Running head: AVISION OF EDUCTION IN 2020 1

A Vision of Education in 2020:

A Constructivist and Connectivist Approach

Danika Barker

University of Ontario Institute of Technology

A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 2

Abstract

This paper presents a vision of education in 2020 from the perspective of a fifteen year-

old student. The paper explores the potential influence of the ideas of constructivism and

connectivism on an education system where students are immersed in technology. After

illustrating a “day in the life” of a 2020 student, the paper identifies and justifies the

picture presented by making reference to current research and trends in education.

Key words: connectivism, constructivism, technology

A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 3

A Vision of Education in 2020:

A Constructivist and Connectivist Approach

It’s 7:00 AM on a typical Monday morning and by now Elizabeth has woken up

thanks to the new “daylight” app on her handheld device that gradually floods her room

with simulated daylight. It’s much nicer to wake up to than the her old alarm app. Before

getting of bed she flips through different touch sensitive screens on her handheld,

checking the weather, pop culture news, and her digital organizer to remind herself of her

plans for the day. Today she’ll have to log in to her virtual learning class. She’s studying

an interdisciplinary class that combines social justice, history, and geography. The course

isn’t offered at her local high school, and Elizabeth appreciates the fact that living in a

small town hasn’t prevented her from taking such an engaging class. Then after lunch

she’ll head in to school for her English and Math classes. She’s heard her teachers

discussing the possibility that soon traditional subject divisions will disappear all

together, pointing to the rise in popularity of multidisciplinary classes like Elizabeth’s

virtual class.

Elizabeth gets dressed, grabs her handheld and heads down to the kitchen to grab

some breakfast. Her mother is already “at work” in her home office, and her father is

probably out for his morning run. She sets her handheld down next to her and slips her

tablet into its cradle at her kitchen table and logs in to her virtual class. She could use her

handheld for this but the screen is bigger on her tablet which frees up her handheld for

backchanneling.1 She pauses for a moment to fix her hair as her face pops up on the

1
Backchannel is a term used to describe the communication that happens among
audience members during a presentation. Some presenters choose to make this
communication public to help enrich the presentation and provide feedback to the
presenter. (Rowell, 2009)
A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 4

screen and so do the faces of her classmates. They have a few minutes to chat before

class begins. Elizabeth sees her friend Ethan sign in and she touches his avatar on her

tablet’s screen and they initiate a chat. Ethan lives in Newfoundland so he’s already been

up for a while and they chat about a band that they’re both interested in. Then her

teacher’s avatar pops up and class begins.

Today one of her classmates will be presenting the results of her research project

using a pecha kucha format. 2 Elizabeth likes the format because it forces presenters to be

concise and well rehearsed. They also have to demonstrate a good understanding of

design elements. Last night, Elizabeth rolled her eyes when she saw her mother’s

presentation slides that she was working on for a client meeting—full of 12 point seraph-

laden font and pixilated images that weren’t even creative commons licensed.3 Elizabeth

logs in to the backchannel that her teacher has set up so that she and her classmates can

discuss what they are seeing. Her father comes in from his run at this point and looks

over Elizabeth’s shoulder to see what she is doing.

“This that backchannel thing you were talking about?”

Elizabeth nods, trying to not to look too irritated. Her father still doesn’t quite

understand that she is in “class.” She finishes typing her question into the backchannel

and looks back at her tablet screen.

“Don’t your classmates think it’s rude that you’re texting during their

presentation?”

2
Pecha kucha is Japanese for “chit-chat.” The format involves using 20 slides, displayed
for 20 seconds each (Klein and Dytham).
3
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that allows individuals to license their
work for sharing and remixing, depending on the license (“Creative Commons”) .
A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 5

Elizabeth sighs. “We’re not texting, Dad. We’re reflecting on Bella’s presentation

and asking questions to show our thinking—which is kinda hard to do if you’re talking to

me.”

Elizabeth’s dad takes the hint, walking away and muttering, “Teenagers.”

At exactly six minutes and forty-four seconds, Bella’s presentation finishes and

the screen switches to a mosaic like shot of all her classmates’ faces, including her own

and they applaud. Then the screen switches to show Bella and Elizabeth’s teacher,

Melanie (her parents still think it’s weird that most teachers are referred to by their first

names now. Elizabeth wearily explained that using “Mr.” or “Ms” is so “old school”.

They are supposed to view their teachers as co-learners.). Melanie brings up the

backchannel chat on the screen so they can debrief as a class as Elizabeth’s father leaves

to get ready for work.

When her interdisciplinary class finishes, Elizabeth puts her tablet and handheld

in her bag and heads off to school.

Elizabeth’s school is not exactly cutting edge, but she does appreciate the strides

being made. The school’s wireless network is ubiquitous and students are encouraged to

bring their own mobile devices. While the cost of many mobile devices such as tablets

and handhelds have dropped substantially over the past ten years (Juliussen), some

students still can’t afford their own. With the money that schools have saved by

switching from physical textbooks to digital licenses, they’ve been able to purchase

loaner tablets and handhelds for students to sign out, greatly reducing the digital divide. 4

Elizabeth’s English teacher, Jamie, told her that when she first started teaching twenty

4
Royan Lee, a teacher at Beverly Acres Public School in Richmond Hill, uses iPod
Touches and iPads in a pilot project in a similar way (Lee, 2010).
A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 6

years ago, one of the hot topics in schools was how to deal with cell phones in the

classroom. They were seen as disruptive and were outright banned in many schools. Her

teacher laughed and said that she had responded to a colleague back then by saying, “But

before cell phones, students passed notes back and forth in class and threw paper

airplanes. Did you ban paper?” Elizabeth and her classmates find this hard to understand.

Their handheld devices are essential learning tools; it seems counter-intuitive to her that

anyone would have considered banning them.

Elizabeth’s school doesn’t have some of the exciting new technology that some

other schools have, like the Liquid Galaxy holodeck5 they have in Bella’s school in

Toronto, but she knows from talking to her parents that some of the biggest changes in

education over the past twenty years have nothing to do with technology.

When Elizabeth’s parents went to school, they sat in desks in rows and spent a lot

of time listening to the teacher, memorizing what the teacher said, and then regurgitating

that information on final exams which were either written with pen and paper or she

remembered them saying something about colouring in dots with a pencil. Weird.

Everyone read the same books and completed the same assessments because if they

didn’t, it wasn’t considered fair. To top it all off, her parents had very little say in what

they studied, how they studied it, or how they presented what they’d learned. Elizabeth

would have hated to go to school in that environment.

Elizabeth’s English class still looks a little like her mother’s English class. It is in

fact the same school her mother attended, but there are a few changes. The desks are

arranged in pods, not rows, and there are a number of different areas in the classroom that

are used for different purposes. In one corner, there are comfortable chairs with a couple
5
This technology already exists (Thornburg, 2010)
A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 7

floor lamps where students can read. In another corner, there are four of the school’s

better computers that function as a digital editing bay. Tablets and handhelds are great

but students still rely on computers for editing movies and working with digital

photography. The room used to have dusty black boards but they were all removed before

Elizabeth started high school and in their place, the walls have been painted with a

product called IdeaPaint that turns their walls into giant dry-erase boards.6 It also allows

them to project onto any surface using their interactive whiteboard projectors.7

When Elizabeth walks into her English class she pulls out her tablet and opens up

her class’s blog where the teacher has posted the day’s lesson plan. They’ll be starting

with a mini-lesson on the importance of audience and purpose for different types of

communication from SMS to formal essays, then they will be moving into their learning

teams while Jamie conducts portfolio conferences with a number of the students.

At the beginning of the semester, Jamie presented the students with what she

called an “essential question” (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). They’d done a similar

thing in math, but in this case the question was, “What is the role of story in society?”

Students were then asked how they would go about answering that question. With

Jamie’s guidance, they filled the white board wall with a gigantic mind-map, developing

additional questions and areas of study, essentially creating their course of study for the

year. Students formed learning teams based on interests and developed a series of

problems to solve over the course of the semester. Elizabeth’s team was interested in

exploring different cultures so they had chosen the guiding question, “How do stories

help us see the similarities between diverse cultures?”

6
IdeaPaint already exists (“IdeaPaint”).
7
The Epson BrightLink Solo Interactive Module currently allows people to turn any
white surface into an interactive white board (T&L Editors).
A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 8

After the mini-lesson, Elizabeth checks in with her team, and her team leader for

this month recaps their progress. They set goals for today’s class and then get to work,

but today is Elizabeth’s conference day so she doesn’t join them right away. Instead she

pulls up digital copies of some of her latest work on her tablet. She checks over the

annotations she’s made indicating her strengths, weaknesses and next steps, and when it’s

her turn, she heads over to her teacher’s desk and pulls up a chair. Jamie has a tablet too

and with a swipe of her finger, Elizabeth shares her screen with Jamie.

“So, Elizabeth,” Jamie begins. “What can you tell me about your progress since

our last meeting?”

Elizabeth straightens her shoulders a bit and begins. “Last time, my goal was to

work on my ability to make better inferences during reading. So I used that three column

organizer, “It says, I think, And So,” that Aviva was using.”

Jamie nods. “And how have you been making out with that?”

Elizabeth brings up an old sample of her work to compare with a current sample.

“Well here’s one of my blog posts from September. I realize now that I was reading ‘on

the lines.’ Aviva and Doug pointed out in the comment section of my blog post that I

might have missed the symbolism of the bird in the poem. So when I read my literature

circle novel, I used the chart and I noticed a lot of things that I might have missed

before.”

“Can you give me an example?”

Elizabeth scrolls down and highlights a section from her reflective blog post.

“This part here. I’m writing about how the author keeps mentioning water in connection

with the main character so I thought that might be important. Then I remembered from
A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 9

my learning team’s project that water is an archetypal symbol that often represents

rebirth. So I made an inference that the main character might represent this idea.”

“What changed in your thinking?”

Elizabeth hesitates. “I think… it has to do with connections and being able to

recognize patterns and then trying to like…do something with those patterns.” She

frowns thinking that wasn’t the most articulate response, but Jamie smiles.

“Thank you, Elizabeth. Now let’s talk about the weakness you’ve identified and

we’ll set a goal for next time.”

After the conference, Elizabeth returns to her learning team where they are

looking at the digital textbooks they’ve created using Wikipedia articles on different

myths. They find Wikipedia to be a much more reliable source for information than some

of the older books they have down in the library because it’s vetted by so many people,

but they make sure they cross reference their research with other sources. 8 They are

talking about creating an interactive website that illustrates the connections between

different creation myths so they can teach the other students in the class.

Elizabeth’s final class of the day is math. A lot of the students claim that Mr.

Anderson is so 2016, but Elizabeth thinks he’s endearing in a grumpy old man kind of

way. He hasn’t quite embraced technology in the same way that some of the other

teachers have, but Elizabeth likes the way he thinks when it comes to teaching math. In

Elizabeth’s parents’ day, textbooks were the corner stone of every math class. Teachers

taught a formula, students did the practice questions from the book and then they took
8
In “Assessing the value of cooperation in Wikipedia,” Wilkenson and Huberman
conclude that the Wikipedia articles with the highest visibility/page rank receive the most
edits, and that these articles also were of the highest quality. Rather than discounting
Wikipedia as a research source, teachers may instruct students on how to verify the
reliability of an entry.
A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 10

them up the next day. Mr. Anderson, on the other hand, believes in the importance of

meaningful discussion and authentic tasks. Rather than presenting a problem and having

students follow the steps written in the textbook, students discuss the problem and then

develop the steps themselves. They are in a sense writing the textbook. Today Mr.

Anderson draws a container on the white board and says, “This is a water tank. How long

will it take for you to fill it up?” He gestures vaguely to the class and then sits down.

Used to the procedure, students turn to each other and start talking. “Okay,”

Elizabeth’s friend, Ahmed, says. “So we need to know the height right?”

They continue to establish all of the questions they need to ask in order to solve

the problem. When they’re stuck, they call Mr. Anderson over and he points them in the

right direction. Eventually, they develop the steps to solve the problem as a class and at

the end of class, students reflect in their math journals. To Elizabeth, her math class

seems a little more old-fashioned when she compares it to her English class and virtual

multidisciplinary class, but she still thinks Mr. Anderson is a good teacher. Besides, she

and Ahmed took care of the technology side of things by creating a social networking site

for the grade 10 math students at their school where they get together outside of school

hours (online) to help each other out with problems. “Like a study group,” Elizabeth’s

mom says. Elizabeth shrugs. Elizabeth doesn’t think there’s anything that remarkable

about what they’re doing. They’ve just gotten used to the idea that being smart is not

about knowing everything; being smart is about knowing what to do when you don’t

know.

What makes this story plausible?

A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 11

My vision of education in 2020 is based primarily on the ideas of constructivism

and connectivism. Looking ten years into the future I tried to imagine a scenario that did

not look completely foreign to a teacher in 2010 because although technological

innovations and research into how people learn have grown in leaps and bounds, schools

in 2010 don’t look radically different from schools in the 19th century. In Sir Ken

Robinson’s May 2010 Ted talk, he explains that it is very difficult to revolutionize

education because there are so many things in education that we take for granted

(Robinson, 2010). One of these things is linearity—the idea that you start at a certain

point, follow a series of steps, and if you follow those steps correctly, you will be

successful. We now know, however, that children develop different theories of what it

means to learn as they mature, which means that not all children are ready to learn the

same things at the same time (“How children learn,” 2000). Yet we still group students in

schools according to age rather than readiness or ability. With this in mind, I imagined a

school system that still had the underlying framework that we have today, but one that is

making strides toward a future that would involve a radical paradigm shift.

Technology

The technology mentioned in the preceding story is all technology that exists

today. It seemed more realistic to me that it would take about ten years for the technology

that exists today to find its way into the average small town, high school, in a way that

isn’t a novelty.

The handheld device I imagined that Elizabeth would use is essentially an iPhone

or iPod Touch. This is a device that allows students to find, create, and organize content,

as well as connect with others. It is a far cry from the humble cell phone and while some
A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 12

teachers clamour for it to be banned from the classroom, other teachers and indeed the

Premier of Ontario are advocating their use as learning tools (“Schools should be,” 2010).

Liz Kolb, an instructor at the University of Michigan has written an entire book

describing the ways in which cell phones can be effective learning tools (Kolb, 2008). In

2010, however, I imagine that the concept of a cell phone will be a bit anachronistic. Cell

phones already serve multiple functions. It is not a stretch to imagine a scenario in the

future where students either bring their handheld devices to class or are issued a loaner

device. Royan Lee, a teacher in Richmond Hill, is part of a pilot project where this is the

case (Lee, 2010).

Elizabeth’s tablet is of course based on the iPad. It seemed plausible to me that

tablets like the iPad would replace textbooks by 2020. Educational publishers like

Pearson are already ensuring that many of their products come with rich online content

(“Pearson, Live Ink 9-10”). While tablets may represent a high expense initially, they

might be supplemented by students’ own devices, and schools would save money by not

having to constantly replace worn-out or outdated textbooks. Like the handheld device,

the tablet serves multiple functions, making it a dynamic learning tool.

Virtual learning, just like the tools that make it possible, already exists. Many

boards, including the Thames Valley District School Board are making use of platforms

like WebCT to offer more flexibility to students in terms of how they learn (Thames

Valley District School Board). I’ve imagined a future scenario where students have more

flexibility in terms of how they study so that a student like Elizabeth, who has a passion

for social justice, is able to meet curriculum requirements in a flexible and creative way.
A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 13

This is merely an extension of the recent trend toward emphasizing differentiated

instruction and assessment.

Teaching Methodologies

While all three of Elizabeth’s classes are very different, they all have their basis in

constructivism and connectivism. The backchannel feature in Elizabeth’s virtual class

allows her to learn through making connections with other students.

Elizabeth’s English teacher takes a very constructivist approach to their

classroom. Jonassen (1991) explains that one of the basics of constructivism includes the

idea that instructional goals are negotiated. At the beginning of the semester, Elizabeth

and her classmates respond to an essential question posed by the teacher. Some teachers

already use essential questions to frame their approaches to curriculum (Wiggins and

McTighe, 2005), but I imagined that in a constructivist approach, students would be

involved in developing the essential questions with the teacher acting as a coach or

facilitator. Later when Elizabeth meets with her English teacher for a conference, her

teacher continues to act as a coach, helping Elizabeth articulate what she can already do,

cannot yet do, and can do with assistance. Her classmates act as Vygotsky’s more

knowledgeable others as she discusses reading strategies with them on her blog

(Vygotsky, 1978). By working with her peers she is able to scaffold her learning. Finally,

the project in which the students are involved, creating a website to illustrate the

connections between different creation myths represents an authentic learning task in the

sense that the project is meant to be a learning tool for their peers rather than something

the teacher grades and hands back.

A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 14

While Elizabeth’s math class may not seem particularly different from a math

class in 2010, Elizabeth’s math teach does immerse students in real world problems.

Rather than assigning a problem from the textbook and then outlining the steps to solve

it, the teacher presents the problem and the students develop the steps. This makes the

process more meaningful and would help to eliminate the potential for negative transfer

(“Learning and transfer,” 2008). The problem that Elizabeth and her classmates were

solving is based on a problem presented by Dan Meyer in his TEDx NYed talk, Math

Curriculum Makeover (Meyer, 2010).

The connectivist aspects of Elizabeth’s classes are clear in a number of areas.

Connectivists believe that learning is a connection and network forming process, where

what is known as not as important as the capacity to know (Siemens, 2005). It seems

likely that in an age where factual knowledge is available at the click of a mouse or the

swipe of a touch screen, the focus in education will shift from acquiring information, to

knowing how to find and use information effectively. Adopting this view makes it easier

for teachers to move away from the concept of “covering” the curriculum and move

towards “uncovering” (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). This is what Jamie is doing when

she presents the students with an essential question. Elizabeth and Ahmed have already

internalized the concept of learning as network formation by creating their own online

social network to help them work through their math class. They do not consider

themselves to be smart because they can come up with the answer independently, but

because they know a number of different strategies to find the answers they’re looking

for.
A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 15
A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 16

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A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 17

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A VISION OF EDUCATION IN 2020 18

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