A sort of coming full circle for our class this week as we had an online chat with Jeff Hopkins from Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry, which connects back to the documentary film that began our course, “Most Likely to Succeed”. Having Jeff join us after previewing his sit-down talk with Rich and Rich’s tour of the facilities, provided us some helpful context and an actual walk-through to what we are learning about project based and inquiry type learning paradigms. Talking with Jeff allowed us to assess and evaluate a made-in-Victoria solution to what some see as a failing of the current education system.

.A tailor-made individually driven program at first glance seems to be primarily geared to the independent-minded technologically motivated student. Autonomous learning of course demands accountability from the student, but really, is that any different than the extrinsic mechanisms that testing and assessment tools provide within our public school curriculum?

writing on paper

Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash

After delving through some of the online documents I can’t say whether I am a convert to this type of system, in the least I don’t believe it would suit my preferred learning style. That being said, reading through the learning templates and types of probes that are directed at the learner could very well serve me well when I find myself stalled or pursuing unhelpful rabbit holes.

rabbit holePhoto by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

None of this obviously precludes the school or the type of program they offer as being a valuable tool for learning and likely very suitable for particular types of learners. Imagining that those learners are the target audience for this type of messaging, it would seem that that particular demographic might exchange one type of learning paradigm for another.