Learning really starts when the teacher lets go of the control.

We teachers have so much we want to pass on to our students. And we tend to forget that much of our knowledge is already outdated and even more will be by the time these children leave school. We need to stop talking so much in class.

The children we teach today and in the future will have to be lifelong learners to keep up with the development. So the best things we can give them are the tools to learn and the motivation to do so. Let’s teach them how to learn instead of teaching them facts.

When the children become producers in all subjects, peer to peer teaching becomes a natural part of their learning pattern and ICT becomes part of every student’s toolbox next to the ruler and compass. They learn not only to use ICT but to choose the right type of hard- and software for the different types of problems, presentations, information retrieval etc.

When the children are in control of and co-responsible for their own learning, they learn not only the skills needed to pass the national tests. More importantly they develop a whole string of social skills in cooperation, time management, self-discipline, coaching, processing etc.

 

Helle Kirstine Petersen has a background in ICT where she was a project manager and consultant for IBM for more than a decade. She has been a teacher for 14 years. 11 years at Hellerup School. She’s a supervisor of learning strategies and of teaching foreign languages. She is an author of several books and teaching systems for teaching English as a second language using Learner Autonomy, Learning Styles and Cooperative Learning.