tag:newsoffuture.com,2012:/future_education//3 2012-01-24T16:07:27Z Future News for Year 2020 and Beyond Movable Type 3.2ysb5-20051201 tag:newsoffuture.com,2012:/future_education//3.155 2012-01-24T15:47:40Z 2012-01-24T16:07:27Z

Imagine if in the future, your students could improve their alertness during the afternoon by 50%. I am pretty sure that could help you in your teaching, not to mention what it would do for your students’ performance. NASA did...

Pontus Edenberg
NASA did a well-cited study that suggests that you can increase performance by up to 34% and alertness by up to 54%, if you take a 26 minute nap during the day. The study was done in another environment with adults, but I think that it says something about the future possibilities of performance related to taking a nap.

We can easily adjust the school day to include 30 minutes for a nap after lunch, if it means improvement in education. I wouldn’t mind having my kids come home 30 minutes later each day if they have been given a better chance to absorb their learning (not only because of their own nap, but also their peers). ]]> Taking a nap has a bad ring to it, mostly because it is not accepted to take a nap at work or school. But, what if tomorrow your employer ordered all employees to take a 30 minute nap every day; wouldn’t that make all the difference?

As usual, if we get students to adopt something from an early age it would not be a problem to maintain it. It might be difficult for you to suggest that your 14 year old students should take a nap tomorrow when they go to school, but if you ask the kindergarten that supplies your school not to stop with their naps then it will be no problem for your first graders to adopt the idea of taking a nap when they start with you.

The best time to take a nap is between 1-3 pm, so either your students can take a nap directly after lunch or a bit later in the afternoon. Just clear the room of desks (if you still have any), close the blinds and have the students bring out their mattresses and take their nap. Jennifer Ackerman has made a good summary of what to think of when taking a nap.

A nap for better alertness will, most likely, also decrease the consumption of substances to try to stay alert, like coffee, energy drinks, etc. If we are lucky, a side effect of the naps would be healthier living since it is said to reduce stress and lower the risk of weight gain, diabetes, stroke and heart attack (a major study completed with adults from Greece shows that there is 64% less risk of dying of heart disease if you take naps three times a week).

Do you have any experience with your students taking a nap after lunch? Do you know of any research that has been made regarding students taking a nap while in school? What would be really interesting is a study that takes into account the information overload that most students nowadays are dealing with. How is the digestion and learning of this information affected by taking regular naps?

So, if your school board is considering investing in expensive technical equipment for your students to get a better education, make sure they have bought the students mattresses and pillows first…]]> tag:newsoffuture.com,2012:/future_education//3.154 2012-01-04T12:12:03Z 2012-01-24T16:01:12Z

What would a learning environment look like if every kid stepped into school with sparkling eyes, eager to learn and with the ability to focus and absorb information? Have you had such a child in your class? Did it make...

Pontus Edenberg
Have you had such a child in your class? Did it make your teaching easier? I bet it did and I believe there is a way for the rest of your students to join as well in the future.

Engagement from parents is the key to a child’s upbringing and we have the knowledge on what parents should do to raise their child with the appropriate skill to absorb education. How can we then, in the best way, get this information to the parents so that they can prepare their kids to be passionate learners before they step into school for the first time? ]]> It is somewhat difficult to teach parents how they should raise their children. First, you need the parents to volunteer for parenting classes. But even if they do, a lot of parents are carrying too much load to be able to change their ways.

It is not easy for an 18-year old single mom in parenting class, if she lacks the ability to focus on learning, to absorb information, and later on practice how to raise her child to become a passionate learner at the age of six.

Therefore, we need to pass this information on to the parents earlier than that and also make sure that it reaches all parents before they get their first child. You are right, the only institution we have for this is school.

Parenting in the curriculum
If we can get every 16-year old person in the nation to understand that becoming a parent means an obligation to raise a child to become a passionate learner, with the knowledge of how to do it, imagine what that can do to a future society.

Teaching will be driven by the children’s curiosity and passion for learning, guided by teachers to lead them onto the right tracks. This will stimulate personalized learning and give each student better options for their future.

Without any deeper analysis, I estimate that a focused passionate learner in a daily environment with mainly equals can easily absorb 12 years of regular education in 9 years. This means that we in our K-12 can add 3 more years of knowledge in a stimulating environment.

By prioritizing parenting, focused on the raising of passionate learners as main knowledge in our K-12 curriculum (not necessarily as a separate subject), we ignite a virtuous cycle which will empower a population, be easy to pass along, and generate even better results for every generation to come.

You can compare math scores with other countries as much as you like and discuss if new technology is the future of education, but the first nation to embrace the virtuous cycle of raising passionate learners will take a giant leap ahead of others and produce a very well educated population.]]> tag:newsoffuture.com,2011:/future_education//3.153 2011-12-27T12:18:56Z 2012-01-24T16:06:44Z

This is Isabella and she is on her way to school. It is her first day and she is very excited. What Isabella is not considering when she steps in to the school today is that she will spend about...

Pontus Edenberg This is Isabella and she is on her way to school. It is her first day and she is very excited. What Isabella is not considering when she steps in to the school today is that she will spend about 15,000 hours in this institution.

It is her obligation to show up for class every day and in return we are suppose to give her the best education possible with existing means, for her to become a harmonious person and citizen.

Today we measure the success of our students by math and reading scores, but here we have 15,000 hours with Isabella in a group of other students, led by experienced and educated teachers. Aren’t there other skills that we would like her to have? ]]> If Isabella was my daughter, I would see these skills as some of the most important for her future when she leaves school (in no particular order):

- Have good self-esteem and self-confidence
- Sleep well at night (not being generally frustrated)
- Have a good relation to her family
- Have a good economic understanding
- Have good social skills
- Be healthy and understand the important of health
- Have good knowledge about the responsibility of being a parent
- Have the sense that “everything is possible”
- Have the ability to adapt to new situations
- Have good common knowledge
- Long to wake up the next day to fulfill her passion

Would you like to add “unnecessary and mostly unusable skills in math and reading” to that? I wouldn’t.

So why do we continue to bang our head in the wall and force Isabella to take part in lesson after lesson with lectures that are irrelevant to her future? Teachers are also testifying that the curriculum is narrowing even further, focusing on math and language.

I agree with John Bennett that says that teaching traditional math is unnecessary for a big part of the time in school. The same could go for your native language. Why should we have studies in it from the age of 13 when there are far more important skills that Isabella needs when she leaves school?



It doesn’t matter if Isabella knows the difference between ampere and volt if she goes to bed without badly longing for the next day. It doesn’t matter if she can mention 5 capital cities in South America if she doesn’t dare to seek the job she wants because of her lack of self-confidence, or if she knows how to calculate the area of a circle if she face bankruptcy later in life because she doesn’t have the basic economical skills.

There are of course great examples of how to for instance use English in a more creative way to support these skills, like Shelley Wright describes, still meeting curriculum and goals.

But the debate today about the future of education is focused on technical aid, the competiveness of nations and raising math and reading scores. But that is just ways to try to run faster with square wheels on your wheelbarrow. We need to adjust the curriculum with round wheels for Isabella’s future.

But what should we teach her then during these 15,000 hours?

Passion
Of course she must learn how to read, write, and count and also the basic common knowledge about the world around us, the things we need in our everyday life. But that doesn’t take 15,000 hours to learn.

Ken Robinson talks about being in your right element, where your talent meets your passion. I think that is where people are truly the happiest and also can achieve the most for themselves and others. Therefore we need to assist Isabella to find her passion in life and support it. That should be the starting point for any K-12 curriculum.

If you are passionate about what you learn, there are no limits to how much information you can absorb and what you can achieve. With a curriculum based on the student’s passion everything else will fall in place. Dennis Littky talks about passion as the focus for education in the work they do at Big Picture Learning.



Of course we can’t demand of the students to find their passion in life before they leave school, but we can use these 15,000 hours to give them a chance to find it. Even if they will not find it they will be good on their way and definitely know the value of it.

Would you like Isabella to be a passionate chef that never heard of Hemingway or Pythagoras, or to be an impassionate engineer with excellent skills in math and literature?

Even if the rest of the curriculum stays, with the passion in place teachers will always have good answers to the eternal question from students – why do I have to learn this?

Well Isabella, if don’t learn math you will not be able to run your own restaurant, calculating salaries to employees, know how much you should charge for your dishes etc. You need to know about the culture in Argentina, because they have food that could add a new dimension in your kitchen. You need to know the basics in electricity, because it will help you when the stove suddenly loses power a busy night in your restaurant.

But why do I need to read this guy Hemingway? Well…you don’t! Go and find cool food blogs, see what recipes they have and try to create your own.

We should stop measuring success in school after total irrelevant math and reading scores and instead see how we can create a new curriculum that supports Isabella in her future life.

So open up a new spreadsheet, name it “New Curriculum” and get going. We got 15,000 hours to fill and Isabella’s future is depending on it. ]]>