The game is still the same

I have read some posts stating that the Ipad is a game changer for education. Educational change is being driven by many things, the Ipad might be one of them. With all of the tech stuff going on now, the focus is on the here and now. People seem to over emphasize their own contemporary experiences. Bill Gates once said: "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction."

I want to put things in perspective. In my opinion the education game is changing, but we don't need to thank Apple's Ipad for that.

Let's go back in history for a bit. In the 19th century the game was changing because society was changing. Livelihoods were disrupted and communities were scattered because of industrialization. People were migrating into cities leaving their home towns and villages. Times were changing and so was education. Education wasn't focussed on needs or skills and knowledge, but was meant to civilize the people. So education adapted to that new reality. Large numbers of people needed to be taught basic literacy with a now scarce commodity. That resulted in the inception of the system of education that still is prevalent today, class based education, but is failing big time now!

We live in a the age of globalisation. We live in a borderless world and that applies to information and communication as well. We work in multi-disciplinary teams based across the world. So if information is borderless and our peers are scatterd across the world why do we still try to fence of education?

Let's focus on the game again. We learn not as single individuals but as members of a group or a community or a society. Our knowledge and experiences are stacked. It's a shared /common knowledge, it's what we learn from each other, from our parents, our neighbors. The way we learn reflects the way we live.

Basicly we need a way to implement a new order, borderless education, tailored to specific needs. No more classes.