It may seem difficult to believe right now, but I think we
will look back one day and laugh at the ‘workload crisis’ that seems to fill
every other education story coming out of the UK at the moment. It’s not that
teachers aren’t overworked and overburdened by bureaucracy, inspection demands,
endless government initiatives and a whole host of other unnecessary tasks that
don’t demonstrably contribute to improved outcomes. Many are. And it’s
criminal. Not just because it is ruining teachers’ lives, but because it is
damaging children’s learning and life chances.
The reason I think we will get through this in the years to
come is quite simply because exponential technologies are driving a revolution
in the availability of hyper-personalized learning opportunities and
methodologies. And when students learn differently, teachers have to teach
differently. More importantly, teachers are able to teach in a far more efficient
and targeted way, empowered by transformational models of planning, teaching,
learning and assessment. We have been witnessing the seeds of this paradigm
shift taking root for a number of years, albeit agonizingly slowly. The
necessary disruption, as noted in a Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation report back in 2010, remains “fragmented and
sub-scale.”
But I am always optimistic… The School of One in New York,
referenced in that report, was a bold disruption, even if the jury is still out
on the impact (see http://izonenyc.org/initiatives/school-of-one/).
Now that exponential technologies are becoming available to help support such
approaches, I believe we will see a resurgence of these methodologies, with an accompanying
improved understanding of the wider models and support structures necessary to
make them successful. For example, the Rahhal
initiative in Dubai seeks to revolutionize education provision, truly
personalizing the learning journey for students, and bringing together multiple
partners from across the city. Again, this is a bold move, which will require
completely re-thinking the physical logistics of where, how and with whom
students learn, as well as an unprecedented technological ecosystem to support
that learning and track personal progress and achievements.
I have previously written at length on the topics of
leadership, professional learning, parent engagement, environments, curriculum
and pedagogical transformation, and developed holistic educational models to
ensure that digital tools are embedded as a necessary element of the learning
process, rather than as the inevitably fatal and wasteful ‘add-on’. Recognizing that we should always be mindful
of focusing on one area of this process in isolation (each element is critical
and part of the whole), I will now look at the future of assessment (including
tracking), and the related areas of reporting and portfolio-building. These are
habitual offenders in the workload stakes, so it is worth taking some time to
explore how the work of schools in these areas is being disrupted.
There are two enormous, and related, gains to be made in
disrupting the assessment process:
1.
Assessment re-imagined as an essential mechanism
to deliver hyper-personalized learning;
and
2.
Freeing teachers from the administrative data
burden, enabling them to maximize their efficiency, spending their time almost
exclusively doing what they love - working with students.
The dream, then, is that technology can be leveraged to not
only facilitate more effective, personalized workflows, but also to ensure that
the pain points of data entry and reporting are transformed into rewarding,
embedded and natural actions that sit close to the learning and the learner, improving
outcomes and reducing teacher workload. This speaks to the very origins of the
word ‘assessment’, being derived from the Latin ‘assider’ – literally, ‘to sit beside’. When we keep this in mind at
all times, and leverage the right technologies, it is easier to grasp the
rationale of what is coming – and accept and celebrate what will be lost.
In GEMS schools, and building on work done previously at
Royal Dubai School and Wellington Academy Silicon Oasis, we have just completed
phase 1 of a Proof of Concept, looking at optimizing blended and online workflows
to incorporate every element of the teaching and learning cycle. This included Kinteract,
a social media style portfolio builder, assessment and tracking tool and
recommendation engine that I have written about previously. Combined with
simple multimedia forums, learning management system tools and the Office 365
productivity suite, we have been able to demonstrate a highly effective
workflow, in which the teacher interacts in real time and asynchronously with
every student, delivering personalized support and timely interventions.
Moreover, all data and portfolio entries, grading and reporting are built into
the process and, with the teacher being assisted in her future planning by
Kinteract’s recommendation engine, there is no need for any further
administrative work to be carried out. All data is available live to parents,
school leaders, teachers and students.
At JESS in Arabian Ranches, Dubai, Principal Mark Steed is
looking to make Power BI,
with the data flowing from iSAMS, available live to parents in an easy to read
format – a bold move that has the potential to finally kill the dreaded (and
largely useless, instantly out of date) school report. Mark uses the powerful
analogy of the paper bank statement being replaced by live mobile banking to
make the case for live, 24/7 reporting. In my own experience with Kinteract, I
often reference Facebook. Of course, Facebook does offer a summary of the year
in the form of an automated video, which is a ‘nice to have’ – but the point is
that we don’t need this to keep up to
date with, and act on, events throughout the year. Similarly, Kinteract can
generate summative reports, but I anticipate these will only be required for
transfer purposes, with parents gradually accepting and embracing live reporting
in the same way they use Facebook and mobile banking.
This technology is smart, but is only the beginning of
things to come. It will not be long before such tools begin to incorporate
personal assistants such as Cortana, Siri, Alexa and Microsoft Cognitive
Services, and combine with physical interfaces like Woogie and then holograms like the
rather scary new Barbie.
We only need to look at the latest hologram technology out
of China to realize this is not science fiction. It is only a matter of
time before the EdTech, AI and toy industries merge to create powerful new
learning tools. This may start as AI-driven apps on student devices, but will
soon evolve into physical assistants, holograms projected from wearables and,
ultimately, earpieces and even implants and nanobots floating around the
bloodstream! We’ve come a long way since the old ‘Speak&Spell’!
'We've come a long way since the old 'Speak&Spell'
I envisage students within the next few years starting to
bring their personal learning assistants to school, thereby opening a whole new
Pandora’s box that will make the mobile phone issue look rather quaint. Bring
Your Own Device Policies will begin to incorporate ‘Bring Your Own Assistant’
clauses and teachers will need to learn to work in partnership with these
assistants. This may sound crazy, but it is the natural evolution of what we
are already seeing in our work with Kinteract, and with other AI-driven
platforms such as Cerego and Century, where teachers are beginning to work with the
systems’ recommendation engines to ensure children are following and achieving
the correct next steps. (Also see https://www.osmosis.org/, which is aimed at medical students, but could easily be adapted to work for K-12, and Volley, which is particularly exciting as it was founded by a GEMS graduate - wow!). It is easy to see students suddenly starting to use tools such as Volley in class, and this creating conflict with the teacher in the short term... those who adapt and embrace such technologies, rather than shutting them down out of fear, will thrive - and see their students do the same.
Indeed, I also envisage a core element of the
curriculum for students being devoted to interacting with AI systems, moving
way beyond keyboard skills. Just as we have seen the emergence of being able to
find, filter and evaluate sources and information on the Internet as a key
skill, we will soon be requiring children to learn how to interact effectively
with AI, how to interpret recommendations and, crucially, when to override
advice. And that’s before we teach them how to actually build the AI
themselves!
This now leads us to the really exciting new technology that
is likely to transform assessment, progress tracking, portfolio building and certification
– Blockchain. I first realized the potential of Blockchain technology a couple
of years ago when I saw the musician Imogen Heap present at the BETT show in
London. Since then, I have become more aware of the edtech startups (see http://quze.co/ for a local example just getting off
the ground) and more established companies (e.g. https://www.learningmachine.com/)
scrambling to be the first to make inroads in the education sphere. In effect,
Blockchain technology is being utilized to create immutable personalized
portfolios of achievements and certifications. These are now being commonly referred
to as ‘learning wallets,’ paying homage to the origins of the technology in
Bitcoin. Combined with other technologies connecting students with courses,
teachers, peers, content and industry, this development promises to accelerate
the hyper-personalization of learning revolution.
So what will we see dying in our schools? Once these new, streamlined
and hyper-personalized methodologies and technologies begin to take hold in our
schools, I anticipate that the traditional (and even some of the newer) student
tracking tools and certain MIS/SIS modules will be under threat. There will be
no more data entry removed from the learning in time and place. There will
simply be no need to enter data again into a tracking or grading system, as
this has already been recorded at the point of learning. There will be no need
for teachers to write reports at the end of the term or year – why would they
need to, when the data is not only available live to parents 24/7, but also
being contributed to, by the parents and students themselves, as is possible
with Kinteract?
In the not-too-distant future, learning will be hyper-personalised
and teachers will be working very differently. And, if they embrace the new
age, they will have the opportunity to love every moment of their work. The
best way to predict the future is to create it. And it’s happening anyway, so
we need to get on the bus – and (probably) on the Blockchain.
