Online education is a popular option for many educational institutions. If a school wants to move most or  a big part of its teaching and learning resources, the teachers would have to prepare themselves for what such a move would entail. It is never simply about a transfer of traditional teaching and learning resources to the web.

Teachers would have to decide what are the kinds of lessons that would be moved to the web. Not all would have to be moved and maybe, not even a majority of them. Teachers would first have to decide which lessons are best done online? Would the teachers want these resources to be of the drill-and-practice nature or the exploratory nature?

What are the platforms for these resources? Have the teachers familiarized themselves with these platforms’ strengths and quirks? Would the students be required to work individually or in groups in a collaborative nature? If the latter, how is the work to be chunked so that real collaboration takes place.

They would have to know about, among other things, synchronous and asynchronous online learning. They would have to be aware that in asynchronous online learning, they would not be able to use body language, facial gestures and to some extent even their personality which usually exudes their warmth to the students which is so important towards creating a safe learning environment may undergo some major changes. Any good teacher would know that these are very important aspects of their teaching repertoire. The absence of face-to-face contact in asynchronous would also mean that the immediate feedback that a teacher usually gets from their students through their the same body language and facial expressions would also be lost.

While synchronous learning through, for example, video conferencing, can in theory reduce some of these losses, teachers would still need to adapt to the virtual environment. In short, there is a real need to train teachers to use ICT effectively if a school plans to move its teaching and learning resources online.

These are just a  few of the issues that teachers and school adminsitrators have to grapple with when turning to the web. These are issues that must be decided based on what the school wants to do for its students.

In my last post, “We learn what we do”, I suggested that we take a look at what teenagers today are doing online to observe how they interact and learn from their online peers. It was suggested that teenagers today are doing the same things that workers of the future workplace need to do according to studies and even today’s employers. The most prominent aspect perhaps of the teenagers’ activities online is that much of it is a social interaction.

Teenagers enjoy the social interaction that takes place online with their friends. However, this interaction is not totally a waste of time. Teenagers are able to connect with their friends at almost all times of the day. Even if one is not around, one is able to leave messages online which can then be picked up later when we come online.

These teenagers are able to find like-minded souls who can chat about the same interests. They do so through social networking platforms like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Twitter, Multiply and others. They share their interests whether in music or photographs through these same platforms. They egg on one another, they lavish praise or even trade comments or even insults on these platforms. They exchange information about their pet interests and about their activities and about what is hot too. In short, they socialize conveniently on the Net and while they socialize a lot of collaboration takes place, and through that learning takes place too.

However, I am not suggesting that all learning that is being done in school should then go online and into social networking platforms or the chat medium. The important point or lesson perhaps to be learnt from the example I have given above is that a lot of learning takes place among teenagers today on the Net. The manner in which they learn requires them to acquire the very skills that is sought in the workforce of the future. Skills like collaboration, communication, seeking information, reasoning and other vital skills of the workforce of the future is evident in the social interactions of the teenagers online. But they are currently almost absent in the typical classroom environment of a school. Is it a wonder then that many teenagers find school such a chore and a very unexciting place to be?

It is very much in the hands of teachers and school administrators to try and effect a change in the classroom climate so that learning takes place in an environment more in tune with the requirements of the future workforce. We cannot expect students of today to be the effective workforce of tomorrow by forcing them to sit down and listen most of the time. Clearly the social dynamics under which learning takes place must undergo a change.

Teachers today may not be able to make that change without some assistance. Teachers tend to teach the way they were taught. Teachers tend to also think of literacy that their charges need to acquire as the same literacies that was relevant for them when they were students. This paradigm needs to be changed and it can only occur first, by creating an awareness among teachers and school administrators of the need to change the way teaching and learning takes place.

Secondly, teachers must be given the training that is necessary for them to take a step back in their role as teachers and allow more of the work of learning to be done by their students themselves. In Singapore, the Ministry of Education has been promoting this “Teach Less, Learn More” approach in schools. Teachers must learn to be comfortable to design lessons that require students to explore, collaborate, use abstract thinking skills and even ask questions of their own. If these skills take place in the classroom it should be the product of conscious design on the part of the teachers, and not because of some lucky coincidence. Students must be given the opportunity to rehearse their roles at the future workplace in today’s schools.

Thirdly, a serious re-assessment of learning is required too to reflect this changed paradigm. The over emphasis on high stakes examinations as the main method of deciding who has learnt what is in need of an overhaul. Certainly there will be a place for written tests and examinations but there should be more use of alternative modes of assessment in the school environment to better reflect the way the “new” teaching and learning is to be done.

Schools everywhere today, must take up the challenge to prepare their students to acquire these skills or literacies. Singapore has seen the need for such a change despite its educational system being often lauded as a sound one. Schools in neighboring countries, Indonesia or the Philippines must also be alert to the need for these changes, and perhaps even more so before they get too immersed in high stakes examinations school systems because high stakes examinations system can be truly addictive and hard to give up when one realizes that it only gives illusory highs.