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Thanks a lot, Roberto.
It's really a great pleasure to be here.
Sharing some ideas with everyone,
some of which are mine and some ideas
I've taken from others, because that's how
some ideas are born and others are multiplied.
Firstly, since we're talking about ideas,
I'd like to tell you about one idea
that had a huge impact on me,
Michel Foucault, a historian of ideas,
once said;
"There are three institutions that were born at the same time:
Hospitals, prisons and schools".
and as you are all aware, over the centuries,
we've maintained the same infrastructure
for these three institutions.
I'm going to show you some buildings.
Some are schools, others are prisons,
others are hospitals and I think it's hard to tell
which is which.
Take these blueprints for example.
They could be of a hospital,
or a school,
or a prison.
Just like this one here.
This image by Foucault hit me really hard.
And of course I thought,
we have to do something about this!
Well we already saw, Angie was telling us,
how hospitals are already making changes,
and that puts a smile on people's faces,
but we have to do the same in the schools.
We carry on in the schools with the same mentality,
and the same buildings,
and we're holding the students in classrooms, cells, cages.
Even with the benefit of modern technology,
we just bring it into the classroom.
And as Rodolfo said before,
speaking about self organisation;
he finished by saying that not only
there is biological self organisation,
but also self organization on a social level.
I wanted to talk about three emerging types
of self organisation.
One of them is the new generations.
These generations are completely different to us.
They have different attention spans,
meaning, they can multitask better than us.
Although you might not believe it, they are hyper social.
Why do they spend all day on computers, iPads and phones?
Because they have to be connected, socialising.
And they process information very quickly.
Some authors, refer to them in many different ways:
Generation Z, G, it's true!
I love the Danish authors,
who call them *** ZAPPIENS,
notice how Sapiens is written.
They're the researchers who came-up with the term.
Then there's the other emerging type,
which is the technology and the way it moves ahead,
advancing digital technology.
The issue is that this type is personal, portable and wireless.
And that's a drastic change.
Why?
Because it means that now we take it with us 24 hours a day,
seven days a week.
And now they have become a learning tool.
The problem is that we're putting it in the classroom.
The other emerging trend is the cloud.
What that means,
is that information is delocalised
and we have access to it 24 hours a day,
seven days a week.
We used to have to go to school to find information
then to the library.
Now we can access information
on the cloud and if we have the devices
to get at it, then it's available
24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
So, what does it mean?
That learning became ubiquitous, I no longer have to go
to a classroom, to get a worthwhile education or training,
Learning occurs all the time.
What does it mean?
That the world is a classroom.
We've left the classroom and now
the world is a classroom.
What implications are there for us, the teachers?
What do we do?
Take technology away from them or hide it?
Or we let them do it, I don't know.
One has to think seriously about this.
But there's not just one implication
for us as teachers and all of you.
Because if the world is a classroom, or the classroom is the world.
We are all responsible for teaching the new generation.
We don't know what they are learning.
Because they are left by themselves
with the information, 24 hours a day,
with the technology but we're not guiding them.
And we are all responsible
for the ubiquity of learning.
And in some self organised way,
three opportunities emerge, which are the ones
I wanted to put to you to see if all of us
can help teach the new generations.
One is that if it is true, we have to change the classroom,
it's also true that we have to get out of the classroom.
We can't keep going on confined
to an education inside the classroom, the cells, these tiny rooms, and so on.
The other emerging trend is that we must convert
every public space into a learning space.
And that has implications for the people who design them.
and for us as teachers,
and for those who propose
that learning can be made ubiquitous and that we are learning
all the time.
The public spaces have to be converted,
into learning spaces.
And the third emerging trend
is that we all have to become teachers
and apprentices.
Here is a mother, which effectively,
all mothers are teachers but not just the mothers.
All of us have to convert ourselves
into people who support teaching
the new generation.
Furthermore, we have to convert ourselves into apprentices,
because things are changing so much
that we all have to become apprentices.
And we have to learn from the new generation
and from the *** zappiens.
It's not the little old man in the photo who is teaching the little girl.
It's the little girl teaching the old man.
We need to be humble in order to be apprentices.
And above all, we have to learn
that learning right now
has to take place in the community
because learning is a phenomenon which is intrinsically social.
If the classroom is the world or the world is the classroom
first I invite you to look after this planet,
then after that, I invite all of you to become
teachers and apprentices.
And that we help the new generations to learn.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)