My Vision of the Future

My vision of the future in education is one where the learning commons, inhabited by forward-thinking, ever-learning teacher-librarians, is the centre of the universe in a school: the go-to for students, teachers, and parents as they navigate an increasingly tech-heavy world where “21st century” and “personalized” learning increasingly replace outmoded forms of schooling. I personally do not have a particular attachment to “traditional” education for a variety of reasons.
One reason is that our education system is not really all that traditional. Why? Because in the whole scheme of things, the modern education system has been a short-term experiment (a mere blip of human time at around 150 years or less) based on the latter days of a historical era known as the Industrial Age. For eons before this, humans tended to rely on watching, doing, apprenticeships, and interactions with a variety of members of the community.
With modern digital tools, we can go back to learning in these ways, but vastly improving upon them by expanding the definition of community to include people, places, and information far beyond our physical reach, and to allow for greater individualization, creativity, and collaboration than ever before possible. Others, however, might feel rather attached to education as it currently is.

If this is because the thought of doing otherwise is overwhelming, this resource is for you: it is a basic primer on how teacher-librarians and learning commons can assist teachers in modernizing the classroom. Please either hover over the “My Vision of the Future” tab and select to read and view sections of this presentation, or simply follow the link at the bottom of each page, such as this one: As technology advances, its educational applications have evolved as well.