On-line education, or e-Education, is changing the way we learn.  Sir Ken Robinson is an author, speaker, and international advisor on education and considers our education system to be industrialized.  He compares education to catering, where there are two models of quality assurance.  The first is the fast food approach where everything is standardized and you know exactly what you are going to get.  The other is equivalent to the top restaurants where things are custom prepared. (See his video here)

The comparison is about conformity.   Our education system is like the fast food model where we know exactly what it is we are going to get but our human need for passion is not fed as well as it could be.  This is a linear industrial system where conformity of both products (education) and customers (students) aids production buts does not satisfy the needs human development (nutrition) as completely as it may do.

Sir Ken Robinson advocates the organic process of an agricultural model of education where outcomes are personalised and self-directed but within a guided system.  In this model, the teacher is like the farmer, providing all of the needed ingredients and leaving the crop to grow in to the best it can do.

A shining example of this approach is given by education scientist Sugata Mitra (this video is an inspirational must-see).  In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave children self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.  He tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they are needed most.

What he did was to set up an internet-connected computer in front of a group of children in a slum in New Delhi.   The children had little schooling, did not speak English and had never seen a computer before nor did they know what the internet was.  He switched it on on, connected it to the Internet and left the children to it.  What he noticed was that children will learn to do what they want to learn to do.  And they do it extremely quickly because they enjoyed what they were doing.

This puts in to context a quote from the late Arthur C. Clarke, who said two interesting things, "A teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be."

The second thing he said was that,"If children have interest, then education happens."

This observation is at the heart of e-Learning.  Most of us have seen, and been amazed by, young children who very quickly grasp how to use the technology of computers and the Internet.

In the UK, e-Education has resulted in a two-grade improvement and engaged hard to reach kids, especially where they had access to devices at home and school.

Where it is allowed, e-Education is transforming the education of our children.

The focus and power over individual learning has shifted away from the institutions and towards the student.  The options for education have never been so diverse.  Education is more accessible than ever before.

By 2019, it is estimated that 50% of all classes taught will be delivered on-line and many of them will be free.

As an example, iTunes offers over 350,000 lectures from hundreds of universities world wide.    Courses from Oxford or Cambridge Universities in the UK, Stanford or Princeton Universities in the US, or from our own University of Otago can be studied at our own pace.   Otago was the only New Zealand University found to be offering content on iTunes but the Southern Institute of Technology in Invercargil has a range of courses on offer.<

If there is one thing that will change the world, it is access for everyone to higher education, and fast broadband brings that opportunity.