I used to be left at home as a kid with my mum while my dad was out at work and all my siblings were in school. I remember being in a world all my own and looking for things to do to occupy myself. I remember getting an old clock to work again after dismantling it and fiddling with it for awhile.

I also remember the miniature “sail cars” that I used to built from cannibalized toys. The sail would usually just be a piece of paper held upright in place by a stick. Sometimes I would use those plastic windmills or propellers in place of these paper sail to power these sail cars of mine. The wheels would come from dismantled Matchbox Superfast cars, and the chasis of my sail cars would be made from empty boxes. They would be held together by rubber bands or glue.

I had hours of fun building different sail cars and racing one against another on the floor of my apartment house. The wind would come from the direction of the balcony. I would build different configurations to see what will make my sail cars move faster. I would try with paper sails or switch to plastic propellers. I would change the wheels and “chassis” to see which chassis is more stable to support the sail or fan.

Looking back I think those were wonderful learning moments for me. I was faced with a problem and had to solve it through some creative thinking. I don’t think I had learned about “center of gravity” but I knew it intuitively through trying to get a stable sail car. I learned something about “harnessing the energy of the wind” even though such words perhaps didn’t exist in my vocabulary. “Creativity” wasn’t a word to me either.

I learned science without a textbook. I explored things. I explored ideas. I learned to be creative through play. I was learning as learning should be done. It was fun and natural, and very importantly, meaningful. Meaningful without having to memorize definitions of concepts like “wind power” or “energy”.

Parents and teachers can do a lot to encourage such curiosity among by providing them with opportunities with do-it-yourself projects. Give them a free reign. Don’t even designate these DIY projects as a “Science project” or a “Mathematics Project”. Don’t attach labels to them. You may  insist that their project must not have electronic parts. Leave it to the kids to share something that interest them. Do you think learning in schools can be like this? For parents, it is a great way to wean your kids off the computers and video games.

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” ~ Lao Tzu

“As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults.” ~ Wikipedia

If talk about a school curriculum today, very often the curriculum that we are talking about is more akin to that described by the Wikipedia quote above. There is the idea that all the things that need to be taught in a school are to be done as if all the students and teachers are participating in a good old-fashioned Ben Hur-like, Roman chariot race.

That there is a race to complete the syllabus is not a doubt. The race is governed by a deadline which is usually an artificially imposed time limit. That time limit is signified by the semestral examinations or the even more important schedule of international examinations. Learning becomes a sprint although many will say that the current school system of learning is more of a marathon. Actually it is not one sprint, but many sprints.

In such an environment, little time is given to real learning where there is serious effort made at concept-building, deep understanding and building on what has already been learnt. Everything is compressed because the conveyor belt of learning in modern schools keeps moving faster and faster. As more things are seen to be essential to learning are added on, less time is given for everything to be fixed on that conveyor belt of learning. The conveyor belt is then speeded up to accommodate more parts. Learning in such a school environment is a real race. But unfortunately, real learning cannot be done in this manner.

A more accurate analogy for learning is that given by Lao Tzu above. Learning is very much an organic growth experience. It takes time. It takes nurturing. If it is an organic experience then it accepts that the starting point is different for each one of its participants. When time and care is given, the outcome is a completeness and a wholesomeness of the student. Is it a surprise that the product of a system that is harried and rushed is far from that? They tend to look like a product at the end of a race; tired and exhausted or one indistinct from another. Just mere clones to keep the economy going.

I know it is not always an “either or” issue. But I thought that I should revisit this issue of what is more important between the two after reading this article especially after reading the comments by readers that followed it. The article was reporting on ICT trends in education for the year 2010 (is that enough for a trend?).

I am not talking about an ideal scenario where schools have well-trained teachers and lots of funds for ICT purchases. It is rarely like that. Even in a rich country like Singapore with its massive MasterPlan for IT in Education (MPITE) didn’t escape this problem. When I was with the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore as part of the team pushing MPITE, I knew that the teachers in general were not quite ready to use ICT in education. And mind you, these were trained teachers.

I am not against the use of ICT in education. But I think ICT in education, especially its use in the classroom, must be accompanied or even preceded by good teaching strategies and good instruction. Too often in my experience with teachers, I have found that they were unable to make a successful transition to the use of ICT for teaching and learning. This was because they needed to make a few changes before they can successfully use ICT in the classroom.

To make that transition more successful and less foreboding for the teachers, there is a need for teachers to first change perhaps the way they teach. Cooperative learning methods and a shift away from the traditional frontal teaching is a pre-requisite. There are others but I think these two are essential.

Among the most important purpose of using ICT in the classroom is the opportunity for students to explore and collaborate. If the use of ICT does not reflect these, then I think the use of ICT in the classroom is severely curtailed. In order to do these, teachers must undergo a paradigm shift in the way they teach. They must be willing to take a more “hands off” approach. They will have to design meaningful learning activities that involve collaboration. There is no point in having 21st Century tools and yet teach as if it is a 19th Century classroom. At the other extreme, you may have teachers who enjoy using ICT so much that they lose sight of the learning goals.

Schools would do well to invest more in teacher training and development to make this paradigm shift among teachers. Of course, there is also a need to change the syllabus and move away from traditional written high stakes examinations but that is another story. If schools move into ICT in education without these changes, they will find their teachers teaching ineffectively in an old mode in a high tech environment or having lots of classroom activities involving the use of of ICT but with little learning done.