Between a chalk and its dust something treasured was transacted in a classroom for many years knowledge. When a generation came with a totally different taste of acquiring knowledge, chalks got fagged and the users exhausted, that too in vein. They needed something special,peculiar,exceptional and extraordinary which is visually winsome,audibly pleasurable and easily acquirable that too in an affable mise-en-scene , benign modus operandi and in a grease the wheels contrivance.
For the generation next , if school is not a beguilement and does not have apparent meaning or benefit they will not participate or participate in full and authentic ways.
The society has changed, the life style has changed, the technology has changed ,the payment mode has changed,the packing style has changed,water bottles have changed, computers have changed,lights have changed,printing technology has changed ,ipods have changed,communicating style has changed,calculators have changed, radios have changed,soap has changed, food style has changed,shopping style has changed,cameras have changed,gaming consoles have changed more over the generation has changed all these changed our way of life. It would be better to ask what not has changed instead of what has changed .Still some of the schools and teaching methods at least in some of the schools have not been changed. Great.
The post modern learners require more ownership information ,the facilitators require more and more exceptional information developed through the personal construction of knowledge and so suggest the need to revamp a number of apothegmic tralatitious practices.It is not a complete wipe out of the entire educating culture but the educating method.
The environment must be changed from teaching centred to learning centred which is an absolutely necessary shift reflection.The schools must recognize that they do not exist to provide instruction but to create learning.
Traditionally the instructor determined everything.They determined the content,outcomes,procedures and nature of their class. Often with little or no outside input. While instructors were responsible for input, students were responsible for outcomes-their success or the opposite.The successful student was the one who could identify what was important and give it back to the instructor on tests.Teaching was the constant as every student got the same thing and learning was the variable as some students learned more and some students less. Responsibility for outcomes rested with the student: they all had the same input so variances in the output was up to them.
The teacher learner relationship should not be confined to students please the instructor and instructor please the students. They must understand that they have got a provider role.The faculty must become not only experts in their fields, but facilitators of student learning.It must not be like students looking to them for an agenda and identification of what is and what is not important. Once the students own the outcomes and know their options,facilitators cannot retire to the lounge to allow learning to take place in their absence. It is incumbent that faculty remain active and available to help students identify the learning methods best for them,to assist with each of the methods and activities and help students assess their progress.
In art ,for example,one could make students learn many colors [knowledge] before painting [application] or deciding which works of art they like or don’t like [Evaluation].Or students could start by identifying a picture or some pictures they like, and identifying the colors therein. It would put the colors in a context and establish meaning for the lower level material.The facilitator have spent way too much time on the cognitive,little on the psychomotor and have almost completely ignored the affective or the why care element.
The post modern schools and facilitators must not think that because we learned a certain way when we were kids that our children must learn the same or that what was good for us will automatically be good for them.