Self-Organized Learning Models

Education reform is a nice pair of buzzwords. What do they mean exactly? First we need to explore education development and the idea of how we learn. Language in the Declaration of Independence is as inapplicable to unforeseen modern day rights issues as our founding education methodologies are to today’s needs for innovation in education.

Back when men were traveling horseback from town to town championing the benefits of education in the 1600’s it was innovative to provide education in classrooms.

Now that we have all the kids wrangled up for compulsory education it’s time to rethink what it means to get educated.

You have probably had the experience when you were so engrossed in a book you could not stop reading. When you are interested in a topic so much you are compelled to devour every article on the subject. Or you have seen a toddler manipulate a new toy for extensive periods of time learning its every use without any instruction.

Inquisitiveness is the drive behind the emergent learning we are naturally prone to, and it is how we can learn without being taught what to learn. It is the very model of learning that some experts are saying is the only type of true learning.

Continuing from the early 90’s, Professor Sugata Mitra has experimented on how people learn by leaving a few computers embedded in walls of offices throughout slums in India. His experiments centered on whether children could figure out how to use computers and educate themselves on the downloaded subject matter. To his surprise typically within hours children had gathered in groups and worked with each other to figure out how to use the computers and within months worked collaboratively to learn complex subject matter.

His experiments have been replicated throughout the world proving time and again children can teach themselves complex subject matter with little supervision. At a recent TED Global talk he said, "I think we have stumbled across a self-organizing system with learning as an emergent behavior,"

Schools that support the idea of self-organized learning that Professor Mitra is promoting are Waldorf Schools, Sunny Hill Schools and Montessori Schools to name a few. Technology provides children  access to limitless subject matter and freedom in small group structure achieves the added benefit of brainstorming new approaches to problems. Perhaps using technology within collaborative groups will be the answer to our innovation quandary and will define what it means to receive an education.

Education is not received it is achieved. ~ Albert Einstein