I feel that a shift in how we view schooling and education has already begun. I would say that the pandemic acted as a catalyst for this. We were forced to utilize the technology we had available to us for a sense of connection. While this is typically what the internet and social media is used for, we needed it more at that time than ever before. Wesch notes that this phenomenon has occurred before as people began to feel a loss of community throughout history such as when women began to enter the workforce and had less time to connect with one another.
As time went on it became crucial for us to use this to educate one another. As many of us know, video conferencing and online submission sites were very important to the continuation of the traditional education that we know today. However, at the same time another form of education gained popularity as people had more time on their hands and turned to the internet to share their interests and talents. People began teaching one another how to do things like knit, crochet, and bake bread. This is when participatory culture began to spike as people had more free time and were longing for a sense of community. People began finding apps, webpages, and content creators that were embracing something that they were interested in, at which point they started to participate in these interests. As we discussed in EDTC 300 when discussing participatory culture, the more people that participate the more people start to take an interest which only further expands many online communities. This expansion increases the audience demographic by spreading the content across countries and age groups.
All of this is to say that people realized that there are other forms of education besides sitting and listening to a teacher’s lecture. There are ways to educate yourself without paying for classes or being limited to the options that a school or website can offer. For many, learning by participating with trends or groups on the internet is exciting because it is something that they can participate in on their own timeline and are free to quit whenever the passion fades. They are not stuck paying to learn something that they are no longer interested in. I suspect that some day the traditional forms of education as we know them today will transform to be more learner and participatory driven. I feel that the Montessori approach will become more of the norm as students are given options as to what they will learn and work on versus all of them following the same unit plan. This is also an interesting tactic for students with exceptionalities as they can choose tasks that are of interest for them and perhaps learn it in a way that is more conducive to their line of thinking. For example, there is an animation company called Dani-mation which is run by a woman who is on the autism spectrum with the intention of teaching other people on the spectrum about animation. This approach would mean that students would have more say in what and how they are learning which can mean that they are more successful and are able to learn more than they would from the traditional approach to education that many classes use today.