This vision is interesting to have in mind because there is an intime connection between this new mindset of empowered employees and what we do in education, the goals of the educational system. There must be a change in how we organise the learning experience. I propose a shift in the view of students as patients as empty vessels that receive almost submissively the learning plan, the schedules, the learning goals to students as agents of her/his learning experience. That is not a default mode. It has to be learned and practiced so it becomes second nature. The best way to do it -in my perspective- is through the daily learning experience. In my view, there is nothing more powerful than the every day experience, it is the best opportunity to teach.
I use the analogy of how I educated my own children (3) using as opportunities the daily experience. I used simple issues to teach profound values and important skills -emotional and intellectual-.
That is what I suggest with using the daily classroom experience which is almost ubiquitous in young students, it happens 5 days a week and it implies a huge amount of students time. There, we as teachers should use a different approach to learning encouraging students to be agents instead of patients. We must encourage students to use the affordances of Web 2.0 to orchestrate their own learning transforming themselves into self-organised agents. “The ability to self-organise in order to produce and repurpose products and information” (a sentence I took from the blog I am linking) should be a goal in the classroom. That is perfectly possible. It is a matter of changing our approach to learning and teaching -of course! All this happening in a safe environment with a trusted community where learning therefore making mistakes and improving is the default mode. This is an ideal condition for this learning to happen.
My proposal is to use the PLE as an approach to learning improving the agency of the students, empowering them and giving them the freedom to self-organise their learning experience so they are in the future strong and already empowered “gig employes” or even better “gig entrepreneurs” that engage actively in their society which is no longer a local one but a global and digital one, where living is understood as a two dimensional presence: virtual and physical.
Existing in this new society demands a new mindset that an important percentage of young people have had the chance to naturally grow into it but teachers not necessarily have done so. Maybe this is also a good chance for teachers to transform into empowered employees that inevitably are part of a global gig economy!
Enjoy the read!!
