資訊科技＠陽明

Question : What are the main critical success factors to set up a School of the Future?

The first thing of them all is pedagogical vision. The School of the Future will not be characterized by its building or by its technological infrastructure: it will be characterized by its pedagogical vision, that includes a new view or concept of education, a new understanding of learning, and novel methods for promoting learning.

The second critical success factor is people. It is essential that we find people who are more than willing – who are eager to embrace this pedagogical vision and are dedicated to promoting it. And then we need to give them freedom, incentive and tools without which it is virtually impossible to reinvent schooling.

It is only after these two factors are adequately faced that issues relating to curricula, technological infrastructure and buildings ought to be raised.

Question: Will the School of the Future change the way we learn now? What sort of change can we expect and how will it happen? Will these changes be good both for students and teachers?

I have no doubt that there will be enormous changes in the way we learn in the future – and the School of the Future will have to assimilate them. These changes can be classified in the following way:

• Changes in what we learn
• Changes in how we learn
• Changes in when we learn

In the School of the Future learning will not be identified with assimilation of information. The most important element of learning is capacity building, the development of competencies. Every learning involves a doing. The object of learning is not a mere "knowing that", but a "knowing how".

So, the curriculum will not be a set of subject matters (academic disciplines) organized by grade: it will be a mosaic of competencies, in which each competency will be linked to the skills, to the attitudes, to the values and to the information required to develop it.

This brings us to the second set of changes I mentioned: change in how we learn. Since competencies involve “knowing how”, learning must be active, learning must basically imply doing. But this doing is not doing what other people tell us to: it must be self-generated and self-directed doing, a doing that is related to one’s interests.

This is the essence of what some people call today “project-based learning” (or “problem-based learning”, or “inquiry-based learning”). However, this approach to learning is not effective if the projects, the problems, the inquiries are determined by the teacher for the student. That is why I emphasize the need for learning to be self-generated and self-directed.

So, we, the learners, ought to choose not only what we are going to learn – what sort of competencies we will need to develop, given our talents, interests and goals in life – but also how we are going to learn – what sort of learning projects are most worthwhile.

Question： What is the most important meaning of having Education?

I think that education is a process of human development. We are born totally incompetent, and, therefore, are absolutely dependent on the care of others.

But we are born two important features:

• First, an incredible capacity to learn;
• Second, with a “hardware” that requires “software” to run…

So, this is what education is all about: a process of human development that allows us not only to survive (become competent) but to choose a life for ourselves (become autonomous). Education is the process through which the incompetent and dependent beings that are born become competent, autonomous adults.