Innovation Profile 092

Children are learning machines

Young human beings naturally learn, but their learning can be inhibited or accelerated. The job of a teacher is to provide an environment in which learning will accelerate.

Teachers concentrate mainly on the learning environment in their school and classroom. For the majority of children this has been the richest learning environment they could access.

This is no longer necessarily true, because children who can access the web from home can find good interactive learning experiences from many places. Teachers, in areas with satisfactory community-wide web connection, can now expect pupils to use a variety of learning environments and can plan accordingly.

This is a very considerable change in pedagogy. If a school and its teachers create an atmosphere that encourages the pupils to take personal responsibility for their learning, dramatic improvements are possible. When learning is enjoyable and you can follow interests, concentration grows and the time spent learning increases considerably.

We have reached a point where equity in the provision of education is now an issue, nationally. In most countries of W.Europe pupils in some areas have access to school virtual learning environments, area-wide managed learning environments, and the wealth of learning experiences globally on the web.

As an example, consider the areas served by Digitalbrain Learning Manager systems. These include the whole areas of the London Grid for Learning and the East of England Broadband consortium - a significant percentage of the pupils in UK. You can find more information at http://www.digitalbrain.com. Click 'Products' and 'Learning Manager' for details of what is available to pupils and teachers.

A very interesting indicator of how well a country is enabling learning through ICT would be the percentage of young people in the country who have access to a community-wide online learning environment, as well as the learning environments of their school. And if parents were made aware of this there could be considerable political pressure to extend this to all.

It would then be imperative for all teachers to think deeply about how their pedagogy should change, to help their pupils use the full range of learning opportunities available.

The Digitalbrain Company Profile on our web site will give you an overview of the company and a list of other Innovation Profiles connected with it.

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If you know of examples of innovative use of ICT-for-learning that others would be interested in, please email innovations@eep-edu.org

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