Watching a TEDx Talk is a great source of learning and gathering knowledge.
I have never come across any Ted Talk that made me feel that I didn’t learn anything from it!
This post is about one of the recent talks by Louise-Amélie Cougnon titled Tomorrow’s Education which will give you a peek into the classroom of tomorrow.
Louise-Amélie Cougnon believes that a pedagogical revolution will take place through the right use of technology in the classroom. The notions of flipped classrooms, peer learning and co-construction will be reinvented, not with the help of personal smart phones, tablets and laptops, but rather thanks to shared technologies, technologies that enable more connections between the students.
Louise-Amélie Cougnon studied the relationship between language, classrooms and technology for a decade. After a few years as a Phd student and lecturer at the university and as a pedagogical director in a distance learning company, she works now in a research center in sociology dedicated to learning sciences.
In her talk she talks how she sees the Classroom of Tomorrow. Mentioning technology as one “language”, she quoted, “My generation in the 90’s did not use technology into the classroom. But then arrived mobile phones and emails and Internet. Slowly, but surely, this technology entered houses, privates rooms, bags and finally… classrooms! Very rapidly, everybody noticed a change in the way people were communicating through these new media. Therefore, there was a need to study (what we thought was) a new kind of language.”
Talking about integration of technology in the classroom and digital presence in terms of its utilization she brings forward some practical ideas to open a discussion on what could be a new and better school.
Below are 4 points on reinventing schools and use of technology in the same. Check it out!
1st Problem at School: Each child uses technology (personal smartphones, tablets and laptops) in the classroom to work alone (read, memorise, listen…), as it was already the case with his or her book.
Idea for the Future: Learning has to be made up of collective activities, not individual ones.
2nd Problem at School: We place our students in front of digital tools in passive positions that are boring and cause physical problems (backache, stiff neck, migraine, stress…).
Idea for the Future: Learning has to offer an open and active environment in which each student will be a real actor of his own education.
3rd Problem at School: We think that education and fun are two very separate worlds. School is still seen as a strict environment to which each of our children must defer.
Idea for the Future: Serious game applications offer a wide range of funny activities that will have to be used in the classroom of the future in order to offer a pleasurable environment to the child.
4th Problem at School: We use the same activities for all students, even since we know that all learners are so different from each other. The numerous technology tools and group activities today offer very different needs that can be filled by different skills.
Idea for the Future: We have been talking about differentiated learning for a long time; now, let’s really apply this concept to classrooms, where each student will be a potential genius of his own domain.
Watch the great talk below!
You can follow her on twitter at @Amelaaay.
