Why the Web Matters for Education

The big ideas, the ones that shatter the walls you didn’t even know were there, are often more discovery than innovation. Discovery naturally arises from human curiosity, and with the internet, we have infinite capacity to make the most of our curiosity. A story out of Matamoros, Mexico reminds us of the power of technology to fuel discovery when it’s put to the right use.

I won’t reiterate the story from Matamoros in detail, as you can read the beautiful article written by Wired author Joshua Davis. The summary is basically this: a teacher, Sergio Juárez Correa, wanted to do something better for his students, so he went online and learned about student-directed learning methods. They’re still considered controversial and are not in common practice, but the idea behind these methods, that students learn best when they explore and discover on their own, is hardly new. As Davis notes, some of our best known technology innovators, like Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, attribute their success to having been brought up with these types of learning methods.

The students in the class excelled. One got the top score in Mexico for math on the standardized test. It’s a lovely story, but it only briefly touches on something extraordinary: for the first time in the history of our species, kids have access to so much information that they can explore and discover any topic at nearly any time. While the students in Matamoros didn’t have access to the internet directly, their teacher used his connection to find answers to their questions when he didn’t know—and he used the internet to learn about teaching methods and connect with other teachers.

Not every child is lucky enough to have a teacher like Correa, but more and more children have access to nearly all of human knowledge. Even if they enter a school system that uses a traditional model, they are never limited in their ability to discover on their own.

Online learning has the potential to alter how we think and how we perceive of and interact with the world. There are complications, and theories abound about how instant access to information depletes memory, but similar arguments were made by Plato about the invention of the alphabet. I don’t think we’re worse off than we were a couple thousand years ago. A friend of mine once made a good point; he said that he didn’t mind if his memory wasn’t as good, because technology freed his mind from that burden and let him focus on processing rather than remembering. Such an assertion suggests that the way we learn and interact with information is changing.

Perhaps the student-led learning experience of Google’s founders is reflected in the products they delivered. Google has expanded the potential for this learning philosophy to encompass the entire connected world (about 34 percent of the global population).

The internet also brought us this story—it’s raising awareness where awareness is desperately needed. Teachers need these tools to discover what’s working. Teachers can collaborate and participate, sharing knowledge around the world. Just as this could be done well, it could be done very badly. We all know how misinformation and anecdotal evidence are rampant online, supported by confirmation bias. We do, however, have to acknowledge that the power is there, and it’s our responsibility to use it wisely.