GEN A AND Z WEIGH IN

On the back of my last Thought Leadership article Adapting Education to Generation Alpha, based on McCrindle Research’s latest data, I thought it would be worthwhile hearing from groups of young people and their views on a range of topics. With this in mind, I sat down with a group of our Alpha and Zoomer students to discuss their ideas and opinions on a range of topics, including the use of technology in education, online safety, jobs of the future, robots, artificial intelligence (AI) and what schools of the future might look like.

These “digital native” Alphas and Zoomers, who are more than comfortable interacting with technology in daily life, often using several devices at once, still stated that human interaction in learning was by far the most important aspect for each of them.

“Maybe really far into the future there won’t be schools or universities, there would just be online learning for everything, and people just go online and take courses, but it would be pretty lonely without the human interaction,” Year 5 Rodmehr Jangani said.

His fellow Alpha, Year 6 Caiden Bertossi, pictured a world with artificial intelligence where all teachers would be replaced by robots. However, Year 11 Neha Jim drew on her own experience of online learning during COVID, choosing a more balanced approach.

“You can learn as much theory as you can but in order to go into a real-world scenario and execute what you’ve learned is a whole different thing,” she said. “Memorising things and applying what you know are very different; if school was all just looking at the whiteboard taking down notes, that’s just theory, you need those practical things to apply the concepts and visually demonstrate it.”

“Teachers have their own life experiences and are way more adaptable than a robot; robots would just be programmed in one set way to learn whereas the teacher has all the knowledge and knows how to teach different students in different ways, so they learn.”

Other Zoomers in the group agreed that while many have prophesised a world filled with robots, some roles would need to continue, and the role of teachers would be safe.

 “Teachers have unmatchable brain power that computers can’t replicate,” Year 11 Ruby Peterson said.

“There’s a certain relationship students have with teachers that is really important, especially in the younger years where kids learn how to respect authority; if there was just a set of videos on YouTube as schooling, we wouldn’t learn anywhere as much as we do now,” Year 11 Jessica Strahan said.

Year 5 Arnav Verma said teachers bring a sense of humour and atmosphere that makes learning fun.

While there is an idea that many jobs will be replaced by more refined technology, Year 10 student Darcy Moore said there were some roles where the human element couldn’t be simply erased. He said these are the areas in which we need to invest in for the future and that there will always be a place for people.

Ruby agreed. “I really want to get into healthcare – helping people is a job that’s not going to get taken away,” she said. “My parents did push me more into technology as there were more avenues for development in these careers, but I have no interest in it.”

Alpha student Rodmehr is a little more comfortable with technology having grown up with it, however he, and others in the group, surprisingly preferred the old pen and paper note taking to cement their learnings.

“I find it easier to research things with a device and take notes with paper and pen on the side, which makes it easier to understand,” he said.

His Year 10 peer Noah Carter agreed that while growing up with technology, “I find learning on laptops can at times, be hard to engage with a topic”.

Jessica added that she thinks it is important to use paper and pen in the senior years of school as exams are still done the old-fashioned way. “If we only used technology, we would be worse off when it came to writing our exams.”

Year 5 Arnav Verma said using technology to learn was “a gift”.

“Learning on technology is fun; it’s helpful but also makes you a bit more responsible for the future. The age that the teachers let us have our own iPads is good because they’re protecting us from all the dangers in technology but still letting us use it and it offers a different style of learning other than just writing.”

Year 6 Sofia Wakeling said technology was easy and fun to use as she has grown up not knowing anything else, yet her family encouraged each other not to use it too much as they recognise “it can be not so positive”.

Jessica and Darcy delved a bit deeper into the world of online safety.

“I think it’s important for us to learn how to deal with issues online ourselves; of course, there’s a certain age where restrictions are important and where teachers need to tell us how to be safe online because we don’t know yet, but then once we are in high school, I think they need to let us do our own thing,” Jessica said.

“See, I think it’s better being safe than sorry,” Darcy added. “I was a little bit later to get Instagram than others and it has been better for me. I think kids naturally always want to be involved in something but in the long term its better off shielding your children from Snapchat, Instagram and social media as long as possible.”

Ruby recalled when books were the true source of information. “I remember being in primary school and having to use books to look up facts and whatever was in the books was real; now you can easily go on the internet but not everything is necessary right, you have to check your sources,” she said.

The group further discussed that this plays into the immediate nature and accessibility of information online we experience today. While books are a source of truth, they only capture one point in time, whereas we can easily get live information online, however, as Ruby said, it brings another aspect of having to check credibility and cross-referencing to trust the source.

The group discussed how they expect technology to change schools in the next decade.

Year 6 Alex Parry said he expects lots of little changes and inventions, just like we have seen over the last 10 years. Classmate Chiara Burrows reflected on how much technology has advanced in recent times and thinks tools like Google glasses equipped with virtual reality will become more of the norm. Ruby found it fascinating that Google glasses now seemed like a small change but demonstrated how much technology has evolved.

“I’m only 17 and I already feel too old for much of the technology that’s out there,” she laughed.

So, what can schools do to better to cater for these changing educational needs? One theme that permeated the discussion was being able to adapt and cater for different ways of learning.

“Education needs to be a bit more of a hybrid,” Darcy said. “I’m a hands-on learner so would prefer to get outdoors and learn how to do stuff with my hands.”

Ruby said there needs to be more of a physical element to education, reflecting with Darcy on the daily mornings of physical activity in primary school.

“We just don’t’ do that in secondary – sometimes during my double periods of Human Biology, for example, we go outside and do some stretching, so we go back into class much more relaxed, and our mind is clear – there needs to be more of that.”

I absolutely enjoyed the time sitting down and discussing what the future might look like with our students from St Stephen’s School. This opportunity reinforced what we all know lies at the centre of all learning, the relationship between teacher and student.

If these students are a reflection, then we are in safe hands.