Ways of Knowing

The new Education Age by Richard Gerver..........

Does it really matter what kids remember, or what they understand. We have to learn to find our own answers and have to Stop waiting for someone else to give answers. In the changing world our children will have to find solutions to all the problems like, global crisis, depleting natural resources,  that we have been creating by taking things for granted.

With the technology in the boom, a questions that always lurks in ones mind, Can technology replace teachers? And this was a question posed to Eric Shmidth Chairman of Google…….. He said  'No, because education has been the backbone of human beings and to provide this backbone, you need human touch, so technology supports teaching but can never replace teachers'

This is so true, any amount of technology is of no use unless humans use it and work with it, and it is created by the humans so how can Teachers be replaced by technology. Technology can only support you, but never replace you.

The speaker also spoke about the core vision of technology giants like Google, which is………..

Core vision... ‘Organise the world information to make it easily available and do no evil’, and the problem was that every time one tries to copy what others are doing, you lose your own creativity the mind wouldn’t work.

The other core idea that was much talked about was: Employing people  who don’t need managing. How often as heads of School or heads of the class, we spend most of our time in trying to manage people, wouldn’t it be great if we employed people who wouldn’t need managing, rather that time would be spent more productively. It is true for a well-managed or shall we say self-managed class as opposed to a totally disorganized class.

What kind of qualities do self-managers posses:

Henery Jenkins professor at MIT created a list for people who had the following skills:

Ø  Play

Ø  Performance

Ø  Simulation

Ø  Knowing how to behave

Ø  Multitasking

Ø  Networking

Ø  Knowing what tool to use

Ø  Negotiation

Another aspect that was briefly discussed was if the environment mattered in the learning and grasping abilities of people. Well we all know that Early Years education is most challenging,  it is about active learning,  it is about engaging the 3 to 5 year olds to tryout new things, experiment and be engaged at all times and this is the age when the children learn the most.

You learn the best when you are relaxed, so best idea that pops in your head is on a holiday, etc.

That is why early years children learn best when they are at play and relaxed....that is why PLAY is most important for that age group.