Democratization of an educational ecosystem

Anonym / Tuesday, January 23, 2018

/ Categories: Learning, Point of View, Technology

Democratization of an educational ecosystem

How are the millennials learning? Has there been any change in their learning outcomes? These are some of the challenging questions that any "educator" needs to address. Education & Learning centers (unlike the healthcare system which has a wide variety of specialized centers), comprises of schools/institutions which are still categorized as "private schools”, "public schools" , "charter schools" ,"homeschools" or "afterschool". We do not see a de-centralized learning process which provides specialized learning nomenclature like "STEM schools" , "LANGUAGE schools" "IMMERSIVE schools" or "ART schools" at K-12 beyond afterschool programs, where a student can go to a "center of excellence" of his/her choice to get that specific learning that best matches his/her learning styles and goals. It is very similar to a healthcare system where a hospital would recommend a X-ray done at a "University Radiology". This helps in creating an educational ecosystem of schools, learning institutions where each individual school is not trying to be an "expert at everything" but working with other specialized centers, makerspaces, special schools to enable better learning for everyone - formal or informal. The large-scale adoption of technology in schools should be beyond coursework generation, record keeping of grade/test scores, communication management or homework distribution.It should enable paths to mapping student strengths to career readiness or other goals and objectives. The primary "care" center of an educational ecosystem starts with a primary education giver - school/other. The monolithic school-based system should be more diversified and distributed across various learning channels - i.e. to provide specific expertise in an area of learning. Technology as a solution to enable education may not be a necessary fit for every use case. However, for us at LEARNROLL IMMERSE it a major enabler as our objectives are to improve learning outcomes by creating learning perspectives or experiences. The technology landscape is huge and changing. There are new technologies created every day that claim to solve many learning problems. Some technologies, frameworks and tools feel like a “trend” and you feel that this may be the right solution! Choosing a technology first and fitting our solution to it is the biggest mistake in the emerging technology adoption for a school. Do we need to re-invent the wheel every day? Education innovators who are experts in an area should create frameworks that may streamline learning through different learning paths. This has been effective in IT world where novices have been trained based on the skills that the job requires besides “standard” IT skill development process used a decade ago. Today processes and frameworks helps in better adoption across different industry sectors without development of code from the scratch. An educator may customize the framework for their specific needs. Today due to widespread internet there may be millions of resources from a teacher’s notes to a student's video. However which one should a student use when he/she is having trouble grasping an concept in science ? The problem is compounded as two million videos give different facts. Will AI (artificial intelligence) be the answer to help us distinguish the right resources from the learning pool? Learning can become complex even if it’s not pedagogy-based learning as we need to consider perspectives. viewpoint and examples that help us learn it better. Immersive learning is a specialized form of learning that is beneficial for visual learners using VR(virtual reality) and 360 technologies and brings global perspectives and better engagement through technology without physical travel. Global cultures, science learning, surgery hands-on, language learning and more including bring remote experiences like space travel to students. The use of AR (augmented reality) and mixed reality (MR) can help in pedagogical inferences, detailed analysis or mentoring/students with both real and virtual objects. "Learning is an experience. Everything else is just information". - Albert Einstein Learnroll Immerse opened its learning center in July 2017 to enable adaptive learning for K-12, Higher Ed using specific technology tools. At Learnroll Immerse, we want to empower advanced education tools and develop metacognition in students who want to excel in college and careers by acquiring critical 21st century learning skills. Students who learn through visual immersion have also shown to improve grades, learn better, and acquire advanced contextual knowledge that is necessary for college/career readiness irrespective of which majors they choose. Immersive learning uses technology to create another world where learning becomes an experience. Learnroll Immerse is also building its custom technology platform that will help in delivering learning experiences remotely too. In 2018 we are introducing AR with VR and focusing on consulting/partnerships with educational institutions beside enabling experiences for our mentoring center in Princeton, NJ.

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