It’s often struck me that professional development in education ironically reinforces the old chestnut “do as I say, not as I do”. I’ve also observed that despite the importance that educators place on independent learning, they tend to be poor models of it.

In “World Without Walls: Learning Well with Others“, Will Richardson writes: “In our zeal to hold on to the old structures of teaching and learning and to protect students at all costs, we are not just leaving them ill prepared for the future, we are also missing an enormous opportunity for ourselves as learners.” He goes on to exhort teachers to “…engage with these new technologies and their potential to expand our own understanding and methods”.

The potential of alternate reality games as learning platforms is well established. The precedent for the End of Web game that springs to mind is World Without Oil, the massively collaborative imagining of the first 32 weeks of a global oil crisis. Players immersed themselves in an exploration of a world without oil and contributed their own stories to an online archive. The context of the game and the authentic use of social media created a lively learning environment.

The idea of an alternative reality game as a professional development platform has a lot of potential because we learn best by doing and sharing. However a key to the success of a simulation to engage learners is getting the context right. The context of a world without oil resonated deeply and widely because it is an imaginable possibility and the impacts on each of us personally are also not hard to imagine.

I am dubious that the End of Web scenario will engage the average educator because it is so distant (2020) and hypothetical/unimaginable. It just seems too fanciful to me.

A far better scenario in my opinion would be the ‘end of school’. First of all, it is more imaginable and to that extent better scaffolded. There would be no need for additional hypothetical context (Alternet) or other artifice (Cylores). I suspect that it would be far easier for teachers to align the game with content and standards/outcomes under this a scenario as a result. It also offers a certain potential in-built tension because it is a possibility that would be dreaded by many educators but hoped for by many students. The interplay of these perspectives could be insightful. Involving parents in the game could be another interesting and worthwhile possibility.

If the aim of the game is not only for teachers to learn from each other and along side students but to also reflect on their own methods, then I think a more realistic scenario would yield more practical insights into the reality of our present as well as the possibilities for the future.

In about 2000 I attended a presentation by Alan November in which he forecast some dramatic changes in education. Teachers found this confronting until Alan clarified that he believed that the information revolution would create a need for more teachers, not less. How do we reconcile this prediction with the disintermediation trend?

As Daniel Pink explains in “A Whole New Mind“, disintermediation is the inevitable consequence when something can be done faster by a computer or cheaper by someone else. Processes, not people, are disintermediated although it wouldn’t feel that way to those who have lost their jobs. So the better question is “what processes in education can be disintermediated?”

In “Redefining Teaching in a Disintermediated World“, David Thornburg answered this question (in 1996!) this way: “From the standpoint of ‘information delivery’ educators are tremendously outpaced by the combined horsepower of television and the Web…schools must quickly yield their role as the primary providers of content.” If that is all that a teacher can do then Thornburg declares, “Any teacher that can be replaced by technology deserves to be.” He goes on to say “Before we toss schools [and by implication, teachers] onto the scrap heap of history as yet another casualty in the disintermediation onslaught, we need to revisit the only safeguard available: value-added.” Thornburg finds the key to redefining the role of educators in a poem on the loss of spirituality called The Rock by T. S. Eliot that begins this way:

Where is the life we’ve lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we’ve lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we’ve lost in information?

Thornburg’s elegant insight is this: “The task of educators (and schools) becomes that of running Eliot’s words backward. It is human beings in the form of passionate teachers who help students find the knowledge we’ve lost in information; who help us find the wisdom we’ve lost in knowledge; and who, most importantly of all, who help us find the life we’ve lost in living.”

Isn’t it interesting that even experts continue to recognise the added-value of a teacher? For example, why does Roger Federer, the greatest tennis player of all time, need a coach? Answer: he could not reach his potential without one. But imagine if his coach was a traditional teacher: “Roger – final Wimbledon marks: 5-7 7-6 7-6 3-6 16-14. Excellent result but must try harder in 5th set in future.” How long would such a coach keep his job?

You don’t have to know much about tennis or coaching to know that Federer’s coach is a partner in his learning and that the program they have developed together would be the epitome of differentiation. If teachers hope to help students fulfil their individual potential in Daniel Pink’s ‘Conceptual Age’, learning will have to be highly differentiated. Perhaps this is why Alan November forecasts a need for more teachers.

A final thought. The value-added role of teachers in the Conceptual Age will be so different from ‘traditional’ teaching that we may even need a new term for what it is that teachers do. As Michael Wesch admits, “I have toyed with the idea of calling what I do ‘anti-teaching’, as I have come to the conclusion that ‘teaching’ can actually be a hindrance to learning”. I can’t see the term ‘anti-teaching’ catching on: do you have a better idea?