so we tried to pack them into an understandable list of only 8 items. These items may give you an idea of what we're talking about, although we'll have to go into the details (scroll down for these...) to really understand what they mean.

So consider this to be some kind of an overview:

Some of the ideas we're presenting here are not new, and some of them can also be found in other projects. Some of them are definately logical derivates of the changes in our world we're currently experiencing.

Other ideas are new, or they are used in a new way to make them fit better into the picture as a whole. Some ideas are quite new to education, while they have already been used in business environments, such as agile processes for example.

So let's get into the details:

Todays challenges

Traditionally most of the "learning" happens in classes, where all students follow an equal course for everyone. A few students do well, most do less well but good enough and a minority fails. Failure means repeating the same class, which in many cases also means repeating the failure as individual problems are not being addressed.

Good students are not allowed to fully deploy their talents, weak students are condemned to failure. The overall trend is mediocrity on all levels.

Today many countries, schools and teachers have dropped this traditional view and they try to focus a bit more on the individual. There are now open teaching methods, individual learning plans and more attractive classrooms.

But is this enough to keep up with the our society which is permanently evolving?

During the past two decades the world has changed a lot, technology has become omnipresent. The internet has changed to way we deal with information, any kind knowledge has become accessible anywhere, all the time.

It has never been so easy to learn or to get access to knowledge and information before - anywhere, any time and in so many ways. Schools and libraries are no longer the number one places to acquire new knowledge.

But our modern society also has its downsides.

Social problems are a growing trend, and they're making their ways into schools and classes. Today schools need psychologists as much as they need teachers, and in many cases teachers have to act as psychologists even if they're not trained for it.

Many families consider TV sets and game consoles being great babysitters. Children spend more time at home, having less contact with nature, other children, other people and the outer world as a whole.

Health problems and obesity among children and adults become an ever larger problem all around the world. For many children sports is just another download on their game console.

There's a lack of communication between parents and children, and there's also a lack of communication between children themselves as they spend more and more time at home in front of a screen.

These trends cause lots of emotional problems and negatively influence relationships. These may become the major problems of our next generation society.

Note: these problems are way to complex to be discussed here, but we wanted to mention them as they definately have a large influence on todays education systems as well as on the learning capacities and learning processes of individuals.

All of these changes (technology & society) lead to potential challenges for schools, teachers, parents and the children themselves.

The world has changed to dramatically during the past 20 years that many teachers and schools are no longer able to keep up with the evolution, and this will even become worse as all of these trends are accelerating all the time.

Decades ago the teacher was the source and keeper of knowledge, today many teachers are often no longer able to follow what their students are even talking about. Today even your mobile phone will give you access to more knowledge and information than you local school will probably ever be able to offer.

We don't say that schools or teachers will become redundant in future, in fact we believe that it will be quite the opposite. But the roles of schools, teachers, parents and students in our society will change. The question is how will they change, and how will everyone adapt to these changes?

Of course we can't offer any real solutions to all of these social problems here - this is still just a website after all. Nevertheless we try to offer at least some tools for the technolocial challenges of tomorrow.

1. It's all about the individual learner

Traditional teaching methods are often inefficient as they are targeted at a very small percentage of the audience. A large amount of energy and time is lost when trying to present uniform and homogeneous contents to a mixed class where every student is on a different level.

Scientific research has shown that creating homogeneous classes is not the solution as students should also be able to learn from each other. Successful school concepts often feature classes and groups of mixed ages and mixed competences. Creating "Homogeneous classes" is not really possible anyway, as there are just too many individual differences between students.

Successful learning methods must focus on the needs of the individual human being. We'll have to give up the idea of "teaching classes". This is about teaching individuals.

And we'll even to further: the focus should not be on "teaching" but all, but on "learning". It's the learning process that matters.

In some cases you'll need a teacher to show you something, to help you or to point at mistakes you're making. But in most cases you don't need a teacher to learn something at all. Learning means that you are focusing on the problem and actively try to find solutions or repeat or train yourself.

So let's put the focus on the individual learner. You don't need a teacher. What you need is motivation.

Each human being, even each animal is motivated to learn new things. This is what made us survive, this is what allowed us adapt to all of the changes of our world and to face all of the challanges of society during the past few thousand years.

Learning is a skill and a desire everyone is born with. And don't forget: everybody is a learner, not matter if you're a student, parent or teacher.

Education is something everybody needs. Unfortunately some people seem to ignore this fact. Stop learning and you're falling behind in our modern world and society.

It's all about YOU! So how are things going to change?

We think that putting the focus on the learner will mean giving up existing hierarchies. We shouldn't percieve teachers as masters and students as slaves.

You are part of a network where everyone is learns, teaches, communicates, participates, contributes, collaborates and creates new stuff. You are now one of the decision makers. You are valuable.

You can define what you'd like to learn, when you'd like to learn it and how you'd like to learn it. You'll need help and guidance from time to time, in some cases maybe even on a regular basis. This is where you may need your teacher.

Of course governments, ministries and schools should define global goals, directions and standards. And they should also make sure that a large number of students will achieve the predefined goals by offering them everything they'd need to do so.

Teachers should make sure to check or test the skills of their students on a regular basis. Not to classify or punish them, but to find out where they still need help.

You certainly don't need any kind of dictatorship if you'd like to learn something. You're an intelligent, thinking creature after all.

Students should be allowed to test, evaluate and manage themselves whenever possible. This can be done with children starting at age 6 or even earlier.

It's a pity that many teachers don't have any confidence in their students.

The learner is the owner of his/her own work.

Products, concepts or ideas are the properties of their creators (students, teachers, parents or anybody else) and not of any school or ministry.

If a student writes a text then this student is the copyright holder of this creative work, unless it's some kind of prepared exercise. If the student is a minor then his/her parents/tutors will manage the students rights until he/she is 18 years old.

The learner must be able to take his/her work and to reuse it at will, anywhere and at any time. Only the creator of the work (or its legal representative) may decide if a work can be reused, read in front of class, published on the school website or in a book for example.

You'll notice that in many cases governments, schools and teachers are not respecting the rights of the students or other authors, even if they may not doing this on purpose. We think that schools should respect the authoring rights of their students and make sure these elements are properly licensed if published or reused.

Some people will now say that all this is not important.

But we think it is. Especially now, in our digital world. Mankind is publishing more text and creative content than ever before. 10 year old children are writing down their opinions and publish them worldwide. Who owns the copyrights, who is responsible for these posts, who may reuse or change them? We think these are important questions that one should think about.

Smooth transition from learner to worker or entrepreneur.

One of the major problems of many education systems is that they don't prepare their students for the real after-school life.

Many schools and teachers focus on non targeted, repetitive exercises that are not adapted to the needs of the individual learner. They are wasting time and energy, frustrating both weak and brilliant students.

Some people still think that "sitting in front of many exercises for many hours" equals "learning a lot".

In many schools students are only studying to achieve a certain result in a certain test. This has nothing to do with real learning, as all the knowledge will be forgotton and lost a few days later.

We shouldn't learn for school, but for ourselves. Education should allow us to succeed in life, not only to pass tests.

2. The learning network

Everyone is learning, everybody can teach!

As mentioned before: we're living in the 21st century and it's time to let go some of the old hierarchical concepts.

Everyone is a learner. Everyone can be student, teacher, educator or parent at the same time. Everyone can learn, teach, communicate, participate, contribute, collaborate and create. Everyone is valuable.

Today everybody's learning all the time. Learning is not limited to the things you're learning in school. Thanks to technology most of the knowledge on this planet is now available anywhere, at any time.

Learning is no longer limited to the school environment. Learning boundaries are no longer defined by ministries or governments.

Everyone is a node inside a Socal Network, everyone is learning, teaching and exchanging ideas. This network is no longer limited by any physical boundaries.

But can be fully rely on virtual communities?

Will schools become completely redundant one day?

Well, we don't think so. But we may have to give up the traditional views of schools, teachers and students.

The school is a place where people meet to exchange ideas. It is the place where we meet to make sure we're heading into the right direction.

Todays teachers become resource managers and help other to achieve their goals.

School could be the network node where everything is becoming connected. It could be a place where everyone can meet, learn and teach: students, parents and teachers. It's the place where everybody discusses and tries to find solutions to the problems of our modern society.

It's all about the partnership between students, parents, teachers and other members of society.

It's the network that makes schools and educational systems so powerful. Good educational systems rely on working networks. Bad educational systems rely on ministries and hierarchies.

3. The learning environment

When talking about learning environments then most people will probably mean schools and classrooms.

But classrooms aren't the only environments where students can learn today. School isn't the only place that offers knowledge anymore. Think of TV, think of Wikipedia, think of eLearning websites like ours. And don't forget: everybody's a learner, but not everybody is attending classes.

Learn anywhere, at any time

Today we can all learn all the time, no matter where we are. Technology makes it all possible. Thanks to our smartphones, tablets and laptops we have almost the entire knowledge of the planet on our fingertips, all the time.

This is a big change for students - a few decades ago they could learn in class and at home, but learning elsewhere was difficult as you would have had to carry your books around all the time.

Do we say that schools and classes will become redundant? No, just as we mentioned above, it's only their roles that will change.

Stimulative learning environments

One important aspect is that the learner has to like spending his/her time in his/her learning environment. Most classrooms are not stimulating.

Sometimes you may prefer a quiet place for learning. This may be the case when you're reading a book or if you're really focused on a single problem.

In other cases you'll have to learn to learn in an environment that's not quiet at all.

Stimulative learning environments require connections to other human beings. Communication and feedback lead to faster and more efficient learning processes.

Today this may either be a physical team or class, or a virtual worldwide network. Learning groups can be either real or virtual classes or teams. Feedback by human beings may be partially replaced by machine feedback in future.

But as already mentioned, we don't think that virtual communities should replace existing networks.

The learning environment is also about nature, sports, health and food.

We think that schools should offer free healthy nutrition for all students. Some countries already offer such a service, including Finland for example.

4. The learning process

So what is it REALLY about?

Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information. - Wikipedia

There are many differences among the educational systems on this planet, one of them is the number of hours students are spending in class.

The surprising part is that students in good educational systems are spending less hours in class than their counterfeits in some really bad systems. How can this be explained?

Well, you can spend a lot of time doing the wrong things. And doing wrong things over and over again will not lead to any real progress.

So the solution is quite simple: stop doing the wrong things and start doing the right things - and you'll see that you can get far better results in much less time.

Some people will now say that it's a good thing for students to work long and hard so that you'll get "prepared for life". That's plain stupid. You'll only turn these students into people who will continue doing wrong things later on in their life without being able to rethink their actions.

We'll have to let go the idea that spending lots of time on learning stuff will lead to good results. Individual targeted learning will dramatically reduce the time and effort required to learn something.

Invest less time, but do the right thing. Call it "process optimization" if you want.

There are two principles called KISS and YAGNI that are used to improve software development processes. We think these should also be applied to the educational world.

KISS means "Keep It Simple, Stupid".

YAGNI stands for "You Ain't Ganno Need It".

Everyone wants to learn something, so it shouldn't be necessary to be forced to learn. Forcing people to learn things usually doesn't lead to the desired results.

What do we want to learn? You define your own learning goals, eventually with assistence by your teachers, educators, parents or friends. Assessment are based on content, quality, value and results.

How do want to learn? There will be a facility to critique work based beyond mere foundational standards. Work will also be judged on inventiveness, collaboration, quality of communication, compellingness, value to an authentic audience. All learning products will include an element of reflection by its producer.

5. Reinventing the existing learning methods

We're currently working on some new concepts that will help to manage and evaluate learning processes.

Unfortunately we didn't manage to turn this into any understandable text yet, but we're working on it, please be patient...

6. Free learning resources

Learning is not limited to schools and books, it includes all kinds of networks and all kinds of media.

- Social Networks
- Search Engines
- Media (photos, images, videos, ...)
- Libraries and school libraries (books, e-Books, gateways to the web, ...)

7. Omnipresent & transparent Technology

Technological requirements of a learning platform

It should basically offer the features of a Social Network platform, but unlike most of todays networks it should be much more open. Some of the desirable features are:

A learning, teaching, training and publishing platform. You may set up your own profile including personal information, creations, and more.
You may connect to your friends, teachers, students, parents, children, ...
You may collaborate with others, share your data and write comments.
You may communicate via mailing systems, blogs, micro-blogs, forums, ...
You decide who can see your work, and your work can be commented by your contacts.
The community can influence the future evolution of the learning environment.
It will be a work platform all year long, it must be accessible in school and at home.
Data may be turned into an ePortfolio by the students.

Using computers and technology in education

Use the computer as a driving force instead of just an additional tool.
As a learner: use the computer to initiate, manage and monitor your own learning process.
As a teacher: use the computer to initiate, manage and monitor your students learning processes.
As a parent: use the computer to initiate, manage and monitor your students learning processes.

Some technological requirements

The entire technology is web based and completely OS and browser independent.
You can use the technology using your computer, laptop, tablet, phone or any other device.
You can use the technology wherever you are.
High performance, low costs.
Cloud computing.
Reduce your administration time and costs.
The technology offers advanced storage and backup technologies.

Recommendations

For classrooms we recommend a combination of info terminals and work terminals, plus one or more creative workstations.
Additionally there can be tablets, handhelds, smartphones or other devices. The entire technology can be hosted on an internet or intranet server.

8. Knowledge and technology must be open and free

Everyone is free to learn, and learning should be for free.
Hardware costs in schools have to be reduced.
Software must be free.
You don't have to pay for any software or to install any software.

Notes

Work on the morzino.com concept and philosophy began in mid November 2009. This page was published anout a year later in November 2010.