Korea’s plan to teach skills needed in the 21st century

The objective of “smart education” is to digitalize Korea’s entire school curriculum by 2015. The program is designed to respond to 21st century education challenges by moving from uniform and standardized education to diversified, creativity-based learning, while at the same time bridging the education divide by making access available to all.

Some key-points here are:

Communication, cooperative learning, Students have to work hard to make it to universities. That is a very high motivation factor. In this video they claim things have changed and “passive” learning is no longer a good way to prepare for the exams. Approaches to learning are changing, and when students are given an opportunity to use ICT they learn “actively”. They learn how to think independently and creatively, and how to meet the challenges of our new era. In the past, a strong student was one who was able to remember what he or she had learned, and filled out the correct answers in tests. Future skills will require students not just to have a good memory and write down what the have memorized, they will need to be able to select what is useful from various sources of information, and then assimilate that data as their own, and recreate it as their own.

See the whole video below – 15 minutes and reflect on these questions. How much of this are you doing in your own class? What kind of competencies are emphasised in your school. How can we change the way we teach and the way students learn? In Korea students are eager to learn because they know it is difficult to get accepted to the right universities. What can we do to motivate our students and make if fun to learn again? It is hard work, but using technology the way they do it in this video-clip is the way to go to make school more engaging and more real to life. I hope the discussions in Norway can turn from teacher–centered towards learning–centered, learning happening for both students and teachers!

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