I vote for self directed learning in schools!!!

I feel the need to open with the quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery that states, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men together to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea”.  Just let that settle in your mind while I quote from Hamilton, “a component of student-directed learning must be making; creative and imaginative re-purposing and renewing of old tools, concepts and methods and thereby inventing new tools concepts and methods”.

You are probably wondering how those two quotes connect. Well in my mind it goes something like this... The ship is the school and the educators are the men. You cannot build a school by telling educators to gather the learners and waffle on content from different subjects and by means of different assessments. A school full of learning is built from the educators and learners having enquiring minds and a keen sense of curiosity and adventure. The concept of student directed learning can be empowered by that. The fact that it should include creativity and imagination makes it all the more interesting. This is where I bring the independent project in. What makes the independent project unique? Is it the fact that it provides an opportunity for all different people from different backgrounds to get together and learn or debate meaningful topics or subjects and grow. Maybe it’s the differentiation in the teaching and learning that takes away mediocraty. The usual public school system forces learners to all follow similar paths and ultimately end on similar levels but learner’s shouldn’t be forced to this narrow minded system. Learners should be free to learn whatever they want to learn because there are teachers out there who lack passion and destroy a subject for a learner. Self- directed learning takes away that restriction and encourages or motivates learners who have boring, demotivated teachers. Self-directed learning keeps learners focused and interested and ultimately builds confidence. It induces a thirst for knowledge in all subjects of the school and allows learners a free space to constructively criticise and to receive constructive criticism in return.

I feel that this is a necessary step towards changing the education system for the benefit of all learners across the world.

To conclude, I feel that there is potential for tech-mediated self-directed learning as the learners nowadays are different to those of the past. By using technology as a tool and the content being what the learner wants, a sense of independence is put in place and this motivates learners. They want to know that adults trust them to control what they want to learn and in this way they are encouraged to do the best they can.